"Spirituality... It's very tricky, you know," Yorimitsu murmured, his voice conversational and light as he leaned over a small stone mortar. "I remember when the old hag was teaching me the basics. One day, I botched a ritual, and my hand turned into that of a frog. It remained that way for a month, I think. Hard to do anything with webbed fingers."
On the floor, the shinobi groaned, his eyes fluttering open. He immediately tried to surge upward, but his body betrayed him. His shoulders locked, his elbows pressing painfully against his spine as if invisible ropes were cinching tighter with every breath. He was paralysed in a kneeling position, his hands pinned behind his back by a force he couldn't see.
"What is this feeling? What is he talking about?" The shinobi's mind raced, sweat beading on his forehead beneath his indigo hood. "He's rambling like a madman; I can't move a muscle. What kind of poison did he use to leave me so utterly useless?"
A wave of cold dread washed over him. "Yorimitsu no Minamoto is far more dangerous than the Mistress calculated; he defeated me in more move and his movements I couldn't even see them. He is unnaturally quick."
"It's over," the spy thought.
Thud! His heart slowed down.
"If I can't escape, I must end it. A shinobi is useless when capture I cannot let the mistress's secrets be spilt."
He shifted his jaw, his tongue searching for the hollowed-out molar filled with fast-acting hemlock.
"You won't find the poison pill in there," Yorimitsu said without looking up, the rhythmic scritch-scritch of the grinder continuing. "I took it out while you were dreaming, Spider. It's on the table if you'd like to see it."
The shinobi's eyes widened, the pupils dilating until they were pinpricks of pure terror. "He knew. He saw the rafters, the slug, the pill... he's been ten steps ahead since I stepped onto the roof. Who is this monster?"
"As I was saying," Yorimitsu continued, blowing a fine grey dust off his thumb. "People think we deify the natural world; they think practitioners are deities who can do anything."
"But that's far from the truth, Its Equivalent Exchange..."
He paused, finally turning to face the captive. He held up his hand, and a small, flickering flame of brilliant Blue Fire ignited in his palm. It flickered burring the other flame in the room.
"No, that's not true either, Mmmmm. It's more like... negotiating with the natural world. If you are a good enough negotiator, I'm sure you can get away with much greater power. Even so, there is still one more prerequisite: you have to have an affinity for the laws you use."
The blue flame twisted, forming the shape of a small, glowing sparrow that flapped its wings before dissolving. "My family's affinity is the flames. My sister possesses the Flames of Healing soft, mending heat. My flames, however..."
The blue light intensified, and the heat suddenly became so sharp it made the shinobi's skin prickle. "Mine are the Flames of Creation."
He looked up at the Shinobi.
"I am sure you are wondering why I am telling you all this," Yorimitsu said, his voice dropping into a register that made the floorboards hum. He turned around slowly, and the shinobi saw a large, predatory grin stretching across Yorimitsu's face; or rahter were his face was supposed to be, he had no eyes, no nose, just the wide mouth gaping into darkness.
"Get away from me," the shinob cried out.
Yorimitsu reached into the stone mortar and scooped out a handful of the grey ash he had been grinding. He stepped toward the paralysed spy and began painting a series of jagged, archaic symbols directly onto the man's forehead and crown.
"This is the price I must pay to use the Power of Sight," Yorimitsu whispered, his breath cold against the shinobi's skin. "In the art of negotiation, one must give to receive. To see into your soul, I must first surrender a secret of my own power to my opponent, you see, and now that you understand my flames, let us see who pulls your strings."
Yorimitsu slammed his hands together in a thunderous clap. The dark ash on the shinobi's head flared into a blinding, white-hot light that swallowed the room.
Suddenly, Yorimitsu was no longer in the guest chamber. He was drifting like a phantom, suspended in a void of fractured thoughts and grey mist. Below him, he saw the shinobi unmasked and younger kneeling in a garden of black stone. The spy's real face was plain, almost forgettable.
In front of the shinobi stood a figure of immense, suffocating presence. Yorimitsu drifted closer, squinting, trying to peer through the gloom. He could see the hem of a high-collared silk robe, the flash of a golden fan, but no matter how high he flew, the Mistress's face remained an impenetrable void. A thick, oily dark haze swirled around her head, swallowing the light and distorting the very air.
"Mmmm?" Yorimitsu's phantom voice echoed in the mindscape.
He raised two fingers, his Reiryoku condensing into a needle-sharp point of solar energy.
He roared.
"Revealed!"
A pillar of white light erupted from his fingers, striking the dark haze over the Mistress's face like a lightning bolt. The fog shrieked, swirling violently as it began to thin. For a fraction of a second, Yorimitsu saw the curve of a jawline and the glint of a cold, amethyst eye—
CRACK.
The memory fractured like a sheet of ice under a hammer. The garden, the Mistress, and the grey mist exploded into a thousand jagged shards of light.
Yorimitsu gasped, his eyes snapping open as he was violently ejected back into his physical body. He stumbled slightly, his heart hammering against his ribs. On the floor, the shinobi had slumped over, unconscious again, a thin trail of blood leaking from his ear.
Yorimitsu wiped a bead of sweat from his own brow and looked down at the smouldering ash on the man's forehead.
"Tch," he spat, his voice thick with irritation. "A screen, they placed a mental restriction deep in his subconscious. Any attempt at tampering with the sealed memories triggers a self-destruct sequence in the mind."
He looked at the unconscious Shinobi and sighed. He hadn't seen the face, but the amethyst glint of that eye stayed with him.