If some of the content in this chapter seems familiar, it is. The AU has affected when some of these events are occurring on the timeline, as well as who is present. This is one of the few instances where there will be overlap. Can't wait to hear what you all think. XO Ponchoninjax3
"Stop thinking so much, it's making you look constipated." Yuki swatted at Beki.
Beki shook her head. "Sorry. I just had the biggest landmine go off in my personal life. It takes a little time to adjust."
"The biggest landmine so far," Yuki beamed. "You're still young, sweetie. There's plenty of time for bigger and greater disasters to strike."
"I've been present for two terrorist attacks, a kidnapping, a murder, and a couple of attempted murders." Beki pressed her thumb between her brows. "I think I'm full."
Yuki stared off at the familiar vistas of her homeland. She had barely taken notice after her revival. Her mind had been too focused on saving Beki and avenging Seiichiro when she first reawakened. She hadn't registered the beauty of the coast and the skyline. The water was sapphire under an aquamarine sky, the steep slopes of the mountains lightly dusted at their crests with snow. She could almost smell the salt spray kissing her face and feel the give of the powdery sand beneath her feet. Her heart ached a little as Yuki finally allowed her homesickness to catch up with her.
"I said that, too. Then they ran out of adults and started throwing genin at us during the war." Yuki's eyes seemed to stare at something beyond Beki's comprehension, somewhere beyond the veil, before she snapped back to herself. "Anyway, just leave it all to Ishida. He learned how to clean up messes from your father and then perfected the technique."
"Other than having to attend Mommy's Finishing School?" Beki rolled her eyes. "If you had told me three years ago I was going to charm school, I would have though Dad and Hiashi would have dragged me hogtied through the doors.
"I loved your father but he lacked ambition. In many ways it was his greatest virtue. That's why you never got wrapped up in court politics or married off to some fifty year old aristocrat." Yuki said. "That devil may care attitude crippled you both. It was short sighed to not prepare you for proper society. You're a shinobi. He wouldn't sent you on a mission without a knife, would he? Charm and etiquette are more knives in your block. A cleaver won't do when you need to bone a fish, Beki."
Beki drew a long breath. "I think leaving me with the Hyuga was his round about way of doing it. They tried their damndest, I'll tell you that."
A long silence fell between them, allowing the ambient sounds to ease the discomfort in the air.
"I know I said you will probably never see your friends again," Yuki stared pointedly again. "Don't give up hope. Maybe this coup will blow over and we can slip you in the back door."
"You do realize I took the nuclear option?" Beki threw up her hands and gestured back towards the Leaf. "They were hanging off a cliff and I cut the rope and ran. They were my family when I had no one. The Hyuga protected me, fed me, clothed me, acted like I was their own damn flesh and blood. I just ghosted them."
Beki clenched her fists, cursing the lump forming in her throat. "Do you think they would ever want to see me again after that? How could I ever have the audacity to face them again?"
Yuki cocked her head and kicked at a rock in the path. "If they really love you, they'll be happy to see you."
"It wouldn't be right." Beki pressed her palms to her eyes. "It would be sheer, unadulterated hubris to ever cross that bridge."
"I didn't say you have to pretend nothing happened. In my opinion, you have nothing to apologize for. There was a damned coupe. Why the hell do you think your dad put you there in the first place? To protect you from getting used as a pawn in this kind of crap. If, no, when you get to go back, you can better explain yourself." Yuki waved dismissively, as if the very idea left a bad taste in her mouth. "And if you must apologize, you can do it then."
"You think? Beki gave her a vulnerable look.
"Can you imagine Hinata slamming a door in your face?" Yuki raised an eyebrow.
"No." Beki sighed and shook out her hands. "You're right. It'll be fine."
"Remember I've got as much skin in this as you do." Yuki folded her arms. "I had really started to like that guy. The last thing I want to do is avoid him forever."
"Anyway!" Yuki snapped and her vulpine grin returned. "By the time we're done with your training, you will breeze through every formal audience they can throw at you. Be it the king, a visiting ambassador, or the stuffy elders in Suna. When they were training me for head priestess, the mantra they taught me was 'dignity and humble authority'."
"Funny, because I would never describe you as 'dignified." Beki shrugged. "Let alone 'humble'."
"I know how to behave. Or rather, how to pretend to." Yuki explained, clearly ignoring Beki's dig. "It's a part of me I like to separate myself from. Doesn't mean it isn't in there when I need it."
…
The pair stuck to back roads, traveling incognito from dusk until dawn to avoid recognition. The ambassador making an unscheduled visit home would warrant excessive attention. Recognizing her allegedly long dead companion would only escalate matters more. It took almost a week of travel to reach the temple Yuki had grown up in. Beki waited patiently beside her as Yuki surveyed the scene after a decade's separation.
As far as Beki could remember nothing had changed. The forest had always looked like a sea of bones; skeletally thin trees six meters tall or more. The leaves were the color of fresh blood on snow, exploding in clusters like weeping wounds on bark of porcelain and ash. It was always cold this far up the mountain. Even in the dead of summer it felt like fall on the mainland. Small creeks and ponds formed from the snowmelt, breaking the silence with their soft rippling or by the animals that came to visit them.
"Something feels off." Yuki turned her head, slowly scanning the space like a spooked cat. It wasn't a person Yuki was looking for, that much she knew. Having spent most of her formative years on this soil she knew how it was supposed to be. It had always been quiet and serene. Now it felt isolated and desolate. Lonely. Exactly the sort of place where people could get lost and lose all hope before meeting a terrible end from exposure or misadventure. Nothing appeared to have changed yet it felt unfamiliar.
"What do you mean?" Beki reached for her kanabo.
"We aren't welcome here." Yuki said before she realized what had come out of her mouth. Her eyes widened at the revelation of her subconscious. "We need to check on the priestesses."
Beki's face twisted in concern as they raced up to the shrine.
"I can't find the words to describe it." Yuki shook her head. "How does it make you feel?"
"I've always felt like I'm being watched here." Beki shrugged.
Yuki grabbed her arm and stopped abruptly. "For how long?"
"As long as I can remember. Ren's said the same thing but only in specific spots," Beki explained. "Out in the woods, mostly."
Yuki stared intently off in the woods. Beki sensed she should share more.
"Sometimes we heard voices. There's a cave in the cliffside-"
Yuki fell perfectly still. "What are you talking about?"
"The door looked like it was part of the rocks. Ren and I stumbled across it. No. That's not right," Beki shook her head. "We were…called there. Lured in, I don't know. Ren and I broke off the lock because we didn't know what it was. Then it was like something took over and forced us both down there. Swallowed up our light and started to talk to us. There were three clear coffins. Two of them had women, one bound in rope and the other suspended in water. The third we couldn't see inside. It smelled like hot tar. We lost consciousness and dad found us out in the woods babbling incoherently, wracked with fever."
"That doesn't make any sense," Yuki shook her head. "It couldn't be the Three. We have their ashes in urns in the shrine. You've seen them for yourself. Maybe it was three other ancestors that were sealed up for being naughty or something."
"Either way, what the hell would call you down there? It's three dead bodies." Yuki asked. "I've never heard of such a place, let alone felt anything strong enough to draw me anywhere."
"I've heard something out there say my name. My real name." Beki was pale. "It sounded like it was standing right behind me. I don't know what the hell it was but I made a habit of not wandering around alone in the woods afterwards."
"I'll have to ask Reika about it. After the whole, 'surprise I'm not dead' conversation," Yuki continued to scan their surroundings. "Something is here. It's like a trail of smoke hanging in the air after a smoker has moved to another room. They're not here but they're around. It's not a person. It's…a presence. Like a wet blanket over everything. It pisses me off because I can feel it but I can't quite perceive it."
"It feels normal here to me." Beki said. "It's always been a little oppressive, the way it feels right before a thunderstorm breaks."
Yuki took a mental note before leading the charge up to the shrine. The place was eerily deserted, even by Beki's standard.
"TSUKIYAMA," Yuki called out into the echoing halls. It was more dilapidated looking inside than she recalled. If they had less patrons, that would make sense. Less money coming in to hold against the increasing tide of upkeep costs of a several hundred-year-old shrine. Yet somehow, it felt like it had always been this way. The decay had a sense of permanence about it as though this were its natural state. It was off-putting, the dissonance between Yuki's memories and what she was perceiving in real time. She was beginning to consider the possibility they had accidentally slipped into another plane of existence when Ren's head popped around a corner.
"What are you guys doing here?" Ren stepped out into view in her miko robes.
"It's a long story," Beki rubbed the back of her head. "Short answer I'm hiding out in Getsu for a while."
Ren shrugged. "Cool. So we're having a big sleepover?"
"Potentially," Yuki said. "Where's your sister?"
Ren scrunched up her nose. "Where was Reika…? I think she was out by the lake."
"Good. We have some things to discuss." Yuki folded her arms. "But first, has anything weird been going on around here?"
"This is a shrine dedicated to three murdered priestesses. You're going to have to be more specific," Ren cocked her head. "What are you looking for?"
"It feels off." Yuki explained. "Beki said you two found some weird cave out in the woods? There were coffins, voices, feeling watched, that sort of thing?"
Ren blanched, her easygoing expression evaporating in an instant. "You told her?"
"It seemed relevant." Beki explained. "She was here before us, Ren. Maybe something is up and she would know what it was."
"I told Reika about it years ago and she brushed me off. Says everything is fine." Ren shook her head.
"It's not?" Yuki watched Ren's face.
She hesitated for a moment, her eyes darting around. "It's gotten worse. No one comes up here anymore. All our staff have either died or resigned. No one will give us a clear reason but I know why."
Yuki's brow knit. "Spill."
Ren dropped her voice to almost a whisper. "There are weird lights in the woods. Too big to be fireflies but when we've gone out and investigated, there's nothing. The locals called them 'ghost lanterns' and wouldn't set foot outside if they were about."
"I keep thinking I hear someone moving around inside the shrine," Ren said. "Footsteps, the swish of clothes, that kind of thing? That thing where you think you heard someone call your name but no one is there?"
"When did all this start happening?" Yuki asked.
"For the last couple of months its been escalating. There were a few odd happenings. Doors slamming, books falling off shelves, every mirror in the damn place shattering at the same time," Ren sighed. "Then the nightmares came. The older priestesses started having dreams about dying and then boom, it would happen. However they saw themselves die in their dream, no matter how bizarre, it took them. One drowned in the bathtub, another was consumed in a mysterious kitchen explosion, and the worst one got tangled up in one of the pulls for the big brass bells in the temple proper and got crushed when it fell."
"Then the younger priestesses and attendants started having the nightmares. The voices got worse. I didn't just hear someone calling my name anymore. They would find me when I was alone and vulnerable. Like when I was in the bath or going to the bathroom late at night. Threatening me. Whispering secrets I've never told anyone. Laughing at me," Ren shuffled uncomfortably. "The handyman hung himself. He'd been acting kind of dodgy but we thought it was just the bad vibes rubbing off on him. He had written 'make it stop' over and over again all over the walls. So, I don't think there's any doubt even the 'non sensitives' were getting hit with this crap."
"I barely sleep anymore." Ren shuddered. "I keep having this dream where I wake up in the middle of the night and there's this…thing in the room with me. It starts out in the corner and I can make out the shape of a woman but its…wrong. I can't move. I can't scream. All I can do is watch as she walks towards me. She doesn't have arms. She does these weird, jerky steps like her body is stiff and broken until she's standing at my feet. There are holes where her eyes should be and there's this big black gaping toothless maw for a mouth," Ren suppressed a sob. "She's bound with rope. The rope starts moving by itself, inching its way up my body like a snake until it reaches my face. It splits into a thousand fibers that force themselves in my mouth, my nose, and my ears. I can't breathe and I can hear this thing start to wheeze. It's laughing at me as I die."
They fell quiet as Ren finished speaking. The silence was so heavy, Beki swore she could feel they weren't alone but no one else was there.
"How is it affecting Reika?" Yuki asked.
"Doesn't seem like it is. She has that same serene expression as always. Says everything is fine." Ren explained. "Isn't losing sleep and laughs off anyone who brings up 'the weirdness'."
"The weirdness?" Beki knit her brows.
"That's what I've been calling it because I'm not allowed to refer to it as anything else. Even if I know exactly what it is." Ren set her jaw.
"And that would be…?" Yuki asked.
"The Maidens. I know its them." Ren looked at Beki. "I…I had my suspicions. So I've gone back to the grave a few times. Not down into the cave. I don't think I could do that if there was a knife to my throat."
"And?" Yuki cocked her head.
"Singing. I hear singing and bells," Ren shut her eyes tight as though trying to hide from the memory. "But it isn't coming from within the tomb. It's…everywhere. All over the mountain. It seems like its coming from just beyond your sight no matter what direction you face. It's strongest by the tomb and gets weaker until you reach the shrine."
"I need to go to the Asou estate to pick up a few of my things for Beki," Yuki said. "When I get back, I'll talk with Reika about it all. While we're here maybe we can get to the bottom of all this."
"So you freak us out and then bail?" Beki glared at her mother. "Classy move."
"Look, it's still light out and it sounds like the worst of the activity doesn't happen until after nightfall." Yuki explained. "I'll bring back some clothes and the things I need to start your debutant training. Between your lessons we can investigate together."
"What should we do in the meantime?" Ren asked.
"Go down into the archives." Yuki said.
"I'm not supposed to go down there." Ren said flatly.
Yuki raised an eyebrow. "Like you haven't?"
"Not here. Not with this shit." Ren winced. "I'm normally not one for rules, believe me. I just don't want to give anything an excuse, you know?"
"You make it sound like the boogeyman or something," Beki sighed. "We're being ridiculous."
"Yeah. I would totally agree with you. Probably laugh about it too, if we were down in Kami to Akuma." Ren grabbed Beki's arm. "But not here. There's no joking about it when you feel it breathing down your neck."
"You have my permission to go in the archives." Yuki said. "I was high enough salt to have access to some of the records down there. If you're too chicken, just don't go in the head priestess's private study."
The girls nodded in unison but still looked uncertain.
"I would say to take the cat but it's still back in Konoha." Yuki's face suddenly twisted. "The cat."
"Huh?" Ren blinked in confusion.
"Seiichiro took the cat from the shrine a while ago." Yuki face palmed. "Dammit, Seii. I told you it wasn't a cat cat."
"What about Socks?" Beki asked.
"Beki, that cat has been here since I was three and he hasn't aged a day." Yuki sighed. "Use your damned head. What cat lives well into its thirties and doesn't look a day over five?"
"I just assumed it was a retired ninja cat," Beki shrugged. "I knew he talked sometimes but he never talked to me."
"He's some kind of guardian…thing. Spirit doesn't seem right because he's too tangible." Yuki explained. "But I would put my entire fortune on him leaving contributing to whatever leak we have going on here."
"Great. I've been living at a temple where the only thing between me and the monster under the bed is a fat tuxedo cat." Ren rubbed her eyes. "So case closed? We go get the cat?"
"Not so simple," Yuki shook her head. "The cat was a band aid. I want to know what the hell kind of festering wound he's been covering up. Hopefully you two can find something down with the books."
Some of the mystery having been solved, the girls relaxed. Yuki presenting a partial solution so quickly meant there was hope they could have the whole thing resolved sooner rather than later. Their confidence renewed, Ren and Beki said goodbye to Yuki and then went down to the archives.
…
Charcoal sat in decorative censers in strategic positions through the room to absorb excess moisture. Shelves of various sizes lined three of the four visible walls stacked with scrolls and hand bound books as old as time itself. The tatami mats that had been laid over the carved stone floor were musty and in desperate need of a change. The most shocking discovery was the amount of non-literature present in the archives.
One wall was lined with weapons, shelves lined with jars, framed mirrors and canvases set against the wall, statues, and decorative boxes and crates of various sizes.
"I heard about this," Ren gestured at the wall. "The older priestesses told me back in the day people would bring allegedly cursed or haunted objects here for the shrine to cleanse."
Beki cocked an eyebrow. "So why are they all stacked up in the basement?"
Ren shrugged. "Probably weren't haunted or cursed in the first place."
"That would be the optimistic opinion to have about a pile of potentially damned merchandise." Beki eyed it all suspiciously.
"Your mom sent us down here to look for clues so let's hit the books." Ren stretched. "Maybe if we're lucky there's like, ancient smut novels down here."
Beki laughed. "You think the 'forbidden texts' are erotic novels?"
"I can hope, ya know? Maybe some salacious ankle flashing and long gazes brimming with smoldering desire from across a crowded room." Ren smiled.
"Sounds more like an Austen novel than ancient erotica." Beki said as she picked up a book. "You'd have better luck with an edgy artbook full of naughty woodblock prints."
"You're the real pervert of the two of us." Ren picked up a book of her own. "I want romance and exposition and you want antique hentai."
"I do not!" Beki balked. "You're the weirdo!"
"Uh uh," Ren shook her head. "You're the one that saw a man with blood red hair, a face tattoo, guyliner, and a BDSM coat and said 'yeah that's my speed'."
"One, that's his natural hair color. Two, it's an unfortunately specific self-inflicted scar," Beki counted off on her fingers. "Three, he is not wearing guy liner. He's got chronic insomnia. The bags under his eyes are so severe he's got them on his eyelids, too. And four…okay maybe I thought the leather getup was hot. Sue me. He dressed like a bad boy and I had a control freak for a father."
"Surprised he doesn't drive a motorcycle," Ren said as she sat on one of the sturdier looking tables. "Have a couple of piercings-"
"Shut up." Beki sighed as her eyes traveled down a page. "Hold on, this is spicy."
"Smut?" Ren asked a little too excitedly.
"No this was an excommunicated priestess. Talks a lot about purifying evil, darkness, demons, the whole nine. Real fervent, fanatic sounding type," Beki said. "I'll read you anything if I find something big."
The two read in silence for some time before Beki disrupted the silence.
"This is how she ends her final entry: Rip and tear until it is done."
"Yikes," Ren laughed. "Someone was a little hardcore."
"You found anything?" Beki asked.
Ren shrugged. "Just a scroll with a bunch of unfamiliar runes. Someone was kind enough to scrawl 'Fear the Old Blood' in the margins in, you guessed it, blood."
"Gross." Beki shook her head and closed the book. Her eyes roved the stacks but fell on the wall of relics instead.
She was surprised by the number of weapons hung on the wall or stacked on special racks. One in particular drew her eye. The blade caught the light in an unusual red-black. The hand guard was a set of bones attached to a horned skull and a set of ribs, the hilt topped with a sharp crown. Tucked behind the racks was the biggest boomerang she had ever seen. Ren picked up on Beki's wandering and tossed aside her assigned reading to join her.
Beki began to unsheathe the swords on the racks. She found a katana with a black blade, another katana where the cutting edge was on the wrong side, an odachi more than two meters in length, and an oddly shaped sword that appeared to have some kind of miniature canon mechanism. A hat on the rack seemed out of place until Beki noticed the dangerous blade edged rim. There was a bladed fan and a pair of very old looking lion faced gauntlets too big for even a man like Seiichiro with spikes, sharp teeth, and splattered in blood. Another odd old relic was a curved dagger with strange runes, a mean looking hand guard, and sand trapped in the hilt. Slung over one end of the rack was a morning star with an excessively long chain, like a whip, with a cruciform handle. Framed on the wall was black hair woven into the shape of a butterfly. A silver key shaped staff with a garnet orb the size of Beki's fist was secured in a glass case all its own.
Ren wandered up to Beki holding a jar covered in protective seals. "This is really weird."
"What is it?" Beki asked.
"So there's this mummified finger in here," Ren said. "Someone wrote 'do not eat' on the lid. Why the hell would someone eat a mummified finger?!"
Beki shrugged. "I don't know. I don't know how most of these could even be considered weapons. A lot of them are too big or heavy to even pick up."
"But a finger, Beki! Why do we have a finger?!" Ren rattled the jar. Her gaze lingered a little too long inside and Beki whacked her upside the head.
"Don't you dare."
"I'm really curious now! What will happen if I eat the finger?" Ren held the jar up to Beki's face.
"Maybe they reused the jar from something else and just assumed people would be smart enough to not eat mummified body parts?" Beki offered.
"Fair enough." Ren sighed as she replaced the jar. "Maybe later, forbidden snack."
…
Deep in the desolate mountains Yuki let herself run free. The cold, damp air made it easy for her to weave ice from the world around her. The Asou estate would take the better part of an hour to walk to. Unfettered from the constraints of moving through a crowded village or an incapable companion, Yuki began to skate. The trails formed a few feet before her and dissolved in her wake as the wind whipped through her hair. She reached the cliff overlooking her family's old manor. Yuki made no effort to reduce her speed but instead plunged head first into the void.
Several feet above the rapidly approaching ground, Yuki a hand out before her. A ramp rose up to meet her made of ice strong enough to take the impact. Over the years, Seiichiro had made sure maintenance had been done to keep the house standing. The gardens were a little overgrown but Yuki liked it that way. It was an old-fashioned country manor Yuki and Seiichiro had hoped to retire to someday. In her youth, Yuki had come down from the shrine from time to time when she wanted to be alone. Painting watercolors in the garden, composing poetry by the hearth, or even just watching the sunrise brought her solace.
Although she had never fully lived in it the building was as close as Yuki had ever come to feeling at home. From the well-kept china in the cabinets to the folded clothes in old chests, Yuki could almost sense the family that never got to be. Somehow, she knew the well-seasoned cast iron tea pot in the hearth had been her father's. Something about the colors and the pattern of the needlework on tea towels and other scraps of fabric screamed "grandma" to Yuki. She could never bring herself to look too hard at the sepia tone and black and white photos scattered throughout the house. Maybe that would make it all too real. Turn the familial warmth to longing. Instead of tricking herself into feeling like Yuki had been the first to arrive home she would feel like the last person to leave. Seeing her own features on the faces of the dead, features that she now carried alone, would solidify her moniker as the Last Asou.
As always Yuki steeled herself against those painfully human thoughts by focusing on her daughter. She moved confidently through the house, collecting an old rucksack from a stand by the door before heading into the study. After her calligraphy brushes and ink stone were carefully secured in a fabric roll Yuki scrounged for old paper pads she had stuffed into the bookshelves in a teenage attempt at neatness.
Despite her best attempts to ignore it the old photo on the shelf drew her eye. Perhaps it was seeing double of her face, or maybe it was some residual instinct from her infancy to seek out the face of her mother. Either way Yuki found herself staring at the last Asou family portrait. She comforted herself by looking for Beki in her parents, for obscure features she had missed by misattributing them to either herself or Seiichiro. The lack of color and age made it difficult for anything to stand out front and center.
Her mother had been beautiful. She had the same thick, luscious, almost too-black hair as Yuki but was shorter with softer proportions. It made her less intimidating than her daughter, especially when dressed in a demure kimono like she was. Yukihana and Yukihina had been about two years old in the photo. They were old enough to stand obediently in their little matching kimonos. Perfect duplicates, like looking at a single child standing beside their reflection in the mirror. Each parent held one of them by the hand. Yukihina stood with their mother and Yukihana stood beside her father.
Yuki barely remembered her father. Looking at his image she could almost convince herself she knew what he looked like. The photo depicted him as incredibly fair aside from the freckles Yuki had inherited splattered across his nose. His hair looked an incredibly light brown in the image but Yuki couldn't shake the subconscious knowledge it had been white. Or almost white, like Beki's hair.
Despite being dressed neatly like a gentleman there was nothing genteel about him. He was tall and lean with a muscular build a person only got after a lifetime as an outdoorsman. Someone who rose before dawn on an internal clock and ate what they foraged while working in the woods. There was a feral quality to him Yuki instantly related to. Flashes danced through her mind of sneaking out a window to sleep under the stars with him under a blanket of woven grass. Sitting on the roof to watch the first snow fall while her mother and sister hunkered down inside. Looking back and forth between her parents, Yuki couldn't help seeing a cultured lady taking in an injured wolf for a pet. The Asou heiress could brush him and put on a collar but he would always belong in the wild.
Yuki broke herself from the spell of the photograph. Normally, when they would come to visit, Yuki and Seiichiro would have stayed up at the shrine. Knowing there were some oddities going on, however, Yuki thought the Asou home would be a better base of operations. She took a few futon from a closet and beat them before leaving them on the deck to air out. She repeated this with the linens, hanging them on an old but sturdy clothesline. Yuki grabbed a field notebook and a pencil to record anything useful she might find in the archives and began the trek back to the shrine.
Feeling emotionally exhausted after confronting memories she would have rather forgotten, Yuki took the longer path from the house to the shrine. It passed an overgrown path that once led to an elderly neighbor's cottage. From the road Yuki could see the building had collapsed and had been left to go fallow. A river cut through, fed from cave systems within the mountain, big and strong enough to warrant a decent wood arch bridge across.
Yuki hated the old creaky thing. As a mother, the hand rails were too high and gaps between the supports beneath them were too far apart. Thick mists hung over the roads almost waist high in the mornings and evenings. On clear days, strong enough winds to stagger a man whipped through the clearings where the trees broke. In an abundance of caution, Yuki had always made a point of carrying Beki over that bridge, even after she was tall enough to reach and hold onto the railings. That was the burden of parenthood, however. No one this far out in the wilderness gave a damn about safety. It was all on the individual to keep their family safe. Nature sure as hell wasn't going to do it.
…
Yuki reached the shrine, having spent about an hour round trip. Approaching the shrine from the other path Yuki found herself unsettled once again. This time around Yuki noticed the overgrown underbrush. Nettles, barbs, and untrimmed branches growing into the path. The quiet put her off the most. There was an absence of crickets, frogs, not a single bird sang beneath the sanguine canopy of leaves. Yuki realized she had felt this way before. In a graveyard.
In the light the wear and tear were beginning to show on the buildings. It was strange when compared to her memory from ten years before. Considering the shrine was hundreds of years old the rapidity of the decay was strange. Perhaps it was the deaths of all the staff. No maintenance meant nature was reclaiming the place. That would be the logical explanation for the phenomenon. Yuki's sixth sense screamed there was no way that was the case. Ren was right on the nose. Something sinister lurked just out of view.
Before they had arrived, Yuki's mind had been fixated on two things: Beki's safety and seeing Reika again. The head priestess and Yuki had serious unresolved baggage. There had been plenty of opportunities to resolve it but Yuki chose not to mostly out of spite. Forgiveness might have been easier if she had looked after Beki. Then again, Reika had never liked children. It was only out of obligation she had anything to do with her own sister. Even so, it had been something Reika had privately complained about often.
Those thoughts couldn't be any further from Yuki's mind. As she entered the shrine proper and made her way to the great hall, all she could think about was what hunted them in the mist. The wood groaned beneath Yuki's feet, splinters and loose nails hardly drawing her notice. The walls sloped noticeably enough that it felt like the roof was coming down, slowly, like a trap in a tomb. Valuable embroidered scrolls had faded so only ghosts of their subjects remained. The inked scrolls wept smoky trails, obscuring their messages behind their mourning.
The space was abnormally damp for a mountain top shrine, even with the holes in the roof and buckets on the floor. Yuki felt sticky. She was tempted to draw the water from the air but the childhood warnings of the priestesses to preserve all the artifacts stayed her hand. There was no way these already damaged pieces could sustain a sudden cold snap.
When Yuki reached the great doors of the main hall, she found them swollen from the damp. After a lift and shove, Yuki was able to gain entry. A surprised Reika was already on her feet from the sudden intrusion.
"Yuki…?" Reika blinked multiple times, her face the very picture of a frightened doe.
She looked much as Yuki remembered her. Her hair was somewhat overgrown and poorly tended and dark circles were forming under her eyes. Otherwise, Reika looked fine. Her amber eyes stayed locked onto Yuki as Reika approached, hand extended timidly, as though expecting to meet only air when she made contact. Her terror only escalated as hand cupped cheek. Reika paled, her hand retracting as if burned.
"Am I dreaming?" Reika patted herself down. "Am I dead?"
"No, I was never dead." Yuki folded her arms. "Trapped in my own ice. Long story. Not important."
Reika shook her head. "What are you talking about? How can your sudden revival after ten years not be the priority of our conversation?"
Yuki gestured at the crumbling main hall. The holes in the roof were worse here. The fallen bell Ren mentioned drew Yuki's eye. The stain on the wood made her blood run cold. "What the hell is going on here, Reika?"
"I'm understaffed." Reika ran her fingers through her crown, swallowing hard. "I can't get anyone to come up here anymore."
"Because of the deaths?" Yuki cocked an eyebrow. "Ren told me everything. Says you say it's all 'just fine'."
Reika held up a hand. "I'm sorry. Before we can continue, I need to know you're really Yuki. Tell me how you're here."
Yuki spent the next ten minutes telling the story, pausing often to answer questions Reika came up with only Yuki could know the answer to. At the end, Reika could only shake her head.
"As impossible as it is to believe, you seem to be yourself. I would have never thought in a million years you would be the one to deliver me in my darkest hour."
"I would hold off on the 'delivering' bit." Yuki put her hands on her hips. "I can't fight an unidentified enemy."
"What can I say, Yuki? I don't know what it is myself." Reika surveyed the abandoned looking hall, her eyes lingering on the three urns in alcoves at the far wall. "When it all began, it started with the elders. You remember how they always were. Never liked putting names to things. Wanted to ignore it, pretend it wasn't happening. Their stubbornness might have doomed us all."
"What do you mean?" Yuki asked.
"They seemed to have some idea of what was going on but refused to share. I would catch them whispering amongst themselves. They would fall silent when I demanded answers, even when I reminded them of my station." Reika explained. "I caught them in the middle of rituals, they stayed up night and day praying at the shrine, all to no avail. When they started dying it was like knocking over dominoes. I think we lost them all within two weeks."
"You don't need to go into the gorey details. Ren filled me in fine." Their eyes both wandered to the bell in the floor. Yuki couldn't ignore the glimmer of the red black splatter on the metal.
"At first I had chalked it up to the elders frightening one another into having the dreams. Then they had turned them into self fulfilling prophecy. But then they began to spread. The nightmares were like a virus." Reika began to braid her mass of hair as they talked, from the crown back, the way they were taught to as young girls. "Before the first three died, they had confessed that they felt like they were going to die soon. Some of them had premonitions, you know, but it was so odd we just assumed it was just foreboding from the previous deaths. And they couldn't describe how they were going to die. It was always something general, like, 'I really shouldn't be cooking today' or 'Maybe I shouldn't bathe for a while.' But then they were dead. And they had died doing what they had said they shouldn't be doing."
"Self fulfilling prophecy." Yuki shrugged. "You said so yourself."
Reika sighed and nodded. "The thing is, Yuki, that the next set who started getting the nightmares...they wouldn't tell me about them either. It went on for weeks, waking in the dead of night to hear screams coming from the priestess's bedroom. Then, one day, they each came to me one by one without consulting one another, and said they needed to leave."
"Had they foreseen death?" Yuki cocked her head.
Reika nodded. "They all refused to speak of it. They simply packed their things and left. It was quiet for a while. Then the attendants started claiming strange things were happening to them, as well."
"They all had visions and quit?" Yuki asked.
"No," Reika dropped her voice. "Things started to go missing. Ancient things kept tight under lock and key. The odds and ends that aren't on the books. You went crawling around in the underbelly of the archives enough to know what I'm talking about."
Items of less repute, either stolen or of questionable origin, were kept locked up in the archives. Things people had claimed had belonged to the Three Maidens, valuable banned tomes, and so on. Yuki may have pilfered one or two of the smaller, less harmful seeming trinkets. The hairpin she stole was probably still in a jewelry box at her house in town.
"So we had some thieves," Yuki offered. "They noticed all the priestesses were leaving, knew there were more gaps in security, and swept through."
"That doesn't explain the accidents, Yuki. Or the…" Reika cringed. "Omens."
"What kind of omens?" Yuki asked.
"Things flying off shelves, cabinets knocking themselves over, doors slamming shut. And voices." Reika explained. "They said there was soft laughter, always sounding like it was coming from another room. Then, they all claimed that at some point or another they had heard someone speaking right in their ear-" Reika held a hand over one of her own ears. "Whispering all their terrible secrets back to them. The handyman hung himself in the shed over it, Yuki. He wrote all over the walls 'make it stop make it stop' over and over again."
"As Ren said." Yuki looked around. "So now it's just the two of you here. Ren says its coming for her now."
Reika nodded. "I...I didn't tell Ren. It started happening to me a while ago. About eight months, I think. I woke up in the middle of the night, swearing I heard someone call my name. Then the dreams got more," Reika rolled a hand on her wrist as she searched for the word.
"Graphic?" Yuki offered.
Reika snapped her fingers. "Yes! In one, the shrine is on fire, another one, a huge tsunami has hit the island and we're all under water. I'm trying to swim to the surface but there are bodies, clawing their way out of the grave and grasping at me." She clutched her belly and shuddered. "In the dreams and when I'm waking, I hear it calling out for 'mother'. I don't have children, Yuki. I keep waking up terrified that I'm going wake up pregnant!"
"I don't think they're talking to us." Yuki shook her head.
Reika blinked. "Yuki….you...The dreams, you've been having them, too?"
"I didn't die, Reika," Yuki hugged herself. "I've been trapped in the ice. I thought I was dead or in purgatory while I was inside. I could hear voices, perceive light, that sort of thing. I had no sense of time or space. Something woke me up." Yuki reached into the pouch on her hip and tapped out a cigarette from her pack. She lit it with slightly shaking fingers. "I haven't told anyone this. I thought it was just my imagination. It's unclear how it happened but I remember being drawn back to reality."
Reika paled with realization. "You heard the call."
Yuki nodded, taking a deep draft on the cigarette. "I thought it was nothing, you know. I've always had the dreams-"
"But your sight was the strongest out of any of us!" Reika hissed. "How long was this going on for you?!"
"It's never obvious, Reika. Sometimes nightmares are just nightmares. I can't tell what is and is not significant. Even the warnings are buried beneath a multitude of layers. Over time, as I approach the event, some of those layers get peeled back and I can make interpretations." Yuki shook her head. "Most of it is gone when I wake up, anyway. I used to keep a journal by my bed to try to recall as much as I could. Always ended up saying things like 'left forest sweater shark'. In most situations the warnings wouldn't help anyway."
"So, head priestess, what does this mean?" Yuki narrowed her eyes as exhaled a wispy trail of smoke. "Why are we being hunted?"
"I…I'm not sure. I told you, the elders knew what this was and kept it from me. There's this nagging feeling though, something I can't shake. Ren was…Ren was asleep in the room with me. We thought maybe it would be better if we were together. I heard her thrashing. It looked like she was tied to the bed but there was nothing there. The way she was moving, it was disturbing." Reika tugged at her braid. "I shook her. She wouldn't wake up. Ren started screaming this awful, muffled cry. Like something was smothering her."
"I swear it took me a good ten minutes to wake her up. When she finally did, she was covered in sweat, her eyes wide and wild. Ren grabbed me by the hair and said one thing: 'They're coming'," Reika's voice shook as she spoke. "I spent a lot of time meditating on that. Only one answer came to me. No matter how many times I tried to come up with an idea or an explanation, it seemed like it could only mean one thing."
Reika's eyes darted behind her toward the urns.
"What are you talking about, Reika?" Yuki narrowed her eyes. "You realize how bonkers you sound, right?"
Reika took a deep breath and steadied herself. "There were things they kept from us, Yuki. Things that only a head priestess is told."
Yuki folded her arms. "And you're going to share it all with me now?"
"It seems pretty foolish to keep it all under wraps when no one is left," Reika looked up at Yuki, her catlike amber eyes clouded with worry. "At this rate there might not even be a shrine left to protect."
"You've piqued my interest." Yuki took out her cigarette and her finger hovered over it, ready to tap off the spent ash. She looked around for a proper receptacle but Reika sighed.
"Go ahead. It's not going to hurt anything. This place is already a dump."
Yuki almost looked pained as she tapped ash onto the floor, put the cig back in her mouth, and puffed.
"So, the big lie we were told," Reika gestured to the urns. "Is that the Three Maidens passed away and that's when the counter styles were built. The truth is," Reika squared her small, feminine shoulders. "The Three Maidens never died."
"Bull." Yuki spat.
"You just crawled out of the ice after a twelve-year nap and you have the balls to say 'boo'?" Reika cocked an eyebrow. "Come on, Yuki."
"You got me." Yuki smiled. "Go on."
"So, apparently the Three got a little too ambitious. They don't go into a whole lot about the details on why and how," Reika explained. "I was just told that the counter styles had been developed by their children in secret and that they were used to capture and imprison the Maidens."
"But even if they were buried alive they would be dead by now," Yuki offered. "No worries, then. The dead can't hurt us."
"Again, I didn't get the specifics. The main point was that as their grandsons were locking them up, the Maidens claimed they would rise again. When they did, they would be acting as horseman for the apocalypse." Reika explained.
Yuki flashed a conspiratorial smile. "Ooh, apocalyptic prophecies? Those are always so fun. So, who are they heralds for? An elder god crossing onto our plane of existence to consume all life? A series of natural disasters that resets the earth to its natural, pre-peopled state? The gates of hell opening and spewing out legions of the undead? Oh! I know! A plague that makes the dead consume the living!"
Reika swatted her. "No, Yuki. I don't know who they serve. The old writings are very cautious. They believed there was power in words, in what was said and what was left unsaid. If you spoke of something, you gave it power. If you struck it from our language, it was another way to keep it bound."
"I can believe that to an extent," Yuki put out her cigarette under her shoe and tossed it in a planter to pick up later. "It just makes it pretty damn hard to prepare for an enemy we don't even have a name for."
"Would you like to see them?" Reika asked. "The Three."
Yuki smiled coyly. "They wouldn't happen to be in a hidden cave somewhere in the forest, would they?"
"Did…did you know?" Reika's jaw went slack. "They didn't show me until I had been head priestess for a year!"
"Ren and Beki found it years ago, apparently." A shadow crossed Yuki's face. "Beki described it as feeling called there. Damn, the pieces are all lining up."
Reika led Yuki out into the woods. Yuki had to reduce her stride to half to account for Reika's diminutive size. As adults she barely reached Yuki's shoulder. After a fifteen minute walk in woods that were so foreign they might as well have been on another planet, not the familiar romps of Yuki's childhood, they reached a strange rock face. There was a door painted to imitate the look of the stone and fit flush to the rock. If Yuki hadn't known it was there, it would have been impossible to find if staring at it. Reika withdrew a complicated looking padlock from within a depression, unlocking it with a thick iron key dangling from a cord around her neck. A seal was set about where a door latch would be. Reika removed it, took a deep breath, and opened the secret door.
After a few minutes of walking down an impossibly long and disturbing tunnel of stars that seemed to lead them into the depths of hell itself, Yuki stood in front of her ancestor, the first Drowned Maiden, Asou Ouse. Although separated by a carved stone coffin, Yuki had an almost supernatural clarity while looking at her. Perhaps it was the mysterious fluid filling the coffin. The colors within seemed saturated; Ouse's hair was unnaturally black, so dark and inky it almost seemed to absorb the light from Reika's torch. Her skin was almost luminous. It was paperwhite, as smooth and young looking as a teenage girl's. Her long black eyelashes, like the wings of a butterfly, gently rested on her freckle-free cheeks. What stuck out to Yuki the most was Ouse's lips. They were as red as blood on snow, the lines so sharp they looked freshly painted. It made Yuki wonder what they had her in that it could keep her makeup pristine for hundreds of years.
Ouse appeared to be resting peacefully, at least. The other two Maidens didn't share her dreamless oblivion. The first Tsukiyama, Ruri, was bound from neck to ankles in ropes, her face wrapped in saturated bandages. If you looked closely, you could make out the impressions of her features beneath the wraps: an oval face, a button nose, and a mouth open in a soundless scream. That at least was better than the first Tsukimori, Haruka. They'd buried her in tar. Yuki felt heat radiating off the coffin and it made the whole room reek with fumes. When Yuki had gone to touch the stone, Reika had yanked her hand away.
"We aren't supposed to touch them." Reika explained. "Something about chakra vampirism or power transference or sentience projection…" She shook her head. "I've never been able to make much sense of it. I just read the warnings and follow what they said."
Yuki looked at Reika. "Seems silly to follow rules you don't understand."
"Seems silly to risk hastening the apocalypse because ancient lingo didn't translate well," Reika scoffed. "Have you seen enough? This place gives me the creeps." Reika glanced around nervously and gasped.
"What?" Yuki turned her head to follow Reika's gaze. "Spot a rat?"
"No!" Reika ran over to an alcove set in the wall and held up a small beat-up lacquer box. "This is one of the items that went missing!"
"What's in it?" Yuki asked.
Reika winced. "It's one of the effects of the Maidens."
"That isn't creepy or serial killer-y at all. We kept trophies from them?" Yuki cocked her head.
Reika bit her lip. "I think the first priests and priestesses were nervous. They had angered and betrayed the Maidens. Maybe they thought by honoring them and making them offerings they would appease their restless spirits."
Yuki shook her head and looked back at the coffin. Was she imagining it, or was Ouse smiling? Yuki leaned in closer and watched for any movement. Twitching in the face, muscle spasms in the arms, anything. Somewhere behind her Reika was still prattling on but Yuki had blocked her out. Her concentration on the body also heightened Yuki's awareness of her surroundings. The air had changed in the room since they had come inside. It had fallen still, stifling and coffinlike, the way a small room with no circulation did. The staleness and stillness built up to an almost ominous presence; a weight hanging in the air like a raincloud. Yuki felt the sensation of a person hovering right behind her and figured it was Reika leaning in to show her something. Right in her ear, she heard her name and it wasn't Reika's voice. Hair rose on Yuki's neck and traveled all the way down her arms. She spun around, ready to fight, but her suspicions were confirmed: they were completely alone.
"Well, I think you're right. These Three feel like they're the source of all the trouble." Yuki turned, faced her ancestor, and flashed a smile reminiscent of a wolf baring its teeth. "Was that you, Ouse? Do you have something to tell me?"
Reika walked up beside her. "Why are you talking to her?"
Yuki kept her eyes glued on Ouse. "I can feel her watching me."
Reika peered at the coffin, a frown tugging at the corners of her fine lips. "Her eyes are closed."
Yuki gestured up above and around them. "All Three of them. I don't quite know how to describe it." She shook her hands out nervously. "I've felt this before. When I've been in the dark or dense woods with enemies. You can't see their eyes but you can feel them on you."
"Yuki, that can't be," Reika watched the coffins cautiously. "It can't be them. It has to be something else. Something drawn to them, maybe. One of the items in the archives they said was cursed? The conditions were met and the curse activated, something like that?"
The moment they stepped into the space, Yuki had felt the Three. What she hadn't shared with Reika about their presence, in part to keep herself calm, was exactly how they were observing the pair. The Three were watching them like predators circling lame prey; so overwhelmingly strong by comparison that there would be no contest. Reika and Yuki would be consumed. Why hadn't they pounced yet, then? What was their goal in luring Yuki and Reika down into their tomb?
In her travels, Yuki had heard about shinobi being able to take over another's mind for a time. What were the chances Ouse was weaseling her way in, setting root in Yuki's mind to take over her body? Or was this going to be a more physical form of substitution? It would make a strange sort of sense that in order for the Three to leave their prisons one of their descendants would have to volunteer to take their place. Was that why the old edicts stated one of each Maiden must be present at the shrine at all times? Before she had a chance to stew on her worries, Reika grabbed ahold of Yuki's wrist and squeezed hard.
"Yuki, we need to go." Reika clutched at her arm, her head whipping back and forth as if she had finally begun to sense the Three's eyes.
The last thing you did with a predator was turn your back on it. You squared up, made yourself as big as possible, and let it know you weren't going down without a fight. Even if it won, if it ate you, it would walk away crippled and vulnerable. Yuki stared down the coffin, daring her ancestor to open her eyes. Nothing happened and the absurdity of her actions crept in. Yuki began to feel subconscious and shook herself out.
"Yeah. You're right. There's nothing for us here."
The two headed up the walkway. Before they were out of sight, Yuki stole a glance backward. Nothing. Three bodies, somehow dead and alive, same as when they came in. For the briefest second, Yuki swore she saw Ouse's eyes flutter.
Once they were out, Reika reset the seal. She panted and collapsed into Yuki's arms. "Do you see what I mean?! Do you see how bad this is getting?!"
Yuki said nothing. Her eyes were locked on the rock face where the door once stood. In her heart, Yuki knew that the pair had been incredibly lucky. They had unknowingly wandered into a spider's nest and somehow escaped with their lives. "They don't feel secure down there."
"Do you think that's why they've been killing the priestesses?" Reika breathed into her hands for a moment before surfacing, stabilizing herself. "They're trying to weaken the seal?"
Yuki shook her head. "That would make sense but then again, it could be anything. The ninja world is going to war again. Maybe it has something to do with that. Has there ever been this much activity before?"
"I...I don't know," Reika shook her head. "We should check the archives. I've been researching as much as I can but perhaps I've missed something."
"I had the girls down there looking already." Yuki had resumed her usual pace, forcing Reika to jog to keep up.
"What!?" Reika screeched to a halt and stared Yuki down. "You sent them down to the archives without my permission?! Beki isn't even a miko-"
"Does any of that matter now?!" Yuki screamed, surprising them both. She recovered her composure enough to keep her volume close to normal. "This hierarchy shit means nothing! If there hadn't been all these tiers of secrets and access, we wouldn't be stumbling in the dark. Critical information died with a bunch of stuffy old witches whose only self worth came from how much of the ancient's knowledge died with them!"
Yuki pointed back at the cave. "I lived here my whole damn life and knew nothing of this. You can barely tell me anything and you're supposed to be running the damn place. The Order is dead, Reika, and they might have killed us with it. If the legend are true, the Three Maidens were powerful enough to destroy armies. I can do a lot. I can kill better than anyone I know, but I'm one person."
"If there is anything in those damn tomes that can buy me thirty more seconds, can make them vulnerable for even a moment, it might save our asses." Yuki was out of breath. She averted her eyes, angry at herself for the flush that came into her cheeks.
"You're right." Reika reached out and gently took Yuki by the shoulders. "I'm sorry. Tradition and habits are hard things to break. The dead are dead. What's important are the people that are left. Let's go see what the girls have found."