Scott McGough - Outlaw:Champions of Kamigawa

"Who has?" Toshi said. "Me, or her?"

"Both of you."

Toshi shook his head. "My trouble started with moonfolk. The kami didn't start popping up until after that." He narrowed his eyes and took a step back. "You wouldn't know anything about the moonfolk who are after me, would you, Mr. Smiling Moon Spirit?"

Mochi grinned guiltily. "I do, a little. But trust me, those snobs wouldn't deign to scheme with me. They pray to the larger spirit, the moon in all its guises."

"And I've been seeing a lot of crescent moons lately. In the sky, on the scales of angry kami, around the necks of soratami. You'd better come clean, little spirit, because you're not very convincing."

"The moonfolk are actively attempting to colonize the nezumi under their control. You interrupted one of their initial outings. Apart from trying to warn you after they surprised you at home, I've had nothing to do with your current list of troubles." "Then what do we have to talk about? My problem is with soratami."

"I'm getting to it. You have to start at the beginning. Stop interrupting." The little kami resumed pacing. "Where was I?"

"You were talking about the kami attacks." Michiko stepped away from the wall.

"Ah, yes. Something you have become keenly interested in lately."

"I am seeking the cause of the Kami War, Mochi. If you answer no other questions for me today, answer that one. The killing and strife must stop."

Princess Michiko continued to impress and amuse Toshi with her innocence and drive. You had to be rich and pure of heart to be so concerned about others. He surreptitiously checked her wrists. Another few days and she'd work free of those ropes.

"Patience, Princess. Right. Now, the soratami have been working to expand their influence over the rest of Kamigawa. They've also become increasingly active in your father's kingdom. Twenty years ago, your father did something terrible. Me and the soratami… my soratami, who have nothing to do with Toshi… have been working to undo it ever since."

"On the night I was born," Michiko said haltingly, "they say my father performed a ritual."

"Indeed. And the ritual performed in conjunction with your birth made a great crime possible."

"Was he going to sacrifice her?" Toshi heard his question bounce around the inside of the cave as Michiko and Mochi stared at him.

"What? That would be terrible, wouldn't it? That's all I'm saying."

"The crime was my birth," Michiko said bitterly. "I was an event to him, not a child. I might as well have been a solstice or an eclipse."

"No, Princess." Mochi's face was earnest. "Never. You are as important to Konda as anything in this world." "You are kind, but that is simply untrue. He keeps the most important thing behind locked doors and never strays from it."

"There is so much you do not understand, Michiko. Here. Let me show you."

"How can you-"

But Michiko never finished her question. Instead, Mochi opened his mouth wide and the interior of the cave once more disappeared in a blinding flash of moonlight.

The light receded and Michiko found herself floating below a mass of yellow clouds. Below her, the Daimyo's tower sulked like a tombstone. She was not light, as she had been in Mochi's previous vision, but possessed her own shape. She could feel her arms and legs, the weight of her robe against her skin, but she could not see herself, not even her eyelids.

A break in the clouds formed, and Michiko heard

Mochi's voice whispering in her mind.

Behold the night of your birth. I regret that I cannot show you your mother one last time. Our opportunity is limited and there is something you must see.

Michiko agreed, and though she did not speak or think the assent, her phantom form was drawn to the top of the tower all the same.

She passed through the heavy white stone and a dozen or more retainers without resistance. The men and women of the tower did not register her presence in the slightest. Ghost-like, she drifted down the halls, up the stairs and into the locked chamber where twenty years hence, Daimyo Konda would spend all his time.

Her father was there, looking as he always had. His face was slick with sweat and he was grinning victoriously. A bearded man in Minamo robes was kneeling beside a brazier of blue fire. Takeno kneeled beside the brazier, chanting and hurling gold dust into the fire. A soratami stood opposite the wizard, striding back and forth as he chanted. His ears were loose and trailed behind him, the strange markings on his flesh migrating from his skull to the tips of his lobes.

Why is there a moonfolk here? Michiko wondered.

As I said, Mochi's voice answered. We've been trying to undo this since it was done. Your father would not be dissuaded, so we decided to participate in order to keep the situation manageable, and in case something went wrong.

"Come," Konda intoned. "Come to me now, my child."

The air above the brazier split and a thin seam of energy seeped through. The dazzling blue-white line intensified. The ends of the line withdrew into the center and formed a blazing spot of blinding energy.

"Come!"

The light crackled, contracted, and then burst, flooding the room with a sheet of luminous white. Michiko blinked reflexively, but she maintained a clear and interrupted view.

Her father and his cohorts were frozen, statues on a field of white. The center of the white void was open and swirling like a rapidly draining basin. Through the hole, Michiko could see something vast, glimpses of an alien world.

This is a window into the spirit realm, Mochi's voice said. No mortal, not even the ones in this room on this night, has ever seen what you now see.

Michiko floated forward, hypnotized, intoxicated by the swirling vortex. She reached out a phantom hand and broke the plane between the kami's realm and her father's.

Watch closely, Princess. And don't forget to come back.

Spirits swam and soared across the colorful emptiness, not in shapes but in vectors. There was a clear sense of motion, but no sign of bodies in motion. Michiko sensed action, but she could not distinguish any actors. It was like a thousand gusts of wind across a shapeless expanse of clouds and wavering light.

Then, the entire churning mass trembled. She had the oddest sensation of being a fish in a bowl while someone was tapping the glass. The fabric of the world around her seemed to stretch and collide with itself, trembling from to some tremendous external impact.

"Come!" her father's roar rippled across the surface of the spirit world. A million strands of force flowed back toward the rift behind Michiko, gathering from every direction into a funnel shape.

The funnel continued to swirl and collect strands of motion to itself. Michiko was reminded of the dregs in the bottom of a teapot-the bits of leaf and stem were a part of the brew, but if you stirred fast enough, you could easily separate them into a column at the center.

The swirling funnel grew thicker, more dense. It had accreted so much spirit energy that it was becoming physically solid. Michiko saw parts of the spinning mass harden, break off, and be churned back into to vortex. Soon the entire thing would congeal like cooling wax, set forever in the shape of a disk.

"Come!"

The disk turned on its axis. It oriented on the portal and drifted toward it.

Everything but the disk stopped, as if the kami had together abandoned their own pursuits and had paused to watch. There was resistance between the disk and the portal, a current of force that flowed to keep the disk in place. Her father's call was too powerful, however, and the disk surged on like a fish against the current.

A terrifying, outraged growl rumbled across the entire realm. Michiko had never imagined any sound could be so primal, so threatening. Terrified, she tried vainly to turn away, to flee before whatever made that sound appeared before her.