AN: Hey y'all, I'm back.
Another day came by and went and Sakura slowly started cleaning up the place she's going to be calling her new home. She figured she should probably start with the kitchen, since the bedroom in a passable condition enough. All throughout her day, she was accompanied with two different voices, and only occasionally the third one with his gruff inputs.
Sakura tied a cloth around her nose and mouth, putting her clear framed glasses close to her eyes and slid on some rubber gloves over her hands. She looked around the kitchen with a grimace. It looked like it hasn't been used for years, which probably wasn't far from truth, but it'll be a pain in the ass to clean.
"I don't know why you bother doing it all manually." The voice of Shisui spoke up in her mind again, "You could just use your magic and be done with the whole house in a single day."
"Yeah, be done with it in one day and then promptly pass out for the next week due to magic exhaustion." Sakura muttered, sarcasm coating every word. "Sounds like a real treat." However, she did use some magic, enough to not put a strain on her reserves. She brought out a spell paper, scribbling out the spell on the black parchment with a chalk and wrapping it around a broom.
The next minute, it was floating in the air, swiping away the floor. Sakura picked up a rag, wetting it in the kitchen sink and then wringing it out of the excess. She put away all the utensils and cookware away from the counter and put them on the dining table for the time being, proceeding to wipe away the counter first.
"You should perhaps check the kitchen waterways first." Itachi suggested, ever the voice of reason. "You wouldn't want to clean the kitchen with dirty water."
It has been like this since the past two days since they came under her possession, anything and everything she would be doing would always be met with some kind of input or suggestion by the three souls. She had to lock them in their box when she in the bath because she didn't want their voices screaming in her mind when she's trying to take a shower.
She learned quite a lot of things about them too. Itachi, Shisui and Sasori were warriors from the land called Konoha, known as the Hidden leaf in modern time. Sasori was originally from the Red sand, but moved to Konoha before joining the military under the king's rule. They were, apparently, very well know and revered magic warriors of their time.
She also found out that Itachi and Shisui are actually cousins. She was told of some things about their life in the time when they were alive, but those stories were of little importance, even if damn interesting.
"I want to clean atleast the stove counter before fixing the plumbing, I don't want the water to make a mess of the already dusty place." Sakura replied out loud while continuing to wipe the counter.
If someone heard her talking to the wind in her home, they would surely think of her as crazy in the head.
She looked at the open box sitting on the living room coffee table, making sure it hasn't moved an inch, before going back to scrubbing some old wax stains from the black marble countertop. She has yet to even explore the whole house, the guest rooms were still locked, as well as the study.
"Maybe we should open the study first." Shisui suggested, his voice underlined with curiosity. "Didn't your grandmother have a journal or something? She told you, right?"
Sakura hummed in answer, wiping away the counter one last time before screwing open the stove. It was one of those old stoves than ran on coal and wood, thankfully there seemed to be plenty of wood around the house. She might still need to get one that ran on gas.
It took her another good four hours to repair the stove that hasn't been in use for god knows how long. "Do you think there might be something around here that is not from the last century? I cannot use a handpump for every bucket of water I'll need." Sakura asked under her breath, pretty aware that the three souls would be able to hear her no matter the volume of her voice.
"I've never heard your grandmother using anything other than the handpump in the backyard for the kitchen." Itachi replied, "Back in my time, we only ever used wells and the streams in our kingdom. Handpump came into existence way after we passed on."
"You sound like the annoying old people from the city who always complain about my generation." Sakura snorted under her breath, pitching her voice to be a bit nasally. "Back in my days, we climbed up the snow mountains and crossed shark infested oceans and fought with bears to get to school. You people can't even get up at eight in the morning!"
Shisui laughed in her head as Sakura threw away the rug and snapped the rubber gloves off of her hands, throwing them away for another time until she needs to use them again. She went around the dining table to pick up the black box from the living room and shutting close the lid before going back to her room.
Once showered and in fresh clothes, she opened the box again and kept it on the nightstand, pulling her covers over herself and propping open her laptop on her lap.
"What's that thing?" Shisui asked curiously and Sakura could almost imagine a faceless man leaning over her shoulder to peer at the curious little thing with his head tilted.
"It's a laptop." Sakura answered simply before realizing that wouldn't really answer his question. She forgot that her grandmother almost seemed to have an aversion to any kind of technology, even a cell was barred in her house. Sakura still had to write old fashioned letters to communicate with her. The only exception to that rule was the woman's beloved car. She was just grateful that Chiyo had modern plumping and taps into the attached bathroom, she wouldn't have survived hand pumping water for baths.
"And what's that?"
"It's a… device." Sakura tried to think of words that would answer his question properly. She has never thought of answers of such questions, it was like explaining was is the sky blue to a five year old. "It's an electronic device that runs all kinds of programs and applications."
"Programs?" It was Itachi this time, "And do you mean applications like an application for leave or an application for work?"
"No, no that's not it." Sakura laughed quietly under her breath, "Applications like… basic functions. It can send letters and pictures in the matter of seconds, and you can even call someone directly and talk to them real time. Like face to face. You can search up information from all around the world and it would be in front of you in a matter of minutes." Now that she's saying all that to him, it does sound no less than magic on its own.
"It's like a dictionary, a postal, an encyclopedia, a telephone, a journal and just everything you could think of, in one place."
Itachi and Shisui were silent for a minute as if soaking her answer, "Magic really advanced in the time we were gone, huh." Shisui's voice was full of wonder and even slight envy if she heard him right.
"That's the catch, it's not really magic." Sakura answered while opening her emails, looking over them for any new mission request she might have received. There was one for an overdue payment and most of them were just ads for products or services. She didn't expect any new mission request she put on her notice to leave, but one particular email shone amongst the other. It was from Neji.
"It's just humans and the result of their needs. They developed complex systems that could work just like magic, but are made by humans and not an unexplainable force of nature." Sakura elaborated while she opened the email, eyes skimming over the words.
He needs her service for an emergency at his clan, though what the emergency was remained unexplained. The only thing he wrote was that her presence was needed urgently and that it was not to be discussed with anyone but him. That was suspicious. If something was a matter with the clan, the services are always discussed with the clan head, which Neji is not.
She decided to reply him first but not agreeing or disagreeing to his preposition. She needs to learn of the predicament first before she decided on her actions.
"Sakura?"
Sakura blinked out of her reverie at the call of her name. "Yeah, sorry I was just reading something here-"
"No no, did you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Sakura furrowed her brows at Shisui's question before she actually heard it. A sound, almost too low for any human to hear but she felt it nonetheless. A low whistle that could be mistaken for the wind blowing but the sound of metal piercing through the wind was unmistakable.
"Someone's definitely here." Not a second after Itachi's caution, something stuck to the side of the door that was not completely off the hinges. Sakura slid down from her bed and hid behind the large bedframe, only peeking out to keep an eye on the door.
Another second later and with another thud, something stuck to the door again and Sakura felt the sudden rise in the energy whirling behind the door. And a second too late, she realized what it meant.
"Shit."
A blast went off behind the door, and this time, the door cracked open enough for whoever was outside to push themselves inside. Sakura pulled out her set of rings from her shorts pocket, sliding them on her middle finger on both hands and dove for her bag on the other side of the room.
The voices kept screaming inside her mind and a third voice joined the other two this time as well, and that was enough to remind her the true purpose of the break in.
There was another push to the broken door that was barely keeping the threat contained outside, and the waves that rippled from the attack made Sakura weak in her knees. But she was able to grab the box and shut it close, sliding it in her pocket and her mind was free from the screams again.
Sakura locked her knees, standing in front of the door and pulled out two strips of paper from her bag. She whispered the spell into them, closing her eyes and prayed to God that it would be enough for the time. When she felt the next attack coming, her eyes snapped open and the paper pressed flat between her palms.
The very next second, smoke rose from between her palms and when she blew it toward the door, the rippling shockwaves from the attack was stifled. The door didn't move, but the waves were absorbed in her bones and Sakura gritted her teeth to hold in her screams of pain.
Another attack came and was stifled but it gave Sakura enough time to ready the barrier. She held four bone chips between her knuckles and haphazardly threw them toward each corner of the room. With another whisper of the spell while she still kept up the smoke around the door, the bone chips glowed inside the smoke darkened room.
Sakura could feel the magic draining little by little from inside her and doing multiple spells all at once would do that to one, especially someone as underprepared as her.
Then at once, the bone chips sparkled and she could feel another invisible layer covering the insides of the room. Sakura felt herself weighed even more as the chips drained way more than she thought it would. Her knees shook slightly and she released her pressed palms. She looked at the closed door with rapt attention and breaths coming out in harsh pants, and it was all silent for a long minute.
There was another thud but it was subdued so well that it was only barely noticeable. 'But I still need to prepare for an attack…' With that thought in mind, she grabbed the metal hairstick she used to tie her hair in a bun and held it in her hand. Her mouth whispered the spell but her eyes and attention stayed on the door. She could definitely feel the angry presence outside now as it was right outside the barrier.
Angry sparks flared up from the end of the stick and Sakura held it in her hand, pointed at the door prepared for the worst. She waited and waited and she could still feel the presence and her breath refused to be released from the confines of her chest. The barrier was weakening and so was she every second that she kept up all the three spells at the same time. But she refused to relent.
Finally after a long moment that could've been no more than a minute or a whole eternity, she felt some movement outside the door. The presence moved, a bit to the right as if trying to look in whether they could break in the windows but the shield didn't move. And then there was some quiet murmur outside on the balcony and the stifling presence disappeared.
Sakura still didn't move. She didn't drop the shield or stop the smoke or dropped the hairstick, she continued to hold herself like a bowstring pulled taut and ready to strike any minute. She did not care that her heart and lungs were failing to hold her up the more her magic was consumed.
After a long while when she was finally sure that the intruders actually went away, she released al the spells at once. Her body not being able to hold herself up any longer, dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. A groan of pain left her as she turned to lay on her back, trying to catch her breath in short pants.
'The box!' she closed her eyes in relief when she patten her shorts pocket and found the lumpy thing still inside. She pulled it out with shaky hands and haphazardly opened the lid.
"Sakura! Sakura, are you okay?!"
"Yeah." Sakura panted out a response to Itachi's frantic question. "I'm alright." She almost wouldn't have been alright had she been needed to hold up the barriers for even a minute longer. Her limbs weighed like lead and she could feel bile rising up her throat. She closed her eyes, trying to will away the nausea because she didn't want to move to even the bathroom.
"Goodness, you got really beaten down." Shisui cursed quietly and the worry lacing his voice was palpable. "These were the same people from the last time. They tried to break down the door the day after your grandmother died."
Sakura groaned under her breath, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand when lights started blinking behind her closed lids. "I should've fixed the door when I had the chance." The door was protected by her grandmother's enchantment that was supposed to last long after she was gone. It seemed to have did it's work well since the door was still not completely broken down.
"You should probably do that." Itachi agreed with her, "Though I'm more concerned about your health after the attack. It seems to have a lot out of you."
Sakura felt a bit ashamed to admit it, but it had taken a lot out of her. She was still an amateur witch who was only able to pay her bills because she got lucky in having a healing affinity. All she learned from her grandmother were the most basic of the spells and procedures and then she was sent on her way to figure things out on her own. Learning things on her own made her fiercely independent and a fairly quick problem solver with crafty solutions, but having to do everything on her own also put her back in a lot of areas.
"I'm just a little rusty in my combat training." Sakura groaned, "I'll be fine." In time.
"You don't have the time to get better when all of our life in on line." Sakura blinked in surprise at the rare voice that joined them, but his voice sounded less concerned and more annoyed. "I thought you were a competent witch."
"Yes, I almost just died, thank you for your overwhelming concern." Sakura bit back with irritation dripping from her words. She finally felt alright enough to sit up and looked around to assess the damage. There were some large wood splinters thrown on the floor and the room was still darkened with smoke. Thankfully, nothing else seemed to be broken.
"You wouldn't have died if you were prepared better. These are the lowest leveled magicians, what would happen when the real threat comes around."
"And guess what, I wasn't prepared better. And guess why, I didn't fucking sign up for this." Sakura snapped at him through her teeth and angrily pulled herself up to stand. "If you don't have anything better to say then keep your mouth shut. And if you're so annoyed at me then just say the word and I'll hand you over the next time they break in. Problem solved."
There wasn't any more talking from the other side anymore as Sakura shut the lid with a thud and shoved it inside her dresser drawer. She managed to stumble into the bathroom and without even taking off of clothes or drawing the shower curtains, she turned on the knob and let the cold, chilling water rain down on her.
The cold stung, but was enough for her to not feel nauseous anymore and clear her head. She still felt incredibly weak, but no more did she feel like throwing up. This always happens, whenever she had to go on a mission that unexpectedly involved any kind of combat. She was left unprepared and had to use up her magic in ways she wouldn't have wanted to. So many times, she came too close to unraveling the yarn ball of something more that she would rather never get close to again.
After a minute of soaking, she stripped down her soaked clothes and patted herself dry, putting on fresh clothes and brought out four more spell papers from her bag. She knew the spell her grandmother used on the door, she had been taught that particular seal when she was young. She wasn't as experienced as her the older witch though, so she'll have to use four seals instead of just one for the job. Until she could replenish herself and make a proper seal, it'll have to do.
It took twenty minutes for her to draw the seals on all the papers and she checked and rechecked them to make sure everything was alright before she got up to stick them on the door, and then paused. The door, now that she looked at it, was nowhere near the condition to hold anyone outside even with the seal on.
With a sigh of defeat, she pocketed the paper slips and dug in the smaller suitcase for the small collection of power tools she kept on herself. Two screwdrivers, a few pegs, nuts and bolts and a drill. She would rather not use her magic for such menial task.
Sakura wanted to do nothing more than curl up in her bed and get a few more hours of sleep, but her mind would not let her rest until she figured something out with the door. She painfully took the door off its hinges and did a small spell to fix the splinters and chipped pieces so that it looked whole at the very least. She replaced the hinges and checked and rechecked the heights of the door before screwing them back in place, and only then did she apply the seals.
The second she checked the seals for the last time, she crawled back under the covers in the soft bed and not a minute later, drifted off into a dreamless slumber, all the while not a single thought being spared to the still closed box inside the top drawer of her nightstand.
Red poppies and blue fog covered Sakura's vision, but she knew that were no red poppies and certainly no blue fog. Simply the mystical magic that went unseen by other people.
Since Sakura had been all but a stumbling toddler, she had first heard that she was a peculiar child. Her parents said she was 'special' but the words 'strange', 'weird' and 'abnormal' seemed to be far more common in using to describe her.
Plenty of children from the countryside were fond of stories of faeries, chasing pixies, and making friends with imaginary people. Sakura was one such child with the same urges and tendencies, but where most other children made up the stories or tended to imagine them, Sakura was 'special' in her case. She just assumed everyone else saw them too.
Sakura was special but she didn't know that, even when she would wake up in the middle of the night to light candles in every doorway in her house, or burn sage and incense every dawn and fill the whole room with the smoke. When she would put her pickles on the roof on very specific days or take down clothes from the cloth lines minutes before it starts raining as if she knew what the weather was going to be like, her parents told her just that.
She was special.
Even when she told her father to not lay his personal harvest of sesame outside on a specific day and then cried and begged when he refused until he finally relented, they tried to not act too surprised when the rain came down so heavily and every other farmer was complaining for months on end about their ruined harvest.
Her parents indulged her for a lot of her childhood, they would encourage her to make friends with the river pixies, dance around with the forest nymphs, pick up the magic mushrooms. She was just another child with her childish wonders, right?
But when Sakura continued with her rituals way past the age when most children outgrew their childishness, the antics they found endearing at one point quickly turned sour.
So Sakura hid herself away, forced herself to outgrow the rituals she held dearly and tried to appear normal. But the words 'strange', 'weird' and 'abnormal' followed her when she would wear a peach pit around her neck, tied with a chord, when she said that the grounds were angry and the next day an avalanche wiped out half the civilization from a village far away in the mountains.
Her parents fought hard that night, with each other. They said Sakura had a black tongue that only cast misfortune upon others, that everything she curses comes true. The whispers from the other countryfolks were catching upto them. Sakura was no longer special, she was just abnormal.
So she hid more. She never stopped wearing the peach pit, or decorating her room with crystals or purifying her doorways with moonwater, but she stopped speaking about the things she saw and the things she felt.
She stopped being who she was, and her soul might as well have died the same day too.
It was another seven hours later when Sakura was standing in front of a new door in the grand house, shuffling her keys against the unused locks for the right fit. The first two keys didn't ft and she guessed they were for the guest rooms, the third time turned out to be a charm.
The room was in about the same condition as the other ones with cobwebs hanging from the corners and just about every surface and crevice matted with a layer of dust. Thankfully, most of the books were in closed bookcases and cabinets, so that saved her a lot of a trouble trying to clean those things without them falling apart.
"Now, where is the damn journal…" Sakura furrowed her brows and her gaze zoomed right on the study desk. If it's just a journal, it makes the most sense to just have it on the study table.
Sakura pulled open the top drawer, coughing a bit from the dust that went flying up and was more disappointed when there was no such thing present. The other drawer was the same case, and so were the other three. Sakura tried to scratch her head to think but then remembered her dust covered fingers and retracted her hand.
'Where else could they be…' She stewed in her thoughts more a moment more but the sensation of someone poking her head was distracting, even more so because she knew there was no one poking here. At least not physically. She has opened the lid of the box in her nightstand before she came here.
'So you're looking for the journal?' Shisui inquired curiously and Sakura nodded before realizing he couldn't see her yet. "Yeah, I am." She continued looking around, opening one of the bookcases. The books she saw had writings on the spines and looked in pretty good shape to be a journal, on top of being too thick to be just a diary.
"I think I saw your grandmother once put it somewhere in a drawer." Itachi provided helpfully, his voice imploring. Sakura looked for any other drawer in the room and most of the other cases and shelves had cabinets instead of drawers.
"I don't see any other drawer." Sakura looked at the side of the cabinet to see whether there was another secret compartment or such, but found little else. She opened another cabinet, looking for inside drawers but found nothing except some old books and questionable ingredients she has heard about being used for rituals. Every book spine she looked at only told her that it was an educational book and not a journal.
"Maybe she took it out and put it somewhere else…" Shisui provided unsurely, "She never really talked to us about her findings or anything she would encounter in regards to us."
She searched cases after cases, shelves after shelves, opening and closing every cabinet and cupboard, but found nothing of sorts. The books were left haphazardly mussed in her wake but the journal remained unseen.
"Alright." Sakura whispered under her breath, closing another cabinet door shut. Her legs were getting tired of crouching and squatting and bending so much so she decided to just sit against the windowsill, though still dirty she didn't particularly care anymore. She sighed before tilting her head back to rest it against the glass of the window.
"Where are you going to look now?"
Sakura didn't answer right away and trailed the design on the ceiling with her eyes. "I don't know." She answered shortly. She was just contemplating giving up her search for the day and putting it off for later, but the rare voice spoke up inside her mind.
"You won't find it laying on open in a drawer or cabinet." Sasori spoke up in his usual bored voice, "It's hidden."
Sasori went quiet again and Sakura answered a few moments later. "I know that, I'm not stupid." She murmured under her breath and folded her arms across her chest. Her grandmother was stern and maybe even a bit mean, but she was the most cunning woman Sakura had ever seen.
While Sakura was little, she has always admired the old woman's ability of thinking ten steps ahead of her enemies, and the fact that the intruders haven't been able to break in yet was probably thanks to that fact. If Chiyo was safekeeping these precious artifacts and had a journal with her research information in them, she had already made it close to unreachable for anyone but herself.
'Think like her.' Sakura whispered in her mind, closing her eyes and straightening up. 'Where would she have put it?'
"She probably would've put it somewhere no one would even think of searching around." Itachi's voice added in her thoughts. Shisui chimed in from the side too, "We should eliminate the most obvious choices and search the places that wouldn't even cross anyone's mind."
Sakura almost agreed with him but then frowned. "But what if she thought even further?" She tilted her head back again, "What if she knew we would look for the most inconspicuous places so she hid it in plain sight?"
"There's only one way to find out."
Sakura nodded in agreement but made no move to get up from her seat or start looking. She continued to stare at the ceiling instead, lost in her own thought. The design around the central light looked like a curling vine of ivy where a golden snake peeked out from between, waiting and watching until the prey is defenseless. The moonlight streaming through the window played off of the golden design and the eyes of the snake gleamed wickedly.
'Wait what.'
Sakura straightened up, squinting her eyes to see the design better. The body of the snake peeked out in places from between the ivy vines and the beady eyes of the serpent were definitely gleaming even if it was almost unnoticeable. Now that she sees it, the body of the snake was gleaming dully too from the bits of places she could see.
Sakura stepped forward and tilted her head to the side and the gleam disappeared. She ducked down to see the places the moonlight was hitting and the gleam returned. It was only ever so slightly noticeable if she saw if from certain angles.
"Can you people see what I'm seeing?"
"I don't even know what you're seeing."
"Look at the ceiling, the design around the light. It shimmers." Sakura dragged a chair over to stand under the ceiling lamp and stood on top of it. When she still couldn't reach it, she stacked two boxes on the chair instead and with the new height, she could touch the ceiling if she stretched hard enough.
The moment her fingertip brushed against the scales of the snake, a muted flash of electricity ran through her body. 'This is it!' she closed her eyes, keeping her fingers pressed to the snakehead and tried to trace the spell. It was definitely a seal, drawn to mask appearances. It was a simple enough spell but the specific code used to formulate the mask was tricky.
"Did you find something?" Shisui asked curiously. Sakura opened her eyes and stepped down from the chair. "I'm not sure if this is it, but it's definitely something."
"Do you know the spell?"
"I'm familiar with the type of spell, but not this one in particular as it seems like there are still ways to see through it." Sakura dragged the chair away from under the lamp and instead brought out a chalk, drawing a circle on the floor around the lamp and checked more than three times to make sure the lamp was centered perfectly in the circle.
She drew the sigils and runes around the circle once and started pouring her magic through it. The snake glowed brighter but Sakura was not surprised when it dimmed down not a second later. Sakura found the spell being tricky to be a major understatement when the same happened the next five times too.
"Did anything happen?" Itachi whispered in her ears and Sakura let out a frustrated sigh, staring down at her chalk covered fingers. "No, the seal is way trickier than I first thought."
"Did you try flipping the original code?" Sasori gave his rare input.
"Flipped it, reversed it, repeated it, added extra runes, nothing worked." Sakura flopped down on her back, her nose tickling from the dust that rose up around her.
It took another four tries before she got the nearest to the most probable solution. Sakura huffed out a breath before she checked and rechecked the drawing with attention, before she stepped back and poured her magic into it once again. The snake glimmered bright, but instead of flickering out this time, it only shined brighter and brighter until the vine leaves shifted and the snake fell out, straight in the center of the circle.
The stationary golden snake curled into a ring before it morphed into a rectangular shape and the shine died down. "Found it!" Sakura laughed almost too loudly in relief and grabbed the journal to her chest. She flopped down again and the weight of the magic usage finally settled down in her body.
"Open it open it!" Shisui almost sounded like an excited kid on Christmas eve eagerly waiting to unwrap presents, and Sakura held the journal to her face. The notebook was bound in dark leather and had a curled snake engraved on the front, when she flipped it open, the familiar handwriting of her grandmother greeted her, along with the smell of cigarette smoke and alcohol.
"Oh this is her journal alright." Sakura murmured to herself before sitting up and moving to sit with her back rested against the desk.
"What does it say?"
"Not much." Sakura skimmed over the first page which basically only said the same things Chiyo wrote to her in the note. "You people were warriors, someone is after you. You were passed over to her by her mentor. She got you from her nemesis. Nothing new."
The next few pages were roughly scribbled notes from the silent wind era and how the uses of magic were different back them compared to her time. "Did you guys really have fairy doctors just roaming the markets?" Sakura mused out loud, leisurely flipping through the pages.
"We did, actually." Itachi answered with a fondness in his voice, "We had fairy doctors, apothecary witches, and magic healers. We were actually really surprised when we woke up in this time and found out that magic is not at all common."
"It's such a shame really." Shisui chimed in, "I was friends with a couple magic healers and they were such wonderful people. It would probably make the art of healing a lot easier if magic were to be in use now too."
Sakura hummed in agreement. "That's true. Magic is a dying art." She remembered the first time she heard about magic. Her parents still had a good relationship with her grandmother and Chiyo would visit them in the farm every holiday. Sakura remembered being so excited to learn how to make potions from the old lady and when she shared her excitement, the distinct memory of the swift rejection she faced from her father was still printed in her mind.
'Sakura, I've been generous with letting you play out your fairytales for long enough, but it's time you let go of your childishness. Magic is nothing but a sham and you would be only naïve to still keep believing in it.'
The words hurt, but not as much as when Chiyo stopped showing up for Christmas.
'My mother lost her way in this family and fell deeper in her insanity to the point of no return. I don't want the same to happen to you.'
Sakura shook her head when the book started sliding from her hand and tried to put her concentration more firmly on the texts. The paper felt thin and flimsy between her fingertips and the writing on the lines told her that her grandmother wrote the first pages when she was much younger and had a steadier hand.
The lackeys were back yesterday, and they were still searching for the warriors. It has been the fourth encounter in the last month, the attacks have been increasing in frequency and I'm afraid that they will only continue to become more persistent the longer they don't get what they want.
The lackeys seem to be working for some magician, but the identification id still unknown.
Sakura frowned at the journal entry, so the attacks were happening to her grandmother as well. She flipped to the next page, the date entered to a few days later.
I got some books yesterday from the old library about the silent wind era and according to the information in it as well as the word of mouth from the souls, the threat seems to be from a time a few decades from the end of the silent wind era. From the texts, the souls are of three warriors that held high position in the court of the time.
Sakura skipped to the next page, the date of a week later.
The attack happened again, this time I managed to capture one of the lackeys but the other escaped. The captive was tight-lipped and when pressed for information, he died a sudden death. I didn't kill him.
Saura frowned again and tried to read again but the hushed conversation from the two souls made her loudly shush the two. They quieted down and Sakura focused again.
The captive seemed to have an auto-destruction spell. I checked the body and he had a seal branded on his tongue. I don't know what seal it is, but I will find it. Furthermore, the nature of the seal branded tells me that the mastermind behind all this is a person that practices sorcery magic. But the death was caused by some kind of suicide spell that was ingrained in him and the spell made it impossible to even decipher a single lead to the identification of the man behind everything.
The meticulous nature of all the spells tells me that the sorcerer is one of the most dangerous I've ever encountered, especially if the danger of the attacks tells me anything.
Another page later, Sakura got her answer to the previous entry.
The branding on his tongue was a lip-stitch spell. Anyone who dares trying to tell anything about the master, doesn't stay alive to say anything at all.
A chill suddenly descended in the room and Sakura could feel goosebumps rising along the length of her arm. She looked behind herself to the window where the moon was a crescent smile in the sky, twinkling ominously at her. The sheer gravity of the situation suddenly dawned on her.
Meeting the souls, getting to know their predicament, everything seemed like a lightweight mission like every other time. Sakura doesn't know why she didn't see the graveness of the situation before now. It was as if she was going through motions with the lukewarm responsibility of her regular missions, but the seriousness of her situation doused her like cold water.
She could actually die while safekeeping. She already came so closed to it before.
"Sakura? Are you okay?"
Sakura blinked when her hands started sweating and she tucked the book under her arm, standing up on slightly weak legs and started walking out of the study. "I'm okay. I have a lot to do."
She shut the door to the master bedroom close behind her, keeping the journal on the nightstand and opening the drawer to look at the box with the items sitting comfortably in them. She took them out and sat them on her bed before looking toward the door had temporarily fixed.
'I need to fix it properly.' She has studied the protections seal her grandmother put on the door, so intricate and strong that it stayed even after her demise. She will not be able to get it that tight, but Sakura will make it work.
"Sakura, you don't look okay." Shisui told her worriedly and she knew he could see her getting on her knees to draw the seal on the ground. "What did you read on the journal?"
Sakura was silent for a moment. She felt foolish for taking the matters so lightly, as if one wrong move wouldn't have her six feet under. Her grandmother was infinitely more powerful than her and she continued to fight her whole. She wanted to hit herself for thinking everything will be okay.
"Chiyo caught one of the lackeys once." Sakura answered with her voice blank as she focused on drawing a circle, large enough for her to sit inside. "The threat we are talking is way more dangerous than I ever assumed." Only a seasoned to the tip sorcerer can use a lip stitch seal, and that too to work instantaneously. "We're doomed."
The silent that covered the room was deafening and only the scratching of the chalk on wood was heard. "I can't do this on my own." Sakura murmured, cursed, to herself. She will die the next time another attack comes at her. She is all but a novice witch who could only sooth ailments, she can never fight anyone. "We're fucked."
She finished writing her seal around the circle and sat inside it. She drew an eye in front of where she sat and two branches of yarrow curling around it. and with the last lead drawn, the seal was complete. She brought forth a piece of parchment, putting it flat on the eye and flicked open her switchblade. Her left palm was held over the parchment at a height and she drew the switchblade over her skin, the red beads trailed over her palm and one drop fell on the paper.
For a second nothing happened, but then the design around her glowed golden before it shrank and shrank until the whole design of the seal was able to fit on the small piece of paper.
Sakura released a breath, wiping a hand on her damp forehead. She expelled too much magic into one seal, but that should make it hold itself well.
After she stuck the paper to the door, she heard a murmur from Itachi.
"Why are you saying we're doomed? You're a strong witch."
Sakura wanted to laugh. "You cannot be more wrong." A bitter smile tilted at her lips, "I am no more than a doctor who still uses her charms and spells to work for her. My patients think it's just my knowledge of medicine. My grandmother was a fool to have left you all in my care."
Another silence met her answer and Sakura forced herself to let go of the door handle, still afraid that it will burst open any second. She plopped on her bed, staring outside the window at the dull moonlit sky, leaving her to her own devices alone in the house.
"I'm sorry."
Sakura looked at the box sitting beside her, the voice of Itachi a soothing melody in her ears. She has never seen any of their faces, but their voices always held such a character to them that she could almost imagine what they would look like.
tachi always sounded so calm, so soothing, like cool water in bamboo streams and the morning mist in winters. Shisui was loud and cheery and boisterous, he sometimes reminded her of Naruto. He was sunny and warm and friendly like the sun. Sasori seldom talked, his voice always a rough grunt like he was annoyed at the world, and he probably was. Whenever she imagined him, she thought of overcast skies before rain and her neighbor's grumpy cat back from the city.
"What're you saying sorry for?"
"I'm sorry we can't help you." Itachi told her again and she could hear the remorse in his voice. "You have been tasked with our safekeeping against your will and we can only sit quiet without any help while you fight for your life. I wish we could do more."
"Yes." Shisui added after his cousin, his normally jovial tone now much duller. "We know you were thrust headfirst into all of this without any warning, and asking for you to comply with us is asking for a lot. We are sorry we couldn't be much help."
Sakura listened to their apologies with a tight face but she couldn't deny the softening of her anger at their sincerity. She shouldn't have to be the one to bear the brunt of all this, but its not their fault. It would be wrong to blame them.
"But we are here and so is the sorcerer, we have no choice but to continue fighting." Sakura whispered to them, curling her fingers in the bedsheets. Sasori has been quiet, not a word escaping him but she knew he was listening all the same. He was listening to everything.
'I wish we could help.'
Something struck at Sakura and she frowned at her reflection on the windowpanes. "Hey, you people are just trapped souls right, that means someone materialized you once before you were sealed."
"Yes."
"Have you ever been out?"
"No." Shisui sighed, "I don't remember the last time I felt the sunlight on my skin, or the last time I even had skin. It was probably before we died, but we've been conscious even after death."
Sakura tapped her finger on her chin, her mind running hundred miles per hour. "The sorcerer wants to possess your power, so they couldn't have sealed you up. You would've been materialized. That means you would've technically been alive, or resurrected." She mumbled to herself and the voices stayed quiet, listening to her mumbling to herself.
"So…"
Sakura looked up at the window, her face reflecting back at her and her eyes focused on the purple diamond on her forehead. It wouldn't kill her, it would hurt like a bitch and probably put her in the hospital's emergency care for all she knows, but it wouldn't kill her if she's careful. She'll have to be careful, but this is the only chance of survival she can she.
She looked at the box beside her, knowing they were watching her too.
"I'm going to unseal you."
AN: Yup, there it is. We love some bad decisions.
So the story is officially taking off. We have our characters, we have our groundwork, we have our base plotline, here is where the things are gonna get interesting. It has been a while since I've incorporated things from the modern world. It's interesting you know, mixing modern and magic and knowing how to do it well. I don't know if I'm doing it well.
Anyway, make sure to give me your reviews of the chapter. I always love getting your reviews, I helps me with writing the later chapters.
Until next time, bye bye3