There were growls coming from the decaying voice boxes of my revived warriors as they shambled through the maze of grainy trees. My ink giant made black splashes in the ground with each step as it stomped over the loose floor. Then my clones, well, they were just less handsome versions of myself. They moved seemingly at random but their movements were being controlled by me from a distance. I sat cross-legged with hands floating around me forming the ‘ok’ gesture and my mind focused with both of my eyes glowing brightly in their respective colors. Noba, I assumed, was versed in the sneaky-sneak but I wasn’t a stranger to hiding in the shadows myself. I already knew all the mistakes that one could make when trying to hide their presence, though he didn’t a good job of throwing my off his trail. Honestly, there wasn’t much to be thrown off from in a forest with no twigs to snap or bushes to break. I had to rely on not only my senses but also my natural talent in the shinobi arts.
“Tsk.” I spit. The hatter was trying to help in advising, but all he did was derail my concentration. With my connection to the spirit world, I could feel his presence better than Noba’s when the visitor
wasn’t trying to hide from me. Still, I listened to what he had to say because I knew that he was speaking for his master. The riddle about lights wasn’t necessary, but then again this was supposed to be a lesson after all. I figured it was good for him to be more vague for me to try to figure it out on my own. I was a kinesthetic learner anyway, and doing more of the work myself would prove to be more useful for me. So I sat there in the sand, feeling my connection to all of the creations I had roaming the forest and using their senses to look for clues.
“Feeling…” My creations and my clones rubbed the trees as they passed. Each one was made to be exactly the same, in texture and volume. Any changes to them wouldn’t be fixed by my cousin, so any discrepancies would be easily noticed. I felt every footstep my army made, checking for any particularly loose spots of sand where it may have disturbed by another’s path. What I felt was my friend trying to play games with me. Several of my creations found tracks, and I believed they couldn’t have all been Noba himself.
“Taste?” There was nothing in that basement I wanted to taste.
“Tsk.”
“Smell.” The air was stale. You could imagine it would be considering we were in an enclosed basement far beneath the surface of sand. The staleness gave way to something I wouldn’t have gotten easily in the fresh air. Through my clones and my own nose, I could smell everything in that room. Of course most of my corpses didn’t have noses anymore, so they were less than useful, and my giant was a faceless ink creature with a humanoid shape. Though I only spent one night with the man, I could easily recognize his scent over that of my cousins, myself, and even the rotting corpses. Strangely enough, it was my original self which stayed near the starting point that could smell him the best. I opened my eyes and they burst into flames of green and red.
The hands floating around my non-clone body moved to attention, flatting and coming together in multiple prayer gestures. I rose into the air in one swift motion without breaking my own pray shaped hands which quickly changed into a flash of handseals. Then there was nothing for a moment, and then the area immediately surrounding me began to
quake. The trees surrounding me would proceed shaking quite violently as the quake began stronger and stretched further away. Perhaps it was possible that Noba went through the forest to set up distractions for me, but then he returned while I focused on my army surveying the land. Perhaps, I thought, the reason I could smell him so fiercely.
“Nooobaaa-saaan…” I whispered to myself, letting the natural shape of the basement echo the words into the dark void of our sandy surroundings.
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