Misconception (Revised)

Misconception

         As I looked out to the war torn village, an uncertain feeling of satisfaction came to my heart. Traders, showmen, women, and children, all had been slain and left to rot in a sea of blood and fire. Yet no remorse had come to me.
I am one of the five commanders of the Ketsueki clan. We are a strong clan, and at the time my quest, our goals as a strengthening force, was conquest, and the sole destruction of the other rival clans. Very few stood to test our will, and those that did stood little chance to even bring forth one strike of their blade.
As the sunlight faded over the tall mountains beyond in the distance, I still looked out to the village. I remember a slight breeze as I heard the sound of rustling leaves beside me. The rotten scent of war taints my lungs, with heavy smells of hot flesh and burning embers. As I looked to the ground beside me I saw a wooden doll covered in dirt and ash. I remembered Keiko, how she had played with her doll, how she laughed and played with her friends. I remember the poisons of revenge that her death set upon my heart, and the hundreds of men I had slain because of it.
The poison of revenge, it holds such power over the mind that our clan has claimed it be an entity, a strange possessive being that is of not heaven or hell. It is more sharp a weapon than any smith can forge. We have come to call this being of blight Doku. 
The last warming rays had nearly dissipated from the now darkened sky; and the slight breeze had subtly died out. The sky was black, as though the heavens had mourned for the people of the once humble village.  It seemed as though we had slain most everyone, yet I hadn’t forgotten that there was still a chance that we might have spawned a Doku that was sitting, waiting in the darkness to strike. It was a lingering thought that now encircled my contradicted mind over and over again.
Suddenly, I felt a cold wet touch as a sharp blade drenched in blood hit the side of my neck. My heart jumped two beats as I drew my blade and turned to face my challenger. In doing so I dropped the small wooden doll I had found laying in the dirt. It was a meek looking man in regular cloths and I would have thought there was a mirror in front of me, not a man. For in him I saw the beast in its entirety. A Doku had in fact been spawned.
But what had frightened me so much that night was the fact that we had made a Doku from a simple villager. He had received no training to become a warrior of any sort, yet his cloths were drenched in blood. He had held no blade before. The blade he held bore the mark of the Ketsueki clan.
The wind had begun to blow once more signaling the start of our fight. The villager lunged forward, his sword to his left side, and came at me from my right. With inhuman strength, he thrust his sword at me in an upward direction. I dodged his attack just in time to face another thrust of his sword. As he swung his blade down I had no choice but to block. It seemed as though he let out every last feeling of anger and sadness in every stroke of his blade.
We were both at a draw for quite some time. The villager had the skill of a Ketsueki general. Finally I let my guard down and he struck me my right cheek. No one had ever made me bleed since the night Keiko was slain. I stepped back towards the edge, terrified. The man started to follow but stopped noticing the wooden doll. He stared at it for quite some time before picking it up and putting it inside his shirt.
Suddenly I heard the hardened footsteps of Ketsueki archers. They quickly formed a half circle around the villager and me.
“Draw your arrows!” said the lead officer “ready your bows! Fire!” and with that they all struck their arrows into the villagers back. He stumbled but was by the most part unfazed.
“Once more!” I said “strike him with your arrows!”
“Again!” said the lead command as each Ketsueki archer fired once more into the back of the villager. He finally dropped to his knees and surprisingly he was still resisting death. He took out the wooden doll and clenched it within his hand.
“Ayame,” he said as he fell to the ground dead. That one word had cut me. It was as if I had betrayed my own self in a way. It put a fire in my heart. From then on I knew my duties. I was to stop my clan’s rein of bloodshed and terror.
Five years have passed since I had made that pact. Our clan has become aware of how we had painted the earth with the blood of the innocents. We are still on our path of conquest but we aren’t using the sheer brutality that we had once come to be known for, leaving innocents and small villages unharmed. Yet it be only a small step in my trek to end this war.