Genma glanced up at the crossroads. Still looked nothing like the path he'd been on in Namoka. And at the sign post. Home, the man had said, and one of the direction markers pointed up one of the roads, with a large pinkish heart where indecipherable squiggles had been before.
Genma wanted to go home. He wanted to get up and run... no flee. His instinct was one of long years as a shinobi of high rank. He'd long ago learned how to suss out an adversary's strength, assess it against his own, and knew better than to fight a losing battle. That's why he'd survived as long as he had.
The memory.... no the sensation came back all at once of lying on that beach, half-drowned and mostly naked, tied up in ropes, exsanguination in a race with the poison from the demon's bite to kill him. Alone. Cold. Poisoned. Dying.
It was what he deserved.
Bring friends? All his friends were dead, weren't they?