"Umm, lady Shinki? I don't suppose you have a light? It's pretty hard for us to see the roots on the ground here." I asked. We had been trudging in the dark behind her for perhaps five minutes now and were already deep enough in the forest that I could both barely see a thing and no longer had any concept of which direction might lead out.
"Oh, sorry. Will this do?" She said, holding out her hand. A perfectly white sphere of pure radiance bloomed there, illuminating our surroundings. I breathed a sigh of relief into the handkerchief I had pressed over my nose and mouth in hopes of avoiding the affects of any patches of miasma we might run across.
By the light of that globe we made our way further in, following the direction that Shinki was leading us. It wasn't much longer before we came to a familiar clearing. "Here we are," Renko announced. "That's Alice's house."
Shinki let out a brief squeal of excitement and hurried ahead, but looking at the house I didn't see any lights shining in the windows. Louise seemed to have noticed the same thing.
"I don't think she's home, mother. I don't see any smoke coming from the chimney."
"Maybe she's just doused it. She might be about to turn in for the night. Oh I hate to intrude, but I have to know if she's alright. Renko, go knock on the door!"
"Uh, sure Lady Shinki. Pardon me." Renko stepped ahead as we reached the porch and Shinki and Louise stood to one side. She looked over at me for just a moment, then rapped smartly on Alice's door. After a moment she stepped back and called out "Alice? Are you home?" There was no response. Finally, in typical Renko fashion, she tried the doorknob. It turned freely, but any attempt to open the door was futile, it wouldn't budge an inch. The outlines of a magical seal glowed faintly around the handle whenever she tried it.
"Sorry mom, looks like she's out. You can see she's built herself a nice little house though, at least." Louise said.
"Don't tell me we came all this way for nothing!" Shinki wailed. She seemed likely to collapse, teetering on the spot, her eyes brimming.
Personally, it occurred to me that if Shinki could sense Alice's presence, Alice might well be able to do the reverse, and could well just be hiding inside with the lights turned out or nearby, having fled at the first sign of her mother's presence. I didn't say anything though. The puppeteer had a right to her privacy.
"There, there, mom. I'm sure Alice is doing just fine. You can see her when she comes to visit Makai, right?"
"I'm her mother, Louise! How can you expect a mother to leave without seeing her daughter's face! What if she's injured? Or lost somewhere, or starving?"
"It's a mother's job to watch her children grow up leave the nest to live without her, right?"
"You sound just like Yumeko, Louise! Is it so wrong to want to see my daughter's face?" The floodgates burst and Shinki began to sob, wailing as she fell to her knees. Suppressing a sigh I handed her my handkerchief, wondering if just one would be enough.
"It's alright mom. I'm sure Alice knows how you feel," Louise sighed, squatting down and wrapping an arm around Shinki with a tired expression. "She won't think you're a bad mother if we don't get a chance to see her today." Watching the two of them, it was almost hard to remember who was the mother and who was the daughter.
"I'm going to wait for her, Louise. I'll just stay right here until she comes home."
"You can't. You're the Administrator of Makai, mom. You're not even supposed to be here. What do you think will happen if Sariel finds out you're gone?"
"I'm the creator god of all of Makai! Why should I have to go back for her?"
"Because you're the creator god of Makai, mother. Not Gensokyo. Your world needs you there." Shinki moaned faintly and sniffled as Louise patted her back.
While I stood to the side, keeping my opinions to myself, Renko stepped forward. "I'm sorry you didn't get a chance to see Alice, lady Shinki," Renko said. "I'll let her know that you came by and were sorry to have missed her. Before you go back to Makai though, do you have time for a few questions?"
"Oh, that's right! Louise, I promised Renko I'd answer her questions. We can at least stay here and wait for Alice until Renko's done talking, right?"
Louise looked up at Renko with an exasperated expression, thrown into harsh chiaroscuro by the sharp shadows cast by Shinki's ball of hovering light. "Please try not to take too long." She said pointedly.
"I'll do my best," Renko said, nodding. She then stepped forward and squatted down, bringing herself level with where Shinki was kneeling on Alice's porch. "Lady Shinki. The questions I want to ask you are about miss Hijiri. I'm afraid during all of the commotion yesterday they simply slipped my mind."
"About Byakuren? What do you want to know?"
"I'll get straight to the point. When Byakuren came to Makai, was she a human or a youkai magician?"
I opened my eyes in surprise at that question, but Shinki's answer was even more surprising.
"She was a magician, she had been for some time at that point. But we knew eachother before she was sealed in Makai. I'm the one who showed her how to transcend humanity after all."
I boggled at that, but perhaps I shouldn't have. Looking back over my notes now, I notice now that Shinki mentioned that Byakuren was using spells Shinki had taught her during her fight with Reimu. Clearly there had been some transmission of technique from Shinki to Byakuren, I merely hadn't suspected that that training had begun before Byakuren's imprisonment.
"So what does it take for a human to become a magician, lady Shinki? I'm asking only in general terms. I have no intention of pursuing immortality myself at this time. How did Byakuren give up her humanity?"
"There are several ways. One of the quickest is to study diabolism. It takes will and finesse, but a human who can make a contract with a powerful demon can learn from them several different methods of prolonging their lifespan. Some are more complex than others. When Byakuren summoned me, I could tell that she was a human who had already achieved a remarkable degree of spiritual refinement, so I taught her one of the most complex, but most reliable methods."
"And what is that?"
"In a place like Makai its easy to shape matter into whatever form you like. That can be done in other worlds too, but it's more difficult elsewhere. Byakuren was able to master it though. She built herself a new, eternally young body with my instructions, then we worked together to bind her soul to it. A human who transforms themselves into a youkai in this way is called a 'Reincarnated Magician', but most of the time there are problems with the new body. It ages too much or too little, or is frail or misshapen. Not Byakuren though. She did it absolutely perfectly, just like I taught her to. She's the most skilled human practitioner I've ever seen. Since I taught her to recreate herself, I guess that makes her one of my daughters too, in a way."
"I see, I see. How interesting. What about the seal that was placed on Byakuren and the Realm of Truth? Who created that, the Hakurei miko of a thousand years ago?"
"Yes, that's right. She didn't do it by herself though. She had an artifact with quite a bit of power stored up in it. It looked a lot like the little pagoda you used to break the seal, actually, if I remember correctly."
"The pagoda?" Renko asked, her eyes going wide. "That pagoda we had yesterday is actually a thousand years old, it's an artifact from Byakuren's old temple. Do you think they could have been the same one?"
"Oh, knowing that, I'd say they probably were. It's pretty rare to see an artifact with that much power sealed in one place. The fact that that tiger disciple had that pagoda is why I agreed to show you to Byakuren yesterday. It looked just like the one that was used to seal her originally, so I thought it might have a chance at working."
"So Byakuren was sealed using that houtou..." Renko muttered to herself, covering her mouth with her hands. "The same houtou that Shou was supposed to have fled from the temple with..." Renko went silent for a moment, lost in thought, then clearly made a conscious effort to put those questions aside for the time being and looked back up.
"Lady Shinki, just a few more questions then, if you would."
"Oh, are we ending already? We could talk longer if you like." Shinki said, pleadingly. Louise glared at her.
"You worked with Byakuren both before and after she was sealed in Makai. During the time she was sealed away, did her magical power seem weaker to you?"
"Oh, yes, quite a bit. She sealed much of her power into that pagoda, didn't she? As she was while she was in Makai, I don't think she'd ever have been able to summon me, funnily enough. Luckily, I already knew her by that point. She should be back to normal now though, shouldn't she?"
"Perhaps so. I never knew her before, so I'm not in any position to judge, I'm afraid. I just have one last question though, and it's an important one."
"Go ahead," Shinki said, nodding.
"In all the times you worked with her, did Byakuren ever tell you why she wanted to become a youkai magician?"