This Venerable Demon is Grossly Unqualified

It’s always a strange experience, waking up in a bed that isn’t yours. There’s that moment of disorientation, before memory reasserts itself, and all the strange little details recontextualize themselves, and you realize you’re sleeping at a bed and breakfast in Boston, not your mattress on the floor back home.

Waking up in a new body is much the same, except the details don’t suddenly start making sense. I’d been up for almost half an hour now, and I was still stuck on the hands. The hands, or rather my hands, I supposed. I’d had calluses before, but this, this was a completely different level. There were scars on my fingers. Deep, old, scars, thin lines of silver flesh criss-crossing the digits. My skin was paler than I remembered, the yellow-orange tint that had endured through a lifetime of indoor pursuits replaced by a bone white. And I felt so strong. My heart thundered in my chest, beating so powerfully it was almost audible. I’d never thought of myself as weak, but this was different, a furious vitality that left me feeling like I could pulp furniture between my fingers, a wild, restless energy demanding to be used.

It was only with great difficulty that I refrained from testing my new fingers out upon the table next to my bed. I’d already shattered the cup, reaching for a drink of water and finding nothing but shards of porcelain that reeked of rice wine.

It was too nice a table to subject to such violence. The whole room was beautiful, but sparse. The low table sat to my left, the sole piece of furniture atop the beautiful rug I sat upon. The rug covered most of the room, bearing embroideries of eastern dragons and phoenixes soaring around each other in tight spirals. A chest of drawers, finely made and coated with lacquer in the shade of vibrant red I’d always associated with the fanciest of dim sum restaurants graced the far wall. While the furnishings were sparse, the walls themselves were anything but, covered with gorgeous hangings from a dozen mismatched artistic traditions. Portraits that looked almost like they could have been done by renaissance masters sat next to landscapes I could only describe as Sumi-E meets modern graffiti, stylized trees and waves done with bold strokes in a dozen clashingly bright colors.

And then there was the sword.

It rested by the door, propped against the trim. I supposed it was my sword, if this body was mine, it stood to reason the contents of the room were as well, at least the personal effects. It was a slender, boxy sort of thing. A thin, but very square blade, with a minimal taper and no fuller. It was utterly unadorned, the guard and pommel a rounded rectangle and black dome respectively of a flat glossy material that looked almost like plastic. It was a curious weapon, I almost felt like it could pass as easily as a Carolingian arming sword as a Jian. I took it with me all the same, there was something reassuring about having a bit of steel at your belt. When I clipped it into the little brass loop that hung from the belt closing my robes, I felt an almost overwhelming sense of correctness flow through me. I knew without a doubt, this was my sword.

I opened the door. It just seemed like the thing to do, going outside. I felt good, even my morning thirst was more of a reflex than a pressing need. But the room was beyond empty, lacking even a stove or bedroll, or any of the other essentials of life, and I’d already spent nearly an hour staring at my scarred fingers and strange wall art. The whole morning felt rather dreamlike. If it was even morning at all, it was rather difficult to tell with all the windows shuttered.

My door opened out onto a great paved plaza, a couple dozen dwellings of varying stages of opulence positioned around it. Mine was one of the well made, but by far one of the smallest, consisting of only a single massive room ringed by a balcony. My neighbors to either side were proper houses, with multiple floors and small enclosed courtyards. The plaza itself was nigh barren, the only deviation from the smooth stones were a few dozen great wooden pillars set at the center, each with hundreds of pieces of paper tacked to it, which cast long shadows in the light of the late afternoon sun.

“Elder Hu!” A shrill cry greeted me from below.

Or, I assumed it greeted me. The colossal plaza was strangely empty, and the young woman who had cried out… Was kowtowing before me scant inches from my doorstep.

“What?” I asked.

“Please Elder Hu, have mercy on this unworthy…" She began. "Wait, what?"

Gingerly, I stepped over her, and began walking away. This situation was weird and uncomfortable and I wanted no part in it.

“Wait, sorry, please don’t go, I was just expecting you to ignore me again!” The young woman said, the words spilling out of her like a drunken frat bro trying to explain cryptocurrency to his date.

“Please, I'm sorry to bother you but I've been here for two months and nobody has been willing to teach me anything, or they wanted things I couldn't give them in exchange and everyone says that you're a master of the sword and one of the fairest elders, could you just give me a few pointers or some advice about the Dao or anything at all I just don't know what to do and I gave up everything to come here and feel like my one chance to change my fate is slowly slipping away from me!"

After that horrendous vomit of information, she fell silent, staring up at me apprehensively from her kneeling position. The young lady wore a black robe, made from roughly spun cotton or linen or wool. Her long brown hair pooled all around her bowed head, obscuring most of her face, but I could see enough to tell she was vaguely asian in appearance. At her side lay a naked sword, a mangled thing that had clearly seen long use, its blade marked by dozens of small burrs that hadn't been properly ground out.

"Walk with me." I finally said, regretting the words the moment they left my lips. What the hell was I supposed to tell her? I wasn't this Elder Hu, but saying that seemed like a terrible idea.

Pithy advice raced through my head. Don't eat yellow snow? Too flippant. Measure twice, cut once? Good, but didn't really seem sufficiently martial considering I'd found myself in some sort of asian fantasy. I tried to wrack my head, Elder Hu's head apparently, for some sort of martial advice, but found nothing. I was a passable mixed martial artist, but far from an expert with a sword. Fuck, never had I more greatly regretted not taking those Kali classes my gym offered.

The girl struggled to keep up with the pace I set as I thought furiously, my already longer legs flying across the plaza even faster than I'd expected, each step building more momentum than it should. I had no idea how I was doing that, but it gave me an idea.

I stopped.

"Demonstrate a technique." I ordered.

The girl leapt to obey, taking a wide stance with her sword held out to her side. Slowly, she brought her hands together, slowly bringing the weapon up to her cheek, then she took a long step forward and spun, the sword first dipping low, then raising high, cold light building along the edge of the mangled blade. As she exited the spin, bringing the sword across and down, I could see the cold light she'd gathered extend forward, flying just beyond the edge of the cut before dissipating. The whole sequence took several seconds. It was gorgeous, in a way, unearthly, and the blade of silver light felt dangerously sharp, even from a distance.

She turned expectantly towards me, breathing heavily. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Had a single swing exhausted her?

I had no idea how to use sword intent, or qi, or whatever the hell that was, but I had one idea.

I channeled Frank, the old Italian-American man who had taught me to box.

"Now do it again, without all that wasted motion. A mortal with a sharp stick could have poked you to death in the time it took you to finish that."

Well, maybe it was a poor channeling. Frank wouldn’t have used half as many words. Or said anything like that. It was a truly awful impression.

"I'm sorry Elder, I do not understand. What wasted motion? That was my best comprehension of the Waxing Crescent, as the Manual of the Passing Moon described it."

"All of it. Starting from such a low guard. Why would you ever keep a sword in a position where you cannot immediately block with it. That spin. Looking away from your opponent for a little more momentum is to court death needlessly!" I began, a little bit of Xianxia-rhetoric slipping into my speech.

“I’m sorry Elder, but I do not understand. Could you show this blind disciple?” The girl replied, staring down at the ground instead of meeting my eyes.

Well, time to expose myself as a fraud. Even as I agreed, my mind raced to think of excuses. Performance anxiety? Left my good sword at home? I decided to just perform some sort of normal-ass slash. Maybe I’d say something about how a normal swing would kill a man just as surely as whatever fancy moon nonsense she’d demonstrated? Was that even true here? I wasn’t sure.

I drew the sword by my side, and suddenly, everything felt right. I took it up in the same guard I'd exhorted the girl to, a sort of two handed mid-guard that I was pretty sure I'd seen a kendoka take in a YouTube video a lifetime ago. Or maybe it was HEMA? Swords really were not my forte. I'd planned to swing like the girl had, minus the spin, but my muscles had other ideas.

With an ease born from thousands of repetitions now forgotten, I brought the hilt up to my chest, angling it for a two handed thrust that was totally inappropriate for a weapon of this length and weight. Power surged through my veins, and I caught the wind along the edge of my blade. For a ghost of a moment, it felt like I was thrusting through molasses, every fraction of an inch heavier than the last, until an instant later, the resistance broke, and with it, the very air around me. A sonic boom echoed as a pressure wave screamed out from my sword, sending a horizontal hurricane ripping across the plaza. Trees whipped back and forth, lacquered shutters clacked as they were torn from their ties, and a few windows simply popped, the sheer pressure of the blast too much for them to bear.

Oops.

A word entered my mind unbidden, I might not be this Elder Hu, but the body remembered. Stormbreaker, it was called. A sword to silence the raging heavens.

I waited a moment, for the cacophony to quiet.

“Any move that cannot be performed instantly from your default guard is one your opponent can predict. This is sometimes an acceptable flaw, some attacks force a reaction, allowing you to control the pace of the fight. To further comprehend your technique, identify the gap between your technique, and the simplest sequence of physical movements that could allow you to execute the final strike with the appropriate force and position.” I said, letting my voice slip into a regular, pedagogical, cadence. “True mastery is squaring the circle between the metaphysical requirements of your technique, and the physically optimal motions for the particular exchange of blows you are engaging in.” I added, throwing in a little profound sounding mystical gibberish. Well, it wasn’t total gibberish, the concept made sense, I just had no idea if it was true or not.

Oh god, oh fuck. Doors were opening. A bunch of Asian men in robes were slowly filing out of some of the houses, investigating the sudden hurricane.

“Square the circle…” The girl muttered.

I turned on my heel and started walking away. Lesson over, time for a tactful, tactical, retreat. Again, my legs ate up the ground, further accelerating me with every step, and this time I didn’t try to hold back.

The girl tried to follow me for a moment, before accepting the implied dismissal for what it was.

"This Su Li will never forget your kindness Elder Hu. Truly, they do not call you the Saint in Crimson for nothing." She shouted at my back.

I looked down at my robes. The edges were a bright red, but they were mostly black. That seemed like an ominous sort of sobriquet. Her words aside, I really didn’t think they meant the catholic sort of saint.

Elder Hu, the Saint in Crimson. That was me apparently.

Quickly, I beat a retreat, before anyone else could try to talk to me, zipping out of the plaza and down the mountainside.