He'd failed to make the libations to his brother again, failed because it accidentally got poured into his stomach instead of the stones he'd laid in memory all those years ago. He almost thought he could see his brother's ghost standing beside him, sitting on a stone, whittling. His brother had never whittled before, which made it all the stranger. As he stumbled carelessly forward, he was surer and surer that he could make out what looked like the outline of a person, clearly fiddling with a knife. But it was clearly not the young nobleman's brother. He set his hand on the long hilt of his father's sword, and stepped forward again.

The ghostly figure did not look up, but threw the whittled piece at the young nobleman. The sword was out of the sheath and slicing, clean and pure like Ishidoro would never be. The cut was smooth and clean and as he slid the sword back into its sheath two sides of a skull were rolling on the ground of the garden. Ishidoro screamed, and the scream rose higher as the ghost rose and regarded the samurai with contempt. His knife seemed to grow longer, longer, until it was as long as Ishidoro's blade or longer. The ghost made a clean cut, the blade no more solid than the wielder itself. Even still, Ishidoro's yukata split where the ghostly blade cut, seeming to fall in slow motion. The weapon was clearly deadly. Ishidoro's eyes drifted somewhat independently of each other, and he tried to get it together.

He stepped back, regarding the situation carefully. He blinked, stepped, and made the finest cut of his young life. It seemed to him that everything had long been adding up to this moment, and that his training had been in preparation to protect his father's home from this occult invader. The blade sailed through the ghost's abdomen, and Ishidoro imagined he could feel the sword's tip slap against flesh. But in the end, there was no blood, and the ghostly blade sailed down at his vulnerable neck. Only his drunkenness saved him, as he lost his balance, stumbled, and fell. The blade did not entirely miss, however, as it cut a deep groove into his forearm that would last him the rest of his life. The samurai tried to think of how he could possible win this fight--he had no effective weapon, and no means of escape or attack. For the first time he valued the onmyoji at the emperor's palace fully, and he wished that Seimei were come again to save him from this horrible monster.

He stepped back, holding his blade in a defensive posture and tried to keep his wits and his balance in the light of his sake habits. He steadied himself against the fence and tried to dodge a slice headed for his forehead. He almost felt the blade cut into his scalp at the same time that he dodged just out of the way, stepping heavily to his side and dropping the tip of his sword into the dirt. The sake container lay overturned across the garden, and he began to wonder if perhaps he would be able to purify his blade with it, and perhaps cut the apparition with such a holy blade. He lunged, but lost his balance and slipped in the dewy grass in his drunkenness. He tried to move his leg to avoid another attack, but the ghostly blade caught his ankle and he felt it cut like fire through the bone and cartilage, and he bled into the grass from where he once had a foot. He got his remaining good leg under him, and tried to take a step forward. Then it hit him as he put his weight down that the strategy wasn't going to work, and he fell and cried out in agony. He reached, but even still the bottle was away from his hand. He dragged himself another foot forward, but the bottle was still out of his reach. He thrust his blade into the ground, hoping beyond hope that he could drag himself faster with a handle.

The ghost, for his part, was not to be avoided. He stepped up to the prone Ishidoro, and raised his blade for a finishing strike. The down stroke was beautiful, and in his delirium Ishidoro imagined that he was fighting someone a great sword saint, come to punish him for his sin. He rolled desperately to the side, hurling himself with the handle of his katana as a springboard to avoid the ghostly blade. It was in this that he was saved, and he reached the sake bottle with the tips of his fingers and rolled it toward himself.

Finding the bottle not entirely empty, he rose to a knee and reached for the sacred family blade. He quickly poured the contents of the bottle over the blade, and screamed what he hoped wouldn't be his last scream as he tried to slap the ghostly apparition's blade away, hoping that now his weapon would have some effect. When the ghostly weapon did not hit its mark, Ishidoro cried out happily, trying to thrust and finally end the deadly melee he'd been locked in for several minutes. The ghost was not only adept at cutting, however, and the blade sliced through empty air. Ishidoro fell flat on his face from the loss of balance, and he barely brought the blade up in time to parry another cut. The samurai's son thrust from his back, and here he was lucky once more--the ghost did not see the blade coming, and from such a vulnerable position he had assumed Ishidoro defenseless. The sword drove through his ghostly stomach, and he fell to his knees. Ishidoro rose to a knee, and prayed to his brother to forgive his drunkenness. He didn't get an answer. He could see his father, the elder of the Yamamoto family, holding a lantern at the entryway to the garden. "What have you done to yourself!" he cried. Ishidoro tried to explain the situation, when the elder shouted that he had been flailing his blade about completely alone. Only the shorn foot served as testament to the legitimacy of the battle.