"No," the woman instantly corrected herself, "no, you're not the Solar Priestess. I can sense nothing but common humanity from you." She unwound herself from the chair, her blue jean-clad legs moving with an effortless, athletic grace. The arms revealed by her short-sleeved T-shirt were marked by crisscrossing thin white lines, scars that almost seemed delicate. "Another mistake by the First Neck, it seems. She was so sure that you would be the one."
"Orochi!" Himeko gasped.
A darkness glittered in the woman's sky-blue eyes, like chips of black sapphire.
"So your sister talks to you. That's good. Families should be close. And..." She reached into her jeans pocket and took out a short cylinder of carved ivory capped with brass. A flick of her thumb revealed that it was a switchblade knife, the five-inch blade that sprang from the end polished to a high gloss. "...and least this way my trip wasn't wasted."
Himeko stared at the knife, trembling. Her heart pounded like a trip-hammer, and she seemed frozen like a bird caught in a snake's gaze. She'd spoken bravely the day before about facing danger, about not wanting anyone else to be hurt in her place, but idealistic dreams didn't protect her from fear when she was face-to-face with an Orochi who knew who she was, who wanted her life.
"Hikari, run!" Marika cried, pulling on her arm. The petite girl yanked her hard enough that her foot slipped, and while she caught her balance, the spell broke. The fear was no longer a cold paralysis but a hot spear digging into her, screaming runfleeescape.
A dark aura seemed to envelop the Orochi, as if she was wrapped in a veil of black flames.
"Yes, do run," she said. "Let me have some fun with this."
The girls bolted, pounding down the corridor and crashing through the door to the stairs. If only I could do something! Himeko thought. She couldn't think of anything, though; all she could do was run and even that not all that well.
There was a growl behind them as they made the turn at the final landing before the ground floor, and Himeko could not resist turning her head to see. A great, dark shape hurtled down the stairs they'd just descended and crashed into the wall, blasting gouges out of the plaster and sending cracks radiating out in all directions. Himeko let out a little yelp and the shape turned towards her.
It looked like a giant panther, she realized, only every part of it but the eyes--skin, fur, tongue, claws, teeth, everything--seemed to be made from inky darkness, as if shadows had been given tangible form and pooled together in a coherent mass. Its eyes were blank ovals of glimmering violet, and wisps as if of amethyst flame seemed to flicker off its body into the air.
Marika screamed while little whimpering noises came involuntarily from deep in Himeko's throat. She didn't know if that made her less or more scared than her friend.
"C-come on!" she babbled, plucking at Marika's sleeve while fighting to tear her eyes away from the monster. Was this what Chikane had meant by the Shadow of an Orochi god? What can I do to fight that?
The panther flexed its claws, the casual movement of its paw tearing gouges into the tile. The movement spurred the girls; they scampered down the stairs and out through the door.
That was when Himeko realized that there was something she could do to fight the Orochi, or at least to help thwart it. She turned and shoved Marika as hard as she could with both hands. The tiny girl fell stumbling away to land on the grassy verge beyond the walk.
"Hikari, what are you--" Marika cried, but Himeko had already turned to run the other way, back towards the path along which they'd approached the dorm. In the next instant, a black pool seemed to ooze out from beneath the closed door, then rose up into the shape of the giant cat and loped after Himeko.
Yes! At least Marika is safe! the blonde exulted momentarily, before her own situation drove out that happiness. She glanced over her shoulder at the shadowy cat and her stomach flip-flopped. Chikane, what am I supposed to do?
-X X X-
Marika pounded her fist on the grass. Damn it, damn it, damn it, Hikari, why did you do that? But she knew why, well enough. Hikari was that kind of person. If the two girls were together, then that woman was as likely as not to destroy Marika just for being there, but if they separated there was no question which one she'd follow.
I can't just lay here, Marika thought. I have to do something. Her legs were trembling so badly she could barely move them, though. The woman--the Orochi--had been unlike anything she'd imagined. She was certain that they weren't alive now because of anything they'd done, because of running or dodging, but because the Orochi liked to play with her prey instead of killing it outright. She was the daughter of the Ohgami Shrine priest, and she could still scarcely believe in the reality of it.
Hikari and Tsukuyo fought those things? Not once, but over and over through multiple lifetimes? she marveled. Marika couldn't imagine it; she'd go mad in their place. And Hikari? Gentle, sunny Hikari as a shrine maiden of the God of Swords? The idea was almost inconceivable for her.
It did, though, make her realize what she could do. If there was anyone who she could imagine fighting that thing it was Tsukuyo. The Lunar Priestess would move heaven and earth to protect Hikari. Marika had to find her.
Hikari said that...she had a late world history class, she remembered. That would have been in the history/lit building, but because of yesterday's damage...It came to her a moment later; history was temporarily sharing facilities with engineering. She quickly calculated the most likely route for Tsukuyo to follow, and started to get to her feet. The act of deciding to do something had, if not eased her fear, at least calmed her enough to regain some self-control, and though she was a little wobbly at first she began to regain her equilibrium as she started to jog, then run, hoping to meet Tsukuyo halfway.
-X X X-
More than one head turned as Chikane strolled back to the dorm, just as they had during class. It had been over six months since she'd last worn her only pair of blue jeans, and that had been because she'd accompanied Himeko on a photography hike. She couldn't remember the last time she hadn't worn a skirt when not required to by circumstance.
Then again, to her mind, this was 'required by circumstance.' If an Orochi appeared, she wanted the mobility offered by pants. It was the same reason her tanto dagger was in her bag. She'd even gone so far as to pick up her bow before her late lecture; it was slung over her back in its case and was the cause of at least as many stares as the jeans. She'd fobbed off her professor's questions with some excuse about late practice, but she still felt the eyes, the stares, the questioning glances. It narrowed the distance she carefully maintained between herself and the rest of the world.
It was Himeko who'd done this, Himeko whose presence demanded that the real Chikane come to the forefront. It reminded her of how just two days ago she'd wished that she could openly be a couple with her lover, actually stood there and yearned for the chance to openly expose her innermost self to strangers. Himeko was her sun, her light that scattered all her lies, her fears, her self-doubts, Himeko's relentless--there was no other word for it--love for the true Chikane giving her the strength to let that Chikane out, bit by bit.
She still preferred their time together within the Lunar Shrine. Just herself and Himeko, with no one else to share herself with.
"Tsukuyo!"
Chikane's gaze flicked ahead towards the voice. It was Marika, whom she simultaneously hated for every minute the girl occupied Himeko's time and cherished for being a trusted friend that helped make Himeko happy. They'd had relatively few interactions themselves on a personal level.
Marika was running, almost panting for breath, though, and her face, Chikane saw, was wreathed in pure panic.
"What's wrong?" she asked at once. "Is Himeko all right?"
Marika bent over, gasping for breath, her hands on her knees to support herself.
"It's an Orochi," she wheezed out. "She chased Hikari...from the dorm down...the hill path."
Chikane was in motion at once, leaving the path and cutting across the campus grounds at a dead run. She didn't understand why the Orochi would be after Himeko, unless Reiko just wanted to hurt Chikane, to make her suffer in a way that nothing else would, but if the Orochi had been Reiko, Marika would have said so.
A different Neck, then, one with no personal stake in the outcome. So why go after Himeko?
Ruthlessly, she shoved the questions aside. They didn't matter now, anyway. All that mattered was getting to Himeko as soon as possible, and the desperate hope that the Orochi needed her victim alive for some reason.
-X X X-
Himeko squealed in pain as the paw struck her side and sent her flying, then grunted as she crashed into the bank. The shadow panther did not follow up its attack, though, but crouched ready to spring as the blue-haired woman came up next to it. She stroked its head gently, affectionately as she looked at Himeko.
"I really wish that I didn't have to do this," she said conversationally. No, that wasn't right, thought Himeko; there seemed to be genuine regret in the voice. "I'd rather not hurt another woman. We suffer too much in this damned world as it is. But your sister is the Lunar Priestess, and we can't pass up this opportunity. Only with the death of the priestesses can we be assured of Orochi's final triumph."
Whimpering, Himeko inched backwards up the bank, her feet digging into the grassy soil, loose rocks and gravel scratching against her back. She knew she needed to do something, but she was too scared to think.
"The First Neck says that your sister cares for you more than anyone, so even if you didn't turn out to be the Solar Priestess, with you in our hands we'll still have a lever to use against her."
So that's why I'm still alive, Himeko thought. She'd been batted around and scratched up a bit like a terrified mouse, but the Orochi had clearly been holding back. Now she understood. She couldn't let the Orochi hurt Chikane through her, but she couldn't think of anything she could do to stop the woman.
The Orochi urged the great cat forward; it padded towards Himeko with slow, relentless steps.
Suddenly, three arrows zipped down and buried themselves in the cat's side, the points of impact each shining with a pale, almost silvery light that dispelled the shadow's cohesion. The panther became more and more translucent, until Himeko could see the glowing arrowheads through it, then faded even further to become little more than a pale gray smudge, until it was gone entirely and the arrows clattered to the ground.
"Chikane!" Himeko cried jubilantly.
The Lunar Priestess snapped off another shot at the Orochi herself, but the blue-haired woman sidestepped, then hurled her knife up the bank towards Chikane. Chikane dove aside, a good move as it turned out as an explosion of black fire burst from the ground where the knife struck. The Orochi produced another blade while Chikane skidded down the bank to the path, putting herself between the Orochi and Himeko. Chikane dropped her bow and drew her tanto. The two women made an eerie mirror to one another, the grim fury in both faces making Himeko shiver.
-X X X-
It had been an unrewarding day, Takeshi Ohgami thought as he slowly read down yet another scroll. The shrine records were very specific as to rituals, but all too often retreated into the generalizations of legend when dealing with the nature of the Orochi and their battles with the priestesses. His past conversations with the Asamiya sisters had given him a good idea as to why: every time the battle was won, the world itself was remade, time unwound so that from the perspective of those who lived on the battle had never occurred. History could not record that which humans had not experienced; the memories of the gods were given voice only in myth. Even the priestesses themselves did not customarily retain the knowledge of their part, requiring the existence of the Ohgami family.
Tsukuyo had indicated, obliquely, that it had been largely Hikari's doing that the present circumstances were so different from the cycles in the legend. Was this the reason why she was not, apparently, the Solar Priestess? Had she stepped out of her own role in the course of, again apparently, saving Tsukuyo from the despair that had made her Orochi?
If the shrine's archive contained answers to those questions, they were stubbornly refusing to reveal themselves. Neither he nor his sister had been able to discover anything beyond what they'd already known.
Yet perhaps that was the problem, he thought. What he'd been taught by his father had been that the coming of the Orochi, the battle of the priestesses, and the triumph of Ame no Murakumo were all part of an eternal cycle compelled by destiny. This promoted rigid, patterned thinking. Perhaps his problem was not a lack of knowledge but an inability to accurately interpret the knowledge he had. "Eternal" and "destined" did not, after all, mean "immutable," as had been proved.
It was in this spirit that he renewed his research, and when he happened to read (or more accurately reread, as it was the fourth time he'd come across some variation of it that day) a particular passage, it sparked his imagination.
"Minako."
"Yes?" she said sharply. Ever since she was a little girl she'd always hated being distracted while she was reading.
"I think I've found something. Listen to this."
He read it out to her.
"Yes, and...?"
Takeshi explained, then, what his conclusions were and a smile slowly spread across her face.
"Well, now," Minako mused. "Isn't that an interesting development?"
-X X X-
The knife blades rang off of one another as Chikane and the Orochi lunged. The switchblade and tanto were more than just steel; they were extensions of their power as Sixth Neck and Lunar Priestess and the silver and violet sparks they struck off one another were only the slightest hint of the forces meeting.
This Orochi, Chikane realized, wasn't like Reiko, dangerous only because her sword was a manifestation of Take no Sukunazuchi. This one knew how to fight. She was good at it, entirely apart from her supernatural force. Indeed, it was only her own enhanced abilities she was using; it was the panther-construct Chikane had recognized as the Shadow of Izuhara no Tamazuchi. Chikane was lucky that she'd had the chance to attack and dispel it without warning, given how evenly matched they now seemed to be.
The woman, she could tell, was doing the same thing she was, taking her opponent's measure during the initial clashes between them, measuring not only skill but determination and resolve during these exchanges of cut and parry. Of course, determination was inherent in an Orochi's nature; they wouldn't be Orochi if there wasn't something powerful driving them, a core of pain and rage and despair regardless of how lighthearted or even comical their personalities might have seemed on the outside.
"Why?" the Orochi asked as Chikane's tanto sliced a cut in the fabric of her T-shirt while missing the flesh beneath. "Why are you doing this?"
Chikane struck aside the two quick ripostes. The heat in her back was like a brand eating into her skin; she was pushing the limits of her mostly-sealed power in keeping up with the Orochi.
"Why are you fighting us? I can feel it from you. The same anger as in us, the same disgust with the world."
She's not taunting, Chikane realized. She genuinely wants to know.
Chikane lashed out again, driving her back.
"I could ask you the same thing," she said. She certainly wasn't about to have a heart-to-heart about her feelings for Himeko in the middle of a knife fight! "Even when I let my anger reign, I tried to fix what was wrong with my own hands, not tried to just destroy everything."
"Do you think I didn't try?" the woman shouted. "I looked and I looked for that bastard, but his family had transferred away while I was in the hospital and I never found them! I found others, though, so many like him. Boys who think paying for a date means a right to a girl's body. Men who believe their desire gives them the right to do whatever they want." She slashed at Chikane wildly, her strokes carrying greater force, channeling more of the darkness but ironically easier to evade. "So I studied. I planned. I watched. I trained. At first, I thought that I was doing some good, helping in my small way. But it never ends! There are always more of them, more filth like a festering plague, bubbling up out of this corrupt world's heart!"
As she spoke, it began to dawn on Chikane what the Orochi was talking about, how--and why--she'd gained her skill, her causal ease with a blade, and as it did the hilt of the tanto almost seemed to crawl beneath the Lunar Priestess's fingers. She'd owned another such weapon once, when she was Chikane Himemiya. As had suited the heiress of Mahoroba's founding clan, it had been a masterwork blade, even its hilt and sheath a work of art in fantastically colored patterns inlaid in the wood. She remembered the feel of that hilt under her rapidly numbing fingers, how she'd flung it away, unable to bear touching it because of the blood she'd shed not with the blade but with the sheath.
Himeko's blood.
She stared at the enraged face of the Orochi, watched as a crackling aura of shadows began to swell up around the woman, and the only coherent thought in Chikane's mind was a paraphrase of a Western quotation she'd once read.
There, but for the grace of God, go thee.
"Himeko..." passed from her lips, the dagger dropped from her hand, and it was actually fortunate that she sagged to her knees on the path because if she hadn't the Orochi's knife would have torn out her throat, instead of passing over her head.
The Orochi stared at her in confusion. Whatever she'd expected, it certainly wasn't this. Her confusion, however, was a momentarily, fleeting thing, and the dark aura swelled up, the translucent image of the panther beginning to reform as she called upon Izuhara no Tamazuchi to destroy the Lunar Priestess.
Then her body jerked as a rock struck her head.
It wasn't a very big rock--five pounds at most--and it hadn't been thrown very hard because Himeko wasn't particularly athletic. The fact that she'd actually hit her target with a kind of two-handed shot put from halfway up the slope was amazing in and of itself. The impact of the crude, purely mortal weapon on the Orochi was negligible, no more bothersome than a friend's playful cuff upside the head. But it got her attention: she whirled, arm spinning to hurl her knife at the gnat that dared to interfere.
The sight of Himeko in danger was probably the only thing that could have commanded an instant, instinctive response from Chikane at that point, but it did. She scooped up her tanto and rammed it into the Orochi's exposed side. The throw never happened; the woman staggered back in pain and shock and in the next instant she was gone, black fire seeming to consume her.
"Chikane!"
Himeko's running feet on the grass.
"Chikane, what's wrong? Are you hurt?" She dropped to her own knees next to Chikane, her eyes pleading and worried. In the next instant Chikane had flung herself against Himeko, fisting her hands in Himeko's shirt as she buried her face against her sister's shoulder and wept, choking on the sorrow that threatened to consume her.
-X X X-
"Chikane?" Himeko asked, though babbled was more like it. She didn't understand what had happened. One minute Chikane had been fighting the Orochi, and in the next had just...dropped, but without a blow being struck or any other kind of injury she could see. And now this, her beloved crying as if her soul had been torn out of her. "What did she do to you? How can I help? Chikane, tell me!" she pleaded. Her arms had closed around Chikane almost reflexively, but she was afraid to hold her tightly for fear there was some injury.
"Himeko! I'm sorry, Himeko. I'm so, so sorry!"
"C-Chikane?" Sorry? Himeko thought helplessly. Sorry about what? The only thing she could think of were the injuries the Orochi woman had inflicted. "I'm okay, really. I just got knocked around a bit. I've had worse just falling down, honest! You got here and saved me before anything really bad could happen, so...so it's okay, right?"
Chikane shook her head, still sobbing.
"No, n-not that," she wept. "What I did. I didn't...I didn't even stop to think! Gods, I was so stupid!"
Himeko blinked helplessly.
"Chikane, I don't understand," she pleaded. "What's happened?"
"The Orochi. What she was saying..." She stopped, taking several deep, ragged breaths as if she was trying to inhale through her tears. "Oh, Himeko, what if I'd done that to you?"
"If you'd done what?" It was so frustrating, not knowing what it was that Chikane meant.
"When I--when I hurt you--" She sniffed, then shook her head. "No, let me say it. When I raped you."
"Chikane, that was in our past lives!" Himeko protested. "You know that's over and done with." Why on earth was she bringing it up now?
"I wanted you to hate me. I wanted you to think I was a monster so that you'd be willing to kill me. So I did the worst thing to you that I could imagine, but I...I just assumed how you'd react to it."
Oh.
"I never stopped to think, never realized what that kind of horror could do to you. What if you'd become like...like that woman? Or what if it had broken you? There are so many different ways people could react, and--"
Himeko cut off her protests the only way she could think of, by grabbing Chikane's arms and kissing her. It wasn't a gentle kiss, either, but warm and deep, the kind that sent tingles of fire through Himeko's own body. Chikane struggled against it for a second, but Himeko was insistent, nipping at her lover's lower lip, then probing with the tip of her tongue until Chikane's mouth flowered open beneath her own. Only when she felt the tension leave Chikane's body, her beloved relax into her arms, did she end the kiss.
"Chikane, you and I have been together for hundreds of years," Himeko said, "years that we don't even remember but that we feel in the depth of our hearts. If you didn't stop to think of what might have gone wrong, it's not because you were careless but because of how well you know me. Even though you didn't know how much I love you...and how could you, since I was so slow to understand it myself and caused you so much pain...even though you didn't know, you still understood in your heart that I would be all right. That's all. What another person might have felt or suffered in that place didn't matter, because you know me."
"Himeko..."
"So...please, Chikane? You were so horribly, horribly lost back then. I don't ever want to see you feeling any guilt or pain about anything you did to me or felt about me. All I want in life is to be your one and only Himeko. And even if I'm...I'm not the world's sun any more, please let me shine for you?"
Chikane buried her face against Himeko's shoulder again with a fresh wail. Oh, no, I've messed it up again! What did I say?
"I don't deserve you, Himeko!"
Himeko sighed with relief and let her arms close around Chikane again, holding her close.
"I feel the same way about you, you know."
Tears of relief always ended faster than tears of sorrow, and in a couple of minutes Himeko was kissing the wetness away from beneath Chikane's eyes. They suddenly jerked back from each other, though, at the sound of a loudly cleared throat.
"Er...am I interrupting a moment?"
They spun towards Marika, who for only the second time since Himeko had met her, was blushing.
"So...um...I guess you got here in time?"
The glare that Chikane had been starting to level at her for the interruption suddenly softened, then she smiled.
"Yes, thanks to you coming and finding me." She rose, helping Himeko to her feet.
"Well, then...yay for me?"
Himeko giggled, then hooked her arm through Chikane's as they went to find her bow. Maybe it was just for now, but at least in this moment everything was all right again.
Back to Kannazuki no Shimai Index - Back to Kannazuki no Miko Shoujo-Ai Fanfiction