It was a peaceful night in Kamiki Village, one of the first such nights for the small village in a long time. As the moon above cast it's silver beams on the world below, all was quiet in the settlement, its residents all resting peacefully with the curse of the dreaded Orochi finally broken after a century of the monster's tyranny. At the base of the giant tree that overlooked the village, the shrine that had been built in honor of the sacred wolf stood quietly, the sun goddess's power watching over the mortal realm even as she rested in her prison of stone.
Not far from the statue, behind the shelter of one of Konohana's roots, the goddess's future self and her human companion had set up a makeshift camp, mainly consisting of the enchanted wooden mat the sun goddess had found during her travels in Nippon so long ago. They hadn't dared to build anything more complex than that, not wanting to risk being spotted by any of the villagers who currently believed the goddess to be frozen in the stone of the nearby shrine.
Lying on the wooden mat, Amaterasu looked over at Yuro's sleeping form, her companion resting peacefully next to her. Sleep hadn't been as easy for her to come by. The trauma of her encounter with the dark lord Yami, as well as the emotional drain of seeing her long-lost love Waka, had taken its toll on her, preventing her from getting much rest.
Sighing, the sun goddess looked away from the youth, turning her gaze towards the night sky as Yumigami's stars watched over the world below. She envied the peaceful sleep her companion was getting. For too long, rest had been something that seemed to elude her, her dreams filled for years with nightmares of Waka's death, and now with knowledge of the nightmares Yami would be inflicting on the mortal world in their time.
Almost as if in response, the youth shifted a bit in his sleep, murmuring something unintelligible. In his mind, Yuro found himself surrounded by doors, the same doors he had seen when he had unconsciously tapped into his ancestor's powers up on the Celestial Plain. Gateways to different worlds, to different possibilities.
Curious, the youth found himself opening several of the doors, drawn to different ones by some strange magnetism. Within each, he was able to catch a glimpse of a different time and place, of events that had been, or could be. He recognized some of them, watching from a distance as he saw himself dancing with Amaterasu the night they had first met. As he looked into one particular door, Yuro paused for a moment, watching from afar as he and the goddess slept in each other's arms in the present moment.
Suddenly, he felt that same sort of magnetism calling him again, stronger this time, reluctantly closing the door to the present as he stepped towards the door drawing him in. The door opened, and the youth now found himself staring out into space. A bit confused by his surroundings, he quickly looked around.
The doors he had seen before were gone, replaced by the blackness of deep space. As Yuro looked around, he could still sense the energy of those portals, but much more distant, as if every speck of starlight in the vast ocean of space was one of those doors. It seemed as if the door he had stepped through had not led to a certain time or place, but rather to a place that connected all the doors, a nexus leading to every world and every possibility.
As the distant portals drew his attention, he suddenly realized that he was standing on something. The youth looked down to see he was on some sort of odd platform of energy, partially transparent so that he could see the lights of distant stars and portals in the distance below. Looking forward, he saw the platform continue onward, with some sort of shrine at the end, a sword glowing at its centre.
Almost immediately, the feeling of magnetism returned, and Yuro felt himself being drawn towards the mystic weapon. As he looked over the metal blade, the youth felt the same sense of familiarity he had felt when he had first met Amaterasu, the sense that he had seen this weapon, this place before. Slowly, he started to walk towards the sword, transfixed by the weapon's silver glow.
About halfway to the shrine, the youth stopped as the platform suddenly shook. Around the sword, he could see several figures start to take form, each turning to look at him as they took shape.
Yuro attempted to continue forward, but quickly found himself unable, some invisible force preventing him from taking another step forward. As his attempts to approach the shrine failed, the platform shook again as one of the spirits spoke, its distant voice seemingly carried to the furthest reaches of the vast universe before them, despite having the volume of a whisper.
The one who has lived three lives approaches.
He paused. Three lives? What was this mysterious being talking about?
The voice seemed to hear his very thoughts, the strange entity tilting its head at him, the youth feeling as if it was observing his very soul. No - not his soul, he realized, but his timeline. Everything he ever was, everything he would ever be, even if he didn't know it yet.
He is confused. Does not know who he was, who he is.
It paused for a moment, glowing eyes seemingly accusing him as it continued.
No memory of what he did.
None of it made sense to him. Three lives… perhaps it was referring to his memories as Waka as being a second life, but what was the third? Why did he have no recollection of it?
What did he do in that third life?
"Please," he cried out, confused. "I don't understand. Who was I? What did I do?"
The being started at him intently for a few moments, then stepped back, as if uninterested.
It is not time yet.
Suddenly, the youth felt the invisible force push him backwards, sending him flying away from the shrine and back out the door he had entered. As he continued to move back past all the doors he had looked at previously, the speck of white light that had been the door leading to the shrine began to expand, his vision suddenly overwhelmed with a blinding flash.
The youth jolted up as the flare faded from his vision, taking a couple breaths as he tried to regain his bearings. A quick look around confirmed that he was at the base of Konohana, at the makeshift camp he and Amaterasu had made. At the thought of the sun goddess, Yuro looked to his side, surprised to notice that the goddess was no longer lying at his side.
After taking another moment to recollect himself, he stood up, walking over to the statue of her past self in search of his companion. After a few moments of searching, he found her sitting on one of Konohana's branches up above, gazing up at the dawning sky.
Noticing her companion's approach, the sun goddess turned, giving him a small smile as she offered a hand, pulling the youth up onto the branch alongside her. She grimaced a bit as she did so, her body still sore and tired from her battle with the dark lord the previous day.
Yuro glanced at Amaterasu as he sat next to her. Though her physical injuries seemed to have improved, she looked drained and exhausted.
"How are you feeling?" He asked, concerned.
She lifted her arm a bit, looking at the wound on her side, still wrapped in the makeshift bandage from when they had arrived here the previous day. "It's better," she said, removing the wrapping as she did so, revealing a wicked scar where the cut had been. "I've regained enough divine essence to heal quickly, though not completely. It'll probably be a week or two before that scar's gone. Still a little sore, though."
He gripped her hand, giving her a small smile as he did so. "That's not what I meant."
She looked away, all the emotions of the previous day still running through her. "For half a millenia, I mourned him. I spent every minute of every day missing him, of remembering what once was." Her eyes glistened with tears, all that pain she had been through still far too recent to have been completely dulled. "Never once did I wonder if he had ever felt the same when I was gone. And after last night… Now I know he did, and it just makes it hurt even worse."
Her death as Shiranui hadn't been the last time she had made her beloved wait for her to break free from her stone form. How many years had she put him through the pain that had been her closest companion for five hundred years? How had she never once realized what her regenerations did to him?
"After all that time, after all the pain both of us had been put through by Yami, I thought I could destroy him," she continued, "I even dreamed of it, many times. Of shattering his very essence, and making sure his evil could never again touch this world, never again hurt anyone the way he had hurt us. And now, I finally got that chance, only to fail and almost lose even more."
"We'll find a way." He gave her another smile, trying his best to reassure her. "We'll find a way back to our time, find the others, and together we can figure out how to defeat him. You've protected this world from him for centuries, and I know you still can."
She shook her head. "For all of my power, I couldn't save Waka. And now, I can't even avenge his death." She looked away again, almost in shame. "I couldn't even save you on the Plain. How can I protect the world if I can't even protect the ones I love?"
"Don't say that," he replied, "You didn't need to save me. We got away."
She turned back towards him, her voice raising slightly. "We got lucky!" She took a breath, trying to calm down. "If it wasn't for your portal, we'd both be dead. I finally find someone after Waka's death, and I can't even keep you safe from the same fate."
"You don't need to. We've seen what I'm capable of. I'll learn to control it, how to use it to fend for myself."
"And how will you do that?" She looked at him again, a hint of desperation in her voice. "You only saw a fraction of Yami's power on the Plain. You're not going to be able to stop him by throwing down portals, no matter how well you can control them, if you don't even know how what to do with a sword."
He gave her a smirk at that. "Teach me, then."
Well then. It has been a very long time. This chapter has gone through several revisions at this point, and that hectic thing called real life has been a bit of a challenge lately, what between moving into a new apartment, working full-time in IT, classes and all the other projects and communities that I probably don't have the time for but do anyway. We'll see how things go in terms of updates from this point on. Ideally my goal is around the "one chapter every two weeks" mark but at least initially I really need to get back into the world and refamiliarize myself with the continuity I write in (thankfully, I made a huge list of character sketches and story/world concepts a while back for this very reason).
As far as the chapter itself goes, Yuro's dream/vision was probably the part that forced this to be redone as many times as it did. I really wanted it to shed a bit of light on Yuro's nature, all the while posing far more questions than it does answers, both to us (well, technically you all) and to Yuro himself. I found with earlier versions that I was either not revealing enough or revealing too much, and it took a fair bit of fine-tuning to really get it down the way I wanted to.
All that work on that particular sequence also really tempted me to go even further down that path with Yuro, but I think I'll save the next bit of it for the next time. Suspense, and all.
On a different note, I know that I've said it before but thank you all for the continued support, both on FAE and on my shorter works. I may not have necessarily had the time to keep pushing content out for a while there but every few weeks or so I would notice an e-mail notification about new reviews or follows on my works and always felt a little bad that I didn't have more time to dedicate to this as I would like. Hopefully that situation will change going forward, because it seems like you all enjoy reading about the adventures of Ammy and Yuro just as much as I do writing them.