On Astral Tides: From Humble Freelancer To Astral Emperor

As Tamamo-no-Mae descended the volcanic slopes, her tails began to diminish in size, the energies withdrawn within, the golden lustre of her fur dimming. Leaking a long sigh, feeling the comfortable weight of power settling into her tails, redistributed, the crackling splitting of the fragile skies above slowed, the jagged, incandescent lightning diminishing, although…

Tamamo-no-Mae turned back for a moment, the skies still churning. Her ears flickered, buffeted not just by the aftershocks of the tremendous battles above, but by a faint stirring of something both familiar and… shameful, perhaps, would I call it? How very… exotic… a feeling this is. I felt I was a being who knew no shame, only my own desires and wants, until that wretched monk shattered my very self. By then, perhaps I was too… broken… for truly feeling shame. Now though…

Now, she vaguely understood, a rather disgusting feeling, like the prickling of tiny insects nibbling at her flesh, the insides of her mind, and she did not care for it. Facing that foolish, parasitised Kamuy, she had held back instinctively, surprised, and also somehow relieved that some still lived. Only to have my hopes dashed, it seems… but then, were I the one so oppressed, would I turn to others for vengeance? Of course I would. Though I much preferred to enact my desires with my own hands, were I unable to, I would have no qualms in seeking others. I am a Yōkai. Perhaps it is prideful of me to say, but there truly are but a half-dozen who could ever rival me, throughout this entire land. Even so, there were those who exceeded my might, back then, those who took the Kami as their own…

Spitting a little blood, her insides still unsettled from the unleashing of her strength, which like all Kitsune who grew many tails, she could keep distributed, hidden… Of course, the drawbacks are significant. Appearing weak, mundane, is to be such. A sudden strike, before I have chance to withdraw and circulate my strengths, my League, and… I could be mortally wounded… Tamamo-no-Mae accelerated, setting such thoughts aside. As she sped up, wind element and lightning element resonating with two of her tails, the black rock beneath her feet exploded, propelling her out, across barren, dead lands and towards the churning seas.

The odd squeal from Sekka rang in her ears, while Bintara, taciturn woman that she was, merely closed her dark eyes, her face expressionless. Both of them were held within ghostly tails of Tamamo-no-Mae’s aetheric energies, but only Sekka was struggling, rather dishevelled, her cool, blue skin already pink, not from embarrassment, but from the damaging heat of the volcano.

“I am not luggage to be carried so…” Sekka hissed, as they plummeted towards the ocean, the churning, cold black waves greeting them. “…and I do not care to swim…”

“Then act.” Tamamo-no-Mae grimaced, still resisting the urge to turn back to the battle behind her, a ghostly, almost invisible tugging on her zeroth tail, her very self. “Make us a foothold. I am not fond of dallying here.”

Sekka breathed out, and her chill breath struck the surface of the ocean moments before they did, freezing a great portion of it into a block of ice. Mae touched down, splashing water everywhere, but in a rare act of good manners, she used her water element to scatter the shower away, before Bintara could act. Then she blasted off the icy block, which shattered from the impact and pressure, once more rocketing into the skies, wind and lightning surging, lighting up the inky gloom, the distant, looming island coming closer. Though I shall not make the leap in one motion…

As they descended, Sekka let out another annoyed protest. “Why do I have to come with you? Why did we have to retreat at all?”

“It is quite simple.” Tamamo-no-Mae found she was enjoying this strange situation, of seeing old, familiar faces once more, those who had almost vanished from her memories over the long centuries of torment and dissolution. Yes, the memories were rather fuzzy and incomplete, but as she spent a little time with them, such memories seemed to sharpen, coming back into focus, making her feel a little bit more like herself, and not someone watching her memories from a distance. “Is it not merely good manners, to offer aid when we have offered it to you in return? Why, I had not known you were so churlish, Sekka, as to disdain to offer a hand…”

Sekka was listening, incredulous, and Tamamo-no-Mae was actually getting a teasing thrill from seeing her constant shocked reactions to her attitude. It amuses the playful, wicked side of my nature, I imagine. I am certainly no doer of good, selfless deeds, but… perhaps, at least for now, I have found no need to indulge in overly wicked ones…

As her thoughts raced, Sekka once more froze the water below them, and again they catapulted off ice, leaving a massive plume of water cascading into the air behind them. Sekka cursed, biting her tongue, and Tamamo-no-Mae held in her need to laugh uproariously, instead choosing to finish her mocking teasing. “…to those who have protected you, and promised to restore your sovereignty over the icy mountain you call home, Sekka. Why, we even tended to your injured body, brought you succour, and drove back the invaders which hunted you and your fellow Yuki-onna. And you would baulk at helping us remove the fiery thorn in your flesh that is that Territory?”

They landed with a great impact, the shoreline of the island having a crater blasted several metres deep and dozens across by Tamamo-no-Mae’s phantom tails. Dust and debris scattered, once more aether keeping it from soiling her passengers, and she released them, placing them down upon the barren, stony ground. Showing that such a feat of rapid travel, through simple raw strength, was nothing to her, even though it had churned her Chakra network rather brutally, Tamamo-no-Mae merely straightened the cloth of her kimono, preventing her chest from springing free.

“It does seem rather ironic coming from your mouth, fox.” Bintara opened her eyes, taking a deep breath, drawing in water element from the surrounding seas. It was rich here, and old, as was the earth element that permeated Rebun island. Then Bintara froze, her expression switching to one of great dislike, and now she was the one spitting, as if tasting something unpleasant and foul. “Was it not your lack of gratitude and unwillingness or inability to pay what you had promised that was the cause of much of your present sorrows?” After her pointed question, she spat again, and water element was expelled from her. “What happened to this place? The seas here used to be full of sweet energy, the strength of those who came before, yet now… bitter, almost acidic…”

“The earth element is the same.” Tamamo-no-Mae agreed, the ruby motes leaking from the rocks speckled with a sort of inky, ominous blue. “I would not care to try and tame it. As for your words… it gives me the best perspective to speak from experience, does it not? Yes, it is very easy to trample on promises to those below us. But we never know just when one insect we ignored turns out to carry a potent bite…”

“Bite, you say?” Sekka shivered, as they clambered out of the crater their landing had caused. “…are you threatening me, after I gave up much of my precious ice element, not for mere days, weeks, months or even years as you suggested, but for a near-endless time?”

“Threats? Hardly.” Tamamo-no-Mae knew it was not an unfair admonition, after all, threats, lies, promises, wheedling and treachery had long been her stock-in-trade, though to those few she considered, if not equal, her peers, she was often candid and acted in good faith where she could. Of course, where I could not, I would lie and still take what I wanted. After all, my own desires were all I cared for in this barren, cruel world. Just look… at what happened here. Is it any wonder I became nihilistic?

“No.” she continued. “It is simply some advice. Besides, have you not a guarantor for whatever promises I accrue, in Akio?” Tamamo-no-Mae waved her tails in languid amusement as they began to stalk up the rocky beach, towards the peaks and rivers of the island’s centre. “Rest assured, Sekka, I am grateful that you kept your word even beyond what could reasonably have been expected of you. It was likely I would never have returned, barring the meddling of that man…”

“And Uranai’s prophecy.” Bintara broke in, tossing her head restlessly, great horns catching the unlight above, casting odd, prismatic reflections over the dead lands around. The rock underfoot was bare, the sky heavy and permeated with toxic earth element, and the Bitan clearly felt great discomfort. “And a granddaughter you once spared on a whim. It does cause one to wonder…”

Tamamo-no-Mae agreed. “Indeed. I am not a great believer in anything but my own actions. The Heavens, as Caihong’er would say, have laid out the paths for us all, but strength trumps fate and destiny every time. Only the weak should complain about the whims of fate, the ties of destiny. The weak…” she repeated, expression suddenly grim. “I loathe this island. It brings back unpleasant memories.”

“I did not take part.” Sekka’s expression matched hers. “I knew a flame too hot to be controlled, too burning to be comfortable, when I saw it. But you…”

“Yes, me. I was bored, I so often was back then. Ōtakemaru just wished to indulge his rage, his need to kill… Shuten-dōji, his reasons were as obscure as always. And Nurarihyon… the Parade roams as it will now, does it not, and he and little Seirei, Uranai, you, Bintara, and the others… travel the lands on your ocean of darkness.”

“Better the Kami we know, than the Kamuy who were the bones of this land…” Bintara remarked, her tone quiet, contemplative, almost reverent. “…we are Yōkai. They were Kami. Both of us desired power, but… the power was their power, so I was told. I am not as… ancient as you.”

“How frightfully mocking you are, Bintara. So sure that I owe you for your assistance that I will not take offense. Yet it surprises me that indeed I will not. If nothing else, this is certainly not the place for it.” Her ears were flickering uneasily, her tails likewise writhing. Akio has his Eyes, which reveals many mysteries, even those I am not aware of, but… compared to a being such as I, who, as Bintara so puts it… is ancient, and has thus seen much and learned more over the long, slow march of time… “…I am renewed, myself and yet not. So it is not untrue to call me a mere babe, though I believe that the humans which inhabit our lands have a saying now. All women are forever eighteen. I like the number. Nine are my tails, and this is my second life, so… I shall be eighteen.”

As Sekka snorted, exasperated, a faint fog of ice element rising from her, forming a protective armour, as if she expected trouble… and trouble there surely will be. Sekka is old too, perhaps not as old as I, but… she lived during these forgotten days… Tamamo-no-Mae continued to speak, her tone rather wistful. “Rest assured, I shall return the favours you have offered, Bintara, Sekka. Perhaps I will ask Akio to aid me in that, but… it does not sit well with me, letting him pay for all. I have been a slave, a mistress, a Princess, an Empress, a warrior, a geisha, an artisan, a peasant… but I dislike being a kept woman. At all those roles and lives I lived, to stave off the boredom of endless life and great power, I excelled. Now I shall wear a new mantle, one I have not tried before. Yet… our pasts always catch up with us.”

“What is this place then?” Sekka asked. “A site of battle, surely, yet… I can sense a presence. Mournful, lost, hateful, bitter… furious.”

“The last battle. I had hoped not to set foot here again.” Tamamo-no-Mae looked around. They were ascending jagged, bleak hills, empty, glassy black rivers and streams wending their way through the lifeless landscape, more geysers of polluted earth element spraying into the skies above, before sinking to the land, further intensifying the cloying, heavy feeling the place gave off. “Yet my wishes have seldom come true as of late. Once more, perhaps it is Karma coming back to me…”

“I hardly think so.” Sekka disagreed, and as Tamamo-no-Mae raised one questioning golden-blonde eyebrow, the Yuki-onna shook her head, silver-blue hair cascading, her expression rather sour. “You returned from whatever prison you were trapped in. Those you entrusted to me yet endure…” she paused, before voicing a troubled question. “They will live, yes? Bintara, you felt they were beyond saving, and if the great Bitan, the healing dragon-cow of the seas, feels they are doomed, then I have little hope, yet you seemed… confident.”

“Live? Undoubtedly.” Tamamo-no-Mae shrugged, as they were closing in on their destination. Akio had given no clear instructions, but she was no fool, far from it, and her keen senses, just as sharp as Caihong’er and her boundless Saintly Qi Perception, coupled with her cynical, bitter wisdom wrought over millennia, screamed that what they had faced atop Mount Rishiri was wrong, yet a familiar sort of wrongness. It stems from here. From that final battle. Akio must wish me to halt it here, so he can crush them there. She licked her lips, suddenly feeling rather more like her old self. He does not wish to fight those he has no grievances with, and even sympathises a little. The Kamuy surely hate us, or would, if any survived. Perhaps some few did…

Reaching the centre of this Boundary island, the highest peak stood. It was not towering, such as Mount Rishiri here, or mighty Fuji to the south, or the sacred Mount Tai and other noble peaks of Kunlun. Yet it had presence. From here, to the north, across perhaps a dozen Ri of black ocean…  no, they use kilometres and miles now, do they not? Forty or so kilometres then… lay another land, one that the Gods, and the Kami they raised up, were unwilling to intrude on. If they retreated, the Kamuy could have evaded pursuit, yet… here they stood, the last foothold upon Japan. I understand. I too hated more than anything losing what I considered mine. But could I defy hopeless odds for it? Land, treasures, even people… to die for them is… oh, it seems I am indeed young at heart again. What childish thoughts I am having. It is surely this place, and the feelings and memories it rekindles within me…

“If I can be saved, it is only a matter of time and effort before Caihong’er and Liena wake. As for their Cultivation…” Tamamo-no-Mae clicked her tongue, tails wagging restlessly. “…perhaps they might wish to have died, rather than have their futures cut off. Yet while they live, there is still hope. It is as Caihong’er always declared, the Heavens are beyond the comprehension of any of us. I disagreed, of course. Prideful woman that I am. I thought I knew everything there was to know. But enough of that. Now… now we must act.”

“Act how?” Bintara queried, and Tamamo-no-Mae grinned, her earthen tail shining crimson, coupled with the vivid violet sparks of spatial element, something she barely comprehended, but could use to perform some feats.

“Oh, to cut off the source of the grudges. Can you not feel it, healing dragon-cow of the seas?” She cheekily appropriated Sekka’s earlier address, her tone dry. “You deal in the spirit, and in what is true about our existence. True and eternal. Though I suppose it really is not, as I have seen mine, and his, scarred. The Gods are liars. No wonder Nurarihyon despises them so. Let me… make it clearer!”

A ruby orb of light formed, condensing into a great spike of stone. Violet light shimmered, and it slammed down into the mountain like a purple talon, only to be halted by a rippling of potent energies, aether, adherence, soullight… the vivid glow peaked, blinding momentarily, and Tamamo-no-Mae panted, more blood scattering as she overexerted herself. Then resistance ceased, and the spatially fortified rock spike she wielded shattered, the fragments smashing the mountain beneath them, leaving a gaping void into the caves below.

A great tide of dust element washed out, and Sekka wove ice, Bintara water, and Tamamo-no-Mae wind to protect themselves. After the dust, came a bubbling rush of stinking ooze, the same mutated element that the undead Kamuy were impregnated with, and lastly, a pall of bitter water element. Not orange, but a vile, umberescent tone that evoked disgust by its very appearance, and the reeking scent it gave off was worse.

“Is that…” Bintara tilted her head, as now the mountain was breached, she could feel a faint pulsing, almost like a heartbeat, or several overlapping. “…it almost feels… alive?”

Tamamo-no-Mae shook her head. “Living, dead, undead, it is hard to say. However… I can feel three strands of it. Two headed towards Mount Rishiri, and… a third, also towards the volcano, yet… not the one you know of…”

Leaving those ominous words for her companions, Tamamo-no-Mae stared down into the darkness, shaking her head bitterly. Yes, I never wished to return here. But now I have… perhaps it is time to sweep away old regrets and bury them properly. Then her head turned almost instinctively, as she glanced back towards Rishiri Island. Even from this great distance, her keen emerald eyes could see the small figures battling gloriously, set to a backdrop of vivid lightning and erupting lava. Show me… show me something else I have never seen before. Show me that this world is a world where I can be free of the chains of my ennui…

***

“You stand no chance, no potential, no hope of victory!” the man possessed by (or perhaps now simply the) rib fragment of Akoman chortled wildly. “Not now the wicked Kitsune has retreated.”

“Oh, I am here. I may not be grandmother…” Hana laughed with exhilaration, all five of her tails growing, a pale imitation of Mae’s, but still impressive, as they shot to three metres in length and blazed with shimmering elemental energies. “…but I am still the second strongest Kitsune living until today… I shall replace her until she is done with her errand. Sent off like a… how would you say it now, oh yes… a wife to the store to fetch some miso and rice.”

That’s quite a phrase. Must have picked that up from dramas on TV. And how can she be sure no other Kitsune from Mae’s generation went into hiding and still lives? No matter… that’s irrelevant now. Even as I swung Tsurugi to fend off the fast and powerful bastard who was taunting us, I sent out a little wind element, containing my voice, to Hyacinth. “Have you found them yet? I know it’s hard, but if you can, we can end this quickly.”

Hyacinth shook her head, unwilling to reply, as our enemies were listening, but Shaeula leapt back, controlling two Pinwheels with her wind element, constantly slashing at the foes with Mortal Fragarach. She panted with exhaustion, and while she did seem tired, she shot me a wink to show it was mostly a ruse. Wind element scattered as blades all around us, while the two Oni rushed in to engage the colossal Flame-bearing Mountain Kamuy that was the fragment of Akoman, slamming into the huge foe, driving it back, laughing wildly. I suppose I’ll have to treat them to a few barrels of booze after this is all done. I know they came for selfish reasons, but help should always be rewarded…

As a careless blade of wind seemingly spun in my direction, passing by my ear, my hair fluttering, Hyacinth rapidly breathed her words into the vacuum trail it left behind, Shaeula once more proving her growing mastery of the element. “Nooot yet, Akio. It is hard. There is much strange abooout this place and digging through the stone exhausts Hyacinth. But I will nooot give up. I will find the Anchor, and alsooo the core. Through the roooooots I can sense it.”

I gave her a thumbs up, even as I swung Tsurugi one-handed. The enemy I was facing caught the blade, only to lose his fingers, though in a surge of dark mist, they quickly regenerated. Hyacinth’s spores were belching out everywhere, the fire-resistant variant continually feasting upon the undead Kamuy and the ooze within, before ripening and exploding, spreading their spores.

“This will nooot do!” Hyacinth cried, bringing forth the Cauldron Of Dundrennan Abbey from her spatial storage. The large cookpot had been restored, carefully polished to a black mirror sheen, and even inlaid with some precious metals to make it appear magnificent, but appearances could be deceptive. The adherence radiating from it was pure and spiteful, and I imagined I could hear the wailing and knocking of the Fae trapped inside, withering away, and the screams and laments of a million plague victims. Yeah, it seems stronger than ever. Hyacinth’s been using it in secret…

“Blooooood!” she called, slashing her wrist, and silver and red splattered into the Cauldron. Spooores!” A tide of her wood element, containing powerful nature energies, filled the pot, and she staggered, greatly fatigued. Seeing that, I tried to disengage from my battle for a moment. The Kamuy was tied up with the Oni, while Daiyu and Hana were fighting the other Chosen, the one who seemed to have the Divine Favour of Osiris. That left Shaeula and Hyacinth to whittle down the undead Kamuy horde and destroy what was left of the Territory. But for a moment…

“I shall step-step in!” Shaeula cried, unleashing her Wind And Waters Of Devotion And Worship, a damp wind filled with sparkling motes of watery light spreading over the three opponents who were alive. “Be still-still, you damned pests!”

“I… will kill you all!” the dark-skinned Chosen of Osiris grated, suddenly stiffening up.

Taking advantage, Daiyu gathered all her strength and darted in. Her jade bells rang, wind, earth and flame driving away the undead Kamuy, and then Daiyu’s hands slammed into the opponent with bone-crushing force.

“Jade Yin And Yang Stance! First Strike. Double Single Palms!” Qi, Yin and Yang, a mirrored pair of dark blue tinged with black, and indigo, tinged with white, surged on her hands as the blows landed, injecting the shimmering energies into the Chosen’s body.

“Second Strike. Double Twin Palms!” Daiyu’s body had tremendous ability to recover due to Chang’e’s Favour, as well as her training, so the blurring strikes, which exceeded the limits of her mere stats and her body, were powerful, and against a halted opponent, were ruthlessly effective. She’s improving all the time. Nobody is resting on their laurels…

“Third Strike. Repeated Four Tiger Claws!” Fingers now reinforced with a crystalline sheen, she sliced flesh and bone, but more importantly, cleaved through key parts of his Chakra network, disrupting him as he struggled to throw off Shaeula’s command.

“Fourth Strike. Cascading Eight Turtle Blows!” At this point before, even doing half the strikes was wrecking her body, here, Daiyu merely seemed in pain, as her crystalline fists struck eight times each in the blink of an eye like wrecking balls, and it was the Chosen who was spitting blood as she targeted his joints ruthlessly.

“Fifth Strike. Returning Sixteen Phoenix Talons!” Flame surged, and her Qi peaked. Now her body was suffering, and her blood steamed as it gushed into the fires. Daiyu, undaunted, moved like she was a video sped up, and with thirty-six sweeps of her hands, almost every major meridian was disarrayed, and the opponent was reeling.

“Sixth Strike.” The smile on Daiyu’s face, despite the pain, was slight, yet incredibly beautiful and inspiring. “Relentless Thirty-Two Qilin Horns…” Her fingers were spears, and from the root, through the sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye and crown, as well as the Dantians and several other specific areas, she inflicted stabbing injuries. I winced, as an ordinary person would have been killed by those strikes dozens of times over, yet it wasn’t the physical impacts Daiyu was concentrating on…

As I watched Daiyu make her move, I wasn’t alone in reacting. I leapt towards Hyacinth, my own wood element surging. Hands on her bottom and lower back, ignoring her quivering, I flooded her network with every drop of it I could, making her giggle and shiver. She glowed a fierce brown, red and orange swirls of light surrounding her. Further feeding the Cauldron with the fruits of our contact, the pot began to shake, the adherence growing, and Hyacinth’s eyes went wide. Seeing that, the fragments of Akoman raged, breaking free of Shaeula’s control, but Shaeula and Hana teamed up to counterattack my opponent, their lightnings combining, moving faster than the foe could dodge, smoke rising from his body as he burned from the impact and subsequent savage shock.

That was followed by laser light, Shaeula knowing she couldn’t stop such a tough, regenerating opponent for long, so she targeted the joints, buying us time. The two Oni had been beating their slowed opponent until their fists bled, but it let out a bellow, and Red was thrown aside, one arm shattered, and it began to launch fiery meteors, just as it had before.

Too slow though. This is a battle of attrition, so it should be in your favour, with home ground advantage, but… “Tsurugi… slice!” I used Void Serpent Steps to blink behind the Kamuy, and my blade blazed with light element, effortlessly cleaving the boulders apart as my arms, flexible and quick, just like a snake, delivered dozens of overlapping cuts, mimicking Daiyu’s lightning-fast assault. Rocks fell down, and the Kamuy split apart, the spider-hand within emerging again, criss-crossed with deep wounds and leaking poisonous mist and a foul, dripping water.

“Futile. Useless. Inconsequential.” The hand of Akoman sneered. “There is no Wisdom in resisting Chaos. For Chaos is the purest of all things. Your Wisdom shall be ours, a route to…”

“Go fuck yourself!” Prominence Dawn, this time fed with my earth element, released a hail of shimmering, beautiful crystalline missiles, shaped like thin spears, and they fell like rain, piercing the spider, pinning it down.

“…cripple the roots…”

“Cripple this-this…” Shaeula’s pinwheels wrapped their wires around the hand, caging it in, beginning to shriek as the vibrating Akionite wires revved like bonesaws, eating through iron-hard flesh and stinking bone.

“You are beginning to annoy, frustrate, anger us!” the regenerating fragment of Akoman, the rib, surged at us, but I had kept back a good portion of the crystal element from Prominence Dawn, and cycled it within me, allowing me to use a Skill which I seldom had use for now, ever since it had evolved.

“The feeling’s mutual.” I was in front of him like a blur, and my strike was flawless, splitting him in half, and then into quarters. Once more, my sword was a shimmering blur of sinuous, serpentine attacks, and I could almost hear David applauding, saying something like “You may think your moves here are worse than your mechanically perfect ones from before, but trust me, you’d be a dumb bastard if you do. After all, one predictable, perfect strike, isn’t going to beat a dozen ruthless, still damn wonderful slashes, yeah?”

Might Of Indestructible Jade outclasses Might Of The Furious Earth in both passive and active buffs by a wide margin. It’s just a shame it’s so hard to get crystal element working. Maybe by the end of Pilgrimage, with the help of our little Korean Hunter ally Suk’ja…

The rib was cut free, and the undead Kamuy were trying to salvage the situation, but Hyacinth’s Cauldron had boiled over, and what came out… fucking hell, that’s… gruesome…

A gloopy tide of adherence-polluted spores spread like the ooze the Kamuy were filled with. In fact, it was lapping that goo up, forming lumpen, toadstool shaped mounds the size of Shaeula. Tendrils were flailing from them, both above and below, and rock fissured and split underneath us. Any Kamuy caught was drained dry and turned to dusty bone and fur, even that beginning to disintegrate.

Daiyu, seeing an opening, rushed through the reduced host, reaching the few remaining visible Buildings, and she began to ruthlessly destroy them, leaving nothing untouched.

“Hateful, hateful, HATEFUL!” the rib chorused, only to be struck by another beautiful slash from the Flexible Serpent Sword Style, this one closer to my original habit of making a single incisive, fight-ending blow, yet… unlike a mechanically pure strike from my past talents, this one contained the venomous fury and rapid lethality of a puff adder, an almost reptilian menace and grace.

“Overturn death! Rebirth us…” the rib called, as my blow struck. I’d poured spatial element into Tsurugi’s edge, and my vicious strike bit deep, before my wrists bonelessly twisted, and the sky was filled with dark purple flashes.

You have gained in strength. Your Level…

I blinked that and the cascade of ether away, my Eyes were still rather raw and prone to malfunctioning. What I did pay attention to was a twisted mass of soullight, aether and adherence, a jumbled, damaged and tainted snarl of energies, appearing like two or three Favours slammed into one. I then I turned to the spider-hand, who was shearing free from the crystalline spikes and Pinwheels that bound it. Shaeula clicked her tongue as one wire snapped, but the hand was clearly hurt.

“It is useless.” Daiyu called back, even as she destroyed the last pair of Ether Spires here, both Rank 3’s, I estimated. “My strikes were not to kill, Akio wishes discourse, at least with him, not you foul creatures. But they have destroyed his spiritual structure completely. There is no way he can call upon…”

“Wrong, wrong, wrong… wrong… wrong… so very lacking in Wisdom.” The spider-hand finally tore free, capering, despite the numerous oozing, slowly regenerating gouges, holes and slashes that covered its vile, unnatural flesh. “Because…”

The disabled Chosen gave us a look of pure hatred and malice, tinged with madness, before plunging his neck down onto his shepherd’s crook. The staff shattered, as did his throat, and as he died, more soullight and adherence was drawn up from the depths of the volcano, and from elsewhere.

“We… rise… anew…” the Chosen, somehow alive, his wounds running with mud and water all closing up, declared, his dark skin increasingly pale, as if bleached. “Only death can pay… for life. And your lives… will be spent…”

A massive surge of that soullight carpeted the crater where we fought, and Kamuy once more rose from the dead mud, as if completely unharmed.

“See? There is no universal truth! Death, life, all is simply a chaotic state of being, one that true Wisdom can shape as it wills!” The voice of the fragment of Akoman changed as it was clothed in the Flame-Bearing Mountain Kamuy’s flesh once again. “Perhaps you would care to send off another three to flee? At least that way, some more shall live, rather than becoming dust, ash, ooze!”

I was about to respond, but before I could, Hyacinth laughed long and loudly. “What a pompous fooooool he is. You have sooo many eyes, ugly, wretched hand, yet you can nooot see. Take a look around you, pathetic clooown!” She then winked at me, signalling her efforts were paying off.

Yeah. Hyacinth for MVP here, definitely. Though everyone’s pulling their weight.

“This is… where have they gone?” The Chosen of Osiris was horrified to see that the numbers of undead Kamuy had reduced significantly, only a handful remaining, and they had all withered, shrinking to the size of ordinary animals. Instead, dozens of the vile mushroom-like shamblers Hyacinth had conjured from her Cauldron were pursuing them, while others were burrowing into the volcanic crater, and lava was spilling out of the wounds in the rock. Some shamblers burned, but others were there to open the breaches further as soon as the level of magma had dropped, heedless of scorched tendrils, as more sprouted each time one seared away.

“That’s a really sweet Favour.” My smile was far from kind. I had no wish to fight, even with the horrific scenes of Yōkai tortured below, I felt that the fate of the Kamuy was tragic, though perhaps that was simply my arrogance, long divorced from the truth of what had actually happened. Likewise, the systematic purging of the Ainu and destruction of their culture was a tragedy, one sadly repeated all to often in human history. That didn’t mean it would be right to enact such a massacre on us, on the other Chosen who would have lived in Hokkaido, either. “But there’s no way it’s able to continually resurrect these vast hosts, resurrect you, without limits. What God would ever hand that much power over willingly? His Truesoul would be scarred by that for sure. No…”

I made my guess. “…you’re fuelling it from the vast leftover adherence and perhaps even remnant soullight of the Kamuy who fell near here. But even that has limits. If Hyacinth’s spores completely devour the mutated dust element used as a medium… well, what’s to resurrect? Osiris was also tied to the mud of the Nile, wasn’t he?”

I then waved the mangled mess of Favours I’d grabbed. “Besides, where’s your other fragment gone? I don’t see him, either. Now, how about we all take a step back and stop, before this situation escalates further.” Though whatever happens, I think our spider-hand has to be disposed of here. Just like at Choe-Museon, they seem to delight in egging others on to self-destructive levels of hatred and madness… so, we need to cut off the source of their confidence, both here, and in the Material…