Chapter Four: Guilt and Gravestones
Johan had no satisfactory answer to give the leonine Duel Spirit; how could he? He'd not even begun to get his bearings on where he was, to say nothing of what he was actually going to do now that he'd escaped that wretched place.
Before he could formulate even an unsatisfactory response, though, Ruka shot to her feet and spoke, her voice tremulous but holding a core of steel that Johan hadn't realized she was capable of. "Why're you being so mean, Regulus? You said it yourself; we brought Mister Johan in here. He didn't come himself!"
"Are you certain of that, Little Ruka?" Regulus rumbled, giving a shake of his mane as he padded around the back side of the couch, crossing Johan's view to stand alongside Kuribon between him and Ruka. "Things are never what they seem when it comes to the Mayakashi; trickery and deceit are the very thread from which their souls are spun." The White Lion fixed Johan with a piercing glare once more. "I shall not ask you again, dead soul. What designs do you—"
Regulus' accusatory question was cut short as the screen door that led out to the twins' backyard rattled open, Rua's voice preceding him as he strolled in, hands behind his head and a sheepish smile on his face. "Man, Yusei! You really cleaned my clock with that Nitro Warrior of yours! My Morphtronics didn't stand a chance!"
The boy entered the room with the older man right behind him, and almost immediately stopped in place, noticing the tense atmosphere if not the Duel Spirits. The heaviness in the air was not lost on Yusei, either, as the Duelist asked, "What's wrong, Johan, Ruka?"
Before either of them could speak, though, twin beacons of crimson light flashed, one from Yusei's forearm and the other from Ruka's. Both of them clutched at their glowing limbs with grimaces of pain on their faces even as Johan and Rua looked on with horror. The revenant's eyes met the young boy's, and without speaking, they both acted.
Even as Yusei crumpled to one knee, Johan was at his side, throwing the man's non-glowing arm over his shoulder and hustling him to a chair and getting him seated. As he did so, Rua did the same for Ruka, who'd gone to her knees by the time her twin had reached her side.
As the ethereal glow slowly faded, so too did the pain visible on both of their faces, with Yusei being the first to open his eyes and nod his thanks to a concerned Johan. Almost immediately after that, though, the stoic Duelist inhaled sharply.
"Why is there a lion in the room?" he asked tightly, eyes pinned to Regulus with an expression of shock and not a little panic on his face.
The White Lion, for his part, looked just as dumbfounded by this question as Johan felt. Rua looked between Yusei, Ruka, and what had to look like nothing but empty space that Yusei was staring at. "Eh? Eh? Ruka, Ruka, what's going on?"
"Y-you can see Regulus, Mister Yusei?" Luna managed to ask, her eyes half open and her breathing heavy. "W-what about Kuribon?"
"Regulus? Kuribon?" Yusei repeated, looking between the two Duel Spirits as confusion warred with realisation in his gaze. "Duel Monsters? Actual Duel Monsters, not Solid Vision?" The younger man's voice rose slightly, though Johan had to admit that Yusei was doing a remarkable job holding his cool in the face of what probably counted as a life-altering revelation.
That was the point at which Yuki decided to open her mouth again, giving another tinkling giggle and commenting amusedly, "That old dragon is as meddlesome as ever, weaving his own crimson strings of fate." She smiled behind her sleeve. "I wonder: just what kind of age will come about this time?"
"Yuki you're not helping please don't," Johan wheezed out as Regulus trained his glare back on them. He appreciated her playful nature, but now was really not the time for it. Yuki pouted, but another voice cut in before she could reply.
"He's right, you know. I know you are trying to lighten the mood, little Yuki, but your social awareness still needs work." To Johan's other side, where once there had been a bare cushion, Hajun now sat, his shakujou leaning against the arm of the couch but still well in arm's reach. "It's been a long time, Regulus."
The great lion for his part, looked like he'd seen a ghost, and not the Duel Spirit kind. "Kenja?" Regulus breathed incredulously. "What happened to you?!"
A sad, nostalgic smile crossed Hajun's face. "That's a name I haven't heard in centuries. I go by Hajun, now." The old yokai shook his head slowly. "As for your question? That's why I'm here."
Sad eyes swept the room, meeting each occupant's eyes in turn, even Rua, who clearly reasoned that something was amiss, despite his lack of spirit sight. "To tell the tale of what happened, all those years ago. The tale of the conflict between the once-wicked Mayakashi, and my former people, now extinct, the Shiranui."
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Centuries ago, when humans yet made war with blades, bows and spears, and gunpowder was a recent invention, a very different war was being conducted. This war was equal parts open battle and shadowy intrigue, as those on either side could scarcely be more different.
One one side, the Shiranui: proud shamans and samurai who carried the will and honor of their ancestors into battle with them. On the other, the Mayakashi: scheming, willful spirits whose peddled wares ranged from mischief to mayhem, as their whims dictated.
However, this war was not one over the pride of one's ancestors, nor was it out of some bored whim. This was a war over the division of day and night itself. For you see, the wicked Mayakashi could only take on their true forms once the sun had set, and their leader was greedy. She did not want to settle for a mere half day's power, and thus Yoko, the fox, set about her goal of upsetting the world's balance.
An eternal night is what she sought, and the other Mayakashi were all too eager to follow her. However, none were more eager than Yuki-Onna, the frozen woman. She above all else reviled the sun, for her beloved ice and snow faltered beneath its harsh gaze. And so it was that the Mayakashi set about in the shadows, plotting a grand and terrible ritual to call upon a being powerful enough to wrench the sun from the sky.
Mercifully, though, the leader of the Shiranui's shamans was able to divine their sinister plans. He sent forth the Shiranui's greatest warrior, the sword-saint Ikusa, who descended upon the Mayakashi with twin swords in hand.
Oboro-Guruma, the demon wheel, and Tsuchigumo, the demon spider, were easily cut down by Ikusa's blades, the holy fire of his left sword burning away the spider's poison even as the spectral force within his right extinguished the wheel's own impure flames. Yuki-Onna knew that death would be her fate if she opposed him directly, and so she harried him from afar, desperately trying to buy time for Yoko to finish her grand design.
It was not to be, though. Yuki-Onna was forced to abandon her leader, her sister in all but blood, and fled the battlefield. In the depths of a necropolis, hidden even from the pale light of the moon, Ikusa and Yoko fought. They were evenly matched, so much so that Ikusa was forced to unleash the Shiranui's ultimate technique: Tsubakuro no Tachi, the Swallow Cutting Sword.
Yoko fell down into the darkest depths of the cavern, gravely wounded, but the expression on her face before she fell out of view gave Ikusa pause. She was smiling. All too quickly, he realised his mistake. In his desperation to stop the ritual from occurring, he'd brought it to its conclusion by providing the final catalyst required: the blood of the caster, shed by hands not their own.
As the ground beneath their feet rumbled with the stirring of countless dead, Ikusa made the only choice he could. He cast the Spirit Sword away, knowing it would find its way back to his people, and used the divine flames of his remaining blade to burn away the ritual. Such a feat was not without its costs, though, and his very soul was the tinder for the cleansing nova.
When his blade reappeared before the head mystic, he knew what had occurred, the spirit within the blade telling him of the battle. The Shiranui mourned Ikusa's passing, but none more than Ayaka, Ikusa's daughter and sole surviving family. As his heir, the Spirit Sword passed to her, as did the duty of succeeding her father. All of the Mayakashi had not been accounted for, after all.
And so she trained, for hours and days and months. She trained, and a year and a day passed. She trained, and one day, on the eve of a full moon, Ayaka met another girl. A beautiful girl, impossibly so. The girl introduced herself as Dakki, a traveling shrine maiden, and seated herself beside Ayaka. After a time, the two began to talk, to learn about one another.
They met like this every month, learning more about one another and becoming closer. Ayaka slowly began to realise that unfamiliar feelings were beginning to blossom within her, and it wasn't until another year had passed that she identified them as love. A young, nebulous love, but love nonetheless.
Alas, that love was doomed from its inception, for Dakki was merely a mask, taken up by Yoko so that she might exact revenge upon the tribe that stole her victory from her grasp, and wounded her so badly that she could not even take her true form.
At least, that was her purpose at first. As days passed, Dakki found herself thinking less and less about how nicely her claws would fit about Ayaka's neck and more and more about how nicely Ayaka's hand would fit in hers. Scheming kitsune though she may have been not even the chieftain of the Mayakashi was immune to the fickle, frivolous, and often fearsome contagion known as "love".
For a time, Dakki allowed herself to dream of a world where all of who she was could be accepted by Ayaka, and she felt at peace. However, such a beautiful fantasy was not to be, as there was yet another player with a part in this tragedy, and Yuki-Onna saw Dakki's blossoming love as the deepest of betrayals.
For since the snow woman had fled the battle, she'd been wracked with guilt, overwhelmed with grief at the possibility that her sister had been slain because she was too weak to stop Ikusa. For months on end Yuki-Onna searched for any trace of Yoko, and for every month that she failed to find her, the snow woman's heart fell deeper and deeper into a spiral of mad darkness.
And so it was, on that spring afternoon two years later, when Yuki-Onna finally found her sister and saw her looking upon their hated enemy not with malice but adoration and love…
She snapped. Every drop of self-loathing and grief was instantly transformed into a cold fury so powerful that it blotted out the sun in the form of a demonic blizzard. In that instant, Dakki's hand that had been holding Ayaka's oh-so-gently became the claws of Yoko, stained with blood and sin.
The way Ayaka flinched back from her in terror shattered Yoko's heart into pieces, and therein both were left entirely open. Into that opening flooded Yuki-Onna, stealing Ayaka's sacred staff and absorbing its power to become a being infinitely colder than a mere snow woman. A being that reigned over the absolute stagnation of an existence devoid of heat.
Yuki-Onna had become the avatar of absolute zero itself.
Even with the power of the Spirit Sword and Yoko's deadly demonic foxfires, the estranged duo could not defeat Yuki-Onna. Indeed, they couldn't even hold her full attention, as she fended off their attacks lazily with one hand and traced her sorcery in the air with the frozen staff.
From the frigid ground rose two corpses, encased in rime and clearly not in possession of their own wills. Oboro-Guruma and Tsuchigumo were set free to run amok amongst the Shiranui temple even as the ground began to tremble. Yuki-Onna's demonic ice had not merely reanimated her dead comrades, after all.
It had also extinguished the flames keeping Yoko's ritual at bay.
And so it was that, as a blizzard far colder and darker than anything the Ice Barrier clan could conjure spread across the land, that a titan of bone and malice rose above mountains, its skeletal hand reaching up to pluck the sun from the sky.
However, all was not lost. For during all of this mayhem, the head shaman of the Shiranui had taken action as well, having one final card that he could play. He rose into the air, his immaculate spirit burning away at the demonic ice even as it clawed at him in return, and reached the sun before even the fell Gashadokuro could.
Kenja, the highest sage of the Shiranui, made a pact with the sun itself: "Take my life, but save all you can." As those words left his chapped, burnt lips, Kenja fell, and by the time he struck the ground, he was no more. In his place, only Hajun remained.
Why the spirit of the sun did what it did next is anyone's guess. From its blinding light stepped a spirit astride a horse with a flaming mane. The spirit's name was Homura, or so it declared, and its light would shine upon all without bias.
And shine it did, cremating the dead and entering the living with equal fervor. When all was said and done, all five of the Mayakashi present were forced into their human guises (or in Gashadokuro's case, forcibly sealed into a human vessel). With the blizzard dispelled, all could see what remained of the Shiranui, and what met Yoko's eyes tore her heart asunder anew.
Ayaka was sprawled on the temple steps, a massive hole in her chest and blood pouring from it in spurts as her heart pumped her life away. Yoko ran to the woman she loved, and pulled her close, tears pouring from her eyes as all the other Mayakashi looked on, dumbfounded. In their final embrace, Ayaka leaned forward and gave Yoko her first, and last, kiss. The last Shiranui then whispered something in her ear, and expired in Yoko's arms.
-x-x-x-x-x-
"And so ends," Hajun said to a room silent save for the sound of Ruka quietly sobbing, " the tragedy of the Shiranui and the Mayakashi."
Nobody spoke for what felt like an eternity. Nobody could, in the face of that tale.
Finally, though, Johan managed to break the silence, very carefully not looking at Yuki, who was as still as a corpse and looking anywhere but at him. "What," he rasped, "were Ayaka's last words?"
Hajun sadly shook his head. "Only Dakki knows. She's never told anyone, even after all these years." He tapped a finger on the arm of the couch and sighed. "If I had to hazard a guess, though, she probably asked her to live a kind life, or something of the sort. Ayaka always was the type to believe in others, even at cost to herself."
The old yokai fiddled with the rings on his shakujou's head absently. "After that, Dakki and I started co-leading the Mayakashi, since I've got the experience of a human conscience to temper the wilder instincts of their yokai blood, and Dakki...well. Burying one's first love is enough to change anyone.." He set the monk's staff down and spread his hands.
"It was rough going at first, especially between Yuki and Dakki, but once the others started accepting their human forms as a legitimate part of their identities and not just disguises, things began to improve." Hajun gave a small, affectionate smile as he patted Yuki's shoulder, causing her to startle where she sat. "Eventually, they took on the gift and curse that was a human conscience, and the Hyakki Yakou was born. Our purpose is to dance and revel at the turning of ages, acting as witnesses for those who come after. Nothing more than that—" He stared Johan straight in the eyes.
"—Until now."