Selvaria (Our Heroine of the Sea!)
Izanami (Emergency Deity Meeting!)
Konohanasakuya-hime (Japanese Goddess of Mt. Fuji!)
Selvaria weaved through the choppy waves, fire igniting in her chest as if she were a drummer, pounding the sound of war! Above the surface, she saw the shimmering World Tree, stretching far and wide.
He’s a big one. Probably a bit bigger than me!
Not just that…
She surfaced, grinning as she saw the giant branches coiling around the flying death dragon. Jets and other UK assets were scrambling, firing at will upon the colossal figure to no effect. Her eyes widened as its wings spread wide, bone spikes raining down upon London.
One landed in her path, where it burst out of the sea as a six-meter-long bone shark.
Really… Thanks for the bite!
Maw opening far wider than her opponent, it barely showed its ugly snout before it entered the abyss that was her belly. Just a distraction.
But, Selvaria knew that in her current state, Níðhöggr would think she was more of a side dish to the World Tree main course. The problem was scale and threat.
How do I draw aggro?
Sucking in deep, a beam cycled into her open jaws, converting seawater as electricity sparked around her, plates along her spine shining. Frost leaked out with the energy circling it, the beam sliding down its wing, sending chunks of ice breaking off to fall below.
She almost felt insulted as, instead of turning to face her, it threw out dozens more bone spikes in her direction to convert into its undead minions.
They lurched out to bite her, sinking their jaws into nothing, because their jaws were broken on her armored plates. She ignored them. Small fish. Distractions.
I need to become the bigger dragon, but… Cool!
Her thoughts broke as undead swordfish jumped out of the sea, waterspouts carrying them up to strike her back—their noses broke, naturally.
Uh, guys, I’m literally, like, the tankiest thing there is!
Stop embarrassing yourselves.
But thanks for the idea!
Now, problem two. This loser is cracked out on World Tree bloo—
Aquamarine eyes twinkling, she saw Merlin at the docks, dozens of robed magic users with them, and a rather sharp-looking dark-haired woman who gave her a tingling sensation in her tail.
However, it was the golden, smug-looking deity that shimmered in the sky above her that caught Selvaria’s attention. Her honey liquid hair flowing down like melted gold, her voice whispering into her mind.
“Hello, Selv, darling. Fiona sends her regards. Also, a request… Eat the sap of the World Tree. I am healing her and managing the pain. Drink your fill. Ascend to face the boss! Fiona’s words. Good luck!”
No one else seemed to see her as she neared, breaking free of the surf and transforming into her human form. Her hyper-condensed weight hit the concrete docks like a steel beam dropped from space, doing more damage than she intended.
Luckily, she was smart and landed a ways away from the group.
Merlin was beside her in a flash of light moments later.
“Selvaria, I am happy you could join us—”
“One minute,” she flatly sighed, tail wagging as she turned around.
Undead sea creatures from four to eight meters long rushed the docks, only to charge headfirst into her electrified frost ray. Smacking her lips as the frosted fries were left floating in the sea, she cracked her neck and yawned.
“Okay. I got a plan. I need you to make a portal from the ocean to me. You’ll get the timing. It’s got to be a ton, though! Well, a lot more than a ton,” she mumbled, head tilting to the side as the knights around the area clashed with undead minions spread across London. “You get me. We need to bring it into the ocean.”
Merlin’s mouth was tight.
“That, we were working on. It will take some time to prepare. Your ranged attacks—oh?”
He seemed to realize what she was talking about as the business-looking woman strode over to speak to them.
“The name is M, Selvaria,” she greeted without much more introduction; Selvaria liked this woman already. “I understand you’ve developed a plan with Titania and the chained deity supporting her. We will be ready.”
Selvaria held up her thumb.
“Nice. BRB. Put on my theme song.”
“Your wha—”
She already left.
Whipping her tail and jumping back, she dove into the sea, rocketing toward the gap in the River Thames where the World Tree’s roots plunged into the depths. Thunder and lightning rolled overhead, the stench of death sinking into the waters.
Golden sap leaked from the roots in luminous threads that turned the murky Thames water into something magical. Selvaria opened her jaws and drank, finding the largest exposed root and sinking her fangs into it.
It hit her stomach like swallowing a star.
Every cell screamed as the divine energy flooded her system, the World Tree’s raw life force crashing through her Sea Pool like a dam breaking upstream.
Her scales brightened, cracked, and reformed—thicker, denser, each plate gaining an iridescent sheen that caught the water’s glow. Her tail lengthened. Her spine extended.
It hurt.
No. It hurt a freaking lot!
I’m going to punch you, pretty blonde lady!
The armored ridges along her back multiplied and sharpened into crystalline formations that hummed with stored energy.
She was growing.
Not just in size.
[Level 20]
[8 Stat Point Available]
[Type Evolution Unlocked]
[Evolution Extension Available]
[New Limit Break Perk/Advancement Unlocked]
[1 Equipable Feat Choice Available]
[1 Feat Slot Open (4/5 Used)]
[2 Feat Extension Available]
[1 Stat Modifier Available]
[1 Branch Feat Available]
[100 Good Girl Points]
Finally, Level 20, baby!
And good girl points?! Interesting.
Okay, blonde chick is safe…
For now.
And I don’t care what Evolutions I have.
Whatever one gets me the biggest!
[Kaiju Evolution: Greater Leviathan Achieved]
[Sea Pool Capacity: Expanded]
[New Feat Unlocked: Sovereign Tide — Water manipulation scales with the user's mass and volume. At full Kaiju manifestation, the user commands oceanic currents within their domain radius.]
[All Kaiju and Normal Feat Grades Upgraded]
That’s the stuff!
Selvaria’s eyes opened in the murk, and the Thames moved for her.
Not a current. Not a wave. The entire body of water surrounding her shifted in response to her will, as if the sea had decided she was its spine and would move where she moved.
Oh.
Oh, this is good!
Mua-hahaha! Godzilla, eat your heart out!
She could feel the weight of the river, the push of the tide, the incredible density of the North Sea pressing against London’s coast. It was all hers. Every drop within a radius that expanded with her growing mass, answering her the way muscles answer thought.
Okay. New plan. Same concept. Better execution.
Because I’m a freaking Leviathan!
She closed her eyes and pulled.
The Thames erupted.
Not a geyser—a cyclone.
Water spiraled upward from the river in a twisting column that thickened as it rose, Selvaria’s massive form riding its core like a bullet in a barrel. Seawater from the estuary flooded inward to feed the column, the displacement sending emergency sirens screaming across the waterfront to meet every other siren down the list.
The dragon’s crimson eyes widened—actually widened—as two hundred and fifty meters of armored leviathan rose out of the Thames on a pillar of spinning ocean, jaws open, frost and lightning cycling between crystalline teeth that were now each the size of a car.
“Knock knock, guess who, ugly?”
She was his size now.
“It’s Selvaria!” she roared, the sound nothing like human speech.
But she was laughing.
Selvaria hit the dragon at the apex of the cyclone, her jaws closing around the base of its left wing where the membrane met shoulder. The impact threw them both sideways, the water column collapsing beneath them in a thundering cascade that flooded the Embankment and Merlin hit the funnel with a spell that dispersed it into rain across all of London.
Meanwhile, Selvaria latched onto the stunned dragon’s body, claws scraping against his plates—to be fair, only one or two of her claws found a way past the plates.
They tumbled through the extending branches, breaking through to spray golden liquid across the landscape. Dragon and leviathan, locked together, spinning through the sky above London in a tangle of scales, frost, bone, and fury. Her claws dug into the flesh of the lizard wherever she found leeway.
Naturally, she angled Níðhöggr to tank the blow. He tried to re-angle, but his wing was in her jaws, arm angled in a headlock. It was GG. Selvaria’s tail answered his. Hers was far more muscular and sharper, too, given it was her primary weapon. It sliced past its armor, causing more bone to fall to the ground, creating more undead.
Man, you just spawn insects!
Anyway, cannonball!
“Grraaar!”
She wrenched sideways with her whole body, using the momentum of their spiral to redirect their trajectory northeast—over the industrial districts, over the rail yards, over the M25—and slammed them both into the Essex countryside in an impact that would no doubt registered 4.2 on the Richter scale.
She made sure not to land on any house.
Because she was a good citizen…
Well, not that she was a UK citizen.
A good leviathan!
Later, she’d have to check the records, print, and frame it for her mom.
Farmland erupted around them. Dirt, stone, and shattered fencing sprayed in every direction as they carved a trench half a mile long through fields that had been growing winter wheat an hour ago.
Níðhöggr screamed and thrashed, crimson breath igniting the furrows in lines of hellfire. Selvaria held on—jaws locked around the wing joint, teeth grinding against scales that tasted of divine wood and corruption. Her new Feat sang through her body as she reached for every source of water within her radius.
Underground aquifers. Drainage ditches. A decorative pond in someone’s back garden that she hoped had Act of God insurance, because of the obvious.
C’mon! I need more, guys! She screamed inside as her power slipped away without the constant flow of liquid. I need ocean water!
Then the portals opened.
Merlin, I could kiss you! Not. But yeah.
Get wrecked!
Dozens of shimmering circles tore through the air around the crash site, earth moving with their thrashes. Each one was a window to the ocean floor. Seawater exploded through them in horizontal geysers, flooding the cratered farmland and bathing them in sweet, salty honey.
Her strength began to return, liquid soaking into her body as he bit down on her arm—he actually broke through a bit! His teeth pricked her vulnerable underskin, like little needles touching the surface of your arm. At least, that was what it felt like.
“Ouch! Son of a—”
We’re done!
Using her tail as leverage, she pushed on top of the snarling dragon, water swirling as she manipulated it to help her momentum.
And she swam through the flood Merlin fed her. She moved with the impossible speed of a leviathan in open water, dragging Níðhöggr by the neck through the surging current.
Her jaws tightened. Her tail churned the flood into a directional torrent that pushed them northeast, toward the coast, toward the sea.
The dragon fought. Its claws dug trenches in the earth beneath the water. Its breath turned sections of the flood to steam. Its bone spikes erupted from its body in every direction, shattering against Selvaria’s crystalline armored plates and falling into the current to be swept away.
Only that stupid bite can do damage to me, stupid, and I’ve got your neck!
It couldn’t fly. Not with her weight on its neck, not with the water dragging at its wings, not with a Heroine of the Sea riding it like a jockey from hell!
The coast came fast.
Selvaria swayed around towns and population zones, the waterspout spiraling like a serpent as Níðhöggr’s scrambling claws and wings shattered the London countryside.
Selvaria burst over a rocky cliff with the shocked dragon in her jaws and hit the North Sea in an explosion of spray that sent a wall of white water racing toward the continent. The ocean swallowed them both, and Selvaria pulled them down, activating one of her shiny new Feats.
[Sovereign Tide: Gravitational Descent]
Into the dark.
Into the cold.
Into the crushing depth where sunlight was a rumor and pressure was a vice.
This was her kingdom.
And now, with the UK a free-floating continent, it was time to see what lay in the fathomless depths that not even her senses could fully penetrate.
Níðhöggr twisted in her grip, the dragon’s crimson glow dimming as the sea pressed in from every direction. Its corrupted breath produced only hissing bubbles at this depth. Its torn wings were useless, folded against its body by the weight of the water above.
Tens of thousands of bone shards spread, creating an army of tiny insects that attempted to follow. But there was no following here.
She dove further, faster, tail beating left and right as the beast clawed at her to no effect.
Welcome to my domain!
Sadly, or maybe not so sadly?
She knew this was only the beginning of this fight!
✧⸻✧⸻✧
Izanami’s Domain — Emergency Convocation
The dead goddess opened her court, and they came.
Naturally, they came.
Not all willingly. Not all with trust. But they came, because the World Tree was burning gold across every sky in every reality, and even gods knew when the ground beneath their thrones was shifting. And whose faction was the cause?
Why, the one who made it quite public whose little hare was under her banner.
Every mortal needed their own 7th-dimensional patron.
Ironically, it should have been the Korean Creation Deity who backed Rachel.
Though that area of the divine world had been oddly…quiet.
And she wasn’t about to let Hades, Persephone, or Athena take her battle manic woman.
The Ever-Shifting Mists had a hand in it.
And they fascinated Izanami.
So many unpredictable things…
Nungal was right.
That is going to light a fire beneath so many pantheons.
Izanami sat on her cracked stone throne in the polluted wasteland of Yomi’s upper reaches, her scarred kimono catching the Hell Moon’s sickly light. She examined her fingernails, wondering which rats would scurry to her domain.
Her corrupted beauty with that careful balance of illusion and ruin she wore like court dress showed no urgency. She hadn’t needed to call them. The Tree's resonance had done that. She’d merely done what she always did… Invite, with an opened door.
Hades arrived first, because Hades was always punctual.
The Lord of the Dead materialized on the comfortable hotel chair that reformed itself from memory; the same seat he’d occupied during the Legend Quest he’d met Rachel in.
Persephone followed, her dual-natured gown blooming flowers that wilted at the edges, and settled beside her husband without a word. Their eyes tracked the dimensional rifts visible even from Yomi’s depths within the 7th Ring of Hell.
Athena came next, her aegis dulled but her owl-like eyes sharp as scalpels.
She planted her spear and stood rather than sat, scanning each arrival the way a general scans a battlefield—assessing threats, counting allies, cataloging exits.
They were all the typical attendees, all somewhat in alliance, with Rachel at their center.
Rachel’s representatives on this level, many would think, and they wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but Athena had her own calculations running behind that measured stare.
“The Tree’s network has reached the 6th-dimensional boundary,” she stated without greeting. “It’s folding into the dimensional cracks we cannot perceive. From one who Rachel has been exposed to the Black Moon. Meaning…”
“Cerridwen looks upon her,” Izanami murmured. “The question is, how has she changed since being held in a space outside the divine realm? Oh, how lovely, it seems several others without stakes have decided to take my invitation… Greetings, Morrigan.”
The woman arrived through a veil of black feathers, crows settling on her shoulders like living epaulets. The Irish war goddess’s bright blue eyes swept the gathering with dark satisfaction, her ever-shifting tattoos reforming across her exposed skin.
She said nothing. She didn’t need to. Her presence alone told everyone where the Celtic pantheon stood on the matter of a World Tree growing through their homeland’s sealed barrier.
“You’ve had it rough over the last few cycles,” Izanami mused, resting her cheek against the back of her hand. “Has my hare made you a believer in misfortune?”
The Morrigan’s frame flickered, sharp eyes drifting to the newest arrivals.
“War and Conquest are behind her. It would be foolish not to acknowledge where fundamental forces gather. Whether they succeed is another matter entirely… Nungal’s prophecy came true. What does that make for her second prediction?”
“That indeed is a point of concern…” Shiva descended cross-legged, his four arms resting on his knees, the third eye on his forehead pulsing with restrained fire. “Beings that move beyond the 7th Wall descend upon our realms.”
Izanami’s lips tilted upward, following the destruction deity’s gaze to the mists and crimson pools soaking into the divine realm through cracks left by the two Oscillations and World Trees.
“It is an invasion. And the one tying it together has shown herself to be beyond every one of our calculations. Nungal was correct, yet again, about Butter, the Spirit of Conquest.”
Every deity’s nose crinkled as they all looked upon the blonde, supporting a network that should have run her dry of divine power immediately. Yet, her power didn’t come from the jewel she assumed to be using; that was merely a stabilizer.
Truly, something vast and impossibly dense boiled up from a place none of them could penetrate within the mysterious woman’s soul.
“A force Misfortune did not fight, but aligned with. That Karma sided with. Who was able to outmaneuver Scarlet within the Red Sea… Yes, Nungal was correct. She is quite the blinding terror once stripped of the personality vibe.”
Lakshmi floated beside Shiva, her radiance dimmed but her composure intact. She settled in, steady hands folded, lotus seat unwavering.
“The Tree’s roots have reached the Ganges,” she stated, her voice carrying the weight of rivers. “What seeps in is not yet hostile. But they are hungry. Some fear it and wish to appease its appetite to put it into a lul.”
“Foolish Gods, indeed,” Isis replied, the golden-skinned goddess entering with the measured stride of a woman who had rebuilt a dead god from scattered pieces and would do it again if pressed. “It has reached the Nile, where it allows Níðhöggr to draw out souls.”
Her wings flared at her back, the solar disk between her cow-horn crown catching every source of light in Yomi and refusing to let it dim.
“The connection is temporary; what comes through is not. I trust that is why we are here… In addition to what we all feel leaking out of those cracks.”
“Among other reasons, Isis,” Izanami absently returned, “thought the outcome is all that we care for in that regard. No, we are here for far more than that, I think… Nungal has terrified everyone present. Yes?”
She looked up.
A silence fell from her statement of fact.
The Norse contingent materialized with the roaring sound of a distant storm front.
Odin sat heavily in a stone chair that hadn’t existed a second ago, his single blue eye visible beneath his ragged hood. His ravens, Huginn and Muninn, circled once before landing on his shoulders. His wolves flanked him, their golden eyes tracking each deity.
The old god said nothing. He simply looked.
Mei arrived last, silver hair perfectly arranged, a formal bow masking the tension in her ruby eyes. “Lady Chang’e sends her regards and regrets. The repositioning of her lunar domain requires her personal attention. I speak on her behalf. May I thank you, Lady Izanami, for your quickening me to stand amidst this Divine and Infernal audience.”
“The rabbit secretary, Izanami?” The Morrigan noted with faint amusement, a crow cocking its head at the Chinese representative. “Rachel has you all whipped, does she?”
Mei’s fan snapped open. “The chief advisor, Lady Morrigan. A distinction with teeth. And I would not call the understanding we have with Rachel being ‘whipped’ but a strategic benefit from all sides. It has only been through the power of her benefactors she has survived.”
Shiva chortled.
Izanami lifted a scarred hand, and the bickering died.
“I did not call you here for diplomacy. Diplomacy requires time, and time is what the Tree has taken from us.”
Her flaming eyes drifted across each face. “You all felt what passed through the dimensional barriers moments ago. Something brushed against the fabric of our reality from a direction that should not exist. The effects of that chill even my unholy bones. Nungal’s warning made manifest… We are not safe.”
Silence moved more opinions than words.
It was long and heavy, all divine focus centered on the cracks and roots digging into the Divine and Infernal Realms. Babylon would use them, and the one pulling the strings behind that tower was one Izanami aimed to use. But that wasn’t the current problem.
Athena was the one to break the stillness.
“…Esteemed ones, many of you are beyond my own humble station within the Greek pantheon,” she bowed, mainly to the undead couple. “Uncle Hades. I know you have made efforts with my father. Still, what is behind the 7th Wall affects us all.”
She tightened her grip on the spear in her hand.
“We cannot afford to be quarreling with one another. We once banded together against the Titans… I suggest we speak to one who has knowledge of what lies beyond that gate.”
Izanami’s smirk lifted, fingernails tapping the stone as Persephone sighed and engaged.
“Lady Nyx… She has been wrapped in the night and darkness since our awakening. Zeus has forbidden anyone from contacting her beyond Olympus. I am afraid the only ones who could bypass his seal without permission or a battle would be…”
Her gaze drifted to her husband.
Izanami let a low rumble resonate in her throat, gaze shifting to Isis.
“What of the Ogdoad?”
Isis’s wings shivered slightly, vision falling to the battle between the dragon and leviathan mythickin kaiju.
“…Heh, Hauhet, Nun, Naunet, Ku, Kauket, Amun, and Amaunet…are absent. They do not answer. What of the Brahman?”
Shiva’s four arms tightened around his core, and he slowly shook his head.
“We sense the Brahman’s presence within us and all things… Though it is as if an echo. Strange. Odin, the realms speak with the whispering force of Ymir’s soul. Is it the same for you?”
The one-eyed man stroked his wolf, letting them stew for a time before opening his mouth, voice gravelly.
“…It makes me wonder if Nyx is alive or dead and Zeus is hiding it. We can stop dancing around the topic, seeing as we do not even have ale or bonfire… Though a kaiju fight makes good entertainment. Thor would be rearing to join that battle with the implications. We owe that strange leviathan a debt of gratitude for her labors.
“In any case, the void of creation beyond the 7th Wall is where our beginnings started. Those who knew about it are gone. All but the higher-Nungal. And therein lies the horror that has brought you to Izanami’s doorstep.”
The Morrigan’s crow cawed, drawing everyone’s gaze as it whispered into the warrior woman’s ear, her vision narrowing.
“I suppose it does little to hide it now… Danu is missing within the Tuatha Dé Danann. It is the same for you, Izanami? The Kotoamatsukami are absent?”
She simply shrugged her shoulders with a light laugh.
“How should I know, locked away in this Hell? You’d need to consult my husband. Clearly, he chose not to take this invitation… My constant invitation. Therefore, Hades,” she whispered, looking at the handsome man with the rest of the group, “we must know of Nyx’s condition. Her children are more than a little active. Will you bypass your brother’s law?”
His wife looked worried as the stoic man sat with his legs crossed, hands in his lap, looking at Rachel and Scarlet. No one else.
“…I will not divide Olympus. But I will speak to Zeus. For I fear his reasoning is sound, even if not yet clear. Be it for her protection…or ours, I will set myself to discovering the answer. I suspect we will learn part of that reason soon enough. Rachel is about to enter the rift.”
Persephone breathed out a tense stream of air, chest deflating.
“Good! Now that is settled, shall we combine our efforts to carve a viewing angle through Rachel’s disruption beyond the Divine and Infernal Realms, using her link to our adorable pups?”
“I like your energy,” Izanami cooed. “Let us dive into the unknown, and see what lies beyond the 7th Gate. This time, we have the blueprint to follow Rachel. Let’s use it.”
The pantheons leaned in.
And far below, in passages no god could physically follow, Rachel walked deeper into the dark, illuminating all she came into contact with.
✧⸻✧⸻✧
Mount Fuji, Japan — Sengen Taisha Inner Shrine
Cherry blossoms were falling out of season.
Konohanasakuya-hime watched them drift through the sacred precincts of her shrine within her 4th-dimensional bridge, each petal catching the dimensional light that now threaded through the sky above her mountain.
They should not be here. It was not their time. Spring had not called them, and no festival drum had beaten their descent.
But her mountain had answered the Tree’s song before she could stop it.
The blossoms fell in spirals that matched the distant hum of a marrow-chilling song within an abyss beyond the Divine and Infernal.
It was the same frequency that pulsed through every root system on the planet, calling nature-aligned souls to a queen she had never met.
Her truth-fire flickered in the stone lanterns lining the approach path, each flame bending toward the west, toward London, toward the source.
She sat in her shrine’s innermost chamber, layered robes of white and pale blossom pink folding around her in concentric circles on the tatami. The outer sleeves were vermilion fading into ash-black at the cuff and hem—cooled lava climbing through silk.
Her hair, glossy black at the crown, desaturated toward smoke-brown at the ends, lay perfectly still despite the spiritual wind that made every other object in the chamber tremble.
Her expression did not change when Himiko entered.
The Legend of the shamaness-queen knelt at the threshold, pressing her forehead to the wood in formal prostration before rising to a seated position. In the shadows, her many servants and guards stood poised to execute the divine priestess, should she prove a threat.
My, how she’s sacrificed and struggled these three months.
Throughout that time, she’d held Japan’s spiritual infrastructure together, and it showed in the hollows beneath her cheekbones and the gray threading through her bound hair.
She wore shrine-maiden white over practical modern clothing. It was a compromise between the sacred and the necessary that Konohanasakuya-hime found distasteful but understood the decision.
“Konohanasakuya-hime-sama. I bring my report, and ask for your blessing.”
“You bring your exhaustion,” the goddess corrected, her voice composed and unhurried. “Sit properly. Tea is prepared.”
Himiko’s eyes flickered with gratitude; she was too disciplined to voice as a shadow attendant within the higher 3rd-dimensional zone deposited the beverage.
She adjusted her position and accepted the cup that waited for her, steam rising in patterns that alluded to its soul-cleansing brew.
“Your support has borne fruit. The underground war has paused,” Himiko began, her fingers enclosing the warm ceramic.
“Every faction felt the tremor when the World Tree activated. The mirror-veil battles in Osaka, Kyoto, and Sapporo suspended within minutes. The Tokugawa remnants withdrew to their claimed territory. The imperial restoration faction has recalled their agents from the contested zones. Even the Yokai lords in the north have gone quiet.”
“My allowance into the mirrored space was not for free. To maintain this equilibrium takes great stress upon Mt. Fuji. Though the Second Oscillation has granted me a surprise second wind. The people?”
Himiko showed a thin smile. “The people are watching the sky and going to work. The trains are running. The convenience stores are open. Civilian life continues.”
“Good.” Konohanasakuya-hime lifted her cup, the liquid within glowing faintly gold. “That is what matters. Let warlords pause their games or continue them in the world between. Let legends posture. If the people eat, if children are born safely, if the festivals continue—then Japan endures… We endure.”
She drank, and the tea tasted of snowmelt and sulfur. Her mountain’s blood, filtered through centuries of devotion, cycled within her. What the higher deities were doing beyond the 5th and 6th Gates, she was not privy to, which annoyed her.
All she knew was Lady Izanami had thrown everything into chaos.
The heavens were divided. Children constrained by their father. Their mother is playing not in Japan, but on a world stage, making enemies, who set their sights on Japan.
So long as I keep Japan stable, we can survive.
The birth rates, though…
What more can be done?
Our culture has changed so fast…
“However,” Himiko continued, setting down her cup with precision and making her return her gaze to the Legend.
“Go on…”
“The pause will not last. The dimensional light is affecting the mirror-veils. Several containment zones in Nagoya have destabilized. If the factions resume fighting now, the damage will bleed through to the surface world. Civilian casualties would be—”
“I didn’t give you Mt. Fuji’s power to give me unacceptable outcomes. Fix it.”
The word carried no heat. It didn’t need to. The stone lanterns in the corridor outside flared, their truth-fire turning white for a fraction of a second. Her mountain shook.
“Yes, Konohanasakuya-hime. May I know the reason for the disturbance?”
Konohanasakuya-hime closed her eyes, and through her domain—every shrine in her network, every mountain path under her jurisdiction, every midwife’s prayer and fire brigade’s invocation—she read the Tree.
It was vast. Alive. Desperate.
A young queen held it open through sheer will and the love of strangers, and the goddess could feel that queen’s voice threading through frequencies that overlapped her own blossom-sovereignty.
Another flower-queen. Different jurisdiction.
Different people. But the same fundamental function: holding the world together through beauty, pain, and stubborn refusal to let go.
Titania, I hear your heart and would offer my support, if able.
She opened her eyes.
“The UK World Tree. Titania is genuine,” she stated, and the statement carried the weight of juridical certification. “Her bloom is true, not forced. The Seeds propagating through the network are in natural bud—not accelerated, nor corrupted. The Mists and Tide threading through the branches are the cause.”
She paused.
Himiko waited.
“…And unfamiliar,” the goddess finished. “They originate from beyond my sight. Beyond the reach of any deity I know, including Izanami’s realm. I feel it is temporary, though with lingering effects. Watch carefully.”
The name fell into the chamber like a stone into a pond. Himiko’s fingers tightened around her cup.
“Izanami-sama has been active?” Himiko asked carefully. “Is this done through her representatives abroad. The Nephilim Yseress. The Hare of Misfortune—”
“I am aware.” Konohanasakuya-hime's calm eyes tracked a cherry blossom as it drifted through the open screen, darkening to a black cinder before it touched the tatami. “Do not concern yourself with the dealings of the gods. Focus on the task I gave.”
She set down her cup.
Himiko bowed.
Outside, the blossoms continued to fall.
Out of season. Out of order. But undeniably alive.
It didn’t take long for Himiko to leave, the shrine maiden doing her best.
If things continued like this for another four months, she would die.
Her soul could not handle the power she was infused with—
The full weight of Mt. Fuji.
Konohanasakuya-hime watched her like the falling blossoms, pretty and fading.
How much longer can you hold back Japan’s faction from invading the public?
Long enough, I hope…
Otherwise, Izanami will be set free.
And who knows what she will do when that final seal breaks, and she can personally descend upon this world?
Looking up at the growing ethereal World Tree, she sighed.
Who knows, indeed.
The sins of the father upon the children of my land.
What cruelty you have, Fate.