The Emperor and the Tree

or

The Supreme Divine Emperor Reincarnates as a Wooden Log

---

Chapter One

Mad

 

An exiled heir only needed to reclaim his empire once. Ridiculous, but true. Prince Nekohiko never doubted this saying or the wisdoms it offered. He used it to his advantage the night when he and his beaten, ragged allies sacked the Emerald Palace at the heart of Washu.

Because now that he'd conquered his throne from whatever bastard had stolen it, he faced only two sure possibilities. One -- nobody would challenge him ever again with how gruesome his conquest had been. And how devastating its aftermath.

And the second thing...

No. For now, the first possibility was all that mattered.

The buildings and the trees burned in the flurries of embers against the star-studded sky. Lifeless bodies lay warped and distorted by spirit magic: unrecognizable shapes of former limbs, heads, torsos strewn across the tiles of the vast courtyard under the Palace's stairs and on each of its steps. Blood soaked the air like heavy humidity.

What madman would want this repeated with Nekohiko as their enemy?

"Careful. Imperial guards," Abihiko said. They ascended the stairs slowly, attempting to not step on any of the ravaged body parts underneath. They often failed.

The pretty green robes and the scaled armor of the fallen Imperial guards were so drenched in red that Nekohiko had trouble telling them apart from the rest of the corpses. Had Abihiko not said anything, Nekohiko would have never noticed.

Smoke lodged in his lungs. He coughed and retched, halting on the slick bloodied steps that seemed like they would never end.

"Imperial guards? Already?" Nekohiko took a bleary glance around. But his gaze, as always, returned to the contours of Abihiko's face. Such a reliable, familiar image in the middle of a horrible night. Abihiko's color, usually pale, was tinted red and fiery from the glow of the roaring fires on the horizon. The wind swept strands of his long hair across his nose and dark, unblinking eyes.

"But the Imperial guards are the last circle of defense," Nekohiko said. "Do you mean that--"

Only the fake Emperor and his innocent servants and family members were left. The battle was over.

He'd won.

Nekohiko trembled. Coming back to the home he'd escaped as a newborn baby in a nurse's arms was a vile way to celebrate his sixteenth birthday. He felt like fleeing this wretched place all over again.

But no thoughts of fleeing came. Abihiko held him tight. His hand was hot and dry where Nekohiko's was clammy and cold. As though understanding, Abihiko only clasped his fingers harder and gave Nekohiko a forceful tug up the ruined steps.

"Yes. Already," he said. "The Usurper will be next. And then, Supreme Divine Majesty, your rightful throne will be free for you to reclaim."

"Don't call me that."

"What else am I supposed to call the true Emperor?" Abihiko let out a laugh. "You're such a dummy. Come on up."

Nekohiko's troops had already stormed the buildings and now dragged everyone out for judgment. From somewhere under the shadowy niches, a shatter of ceramics sounded. Then came the shriek of a woman, high and ending abruptly with a merciless slash.

Nekohiko swayed on his feet.

"Your Majesty!" cried several of the guards following him close behind. "Are you unwell?"

Ah, how nice of everyone to ask. On that same note, though--

"I'll give him a shoulder." Abihiko dismissed the rest. He swung Nekohiko's right arm around his shoulder and neck. His dark, gleaming eyes had all the hint of a smile. "We'll be fine, won't we?"

Of course.

But it had always been this way. What would Nekohiko ever do without him?

"I'm sorry I can't be of more help," Nekohiko said so that only Abihiko could hear.

Even on an average day, Nekohiko wasn't good at rationing his magic powers. In their class back in the Spiritway Shrine School, he had always been bad with it. But tonight, he'd been especially careless. Too many sudden scares, too many small skirmishes he'd wasted his powers on. He was almost drained and just as reluctant to go on now that he'd glimpsed up close the massacre he and his people had unleashed.

Magic had never looked as repugnant during their training trips at School, had it? Both Nekohiko and Abihiko still wore their monastic uniforms as though this was also just a simple class trip they took. Not a life-changing event. Neither a carnage he was sure he'd never forget.

"I should be the one helping you up, not the other way around," Nekohiko mumbled. "The older ones take care of the little ones."

Abihiko laughed again.

"I feel so powerless."

"It's all right. I still have mine. I won't let anything happen to you," Abihiko whispered back, scaling the stairs step by steady step.

Nekohiko didn't even need to say "thank you" back. This was all to be expected between best friends.

The grand hall of the Palace dreamed in ruins and eerie silence. All the people caught here had been dragged out and executed shortly. The Usurper as well -- taken from the treasury he and a couple of his concubines had huddled in. Nekohiko didn't need to witness the swift execution. Abihiko also chose not to. The two of them had no heart for grisly work, young as they were, so Nekohiko's war advisor, Lord Okinaga, let them both go on while his soldiers took care of the fake Emperor's family.

Yet, no matter how awful this night turned out to be, Nekohiko couldn't pretend this might be avoided. The Usurper and his loyal subjects had to die exactly tonight, or Nekohiko's life could never be safe from their persecution. The laws of this Land's Spirits forbade the murder of the Shrine children. Until a person's sixteenth birthday when they finally came of age, not a drop of their blood could be shed without dire consequences from all the myriads of Spirits that roamed the living world.

So for Nekohiko, this night was the point of no return. He wouldn't be able to see tomorrow otherwise. Everyone who could harm him afterward, had to die tonight.

"Don't look," Abihiko reminded him as they walked further and further away from the entrance and the executions. Shadows multiplied the deeper they went. The entire hall seemed haggard and insidious. Nekohiko still sometimes turned when the shrieks of the executed rang especially loud. He didn't want to seem like he was scared of the responsibility. A true Emperor should know what sacrifices his reign demanded, no?

Abihiko jerked his hand. "Don't look, Supreme Divine Majesty, or you'll get queasy again."

"Don't you look back either, little one," Nekohiko replied feebly just to say something. "You seem quite ill yourself."

Immediately, all the grave atmosphere dispelled. Even the facade of pomposity and Abihiko's eloquence had taken a hit. Abihiko sparked up faster than an oil-wick. "What did you just call me, dumb Neko? Who's little one -- I'm the one carrying you! Forgot?"

It was pure luck no guard or advisor was close enough to hear such uncourtly insults to the new Emperor's very face.

"Supreme Divine Majesty," Nekohiko corrected.

"You wish."

The murk of the main hall opened up into the wide inner courtyard. The drafty wind carried the scent of ashes and smoke in and out of the hall and rustled the leaves of a magnificent Spirit tree in the center of the garden. The red of the fires didn't reach here. Only the serene, gentle starlight poured over the graceful branches. Nekohiko had previously ignored the throne room and even the ancestral hall since currently only the Usurper's family tablets were enshrined there. When he'd passed the throne a moment ago, the guards behind him started chanting his name as though the entire battle for the Palace was long over and Nekohiko's reign was already somehow established. Abihiko joined in among the very first, gleeful and only slightly mocking in his delivery. But Nekohiko didn't care about any of that. His eyes were only on the sacred tree in the starlit garden.

The tall, majestic, richly-needled tree. Just like in the stories the last of his family's loyal servants had told him.

The Emerald Fir

"I promised you we'll come to this place one day," he said to Abihiko without turning. "Here we are. At last."

"Yes. You'll rule, and I'll be your second-in-command. Exactly as you promised." Abihiko stopped beside him, their shoulders warm against one another. Such a familiar sensation. Nekohiko couldn't help but lean into it, finally starting to feel at home in this alien place he'd never known and couldn't easily connect with.

But with Abihiko around, even that didn't seem so hard to do.

"It's midnight," Abihiko said suddenly as if only now remembering. "Dummy, you're sixteen now."

Already? Nothing felt different to him.

Nekohiko smiled. "Now even you can't argue I have the right to call you little. Mm, little Abihiko?"

Instead of an answer, Abihiko pushed him playfully with his shoulder.

"Is everything going according to our plan?" The voice of a soldier or a guard reached them from the throne room.

Nekohiko didn't pay him heed. But then he frowned.

He'd never been a vain person, yet wasn't he the Emperor now? Why would some random soldier talk to him or anyone in his presence in this way?

Abihiko took it over from him, though.

"Yeah, everything's going smooth. No worries," the youth replied to the soldier, then hugged Nekohiko tightly from the side with his arm. Nekohiko didn't even have time to react. Abihiko's murmur into his ear was swift and hot. "Happy Birthday, Neko."

In his right hand, something glinted dully as he reached out to embrace Nekohiko from the other side.

At first, Nekohiko didn't understand. It happened too fast and it didn't make any sense. The sear, both cold and blazing at the same time. The stark agony across his throat like a thin thread of silk clinging to his skin. The torrent of hot liquid that poured down his front from a gash in his throat -- all in a matter of heartbeats.

Abihiko, he thought dazedly as the world tilted and spun before his eyes.

He knew what people said. The Emperor only reclaimed his throne once in his lifetime -- a wise, wise saying. One reason for that was because nobody dared to steal a throne already retrieved by force. It simply wasn't worth it.

And the second reason was because most Emperors didn't live long enough to witness their throne stolen more than once. Most emperors died instead.

Such a banal saying. Yet so truthful.

"Abi--"

Nekohiko's words drowned in the blood gurgling out of his slit throat. Abihiko still held him tight, not letting him crash to the white gravel under their feet even as Nekohiko's legs and arms began convulsing.

He could feel none of that. All of his will went into staring, wide-eyed, tears spilling, into his best friend's uninvolved face.

As if in a nightmare, Abihiko smiled at him. So gently and casually, as he always did.

"Sorry, Neko. Really, it's nothing personal. Just... the general inconvenience of you." He didn't seem to like the phrasing, so he grimaced. "Please don't be mad."

Don't be... mad?

Don't be mad?!

Darkness claimed him. And then cold. Last, only a trail of a dissipating echo of a lighthearted voice endlessly repeating in Nekohiko's torn soul.

"What a dummy, seriously."

 

---

***

Death.

This was it, utterly and unmistakably. A shock so shattering he had to ask himself if it had plunged him into a bizarre dream in which his last dying moment would be stretched to infinity. Because though he was certain he had just died, he also... didn't.

He didn't feel anything. But he also wasn't relieved from his mind or from the idea of the most horrid betrayal he'd ever heard of. Or from his memories like flickers of fireflies in the night.

Growing up lonely and hidden in the Tanzawa mountains. Finally gulping his first breath of freedom in the hostile outer world when his guardians sought shelter for him in the Spiritway Shrine. Becoming a disciple there. Meeting his only real friend there -- meeting A...

No!

Even thinking about it hurt. The pain was everywhere. He was pain, himself. He'd scream or cry to relieve it but no such luck.

This was surely hell according to everything he understood about existence. This. Not being able to let go since he had nothing to focus on other than his misery, and not being able to vanish into oblivion. He'd give anything -- literally anything to be able to!

Only he had nothing to give up either.

...

A pain of a different sort woke him, one day. It stunned him because he had all but given up hope to ever feel anything real again. And with such ferocity, too. This pain came like torture. Where? In what parts of him? He had no body -- what kind of physical suffering could he possibly feel in such a condition!

And yet he did.

Apathetic, he again decided it was part of his netherworld torment after death. But sometimes, there was no pain and instead only the sensation of being prodded and even tickled, coming rarely but from any direction.

Which made it all the more unsettling. What the hell? he asked himself time after time. Quite an odd netherworld torment he was having. But it distracted him long enough to stop obsessing over some very specific person. Some very specific little traitor he wanted nothing less than to bring with him into this pathetic afterworld.

Abihiko. That scum of the earth.

Lately, Nekohiko thought about him less. He even started to forget his facial features because any part of him brought ache to his soul. But the real, physical pain that assaulted him from all the sides now was too persistent for him to ignore. Metals scratched him, sliced him, sawed through him, cut him, chopped him. Parts of him felt shattering, splintered. Chaffy sand surfaces cruelly whetted his very essence, for all it felt like. An aggravating, incomprehensible agony, and for which reasons?

Why? Why was this happening!

Another tickle of a wet lick caressed his side, and Nekohiko reeled with distaste. But before he could begin complaining to himself all over again as he became used to doing here -- he heard. He heard sounds.

He heard voices.

"...no, don't cut it," a raspy old man's voice was saying. "Just mark it with a brush like this. See?"

A snicker responded to it in the voices of two young males, rough and husky. "It looks stupid."

"Kinda looks like an ear, I swear. The log has an ear now, look."

Like an... ear?

Nekohiko stopped screaming in his mind from the sudden overstimulation of all the various worldly sounds he'd just heard. He calmed himself down and listened.

Did they say "ear" exactly at the same time his hearing came back to him? This couldn't be a coincidence, could it?

"Idiots," the old man grumbled. "It isn't 'ear'. It just looks like it a little bit. It's a word. And it's part of a larger word, too."

"I know how to carve one very funny word on a piece of wood," one of the youngsters mumbled to the other. Both of them snorted again.

The old man only had a sigh for them.

Then, as the gentle licks of something wet and sticky against Nekohiko's strange new body came and went, the old man added, "No cutting. And no carving. No one dares cut the precious lumber like this one. Ah, I need to teach you to read one day, don't I? Have you any idea what it says here? Whom this piece of wood belongs to?"

Piece of... wood? Log?

Precious lumber?

Wait. Wait, no.

"It says here, 'Property," the old man said, striking his finger against each of the words his ink brush had written a moment ago, "'of the Supreme Divine Emperor..."

Supreme Divine Emperor. Myself? was Nekohiko's first, almost reflexive thought.

"...Abihiko'," the old man finished.

Supreme Divine Emperor Abihiko.

If Nekohiko hadn't known firsthand what a slit-throat betrayal felt like, this -- this would absolutely be the closest thing to it.

"Wrap the log up and send as a gift to one of His Majesty's workshops, boys. They'll surely make something great out of it for the Emperor to enjoy."

"Oooh," one of the youngsters gushed, "A chest! I bet it'll be a treasure chest."

"Nah, probably a bed. Or a chair? Or maybe floorboards for his study?"

...

Oh, so something for the Supreme Divine Emperor to use, lie on top of, sit on, or walk all over for the rest of Nekohiko's tormented existence?

You've got to be kidding me.