Chapter 83 - mmm

𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝟒. 𝒀𝒂𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒂 𝒏𝒐 𝑶𝒓𝒐𝒄𝒉𝒊

.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.​

The black tsurugi woke in Kuroe's hands, but not with a polite glow that usually preceded some noble little sign from the heavens. It woke through violence. One instant, it was only a weight in her grip dragged up from mud and lake-rot, the next, the recoil blasted through her fingers, up her elbows, and into every small bone in her body. The shock of it rattled her skull and deeper too, somewhere that did not feel entirely attached to a ten-year-old body in a torn white yukata drowning under a monster.

Pain hit the slit on her forehead, too much to fit into one life, and for one blink, she wasn't even sure she was still underwater or that she was still herself. Her eyes squeezed shut on instinct. Opened—

—and she was standing and existing badly in white.

The space around her was vast and mercilessly bright, completely white with no ceiling and walls, no horizon she could measure. Just white, white, white, all the way into forever.

Kuroe looked down; her hands were covered in blood, wet with it. It streamed over her fingers, down her wrists, and hit the floor in quick red taps that spread around her bare feet. Her own breath caught in her throat as she saw the tsurugi, the same black tsurugi.

It was buried in the center of her chest.

Kuroe blinked hard, but no pain came. She raised her head—

—and there, standing at a distance in the white, was Shirae. No, well, yes? Mostly. Kuroe would have known that white hair anywhere, and those pale violet eyes too, the sort that always looked like forgotten winter. But this Shirae was much older, Oba-adjacent but patient and exhausted by the decades. Her face still held that same Shirae-blankness, but she was not alarmed by the amount of blood pouring from Kuroe's chest. That was frankly offensive.

Kuroe's first instinct, even while some smaller practical corner of her remembered she was probably still underwater under a giant serpent and ought perhaps to prioritize that, was to march straight over there and demand why Shirae was standing around looking resigned instead of concerned about the sword in Kuroe's chest and the general inconvenience of all this.

Then Kuroe's eyes shifted, and to Shirae's left stood a young man.

White hair and impossible blue eyes that made it seem like he had never once been contradicted in his life. He wore a black kanmuri and a white kariginu as he stood beside older-Shirae with one hand tucked inside his sleeve and the expression of a man mildly disgusted by a bug.

His gaze landed on Kuroe, superior and vaguely revolted. Then his eyes met hers properly, and the bastard—

The white-haired, blue-eyed bastard—

He lifted one long sleeve to half-cover his mouth and tilted his head, blinked, then smirked, small and private, as if the two of them shared a joke and the joke was Kuroe.

Oh. Oh, Kuroe hated him at sight with the full purity of a first impression that circled all the way back into fate.

Then she blinked—

—and lakewater filled her mouth again.

Back, and under again, under the great scaled belly of Yamata no Orochi, trapped in water and sickness and pressure, with the tsurugi still locked in her hand as if her fingers had forgotten how to let go. Fine. Whatever that had been, that older-Shirae, that hateful blue-eyed peacock in white, the blood, the chest-stabbing, all of it, could wait.

First things first: do not drown.

Kuroe opened her eyes against the sting and looked around wildly. Water, mud, the writhing roof of Yamata no Orochi's body overhead, light torn by waves and scales; her lungs were already screaming, and her chest cramped.

No air and not enough time. But she had the tsurugi, so she would use the tsurugi. Simple. That was a lie, obviously; nothing was simple, but saying it in her head helped a little.

Kuroe planted both bare feet in the sucking muck at the lakebed and shoved upward. The movement that followed was pathetic, and she got nowhere near as far as she wanted because the water dragged at her and the current knotted around her legs. Panic made her body stupid and small as she kicked and reached, only to drift closer to the underside of Orochi without actually reaching the place she needed.

Her lungs spasmed as water pushed in.

Not yet, not yet—

Kuroe raised the black tsurugi with both hands and poured everything she had left into it. Panic; panic was plentiful. Cursed energy ripped up out of her center and fed the blade; the tsurugi answered at once, eagerly and with a feedback so smooth it startled her. For such an ancient, evil-looking thing, it fit her hands too well, as if it had been waiting for someone exactly her size and exactly this desperate.

Underwater, in slow and horrible suspension, Kuroe swung once. The blade did not cut in the ordinary way. There was no drag through the water, no resistance where she expected it. The tsurugi moved, yes, but something else moved with it, as if the sword had convinced the world to split where she pointed. A slash opened above her, an invisible line where reality forgot how to stay attached to itself, and the water over her head parted around it.

The slash went on. Up; forward; up again.

It struck the soft underside of Yamata no Orochi and opened a wound there the length of Kuroe's own body.

At first, nothing happened. Then the saika convulsed, and the entire lake went mad. From the split belly poured a liquid thicker than blood and blacker than mud, pitch-dark, heavy, and oily, spilling out in a cloud that stained the water around her. Yamata no Orochi thrashed, and its thrashing turned the whole lake into fists. The currents reversed as mud exploded upward and scales moved overhead.

Kuroe flailed ungracefully and unheroically, like a child drowning under a god, which was, unfortunately, exact. Still, the tsurugi remained idiotically clenched in her fist.

The current caught her and yanked as Yamata no Orochi's pain churned the lake into large spirals. Kuroe, coughing up water inside water, clawed for anything that was not the center of the lake. A glimpse of lighter water, maybe. Or a shallower pull. Or a bank.

Yes. There.

She kicked, then dragged, lost ground, then found it again. Her knee hit mud first, then her shin, and then both hands. The tsurugi stabbed into the lakebed by instinct and held as Kuroe used it to haul herself forward through sludge and reeds while another gulp of black-fouled water went down her throat and lit her lungs on fire.

Finally, air.

Her face broke the surface near the edge, and she coughed and gagged and dragged herself onto the low muddy shore. She rolled once onto one elbow and coughed up more black water and lake silt. Then she coughed again. Again. Each breath scraped against her lungs and throat, and she could not feel her legs correctly. Her head was a bell somebody had struck from the inside, and when her eyes focused, they fell straight to the black tsurugi still in her hand.

The blade was wrapped in cursed energy, blue-black; it climbed from the hilt into her hand, up her wrist, under her wet sleeve. Kuroe stared as the veins beneath her skin changed color from blue to deeper blue, from deep blue to almost black near the hand gripping the blade.

It was as if the tsurugi's own color was entering her, filling her. Ink dropped directly under her skin.

Kuroe's head swam as the world tilted a little, and for one horrible moment, she thought the tsurugi was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She wanted to swing it again, wanted—violently—to feel that cut tear through the world one more time. She wanted to open the serpent again and watch more of that black flood pour out. She wanted to see how much black liquid a saika could lose before it stopped moving. She wanted to color the whole lake with it.

Wanted.

Wanted.

Wanted—

A wave slammed into her from behind and pitched her face-first farther onto the bank.

Kuroe ate mud and algae; this saved her. The shock of filth in her mouth knocked the trance sideways as she gagged and scrambled up onto hands and knees just as Yamata no Orochi thrashed again out in the lake. Enough. Enough admiring cursed weapons. She still had the very inconvenient problem of dying.

So, Kuroe shoved herself upright.

Outside the water, the tsurugi looked even more absurd; it was almost as long as she was, and yet in her hands it felt wrong. No child should have been able to wield it, no child should have been able to lift it one-handed while half-drowned. But she had no time to dwell on this because a voice tore through the wind.

"Kuroe!"

Shirae.

Kuroe snapped her head toward the sound so fast her wet black hair slapped across her face and into her mouth; she spat it out and shoved it aside in time to see Shirae.

A small white shape running on the far side, on her altar, and toward the bank. One of Yamata no Orochi's heads smashed down onto Shirae's altar and exploded it into stone. Shirae threw herself forward a breath before impact, hit the rock, rolled in a blur of white sleeves and skinned knees, then came up again somehow upright, somehow still clutching the remaining talismans in her hands.

Kuroe saw a look on Shirae's face she had never seen before: determination.

"Kuroe!" Shirae shouted again.

Kuroe found herself properly at last. "Shirae! I'm here!" She ran too, black tsurugi in hand and vision still swaying, feet slipping as she followed the curve of the shore.

Behind them, in the middle of the lake, Yamata no Orochi kept thrashing; its eight heads roared in overlapping agony and rage, a sound that stabbed into the ears, as waves of water mixed with that same pitch-black fluid hammered the shore. Every time one struck, it hit the girls up to the waist, forcing them sideways and knocking their steps crooked, shoving them into stumbles and desperate recoveries. Then the waves smashed outward against Kaneko's barrier, making the black dome shudder one strike from splitting.

That damn liquid. Kuroe had spat out plenty, but she still tasted it in her throat and in her lungs. It made her feel hot and filthy.

After a long run, they were almost there, almost close enough to touch halfway between the broken altars, near where Omi's central altar had become rubble and blood, and what remained of Omi lay among it all.

Kuroe saw Shirae's face clearly just as Shirae's eyes found her. Relief crossed her face, and then a small smile.

"Kuroe—" Shirae breathed.

One of the saika's heads crashed down between them. The impact blew mud, water, shattered stone, and cursed energy in every direction.

Kuroe and Shirae both jumped backward at the same time, survival instinct guiding them as the serpent's jaws bit deep into the bank between them, and the detonation of its cursed energy knocked both girls off balance. Kuroe hit on one knee while Shirae stumbled hard in the shallows. And then, that same instinct struck them both. From her side of the destruction, Kuroe saw Shirae panic into action; she hurled all three of her remaining talismans at once.

The paper seals ignited mid-air, fusing into one roiling bloom of fire vastly larger than any single charm should have made, and Kuroe felt pride hit her.

Yes, that's it—!

The fireball struck one of that single Yamata no Orochi's head eyes full-on.

The roar that came from the head was so loud and high-pitched that both girls clapped their hands over their ears and staggered. The wounded head snapped upward, writhing, then swung toward Shirae with murderous focus.

Shirae had no talismans left. She stumbled backward, but her foot caught in the flooded mud, and she fell, sitting in the black water as the saika opened its jaws.

Kuroe froze, and for one too stretched second, her world slowed. The rain, the waves, Shirae in the water, and the maw descending on her. Kuroe felt the black liquid she had inhaled burning in her lungs, felt the tsurugi's cursed energy moving into her and back out in a loop. It all became ecstatic, because her skin felt too tight and her thoughts twisted around each other, and she was probably feverish—

The tsurugi pulsed once like a heartbeat.

Do it. Cut the snake.

A smile touched Kuroe's face without permission as her arm rose and she poured cursed energy into the black tsurugi. When she brought it down in a single desperate swing toward the head, descending on Shirae, again, the slash did not stop at the blade but tore outward through the air itself and reached Yamata no Orochi a split second before its jaws reached Shirae.

The head came off cleanly, and Kuroe really did not understand it.

She had only swung a blade; her arms were too thin and too human. Ridiculous. No amount of ten-year-old effort should have been enough to sever one of those eight scaled massive necks.

And yet there it was: the head, cut free from the body, spinning aside while the neck convulsed in a spray of blackness. Then exactly as Takamitsu had warned—exactly, curse that bright fool—the severed neck burst not only with that same pitch-black blood but with the force of an entire river.

The water exploded outward, and the first thing it hit was Shirae. It took her off her feet and hurled her straight into the vermilion torii above Omi's ruined altar. Shirae collided hard, fingers clawing immediately for purchase on the old wood. Her nails tore as the wood splintered under her grip; she hauled herself up by pure refusal while the water kept rising around the altar.

Shirae turned, choking on it. "Kuroe—?"

Meanwhile, Kuroe had no torii, no handhold. The flood hit her a breath later and knocked her flat, dragging her backward toward the center of the lake again while she thrashed with all the grace of a drowning chick and perhaps less intelligence. One arm pinwheeled wildly while the other still held the black tsurugi above the water as if the sword's safety mattered more than hers.

Perhaps it did. Perhaps she had already gone a little mad. Either way, the current pulled harder.

Kuroe kicked, got a mouthful of black water for her efforts, then kicked again. The lake slapped her back under, rolled her sideways, and flung her up just long enough for her to cough, sputter, and fling the tsurugi one-handed through the air in an attempt at another slash, but the water kept ruining everything, and every time she tried to gather enough cursed energy and line up her arms properly, another wave punched her under.

Above and around her, Yamata no Orochi kept thrashing.

One head? No. Three.

Three heads tracked her, snapping through the stormlight, convulsing blindly, roaring in pain and rage, vomiting floodwater and that same pitch-black liquid into the rising lake until the whole shoreline had become one long black line. The water hurled itself against Kaneko's barrier, and the dark dome shuddered, and cracks ran through it. Kuroe got one glimpse between waves at Shirae, who clung to the red torii with both hands, while three of Yamata no Orochi's heads arced around her. She tried to shout her name, but the light changed, and a shadow fell over her, a huge one.

Kuroe looked up.

One of Yamata no Orochi's heads had reared directly over her, jaws open wide as water streamed from its fangs. One eye, gold and slit-pupiled, fixed on her.

That's it, she thought, absurdly calm. That's actually it.

She had to admit, even with her mind being such a clever, busy place most days, she did not see a way out of being eaten by a mountain-snake while floating on her back in a cursed lake.

Then the barrier broke. As another wave crashed against it, the barrier reached the point where "containment" stopped being possible. Kaneko's dome shattered into a thousand razor-thin pieces that dissolved in cursed energy before they hit the ground, falling inward. And behind the collapsing dome, the world returned all at once—

—along with a brilliance so violent, Kuroe had no choice but to squeeze her eyes shut.

White flooded the whole lake like sunlight. Kuroe cracked one eye for the briefest second and regretted it as the light speared through the storm, through the waves, across the scales of Yamata no Orochi until even the head above her recoiled. She saw it flinch, its jaws twisting sideways, every eye that could narrowing in hatred. All the heads turned from the source of that impossible brightness.

Ah, she thought, half-blind. The bright idiot.

Then the water smacked her sideways again, she clutched the tsurugi to her chest on instinct, and something caught her; one moment she was choking in water, the next a hand had hooked her somewhere under the arm and hauled her bodily up out of the lake.

Kuroe yelped and latched onto both the tsurugi and her rescuer like a desperate monkey. The pressure changed, and her whole world with it. Her stomach dropped out from under her, and air rushed past her soaked clothes. Suddenly, the wind was colder. She dared open one tearing eye just to see her bare feet beneath her that dangled over empty space. Below her, too far below her, the lake convulsed around the body of Yamata no Orochi, black water blasting outward in rings beneath that blinding light. Above her: only storm front.

First thought: Oh no. The valley's going to drown.

Second thought: Screw the valley. That thing wanted to eat me.

Third thought: What in the name of every kami am I doing in the air?

She began to struggle immediately, then a flap of crimson robe crossed her vision, followed by the line of a bright spear and a laugh she knew at once; light, warm, and already exhausted by her.

"Kuroe, Kuroe—calm down—oi—"

She did not calm down at all; if anything, she thrashed worse. Half of her wanted to wrap herself around Takamitsu and never let go again, the other half wanted to claw his stupid, bright face and demand why in all the drowned provinces he had waited so long, because Omi was dead and Shirae was still down there and Kuroe herself had very nearly become snake food twice in one morning, which seemed excessive.

Takamitsu, perhaps recognizing all of this on sight, shifted her grip; he let her drop just enough to seize her by the collar of her yukata with his free hand and hold her out at his eye level, dangling like a furious wet cat.

Kuroe stopped flailing at once, not because she had become reasonable, but because now she was dangling in midair, glaring directly into Fujiwara no Takamitsu's face while the man himself hovered in the sky as if that were a normal thing for people to do. His hair and robes streamed perfectly in the wind. Perfectly. Annoyingly perfectly, repeated Kuroe in her mind. Like a painted heavenly guardian and not a loud, bright idiot. She squinted, not for the first time, at his faintly reddened eyes. How does he even keep them open in his own light? He glows like Amaterasu. 

Takamitsu glared back with maddening serenity, the sort of expression that said very clearly: keep wriggling and I may let you experience gravity.

Kuroe froze, but she did not stop glaring.

Then his mouth tilted. "There, there. Good girl."

Kuroe looked him over from head to toe with intense offense. She saw the thin sheet of light beneath the soles of his boots. Ah. Right. He was standing on light again. No—wait!—that was not the point, the point was—

"'Good girl' my foot!" she snapped out. "What were you waiting for? Omi is— me and Shirae were almost—"

"I was waiting," Takamitsu said serenely, "for the ritual to fail." He tipped his chin downward. "And look at that. I'd say you managed to fail it spectacularly. Not exactly the version I had in mind, throwing Yamata no Orochi into a tantrum that large, Kuroe, but brilliant—"

"Screw that!" Kuroe shouted, and hated the sting of tears in her eyes as the black tsurugi still vibrated in her grip, that same cursed energy crawling under her skin. "Shirae is still down there drowning! If we don't hurry—!"

"Is she?" Takamitsu said, smirking. "Take a look."

He tilted the angle of the light, lessened it, and Kuroe, still muttering inwardly about impossible glowing men, followed his gaze. Below them, the seven remaining heads of Yamata no Orochi were writhing in agony, half-blinded by the spear-light. The lake had burst beyond its banks already, the water devouring the shore.

And there, the red torii where Shirae had clung was empty. No Shirae? Kuroe's heart stopped. Then—

There.

On a piled mass of shattered altar-stone and debris jutting up from the flood, Kaneko stood planted with Shirae slung over one shoulder. In one brutal movement, Kaneko dumped her down onto the safer part of the wreckage, as Shirae collapsed to her knees, coughing. Kaneko stepped in front of her at once and drove her tessen into the stone; the giant iron fan hardened with the same cursed energy pattern Kuroe had seen her apply to her tessen on the night of the attack, the one that turned it into steel harder than a mountain.

Then Kaneko looked up, and the glare she sent Takamitsu was so murderous that both he and Kuroe flinched in guilty synchrony.

Takamitsu exhaled, resigned. "Ahh, Kuroe," he dragged. "We may have made this a little bigger than expected. She's truly angry at me now. I hate it when Neko is angry at me. Should we stay up here until she calms down?"

Kuroe blinked at him. Sometimes she honestly could not tell whether he was too powerful to think like a mortal or simply an idiot in a beautiful body. She elbowed him in the sternum as hard as she could from her dangling position. "Do something! Or the water will drown the whole valley!"

He made an exaggerated pained face, though the blow had probably hurt him less than a breeze, then he rolled the spear once across one shoulder. "Right." He sighed. "Now that the ritual has failed, I suppose I really ought to intervene and do something about Yamata no Orochi."

The blade began to gather light; more, then more than that. It accumulated at the tip until everything below turned unreal. Before Kuroe could protest, Takamitsu shifted her onto one shoulder.

"Hold tight," he said. "And shut your eyes if you'd prefer to keep them."

She opened her mouth to object, but it was too late. The world vanished and became velocity. Air punched out of her lungs as her stomach dropped again; her hand slipped on the tsurugi, and she nearly, nearly lost it, then caught it back at once in panic, hugged it, and clung harder to Takamitsu's shoulder. By the time the motion stopped, they were no longer floating above the lake; they were above Yamata no Orochi. At eye level. Several of those eyes, in fact.

Kuroe cracked open one watering eye and instantly wished she had been born less curious, because the seven remaining heads thrashed beneath the blinding spear-light. Beside her, Takamitsu wore that same lethal smile he had worn the night of the tengu-masked ambush, the one that made him look suddenly less like a protective older brother and more like the reason the rival houses he spoke about probably had ulcers.

"Here you are, old friend," he said pleasantly. "It's been twelve years, hasn't it? I still owe you for Taishō's right arm." He rolled the spear in one hand as his gaze skimmed the heads one by one. "Now then. Which heads didn't I cut last time? Let's see... maybe—ah! That one?"

The light intensified until Kuroe had to squeeze her eyes down to slits as she heard Takamitsu's voice.

"Senzan." 

Kuroe had only the briefest, half-blinded sense of what happened next. The light on his spear stopped looking like normal light and started looking more like an extension of the blade itself, as if a spear of daylight had been grafted onto the blade. The light vibrated, dense and compressed, nothing like what she had seen hints of the night before. Better and terrifying. The air around the weapon thinned, and Takamitsu himself moved as if dragged by his own strike, pulled forward by the sheath of compressed light as if falling through a ray of sun.

The next moment, before Kuroe could fully realize he had struck at all, he was already landing, and Kaoru thought that was the exact reason people liked to call him Bright Spear. They hit the debris-stacked rise where Kaneko and Shirae stood; Takamitsu immediately dropped into a forward stance, body pitched toward the lake, observing, and Kuroe craned her neck over his shoulder. One of Yamata no Orochi's remaining necks now bore a perfect luminous line where the strike had landed, a flawless dividing mark.

Kuroe held her breath; so did Takamitsu.

But the head did not fall.

The glowing seam tightened, then closed entirely. Takamitsu narrowed his eyes as Yamata no Orochi thrashed again, pouring more water and black fluid into the flooding basin, and then one head roared straight into their faces.

Takamitsu's expression flattened; he gulped and took one prudent step back, shifting Kuroe higher on his shoulder. "Whoops. My bad," he said. "Apparently, I already cut that one twelve years ago—Neko, if you will?"

Kaneko answered with action and a grunt as she slammed her tessen down hard enough to shake the debris beneath all of them, wide open, then brought her hands into a seal, and chanted: "Emerge from stillness, darker than night. Close upon this place and hold. What is impure, be bound."

This time, the barrier that formed was smaller but denser, a translucent black dome constricting directly around Yamata no Orochi and pressing inward to pin its writhing bulk. Kaneko visibly strained, and the muscles of her jaw tightened. The barrier shook almost at once under the saika's resistance.

"It won't hold even five seconds like this!" Kandko snapped. "After two failed rituals in a row, it's enraged!"

Before anyone else could react, Shirae was suddenly at her side. Kuroe blinked, seeing the attention in Shirae's eyes as she studied Kaneko's hands, her posture, the angle of her fingers. Awkwardly, uncertainly, she copied them, trying to twist her smaller fingers into the same sign, and hesitated only one heartbeat.

Then, in a small thread of voice: "Emerge from stillness, darker than night. Close upon this place and hold. What is impure, be bound."

A second barrier formed, smaller and unsteady. It trembled visibly as it latched onto and wrapped around Kaneko's first barrier, forming a second layer of containment that lent pressure and support. Yamata no Orochi roared and pushed back, but the dual barrier held harder.

Shirae's eyes widened, and atiny smile escaped her before she could swallow it.

Kaneko blinked in open surprise; then scoffed what almost was a laugh. "Really, starchild…? Seeing it twice was enough for you?"

Takamitsu gave one genuine whistle, delighted. "Looks like you've found yourself a barrier apprentice, Neko."

Kuroe, still over Takamitsu's shoulder, nearly kicked herself off him in excitement, because yes, Shirae was performing better again at the first try, but Kuroe would take even the humiliation and a trembling barrier between them if it kept that monster at a distance.

Yamata no Orochi's roar rattled the barriers again, and without missing a beat, Takamitsu spun the spear once more and pointed it skyward, where light gathered and condensed. He murmured, "Kōrō."

From the spear-tip, horizontal and vertical light shot outward, constructing a cage around Kaneko's and Shirae's layered barriers, lights crossing and locking into a net. The pressure around Yamata no Orochi increased, and fr one instant it looked containable.

Then Takamitsu clicked his tongue as both Kaneko's barrier and his light-cage were already beginning to bend.

Kuroe was set down from his shoulder at last; she stumbled, hit one knee, kept the black tsurugi raised anyway before she latched herself on Shirae's side, hugging her and squeezing her cheek against the other girl's damp cheek. "Shirae! You're a genius! I knew it—"

Shirae winced, flushed, trying to keep the focus on the hand sign and the barrier, but ultimately did not struggle against the hug, which Kuroe took as a victory. "W-what?" she demanded. "What's the plan now?"

"The plan?" Takamitsu echoed with a distracted chuckle. He looked at the struggling barrier, at the seven heads, and at the water. "That's the point, Kuroe, Shirae. There is no other plan against Yamata no Orochi. You saw it yourself." He flashed them a quick sideways look. "The saika adapts constantly. Sever one head one way, and that method won't work on that same head again. That Senzan just now? I cut five heads twelve years ago, and as you can see, they regeneratwd and the trick doesn't even scratch the ones I've already touched anymore."

Kaneko, visibly strained, barked back, "Which is why we were not supposed to intervene!"

Both Kuroe and Shirae frowned at her on instinct.

Takamitsu faked a pout. "Not our fault, Neko. The ritual failed, and Yamata no Orochi is throwing a tantrum. If we don't contain it, Izumo drowns."

Kuroe and Shirae exchanged a look, terrified but thinking. "M-maybe..." Shirae began. "There has to be... something—"

The tsurugi pulsed, and Kuroe winced and grabbed at the slit on her forehead. "Ow—"

"What now, moon-child?" Kaneko snapped.

Kuroe rubbed her brow. Wait. Actually wait. Her eyes shot upward, and she pointed, almost stabbing the air with her finger. "Taka-niichan! There! Look, look, look!"

"Hn?" Takamitsu followed her finger without breaking concentration. "What?"

"I cut one of the heads! It's not regenerating!"

Kaneko gave an irritated scoff. "Not regenerating? As if—" Then she looked and stopped.

The severed head Kuroe had cut lay where it had fallen, and the neck inside the barrier… had not regenerated.

Kuroe was on her feet before anyone else spoke, eager and burning and still half-drunk on the tsurugu's power. "This black tsurugi," she said, lifting it. "I don't know howor why, but when I swung it, it cut through! See?"

Now, both Takamitsu and Kaneko lowered their eyes to the weapon. Kaneko's gaze narrowed immediately, then snapped to Kuroe, suspicious.

"What? I didn't steal it this time! I found it under its belly, just as you said!" Kuroe snapped, suddenly defensive.

"There, there," Takamitsu said, raking a hand through the air with a resigned smile. He looked at her again, more serious now, less indulgent brother, more a Shōshō of the Radiant Guard. "Kuroe. Are you sure?"

For some reason, the fact that he asked her like that, as if she were not just a muddy, half-drowned, small child with a cursed sword, sent a stab of pride straight into her chest.

So Kuroe straightened, or as much as she could straighten while shaking. "I'm sure," she said. "Taka-niichan! Use this to cut the other heads!"

Takamitsu studied her, then the black tsurugi, then, at last, grinned at her. "Well then, Kuroe," he said cheerfully. "I suppose we're doing things your way."

He planted his spear upright in the broken ground beside Kuroe and Shirae, where it stood like a second sun; the light pouring off it threw hard edges over everything. Then he reached out and took the black tsurugi from Kuroe's hands.

Kuroe nearly protested on instinct; the blade had only just begun feeling like hers in an unhealthy way. But Takamitsu already had it, rotating the black weapon, testing the balance with the loose, easy wrist of his.

"Neko," he said. "Cover for me."

Kaneko stared at him; then at the tsurugi; then back at him. Her expression flattened into a very particular disapproval that meant: this is a terrible idea, I hate that I cannot stop you, and if you die, I will complain about it over your corpse. Still, she committed and turned her head just enough. "Starchild. Keep the barrier standing."

Shirae blinked in surprise, shoulders twitching, but nodded at once. A new wave of determination pulled her face tighter as she stepped closer and lifted her hands again.

Kaneko touched her own black armor, and at once, the pattern of cursed energy running through the plates expanded, branching and locking, blooming over her in petal-like shapes of iron-black force. In Kuroe's eyes, each plate seemed to turn denser and harder, until Kaneko looked like a walking fortress. Then, that same pattern spread into her tessen when she drove it into the rubble in front of them. The fan rooted itself like a gate, then broadened as layers of hardened, cursed energy unfolded from it in overlapping petals, forming a wall before Kaneko, Kuroe, and Shirae.

"Now!" Kaneko barked. "Release it, starchild."

Shirae startled as her hands dropped, and her smaller, trembling barrier popped like a bubble.

Takamitsu moved before it had fully vanished. He let go of his own light-cage around Yamata no Orochi and blurred upward, suspended on those steps of light as if the air itself had solidified under him. He rose with the tsurugi drawn back above one shoulder—

—and for one stupid moment, Kuroe felt something go wrong before anything had even gone wrong. Her eyes flicked to her own arm, then back up to Takamitsu.

Wait. Why—Why isn't the tsurugi wrapping him in cursed energy? 

When she had held it, the blade had crawled into her veins; it had throbbed, but in Takamitsu's hand, it remained black and silent. No blue-black flare, no hungry vibration.

Oh no. Oh, no no no—

As if to confirm her horrible thought at once, Takamitsu's magnificent strike did absolutely nothing useful. Beautiful form, yes, gorgeous line, a perfect aerial blur with the tsurugi descending in a clean arc beside one of Yamata no Orochi's necks—

But the blade simply skidded along the scales. Pathetically, even. No impossible slash and no severed head, but one very pretty failure.

Kuroe and Shirae both blinked at once in identical guilt, while Kaneko's face became even flatter. High above them, Takamitsu halted in midair at the end of the strike and looked down at the tsurugi.

"Oh, hell—"

Yamata no Orochi, already in a bad mood that had not improved by the attempted decapitation, convulsed, and the nearest head lunged for Takamitsu. He snapped into motion at once, zigzagging across stepped light with the useless black tsurugi still in hand. One head nearly clipped him, while another spat black spray, and a third came from below.

Takamitsu twisted aside and, with his free hand, formed a sphere of light so bright that Kuroe's eyes shrank from it. He flicked it upward, and the orb burst into a small sun. The saika's heads recoiled, half-blinded, their eyes squeezing shut or turning away from the intensity, and Takamitsu used that heartbeat to blur clear of their jaws and retreat toward the debris.

Meanwhile, one huge wave slammed into Kaneko's tessen, and Kaneko grunted and braced behind it. The impact drove her boots through the rubble, carving furrows in the broken stone beneath her; then, behind the wave, one of Yamata no Orochi's heads came straight after it, lowering and smashing face-first into the tessen with the full intention of punching through and eating everyone behind it. Kaneko shoved one armored shoulder into the tessen and held, visibly straining now, arms trembling. Kuroe and Shirae, driven by their survival instincts, both launched themselves behind her and planted their hands against her back in an attempt to help. A great armored shōshō straining against a saika, as behind her, two soaking wet little miko were pushing with all their useless force.

Kaneko screamed what was probably an insult and shoved. The saika's head shifted, and the fan-wall caught the angle, redirected it, and the whole mass of skull and horn went skidding sideways through floodwater. Kaneko ripped the tessen up from the ground and snapped it shut, forcing more cursed energy through the reinforced ribs, then spun.

"Kenri!"

She drove the tessen into the side of Yamata no Orochi's head with both hands and the full turn of her hips and shoulders behind it. The impact boomed, and the entire side of the skull caved inward visibly, bone and flesh deforming under the reinforced strike. The head whipped sideways and slammed into another neck in passing, as black fluid poured from its mouth.

Kuroe stared, open-mouthed. Well, that explained several things about Kaneko's personality.

Then the damaged head began, slowly and hideously, to knit itself back into shape, and Kaneko clicked her tongue. "Great. Now that head's adapted to my Kenri."

Kuroe and Shirae collapsed to their knees in the aftermath without meaning to, half on top of each other and shaking with cold and adrenaline. Kuroe realized only after a moment that one of her arms was around Shirae's shoulders and Shirae's hand had clenched in the fabric at Kuroe's side; neither of them mentioned it.

Takamitsu landed in front of them again, no longer blazing like a tiny sun. The black tsurugi was still hanging from one hand, but his face bore a deeply childish scowl. Without warning, he pivoted straight toward Kuroe and advanced fast.

Kuroe's whole body went oh hell, oh hell, he's angry, and instinctively she clutched Shirae harder.

Takamitsu crouched right in front of them and scowled directly into Kuroe's face. "What the hell, Kuroe," he muttered. "Were you trying to kill me?"

"No!" Kuroe yelped. "I swear it worked before—"

"Yeah, well." Takamitsu shook the tsurugi once, annoyed. "Apparently, this sword has a preference for mikos, because otherwise I can't explain why it refuses to wake for me—"

"—And how was I supposed to know that?" Kuroe snapped back at him. "This is all your fault! If you hadn't left us with only one knife and a fistful of talismans—"

"Enough!" Kaneko's shout silenced both of them. She had already rebuilt the defensive wall of her tessen and was holding it against another surge of floodwater, feet planted wide and armor still blooming with those hardened petal-scales. "We need a plan to contain it! The water is still rising, and it's advancing toward the valley!"

Takamitsu scrubbed one hand over his face, then rubbed hard at his eyes. The rims had gone redder, the whites faintly angry-looking. "Fine," he muttered.

He stood and retrieved his spear from the ground, letting the black tsurugi drop. It rattled down right in front of Kuroe, and her hands twitched toward it automatically before she remembered herself.

Takamitsu rolled the spear once and lowered into a stance, blade angled downward, that lethal smirk climbing back onto his faceù. "Neko," he sang. "Can you do that?"

Kaneko glanced at Yamata no Orochi, more serious. "It needs time."

"I can buy time," Takamitsu said as his grin widened. "I'll wear it down until it runs out of cursed energy if I have to."

Kaneko gave him a look that said, quite clearly, I do not believe you. "Don't destroy the valley," she warned. "I won't be able to erect another prison while preparing that."

Takamitsu threw a grin over one shoulder at Kuroe and Shirae. "It's fine, right? Shirae—if anything large, ugly, and serpent-shaped comes for you, do that trick again, hm?"

Shirae and Kuroe tightened their grip on each other and nodded with little confidence.

Takamitsu rose into the air again and engaged Yamata no Orochi head-on, all seven heads at once. He bounded from light-step to light-step, each foothold blooming beneath his boots for less than a heartbeat before vanishing; he darted between jaws and horns and curtains of black water, flinging Senzan after Senzan, but none of them severed a head. The adapted necks resisted, split a little, scorched, then healed again. Still, he did not stop and never stopped smiling.

Kuroe, feverish and still trembling, watched him like a starving scholar. Some people looked at power and thought: terrifying. Kuroe, unfortunately, looked at power and thought: how does it work?

Takamitsu fought like someone trying to solve a problem by bullying it into revealing its weaknesses; each failed cut gave him information, and each light step shifted his angle. He was provoking Yamata no Orochi and… Was he enjoying it? Maybe. Or maybe that stupid grin was how he coped with fighting something he already knew he could never properly kill.

Meanwhile, Yamata no Orochi rose higher, and more of the vast body emerged from the flooded bed. Then the tails came, eight of them, long and scaled, each thick as a cedar trunk. They churned the lake to froth and made the flooding worse every time they struck.

Beside Kuroe, Kaneko had dropped to one knee, her eyes closed, hands joined in a different sign now. The cursed energy around her was condensing into her armor, her tessen, gathering into plates and curved ribs.

Kuroe wanted to watch that too; she wanted to watch everything, actually. This was a problem because her body was beginning to feel more like someone had boiled it; the black liquid in her lungs made her hot and cold at once, and her head floated.

A wave crashed toward them, and Shirae moved before Kuroe fully registered it. Shaking and pale, but on her feet, Shirae brought her hands together exactly as she had seen Kaneko do. "Emerge from stillness, darker than night." Her voice trembled. "Close upon this place and hold. What is impure, be bound."

A tiny barrier bloomed around them, and the wave split around it, smashing past.

Kaneko, lost in deeper concentration, looked like she did not even notice. Kuroe did. She threw both arms around Shirae's waist from behind in one instinctive squeeze. "You damned brilliant white-haired corpse—!"

Then the world tilted again, and fever surged through her. Her skin burned, and that awful blackness under it pulsed in answer to the tsurugi lying nearby. Kuroe's knees went out, and Shirae made a startled sound, arms catching her before she pitched forward entirely.

"Kuroe...?"

"Am fine," Kuroe mumbled, which was a blatant lie.

Takamitsu dropped onto the debris for one second only, one foot landing lightly long enough to swat away another incoming head with the spear's shaft and glance back.

"Neko?" he called. "You done?" Then he was gone again.

Kaneko frowned, eyes still shut, sweat standing at her temples. "Almost done," she muttered. "Just— keep it distracted—"

"Ossu!" Takamitsu called from midair, absurdly cheerful.

He changed again, and Kuroe saw it even through the fever: the way he rose higher than before, and the light around the spear stopped being just radiant and began to focus, to become dense. He pointed the spear toward the storm-dark sky, and all the light seemed to answer.

Kuroe sucked in a breath, not because she understood everything—she didn't—but she understood enough to know he was doing something dreadful and beautiful.

The light around him compressed; then collapsed, drew inward toward the tip of his spear until the spearhead looked like it was holding a piece of noon inside it.

Takamitsu tilted his head at Yamata no Orochi. "Well?" he said. "Can you adapt to this, too, big snake? I made it specifically for you." Then: "Kōsen."

What came out of the spear was daylight weaponized into a single spear-shaped beam.

Kuroe grabbed Shirae by the shoulders and threw both of them sideways with a yelp, squeezing her eyes as light engulfed the whole valley.

A radiant column tore straight across the lake, through three heads of Yamata no Orochi, and onward into the land beyond. For a moment, everything behind it became a silhouette, a serpent, a spray, broken trees, Takamitsu himself. Then three of the heads were simply... gone. Erased and powdered. The ground beyond the lake flashed white and then blackened, glassing in a long straight line.

Kuroe tried to open a single eye, and some distant part of her hoped there were no villages in that direction.

Takamitsu, his spear dimmer now, light under his feet flickering, began to descend more slowly; he wiped one hand over his forehead as if trying not to notice his own exhaustion. And just as the stumps of those erased heads began to convulse and writhe and horrifyingly regenerate—

Kaneko opened her eyes, and her cursed energy exploded outward in concentric rings. "Tekkafū."

Kaneko's barrier bloomed, completely different than the one before. Petal after petal of hardened cursed energy unfurled around the lake, around the saika, around the entire ritual ground. They rose in tall curved walls, layered and overlapping, until Yamata no Orochi was surrounded by a vast iron-flower prison, every seam reinforced and closing inward.

The prison tightened, and Yamata no Orochi thrashed. The regenerating heads screamed at once as the tails slammed against the bars, but the prison held.

Slowly, inexorably, the structure forced the saika inward on itself, compressing and folding necks, driving the whole calamity back toward the bottom of the lake. It fought with everything it had, and the roar that came out of it made the air vibrate.

Still, the prison held.

In the sky, Takamitsu let out a low, "hah. Smooth, Neko. If only we had a barrier specialist like you twelve years ago."

Kaneko exhaled a ragged breath and folded forward from exhaustion, hand catching against the debris to keep herself upright. Kuroe and Shirae loosened minutely in relief.

"Is it..." Shirae whispered. "Finished?"

As if offended by the optimism, one of Yamata no Orochi's tails slipped between the closing bars and rose over them, huge and ready to come down and crush them all flat.

"Damn it—!" Kaneko snapped, fumbling for the tessen, but too slow and drained. "At this rate, it'll break this one too—"

Kuroe moved first because instinct was apparently her weakness. Her eyes dropped to the black tsurugi on the rubble, and with an effort, she tore herself out of Shirae's hold.

"Wait—!" Shirae tried, but Kuroe was already moving.

She grabbed the tsurugi, and everything flooded back. The pulse; the voice; the terrible gorgeous hunger of the blade. Cursed energy rushed into her all over again, and the fever spiked high as she ran, slipping over shattered stone, straight toward Kaneko just as the tail came down.

Kuroe squeezed her eyes and lifted the tsurugi with both hands, point upward; the tail impaled itself on the blade.

The impact drove black liquid everywhere, spattering Kuroe from head to toe, as she braced for the full weight to crush her flat. It did not. Because Kaneko had reached her. When Kuroe looked up, Kaneko's shoulders were under the tail, her armor screaming and her muscles visibly shaking. She had taken the weight with her own body before it could flatten Kuroe.

"Moonchild," Kaneko hissed. "Out of here—move!"

Kuroe did not require repetition; she threw herself sideways, away from the line of impact. Kaneko, seeing her clear, dropped away too, and the tail crashed into the debris, the tsurugi still buried in it.

And then, strangely—

Yamata no Orochi went still.

All at once, the thrashing slowed, and the roars choked off into dying vibrations. The whole colossal body slackened, as if the tsurugi buried in its flesh had become a command for sleeping. Kuroe, sprawled on her side in the rubble, stared as the prison of Tekkafū pressed downward.

Yamata no Orochi sank and began to descend back into the bed of the lake, slack and half-curled within Kaneko's prison. The tail slid off the debris, taking the black tsurugi with it.

Kuroe watched it go under and felt, unexpectedly, stupidly annoyed.

No, more than annoyed. Totally upset.

She had nearly drowned for that sword, and the feeling of wielding it had been exquisite and appalling, and she missed it already. That was not a healthy reaction to a blade that talked in your bones.

The tail vanished beneath the water, but she had no time to mourn the loss of her terrible, beautiful lake-sword because, slowly, the water began to lower and the flood retreated by increments. The storm front overhead thinned, then tore apart entirely, and sunlight spilled through. The air changed and became breathable.

When Kuroe and Shirae, both still on the ground and half leaning against each other without admitting it, raised their heads and listened—

Small cautious chirps. Birds, tentative, as if the world had sent scouts first.

Kuroe listened, then looked at Shirae, then at Kaneko, doubled over by her tessen, breathing hard, armor cracked in places and beginning to crumble along the edges where too much cursed energy had been forced through it., descending at last, light nearly gone from his spear, eyes rimmed red, grin crooked and exhausted.

For the first time since stepping onto the stone beneath the torii, it occurred to her that somehow, catastrophically—

They had done it. Yamata no Orochi was asleep again.

Takamitsu landed lightly, one boot, then the other, on the broken debris that had once been ceremonial stone. He did not grin right away, just stood there with the spear in one hand and slowly scanned the land beyond the lake.

Kuroe followed his gaze.

The valley had been mauled; there was no elegant way to say it. The flood had burst across the surrounding lowlands and left behind a broad shining ruin of water, churned earth, and uprooted reeds. Three long white scars cut through the far hills where Takamitsu's attack had gone roaring through earlier, glassing patches of soil. The fields nearest the lake were finished, and the old riverbed had forgotten its boundaries and wandered where it pleased. Fragments of altar stone, shattered wood from the torii, scraps of prayer paper, all of it lay everywhere like.

But—

The nearer land, from what they had seen before the ritual and from what Takamitsu had said, had remained empty since the disaster twelve years ago, and the villages were farther downriver, the market-town farther still. Unless the flood keeps running, it should be all right.

Takamitsu's gaze moved back to the calm surface of the lake, beneath which a saika now slept. Then his eyes lifted and met Kuroe's. They blinked; he blinked again. And then his whole face broke open into a grin so stupidly bright Kuroe could have throttled him for it if she had not, in that exact same moment, grinned back so hard her cheeks hurt.

"You amazing little brilliant menace—" he said, and lunged. "Come here!"

Kuroe did not even pretend to resist; she launched herself at him with a wild noise somewhere between laughter and sobbing. He caught her under the arms, lifted her clear off the rubble, and spun her twice in the open air, his crimson robe and his long black ponytail whipping around them.

"See? You did it!" he laughed. "I knew you could do it!"

When he stopped spinning, Kuroe locked herself around him like a monkey. Arms, legs, dignity, all gone; Apparently, some part of her had decided that bright idiot was her big brother, and that was it. She clung to his neck and buried her wet face into his shoulder without any intention of letting go soon.

"We were so scared!"

Takamitsu patted her head. "I know."

"And Omi is dead!"

His hand paused, and when he spoke again, his voice had dropped. "I know," he said. "I'm sorry."

"And I lost my tsurugi! I was getting attached to it!"

He gave a gasp so fake it circled all the way back into charm. "I'll find you another tsurugi!" As if another one of those just happened to be lying around lakes.

Something touched his leg, silently and apparently deciding that if one bright man was being used as a climbing tree, then she might as well claim a branch too. Shirae had attached herself to him, looped both arms and both legs around one of Takamitsu's legs and anchored there, cheek squashed against crimson cloth, looking up with a small flattened frown that communicated very clearly: I was afraid. I almost died. I am wet. I am hungry. I am cold. This is your fault.

Takamitsu looked down at her and smiled. "There, there, Shirae," he said, ruffling the white hair already half destroyed by the day. "I'm proud of you too."

"So proud of them?"

Kaneko's voice cut through the moment, and all three of them looked over. She was still kneeling near her planted tessen, exhausted, furious, and visibly near the end of what both patient and cursed energy would tolerate. Segments of her armor had begun to fracture outright, pieces sloughing off in cracked, glowing flakes where the repeated reinforcement had cooked the metal.

One eyebrow twitched dangerously.

"You had better be proud of us!" She gestured widely at the sleeping calamity at the bottom of it all. "This almost became a worse tragedy than twelve years ago!"

Takamitsu winced. "Neko—"

"Do not Neko me, Fujiwara no Takamitsu."

That shut him up immediately, and terrified him just slightly, which Kuroe enjoyed more than perhaps was reasonable. He lifted both hands as far as the clinging girls would allow and put on a wounded face. "Come on. As if this wasn't your plan too." Kaneko's eyes narrowed, but Takamitsu grinned despite visible danger. "Who suggested looking beneath Yamata no Orochi's belly? On the lakebed? Hm? Who made sure to articulate every single syllable of the barrier chant very clearly? Hm?" He tilted his head. "You're going soft, Neko-oneesama."

For punctuation, Kuroe meowed. It was a miracle Kaneko did not throw something at her, and that dragged a laugh out of both girls before they could stop it. Shirae made the smallest possible smile and quickly hid it in the fabric.

Then Kuroe frowned, replaying the conversation.

Wait. How did Neko-oneesama know there was a sword under the lake? Is she—?

She never finished the thought, because Kaneko had already reached into the fold of her robe and drawn out two small talismans, twin slips of paper marked with matching characters. She stared at them with terrible concentration.

Takamitsu's entire posture changed in alarm, enough to be funny. "What—what are you doing, Neko?"

"What am I doing?" Kaneko repeated as she shoved one hand back through her short hair in frustration. "I am alerting the headquarter and the taishō, obviously. The ritual failed. We burn this one talisman, and they know at once."

"The ritual did not fail," Takamitsu cut in as he took one talisman out of her hand before she could snatch it back. "Look at the lake, look at the valley, look at the girls! I'd say this was a success more than any previous ritual."

Kaneko glared harder. "We do not know how durable this solution is. For all we know, my barrier and that sword may hold him for years." Her jaw tightened. "Or for days. Then what?"

Takamitsu made a pout, and Kuroe nearly laughed again despite how badly she hurt.

Kaneko's face remained murderous. "Fujiwara no Takamitsu," she muttered. "Are you scared of the taishō's wrath?"

"No way!" he snapped at once. "Just—" He reached over and stole the second talisman with a grin, too. "Some things are better explained in person."

Kuroe, fever and exhaustion unhooking her thoughts, mumbled into his shoulder, "What do those talismans do?"

Takamitsu tilted his head down and smiled at her. "You still have energy left to ask questions, hm?"

He peeled her off him—an outrage, really—and set her on her feet. Kuroe almost sat right back down because the world tilted. Shirae, unhooking herself from Takamitsu's leg, caught her under one arm and helped keep her upright as Kuroe scrubbed one eye with the heel of her hand and squinted at the talismans Takamitsu waved in front of her face.

"There are matching talismans at the Radiant Guard headquarters," he explained. "If we burn this one, its twin burns red, and the capital knows the ritual failed. If we burn this one, its twin burns green, and they know we succeeded."

"What if we burn both?" Kuroe asked.

Takamitsu sighed. "Then someone in the capital has a stroke."

"Great. Let's do it—"

Kuroe did not get to finish. Her head lurched; the lake, the rubble, Takamitsu's robe, Shirae's pale face, Kaneko's armor, all of it tilted at once as heat rolled through her skin in a violent wave. Her knees folded without consulting her, and Shirae barely caught her. Kuroe sagged down, folding against her as Shirae's face swung into her vision, far too expressive now.

It occurred to Kuroe, fuzzily, that Shirae looked so much prettier when not pretending to be dead all the time.

"Kuroe?" Shirae said. "Kuroe—?"

Takamitsu's face appeared too, lowering into view above hers with a frown he was trying not to let become worry. "What's happening?"

Then Kaneko's face invaded the scene as well, glaring as if fainting were Kuroe's fault and yet, annoyingly, carrying concern. "What?" she snapped. "Did she swallow that black liquid?"

Shirae looked from Kuroe to the lake and back, horrified by how unhelpful her own memory was. "She was under for a while—I don't know—"

Takamitsu turned and shook Kaneko by the shoulder hard enough that she immediately swatted at his hand. "What, Neko? What happens if you ingest it?"

"It's venomous, of course!" Kaneko snapped. "Why wouldn't it be venomous? You wouldn't know—you've never been the one submerged under that lake!" She dropped beside Kuroe and seized her chin to force her face toward the light. "The last time, I—"

The last time…? Kuroe thought distantly as her eyelids were growing heavy.

Takamitsu made a low sound in his throat and pressed one palm to Kuroe's forehead. His hand felt cool, and Kuroe liked that hand; perhaps she would keep it. She could hear only pieces of what came next.

Shirae, still calling her name, over and over. "Kuroe. Kuroe. Don't close your eyes—"

"She's burning up."

"She needs someone who can heal with reversed cursed energy. Hiyori-san can heal this kind of curses, but—"

Takamitsu hummed again. "How long can she hold out?"

There was a hesitation on Kaneko's end. "Depends."

Oh, that was not reassuring.

Kaneko, already calculating: "Three to five days. Maybe. I don't know for certain—"

"Then there isn't much choice," Takamitsu cut in, too maddeningly calm.

Kuroe felt herself being lifted by strong arms again, the same scent of wet cloth, metal, rain, and light. She found herself filled with one stupidly clear and ridiculous thought: So many people were worried about her, and yet

Shirae's voice followed: "What are you doing?"

"Neko. Burn both talismans," said Takamitsu, already moving or about to.

Kaneko's voice came from somewhere behind them now. "What?"

Kuroe tried to stay awake and gather information about what would happen to them now, because information meant survival, but the darkness won, and she let it take her, her consciousness fading. She only heard Takamitsu's voice one last time.

"We're taking them to headquarters. To the capital. To Heijō-kyō."