(Region 6 - South Sioux City, NE, USA; made public by L5R)

The Kaiu Wall, Crab Lands

Tsuruchi Okame stopped and checked the ground, looking for any sign of their prey. He glanced back at his commanding officer, Yoritomo Egumi, with a grim nod. Egumi signaled for his men to hold, and ran quickly up to check the hunter’s progress. “The trail?” he asked.

“Still here,” Okame said. He pointed to several dark blotches on the ground. “There are some wounded among them.”

“Good,” Egumi grunted. He had led his Legion against the Bloodspeakers in three Crab villages so far, having arrived from the Plains of Thunder only two days before, driving the cultists before them like mice before a fire in the fields. The Mantis commander had brought his men ashore at Earthquake Fish Bay, attacking from an unexpected angle while Hida Tonoji led his Legion against the Bloodspeakers on the Plains Above Evil, far to the west. “How many survived?”

Okame frowned at the trail. “It looks like a dozen, perhaps fewer. It is hard to say with the ground this trampled.”

“At least we know where they must be heading,” Egumi grunted, pointing to the southwest. Okame followed his gesture to the ramshackle assortment of peasant buildings that rested behind a giant stone edifice, the largest such construction anywhere in Rokugan.

The Great Carpenter Wall.

“Let us hope the Crab continue to appreciate our assistance when we spill the blood of cultists on the clean side of their wall,” Egumi said with a smirk.

The peasants outside the Wall had apparently put up a fight. When Okame and Egumi arrived, there were signs of a struggle, including several dead peasants and a pair of dead guards as well, not to mention a trio of bodies wearing blood-stained robes that could only belong to Bloodspeakers. Egumi quickly positioned his men to restore order, aiding the Crab who emerged from the incident unscathed. This region of the Wall had not seen a major attack in over a decade, and the number of troops in the area was significantly lower than in other regions.

Okame prowled alone, seeking something he could not quite identify. There was something amiss, something that made the hair on his arms stand up. He struggled to make sense of the crushed, trampled earth, but could find no trail. Just as he resigned himself to the thought that his hunt was over, he saw a flash of color in a narrow alley between two buildings. Without thinking, he rushed in.

“Okame!” an eerily familiar voice said as he emerged into a rubbish-filled alley between two rows of houses. “I thought it was you.”

Okame looked at the lithe, almost skeletal figure holding a blade against a Bloodspeaker’s throat. His skin was pale and sunken, his eyes dark and mad. “Hiro,” he said quietly.

“I saved this one for you,” the corrupted Tsuruchi said with a smile, slowly dragging the point of his blade across the cultist’s face. “Those who would join Daigotsu are long gone, and I sacrificed the others to the Crab. This one, you can capture. You will be a hero, Okame!”

Okame drew the arrow back, pointing it at his old friend. “Surrender, Hiro. Your pain will be over soon.”

“I cannot,” Hiro said, a ring of genuine sorrow in his voice. “But I thank you for asking.” He hurled the cultist at Okame. The older hunter kicked the Bloodspeaker viciously, sending him spiraling away so that he could have a clean shot.

But Hiro was already gone.