Phantasm 1.0 – Awaken into Darkness

The sound of a blade being unsheathed. A glimmer within the darkness. Moonlight flashing upon moving cold steel.

I was tired, too tired to know what I should make out of this vision. It didn't seem like there was an intruder since the alarm charms I set up at the entrance had yet to go off. Well, "it didn't seem" indeed, because I was simply too tired to give a damn about it. I couldn't even be bothered to scan for spiritual anomalies.

Yes, in the end, I just wanted to sleep.

As hard as I tried to fall asleep though, I found it impossible. I just couldn't dismiss the glint that I saw earlier, it kept coming back, gnawing at my feeling of security.

Why, you ask? It could've simply been a shooting star, or the reflection of moonlight from some shiny surface as far as things went.

Let me tell you why I was so disturbed by that glimmer: there was nothing in the shrine that could actually reflect moonlight. Everything was composed either of wooden or bamboo materials: the walls, the furniture, the floor, nothing at all could have caused that reflection. It wasn't like I had polished them either - my habitation, while not decrepit, was still far away from being sparkling clean.

I thought a little bit more about all this, but eventually, all will I had to remain awake was quickly lost.

Let's face it, it was around midnight, and I had a long, tiring day. I wanted to escape to the world of sleep, and it wasn't like I was being refused either – the doors of slumber were wide open to me.

I let myself sink deeper into the warm comfort of my futon, hoping that eventually, with time, this uneasy feeling would come to pass and I'd finally have a good night's sleep.

For sure, time passed, but much to my dismay, the uneasiness didn't. Rather, it kept increasing by the second, crawling up to my heart, slowly evolving into some sort of fear.

I bore this torture for a minute, maybe two, however, I could only last for so long without losing it.

I snapped. I sat up on the futon. I rubbed my eyes and let out a small groan of discomfort, silently cursing whoever was disturbing my sleep pattern.

Once I became relatively "awakened", I focused my mind and swept my bedroom, searching for any form of spiritual disturbance, looking everywhere, scrutinizing the corners, the floor, and even the ceiling.

However, as I finished, my senses still told me that there was no one in the shrine. Well, technically speaking, there was one person - me, Hakurei Reimu, the shrine maiden that actually happened to live here.

We already know that though, I think.

Anyway, at that moment, I should have gone back to sleep. Note the probability in "should have". If it wasn't for my instinct, that probability would not have been there. But my said instinct kept urging me not to let my guard down. It incessantly hammered that the glimmer couldn't have appeared by itself, as I was absolutely immobile when I saw it.

"Something other than myself had to have moved," I whispered into the night.

I agreed with my instincts. They had never failed me before.

That is why I cleared my throat, and after taking in a deep breath, I asked with a tone as firm and menacing as I could:

"Who goes there?"

I waited for a moment. I waited for the sound of movement, I waited for the creaking of wood as someone stepped onto the old and used planks that made up the shrine's floor, for the flow of od in the air to be suddenly disturbed, giving me the telltale sign that something was moving.

But nothing answered. There was only the chirping of the crickets, their sharp, repetitive chant playing against the background of the silent night.

It wasn't like I expected an answer anyways; sane thieves seldom announce their arrival.

Thinking of thieves, the thought of a youkai paying me a nocturnal visit for vengeance suddenly came up. It sounded fairly possible, since the number of people I had beat up over the last month was greater than the combined amount of times Marisa and Yukari barged into my shrine unannounced. If you have no idea how many times the latter is, the saying "as numerous as the stars" would be fairly adequate.

I reached for my gohei, the trusty ceremonial wand that served as the catalyst for my spiritual incantations. Once I took hold of it, I then checked my sleeves and pockets to verify how many ofuda talismans were left from the previous day. As I took them out one by one, I could only count only about a dozen.

That was a meager amount. Yet, seeing that it should be only one or two youkai that I was dealing with here, I reasoned that it should be more than sufficient for the task at hand.

I stuffed the ofudas back into my clothes, and with my gohei gripped firmly in my right hand, I walked out of my bedroom, ready for any encounter.

The wooden parquet ominously creaked as I stepped into the shrine's worship area. The atmosphere was all but agreeable, with an unpleasant draft blowing onto my bare shoulders. I shivered as the cold slowly assaulted my body.

My eyes were darting left to right, continuing to keep track of my surroundings, in case there was movement within the shadows.

The lighting in the room was very dim. There was only one source of light at that time – the moon. The moonlight, while strong, only lit up the floor below as the roof prevented it from reaching anything further up.

I'd had it with all of that darkness.

I reached for one of my ofudas and infused it with spiritual force. The flow of energy made it glow with a half purple, half reddish tint, the intensity being enough to serve as a makeshift torch.

It's amazing how a piece of paper with some words written on it can be so useful at times.

I brandished my "torch" to light the entire room. The walls appeared as if they had been smeared in unnatural color, permeated with a magenta tint.

Pretty natural, considering what I was using as my light source.

But I hadn't come here to admire the nice colors I could make with my miko powers. I was here to root out the cause of these anomalies I had seen earlier. Seeing that I was still unable to pick up anything out of the ordinary here, I was becoming more and more frustrated.

What if it was all a dream? Anything could happen when one was sleepy. Perception became vague and unclear, hearing turned as acute as the ears of an old man with half a working tympani.

I will find out now. Such a ridiculous measure I had in mind seemed like anything but proportionate to the situation, yet it was the fastest way to discover if my mind was playing tricks on me, or if there really existed a youkai or person sneaky enough that I couldn't detect their presence.

I slammed my "torch" down into the ground, and a magical glyph quickly imprinted itself onto the wooden floor.

That was the sign for me to begin my incantation.

Of course, as Japanese is my native tongue, the incantation should appear in a language no different from what you're currently reading. In my opinion, though, some things taste better while raw. Like sashimi for example.

"Kage wa kieyo.

Omae ga fushi no shudan wo motte.

Kono te ni wa hikari. Kono te koso ga subete to shire."

Light coming from the ofuda enveloped me. Soon after, it would envelope the entire shrine as well.

The premise of this spell was to reveal anyone or anything using magical concealment and trickery. To give you an idea of how powerful that spell was, it is was supposed to dispel illusionary and invisibility magic on the scale of an entire forest.

Why did I know a spell of this amplitude? You'd ask. Well, the explanation is pretty simple: while the the residents of Eientei and I were on fairly amicable terms, that didn't guarantee that, things could maybe go haywire due to a misunderstanding one day.

This was one of the many spells I had come up with to counter their strong points. To be most correct though, this was to counter Reisen's strong point – she could create illusions and induce madness on a whim, so being able to dispel these was a great help.

I digress though. Back to what was happening.

I was immersed into the light for a few seconds. It was a light of an immeasurable radiance, doubtlessly fitting for the concept that it embodied - "revealing". However, unlike sunlight, this wasn't anywhere near blinding. I could keep my eyes open without being fazed at all.

Not even once did I blink.

The light began fading, and the darkness of the night returned slowly.

I focused my mind one more time to search for any signs of spiritual pressure. If there was nothing, it really meant this time that there was nothing.

I began the search.

And immediately, I felt it. A weak spiritual presence that I hadn't picked up previously.

So there was someone after all.

"Show yourself! Come out, I know that you're-"

I stopped. A very unpleasant sound and feeling were the cause of my interruption.

I heard some sort of fuitch noise. The same one heard whenever sharp steel violated the integrity of flesh. The sensation that a cold wind had just blown through my chest also came alongside that unsettling sound.

"What could that be?" I asked myself, refusing to believe what I had already guessed.

I knew deep inside that something bad had happened. I knew that if I was going to look down, I would regret it, very much.

But curiosity was killing me from the inside; or could it even kill me anymore?

A blood-soaked blade was emerging from my upper left chest.

There was a patch of deep-red around the wound, expanding at a very quick rate. It wouldn't be long before my light-red shirt was recolored into a darker shade.

I had been stabbed from the back, and my heart had probably ended up as a brochette.

Something that was late to the instant caught up when I understood my current state. Oh how I wished that I never did.

Agonizing pain shot across my chest. I felt all of my blood pouring out of the hole which had been carved through my body... it was sickening.

I was scared.

I was hurt.

I tried to yell.

What came out though couldn't even be described as a yell. My punctured lung produced nothing other than strangulated, garbled utterances.

I choked miserably as the disgusting taste of blood flooded my mouth.

Subconsciously inching forwards, I tried to get away from the person that had run me through. I still had the will to live, I didn't want to die here, it was too sad of a fate, it was too... sudden.

I slid alongside the blade, trying to remove it from me. Every single centimeter of my advance was punctuated with absolutely, utterly unbearable dolor.

I got it out of me eventually. But that blade took away also most of the life that I had left.

The next step I took quickly ended up in catastrophe.

I stumbled. My body fell forwards, all strength having now deserted my legs. Was it because I was really dying that badly or because I was just scared to no end? I will never know.

I heard the assassin mumble something as I fell.

"... what is this sorcery?!"

I turned my head to have a look backwards. I wanted at least to see the face of my killer.

Who was it? Why had they done that? Why had the spellcard rules not been respected?

This crime would not go unpunished. I had friends, lots of friends. They were going to hunt down whoever killed me. They would reduce him or her to nothingness. He or she would suffer a fate worse than death, all at the hands of the powerful beings that I had become familiar with. They would hunt him down.

Would they?

I began thinking about everyone that I knew. What was I to them? Was I a friend? An acquaintance?

Or was I just the Hakurei Shrine Maiden, nothing more, nothing less?

Maybe that my death would go unnoticed. Maybe that everyone would eventually forget me, like a wave tossed into the ocean.

Marisa would go back to her research of Magic.

Suika would impose herself on someone else.

Yukari would just find a new shrine maiden.

I would be quickly forgotten by everyone, no, everything.

I felt empty inside as I thought of all this. Who knows, maybe that I even cried.

I was utterly scared.

I wanted to escape death. I didn't want to be forgotten.

Everything appeared to be in slow motion. It felt like a minute since I had tumbled forwards.

My head was still turning. Nevermind that, it had turned enough for me to glance at the assassin from the corner of the eye.

Who was it?

I wanted to know, I wanted to know at all costs.

...

What I saw wasn't the assassin.

I saw gaps. Yukari's gaps, with the signature eyes glaring at me from within them.

That is when I understood the reasons behind the assassin's words earlier.

Impaling me through the chest wasn't what he had intended. He probably had gone for a straight, quick and efficient kill by decapitating me. However, his blade somehow ended up into Yukari's gap, and came out as a thrust, piercing my chest.

"Yukari is at work here." That was the only thing that I had the time to tell myself. The moment I acknowledged this information, was the moment that the flow of time magically reverted back to a natural pace.

I should have hit the hardened wooden floor, my head should have smashed against it. However, as always, note the "should have", because in fact, I didn't. Rather, I felt like I was falling, falling and falling without end.

It was a free-fall into an unending darkness.

I spent a long time "unconscious".

By definition, unconscious beings don't know what's going on. They cannot feel anything, they cannot hear anything, all of their senses are shut down. However, in my case, I could somewhat have an understanding of how much time was passing by.

The amount, at that point, had already been too much. I decided to wake up.

Touch was the first sense that came back to me, starting at the head. Slowly, I began to appreciate the caresses of a warm and pleasant wind blowing onto my cheeks.

Smell was the second sense that returned to me. It allowed me to pick up an otherworldly aroma, so sweet that I could feel it seeping into my soul.

Hearing came third, as the loud, yet unnaturally serene howl of the wind came to my ear. Judging from the nature of the background noise, and how the atmosphere in general sounded, I was in a large and open space.

What was the fourth that came back, you're eager to know, right? Well, to be honest, there was no fourth.

All of the rest that hadn't been working suddenly restored themselves in the most chaotic and jumbled of manners. It was as if someone had literally jammed them into my body.

That was sudden. Too sudden for me.

My body jolted upwards, and my eyes shot open.

I saw a young woman, one that I had never seen before.

She had deep olive eyes that were staring at me. Her skin was fair and white. Golden-blonde hair adorned her head, straight, and with strands so finely combed that they resembled golden threads.

The most striking thing about her though, was the dress she wore.

Having an occidental flair to it, it was of a dominant crimson color, with some white silk fabric making up the areas covering the bosom and chest. Sewn onto the edges of the dress, were extravagant golden linings.

I had rarely seen clothes as these. They were a lot akin to Yukari's.

That girl wasn't Yukari though. She wasn't a youkai... but I couldn't say that she was human either.

I could only stare at her wordlessly, mouth agape. Sitting there opposite of me, with flowers surrounding us everywhere, this felt like a totally otherworldly experience to me.

"Wait, am I not in the afterlife though?" I thought as I remembered that I supposedly had "died". It would be natural for her to seem otherworldly...

"So you awakened from your slumber." the girl said.

Her voice was deep and somewhat masculine.

"Where are we? Have I already died?" I asked.

A smile appeared on her lips. Shortly afterward, she then spoke her first words to me, a significant turn of phrase that somehow, would embed itself into my heart.

"The first question, I was about to ask you. The second, you should have. Note the "should have", since in fact, you did not."

Phantasm 1.0 - END