Please note that this is the third book in the series and will not make sense without the other two.

From here on out: If you see anything familiar in here, then it probably isn't mine, because if it was mine, then it would have gone like this instead, now wouldn't it? Also, I apologize. I read a lot and don't necessarily remember where all of my inspirations come from, so if you write, thank you for feeding my addiction for that nebulous intoxicating phrase, What if?..

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The Prologue: The Trial of a Kami

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Book 3 of Dekuyume

The deified third reincarnation of Magatsuhi stands at the orchestra looking up at the gathered kami in the koilon.

Déjà Vu much?

There was one thing the gathered soul kami should have remembered…

No one had managed to defeat the Higurashi yet.

But nothing was certain with the karmic debt Dekuyume had taken up…

So victory was not going to come easy.

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Yama shouted in rage as he was denied entrance, "I refuse to just stand idly by while she is executed!" The Higurashi kami were gathered behind him with the exception of Shikon, who was repelling an attempted domain takeover with Yama's spirit detective, her uncle, her lover, and her future brother-in-law.

"She is not here for execution, she is here for a trial." Yama's protests swiftly grind to a halt, dead on his lips "What…" The door guard nods, "Yes. Dekuyume, land kami of The Eternal Battlefield is undergoing a trial, accused of domain theft." Yama breaths in and out slowly, "And since I haven't heard of this, I suppose that several other kami are set for trial afterwards?" The door guard nods again, "Yes, that is correct sir." Running a hand over his horns, wishing that Binki had taken a form other than the crown on his head, he turns to the Higurashi, Now just how was he going to explain just how much trouble they were in to a bunch of kami who didn't have any affinity for souls…

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Dekuyume had taken advantage of the her voyage on The Shackled Prisoner, and the waiting they forced her to do while her judges gathered. Across the dimension she held power in, all of her instanced incarnations had their idling programming examined, edited, and extended out to the duration of their lives. Each instance was paired with another and given orders to propagate further instances, if their job was too necessary to be discarded at the end of a single lifetime.

All information was recorded into The Eternal Battlefield's archives in her minds home and checked against an early warning program affixed to the Higurashi Sanctuary ward anchor. Essentially she had set everything to autopilot, including The Eternal Battlefield, The third incarnation from that very first timeline, had looked at her with such fierce conviction… as Dekuyume had left her domain, pouring her existence in its entirety into the little shackled shell they had taken prisoner.

She may have fooled the regalia that had taken her prisoner, but she had known well enough that if the greater and major kami were involved in this, that sleight of hand would be easily discovered. Higurashi Dekuyume opened her eyes for the first time since her ascension, to a world outside the confines of her domain. Her eyes were sunset red, against her midnight black hair as it twined up into an elegant bun, laced with purple lotus, far from the one(s) he loves indeed.

The only other change came when her kimono transformed from the iromuji style it was typically in at the kotatsu to a furisode, pale turquoise and decorated in lily of the valley, she would have gone with yarrow, but she didn't want them to declare war on the Higurashi while they had her prisoner. Her fan was also absent, left on the kotatsu with a note to her family, explaining the odd behavior of the instanced incarnations they knew of… and reminding them of her promise, that no matter what… The Higurashi always found their way back to each other again.

Through heaven, hell and reincarnation if need be.

It looked like it was going to be one hell of a ride, The Amphitheatre was playing host to an impressive number of kami… six Greater kami and three Major kami and almost all of them Soul.

It was a terrifying gathering, even to her, because for all of her personal power, her cunning and the breadth of her domain… she was only a kami. A strange concept, that there could be anything above godhood, but true all the same.

The lowest sphere was that of the Souls, whom, for all their powerlessness, still served as the source of power for all kami through the medium of their prayers. Ultimately they were as immortal as all of the others, existing in countless dimensions, sometimes more than once. As rude as it sounded, they were like ants, billions and billions of them all packed together, with so little statistical deviation that the kami couldn't tell them apart from each other much less every other instance of themselves across the dimensions. It was a blessing in disguise really, because if the kami couldn't single a soul out of the crowd, they typically left them alone, allowing their programmed fate matrix to guide them along until they returned to the immortal plain once more.

Above them were the Demi, the godlings, the heroes, those marked by the kami somehow that they could be easily identified, even if they were placed in a room with dozens of their soul echoes. She sort of thought of them as ants that had been pulled out of their tiny little world and painted different colors. It didn't matter if you dumped them back in their world again afterwards, it was easy enough to find them again, even if it did get a bit trickier the more colored ants you had. General rule of thumb though, if you didn't paint it, you best keep your hands to yourself, because if you could see them, the one who painted them could too… and kami were possessive.

Then there came the kami, who for all of the vaunted status… were little more than the working class of the celestial ocean. The land kami, the sea kami, nearly every kami associated with a faith or some aspect of humanity, all of them were in that predicament. They were easy to spot, because they had names, ones that typically had nothing to do with their domains. They also had to do an insane amount of paperwork… Paperwork they submitted to their superiors, the Greater kami. They were the general managers and a bit more tricky, being in an in between state that allowed them to understand the Major kami, but still translate their will into orders for the kami. Sometimes they had names, but usually only if they had been a soul first. Shiva of The Mount Kailash was a good example of that, being the Greater Soul kami of karma.

After the Greater kami things got… odd. The Major kami were more idea, more their domain than anything else. Nebulous things beyond human comprehension because they stood as placeholders, overseers for countless dimensions for the insanity that created them. There were five primary domains, Matter, Energy, Space, Time were fundamental to every dimension within her understanding. The rules set up to regulate the reactions between them were varied but ultimately, all four had to exist so that the fifth, could be. Being, often called just soul was the largest and most powerful, because while a universe could exist, made up entirely of the other four, it was only in the presence of soul that it gained an infinite spectrum of complexity and of course, prayers.

The Major kami were created, derived by their Absolute at the inception of a dimension. She couldn't really understand much more than that, because, for all that they were labeled absolute… there wasn't just one, but what did you call a collection of absolute something or others that weren't made of matter, had no measurement of energy, took up no space, were not subject to time, and half the time forgot to create Major Soul kami leaving it up to the other four to do so? They created dimensions, setting up the rules for how the Major kami could interact, but leaving the rest of creation to them.

Her imouto, Kagome was the kami of The Well of Time, and one of the patron kami of time travelers. She was subject to many Greater kami, one of which was the primary operator for The Flow of Time, a Greater kami of the movement of time. Who in turn was under the jurisdiction of the primary operator of The Spirit of Time, a Major kami of the human understanding of time. Who was created by The Beginning of Time, an Absolute kami, and a measuring point that describes all deviations in time against itself.

And Dekuyume was on trial for domain theft with the Greater kami: The Mount Kailash, The Amphitheater, The Halls of Judgment, The Spirit of the Forest, The Soul of the Mountain, and The Shackled Prisoner and the Major kami: The Wheel of Reincarnation, The Spirit of Time, and The Power of Choice, in attendance.

Yes… this was going to be one hell of a battlefield… if they let her walk away with it.