Guardian: Saviors of Kamigawa

Writer - Scott McGough
Cover Art - Donato Giancola
First Printing - May 2005

SUMMARY
In the prologue Michiko, still living with the kitsune in Jukai, sends a kanji message to Toshi. He sends a reply saying he's quite busy, but will come to her eventually. Eiganjo has fallen, Konda is missing, and the soratami are conquering in the Takenuma and Jukai.

Toshi is back at Minamo, seeing aspects of the All-Cosuming Oni of Chaos eating the library. He's already regretting leaving That Which Was Taken there, but can't teleport it out as Night's Reach has forbidden him form brining it through her realm. He also finds captain Nagao and his surviving men trapped in the room with the thing, as it seems to repel the Oni somehow. Toshi meets with Hidetsugu, who shows him how lesser Oni are razing the Soratami city above. Hidetsugu wants Toshi to commit to the hyozan fully, but Toshi wants to keep playing all his allegiances against one another to stay independent. He manages to get away, but there is a great scene where the two former... friends? allies? look at each other as Toshi teleports away, knowing they are becoming enemies.

Toshi goes to Numai. He finds Kiku as the sole survivor of her wizarding clan. The soratami came to kill them so the wizards infused Kiku with tremendous shadow powers to stop them, but those are now driving her insane. Toshi helps her get those powers under control and the two have sex. Later they get Marrow-Gnawer to go with them, as the rat is only to happy to be away from his clan who are all clinging to him for help. Toshi then goes to Eiganjo to steal a giant moth to carry TWWT and his allies. While there he is attacked by Isamaru, who he teleports to Jukai so he can be with Michiko.

Toshi, Kiku and Marrow arrive at Minamo and teleport Nagao and the other survivors to Jukai as well. Then the All-Consuming Oni of Chaos attacks. Toshi uses the powers granted to him by Night's Reach to chase this manifestation off, but this brings down the ire of Hidetsugu down on him. Luckily at that moment Konda and his ghost army attack Minamo, so Hidetsugu has to send his oni army to fight them, going after Toshi with just two yamabushi as back-up. 'Tsugu reveals he knows Toshi is no longer hyozan, which causes Kiku to side with the ogre. Which wasn't a good move, as 'Tsugu next reveals he snuck a way to kill fellow hyozan into the oath from the get go: you just shouldn't draw blood. He starts to choke out Kiku as an example, and grabs Toshi as well. Suddenly Marrow-Gnawer appears, having been drawn down by the burning of his own hyozan mark. Seeing Hidetsugu killing the others and thinking the oath has been broken already, he saves Toshi and Kiku by stabbing 'Tsugu in the eyes, thus bringing down the wrath of the oath upon himself.

O-Kagachi then shows up. As you might suspect, this causes a distraction.

Toshi tries to save Marrow from the oath by cutting of his tattooed arm, but the nezumi is still burning up. Kiku gives herself over to her shadow powers and attacks Hidetsugu, but Toshi prevents her from killing him so the oath doesn't claim her as well, which pisses her off. Eventually the battle leaves Toshi almost dead. He prays to Night's Reach to save him, but she says he already has the answer. Through a crack in the walls he sees the Oni of All-Consuming Chaos flee from O-Kagachi. Toshi shares this information with Hidetsugu which breaks the ogre's spirit. He makes a deal to let the rest of them go in exchange for Toshi teleporting him to the Honden of Chaos so he can get his god know what he thinks of his cowardice. Kiku teleports away into the shadows and Toshi mercy kills Marrow. He then takes That Which Wat Taken away with his moth to Jukai, using his shadow powers to hide from Konda and O-Kagachi.

The Jukai meanwhile is being attacked by the soratami, who are using the chaos of the Kami War to conquer the world and remake it in Mochi's image. (Their forays into the Takenuma swamp we've seen since the start of Outlaw were all preparation to conquer there as well.)

Toshi briefly gets captured by orochi, who show him their summoning of the dragon spirit Jugan to fight the soratami. When he escapes he discovers that TWWT has turned the orochi who were guarding it to salt. The thing also starts talking to him, yelling stuff like "release me!". And as if that wasn't enough, he starts being plagued by dreams send by Uyo and Chiyo that confront him with all the bad stuff he's done. Initially Toshi seems remorseless, but eventually they wear him down by showing him accusing visions of Marrow-Gnawer, Kobo and Hidetsugu, and calling him and oath-breaker. They also have Godo show up, telling him he can make amends by dealing with the Yuki-Onna, who is still ravaging the Sokenzan mountain borderlands. Toshi teleports to there, leaving TWWT in Jukai. Mochi plans to herd the orochi to it to get O-Kagachi to eat them.

He has a history of eating entire armies after all...

In the mountains Night's Reach appears before Toshi and reveals he is being manipulated. She isn't willing to reveal herself to Mochi and the soratami yet though. Angered Toshi reclaims the power of the Yuki-Onna and uses it reach out through his dreams and freeze Uyo solid, killing her. He then sets the spirit free again.

Meanwhile Konda arrives at Jukai. He's tempted to save the orochi from the soratami, but then TWWT gets rattled and sends out a beam of light. Having spotted his prize, he sends his spirit army after the soratami and takes a small force with him to claim TWWT. O-Kagachi also shows up, manifesting quicker than ever before. Toshi teleports in but with both Konda's spirits and O-Kagachi's heads barreling down on him, he only has one way out: he teleports TWWT through Night's Reach's realm.

The myojin is furious over this, saying O-Kagachi will follow it to her now. She casts Toshi out, but TWWT saves him. He lands in the Jukai, not far from where Michiko is staying with the kitsune. The kitsune elders try to talk to TWWT, while other kitsune work on freeing it. Toshi feels this isn't going to work, and convinces Michiko, who is tied to the thing after all, to free it. Before she tries he manages to surreptitiously draw the kanji for "sister" and "union" on her hands, and the spirit inside is freed, manifesting as a multi-colored and scaled human. She obviously doesn't like being called "The Taken One", so Toshi suggests "Kyodai", meaning "sibling". Then O-Kagachi shows up, fully manifesting all 8 of his heads for the first time. In response Kyodai & Michiko teleport away for a little heart-to-heart.

Here's hoping Commander Legends has a "Sisters of Flesh and Spirit" card so I can put in a more appropriate picture here...

Kyodai shows Michiko life as a spirit. She hates Konda for capturing her, but is also afraid O-Kagachi will devour her, ending her existence as an individual. Michiko then tells her:

"But we can rewrite those boundaries. Our fathers have defined our worlds for our entire lives, but we can redefine them. This is the way of mortal being, for the ages to give way to the young The old must stand aside for the new."

The two sisters merge and return clothed and armed to face the still slowly descending O-Kagachi. There is then a big fight scene, which ends with the sisters shrinking O-Kagachi and biting off his remaining two heads. (It's much more climactic in the book. That's the trouble with summaries...) Konda then shows up but is quickly turned to stone & shattered, remaining alive in this hellish state. Michiko makes Kyodai promise to return in 20 years to see if the scales have been balanced, but Kyodai thinks they never will be.

The sisters then take O-Kagachi's place in Kamigawa's cosmology. They say the Kami War will continue for a while, until they have shown all spirits there is no more reason to fight. They are interested in a "blending" of the two worlds, making spirit-magic more accessible to mortals.

And who wouldn't want to play epic spells like these?

Mochi shows up to mooch, but Kyodai summons Hidestugu, who has apparently beaten up his own god and now is the new chaos oni. Toshi and Hidetsugu recite the hyozan oath for Kobo, and then 'Tsugu eats Mochi, who was ultimately responsible.

With everything wrapped up, Toshi marches off, straight into a trap. He is mortally wounded by Chiyo, who now wears a mask after being mauled by the demon dog last novel. Night's Reach saves Toshi but also teleports him away. No actually... she planeswalkers him away! She reveals that the Kami War did not only weaken the barrier between the Kakuriyo and Utsushiyo, but also the barriers between Kamigawa and other planes, which allowed her to travel there, gaining new knowledge and finding new worshipers. So she's not super happy about Toshi's role in ending the war. So she drops of Toshi in another plane and blinds him. Left alone on a new world, Toshi smells a swamp nearby that promises new magics, and takes the first step towards a new life.

TRIVIA

• Toshi has vivid green eyes. I'm assuming there is some weird lighting going on in Umezawa's Charm.

• The scene with Marrow-Gnawer and his clan is quite funny, as he keeps up a charade of not being able to go because he has to protect his fellow nezumi, while privately begging Toshi to take him away from cramped hovel they are forced to stay in.
• Marrow is just a cool character in general, being loyal yet brutal, and "giddy as a schoolgirl" about getting to fly on the moth. McGough really uses his limited screen-time very well, making you really care for the guy... right before he gets killed, with his last words being him asking Toshi if he did good.
• Before they leave the nezumi hovel, Kiku gives a bunch of rats some gold to write Toshi's name on all latrines they can find, so he will be metaphorically pissed on by rats. She just rolls her eyes when Toshi admits it's a good diss.
• While in Eiganjo Toshi hears that the akki army is still north of there. This is the last we hear of them, so they just sort of disappear from the story. The only thing we know about the end of this attack is that we heard in the Brothers Yamazaki vignette that it failed in the end. We get no word on the refugees that were attack last novel either. In a post on MTGSalvation.com Scott McGough admitted this was a mistake, as he thought the story would be told in one of the online vignettes. Perhaps he was confused by the Brother's Yamazaki story, or the siege from the Sakashima story? Whatever the case, apparently we weren't missing much, as he also says the siege just goes on until the Kami War ended, and then sort of petered out. As the brothers' vignette revealed they defended their village from kami attacks for a while, presumably the siege petered out shortly after O-Kagachi and Konda were defeated, but it then took the sisters quite a while to reign in all the mad spirits.

• We get a quick reference saying "Some of Kamigawa's religions believe Night and Chaos were the first spirits". Presumably these are different religions than that of Dosan. I do like that even a world where the gods are constantly manifesting has different interpretations of them.
• There is a cool scene of Hidetsugu talking about how long he and Toshi were planning to kill each other, and him then being disappointed when Toshi says it was only recently for him.
• The eastern edge if Jukai has never been mapped, because Jukai is massive. We've talked about that when we discussed the Kamigawa map.
• Mochi sends the soratami against the orochi because they have the closest link to the Kami of all mortals, and after O-Kagachi the Myojin of Life's Web is the most aggrieved kami in the war, as she sees Konda's crime as having upset the balance of nature. Mochi says this is why he "arranged" for her to be diminished (via Toshi) at the end of Outlaw.
• The Yuki-Onna's home, the Heart of Frost, is inside the Tendo Peaks.
• Kitsune live for hundreds of years and in an Ent-like move tend to do things slowly and deliberately. Much to the annoyance of Toshi.
• Preempting a possible minor continuity quibble, we get the following line; "Toshi knew next to nothing about the kitsune and he hated the woods, but even he knew that proper fox-elders had more than one tail". Apparently the elders of Sugi Hayashi aren't that senior among the kitsune.
• It is said O-Kagachi "embodies everything in the kayriyo and the utsushiyo" and that he is the Kami of Kami and Kami of the Divide. So yes, he really is a lot of things wrapped in one. 

Not sure what this thing is supposed to be...

CONTINUITY

• Kiku's shadow powers are still not quite as her cards and articles described her. She now gathers shadows around her, and when she goes all out they reach out from her like spider legs. At no point does she turn someone's shadow against them.
• It's said the hyozan curse was only invoked twice, which is at odds with the suggestion in the Betrayers booklet that suggested there once were far more reckoners. Although perhaps in this case the "curse" just refers to the curse of killing your fellow oathbrother, rather than the vengeance the rest of the brothers will take on your killer.
• Jugan shows up, which sounds at odds with the two Battle of Silk vignettes, the second of which says the dragon died there and empowered the monks. But he's a spirit after all, so presumably he just spend some time recuperating in the spirit realms until the orochi and the Myojin of Life's Web summon him here.
• When arriving in the new plane, Toshi sees "two huges spires of rock. They looked too perfect to be natural, but who could have constructed them? And what purpose did they serve, so far away?" Then later Night's Reach says "The landmass you are currently standing on is ruled by a powerful queen who styles herself a goddess. You are my gift to her. To this entire world." Which, combined with the fact that Scott McGough is writing these books, and, oh yeah, the fact that Toshi's last name is Umezawa, makes it pretty clear that Toshi has been dropped of at Madara, on Dominaria, and that he will go on to become Tetsuo's ancestor.

With all three novels having been covered, it's finally time to move on to the actual review! Check in next Saturday for that!