Exposition ahoy!
Morning dawned too early but I was up with the sun and ready to go. Isana was up before even me, looking like she hadn't gotten a wink of sleep that night.
:Duh, dumbass,: I reminded myself. :Her kid is missing, she probably didn't get any sleep.:
We set out, taking a train to a nicer district when she guided me to a large building that looked a little like many of the buildings in the Seireitei. There were red tori in front of the gate and the entrance was being swept by an old man wearing hakama and gi. The sign and the entrance said Yamataro Shrine. I took in a breath, ostensibly to enjoy the morning air, but I was really testing for the presence of any kind of lingering spirit presence. There was the smell of incense, but it was the smell of actual incense and not the scent that accompanied a Shadow. The place did have a peaceful sort of feeling about it but nothing I could really put my finger on as belonging to a spirit being. I shrugged, it couldn't hurt to take a look around.
We entred the shrine (and I did feel a subtle tingle as we passed through a spitit barrier) and passed by the booths with fortunes and charms and headed over to the little house-shrines, where the kami were said to live. I thought about knocking on the tiny front door, but decided better of it. I tasted the air around the tiny little house with its sacred seals on it and did indeed detect the tiniest trace of a spiritual presence. It was fresh, not very strong and it didn't smell like anything I had ever picked up before. It looked like we were on the right track.
"Excuse me," I said at the little house-shaped shrine-box, going for politeness first.
My captain was always telling me that manners maketh men after all.
"If you wouldn't mind comin' outta there, I need to talk to ya."
I tried not to feel self-conscious as some people looked over and stared at the crazy red-haired guy trying to talk to the shrine. There was no answer to my tentative query from within, so I added
"Look, I know yer in there, so ya might as well come on out. I just need to ask you a few questions an' then we'll leave."
The door cracked a bit and a tiny face that most everyone else probably couldn't see poked its nose out. It looked like a daikon radish with arms and legs and a colorful little face on its topside. It blinked eyes that shone with a milky light at us and crept timidly forward.
"Can I help you?" the spirit asked me.
"Yeah," I said forthrightly. "I'm supposed to be a Soul Reaper but I got turned mortal. I need to know what you know about the Believed and if you, or anyone else you know, might know about this thing that's being called a Shadow--"
The little critter squeaked a high pitched sound of dismay and darted back into its little home, slamming the tiny door behind it.
:Well, that was interesting.:
It definately knew something.
"Hey!" I said, tempted to bang on the little box. "I just asked you a question!"
"Go 'way!" it shouted back at me. "I don't answer the inquiries of rude mortals. Especially when they ask about... Them!"
"That was a significant sort of Them," I asided to Isana.
She looked back at me and looked around.
"People are staring," she noted.
"Let 'em," I said absently.
To the spirit-critter I said
"I'm not going to leave you alone until you tell me where I can find out more about what the Shadows are and how to track 'em... and kill 'em of course."
There was a long pause and I said
"I'll bust up yer home if ya don't."
"Mister Abarai you can't threaten to destroy shrine property!" Isana admonished me.
"He don't know that," I muttered.
I waited another half breath and shook the little box, saying
"If you don't tell me what I wanna know, I'll pull out my zanpaktou and use the katsura technique to turn you into a peeled-daikon flower!"
"You wouldn't dare!" the little spirit squeaked from inside his box.
I had him.
"Try me ya little pipsqueak," I growled. "I've just had a couple o' really bad days and I am in a shitty mood bub, so spill it, or I'm gonna start takin' some o' my mood out on you."
"Eeep! Okay okay!" the little runt said. "I'll tell you what I know! Just don't hurt me!"
I smiled smugly, satisfied. Ya just had to know how ta talk to 'em right.
"I don't know a whole lot," the critter sniveled from inside.
"I'm small and weak even as my kind are judged," it added, peeking a timid nose out of its little shrine-home, and seeing us waiting without sign of threat now that it had decided to cooperate, tentatively emerged from its abode.
"The only thing I do is take care of any daikons grown in the area, and I'm bound to this shrine, I'm not powerful enough to move from it. The greater spirits never drop by any more, they're all probably busy doing thier power-politics in thier own realms or at the Great Courts, so I never hear any of the really good gossip. I'm a historian!"
"Just tell me what you know about the Shadows, like, what are they?"
"Well, they're us, basically," the little daikon said.
I waited.
"In order for you to understand, I guess I'll have to give you some history."
I hated scholarly stuff, but if I was gonna be fighting these assholes it would probably be a good idea to know what I was up against or I'd be in trouble later on.
"We nature spirits get power from two places," Daikon-san said. "The core of our power comes from our places of origin. A river spirit draws power from it's river, a mountain spirit draws power from it's mountain, a rain god is defined by wind and water, and so on," the little mite explained. "Long, long, long ago, before Humans came along in great numbers, nature spirits inhabited their own territories that were pristine of any influence."
It sounded very wistful about that.
"Before humans came along, it is said that all spirits were equal in power, but I don't know if that's true or not," Daikon-san continued. "Any way, what's important is that Humans began appear in greater numbers, and their spirits had a special power to them. When they concentrated their energy and put all of their wills into it, they could change things. They could change things in the material world, do things like build houses and move things using domesticated animals, and they could change things in the spirit world too. It didn't take long for a few enterprising spirits, ones who were dissatisfied with their lot in life and wanted more than just their own duties, to see this and to take advantage of it. They encouraged the humans around them to worship them. The act of worship, whether it's a prayer or a ritual dance or whatever, transfers power from the Human's spirit over to the Nature Spirit, adding onto that extra power that the Spirit already had."
I nodded, it sounded like a pretty good system for the Nature Spirit.
"As a Spirit gained more power over the generations of people worshiping it, they were able to do more and more things. Many of the powerful Nature Spirits would turn on the weaker ones and absorb their powers and territories, spreading thier influence through the world by using their human worshipers to spread the word of their power. This was when a change in the nature of the spirit world began to occur; the Nature Spirits that had always been bound to the land now had enough power to cast off their connections to the material world and use their own power to create their own realms in the Dangai, the chaotic realm of energy that exists outside of the mortal realm."
My brow furrowed in puzzlement. I'd always heard of the Dangai referred to as simply another realm that existed much the same way as the Mortal Realm and the Soul Society did. This spirit seemed to think that the Dangai was somthin' else than just a realm or a dividing place between worlds.
"Okay, explain that again," I said. "The Dangai is a realm, just like this Mortal Realm is a realm and the Soul Society is a realm, how can you make other realms inside of another realm?"
"You are mistaken Soul Reaper," the nature spirit said to me. "Dangai is not a mere realm it is..."
He paused.
"Picture an ocean that goes on forever in all different directions," he said. "That ocean is the Dangai. Now picture islands dotting the surface of the ocean in all different sizes with all different people living on them. Those islands would be the different realms. The Spirits, by using the great power that they had amassed from worship by the humans, could disconnect themselves from the Mortal Realm and create thier own islands where they could receive power and spirit-energy flowing from their former places of worship."
"Kind of like a feeding tube or an IV?" Isana guessed.
"That's a very good analogy young woman," Daikon-san said approvingly.
This was one spirit who clearly liked to talk and hadn't had anyone to talk to in a very long time.
"The Spirits that had amassed enough power to build thier own homes in the divine realms were named "gods" by the humans, and worshiped by people in large numbers," the radish spirit continued.
"The problem with relying upon the humans alone for power anymore was that they were influenced by the people they worshiped. When there came to be a clash among one group of people against another their "Gods" would fight as well across their realms in the Dangai. This went on for many many centuries, with many cultures inventing many gods and vying for supremacy."
"There's something I don't get," I said. "You said that powerful spirits built their own realms in the Dangai once they got enough power from bein' worshipped to write their own ticket out, if that's true then how did the Mortal Realm, which you've said predates Human and Spirit alike, how did that get in the Dangai?"
"The analogy of an ocean to describe the Dangai isn't entirely accurate Soul Reaper," the radish spirit said. "It's more like an ocean with a huge interconnected network of threads of power weaving through it. The places where many of these threads meet form Realms naturally. But back to the gods wars. For many many centuries these gods fought and politicked and married among themselves, taking on the characteristics of how they were worshiped and the people who worshiped them, but then a shift in the way people were worshiping occured over time. They began to stop worshiping individual gods. The way they thought of faith and what it meant to worship became more and more abstract, and there were influences by other mortal beings. Jesus, Mohamad, Bhudda, Zoroaster, philosophers, poets... all of them began to slowly bring the attention of the mortals away from the various gods they had worshiped for centuries and focused it on another manner of faith altogether. It wasn't true in all places, naturally; India for instance still has very powerful gods in it that retain their original forms and power. But there are no absolutes after all."
Yep. I had stumbled across a scholarly spirit alright.
"For the most part however, with the spread of the influence of these new ideas and the practice of strange new faiths that did not worship individual gods with individual characteristics, the power that fed into the realms of the gods individually began to wane and dry out. There was less power flowing from the Mortal Realm and this weakened the power of the god and its ability to maintain their lifestyle in their own realms. Centuries ago, the more powerful gods that there were left noticed the great waning in power and decided to seek out all other powerful spirits spread across the Dangai that had powers and abilities similar to their own, and hold a council to debate how they might retain that power which they still had. Out of these quorums came the idea to combine all of their powers and strengths. Thus was invented what came to be called the Great Courts. The most powerful of the gods became emperor and/or empress of the Great Courts and the gods with lesser abilities became their vassals. By combining the individual created realms with the other like-powered gods they pooled thier resources, and cut back on the energy requirements it took to maintain a comfortable life by centering their Courts around a Nexus Point in the lines of power. The result was something you would compare to a castle with many rooms."
I guessed I could kind of see that, the Seireitei was different, but the Soul Society was primarily concerned with the cycle of life and death and the transmigration of souls so it sort of stood to reason that for as long as people had been dying it had always existed in one form or another.
"Shortly thereafter, the human abstract religions became... aggressive. Most of the new types of faith would no longer tolerate the old ways and went about stamping out the places of old worship by using their swords and enforcing the new faiths upon the people who lived there."
I'd had to study human religion in the academy as part of the course load. It had bored me to tears. All the constant quibbling and deaths over stupid little things like names and words... and it wasn't like it mattered all that much anyway in the end. Humans were weird.
"This had the effect of creating an enormous decline in the spirit energy that the spirits received in the Mortal Realm, so much so that some of the ones who had grown powerful but had chosen to stay in the Mortal Realm, for whatever reason, now had no place that they could call their own. The names of the gods and Guardian spirits were erased from texts and the sites of their places of worship were destroyed or appropriated by the new religions. Human's had discovered a way to forcibly disconnect a spirit from its native place in the Mortal Realm and chivvy it off like an unwanted pest. This led to what is called the Great Exode. Most, in fact nearly all, of the powerful and less powerful spirits that had lived in the Mortal Realm gathered what power remained to them and used it to purchase a place to stay in the Divine Realms, just so they would not be destroyed with a cross-wielding priest rode through their lands and banished them as creatures of evil. Most spirits simply swore themselves as vassals to the more powerful gods who lived in Courts that suited their natures. So nowdays, the separation of the Mortal Realm from the courts in the Divine Realms is nearly complete... only a few stragglers, such as myself remain behind. I am not powerful, but likewise my home shrine has never been tampered with either."
He was unimportant enough to be overlooked, he meant.
"So what the heck does all this got ta do with the Shadows?!" I exploded in frustration.
The little shrimp had talked about everything but the Shadows dammit! I'd been standing there for twenty minutes listening ta him yammer on and on and still didn't have any answers.
"Everything," daikon-san said calmly. "The Shadows are godlings that refused to join a court, instead they desired to tough it out on their own, convinced that the new human faiths springing up were nothing more than a temporary phase that would pass."
People were still arguing about it so that hadn't happened.
"Only it wasn't just a phase, and maintaining a realm of one's own in the Divine Realms costs a great deal in terms of spiritual power. If a Spirit does not have the power pouring into them from worship, then the energy is taken from its own spiritual powers. Once their names are no longer spoken, and their powers and places are no longer remembered, then the forgotten god and the realm it lived in decline over time into a pale shadow of itself."
"Huh?" I asked.
"He means that the Shadows were once gods but they didn't have enough power to pay their rent, so they just faded into spectres."
"So then how did they get enough power to cross worlds like they've been doing all of a sudden?" I asked.
And more importantly, why now, all of a sudden?
"The Shadows are only a concern to other Nature Spirits and gods," Daikon-san said. "But since they are no longer powerful enough to be a threat to the Courts and they can't simply consume spirit energy from humans because Human Will is more powerful. They aren't a serious threat to anyone but a Nature Spirit, they can still attack us if we don't have strong enough barriers to hold them off."
I frowned deeply. That couldn't be right, the Shadows had been stealing kids left and right from Rukongai lately. So either there was something else that was masquerading as a Shadow, which I didn't think was likely given the fact that the Shadows smelled like temple incense. Or something had changed to give them greater power.
Aizen had escaped with a tiny shard of the hougyoku...
I shook my head, I'd leave speculations about means and motives to people who were better suited to it, there were only two things I wanted to know, how could I find a Shadow, and once found, how did I kill it?
"A Shadow, even weakened as it's power has become, is still a powerful spiritual entity," Daikon continued. "It's simply a matter of relative power now. They once commanded massive power at the height of their worship, but after the decline the power fed to them was stopped altogether. Even if they did not have the power to maintain their realms, the power innate to them is still considerable."
Sounded like a strong enemy to me. Good, I didn't like pickin' on wimps.
"So how do I find 'em?" I asked eagrely.
"That, I do not know," daikon-san said.
:Figures,: I thought.
He didn't know anything really useful. Justa buncha gobbledygook about old gods an' crap. Well shit! I coulda done without the freaking history lesson if I'da known it wasn't gonna tell me how to track down the bastard that turned me mortal an' kill it. I debated the mental satisfaction I'd get from smashing a hole in the roof of the little salad topping for wasting my time. Isana must've seen my change in temper for she put a gentle restraining hand on me and asked the daikon
"Is there anyone we can ask who might know?"
"A more powerful spirit than I am might know," Daikon said. "But I should warn you, more powerful spirits are not so easily intimidated as myself. You would do better to bribe them or offer to trade a service for information. There are some in this world still left that you don't want to get on the bad side of."
"Where would we find a more powerful spirit?" she asked next.
"There's a shrine int he nearby mountains you can try, the Spirit there is pretty friendly though he might fall asleep on you before you get an answer."
"Okay, well thank you for your time then," Isana said bowing low in polite benediction.
When she came up she gave me a significant look and signalled that I should do likelwise. I huffed a scoff, I wasn't gonna bow my head to some low-rank pipsqueak of a salad topping. She narrowed her eyes at me and there was such a weight to that look that I cleared my throat and almost against my will, bowed stiffly and said
"Yeah, thanks then."
"Good luck," the daikon said and the two of us departed.
I tried to post a chapter on Saturday, I really did but FFN was not having any of my txt document formatting (yes, i use text, leemeealone). So I tried again on Sunday and it still wouldn't take it so I waited until I had today off then went through the long, boring process of copying and pasting all of my chapters into Word sheets. So annoying! Well anyway, I hope you all enjoyed and please let me know what you think!