Chapter 20: Deicide

Kiyoshi had watched them from the bottom of his steps until they were out of sight. He may not be able to do much for them while they were outside of his domain. But if it were a choice between watching her die, just steps away from his shrine, or surrendering the last of his power of existence to see her live?

She would live every time.

With a heavy sigh, he turns and heads back to his tree. His eyes catch on a display near the well house as he passes it. The kannushi often set them up to attract more supplicants. This one was about the history of the Shikon no Tama, and had little keychain trinkets for sale. He clenches his fists as thoughts on the jewel manage to displace his worry for Kānēshon.

How many times, how many times did the kami have to say that someone made a mistake in their understanding of the jewel, before they actually sat down and tried to figure it out? Before someone finally scratched their head and said "Huh! But wait! The Shikon isn't just a shiny jewel we don't want around! It's soul material, wrapped in a spell that makes it immune to time! And aren't wishes is just another word for prayers! So doesn't that make the Shikon no Tama a kami?"

He leans against his tree and slowly slides down to the ground, the bark rough against his faux mortal back. His form fades out of the mortal plain to conserve energy, but his armor does not return, an easy sacrifice to feel his wife against his skin. It was understandable that no one wanted to consider the thought of the Shikon as a kami; the kami did not eat souls. Even though the souls had phrased it poorly in their not-so-secret discussions aboard The Colloquium of Souls, they had meant it figuratively. But the Shikon? He shudders, the Shikon no Tama was doing it literally.

At this point, the only soul fragments that remained in the jewel were those of Midoriko and Magatsuhi, as they were the fragments that served as the basis of the jewel's facsimile self awareness. Everyone who had wished on the jewel or had embedded one of its shards in their flesh had unknowingly surrendered some fragment of their souls to the jewel, and the jewel had devoured them.

Kiyoshi grimaces, even if it was a kami, it wasn't one anyone could tolerate existing. But there were only three ways to kill a kami. The first was most familiar to him, having nearly perished from it himself, and it was done by attacking the kami's power base. If there were no people praying, they would slowly loose strength over time. There were only two endings; if they had been souls first, the power loss would go on until they had nothing more than the magic inherent in their own souls. And if they had not, they would start to flicker and get hazy until one day they flickered out of existence and never came back.

Unfortunately for those who sought the Shikon's end, it had gathered far too much power for that to be a viable solution. There was no way to keep the jewel materialized on the mortal plain long enough that it would lose the power it already had. It would whisper its treachery to the ears of the world, and even if no one knew it granted wishes, they would come seeking it, only to find themselves consumed.

The second way to kill a kami was by attacking their origin. So if Magatsuhi and Midoriko had to meet for the Shikon to exist, the other kami could just make sure that they never met. It would work, but only if the Shikon lacked the power necessary to stop them. They still had no idea where the jewel had been after Kagome-chan had wished for it to disappear forever. Given that the Shikon had become the kami of time travelers it was suddenly understandable that so many powerful ships working together couldn't prevent the Shikon's creation. The things the jewel could do with that title were rather chilling.

Kiyoshi props his head on his chin. The last way to kill a kami was to negate their domain. If there was no domain, they would be a no-domain kami, indistinguishable from any other soul in essence. The difficulty of that task varied wildly, but it all boiled down to your ability to kill an idea. Sometimes this could be easy, like say if you wanted to kill the kami of a particular species of animal. You just had to cause them to go extinct and there you were; one kami without a domain. But most of the time it was really difficult, like erasing the god of scent based communication. You would have to remove everything that could communicate by scent from the mortal plain… which was more or less impossible.

Out loud Kiyoshi muses, "If the jewel cannot be wished away, as it will always twist the wish to save itself. And if the jewel cannot be drained of power, since there will always be someone willing to make a wish, be it for magic ink, the ability to run faster than the wind, or the ability to use swords not meant for them. There is only one way left to attack the Shikon no Kami."

As he steps through the portal generated by Botan, Koenma completes the thought, "If we are to end the Shikon, we are going to have to end the eternal battlefield and time travel..." The mortals spent countless hours dreaming of battlefields and time travel. They had shows and stories and music dedicated to the two concepts! They even had games that had killed more humans than had ever existed in a single dimension!

Kiyoshi sighs, "It's impossible, the Shikon no Tama has won." Koenma disagrees, "Not necessarily. There is a beacon of light through this mess." He receives a single raised eyebrow in response, clearly there was little Kiyoshi-san could see that would make this better, but he knew otherwise. "It's what I came to talk to you about. Right before time folded, I experienced a time wave."

There is silence for a few minutes as Kiyoshi processes the implications of that statement, and the fact that he did not. "I died?" Koenma sighs before sitting down next to him, "I suppose you found yourself unable to watch Kagome-san die again, so you conspired against the plans in place for her. There were several others involved that permitted me to notice them; I think one of them may have been Kagome-san herself, but all of them were from farther along the time line than any of us." Though, why she was running around with red eyes was beyond him…

"To lend further proof to the mater, your instance of Kagome-san died seconds before The Well of Time reassigned ownership of the time travelers' domain. And we discovered that the Shikon no Tama is a kami, this time Kagome-chan lived, and The Well of Time did not reassign its Primary Operator. I believe that some-when, in a time we have yet to experience, Kagome-san is going to become the kami of time travelers"

There is a single indrawn breath from his counterpart before he speaks, "Incomplete souls can't become a primary operators, even if they can switch their classification over to kami." Koenma nods in agreement, "Yes, either a solution was found, and the Shikon was defeated, allowing Kagome-san to be complete, or I am mistaken and the kami who assisted you in rescuing Kagome-san was manifestation of the Shikon no Tama as a kami."

The two sit in companionable silence for a while before Koenma stands and dusts off his robes, "It's proof something can happen; now we just need to actually do it. To find out more, I need to speak with future-Botan-chan." Kiyoshi holds his hands out apologetically, "She said she was in a rush, she mumbled something but I'm afraid I was too distracted with granting a seed of eternity to make out what it was. If you want to see her, you should be here when The Well of Souls releases her from the time stream once more."