Hostility could be responded to. It could be met with a blade, shield, chant, or scripture. It could be parsed into emotion, rage, malice, vengeance, sin... sin they could recognize and cleanse, sin they could respond to with the wrath of Heaven's flame. It was not a hostile aura in the traditional sense that plummeted over them, and that was the most terrifying part.
Given how her appearance defied even the outer bounds of modesty, aesthetics, or even anatomical understanding, the woman before them felt like the sky above had shifted down into their lungs, saturating the air with unthinkable densit while their nerves screamed that the world itself was erroneous in her presence.
Surely misplaced on the chessboard of creation.
Griselda's hand subtly pushed both Xenovia and Irina back a step as she placed herself defensively in front of them.
Fou, for his part, was already behind Griselda, blinking rapidly, jostling with barely contained panic.
No one paid him any mind, for their attentions were locked on the goddess of quiet catastrophe before them. Fou was not worried about combat. Oh, no. Not even in the slightest. He did not feel the same ancestral terror that clung to the humans' ribs. His worry was born from a far more personal source. His eyes darted toward the bundle Griselda held in one arm: the book, clasped securely, his prize, his stolen treasure. His stubby front paws subtly tapped the forest floor in a kind of pleading Morse code. With a stretch of his paw, he motioned to the book, then at Tiamat. His tail curled around his body like a guilty child trying to hide.
"Fou..."
"Mommy."
He said it only in his head, but the word echoed loud enough in his thoughts that he winced.
"Help. They took my thing. I earned that. I dodged pine needles in places where pine needles shouldn't have gone, and now they took it and they'll probably give it back to the Pope or worse—put it on a dusty shelf, never touched, never sniffed again. Please, please, let them give it back. You're my mom, right? Big scary mom. Big screechy warm scary mom. Please, just—"
His eyes drifted to Griselda's hips again.
"Also, if you're gonna screech again… wait until I move behind her thighs first. Thank you."
Griselda allowed herself the faintest exhale of her stiffness. Her voice did not rise; she was not Xenovia. She was the commanding sister, the bridge between youthful fire and the cold steel of the Vatican's administration. She had been trained to greet all things with civility first, to attempt speech before the sword.
"You are within Vatican-sanctioned grounds. This forest is under the dominion of Heaven's peace. If you come in peace, I ask that you identify yourself. Otherwise—"
She never finished. The Earth nearly moves. One of her disciples seemed to have made her choice.
Xenovia took one bold step forward. Her hands reached behind her back in a single practiced motion, and when they emerged again, the hilt of Excalibur Destruction was already radiating its savage golden breath. Her expression changed and her eyes were steel. The sword, too large and wild to be wielded by most men, sat in her grasp.
"Griselda. I do not trust that creature," she said. "Permission to initiate preemptive neutralization if it makes a move?"
"Xenovia," Griselda did not turn, "stand down."
"But—"
"I said stand down."
Irina, not to be outdone, flicked the string tied around her wrist, and it blossomed into the form of Excalibur Mimic, folding into a slender katana with a spiritual shriek that only other weapons of Holy ancestry could hear. She took a side-step, eyes on the woman, or thing.
Fou turned, blinked once, then again. His nose wrinkled and he squinted at the blades themselves. There was something... so very wrong along with a familiarity. Something old he couldn't remember, a tingle of awareness that clinked around his skull like sleigh bells muffled by fog.
Tiamat tilted her head at the swords too, seemingly sensing a hidden energy only she could sense just a layer beyond even Fou.
The air suddenly thickened with concentrated heat. Irina, maybe desperate to reassert reality, gripped the sword around her wrist and whispered the invocation.
"O sword of light and mimicry, reflect the strength of the Word."
Light poured from her hand, and in a moment, Mimic was filled with Holy power. Next to her, Xenovia reacted instinctively. Her own grip tightened around Destruction, its massive double-pommelled frame, and triple-pointed tip glowing with nascent light as her power flared into its brutal edge.
And this was the mistake.
Tiamat felt the resonance of power, the awakening of a frequency that threatened to fracture her calm. Her pink eyes widened only slightly. Her mouth opened.
Griselda's senses, honed through uncountable exorcisms, detected the shift an instant too late. She raised a hand, activating one of the few specialized exorcist relics she carried for worst-case scenarios, and channeled Sacramental energy into a brilliant white sigil that manifested like a starburst from her palm.
She fired.
Tiamat's reaction was faster.
Her lips parted. That was all.
Her eyes, glowing softly, dilated in the barest flicker of emotion—protectiveness, annoyance, a mother's sigh when her children ruined the floor for the hundredth time. She inhaled, and the forest bent. She opened her mouth—
"Aaaaaaahhhhhhh!"
In the next fraction of a second, an unspoken scream bloomed outward.
It was a soundless, vowel-rich, cry of tectonic memory being released from the bones of the planet. It was the sound that came before sound was invented. It was the lullaby that birthed the ocean and the cracking of mountains made gentle for an infant's ears.
The impact of a thought turned physical, a wave of planetary rejection that washed through the clearing.
A wide, invisible wall of trembling pressure, born of sheer presence being noticed. The trees were the first to suffer. Tall oaks split at their trunks like poorly-glued models, bark and leaves flying into the sky like birds startled by thunder. The grass flattened. The ground caved. Rocks were displaced. And the three Exorcists—
Griselda was flung back first, her holy garments rippling like torn banners. She vanished into a thicket, hitting the earth with enough force to crater the soil beneath her habit. Xenovia followed next, the shockwave smacking into her like the flat hand of God Himself. Her sword flickered with destabilization, and even she could only gasp before the world turned upside down and branches cracked beneath her body. Irina shouted a defiant yelp as the air slapped her hard enough to knock the mimic blade from her hands, sending her spinning into a bush with an explosion of feathers and holy scripture, and somewhere in the chaos, a singular squeaky "Fou!" echoed with an indignant surprise before both creature and his precious stolen book vanished into the woods.
And then, silence. Deafening, echoing silence.
The clearing lay broken and bowed before a primordial. In the midst of it all, Tiamat remained unmoved. Her lips closed. Her gaze fell to the left, to where Fou had once stood—
Gone, so too was the book.
She tilted her head. Her chest rose and fell in a ponderous breath. An imperceptible hum buzzed around her neck where the black-and-blue scaled adornments shimmered.
She stepped forward to look where Fou had last been, and perhaps wonder, in that distant and maternal silence, why her naughty son always vanished when he was told not to.
When she turned back—
The first blast was a pulse of raw holy energy lanced toward her back, fast enough to pierce solid stone, unstable enough to tear the earth apart around its trail to burn and to see if such a thing like her could even bleed.
But before it could reach her, the air behind the woman shimmered. A circle, pale pink and flawless in symmetry, bloomed into existence like a ring of soap catching the light. The bolt of destructive energy struck the barrier with a shriek, and for a moment the forest became two colors in white and pink before returning to green again.
Tiamat watched with a blank expression and her eyes still only half open as Xenovia's lips pressed tighter and ran. Feet crushed leaves and her body moved. The blade in the younger Exorcist's hands hummed with dissonant rage and closed the distance with weapon drawn high, and when it came down, it was not one strike, but three—an overhead cut cleaving air like a guillotine, a spinning backhand meant to fracture whatever blocked it, and a heavy thrust straight for the heart.
Xenovia did not know what to think.
She had been thrown, yes. Her body had remembered the ground before her brain did, skidding through dirt and pine needles like a doll swung by the ankle. The moment breath reentered her lungs, her limbs were already moving again numbly and when she saw the woman again—creature was more fitting—she was back on her feet, sword dragging slightly in the dust behind her as she advanced.
She would not permit herself to believe that the Church had faltered in their judgment; if something existed in this world that could look upon three armed Exorcists, breathe out, and send one of them flying beyond sight while standing completely still, then it had to be dealt with. And if Heaven was not yet aware of the threat… then she would have to stall until they were.
There was no command from Griselda. The forest where she had once stood had been peeled back like old bark, the ground cratered with the subtle architecture of her disappearance. That left Xenovia in charge of wherever Irina was. It was not her preference. She was not a leader, not by nature or calling. But she was alive and had her sword.
The first blow landed on another summoned disc effortlessly without visible command. The second was met with an arc of sapphire fire rising from the ground in a curved sheet, and the third—her most direct attack was halted by the flat of a lavender arm as the body itself had casually decided to swat the blade away.
The impact didn't even stagger her.
Xenovia spun back, landing lightly, one hand on the hilt again, and glared. The sword vibrated. She lunged again, this time with a cross-slash backed by divine reinforcement, the full current of Excalibur Destruction surging through the motion.
She refused to retreat. Every instinct screamed to do so, every nerve barked in alarm. But she was a fighter for the Church. Her mind did not serve fear. It served obedience.
This time, Tiamat took a single step sideways, and in that same second, five rings bloomed around her, pink again, now layered, each one orbiting her shoulders, waist, and wrists like moons around a star, spun slowly.
The air turned thick. Xenovia's next charge felt like pushing through syrup. Her swing hit nothing and a bare palm tapped her side.
Tap was the wrong word.
The blow cracked through her armor from massless magic. She stumbled back, knees locking, lungs tightening as internal bruises bloomed like ink spilled in her chest.
The breath she drew next was shallow, but she raised the sword again anyway. Her bones screamed at her.
A light footfall approached from behind.
"I'm here!"
The voice is accompanied by the sudden change of Excalibur Mimic into the form of a long halberd with twin sickle blades. She grimaced with her smile faltered when her eyes landed on Xenovia's condition.
"Ah. That bad?"
Xenovia didn't answer. She could barely remain upright.
Irina sighed, but didn't falter. If they are going down, might as well do it with holy flair.
She struck first, fast—so fast she clouded. Mimic shifted shape mid-swing, becoming a whip of chains that cracked toward the woman's legs, then a javelin aimed at her chest. Irina moved in tandem, darting to the right, flipping the blade back into a sword, and slashing from below.
Horrifyingly, Tiamat's eyes tracked her wherever she moved.
Another ripple of wind rose, and with it, another invisible sound.
"Aaaahhhhhh…!"
The sound touched her ears and Irina collapsed mid-swing.
Leggs gave out like her soul had momentarily shut the lights off. She landed hard with a big wince, eyes wide and flickering, breath stolen from her chest.
Xenovia knew, at that moment, it was done.
But there was still her.
So she surged forward again, alone, blade blazing, and swung with everything, an arc so wide and full of wrath that it seemed to tear the image of the trees around it.
Tiamat's eyes focused fully for the first time.
She lifted her hand.
And sang.
The sound was no longer soft, it was almost close to a scream. It was pressure given form, weight given volume. It struck Xenovia like a divine fist with finality.
Her body flew before she could register movement. The forest snapped past her vision in a blur of green and sky, and then she met the boulder.
The sound of bones cracking was muffled by the mountain's size.
When she landed, the sword had vanished from her grasp.
And the clearing was quiet again.
Tiamat turned, slowly, as if only now remembering where she had intended to go.
Suddenly something was moving fast. Tiamat's head tilted slightly as the distant forest trembled under a sharp gust, a faint shimmer of holy power snapping into focus from a far-off edge of her peripheral awareness. Leaves scattered like startled birds. The breeze carried something pure. And something sharp.
Before the brown strands of her hair could fully settle from the breeze's touch, the ground in front of her cracked with a crisp noise. The scent of sacrament laced the air. Then she appeared swift and cutting. A blur of dark and ivory coalesced into a form with practiced posture and sharpened poise. A woman now stood before the Beast, back straight, arms raised, her cross-shaped sword brimming with luminous filaments of condensed holy essence.
Griselda's face bore no anger. Only clarity, and a certain gravity reserved for those rare moments when her compassion must be set aside. There was no room for hesitation. She had no doubt already seen the devastation around her.
Tiamat merely blinked as the tip of the sacramental blade lunged forward, whizzing with the sharp resonance of divine power. Griselda's strikes were deliberate in an almost maternal resolve, to protect and to endure, even if it meant bleeding in place of others.
The blade met Tiamat's forearm, touching against a thin, shimmering veil of pink circular light that flickered into existence in the very instant of contact.
Tiamat's reaction was a passive recognition.
Griselda didn't expect a straightforward blow to work. She feinted upward, only to twist her grip and come down in a cleaving arc aimed at Tiamat's shoulder. The cross-shaped construct fractured into two slivers of light, dividing mid-swing into a dual-blade form and reforming in her palms as if sculpted from pure intent.
Tiamat ducked slightly, unnervingly fluid for someone who hadn't taken a combat stance. A flare of wind burst outward from her side as she tilted. The air simply bent around her thoughts. The gust howled, brushing Griselda's hair back, almost throwing off her balance.
She narrowed her eyes, forcing herself into a slide to minimize the drag. Her boots skidded across the torn grass, grounding herself before pivoting back into another flurry of strikes. One, two, a sweep, and then a pivot stab toward the ribs. This opponent didn't react with guard positions, as when danger approached, she willed it away as if annoyed by a drifting leaf in her path.
Her eyes flickered upward briefly, and in that moment, her gaze took in the shattered surroundings.
And Griselda saw now what the others had experienced.
A long trench cut across the clearing like a scar of force. Trees leveled in rows, their trunks splintered as if cracked from the inside. The shattered remains of Xenovia's Excalibur Destruction embedded halfway into a boulder. Farther away Xenovia herself, crumpled against that very stone, one arm twisted behind her at a broken angle, unconscious or worse. A smaller patch of crushed foliage lay to the right, an imprint where Irina's body had bounced from the soil. Her sword lay nearby, reverted to a silver rod. She hadn't stirred once since her collapse.
"Two exorcist prodigies... felled. And barely five minutes had passed."
"Two girls trained to fight Devils and Fallen... wielders of the legendary fragments of the most sacred blade forged by Heaven's will, and both were rendered incapable by someone who never struck first. Who never even radiated the intention to kill."
Griselda didn't allow herself to panic. But her breath did change, just slightly. She kept striking, trying to gauge timing, openings, patterns. There was none of that. Tiamat did not dodge out of worry or need. She merely avoided what might inconvenience her. Each time a blade came close, her body turned slightly, or a glimmer of pink light spun into being, like a bubble from a dream. Every block was efficient, but strangely disconnected, like the act of defending wasn't born from survival instinct but the passive reflex of something too ancient to flinch.
Magic, Griselda thought. "Except not any codified system. No formulas or glyphs."
Tiamat raised her hand.
"Aaaahhh!"
It thickened the air with a ripple exploding outward like a sonar pulse and wrapped around the combatants.
Griselda braced.
She hadn't expected the sound to strike her like a wall. Her holy construct-shield flared and cracked as the pulse met it, the sheer force behind the vibration shoving her backward. For a moment she could feel every joint in her body resonate. Her inner sacraments strained to maintain cohesion, holy energy pulsing violently to stabilize her limbs. Griselda landed hard but rolled out of it. Her ribs screamed.
She looked again. Xenovia hadn't moved. Irina's fingers twitched, but barely. She was losing time. Losing ground. The opponent had not once retaliated in earnest, she still stood alone, untouched.
Griselda gripped her construct tighter. Her next strike would be the last in this exchange. She doesn't have a plan to defeat the woman, she needs to survive long enough to call for guidance. Someone in the Vatican, or better, Heaven needed to know this was here.
It was a flash of motion that went beyond training and instinct and discipline. Griselda Quarta, Supreme Exorcist, hailed among the one of the most refined humans of the Faith, blurred forward in a last, decisive act. Her hand gripped the cruciform construct forged from her Sacramental aura, the light of Heaven searing visibly from its edges. Every movement she made now was agony; her ribs screamed beneath the force of acceleration, each breath a stab of internal glass, her lungs shuddering with protest as divine energy surged through a body already battered from clashing with a being that eluded her every category.
She moved anyway.
Because that was the duty.
Because that was faith.
And because both dear disciples were unconscious.
The instant before impact stretched thin like melted wax. Griselda could see the lines of it now; the angle of her cross-blade, the arc it would take as it cleaved toward the stranger's face, the way holy energy would lance forward with a thunderclap of judgment, drawn from the trembling will of Heaven's justice.
If the blow connected, it would purify. It would erase the aberrant thing. That was what she hoped. That was what she prayed.
The only thing left was to connect the attack!
The Mesopotamian Goddess shattered her hopes.
Griselda didn't see it so much as feel it as heat, pressure, that suffocating and immediate heat that no flame should naturally exude. Her eyes widened by a fraction, and instinct screamed far too late. Her cross-blade hung suspended in the air, literally centimeters from its mark, edge refracting against a sudden updraft of shimmering fire, distorted from the pressure wave of something far, far too close.
—Fire made flesh, or rather, flesh made fire.
Tiamat's arm, wreathed in living flame drawn from her elemental body slammed forward, elbow bent palm closed like a hammer forged by planetary force. It struck Griselda cleanly in the midsection, just beneath her bosom, shattering through the reinforced cloth, holy enchantments, and protective scripts as though they were parchment caught in a storm.
Her breath left her in a choked burst of crimson.
Ribs broke. The already-fractured ones splintered further like shattered porcelain underfoot. She felt her diaphragm crumple against her organs, the world turning sideways as her body, once so dependable, so strong, so shaped by years of Vatican's conditioning, betrayed her in a single instant.
She flew. The forest floor greeted her again in a detonation of dust and shredded undergrowth. A crater formed where she landed, back-first, limbs twisted like fallen sculpture. Her construct weapon flickered out in a sputter of light, energy dispersing with a whimper. Her vision pulsed with red and white. Her fingers spasmed.
Still, she tried to rise.
Of course she did.
Even bleeding from the mouth, eyes dilated from blunt-force trauma, spine screaming with misalignment and impact shock, Griselda tried to rise. Her elbow dug into the earth, trembling, her forearm folding beneath her as she strained, trying to lift her torso. Her breath came out wet. Her mouth filled with the metallic taste of life leaving.
Her pride shaken, she saw the stranger walk forward again. No emotion. No cruelty in her face. Just serenity. Even her monstrous strength had lacked fury.
It was mechanical. Biological. The act of a being who crushed not out of malice, but because that was simply how it proceeded. Like tectonic plates and the moon's tide.
Griselda coughed and reached for her side, fingers skimming what might have been a fractured rib poking out just beneath her cloth line. She prepared another prayer, mentally, ready to die for it if she had to—
"Fou!"
Griselda's temple rang with impact, and her thoughts scattered like shattered prayer beads across cold marble.
Her body slumped. Her consciousness slipped.
And just like that, the third Exorcist fell.
No words were said. None needed to be.
Fou pawed near her fallen side, dropping the book onto the broken soil, pages fluttering open to some unknowable section.
Across the clearing, Tiamat raised her head slowly to the sky. Her long hair, wet with mist from her earlier elemental invocation, shimmered faintly.
"Aaahhhhh…"
She looked at Fou who sat at attention. The Exorcists lay crumpled around them.
"Aaahhhhh..."
Hearing her intention through instinctual understanding, Fou nodded and abided by her orders.
The Church won't expect all of this.
.
.
.
.
.
The sky was tinged a pale bronze from the haze of a spring morning turned slightly humid by the city's breath.
Kyoto overlooked far below the forested ridge Angra and U-Olga stood upon.
Angra, standing with his hands shoved into the pockets of a black-and-white jersey zip jacket—seriously, where does he keep getting clothes?—squinted down the hill with a grimace. His back hurt from the hours of walking. His legs sore.
Not because of the distance, no. That part was manageable. He was a Beast of Evil, or whatever label humanity preferred this century. He could handle terrain. No, what grated at his sanity, what truly sapped his spirit like a slow, gnawing decay, was the fact that he had walked here with her.
Beside him, U-Olga floated down barely touching the ground like gravity merely humored her existence. The enormous metallic crown she had once borne like a declaration of war was now invisible by an illusion. Her flowing hair shimmered faintly, and the golden and silver horns had vanished from sight.
He tugged the hoodie's zipper up a little higher, concealing the last glimmers of the Persian etchings scorched into his skin, tattoos that moved faintly when no one watched. They pulsed at the approach of divinity, a reaction embedded deep in his soul since the day he was branded humanity's sin. Using simple manipulation of magical energy, he also hid away the tattoo on his face.
"You know, we could've taken the train."
His voice echoed the terrain faintly, hollowed out by fatigue and disdain.
U-Olga did not respond immediately. She instead viewed Kyoto with a gaze that bespoke royalty and judgment in equal measure. Her arms were crossed to hold herself back, because to her, this view was beneath contempt. She was not admiring the city. She was measuring it for conquest, or maybe incineration.
Angra raised a brow, lips curling. "Yeah. No response. Figures."
He stepped forward down the slope, muttering to himself the entire time. "Kyoto Station. You know, Japan's second-largest. Fifteen stories, shopping malls, a department store, hotels stacked like corporate nesting dolls, even a damn movie theater from what I've heard here. If we had just gotten on the train like a pair of halfway intelligent demonic entities, we'd be sipping cheap vending machine coffee by now instead of hiking like damn pilgrims looking for spiritual enlightenment in a place that sells Hello Kitty kimonos."
He spoke not for her benefit, but his own.
"Apparently, no. We had to walk. Walk. All because Her Radiant Divinity of Earth's True Ownership decided she couldn't so much as breathe the same oxygen as a species that has to schedule dentist appointments."
U-Olga slowly turned her head.
"I heard that," she said coldly, her voice like polished obsidian cracking down a granite cliff. "And I will remind you, that I have not yet annihilated this planet precisely because I was given orders to cooperate that would benefit me. Do not presume patience is the same as acceptance."
"Assuming you even had the current capacity to do so, WE'RE all severely weakened. You're tolerating their presence like mold on porcelain," Angra fired back. "I'm tolerating yours like a migraine with delusions of grandness."
She floated past him with her chin held high, robes trailing with immaculate exactness despite the lack of wind. "Your sarcasm is as dull as your scent. The only reason I deign to accompany you is because a certain Beast of Pity insists your familiarity with these flesh-things might yield useful insight."
"Imagine thinking I was the helpful one," Angra muttered, trailing after her and kicking at a rock. "That's the real joke of this operation. Me, scouting. Pretending I'm someone who gives a damn whether Kyoto is spiritually intact."
The path downwards was lined with gravel, the kind carved by hands that still prayed to things older than Buddhism. The very steps murmured a language of ghosts. Angra heard it, of course. He always did. Cities bled memories, and this one was drenched. The type of quiet survival that most humans never thought twice about. They just lived. That was what disgusted U-Olga the most.
He could already see the way she recoiled from their proximity to the town, a twitch of the eye, a subtle strain at her temples. Her glamour was holding, but not easily.
"I hate this," she said after a moment. Her voice didn't tremble, though there was something acidic at the edge of her words. "Why do they build everything so close together? Why do they congregate when it's inefficient? It's claustrophobic. Repulsive even."
"That IS humanity," Angra said conversationally. "Pack animals with religion. You'd think after millennia of watching them slaughter each other with the same sword of ideals, you'd grow numb. Nope. You still hate them with a passion that burns brighter than the first time you stepped on an anthill."
She tilted her head, eyes narrowing. "Are you implying that my disdain is irrational?"
"I'm implying that your disdain is loud."
"Careful, filth," she said.
"No." Angra snapped back, tired, dry, "you be careful. We're here on recon, remember? Not conquest. Goetia gave us a job. I hate this as much as you do, but we play along for now."
He stopped short, staring down at the modern skyline bleeding into the historical district. Glass towers pressed up against pagodas like steel ivy overtaking stone.
His voice lowered. "We're in the heart of one of the oldest spiritually alive cities in the country. If there's any reaction to our summoning, if the leylines are even aware of our arrival, this is where we'll feel it. The humans below won't see us, but other beings might else."
U-Olga said nothing. She stared down at the district, teeth clenched tight like she was willing the city to collapse under its own population. Then, finally, she pushed herself.
"Fine," she said curtly. "We'll observe. But I will not speak to them."
Angra shrugged. "Didn't plan to."
They began descending the steps together, two Beasts, both veiled, both unnatural, both seething with energies so ancient they defied taxonomy. Kyoto was unaware of the two god-like beings wearing mortal flesh.
"I still say we should've taken the damn train…" Angra muttered again, mostly to himself.
So they wandered.
Or rather, they circled, in a slow, pointless orbit of Kyoto that felt less like reconnaissance. Angra dislikes walking again. There was a difference between walking with purpose and being dragged around like some glorified hound by a woman who had zero comprehension of subtlety. He had fought in the Holy Grail War, twice, six times if other timelines were counted, he watched civilizations rise and fall as nothing more than a formless being, he tasted the bitterness of every sin and cruelty humanity could conjure up from the depths of its soul... and still, nothing tested his patience more than this woman and her delusion of planetary royalty.
"Y'know," he started up dryly, trailing just a few steps behind U-Olga as they descended yet another stone path leading away from the Kyoto Tower's base, "if we were actually interested in tracking leylines instead of sightseeing, maybe we'd have gone straight to the bloody shrine quarter instead of playing spiritual tourism with every landmark."
She didn't respond. Her gaze was scanning the skyline and the temple roofs in the distance. Her posture screamed disdain, her pace stiff with unspoken fury. A queen forced to mingle with cattle.
He sighed, hands deep in his jacket pockets again The enchantment holding down U-Olga's celestial crown shimmered faintly in the sunlight, he could see it, even if the humans couldn't. She was a sovereign faking humility, forced to walk among those she thought of as inferior not out of strategy, but out of obligation.
They passed by Kiyomizu-dera with its wide wooden stage jutting over the hillside like a noble's outstretched arm. Angra glanced at it with mild amusement, not because of its spiritual power (which was modest, despite the aura of serenity), but it reminded him how easily humanity attached transcendence to architecture. Put enough faith in a place and it became holy, as if wood and stone could drink divinity out of the air.
They kept walking.
Then came Kinkaku-ji. Gold-leaf brilliance set against the backdrop of green trees and glassy water, the glint of sunlight bouncing off its reflection. U-Olga stared at it for a moment too long.
"Hmph," she scoffed. "It has no functionality. Merely decoration. Useless."
"Kind of like that attitude of yours," Angra muttered under his breath. She didn't hear, or pretended not to. Either suited him fine.
By the time they reached Ginkaku-ji, he had started ignoring the names. Every temple bled into the next. Zen aesthetics, stone gardens, the odor of incense and ambition. Humans built these places for themselves. A mirror of their longing for order. To force stillness into chaos, elegance into nature.
"I'm surprised you haven't tried to convert one of these buildings into a throne yet," he drawled as they passed by a tea shop, smelling the scent of matcha. "All this majesty, and not one screaming human prostrating themselves before you. It's almost tragic, really."
"I do not require their screams, only their recognition," U-Olga snapped, finally turning toward him with that aristocratic irritation brimming behind her eyes. "This entire species is beneath me, and still they do not look up. Do you comprehend the insult that represents? The Sovereign of Earth must lower herself to hide her glory from insects. It is degrading."
Angra chuckled, not kindly. "You don't hide it well. Even now, you're practically oozing contempt like radiation from a faulty reactor. I'm surprised the crows haven't started circling."
She scoffed and looked away, continuing down the avenue, arms crossed. The gesture alone would not shield her from the world's inadequacy.
They passed shops, tourists, vendors, men and women rushing through their small, fleeting lives. Angra watched them idly, his steps lazy and drifting.
There was something comforting in the chaos. Humanity's absurd need to busy itself with endless tasks, stacking meaning atop banality. A world defined by its fragility. Ultimately…
"They persist..."
Through wars, through plagues, through the cruelty of their own kind and the indifference of divine beings like the one walking ahead of him, they endured. There was a quiet power in that.
But all this wandering…
He stopped suddenly in the middle of the street, prompting U-Olga to scowl and turn.
"You have halted." she said flatly like she was announcing a malfunctioning machine.
"We've been circling for hours," Angra complained louder this time, ignoring the passersby who glanced in their direction. "We walked through the tower, the temples, the damn shoreline, and still haven't found the leyline source we're looking for. When clearly, if we'd just gone to Kyoto Station and taken ten minutes to study a municipal ley line map like reasonable beings, we'd have saved ourselves three hours of useless cardio. Do you know what Kyoto Station is, U-Olga? It's Japan's second-largest station building. Let me repeat this again; it's a fifteen-story monolith that houses not just a transport nexus but a shopping mall, a hotel, a movie theater, department store, and several government facilities. All of it under one roof. That's where all the leyline lines intersect in modernity. The concrete temple of modern civilization, filled with a thousand lives every second. But no—gods forbid you walk into a building filled with 'unclean humanity.' So we've been pacing around like lost pilgrims, when the divine scent is concentrated exactly where the humans are."
She narrowed her eyes. "Are you finished?"
"Oh no," he continued, pacing again, gesturing lazily with one hand. "Because we could have taken the train. The train, Ms. Beast Number 7. Not even a special one. Just a normal railway service, with seats, and ventilation, and snack carts. But you—you with your royal spine and apocalyptic ego had to fly half the way and walk the rest, dragging me like some cosmic intern doing spiritual fieldwork under the most insufferable celestial tyrant in recorded memory."
She stepped forward, breath cold, eyes narrowing like razors.
"You speak as if I should tolerate infestation. As if lowering myself into those metal tubes filled with sweat, noise, and the scent of desperation is acceptable. I do not compromise my dignity for efficiency. I do not tolerate being lectured by a walking grudge stuffed into a human corpse."
Angra smirked. "Then perhaps the Sovereign of Earth should learn how to use a map."
She made a sound like she was about to strike him, and he honestly would've welcomed it at that point and give her a beating afterward.
But then he felt it.
A resonance, low and subtle, brushing the back of his mind like fingers on piano keys.
They had reached Shijō-dōri.
Angra's expression darkened slightly as he tilted his head, eyes narrowing. The leyline here was dense. Thicker than it should've been. Ancient and guarded. Old in the way that mountains were old.
"Finally," he murmured, his tone shifting from sarcastic to contemplative as his senses widened. "We're here."
The gates of Yasaka Shrine were before them, proud and vibrant, the crimson-painted wood catching the sun like a divine bloodline. U-Olga stopped beside him, her posture coiling slightly.
"This... feels proper. This is where gods belong." she said calmly, gaze fixed on the honden at the shrine's heart.
He glanced sideways at her, amused.
"Not one of them came out to greet you."
She said nothing.
Yasaka Shrine pulsed with visible leylines beneath its lacquered surface. He was amazed he didn't witness a single shikigami floating under the eaves. The shrine was empty. Or maybe, the shrine chose to appear empty.
Angra stepped beyond the threshold with one hand brushing the wood of the torii like he was acknowledging the local spirits out of obligation. That was the difference between him and his kind; he didn't deny reverence where it was due, but neither did he offer it with sincerity. Reverence was a currency, a relic of civilization, and he had long since traded in that economy for something older. Something more honest.
The leyline pulsed beneath the soles of their feet. It wasn't immediately obvious in the way it might have been in the lands of Magecraft or in the territories of high ritual where the flow of magical energy gushed like molten gold through conduits designed to house it, shaped by centuries of doctrine and human superstition. In contrast, the power coiled deep within the earth like a slumbering dragon, exhaling a breath both sweet and bitter in its pressure.
The leyline was saturated—no, that was the wrong word. "Saturation" would indicate overuse, excess. This was complete. The sort of spiritual density born almost out of sprawling metropolis ley-weaving, but more of old worship. Unspoken reverence etched into ritual and blood. Not magic in the way the West defined it. Something more instinctive and feral.
He crouched, fingers brushing the flagstone at the threshold of the honden, feeling the whisper of the ground itself.
This was similar in the structure of mana. Similar enough to draw upon. It danced along his circuits as he reached for it and then… stabilizing. The sensation was heavier than mana, more physical in its flow, each particle of spiritual energy carried a memory.
The energy struck him the moment he stepped fully within. It wasn't blunt like a divine aura or malignant like demonic prana, still, it was fluid and weaving between space and shadow. Magic, yes. But not the type found in bounded fields or thaumaturgical formulas. This was living. Native. Local.
"You're taking too long." U-Olga said flatly, standing just at the edge of the sacred courtyard. She had already crossed the square, ascending the steps toward the main honden.
He looked up, one brow lifting. "You're welcome to go first, Sovereign. Try not to rupture the soil."
She sneered, and then descended into the energy. There was no ritual to it, no chant needed. She simply opened. Her being unfolded like the petals of a mechanical lotus, and the leyline surged upward as if startled into obedience. The air trembled. Trees at the edges of the shrine rustled. The insects hiding in the cracks of bark grew silent.
"Its essence is rich but unrefined. Not the type meant for a system like mine."
She drew in the power like a vacuum. Greedy. Indiscriminate.
And still… lacking.
Even with all this weight and history, all this saturated presence and ancestral worship, it wasn't enough. Not even nearly. The emptiness inside them both remained a gaping chasm. Their descent and summoning in this world had cost them everything. This was sustenance by scavenging. Not restoration.
Angra stepped beside her and inhaled slowly, drawing the energy inward. He had the patience of one who had long ago ceased hoping for completeness. He absorbed it like a thief gently lifting coin from a purse. No waste. The sensation was strange and foreign. His circuits took it anyway. Twisted it into shape. Let it fill the cracks in his soul like molten lead in old bones.
Angra said nothing for a moment, then exhaled, taking a slow seat on the stone lip of a dry water basin. He dipped his fingers into the well of magic and indulged in it anyway.
"Youki. This is what they call Youki. That's what they call it here. Raw spiritual nature. The base current of the native supernatural. The breath of the land itself was distilled through its children—"
U-Olga made a sound of distaste behind him, not dissimilar to how a queen might regard a servant offering her wine in a cracked goblet.
"It's inelegant."
"It's efficient," Angra corrected, eyes closed, letting the ambient current worm its way into his dying circuits. He could feel the emptiness in his frame. "Nature's piss, if you want to be vulgar about it. Still better than starving."
They didn't have to speak after that. The air around them grew thick with ambient intake. There was no need to drag the power into themselves with violence. It came to them, slow and dense. Power crawled through the earth, through stone, through the old charms tacked onto wood beams by monks who barely knew what they feared. It was the quiet replenishment of beasts who had walked before calendars. Who were given no throne but took the altar anyway.
Angra could feel it now: the leyline's nervousness. Like a creature that knew it was being bled. It recoiled around them, first in protest, now in reverent hesitation. The shrine spirits trembled and did not intervene. No fire kami. No foxes.
Because the leyline knew that what fed from it was no god to be bargained with. It was a conceptual Evil of Man. And Beasts did not ask permission.
"I imagine," Angra said eventually, "that if we sat here long enough, we'd drain the shrine dry and nobody would be able to tell what was worshipped here in the first place. Some fox spirit would come back to find their house hollow and their godhood gone."
"That would be their fault," U-Olga replied. "For being weak. If a creature cannot defend its nest, it has no right to own it."
Angra snorted, half-laughing as he tilted his head skyward.
"And people call me cruel."
A long silence stretched between them again, filled only with the hum of spiritual digestion. A breath. That flicker on the edges of his senses that he might've ignored had it not held intent.
Malice was easy to spot. This was more focused. Coordinated. A perimeter tightening.
He opened his eyes slowly. Looked east.
He felt the pressure bloom on the horizon like a bruise forming beneath the skin of the world.
"Ah," he muttered. "There it is. Took them long enough."
"How many?"
"Difficult to say. Twenty or so. Maybe more. They're masking their auras. Poorly, but intentionally." He tilted his head, the shadows of his tattoos flickering faintly beneath his skin. "I suppose we should feel flattered. Kyoto's protectors don't usually rouse themselves for just anyone siphoning off sacred land."
She looked out toward the city, unimpressed.
"They should have come earlier. I have already taken more than they can replace."
Angra chuckled darkly. "That's what happens when you treat power like it's a meal. You invite the chefs to bring knives. They're supernatural, that much is obvious."
She stepped forward to the edge of the honden steps, arms at her sides, chin high.
"They approach knowing what we are?"
"Doubtful. I imagine we're setting off alarms like a pair of cancerous nodes on the leyline grid." Angra rolled his shoulders, letting the sensation of ambient energy settle beneath his skin. He was still far from full. Barely a third of his strength had returned. The rest would take days, weeks, maybe months, assuming the planet itself didn't turn on them before then. "But they're not wrong to be worried. Even the smell of old youkai blood. Daiyoukai class, probably."
U-Olga's lips curled in distaste. "I was beginning to forget the taste of struggle."
He looked at her sideways, mildly amused. "Careful, Sovereign. We're running on fumes and borrowed offerings. Pick a fight now and you might find yourself crawling back to orbit with your crown dented."
"I do not crawl," she spat. "If they threaten the Earth's future that I envisioned, they will be corrected."
"They'll see it the other way around. We're intruding. Devouring leyline energy. To them, we're invasive."
"As if their opinions matter to US."
"That's the problem with opinions," he mused. "They have this nasty habit of coming attached to swords and claws."
She turned toward him fully now, her eyes glowing faintly behind the illusion that kept her form tethered to humanity. There was fire in her, blistering and barely suppressed. Just will. The raw, uncompromising will of a creature who once sat above every living thing.
"They will bow," she said coldly. "Or burn."
"I suppose we'll see which happens first."
The approaching figures had prompted little in the way of concern within either Beast. For creatures who once had every sin and strain of divinity aligned against them, twenty youkai, even with a daiyoukai among them, was a trivial arrival, if anything. Their spiritual pressures were organized, but that held no significance in the scale of beasts who had once stared down the concept of Armageddon as if it were a bothersome pebble in their boot.
He merely leaned against the crooked base of a rootless sakura tree and exhaled softly out of simple boredom.
Their existence needed fuel. This world, at the very least, seemed like it could still feed monsters.
He tilted his head just enough to get a look at the advancing group through the shimmers of heat rising from the leyline convergence point. At their center was a woman. Golden-haired. Beautiful. Too beautiful for what this world should rightfully allow. And not the virginal, untouchable ideal so many poets had wasted ink describing. No—this woman was mature, powerful, and deeply, viscerally alive. The kind of beautiful that made civilizations crumble because a king said so, the kind of soft-lipped fury that demanded devotion, even as she reminded you it was a borrowed privilege to be in her gaze.
His eyes followed the long, coiled spiral of her golden ponytail, the flare of red tied against her snowy-white coat, and the glint of a golden crown that rested so lightly on her brow that it seemed grown from her skull rather than placed. Shrine maiden attire; ceremonial and traditional, clinging to her like silk to flame.
He found himself thinking, Gods, beings like her really are absurd when they get divine with their aesthetics.
U-Olga followed his gaze and made a sound halfway between disgust and exasperation. "Really?"
"I'm not that distracted," he replied, "just... spiritually aware."
Before she could slap him or complain with one of her usual highborn outbursts, the woman, the daiyoukai, the leader—stepped forward with restrained offense like a matron stepping out to chastise children who'd tracked mud into the shrine.
"You there!" she called out, her voice carrying with practiced spiritual augmentation, ringing clearly despite the soft wind brushing past the hilltop.
"You who are draining the spiritual convergence point without offering any formal invocation or permission, state your intentions."
Ah. The gentle poison of politeness soaked in the authority of someone who knew the land answered to her. There was pride in it, but tempered. Behind it, the spiritual outrage of a creature who likely was the leyline in some partial sense. Angra didn't need something like clairvoyance to tell she was tethered to Kyoto's foundations, possibly its spiritual sovereign.
He stretched deliberately slow, then dusted off his jacket, already scuffed from the soil. "We were hungry," he said, loud enough that all twenty or so of the gathered youkai, with their masks and practiced formations, could hear him. "Not that we expected dinner to come with a hostess."
Some of the tengu shifted, spears lowered slightly. Yasaka, however, did not flinch.
U-Olga, predictably, rolled her eyes. "What my companion means," she said, stepping forward with a haughty tilt of her chin that could have belonged to a certain Roman empress—uhh, emperor, "is that we were recovering. Do forgive the absence of proper etiquette. I wasn't aware this place had spiritual table manners."
Yasaka's smile was tight, polite, even as her eyes narrowed faintly. "This place is sacred. These leylines maintain the balance of Kyoto. They are not a meal for outsiders."
"Then maybe you shouldn't have left your pantry door wide open," Angra muttered again, just loud enough.
The daiyoukai's spiritual presence surged slightly, as if a second heartbeat rose behind her words. "You will answer more clearly, now. State your names. I will not ask again."
U-Olga glanced at him.
He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck, considering the options with the kind of loose disinterest that came from the weary acceptance that this conversation, like most, would spiral into something dumber the longer it was delayed. "Do we give them our True Names?" he asked quietly, not so much out of secrecy, but apathy.
"They asked," she said with a shrug, voice casually imperious. "They might have merit to hear it. If they misunderstand, it's their fault for being primitive."
He blinked at her.
She smiled.
Then, before anyone could object, U-Olga stepped forward and proclaimed aloud, her voice ringing, "I am U-Olga Marie. A Beast of the End. The alien intellect born to be Earth's final god. In your primitive tongue, you may call me the Beast VII That Announces the End."
Silence.
Even the wind quieted, startled.
Yasaka's expression barely shifted, but her brows twitched—just slightly.
Then she turned her eyes to the boy beside her, the one with tangled black hair and a deceptively human slouch.
He gave a thin smile. "Angra Mainyu," he said, hands stuffed in his jacket pockets. "You might recognize it. Old Persian. It means 'Destructive Spirit.' People used to call me the god of darkness. A little melodramatic, sure, but what isn't?"
There was even more confusion, a flicker of remembered lore in her gaze.
Angra's smile widened.
"Don't worry," he said smoothly, tilting his head. "I'm not that Angra Mainyu. Probably."
He didn't wink. That would have been too much. But the mischief in his eyes was unmistakable.
U-Olga snorted.
One of the tengu, a younger-looking crow, cocked his head ever so slightly toward Yasaka, silently asking for command. But she remained still, her expression unreadable save for the glint of offense in her golden eyes.
The names had left their lips with neither grandeur nor gravitas, and perhaps that had made it worse. For beings so audacious to claim themselves as Beasts of the End and Angra Mainyu—one in the voice of a haughty, elegant woman who spoke with the composure of a ruler, and the other from a slouching boy who hadn't even stood up straight when he said it—their lack of ceremonial bearing was an affront in itself. Especially in a place like Kyoto, saturated with history, deference, and tradition layered upon tradition like sediment in a sacred mountain.
Yasaka's brows tensed above her narrowed eyes, and her arms folded beneath the swell of her chest in a way that accentuated the stateliness of her shrine maiden's garb and the authority she bore as the living embodiment of the city's spiritual arteries.
"You are aware, are you not," she began, the sweetness in her tone laced tightly with frost, "that the monikers you speak are not those one wears lightly, and if this is some manner of theater you bring to my gates, I assure you, there are better stages for dramatics than Kyoto's leylines."
"Mm. See, the problem with names, I find, is that they carry far too much baggage for creatures who take them too seriously. You give a starving man a title and expect him to remember it while his gut is empty."
"That is not an answer," Yasaka replied to Angra in displeasure.
"It never is."
U-Olga did not lower herself with banter. Her pride was too crystalline to entertain Yasaka's veiled accusations. "If you doubt, it is only because your comprehension is still confined to the limits of this Earth's superstition. The Beasts are not creatures you welcome into a ledger or index. We are truths you cannot yet categorize. My title was forged in the unraveling of human consequence, not in the shrine records of your archives."
A few of the tengu took an instinctive step back at that, feathers bristling.
"And I," Angra added with a lazy gesture of his hand, as if swatting away a fly, "am the oh-so-call deity of darkness who never wanted to be worshipped in the first place, so I recommend not starting now."
"You speak as though you expect me to be convinced by arrogance alone." Yasaka said with her expression settling into something unreadable but far from amiable. "You trespass upon Kyoto's spirit, absorb her leyline as though it were your own… and offer riddles in return for my patience. If you are gods, then you are very unrefined ones."
"Oh, I agree," Angra muttered with a shrug, "which is why we're asking nicely before I start poking around in your domain more forcefully. That would be unpleasant for everyone, I imagine, though I suspect the idea of 'niceness' isn't a strong currency among the divine either."
"You are consuming something not yours," Yasaka said flatly, "and speaking in cryptic as though I am the one in the wrong for not understanding them."
U-Olga tilted her head. "We are not here to ruin your city or unmake your shrine, as entertaining as it would be to see how fragile such constructs truly are. We are simply... lacking certain details about the world. Or rather, this version of it."
"Ah," Angra drawled. "This part. Right, yes. So. Does the Moonlit World ring a bell?"
Yasaka blinked.
"The what?"
"The Moonlit World," U-Olga's tone was already dipping into condescension. "The network of magical societies, enclaves of mystery, age-old organizations and clandestine towers hiding beneath the fabric of the mundane. Surely even you provincial spirits have heard the term."
"No," Yasaka said simply.
"Really?" Angra muttered, clearly unimpressed. "Then let's be less dramatic and say… the supernatural world. Spirits, gods, devils, angels, that sort of circus."
"Ah." Yasaka's arms unfolded, now shadowed with guarded curiosity. "If that is what you meant… then yes. The Supernatural World is known to us. Though I find it hard to believe you are unaware of it, given the way you're feeding on Kyoto's leyline without effort."
"I am, frankly," Angra said, deadpan, "a walking contradiction. Best not to unravel the whole yarn or you'll find it loops back into itself like some cosmic joke. Which, in my case, it probably is."
U-Olga, by contrast, took the query more seriously. "We are collecting data. Information. Context. Whatever this timeline pretends to call knowledge. We require updated terminology and the geopolitical state of your... world. Moonlit World is what we used in the Age of Gods."
"'Supernatural' makes it sound like a B-grade manga, but I guess time rots language."
Yasaka blinked. Her ears flicked once.
"I'm sorry—are you saying you've been… asleep until now?"
Nope. No, they were not.
"In a sense," Angra drawled with half-lidded eyes and mellow voice. "Think of us like old mold at the back of the fridge. You clean it out and forget it existed, but it doesn't forget you."
"We are," U-Olga confirmed, "and we seek context. Whatever political structure this 'Supernatural world' operates under… we will know of it."
"Enough," Yasaka snapped, her patience fraying, though she still held the air of a matron suppressing the desire to swat an unruly child. "You come seeking knowledge, but offer riddles and titles instead. You speak of forgotten words and judgment and gods who no longer answer their names. Then tell me plainly—what is it you wish to know?"
U-Olga smiled again, sharper this time. "Everything."
The silence extended, broken only by the faintest hum of leyline energy still coiling through the grass like veins of liquid fire. Yasaka inhaled deeply, seeing no way around it, then straightened her posture.
"If you claim ignorance… then I shall offer you clarity. But only once. The world you now stand in is divided, though we prefer to call it 'balanced.' There are many powers that govern it, most invisible to humans, some known to them by story or scripture. Of these, the most prominent, and for centuries the most warring, were the Three Factions born of the Abrahamic religions: Heaven, Underworld, and Grigori. Angels, Devils, and Fallen alike."
Angra raised an eyebrow, they already knew a lot from the four Fallens' memories, but kept pretending to be more interested in a leaf than her words. "Ah yes. The greatest theological soap opera of the post-Age of Gods."
Yasaka gave him a warning glance, but continued regardless.
"Then there are the other pantheons—the Gods of myth who have remained, hidden or otherwise. The Shinto, of which I belong to; the Hindu Devas; the Norse; the Olympians; the Egyptian pantheon, and many others, each with domains they claim and powers they hoard in silence or spectacle."
"And in between all of them," she added, her tone lowering, "are creatures like us. The Youkai. The Dragons. The Spirits and Monsters. Sometimes protectors. Sometimes prey. But always watching."
Suddenly, there were no more words to offer, not at that moment. Ever dignified even in indignation, Yasaka sighed and let her golden gaze slide over the two intruders before her.
Her eyes flashed with finality.
"You may believe your unfamiliarity with our world's rules allows you impunity. But no such ignorance will absolve the act of forcefully draining spiritual energy from the leylines of Kyoto. As its guardian and the presiding Kyuubi, I have a duty. You will be taken into custody. The West Youkai Faction will determine what you are… and whether you should remain."
The tengu behind her responded with wordless movement. Staves twisted in polished hands, spell-scrolls unsealed with the faint crackle of folded ether, and spiritual formulas were already being written into the air, old power that still remained through shrines and rituals and mountains swallowed by clouds. Yasaka has no need to raise her voice.
Angra blinked, but slowly. At this moment, he might be a snake who watches an approaching footstep with idle amusement rather than threat. He did not move, nor make any effort to resist the encroaching spiritual matrix that closed around them.
If anything, he looked vaguely bored, eyes trailing over the calligraphy of a barrier spell being traced in vermillion air before drifting to the shape of a fox tail brushing against the hem of Yasaka's sleeve. Even when being arrested, some things deserved attention.
"Well," he said with the casual drawl of someone reading a tavern menu, "I suppose this is what passes for hospitality around here. Still, I was half-hoping you'd take us in. There's only so much to learn from conversations in forests with armed birds."
U-Olga did not share his enthusiasm. Her amber eyes narrowed with slow-burning disgust, and a twitch of her jaw betrayed the tension behind her sculpted cheekbones. She had already raised a hand to her still-invisible crown, fingers curling as if she would obliterate the offending spells without a second thought, as though to even suggest confinement was an insult etched in divine blood. There was something in her poise, almost ceremonial as this moment was beneath her entirely
"These… primitive beings dare dictate terms to me? To bind me with country charms and rice-paper spells? This is mockery. I have eradicated entire populations for lesser slights."
Angra leaned closer, one hand slipping into his jacket pocket as if looking for a piece of gum or a bullet or a philosophical answer. None of which, to his knowledge, were in there.
He murmured to her from the side of his mouth, dry and snake-like, "Relax. This is valuable. Let them take us in. Think of it as a guided tour with shackles. These creatures have territory, structure, their own political cadence. We're not going to learn a thing standing outside their gates like rejected divinities. You want dominion? First you learn where the throne is. Let the lesser animals think they've caged Beasts."
She did not reply with words, only the sharp flick of her gaze toward him, burning with offended regality and mistrust. But the way she dropped her hand from her crown said more. She would allow this, not because she agreed, but because the game intrigued her now. Even chains could be a strategy. A queen could wear manacles if it led her to the right court.
The tengu, unaware—or conceivably entirely aware—of the tension between the two figures, completed the binding rituals. Threads of Youjutsu, like soft glows of spiritual gauze, wrapped themselves around wrists and shoulders, a mimicry of restraint that had no real bite, not for beings like them. Angra felt the spell press against him like an overeager child's attempt to tie down a thunderstorm with ribbon. The energy was old, ceremonial, tied to the very soul of the mountain gods… but to him, it felt like rain trying to drown the ocean.
"Ah," he exhaled as they began preparing the transference sigils, "touching, really. You even bothered to bind us. I haven't been restrained since I wore a noose made of ideology. Didn't hold either."
One of the older tengu gave him a look of perplexed offense, but Angra's attention was already drifting again. His amber eyes, filled with amusement, slid to Yasaka herself, who had turned to oversee the final coordinates for their teleportation to Urakyoto. Her profile was graceful in the sunset, the strands of her golden hair moving like slow ink strokes down her back, tied into that long, spiraling tail that bounced lightly with her motions. Her smooth hands, moved with that priestess' finesse over a woven paper talisman. She wore power like a second skin—authority and something deeper, something maternal and foxlike beneath the silks. He smiled.
"By the way," Angra said aloud, loud enough for her ears, "you should consider loosening the ribbon on your coat. You breathe better when your chest isn't strangled. Just a humble observation."
Yasaka froze for the barest heartbeat. Her expression did not falter, but her left eyebrow did rise, and a sudden hush seemed to fall over the air like the trees themselves paused to consider the audacity of it. Her golden eyes cut back toward him, lips ever so slightly pursed in that unreadable way women had mastered long before language. She was a woman who had long known what she looked like so there was no blush but there was a glint behind her calm that spoke of tails flicking behind white sleeves and shrines catching fire in accidents no one ever proved.
"If I didn't know better," Yasaka said with all the smooth politeness of a fox preparing to ruin a hunter's year, "I would think you were flirting with your jailer."
"I flirt with death, too," Angra replied, tone dry, "but she doesn't wear heels."
When the spell activated, the forest folded inward, the dimensions twisting into themselves as the leyline gateway opened. Angra let himself fall into the spiraling passage of Urakyoto and into the home of the Youkai Faction. He grinned, glancing once at U-Olga beside him, who looked like she'd just bitten into a lemon wrapped in insolence.
"See? I told you. Field trip."