Prologue
Kazuma and her Kindred movement had grown so much so quickly, that the occupation governments in the north and south both looked to the debased King of Central Koliska to rein in his people. Thanks to this, King Geoffrey agreed to meet with Kazuma and Ayato to see what the fuss was about if nothing else.
They were days away from completing their transition now. The single streak of magenta had spread to erase the black from Ayato’s hair. When he used his magicks, the glowing purple veins covered his entire body, and unless he wore a shift, he appeared as a mouth-less, antlered yokai, and so did Kazuma with her lime green hair. To protect the myth that she was a human incarnation of Tatsumi, Kazuma used saraki shapeshifting to provide a disguise and present a face to the world that was human and unchanged.
They met with the king in his palace at the heart of Bayonheim. His son Prince Richard attended, as well as his wife, Princess Beatrice of Brython, and their young son, Prince James. Ayato was made to attend the meeting with his yokai-ness on full display; antlers, tail, no mouth, and glowing veins for all to see. Kazuma went as her saraki magicks allowed her to appear; as a normal human without a single trace of yokai about her. This way, the humans recoiled in disgust and fear upon seeing Ayato and gravitated towards the “safe” twin. Kazuma presented the people with these stark opposites as a way to introduce the concepts of the neo to Koliska, and it was working perfectly.
“No, you don’t want my followers to back down,” Kazuma declared after the formalities of meeting royalty were satisfied and they could get down to business. “And here’s why; we will reunite Koliska.”
“Reunite Koliska?” Richard scoffed.
Ayato leaned in closer to be sure he didn’t miss a word. He had been made to stand on the other side of the throne room from the rest, but this was the first he was hearing anything about reuniting Koliska.
“Yes, just as the great House of Tatham did in the Era of Civil Wars, we will unite the people under one cause, and together overthrow the Bayanese and Yurdi who encroach on this great land. Koliska will be yours once again, Your Highness.”
Ayato couldn’t see Kazuma’s face from this angle, but he recognized that tone of voice as the same one she used for preaching sermons. It allowed Ayato to imagine the face, full of false convictions.
“How can you unite the people? You’re just a renouncer,” Richard shot back.
“I’m not just a renouncer,” Kazuma corrected. “I am an incarnation of Tatsumi the Kishin God come to this world to free the people and restore the proper balance. And I’ll tell you how but it must not leave this room.”
Kazuma paused here until King Geoffrey asked, “What are you talking about? Continue.”
“First, I will die,” Kazuma bowed slightly as if it were a great public service, “by Yurdi hands, of course. This will free my tama to take on its true Kishin form, and it will stir the hearts of my followers, who will rise up against those who harmed me. My followers are ordinary people, foot soldiers, but they are many. Their numbers will be enough to overthrow the Yurdi in the south and the Bayanese in the north. Koliska will be united once again within a few years of my death, and, of course, you will reign supreme, My Liege.”
Of course! Kazuma only needed to fake her death, and then she would be free to live her life as a yokai.
“Why would your death be enough to make the people rise up?” Richard scoffed.
“Fear.” Kazuma gestured back to Ayato, “My followers fear the loathsome creature my brother has become, wallowing in his sin, but they know that the balance that exists between us keeps Ayato in a neutral, harmless state. A cautionary tale and nothing more. However, once I am gone, the balance that keeps Ayato in check will be destroyed, and he will be free to wreak havoc on the hearts and tama of good men and women everywhere. My followers fear this, and they will begin to see Ayato’s evils lurking behind every corner; especially present in the hearts of their Yurdi and Bayanese oppressors. The people will rise up in the name of righteousness and all that is good to root out the evil and restore the balance.”
Yes, they were being conditioned to do exactly that, Ayato realized.
“All you have to do is kill me and blame the Yurdi,” Kazuma reasoned, “and the rest will simply fall into place.”
“I’m taking James out of here,” Beatrice declared, lifting up the three-year-old boy. “You may continue the discussion without me. This is not something for a young boy’s ears.”
She hurried from the room with the young prince, not risking to meet Ayato’s eyes. The boy did, with the daring and wonder of a small child. He even smiled. Ayato smiled back, making his eyes shimmer all the colors of the rainbow to the young prince’s delight.
Now with the human gone from the room, it was time to get down to business. [I’m not going to let you do this.] Ayato projected his thought-speech to all those present in the room. [I’ve been silent for too long. What you’re doing isn’t right.]
[Ayato, now is not the time to get brave,] Kazuma glowered.
No, it was the perfect time. These men were not her followers. Ayato shifted to hide the most extreme parts of his yokai side. “I’m not going to stay silent.” He crossed the room to be closer to them, “Not until I’ve stopped you. This isn’t right, and you know it.”
Kazuma smiled wide. That was the moment Ayato realized that he had played the wrong hand. Kazuma had been waiting to hear him say those exact words. Somehow, it played into her plan.
She wheeled back around to her royal audience. “You see, even my brother believes my martyrdom can reunite Koliska.”
Not again. Ayato stopped in his tracks. When would he learn to keep his mouth shut? Kazuma always twisted his words. The king was agreeing with Kazuma now. If Ayato the Adversary didn’t want Kazuma to do this, then it would really work to reunite Koliska.
And that was all it took. Ayato slipped away while they were distracted with their planning. He needed to start making plans of his own, away from Kazuma's influence. He had to stop reacting and start doing if he was going to get ahead of this thing.
Within a few hours, it was done. Kazuma was dead from an arrow shot through the heart. Of course, she wasn’t dead dead. Ayato knew her presence was still there and that their magick twin link hadn’t been broken, but she was dead as far as the Kindred and Koliska were concerned.
On the day of their transition, Ayato watched from the shadows as the Kindred followers laid Kazuma to rest. They placed her in a mausoleum cut from granite, which had been donated to the Kindred by the king. It sat at the center of the city and there were plans to build a large shrine around it.
Inside the stone casket, hidden from the mourners, Kazuma transitioned first, triggering Ayato’s transition. First, the intense dizziness hit him hard, drove Ayato to his knees, but the head rush passed, taking with it any last remaining restrictions on his magicks, placed there by his human side. This was followed by calmness, a sense that everything was as it should be.
[I really won’t let you get away with this,] Ayato promised, projecting his thoughts to his sister.
[Yes, please do try to stop me,] came the reply from inside the mausoleum. [I’m looking forward to your attempts.]
There was a commotion among the Kindred followers closest to the mausoleum. Kazuma’s body lifted up out the casket they had carried into the tomb and it floated out of its resting place. As she ascended towards the sun, her arms were raised, but her head lolled forward.
“She is ascending to the Makai!” Philip, one of the chosen six, declared. “Her full body must go to the other world so that she can be freed from her human shell and take her place as a true Kishin.”
The crowd of thousands dropped to their knees in prayer. They couldn’t see it since human eyes can’t look directly at the sun, but as soon as Kazuma had lined up with the glowing orb, she swiped her fingers and disappeared from the sky. It must have seemed to them that the sun Kishin himself had welcomed Kazuma to the Makai.
“How nice of you to come to my funeral,” Kazuma stepped out from the other side of the portal, right next to Ayato. “Now that was a good show. Have you ever seen them pray so fervently?”
Ayato whipped around to strike his sister, but Kazuma had stepped back into another portal. She was gone. Ayato closed his eyes and used his other senses to search for her. The other side of the portal seemed to be in Bayan.
He didn’t waste time wondering why Bayan and took off after her. Ayato stepped through his portal on time to witness Kazuma, standing over a young kaji woman in transition. A baby wailed in the crib inches from where they stood.
Kazuma plunged her dagger hand into the woman's chest, yanking free her tama and then shattering it between her claws. The other kaji died instantly. Ayato finally recalled her name as she dropped, a sack of meat and bones, onto the ground. Chinatsu. She had been one of the ten kaji children who had escaped the Ankoku with them.
Ayato dove forward at the new impossibly fast speeds to which he was capable of reaching to rescue the infant. He grabbed the baby, licked and swiped, and was gone through a portal before Kazuma could stop him. Now what?
He felt a familiar presence nearby and went towards it. Ryoma. Though nearby was an understatement; he had been on the other side of the Bayanese continent.
He found Ryoma standing on a rock, overlooking a deep valley that stretched for miles and miles. He had two years left until beginning his transition as he was younger than Ayato, but he cast his magicks out over the valley, searching intensely. The effort left a sheen of sweat against his skin.
“What’s going on?” he demanded the second the portal had closed. “Two of our kind have just vanished.”
“Take the baby and hide,” Ayato thrust the child into Ryoma’s arms. “I’ll explain later.”
Ryoma caught Ayato by the hand as he passed him the baby and looked him dead in the eye. “This is Kazuma’s doing, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” It stung deeper than he could have ever thought possible to say that one word. “And my own inaction.” Ayato threw his senses wide and locked on to Kazuma. “I’ll be back when I can.”
They both winced at the hole that was left when another kaji tama was extinguished. This one had been fully through her transition.
No time to waste. Ayato leaped through the portal to the cozy cottage home where the kaji had just been murdered. Shimmering aqua magicks lingered around the ceiling. Kazuma stood with Brooke, one of the chosen six, encouraging her to touch the magicks. Being only human, the power in the magicks mesmerized her, called out to her. She stretched her fingers up towards the ceiling.
“No!” But Ayato was still too late.
The second her fingers brushed up against the mist of magicks, they clung to Brooke, drawing into her body. Kazuma threw Ayato aside and trapped him with the wind against the wall. She plunged Brooke’s hand back into the aqua mist, funneling the magicks into her body faster. Then Kazuma removed her tama, tainted in aqua but still mostly white, and sloshed it around in her mouth.
Ayato felt the tama stabilize, but Kazuma was drawing the magicks further and further inside of it. Brooke was not an okara, yet she was transitioning into a yokai from coming into contact with such potent magicks. Ayato could only watch in disbelief as a streak of aqua appeared in her hair.
“You’re going to make them yokai,” Ayato realized. That was what the chosen six had been chosen for. “You’re killing the few of us who remain to turn humans into yokai?”
Kazuma gingerly removed the brightly shining aqua gem from her mouth and placed it back inside Brooke. “These will be yokai I can trust,” she replied. She turned Brooke towards Ayato, who was still trapped on the wall. “Why don’t you have some fun with your new magicks?”
Ayato had been using his magicks to wedge himself free. He could break free now, but he wanted Kazuma to move on first to his next intended victim so he could follow. “I should have stopped you before it got this far.”
“Tatsumi, Aoto, and Reiki, you’re thick,” Kazuma rolled her eyes. “You still haven’t realized it?”
“Realized what?”
“I was compelling you, you dolt.” She and Brooke shared a laugh. “I didn’t want you to screw up my plans. I was using magicks to keep you from acting against me.”
Ayato’s heart sank and he lost his grip on the magicks pinning him to the wall. “What?”
“Why do you think you’ve just now finally started trying to do something?” Kazuma mocked. “That’s too funny, but I do need to get going now. Have fun, you two.”
Kazuma vanished to another part of Bayan. Ayato forced aside the hurt and betrayal to deal with later and broke free of the trap. Before Brooke could try anything, he was off after Kazuma again.
More babies, two-year-old twins this time. Ayato popped into the nursery where they slept and made off with one on each hip as two more kaji tama were put out. There were only four kaji remaining besides Ryoma, himself, and the three babies he’d saved. All four of those remaining were in transition. Ayato wanted to save them, too, but he needed to take care of these little ones first.
Where could he hide these twins?
In plain sight.
Ayato found himself outside an orphanage in Bayan. It was perfect. Now to make them appear to be human.
He told the twins to stand very still and close their eyes. They could barely speak a single word that wasn’t baby babble. Once their eyes were closed, Ayato reached his hand into the first twin’s chest to seal his tama. He would place a cap on his magicks that would keep them at an acceptable, human level until it was time for his transition. It should be enough to disguise him from Kazuma for now.
The three remaining kaji passed in one fell swoop. They must have been living together. Ayato couldn’t ignore the hole anymore. The chasm had been torn too large. He sat back on his heels for a moment. Ryoma had gone off the grid with the baby, but the others were all gone. Alone. All the warmth had been sucked out of the world.
Two tiny little arms wrapped around him. Ayato snapped out of it. The other twin, whose tama he hadn’t sealed yet, was giving him a hug. Her brother was starting to cry. Could they feel the void, too? He put his arms around her tiny body.
Kazuma was coming.
Ayato rang the orphanage bell and left the twin with the bound tama on the doorstep. He lifted the other one up and ran through another portal. He could reunite the twins later once he’d had a chance to seal this girl’s tama, too. For now, one of them was safe but the other wasn’t. He couldn’t lead Kazuma straight to them.
He went back to Koliska, hoping the distance would buy him the few seconds he needed to seal this twin’s tama, too. He asked the girl to close her eyes again, but separating the twins had been a mistake. She was crying too hard to care what he wanted her to do.
“We’ll go back, I swear, please just close your eyes,” Ayato felt a bit silly pleading with a two-year-old.
“Get away from that child!” A brave woman knocked him over the head with her laundry basket.
A second woman joined in, walloping him with her basket, while the third scooped the bawling child up and whisked her to safety.
“No, wait!” Ayato took to the air to escape the fury of their wicker baskets. One of the hazards of being yokai in a human world was that humans always assumed yokai were out to hurt them. In their minds, they were rescuing a crying baby girl from a big, bad yokai. “You don’t understand!”
Kazuma caught up with him at that moment and plowed straight into Ayato. Their heads knocked together as Kazuma pushed Ayato through a second portal waiting behind him. Ayato landed hard on his back. The wind escaped his lungs, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe in. Kazuma half-climbed and half-fell out of the box in which Ayato had landed.
Ayato felt funny. Like his eyes couldn’t stay open. He tried to lift his arm to the edge of the box so he could pull himself up. His arm fell clumsily, heavily back onto his chest. He couldn’t sit up. His head was too heavy to lift.
“Iron box.” Kazuma shook her head against her own sense of drowsiness. “I’ll be taking this.”
Philip and William, yokai now thanks to Kazuma’s killing spree, steadied Kazuma while she reached into the iron box. Through half-mast eyes, Ayato watched helplessly as Kazuma removed his tama.
“I’ll be keeping this somewhere safe, brother, don’t you worry.” Kazuma regained some of her balance once her hand was out of the box.
Kaji were so vulnerable to iron, it was one of the reasons they had moved to the Ankoku in the first place. Ayato couldn’t get out of the box without help, not surrounded like this. He couldn’t go back for the girl and reunite her with her twin brother. Or... is that what he had been doing? His mind was so full of fog.
“I’ll be going by Cameron from now on,” Kazuma informed him. “You’ll go by Avery, not that you’ll have much contact with anyone down here.”
King Geoffrey leaned over the box to have a look. “You’re sure he can’t escape? It seems like an ordinary box to me.”
“It’s not ordinary,” Kazuma assured him. “Close the lid.”
Ayato managed to part his lips but the effort of making sound and forming words was too much for him. Sleep. He just needed to sleep for a little while and then he’d be all right. His eyes drifted shut. The lid closed with a heavy clang. The darkness was the perfect place for a nap.
Just a little nap.
“What do we do with him now?”
“Leave him. He wouldn’t be going anywhere for a long time.”
