Scott McGough - Outlaw:Champions of Kamigawa

The substance of the spirit realm changed. The disk was now almost at the gleaming portal, but the air, the light, the very space around it had changed. It expanded and contracted like a lung, squeezing the world and Michiko too.

On the horizon, a new sun flared to life. It was joined by a second fiery orb, then a third and fourth. Stars began bursting to life in pairs, and when they had formed a line that reached all the way across the realm, they began to blink.

Eyes, Michiko realized. The paired stars were eyes in some vast and unknowable field of faces.

In the terrible light from those eyes, she saw the edges and outlines of nostrils, lips, and huge, savage teeth. Her heart froze. Whatever her father was doing had roused something unimaginably old and incomprehensibly vast. As multiple pairs of eyes surged forward to the portal, Michiko saw that their fire would fill the entire spirit realm long before the heads came close enough to touch the disk. A single one of those stars was enough to char an entire world, and there were more than a dozen coming for her now.

A pair of hands plunged through the portal and sank into the substance of the whirling disk. Michiko recognized the thin, powerful hands of her father as they dug in and hauled the disk halfway through the portal.

Michiko turned back and saw that all the visible horizon was now filled with star fire. It was drawing closer all the time.

Go, now, little Princess. You've seen what you came to see. To stay longer is to invite real danger.

Michiko's paralysis broke and though she had no sense of control over her motion, she willed herself to the portal as hard and as fast as she could. Behind her, the wave of fire was picking up speed, and she heard a louder version of the outraged growl, now a chorus of six or more snarling together.

She hit the portal just as the last edge of the disk vanished through it. Michiko was blinded once more by the trip from spirit realm to her world, and the star-eyed horror's furious sounds lingered in her ears.

How had her father summoned this much power? Even with the moonfolk and the Minamo master, it seemed impossible that the Daimyo could change the rhythm of the spirit world and distill part of it down to a form he could manipulate.

Then she was back in the chamber, listening to her father exult. He clapped Takeno on the back, he clasped the wizard's hand, he bowed to moonfolk on the other side of the brazier.

The blue flame had gone out. In the air above the smoking metal bowl hung a circular mass of roughly carved stone. The form of a small, scaled creature was etched onto the stone disk's face, curled and stunted in the fetal position.

"Gentlemen," her father said. "We have just changed the future."

"Long live the Daimyo!" Takeno erupted. "Long live Konda!"

The wizard took up the chant, and after a few rounds the moonfolk joined in as well. Konda himself stood below the smoking statue, staring up at it intently through wide eyes. As Michiko watched, her father's pupils grew fuzzy and diffuse. They began to migrate back and forth across his eye sockets like a pair of searchlights searching for a ship in distress.

Michiko felt like she ought to scream. Instead, she said a small prayer to Justice, pleading with Towabara's patron spirit to spare her people from the consequences of Konda's crime.

On the wall of the chamber, the mural depicting Justice began to weep. Unable to close her eyes, unable to shed tears herself, Michiko could only stare as the Daimyo's men celebrated, Konda himself gaped in awe, and a princess's love for her father faltered under the weight of his actions.

Toshi started, almost losing his balance. He steadied himself against the cave wall. Mochi had trapped him in Michiko's point of view, so he felt everything she felt and learned what she learned. Disoriented, he focused on sorting his thoughts out from hers.

Michiko stood, eyes downcast, her arms clenched around herself. Her eyes were dry, but her expression was beyond sadness.

Mochi was next to her. He placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I am sorry, Princess. But that is the answer you seek. Your father dared to do what could not be done: he invaded the spirit world and captured a kami. And not just an everyday kami, but a major one. No simple well spirit or household benefactor here. He has imprisoned an essential being and is harnessing its power for his own ends."

Michiko dully raised her head. "And this is the secret of the tower." There was no inquiry to the princess's voice, only resignation. "The thing that he values most of all."

"He values you, too Princess, even if it's only because you are tied to that thing. It was created on the same night you were, born into this world only because you were. You are not the cause of the Kami War, Michiko. You are not the crime. Your birth was merely the opportunity."

Toshi's ears perked up. "What do you mean she's 'tied to' it?"

"Through the ritual. Her birth helped create sympathetic magic that brought the kami into this world. She's like the counterweight on a pan scale. The other side is only balanced, only stable, because Michiko exists as its opposite."

"And what happens to the kami statue if something happens to Michiko?"

Mochi shrugged. "I don't rightly know. Opinion is divided on the subject."

"The snakes said their kami want her dead."

Mochi wrinkled his nose. "Yes. That fits with their patron spirit's attitude. It sees the crime as a terrible imbalance in the natural order. To restore that order, it would gladly sacrifice an innocent life."

Toshi crouched down and pulled a handful of straw from his sleeping mat. "What about you, Mochi? Where do you stand?" As he spoke, the ochimusha folded pieces of straw into the same kanji character and dropped them one by one to the floor.

"I am here to help, as I said. I do not support action against the Princess."

"And what do you get out of it?"

"I am a lighthearted spirit, by nature." Mochi smiled his dazzling smile. "The strife of the war is painfully ugly to me. I prefer to be invoked by lovers and drunkards on a fine night out, not by soldiers cursing me for more light to kill by."

Toshi glanced at Michiko, who still wore the same shocked expression.

"What a pant-load," Toshi said. "Are you buying any of this, Princess? Because I don't believe the kami do anything for purely altruistic reasons. Nobody does. Right now, all we've got is a convincing illusion and this swollen little bladder's word. I say we make him give us some straight answers before we trust him."

"We?" Mochi raised an eyebrow. "But if it's straight answers you want, I stand ready. Ask away."

"Why'd you send me those portents? They led me to danger, not out of it."

"I was trying to get you to go into hiding. How was I to know the ogre would send you right out again, straight to the place I wanted you to avoid?"

Toshi paused, unmollified. "Why are the moonfolk after me?" "They hate for anyone to know what they're doing. It pierces the veil of mystery they've spent so long building up. When you stumbled onto them, and then escaped, it became more than an insult. They're looking to get even on behalf of the whole species."

The ochimusha casually inspected his fingernails. "How did Kobo die?"

"You already know. And if that's not the truth, I'll eat your sword with a spoon."

"Who can I trust?" Michiko stepped forward, drawing both Mochi and Toshi's attention. The small blue kami smiled.

"Him," he pointed at Toshi. "So long as you choose your words carefully and get a solemn promise out of him."

"Who can't she trust?"

Mochi turned back to Toshi. "Anyone who tries to take her to the Minamo Academy. There is far more going on this world than I could ever explain or you could ever grasp. There are plots within plots, conspiracies within conspiracies. Many of the wizards are close to panic now that the Kami War has spilled out of the Araba. They know what happened on the night of her birth. They will do anything to study her in the hopes of determining a way to nullify that act."