Chapter 5

No was excited to finally see her mother again, but the feeling quickly gave way to confusion. Nobody had completely explained to her why her mother had even gone away in the first place, or why Aunt Fuyuka had suddenly grown so strict, or even what had been happening as two of Hideko's guards had appeared in No's room and sneaked her out of the castle tonight.

As she was lowered down from her balcony, No had thought of the stories her mother would tell her about the ghosts in the forest who liked spiriting children away. But she had heard sounds of fighting in the castle too, awfully close to her room. And No knew that she was safe with her mother's guards; after all, there was not yet any reason for her not to trust them.

They ran through the dark pine forest together long enough for the moon to rise higher in the sky. Finally, sometime near midnight, they reached a small encampment that was concealed by the thick growth of the forest. And there had been Hideko, waiting for them!

Although she knew she was getting too old for it, No didn't complain as her mother pulled her into a tight embrace, stroking the back of No's head and murmuring thanks to the Legendary Pokemon. No had wanted to ask her all sorts of questions - why was Hideko living in the forest now? What had she done that had caused Aunt Fuyuka to be so angry with her? And what were the meanings of all the new words that No now heard being whispered around her with hushed urgency, coup and assassins and asylum?

One of her mother's guards ushered No into a small patchwork structure that had been erected separate from the ring of bedrolls around the fire, and No recognized the fabric serving as the door to be one of Hideko's old kimonos. "You must be tired, my lady. Why don't you get some sleep?" the guard suggested as he ducked back outside to rejoin his companions.

Setting down the cloth Litwick doll that was now all she had left from the castle, No went about exploring the shelter. There wasn't much to look at, but when she tried to sit still or lie down, the events of the night would replay through her mind all over again and leave her even more restless than before. And there was one item of interest resting at the foot of her mother's bedroll - a dark wooden box that even now remained locked. No had seen it before in her mother's rooms, but Hideko had always told her that No was too young to learn what was inside it.

When the sound of footsteps began to return towards the shelter, No hastily laid down and tried to make it seem as though she had been sleeping. After several moments, she heard someone kneel beside her, and smelled a faint trace of the perfume that always followed her mother. A warm hand brushed No's hair back from her brow, and Hideko whispered, "Are you awake, No?"

Opening her eyes, No clutched the Litwick doll tighter to her chest, breathing in the faint scent of home. "Yes, mother."

"Good." Hideko sighed, her deep purple eyes downcast for a moment before returning to her daughter.

"I'm very proud of you, No," she began. "You obeyed the guards tonight and were extremely brave. I'm going to need you to be brave for a little while longer."

"Why?" No asked, sitting up on the bedroll. "Is it because of Aunt Fuyuka?"

Hideko hesitated at the sound of her younger sister's name, then responded, "I'll explain it to you in the morning. Do you remember when you met Lord Akechi and his son? We're going to be visiting them in Nixtorm for a while, and we're leaving here at sunrise."

As she said this, Hideko reached for the wooden box and pulled it in front of her, retrieving a key from within her kimono and inserting it into the lock. When No craned her head to try and make out its contents, Hideko gently but firmly pushed her back.

"There is one more thing I need you to do for me tonight, No," Hideko continued, and No heard what sounded like the clink of glass from within the box as her mother fiddled with its contents. No felt her heart picking up speed again as Hideko said, "This was supposed to wait until you were older, but in case anything happens to me, our allies must be able to know who you are."

Laying No back down on the bedroll, on her stomach like a fish, Hideko warned, "I'm sorry, No, but this will hurt. I promise you nothing bad is going to happen, but I need you to not cry out too loudly. Can you do that?"

Gulping, No slowly nodded. She fixed her eyes on the embroidery decorating the pillow in front of her, still not comprehending what was about to happen as the flesh of her shoulder was bared by Hideko's careful hand. Then she felt the first drag of the needle.

No frowned as she looked over her shoulder in the mirror, prodding the violet flowers of her tattoo. She wasn't imagining it; the color had grown starkly vivid within the last handful of weeks. If it became any more pigmented, the makeup that had concealed it for four years might not be enough anymore.

But Hideko had done her work admirably well. The wisteria blossoms trailed across No's left shoulder and down her back, first inked in by her mother's hand and then sealed with spirit magic that distinguished the pattern and coloring from that of a regular human's handiwork. It was the traditional tattoo of all matriarchs, and No recalled a similar latticework of flowers tracing across Hideko's skin. Fuyuka had given herself one at some point between her coup and No's return, but no amount of mixing dyes could give the colors the proper intensity. An ideal metric for distinguishing a sham warlord.

Traditionally, a matriarch of Spectra was not expected to procure more than one heir. Giving natural birth to a daughter was the most common manner, as the magic carried by each matriarch ensured that her child would be a daughter. It was also acceptable, if a matriarch wasn't interested in the labors of child-rearing or simply didn't favor the company of men, to seek out a woman with an extraordinarily strong connection to the spirit world and appoint her as successor instead. Regardless, No's grandmother had broken quite a few of the traditions, starting even before Fuyuka's birth had set them all on this path.

Grimacing down at the tattoo again, No decided there wasn't much more she could do for now. Both her handmaiden uniform and her disguise tonight covered the inked skin, the makeup had always been more of a fail-safe. She would just have to make sure none of her roommates walked in on her at an inopportune moment until she could find a better solution.

Even the arrival of October and its normally wind-filled nights had done little to dissuade the heat wave that seemed to have parked itself over Spectra. No wondered if all of northern Ransei was feeling its effects, and if so, whether Nixtorm was in danger of autumn flooding. She had memories of only one such season during her time in the Ice kingdom, but not even the castle was safe from them. Well, that was Mitsuhide's problem, not hers.

It was safer for No to think as little on Nixtorm as possible, she knew, but there were times where her mind couldn't help but stray back to those in-between years of her childhood. Mitsuhide had always taken it upon himself to look out for her, but No couldn't view him as a father figure when there were only six years separating them in age. Yet the role he had played in her life didn't fit what No imagined having an older brother might have been like, either. And then of course, there had been the slight issue at the very end that had complicated all of that even more.

But that memory was nothing worth pursuing; No needed something else to focus on. As she entered the city alongside her fellow handmaidens, she reached out tentatively with her mind and was pleased to still feel her connection with Misdreavus despite the distance between them. It served to cement No's belief that the next week was going to be very interesting in relation to her ever-growing powers.

Like every year, the purple lanterns of the Festival of Ghosts had been hung above the streets of Spectra, casting the city in their eternal twilit glow. The mood of the thickening crowd was always a strange blend; the tradition of disguising oneself to avoid unwanted hauntings lead to all sorts of bizarre and occasionally grotesque costumes being worn on the streets, and audiences formed out of nowhere as performances of sung, often bloody re-enactments of well-known ghost stories sprung up wherever there was opportunity.

Beneath the revelry though, there was the more solemn ceremony surrounding the festival's original purpose. One was hard-pressed to find an alleyway within Spectra that didn't contain a shrine to the dead, and as the nights of the festival went on, these memorials would grow increasingly covered with offerings from the living. Paper prayers and folded creatures limply fluttered from the shrines' stone fronts, and after several hours, the air throughout the entire city would faintly smell of memorial incense.

This was born of the festival's true origin – it marked the few days out of the year when the magic that typically kept the human and spirit worlds strictly divided went haywire, these boundaries blurring most of all within Spectra. Strange things happened all throughout the Ghost kingdom when the realms collided. Instances of people being spirited away for a night or two were common, as was a much wider variety of hauntings within the city than usual. The confusion wasn't all bad, though; in fact, it provided the perfect opportunity to move forward that No had been awaiting.

Since her meeting with Nobunaga a week earlier, No had spent practically all the time that she was free of her handmaiden duties training with Misdreavus. When she had been required to go into the city, she had combed through its alleyways and corners, feeling for the patches between the worlds that were already weakening. No had also taken care to re-establish communication with as many people within Spectra who knew the truth about her as she could, in perhaps the riskiest move she had made yet - organizing the beginnings of an official army, her army.

Using the festival as their perfect cover, the plan was for as many of them as possible to meet at the kimono shop later tonight. Eika was the only person No was unsure would come, but No had other ways of contacting her. Once they were gathered, No would pass Nobunaga's story on, and ask them to do the same to whoever within Spectra they trusted. The festival lasted for a full week, who knew how much damage to Fuyuka's already-suffering support No could do within that time?

Despite the lack of sleep that had been the tradeoff for all of this effort, any fatigue No might have felt was wiped away with the rising of the moon. She supposed even the folklore that she had drawn upon for her disguise this year reflected her ambitions - the Mother of Ghosts, the personification of Spectra itself. The violet fabric of No's cloak loosely floated around her body with every step she took, its plunging neckline bordered with silk wisterias. No couldn't help but wonder if she would be encountering a dragon in the crowd tonight.

Even if most of Spectra's citizens couldn't physically see the human ghosts that walked among them, the significantly higher-than-usual population of Ghost Pokemon spawning throughout the city was impossible to ignore. The handmaidens had barely stepped onto the path leading from the castle when a Gastly casually phased out of the dusk shadows, brushing close enough to No for her to feel the colder air that followed in its wake through the fabric of her disguise.

This was a question that had always fascinated No - when a person died, was it a conscious choice on their part to remain in human form, or were there certain circumstances that could forcibly transform their spirit into a Pokemon? The few former humans that she had come into contact with had all been dead for too long to give her much in the way of answers.

The Ghost Pokemon were welcome among the festivities so long as they didn't cause trouble, and No enjoyed the rare opportunity to fraternize with them. She could smile as she shooed away the Sableye that tried to slip her bracelet off her wrist, stroke the tendrils of a Drifloon that floated past them, all without raising the slightest hint of suspicion. After all, Fuyuka couldn't ban Pokemon from the entire city, especially not from the festival that was held in their honor. No also couldn't help but notice that Spectra's citizens seemed much less wary of Ghost Pokemon as a whole than they were of human spirits. Superstitions were strange like that.

They stopped to watch several performers, as each of the four girls had her favorite traditional stories. Chigusa was disguised this year as the ill-fated bride from The Unwed Hunter, and Miyuri as Sweet Sen, the mad warrior who had killed for her liege time and time again before finally turning her sword on him when he failed to reciprocate her love. The over-the-top gushes of fake blood that poured from the "murdered" actor's body in the finale earned several loud laughs, and an extended round of applause from the audience.

The next performance, a pantomime with musical accompaniment, was at first not one that No recognized. There were always a handful of new stories each year, although it immediately struck No as odd that none of the actors seemed to be in costume. The performances were, above all, always stylised - they were enjoyed for the spectacle just as much as their plots. In fact, there was something in not just the dress of this, but the entire slow unfolding of the pantomime that left No with a feeling of unease.

Three actors shared the stage, one woman and two men. It was the actress who drew No's attention first. She moved like a Seviper, some part of her body always curled around one of her companions - fingers clamping down on one man's shoulder or a hand brushed across the other's chest. The music accompanying the pseudo-dance sequence was low, dangerous, pulsing with an unmistakable note of seduction. Then one of the men turned, the back of his shirt visible to the audience for the first time, and a small murmur ran among the crowd as the realization of exactly which story this was registered. Yes, it was new.

No felt an iron grip latch onto her wrist, and looked to her side to see Tsubaki. The girl's rose-colored eyes were wide in panic as they glanced towards the stage. No shook her head, hoping Tsubaki had the sense to realize that attempting to push out of the audience now would draw attention that they didn't want. Not that seeing that scarlet crest again, clumsily sewn but still all too recognizable on the back of the actor's shirt, hadn't also set an alarm off in No's brain.

The tension rippling off of Tsubaki in the aftermath of the play was dangerously high, and far too conspicuous - Miyuri and Chigusa were casting worried glances in her direction, perhaps too scared to look for a similar reaction in No. They had defended No two years earlier, but who was to say that people couldn't change their minds?

A distraction was needed, and quickly, before one of them said or did something that would send the night irreparably in a direction No wasn't eager to explore. Watching the play as it had unfolded on that stage had left her with her own irritations. Those memories, the true events of that night, belonged to her alone. Nobody else possessed the right to know.

Ignoring the shrieks of fright given off by nearby festival-goers as several Shuppets and Banettes abruptly dropped down from the rooftops above them, No did her best to push the four of them along with the current of the crowd. Gradually, Tsubaki began to diffuse (and therefore by extension, Miyuri and Chigusa), although No only began to breathe easier once they found themselves in midst of the city square.

This was what the spirit world must be like, No always thought at the sight of the square's yearly transformation. The purple lanterns were so numerous around them that she was reminded of will-o-wisps, bobbing aimlessly in the night for however long the wind carried them until they finally faded. Every storefront and inn was decorated for the occasion, with banners and even more prayers for the dead hanging above doors and dangling from windows. It was nearing midnight, and enough time had passed since sundown for a soft white haze of incense smoke to have settled above the crowd, adding to the night's ethereal feel.

At the center of the square, the grandest stage of all had been erected. Composed of two tiers, the lower, larger half served as a space for any dancers who wished to join in whatever song the musicians were currently playing. Raised several feet above this was a smaller dais that held only one object - a throne.

As always, Fuyuka held court over them all. She was nearly mistakable for a painted statue atop the throne, although No caught the sweep of her aunt's icy blue eyes over the crowd, pausing for the briefest moment to register the return of her handmaidens.

Even here, surrounded by so many people, No couldn't quite stop the momentary surge of lava through her veins that the sight of Fuyuka on that throne caused. A dark thrumming rang across her fingertips, and No had to clench the fabric of her sleeves for several seconds before the stray magic rode itself out. The throbbing pulse in her head was always brought on by the sight of that face, just similar enough to Hideko's to mark them as sisters, yet so different that No would never make the mistake of seeing her mother's eyes in those of her murderer's.

The sound of Miyuri's voice repeating her name registered over the high buzzing in No's ears, ripping through the curtain of red that had begun to descend over her vision. No shook her head, hearing herself say something about a momentary lightheadedness in response to the dark-haired girl asking if she was alright. It had been a long time since she had come that close to losing control. Perhaps the festival was setting her more on edge than she had anticipated.

"Then you should rest for a moment," Chigusa stepped in just as Tsubaki excitedly exclaimed, "Kicho, look who's over there!"

The pink-haired girl's grin was downright devilish as she pointed to a cluster of festival-goers near the edge of the stage, her seemingly all-consuming panic from just minutes before already forgotten. At first, No wasn't certain who she was supposed to be looking at, until Tsubaki continued with, "I put two and two together, watching you watch him at the fights. Go for it!" She accompanied this with an encouraging shove against No's back.

Nobunaga turned just as No's eyes found him, clad in normal attire save for a horned black half-mask. His gaze did not pin her down immediately as it had that night in the tavern. On the contrary, No watched his body stiffen as his eyes cautiously swept over the square. The lack of outward distress spoke to his training as a soldier, but No still recognized it as a quick attempt at surveillance. Was he wary that someone from Dragnor had managed to track him here to Spectra?

When his eyes did finally fall on No, his reaction was unsuspected - it almost looked to be surprise, as though he had suddenly gained a more profound understanding of No in this instant than what she had let him learn of her that night at the inn. No wasn't certain if proceeding was the wisest course of action, but Tsubaki was still whispering a variety of vocal encouragements in her ear, and No didn't want her thinking something was amiss again.

Skirting around a cluster of Litwick that had congregated around the base of one of the nearby shrines, No reached Nobunaga's side at the foot of the stage just as the musicians began the introduction of a new song. Several more men and women took to the stage to join the dancing, both No and Nobunaga watching them for several moments before Nobunaga spoke.

"You possess a strong amount of magic. Even from across the square, I could feel it. Your pull."

No tried to reassure herself that his discovery of this was hardly cause for alarm, although if the aura her powers were giving off was supposedly that conspicuous, she had to wonder why Nobunaga was acting as though he had only just come to this revelation. "How could you tell?"

Nobunaga's eyes followed a couple in matching disguises upon the stage, holding each other close as they danced to the song's slow introduction. "My mother was a fortune teller, a legitimate one. The destinies her cards foretold always came true, right up to the battle that killed her and my father. I know magic when I feel it, and I respect its wielders. I doubt many else here know what to look for, though." Offering No a sideways glance, he added on, "I'm assuming there's a reason you keep it hidden."

"You assume correctly," No confirmed. After another moment of listening to the bells providing accompaniment for the dancers, No gave a soft smile. "Speaking of prophecies, are you familiar with this particular song?"

There was that same look from the night at the inn now, an amused curiosity entering Nobunaga's voice as he responded, "I don't believe I am."

"Well, that's not a surprise," No pretended to scoff. "It's a traditional story we tell during the festival in Spectra, but I wouldn't suppose as much beyond our borders. The ballad tells of Lady Konoe, one of our former matriarchs."

"Enlighten me, then," Nobunaga said. "I've already heard quite a few interesting stories about the ghosts of this city tonight." Was it No's imagination, or was there an unspoken challenge in his phrasing, perhaps for her to argue against whatever dark legacy of hers had been revived in whispers tonight?

Good, No thought. Let him know exactly what kind of woman he had entered into this game with.

"Some say that Lady Konoe was born with the gift of prophecy," No began. "Others that she was merely paranoid." She shrugged nonchalantly. "Whatever the case, Lady Konoe came to believe that she was going to die by poison, and only by poison." The sound of a solitary shamisen began to accompany the low tones of the musicians' bells as No continued.

"As a result of this premonition, however she came about it, Lady Konoe sought to make herself immune to most every poison known within Ransei." No paused for a moment, envisioning the former matriarch's spirit as she recalled her. "They say she distilled hemlock into her perfume, that she drank tea containing the petals of belladonna flowers, even that she wore garlands of aconite flowers in her hair. She appointed an apothecary and medium from Viperia to be her junior warlord as well, ensuring that the woman was her near constant companion."

"Did she miscalculate a dosage?" Nobunaga guessed. "Or did the apothecary perhaps betray her?"

No smirked as the bells began to rise in an ascending scale. "Oh, far worse than any of that. Lady Konoe fell in love. I couldn't tell you what kind of man he was, beyond that he knew of the reputation Lady Konoe had earned for herself by that point, and loved her back regardless. They actually married, an unconventional custom for matriarchs. They say the ceremony was marked by Lady Konoe pouring arsenic into her wine." Sighing, she added on, "Not that any love of theirs wound up mattering. Her groom didn't survive the wedding night."

The dancers on the stage fell into a gentle swaying as the music began to slow into a false lull, the shamisen briefly dropping out. No knew from having watched them in years past that the most difficult part was yet to come.

"You see, Lady Konoe had indeed grown immune to all those poisons after her years of painful effort. But it came at a cost - she herself had become poison. No human lover could touch her skin without being paralyzed. They could not kiss her lips without the toxins transferring into their own body. To love her was to give oneself over to death."

Nobunaga remained silent, No fully aware that she commanded his full attention. "When the morning came and Lady Konoe awoke to a corpse in her wedding bed, she realized what she had become. She could never feel a lover's touch. Having children was almost certainly out of the question. Even her junior warlord looked on her in fear upon seeing what had occurred. Lady Konoe viewed herself as more poison than human, and in her despair, she plunged a dagger directly into her heart. So, in a sense, all her fears proved correct."

At the story's conclusion, the only sound that hung in the air between them for several moments was that of the bells. Finally, Nobunaga looked at No with amusement as he said, "What lesson does one take away from that story? To not intentionally consume poison?"

Softly laughing, No responded, "Well, if you wanted to be as literal as possible with it." As if on cue, she heard the trembling pickup from the shamisen that she had been anticipating. "As for me, I take away a different warning."

"And what would that be?" Nobunaga inquired.

Stepping towards the stage, No turned back to face the Dragon warrior long enough to answer, "That no mistake is more fatal than falling in love."

The final section of Lady Konoe's song was infamous - the tempo rapidly sped up, the frantic movements of the female dancers meant to resemble her throes of lament, only ended by her dagger. No wasn't entirely sure what about Lady Konoe's story in particular had held her captive for every year she had watched the dancers, but now she recalled the exhilarating rush of power that the infamous matriarch's spirit had given her that first night in the shrine.

No had never joined the dance in years past. But she danced now.

The steps built with the music. A slow, bow-like dip to begin with, almost as though No was paying tribute to Lady Konoe's spirit before beginning properly. She wove her body back upwards in a calculated, serpentlike movement, her eyes looking over the heads of the crowd to find small congregations of Ghost Pokemon gathering in all the places where the lights of the lanterns could not touch them. The beginning of the witching hour was nearly at hand, of course they would be out in full force.

One of the musicians began to set a hard, deliberate rhythm on their drum, to which the dancers and No responded with a series of interweaving steps across the stage. The shamisen and bells joined back in abruptly, played with more urgency than before. The tempo slowly picked up more and more with each measure, No catching swirls of fabric out of the corner of her eye as the dancers spun to a trill of the flute.

A storm of ascending and descending flourishes were played on the shamisen as the music reached Lady Konoe's discovery of her lover's corpse. This was immediately followed by a rest held over the entire stage for an extended moment, during which No felt each rise and fall of her chest as she breathed in preparation for the climax. Once more, she called to mind her memories of the matriarchs and their spirits.

Each individual instrument fell together in melodious chaos as the tempo ceased any pretense of buildup, returning at double the speed of the dance's beginning. No's feet flew across the stage, the silks of her disguise's skirt fanning out around her as she threw her head back in a mirror of Lady Konoe's anguished final moments. Her vision blurred into swirls of purple light and black shadow as a deep humming began to resonate in her chest, vibrating through her body as she moved in time with the music.

Over the roar of her own blood rushing in her ears, No became aware of a female vocalist's voice ringing out above the fever pitch that the instruments had reached. There was no set melody that the vocalist followed, her voice alternating between scales of staccato arpeggios and soaring through the night air on impossibly high notes. When the instruments suddenly fell out completely, only the woman's voice remained on a note that merely the sound of left No's throat feeling raw.

Why had the music stopped?

Opening her eyes, No attempted to look to the other dancers on the stage, trying to discern why the song had been cut short. The first one whose eyes she met shrank away from her, and No heard gasps from the audience. Taking a second look at her surroundings, she understood why with a horrified leap of her heart.

Surrounding her body in a pearly white fog were the shrouds of half-materialized spirits, generations of dark-haired matriarchs with piercing stares that had answered to the magic No had unwittingly let loose as the frenzy of the dance had overtaken her. The Ghost Pokemon of the city had answered her call as well - in fact, No realized only now that they had been detecting her heightened magic nearly all evening.

She knew she needed to will the faint purple magic swirling from her fingertips to recede back into her hands. Yet above that, there was another thought. She alone had summoned all of this. Without even trying, No had called upon a score of spirits far beyond anything she had dreamed of attempting in her training with Misdreavus.

But even as this thought exhilarated her, No became aware of a second, much larger problem. When the dance froze, her back had been turned to the platform that Fuyuka's throne rested upon. No felt the first true autumn wind of the season blow across the bare, tattooed skin that had been exposed by the fabric of her disguise falling around her shoulders in the aftermath of the dance. Even without the unintentional display of magic no normal medium could ever be capable of, No knew there was no concealing this truth from Fuyuka's eyes.

She turned slowly, raising her head up to meet her aunt's narrowed glare that gave her all the confirmation she needed.

No had been found out.