You'll Be Joining Us, Won't You?
What had she just heard?
Onodera's mind went white. She dragged the trembling corners of her mouth up into something that might pass for a smile, and turned the question back on him.
"Sh-Shrine Priest? An alliance with the Dan Clan? This is the first I have heard of it. Might I be told how such a thing came to be?"
The Shrine Priest looked at her and smiled a smile that meant more than it showed. Something hot surged up in Onodera's chest.
"Ah. The explanation was certainly wanting. The rest of you must have been just as taken aback."
He let his gaze travel over the crowd that packed the hall: the senior officers who held the Shrine's vital posts. They were as lost as Onodera herself, and from that she understood at once. This had been the Shrine Priest's decision alone.
A man seated near the place of honor sank to his knees.
"Shrine Priest. May your servant offer a word?"
"Speak."
"The Dan Clan is a power that has stood against the Shrine for a very long time. And now an alliance with that same power? We have been told nothing."
"...Hm."
The Shrine Priest nodded, as if their feelings were perfectly plain to him. Inwardly he was cursing. And who the hell are you, that you need to be told every last detail?
"The bad blood between the Dan Clan and the Shrine runs deep. True, these past few decades have seen no clash worth the name, and only of late have we collided again, over the matter of Korea—but an alliance? Are you saying that those of us who serve Japan are invisible to you?"
"He is right. The grudge against the Dan Clan has not been settled. Nor will it be, hereafter."
More and more voices rose to echo the man.
The Dan Clan and the Shrine grated on each other the way Korea and Japan did. There had been a Shrine in the years of the Japanese occupation, and a Dan Clan as well. There had been a Dan Clan in the days of Joseon, and a Shrine as well. Blood spilled between them was not so light a thing that it could be easily laid to rest. How many factions would simply bow and say very well, merely because an alliance had been struck?
The Shrine Priest was not ignorant of it. He listened in silence to the denunciation. Among them were factions that truly nursed a grudge against the Dan Clan, tangled together with factions moving for political ends. The longer he held his peace, the more the outcry caught a wind and spread. This once, even his own factions seemed to have no choice; they kept their mouths shut.
The Great Shrine Maidens found it strange. Stranger still was that the Shrine Priest said nothing at all.
"Quiet."
He raised a hand, and the hall fell silent.
"I have heard your opinions, and I understand them. But the Shrine's alliance with the Dan Clan was beyond our power to refuse."
"Even so..."
"Amaterasu has delivered an oracle."
Eyes bulged. All through the hall, pupils blew wide; they could not believe their own ears.
"An... an oracle?" Onodera stumbled over the words.
"Yes. An oracle."
"Not Lord Susanoo? Not Lord Tsukuyomi?"
"Amaterasu, goddess of the sun. It is she."
Amaterasu. Greatest and noblest of the Three Noble Gods—the benefactor who lends humankind light enough to see what lies ahead. In all the long history of the Shrine, she had scarcely ever given an oracle.
"Does anyone remember the subject of the last council?"
"The Heavenly Road..."
It was scarcely more than a whisper. In that quiet, it rang louder than anything.
"The Heavenly Road, as I heard it from Amaterasu. I will speak of it in fuller detail."
The Shrine Priest explained, and horror washed through the hall until the whole chamber seemed blanched with it.
"Is the end of the world upon us?!"
"That cannot be! How is such a thing possible!"
"Shrine Priest. Is it truly so?"
Those who could not believe. Those who doubted. Those who believed. Every feeling sprang up at once and jostled the rest.
"It is true."
The affirmation came down on them again and again, and at last they pressed no further. Forge an oracle? The very supposition was meaningless. Everyone knew that when the Shrine Priest spoke of the gods, he stood upon fact alone. Do otherwise, and he dies.
Onodera bit down hard on her lip. We've been had. The gods themselves, stepping in? Things that had never so much as reacted, all this time! If you meant to move, you should have moved a hundred years ago! Not a flicker out of them, even when two nuclear bombs came down!
"Now do you see why I allied with the Dan Clan? We have not an hour to spare. Fail to stop the Heavenly Punishment, and humanity will stand with a vast calamity before its eyes."
"...And yet, Shrine Priest. Is the matter grave enough to warrant dispatching three Great Shrine Maidens?"
Onodera made one last desperate thrash. Oracle or rubbish, if she let herself be hauled off like this, she would come away with nothing.
"There are only two Heavenly Punishment in Korea. The Dan Clan's strength is nothing to take lightly, so you ought to decide with greater care..."
"Not two."
The Shrine Priest cut her off, as if the scheme behind her words were laughable.
"All of them."
"...Pardon?"
Onodera's mind went numb. Impossible...
"All of them?! We have not caught a single omen!"
The title of Great Shrine Maiden was no empty shell. Born to divine power, a Great Shrine Maiden could faintly read the disasters yet to come, and the future itself, and could work abstract wonders besides—prophecy and divination among them. She was no match for the Shrine Priest, apostle of the gods, but rot and all, a maiden was still a maiden. There was no world in which she failed to read the gathering of every Heavenly Punishment.
"Regrettable as it is, it is the truth. We have had confirmation from the Dan Clan, and more than once. Would an oracle have descended at all, had the calamity been any less than that?"
Onodera's eyes wandered and found nowhere to rest. Gods. Gods. Those damned gods!
"Do you understand now? The great Three Noble Gods are watching this affair. We stand at a crossroads."
A grave weight pressed the hall flat. One face at a time, the Shrine Priest met their eyes and drove home the danger of the hour.
"Fate is drawing near. Leave Korea as it is, and the age of humanity will come to its final curtain, and the age of Chaos will dawn. So I ask you: set personal feeling aside, and act for the greater cause."
Even those who ordinarily loved a quarrel could not so much as part their lips. It was a thing past imagining. Mere humans, debating a history of humankind upon which the gods themselves had turned their gaze. It did not feel real. It could not be understood.
Conviction, suspicion, unease, doubt. Each of them buried feeling and design alike, and time flowed on through the quiet.
Three people broke it.
"Onodera Io, child of Amaterasu and Great Shrine Maiden of the Shrine! I accept the Shrine Priest's command!"
"Tomomura Mitsukazu, child of Tsukuyomi and Great Shrine Maiden of the Shrine! I accept the Shrine Priest's command!"
"Tsunemi Seshiru, child of Susanoo and Great Shrine Maiden of the Shrine! I accept the Shrine Priest's command!"
The three maidens who had set themselves against the Shrine Priest bowed their heads. Onodera glared at him, eyes blazing. He had not, even now, lost his smile. Her teeth ground together.
"We three maidens, in accordance with the will of the Shrine Priest, proxy of the gods, and with the will of the great gods, shall go forth and cut down the villains who throw heaven's order into disorder!"
Fine. I'll go. You vicious wretch. Did you think I would take this lying down?
"You have my thanks. The gods will not forget you."
Wash your neck, and wait for the blade.
The Shrine Priest lifted his voice, solemn as a rite.
"From this moment, we enter an emergency war footing. This lies within the Shrine Priest's authority of office, and it is an order given as proxy of the gods. If any of you object, speak now."
No one in that room was careless enough to cut in.
"Good. Then we rest for thirty minutes, and resume the council. Dismissed!"
The instant he withdrew from the high seat, everyone scrambled to scatter, faction clustering with faction.
"We've been had. We'll be jerked about, and there will be nothing we can do."
Tomomura clicked her tongue. Irritated, she raked hard at her scalp.
"Time is too short. We have not finished preparing as we should."
Tsunemi stamped her feet where she stood.
"Enough."
At the hardness in Onodera's voice, the other two fixed on her.
"This is our mistake. Not in our dreams did we imagine those damned gods would move."
"What will you do? We will not be able to buy much time."
Tsunemi's brow tightened.
"That place is a killing ground. Every Heavenly Punishment, gathered... Korea must be considered finished."
"No. It may be an opportunity, rather."
Onodera bit into a fingernail until it gave.
"We were always going to have to go to Korea. The hour has merely been pulled forward."
"You mean to fight the Heavenly Punishment?"
"Fight them? Only a lunatic would."
She flicked the finger downward. Blood was streaming from it, and the droplets scattered.
"What matters, in the opening of the Heavenly Road, is the immortal. Kill the immortal alone, and the road is stopped."
"But in carrying out the great work..."
"And is there a law that says it must be done in Korea, and nowhere else?"
Onodera's gaze was so cold it raised the hair along Tsunemi's arms.
"Surely not Japan, first... That is reckless."
"Have we not already finished the work?"
There had never been only a single road by which the gods' shackles might be undone.
"I agree."
"Lady Tomomura!"
"You mean for us to just sit and take it?! Those damned gods screwed us!"
The fury of the other two sent Tsunemi's head spinning.
"There is no telling what will become of Japan."
"What will become of it? It will be a stepping-stone on the way to a better world. What else?"
"You are being optimistic. Do you imagine the Three Noble Gods will prove so careless?"
"Careless or not, it does not matter."
Tsunemi flinched. The madness wavering in Onodera's eyes breathed out a pressure unlike anything she had ever felt.
"We have already joined hands with demons. Is there anything left worth discussing?"
"..."
"Lady Tsunemi."
Onodera set a hand on her shoulder and pressed, hard.
"You'll be joining us, won't you?"
"...Yes. I understand."
"Good."
Onodera touched the red crystal hidden against her breast.
"Who wins, at the very end... I find I am genuinely curious."
Onodera's eyes flushed red.