Chapter Hundred Eleven

The Forest for the Trees

 

 

Nekohiko didn't care about anyone else's reactions, though there were so many. The main room of The Heartstring restaurant nearly exploded in screams and panicked skittering as people jumped from their seats to run away. They bumped into each other, toppled the furniture. They screamed -- just so -- damn -- much.

But all of it dissolved in Nekohiko's mind as he stared unblinkingly at Abihiko before him.

Nothing else existed.

Abihiko's hair and robes only now settled down from the turbulent wind with which he had jumped onto the table. In the scattered flurry of the fire embers of his Hira spells, his pale face, framed with dark hair, looked especially startling.

Black eyes, set on Nekohiko in an expression of fury and disappointment, bright red lips in a tight line.

Nekohiko could not break their intense stare even if he wanted.

And Spirits, he wanted.

"What the hell are you doing," he snarled, slowly getting to his feet.

He wanted to rush to Chinatsu's side and take care of the gushing wound in her head...

But damn it -- Abihiko had cleaved her skull in half with his sword! He hadn't been aiming to silence her or to spook her. He had aimed to murder on the spot. And the heat that came from the sword's blade --

Abihiko was channeling fire into it even now, to melt the split bone and the splattered brain matter. To make it so much harder to Bind back together within the seconds before Chinatsu's Spirit would leave her body irrevocably.

...

Nekohiko wouldn't be able to help her if he tried. Abihiko had made sure of that.

"Where did you find her?" Abihiko spat back, enraged. "Why were you looking for her? Are you insane or just plain stupid, Nekohiko? After everything that happened between you and Daichi and Etsuko and Arata? Fucking seriously!"

The two of them didn't bother about the witnesses by this point. Everyone was in such unraveling panic around that it didn't matter -- even if someone overheard.

Because really, Nekohiko didn't give a damn about security either. It all went up in flames when Abihiko began murdering people in the middle of a packed establishment.

"I wasn't looking for her! It just happened. I was going to leave anyway, but of course you had to murder her just like that? For what -- for being a miserable drunken thing who didn't even know what she was saying?"

Abihiko finally broke their eye contact. He pressed his hand against Chinatsu's shoulder and pulled his blade out, in the slowing pulses of blood and brain matter escaping the gash. The woman was no longer even convulsing in the dying throes. She had gone still a few moments ago.

She collapsed to her seat, then slowly slid to the floor. But Abihiko wasn't looking at her. He cast a quick glance around the hysteria-boiling room and got off the table.

"Stay where you are, m-murderer!" the constable cried, pointing a sword of his own at Abihiko as though that would have amounted to anything.

The sword shook in the man's hands, and the panicked spell-casting the constable did, burning his Bound talismans for calling reinforcements, didn't help either.

Abihiko didn't spare him much thought, going for Nekohiko straightaway.

"Come on, we're leaving."

"I am not going anywhere with you."

"Nekohiko."

Ugh, they did need to leave this place. What else could they do here? Get caught and ruin their preparations for the Trial? Any attention to themselves right now was unnecessary, even if Nekohiko knew the right way would be to deal with the law enforcement to not cause further agitation and fear in the city.

But he refused to let Abihiko touch him as he stormed past the toppled tables and chairs and past the trembly constable who was still mumbling something about arresting Abihiko.

After what he had witnessed with both Nekohiko's and Abihiko's spell-casting, Nekohiko doubted the man would even dare to block their path.

Yet grrrrr... they had left such huge imprints of their magic in this room. And Nekohiko's own Imperial aura, too!

"We need to let Kasuga know," Abihiko said, matter-of-fact. "Mikawa, please notify her that we will need some cover-up from the Nagare state and law enforcement to hide the fact of our presence there until the Trial."

The boy must have heard everything. And judging by how shaken he had always been about murder of innocents and causing grief to others... Yeah, Nekohiko didn't doubt that Mikawa was pissed at Abihiko, too.

So he wasn't surprised to see the boy right outside the window of the first story of the restaurant when Nekohiko and Abihiko stepped out. Mikawa's face was dark and his expression unpromising.

Abihiko didn't care.

"Kasuga's Trial would benefit from this incident being covered up," Abihiko told the boy, stern. "Please get to it as quickly as you can."

Stiffly, Mikawa gave Abihiko a bow, looking every bit like he wanted to snap. "Yes, Your Supreme Divine Majesty. As it pleases you."

As though this had even the chance to work on Abihiko! This person was too utterly careless to bother.

"Neko, let's go. We have a long road before us. We need to be at Adamantine Mountain by tomorrow's noon."

As such, he dared to reach for Nekohiko's hand while his other arm still held the bloodied sword!

Nekohiko recoiled. "Do not touch me. Mikawa..."

Suddenly, he was overcome with an impulse. He didn't know what it was and why, but he didn't want to go anywhere with Abihiko now.

"Mikawa, fly me away from here."

Even the street outside the restaurant was brimming with commotion and screams. The first Utsuro spell that Nekohiko had deflected into the wall had broken the building's side to such an extent that the electric Nagare currents that ran within it began zapping and flaring from within the cracks. People peeked from the adjacent building windows and balconies, and the spectators on the street gawked as well -- not at all deterred by the howling survivors rushing out of The Heartstring's doors.

Nekohiko didn't want to go through this hell hole, especially next to Abihiko. So he lunged for the Nagare boy and latched onto his hand, pleading with his eyes.

"Please fly me out. I don't want to be here," he whispered.

"B-but--"

"Now!"

"Nekohiko, don't be stupid -- we need to stay together," Abihiko said. Yet Nekohiko didn't need to listen.

He was too mad to not want to punish him for what he'd done.

It was one thing to keep the truth away from him until he thought Nekohiko was ready. But a wholly another to murder a person just for telling a small bit of truth on accident.

Perhaps, because Mikawa was just as dismayed by the murder as Nekohiko was, the boy understood him in a flash.

He clutched Nekohiko's fingers in his own -- and rushed upward and into the skies.

Like a lashing grip, a spell snapped at Nekohiko's torso to catch him and draw him back to Abihiko. But unlike the previous time Abihiko had dared to leash him with his spells, now, Nekohiko wasn't afraid to use his powers to slice through his spell with his own.

Abihiko's red Leashing spell sizzled in the air -- and Nekohiko whipped a Towa ice blade at it. A slash, and the spell broke apart. With that, he was free, and out of Abihiko's reach.

Mikawa also went for the dramatic escape. Not just his usual flight powers which Abihiko could parallel by pursuing them over the rooftops, but the true Nagare flight.

Instantaneous, stomach-churning -- like a lightning bolt shooting through the skies.

Within a second, they were gone. And Nekohiko was too angry to even look back and see what Abihiko was doing when they left him.

 

 

 

---

***

 

 

Mikawa hadn't flown far. But the speed with which he was moving was still too fast to glean out the direction -- so even when he stopped in the middle of the skies in full view of Suzumegara, it still didn't allow for anyone to follow him.

Nekohiko's heart lurched from the sudden halt in the air. All of their clothes and hair rushed about them, then slowly went down in the gentle rustle of the winds.

Nekohiko still couldn't focus on anything after Abihiko's face.

The expression of coldness and distress on it.

He mulled it over and hanged limply off Mikawa's shoulder as the two of them floated in the air, suspended between the diffuse clouds, watching the faint silhouette of Suzumegara as it moved over the mountain peaks...

"I am sorry you had to witness that," Nekohiko said, miserable. "And I am sorry that Kasuga now has to clean all that mess up--"

"She'll be fine. I already sent her a Wind Whisper about it and she said it won't be a big trouble."

...

The boy sounded done. Finished, out of his mind with resignation.

"Mikawa, I know you do not favor me after everything that had happened between us."

After I'd almost choked you to death for no real reason back in Nara...

"But Abihiko... he isn't like that," Nekohiko said. "He killed her because she was one of those people who had helped murder me. So he was very worried she would attack me, too."

Why was he defending Abihiko's actions?!

Why did it matter to him so much what Mikawa -- or anyone, for that matter -- thought about Abihiko?

He was mad at Abihiko, too, yet now he was somehow justifying Abihiko's dumb choices?

"I know for sure he didn't mean it to be so cold and... ruthless."

Mikawa turned to gaze at Nekohiko unreadably. "Do you love him too? Like he loves you?"

...

How is that...

...relevant, now?

"He defends everything you do from others, and you do the same to him. Yet, between each other, you hate and fight and hurt one another freely. You just do not allow anyone else to hurt either of you. Or so it seems."

"I guess both of us give quite a negative view of our actions and choices, huh."

"Not really." For how disillusioned Mikawa was, he acted oddly reserved and calm. "Just... incomprehensible. Sometimes, it makes me feel as though you and him... and Elder Sister, even, aren't like the rest of us normal people. You are people from legends and epic stories. Your choices are above those of mere mortals. So I am unsure of how they can be judged on our, mortal level."

"I am still a person," Nekohiko said, uncertain.

"I know. When you gave me that... small bracelet -- from Iokirihime to Sakami. That was something so small, not at all epic or legendary. Something a normal person would care to do. It made me see that... you have to walk a two-life path. One where you behave as an Emperor, and the other... you as a human, perhaps. I guess the Abihiko we just witnessed down there --" Mikawa nodded toward Suzumegara's hulking mass beyond the swaths of wispy clouds far away "--that was the Emperor Abihiko. Not the human one. Trust me, by now, I think I can tell the difference.

"I am not mad or scared of the Imperial you or Imperial him. I just... really prefer the human versions," Mikawa ended softly.

"Human versions of you two, I can understand."

"...thank you, Mikawa."

Nekohiko still felt too conflicted to want to continue the conversation.

The anger at Abihiko couldn't let go of him so easily, so he kept quiet, glowering at Suzumegara's silhouette in the distance. He was cold, hanging out here in the middle of the skies, even with all their cloaks on their backs. But Nekohiko hardly noticed the cold.

"Have you calmed down? Should we go back?" Mikawa asked him.

"Actually," Nekohiko said, unsure. "Can you take me to one specific place first? Please. I need to see it."

"Mmm?"

Were there even places in the Empire Nekohiko had ever needed to go to? Aside from Nara, where the center of the human life was, and Ise where the Spirits dwelled, he had never needed anything in his Empire to visit after waking up as a log. He wanted to see everything, but there was never a true necessity.

For the first time in his life, he was dying to see a place.

And not just with curiosity. With dread, too.

"How far is the Black Ship Forest from here?" he rasped.

 

 

---

***

 

Mikawa had, luckily, not heard everything that Chinatsu had told the people around her. Probably, he'd been too busy with flying Abihiko to the restaurant and making sure Kasuga knew what was happening -- and couldn't focus on the woman's last words.

So when Nekohiko suggested they go to the Black Ship Forest, the boy was reluctant only for... understandable reasons.

As all the others had implied, the Black Ship Forest was not a nice place to be in.

Nobody went there.

Nobody wanted to.

Yet somehow, everyone in the Empire knew what it was, where, and why they shouldn't come.

"But how, if nobody ever goes there, do people know about it so much?" Nekohiko frowned as he and Mikawa descended through the thickening clouds toward the spot somewhere along the border of the Towa Kingdom.

The flight here had been instantaneous, but Mikawa chose not to come too close to the Forest itself. He'd remained at a sensible distance, and was lowering down carefully as though expecting something terrible to happen any moment now.

His nervousness translated to Nekohiko. 

The landscape they were gradually nearing wasn't that bad, honestly. Just a bit mist-ridden from the mountain slopes nearby and the seaside air coming in from the cold waters.

A dark spread of trees loomed underneath them. Touched by the clumps of pale mist, the trees did look eerie, but nothing that Nekohiko would consider sinister. Across it, some enormous woodland Spirits roamed -- Boar Spirits, Fox Spirits, Deer. Not much out of the normal. Actually, as long as Spirits dwelled within this forest, the likelihood that it was a horrible place was extremely low.

On any other occasion, he wouldn't even look at this forest twice, imagining some vague threat from it. It was... quite an average-looking forest.

But because its fame preceded it, he was now all too keen on finding something odd or displacing about it.

To his questions, Mikawa hesitated.

"...well, this place is haunted, everyone knows that. Something awful happened here, and the Demonic and Corrupted Spiritual activity is high," he muttered, floating closer and closer to the edge of the forest.

Nekohiko balked. "What Demonic activity? From the looks and feel of it, there isn't any. This place seems one of the purest Spiritual areas I've ever seen."

And indeed. Now that they were near it, denying this was ridiculous.

The place emanated the presence of the beneficial Spiritual activities, and the sight of the several Spirits in the distance who weren't afraid to wander the forest had to be proof enough.

Yet Mikawa only furrowed his brows more. "I don't know..."

"These are only people's rumors," Nekohiko realized. Nobody was coming here, and because of that -- the negative myths about this place had reached scary levels.

"But... n-no. I remember when this forest appeared. I remember that people said it came to be just within a single night! That isn't normal," Mikawa protested meekly. He also surveyed the area for the signs of Corruption and couldn't find any. The myths and rumors were the only things he could grasp for. "It was the night my father, Lord Kazuragi told us he would go to battle...

"The intruders from the eastern ocean were coming. Hundreds of ships, thousands of foreigners summoned by the previous Emperor during the Civil War with Lord Abihiko. My father and the Lady of Towa had to gather their forces and repel them, but..."

Mikawa dwindled out, shaking his head.

Confusion and misery in his face were so apparent. The two of them finally landed on the ground -- a quiet glade in the middle of the forest, away from the tree line, and Nekohiko couldn't wait to hurry toward the trees and investigate. But Mikawa dithered.

"He came back that very night because Elder Sister and I were crying so much, afraid to lose him. But he came, just several hours after he'd left and... he hugged us and said that there didn't need to be a battle. And wouldn't be one. And that everything was good and safe, for now. But when he said that -- he was white as rice paper! And his arms were shaking. I have never seen Father like that," Mikawa mumbled, drawing back from the trees instead. "I don't think we should delve deeper into this place, Nekohiko. I... believe what others say about it. This is an unholy forest."

...

Fascination and dread mixed within Nekohiko to the extent he couldn't ignore.

Mikawa or no, he had to check.

His footsteps were muffled by the lush grass beneath his feet. The flora of this place was wonderful, so bountiful, so healthy. Nekohiko couldn't help admiring the soulful silence of the woods with only the chirping of songbirds and the subtle drumming of the woodpecker coming from afar. Even the wind rustling through the branches had such a serene feel to it.

That said... once he went below the canopy of the mighty black-trunk trees, a strange doubt swept through him.

What kind of trees were these?

He tilted his head, studying them. The bark was indeed too dark, almost entirely black as though covered with tar. The lines of the trees unnatural -- too smooth where the trunk was, and too jagged once they split off into branches. And the branches themselves...

Were these leaves or needles or...

Wait.

Squinting, he saw. Almost every tree here had a mixture of leaves, needles, and even grass sprouting out of their branches! Grass. No tree like that would have emerged naturally.

These were Bound. Made by a person... why... just why?

"This is so scary," Mikawa said once he also came behind Nekohiko, taking a good look at the treetops. "I don't understand... they look like trees, but they aren't. What are they?"

Drawn as though hypnotized, Nekohiko reached out a hand toward the nearest tree.

And when he did--

His mind exploded with murmurs.

 

 

---

***

 

 

The trees spoke -- all of them, at once. It wasn't just one tree he was touching, apparently. Connected through their roots, this was the entire forest, speaking within his mind.

He had never known one could hear what trees spoke. Unless the trees had a Spirit nearby who could translate into humanly-understood emotions, it was impossible for a human to bother speaking to trees.

But these weren't trees, really.

He could hear them because...

They spoke in human voices.

...

Hundreds. Thousands of human voices. And though he jolted at first in horror at the realization that he could hear them, he also could not understand their words.

Because they spoke a foreign language, solely for each other.

And even so, understanding them was moot because most of the time, they simply... howled and wailed. As though in endless agony.

Like a buzzing swarm of insects, the susurrus of their speech filled his mind for a few brief moments that his hand touched the tree bark. His soul shuddered, and his heart nearly stopped from the assault of so many disembodied voices.

The ugly shock of it.

The overwhelming storm of so many at once...!  

Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh! What was this?!

He flinched, stumbling backward from the tree and nearly bumping into another one. He cringed, afraid to touch anything in this forsaken forest. The few words that he'd heard were repeated infinitely. Not even speech but rambling, mumbling. Unraveled, insane talk of a lunatic trapped in a healing cell.

Of people, as though imprisoned within... the trees?

"Ahhhh! N-no..." Nekohiko turned and turned, his heartbeat hitching in his chest and his skin clammy with cold sweat.

Whoever these people were... inside the trees... foreign intruders? enemy soldiers? -- they were caught within these trees, Bound to them for all eternity. And if this forest had come into being five years ago, then...

In five years of such an existence, it was no wonder how most of these people had become reduced to nothing but rambling madmen.

But worst of all was that... the few seconds of touching that tree bark, Nekohiko had felt...

...it breathing under his fingers.

The tree bark wasn't made of solid wood. The wooden grain was molded into it, of course, -- the dead wood as though coming from some manmade object. But also something else.

The wood of the tree bark was shivering under his touch. And breathing. And warm like only... human flesh would be.

But how...? Why?!

The name of the forest immediately came to him like a nightmare he couldn't stop. The Black Ship Forest. The humans that came in those Black Ships had been... Bound together with their own ships?

And put into the shapes of trees?

N-no.

Ahhh...

This was so terrifying.

"Th-these are people...?" Mikawa gasped.

He crashed into Nekohiko from the side and clutched both his shoulders in his hands as though demanding an answer from him. "These trees -- are people? They are made from human flesh Bound together with the ship wood!"

...

Nekohiko was afraid to breathe. His teeth clattered in his mouth, unable to meet.

"NEKOHIKO!" Mikawa shook him. "Say something! Is the reason why you came here... because you did it?! Did you?! You -- to these thousands of people?!"

...

But...

I didn't even know about this.

How could I have done this, Mikawa?

Yet the answer already lodged inside Nekohiko. He knew. For certain.

The single touch of the trees here revealed the Binding aura imprint of the omnipotent spell that had made them so.

It was the true Emperor's aura. A fully unleashed one, with all the seals broken. Nobody else had so much power as him.

Nekohiko.

"I--"

He couldn't speak up.

He didn't know what.

The two of them were speechless, shuddering through and incapable of comprehending the gruesome fate of the thousands of people around them. Mikawa looked sallow with nausea and daze...

Nekohiko wondered if he looked any better.

Mikawa's reddened eyes stared in horror into his, overflowing with tears that came out of nowhere. The boy's mouth trembled.

"You... back then, in the dressing room. When Arata had stopped Sakami from holding your mind hostage in her spell. You were casting something... quite like this, didn't you? I felt it. I felt even back then. That you could have Bound us all together in that room if you so wished!" Painfully, he ground his fingers into Nekohiko's shoulders, then tried to give him another rude shake. "You -- can -- do -- such -- a monstrous thing! And you don't even realize it?!"

...

...

...

I don't know what this even is, Nekohiko thought helplessly, his own tears slowly spilling out of his eyes as he shivered in Mikawa's arms.

I... haven't done this.

I wasn't in control when this happened.

I would never... something like this...

This horrifies me, too, Mikawa. Cannot you see that?

"Mikawa," he whispered. "I didn't do this--"

But the boy wasn't ready to listen to him more. The forest, now that they knew what it was, terrified him to such a degree, he tripped, backing away and trying not to touch anything here.

The tangled roots and mosses and underbrush caught his feet, but he still backed away -- solely to not be close to Nekohiko.

"Do not talk to me," he said, shaking. "I cannot even comprehend-- you people are all insane. Insane! The things you do with your powers! I understand why the common folk wants to rebel against Binders now! I understand! Binders have no right to have so much unchecked power -- nobody does!"

"Mikawa, you are a Binder, too," Nekohiko mouthed. "And your power level is above that of most--"

"I did not ask for it! And I do not want it!"

"Your own sister is one of the greatest Binders in existence and she almost murdered a whole army on her own, too. The Trial is exactly about that."

"Then she is insane, too! I never said she wasn't!"

...

The boy's scream shattered the echoing silence of the forest, and reverberated all along the whispery, uncanny woods. Unseen, a flock of birds fluttered up, spooked by his outburst.

He rubbed the tears off his face angrily, then shook his finger toward the trees. "Nekohiko, kill them! Destroy this forest! PLEASE!"

Nekohiko blinked, retreating.

What?

"I cannot... murder these people. They are alive. If I destroy this forest..."

Gods. That would be horrible. The damage it would do to the Empire. The place would become a mass grave, and the amount of Dark, Demonic energy that would attract here...

The Black Ship Forest was an awful place, yes. But only for humans who knew what this horror entailed.

For the wildlife here and for the Spirits, this forest was... beneficial. It was their home. It flourished, regardless of what humans thought about its horrifying undercore.

"End their suffering, they are still conscious inside those trees!" Mikawa sobbed, his voice breaking. "Please, please kill them! This is cruel! Only you have the power to destroy such great areas! Please, have mercy!"

The last of Nekohiko's fears clashing inside him dissipated.

His resolve hardened even though he still squirmed deep inside at the meaning beneath the Black Ship Forest.

"No," he said. "If I kill them, this will be genocide."

"It already is -- that is not human lives! They are lost, how can you not see it?!"

"And genocide will taint the Empire's land. The Spirits would suffer and the land will get corrupted--"

"To hell with Spirits! To hell with land! Human lives come first!"

Nekohiko twitched as though slapped.

...

His nostrils flared and eyes burned.

"--and if the land and Spirits get corrupted, the taint will spread and start infecting the neighboring towns and villages," he finished, steady. "Do not tell me how to rule my Empire."

Mikawa stepped back, resigned. "Trust me, I am not. I want nothing to do with reigning and ruling and all those who do. You people are insane," he whispered. "I am just... a normal person. I cannot... take part in anything like that."

"Mikawa," Nekohiko said, worried.

The boy was slowly rising into the air, averting his eyes.

"You will all be in legends and myths. You are all epic heroes. And you do epic level atrocities and... sacrifices, I guess. I am too small for someone like you. I am too weak, perhaps. I am sorry."

"Mikawa, do not leave me here!"

...

But it was already too late. The boy flashed him one last broken look and then -- he snapped into the air in a light-struck flare of the fast Nagare flights.

He was gone on less than a second.

Nekohiko's cry caught on his lips, not having the chance to land.

But he still tried, hoping that the boy could hear him.

"I did not want this! I would never want to do something like this! Do you not know me at all, Mikawa?!"

...

Was it even Mikawa he was telling it to?

Maybe it was just himself.

Or anyone who would ever find out... All those people in The Heartstring restaurant an hour ago when they had spoken about the Black Ship Forest in such hushed, petrified horror...

Anyone who knew about this place, would be disgusted and appalled with its existence.

Especially if they found out who did it...

"No... No, I didn't... I could have not."

As though unable to believe it himself, Nekohiko crushed his sobbing sigh into his hand, then reached out his trembling fingers to the nearest tree again.

His fingertips brushed against the smooth fake bark, and... yes.

The faded yet obvious imprint of his aura. It was all over this place. It was this place's source and origin and brand, marking it as his own creation.

One of the most amazing feats of Binding magic he had ever imagined.

An entire fleet of foreign invaders, something both Hinokuma and Kazuragi had been prepared to fight together, unsure of their survival chances?

He had... done this?

Had saved his people from a terrible massacre? But had committed one of his own in the process? Even if there was no blood spilled and no dead bodies and no deaths.

This atrocity of a forest was still... a kind of a massacre.

His hand came away from the tree, cold and numb. Slowly, he sank onto the forest floor, crushing his head in his hands and thinking.

Desperate, dark, unraveling thoughts.

Abihiko.

Abihiko, was this only one of the many truths you have been hiding away from me? he thought, shivering.

Then, after a moment --

Thank you, came another thought, much less desperate. Even serene, in its surrendering graveness. Thank you for hiding this from me.

He lifted his eyes to the skies, blurry as they were from crying, and blinked, trying to remember where he was now. The sky was... darker than when he and Mikawa had come here.

How much time had he spent here, numb, and lost, trying to gather his thoughts back into focus?

He had lost all track of time. And all sense of where he even was. Somewhere in the middle of this mazelike, boundless thicket of repulsive dread?

"Spirits," he murmured, dropping his head back into his cupped hands.

All alone.

Lost.

And in the middle of such a horror from his own past. Something he had no idea he had even taken part in, five years ago.

That didn't stop it from being his responsibility, though. He suspected that this was right at the peak of his powers when all the seals had just been lifted off him and that had caused his mind to blur and his memory to falter. However, that he could not remember doing this didn't mean he could not try... to fix it.

Mikawa had been right about him being the only one able to end the misery of these poor wretches. These unsuspecting victims in his and the Usurper's war for the Emerald Throne.

Nobody had enough power in the Empire to command Spirits to such a degree as he did. Perhaps, Kasuga or the other Great Lords might have been able to destroy this forest.

But they wouldn't be able to save it in the process. They would have only exacerbated the issue by killing so many innocents gathered in one place.

Nekohiko had enough power to not need murder to fix this.

...

Decisive, he stood up. He swayed a little and almost fell because of how dizzy and weakened he had become from his breakdown here earlier.

But he kept himself in check. He could wallow in self-pity and denial all he wanted, but that was not what the true Emperor would do. The foreigners trapped in the Black Ship Forest were, perhaps, not his people. Only his guests. Or maybe his people already, having been rooted to his land for so many years.

They deserved grace and kindness like everyone did. He could not let them down by being weak or selfish.

He had to do this, and only after it -- waste all the time in the world on weeping about it and having a meltdown.

He breathed calmly, in and out.

Then he began casting -- one of the most tenuous and convoluted spells he could remember in his arsenal.

The one that dimmed consciousness and gave the sense of peace.

The spell of Eternal Sleep, doubled and tripled and multiplied to cover tens of thousands of people. At the same time.

 

 

 

---

***

 

 

He woke up from cold.

When had he blacked out? He couldn't remember. It must have been right after he'd finished casting his spell of relieving the misery of all these souls trapped inside the trees. He remembered finishing it, but not how he'd lost consciousness right afterward.

His face hurt; he must have hit the ground when he'd fallen down.

But worse than that was the cold, sipping in through all his layers and clutching his body in such a dreadful chill. Rigid, he uncurled from his pitiful position on the ground. He craned his neck to look up and see the light of day.

But it was dark. Night, all around him. From between the filigree canopy branches overhead, came only the tranquil shine of stars. An owl hooted far away and the peaceful life of the woodland gave its creaks and the rustle of the small night animals skittering in the dark.

A bit away from him, a few stray woodland Spirits sat, watching him as he rose on his fours to take a look around.

Every last part of Nekohiko hurt from lying in an uncomfortable pose. But also his Binding powers... he had depleted them almost to the bottom, having cast such a demanding spell and multiplied it to such great numbers...

Damn it, he thought. He shouldn't have done so before he got out of the forest.

He could have waited to get out first, then cast it.

Now, with his Binding so weakened, how the hell would he get out of here?

He didn't even know where he was.

"The Emperor silenced all the trees?" the cute Spirit of Mushrooms asked him, blinking with its myriads of spore-like eyes. "Thank you. They were very chatty and... annoying."

"They are quiet?" Nekohiko asked, hopeful.

He clambered over to the nearest tree trunk to touch it.

And though the tree bark itself was still unbearably fleshy to his touch, at least -- no consciousness resided within it anymore.

Thank heavens...

"They are all asleep now," Nekohiko told the Spirits gathered around him. "They are at peace."

"Good Emperor," another Spirit told him.

But Nekohiko knew it didn't say that to praise him for his action. It only meant that it admired Nekohiko in general. As all Spirits did.

With how populated and lively the Black Ship Forest had been all these years, he did not doubt for a second that the Spirits had never given a damn about all the trapped human souls inside it. They wouldn't have noticed if he fixed it now, either. Only the silence that they found appealing.

He didn't know if he felt supported by them or no.

On the one hand, Spirits would never call him a monster for what the Black Ship Forest represented. On the other hand...

He was a human, not a Spirit. No?

He needed the company of other humans. Their... respect, their understanding. Their warmth.

Or perhaps, not any humans', really.

Even Mikawa's rejection of him didn't hurt nearly as much as Nekohiko had thought it would. Nobody's rejection of him would ever hurt.

Only one person had that prerogative.

And that person hadn't rejected him for this.

That person had known what Nekohiko had done. Yet he... had never blamed or despised him for it.

Not once.

"Abihiko," Nekohiko whispered, settling back to the ground and curling into his cloak for the insufficient warmth it gave him.

He wanted to go into his seashell and ask Abihiko for help through it, but...

He wasn't ready for it yet.

To face him. To talk to him about what had happened. And how did the fact that Nekohiko learned about the Black Ship Forest change Abihiko's murder of Chinatsu?

It didn't.

Nekohiko was too lost and too frustrated to want to do anything other than hug Abihiko and nestle safe and close to him. But now wasn't the time for that.

Now, he wanted advice and... to talk to someone.

To someone who would understand him best -- his Imperial duty, his responsibilities, and the horrific extents of his powers, out of all the people in the world.

That person had always been Suminoe.

...

Gods, Suminoe.

Nekohiko hadn't even had time to properly grieve his death, so obsessed he'd been with his quest for vengeance and then the panicked search for truth.

And where had that taken him?

Careful, he dragged his legs into a meditating position and opened his palms, preparing to pray. He soothed his mind and focused. On the chilly night air, on the serene sounds of the forest, on the gentle starlight trickling down the ornamental leaves above.

"Spirits of the Forest, pray with me and help me," he asked those few that sat close beside him.

Like Kotone had taught him, years ago, in her quiet small room back in Izumo.

Ask for help, she had told him.

Alone, you cannot do everything. Sometimes, you've got to ask for help.

"Of course, sweet Emperor," the Spirits answered in unison.

And thus, they lifted the veil between the worlds, and the dark wind of the Spiritside swept through him and past the quiet forest around.

All the colors dimmed. All the sounds faded.

The starlight shone ever brighter, though, and in its cold, white light, the world became monochrome and starkly-contrasted, like only the Spiritside world could be. The Spirits beside him had taken different shapes here -- bigger, greater, less... solid or comprehensible to the human sight.

But as benevolent as they'd been moments ago, and willing to help him.

Nekohiko closed his eyes and focused on sending his plea for counsel, for advice -- for the kindness of a fellow human being who had been as Spirit-attuned as he was. And struggling, similarly, under the weight of his powers and responsibilities before the Empire.

Nekohiko called for Suminoe's Spirit.

"I need you," he prayed. "I want you... Please come and talk to me.

"Please, Your Holiness. I need your guidance. I need... you."

...

...

...

He waited a long while. A long while of nothing happening and no replies coming.

Only silence and the hollow echoes of the empty, inhuman world

But then--

When he had lost all hope of being heard--

"Nekohiko?" a familiar, dear voice behind him said. "You called for help?"

And Nekohiko could hardly believe his ears, so relieved and happy he was to hear it.

He didn't even mind it wasn't Suminoe.

Just, sad. But only a little. Because it was someone else he was very glad to hear.