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No. 153006
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[x]Grab her, keep running and tell her to lecture while running unless she wants to become a pretty little flower.
-[x] If she nags on too much remind her that she was the one who decided to fly drunk, and we have since saved her ass on more then one occasion.
“Look, I realise you may feel betrayed by what I did. But I really think you need to consi-yoink!”
You suddenly dart in close to her, grabbing her by the hand and running down the corridor. For a moment she just limply drags behind you, as if she can’t believe what you’re doing.
“If you really must yell at me, do it while we’re running! Unless you want to spend the rest of your life in her garden!”
“Put me down!”
She flails around for a few seconds as you turn a corner before her feet find contact with the ground. She digs her heels in and the world turns upside down as you suddenly find yourself moving at great momentum while holding a now immovable object.
You salvage yourself halfway through your sudden flip and land on your feet rubbing your arm. Damn, it nearly feels like she dislocated it or something.
Looking at Shikieiki, you note that it doesn’t look like she just used an immense amount of strength to dig her feet in since the carpeted ground looks mostly undamaged.
She just stopped and became perfectly immobile for a split second.
Daiyousei makes the appropriate startled-yet-amused oohs and aahs at this feat; as if she’s already forgotten the mortal peril you are all in.
“Neat! What just happened?”
“A useful gift from my heritage,” the Yama replies. “You can no more move me or sway my course than you could shift the roots of mountains.”
“Really? Your course was doing plenty of swaying when you were busy drunkenly laying waste to that village, if I recall correctly.”
She goes bright red though you’re not entirely sure if it’s with rage, humiliation or both.
“That is another-”
You don’t let her keep speaking.
“Don’t try to blame me for that! It wasn’t my idea for you to drink an entire jug in a single drink! And it sure wasn’t my plan to go flying drunk through the village and ending up in Yuuka’s territory! No! That was all you! You nearly went off flying without us and who knows what would have happened then! All I was doing…all I was doing was just trying to help Komachi since it was my fault she got into this mess!”
You note out of the corner of your eye that Daiyousei is ignoring your little pocket of drama entirely and is busy opening the many doors of the corridor to see what’s inside.
“And while what I did was wrong, I think you can find it in your heart to just give up the lecture until we escape!”
Your face is only inches away from hers now, you having unconsciously sidled closer to the point of shouting directly in her face. She makes eye contact with your for a moment before recoiling.
“And another thing! Since our little adventure through the village, I’ve helped you how many times? I helped cushion and slow the landing-”
“I would have been fine even if I collided full speed actually.”
“I negotiated with Yuuka!”
“I wouldn’t use the term negotiate for what you did. And arguably, that only made things worse anyway.”
“I pulled those sleep flowers off of you!”
“Solving a problem that you caused doesn’t count as helping.”
“Both of you SHUT UP!”
A shrill yell pierces the corridor as Daiyousei loses her patience. Both you and Shikieiki turn and look at her, causing her to quail momentarily before stiffening her back.
“Can we just get out of here first?”
Shikieiki pauses for a moment before nodding.
“As chance would have it, I think I know a way out. Follow me. But there will be words later.”
“Looking forward to it.”
She opens a door, revealing yet another perfectly identical corridor. She takes to the air and flies down it, you and Daiyousei in quick pursuit.
As you round another corner, Shikieiki speaks again to you, neither of you slowing down or breaking pace.
“Now what exactly are your intentions towards Komachi?”
“Pardon?”
“Do you desire her romantically? Is that your reason for all of this?”
“What.”
“I’m not hearing a no.”
“No that is not the bloody reason! Why would you think it is? Can’t someone try to rescue a girl from death for any other reason?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Eh?”
“The Sanzu River and the barrier covering that which lies on the other side have only been forcibly trespassed thrice by the living in all history. And all of them were attempting to rescue lovers.”
The look she’s giving you is strange, like some kind of odd mixture between a reproachful aloof look and a perverted leer.
“Precedence hardly implies causation. I’m doing it because I want to fix my mistake. …Also, you seem to have a remarkable amount of interest in Komachi’s sex life. If I had known that all this firing business was just a lover’s tiff I probably wouldn’t have gotten involved.”
The conversation ends in Eiki spluttering and choking in incoherent rage.
Eventually, your route ends in a pair of immense wooden doors that rip themselves open as soon Shikieiki even looks at them. The Yama draws to a halt as she sees what lies beyond.
“This was not here when I was here last.”
The doors open to a majestic ballroom. The red walls are panelled with dark wood and shining gold, oil paintings adorning all of them. Six giant crystal chandeliers hang from the roof, their gleaming branches just begging for a hero to dramatically swing himself from them.
Beyond them, the room is lit with a thousand candelabra, each one fashioned in the appearance of a metallic rose. Their light makes it easy to see what’s in the room, whether you want to or not.
Hundreds of people, both adult and child, both man and woman, moving slowly to an unheard beat. There was a vast difference in the clothing and style of each one, as if each had been plucked from different times and situations.
And none of them are human. You don’t know how exactly you can tell as they all look perfectly human but when you look at the way they move, the cultivated patterns they form, all you can see are flowers rustling in the breeze.
This Garden of the Sun is the least of my gardens and it is the only one where my flowers wear their true shape.
“Yuuka oversteps her boundaries.”
The Yama’s voice is as hard and unfeeling as slab of marble.
“Do I?”
The crowd parts to reveal Yuuka standing alone, umbrella in hand. She slowly starts to walk through the dancers, dragging her fingers along their faces as she does so.
“None of these are new additions to my gardens. They are all old flowers from before I ever visited Gensokyo.”
“Flowers…?”
Shikieiki looks uncertain but hesitates only slightly before continuing.
“You’ve forgotten your place, flower youkai. It is only your unnatural age that gives you strength to do this. Your origin in the Dream should not give you the authority to interpret the limits of your domain through dream logic! They are not flowers. What they are, are souls who should have long since passed on. Which makes them mine!”
The dancers all disappear, leaving only flowers behind. Yuuka backs away in surprise as Shikieiki advances.
“What’s wrong with you Yuuka? This is not the Yuuka I once knew. She didn’t do things like this.”
The flower youkai looks around in confusion, stepping back further.
“As you said, O Yama, I’m not a real youkai as much as I am a dream of one. Dreams change into nightmares quite easily.”
You decide to interrupt this little…whatever’s going on.
“Soooo…what’s going on? Because I’m not really following this at all.”
“Yuuka Kazami is a youkai from the dream world,” Shikieiki explains to you. “She’s normally fine as long as flowers are unharmed. But dream youkai don’t always behave like regular ones. I’ve never heard of her turning things into flowers before. Something’s changed her.”
Okay. You don’t know how regular youkai behave either but still.
Yuuka laughs, a not entirely unpleasant sound.
“There’s a reason for all of this, even if I can’t quite remember it. Now if you excuse me Shikieiki, we have a hunt in the morning. We all need to sleep.”
Daiyousei immediately falls out of the air, slamming against the floor. She’s already snoring before she hits the ground. Shikieiki staggers back as if from an invisible blow but remains standing.
“What is this?”
“I’m a gardener. All flowers grow as I instruct them to, no matter how important they think they are. So just go to sleep.”
Shikieiki nearly falls over, her eyes closing before snapping wide open.
“Stop that! I can’t fix you Yuuka but I-”
“Sleep.”
“…Can force you to stay here until I-”
“Sleep!”
“…Find someone who caaaaannn.”
Shikieiki stumbles again, her voice slurring. Yuuka starts to step forward.
“You’ll be a pretty little flower, Eiki. I can’t wait until you join my gardens.”
“….Yes…pretty little flower…”
Shikieiki seems just about completely gone, doing nothing but muttering Yuuka’s words back to you. You grab her by the shoulder but she’s fixed herself to the ground again like she did before.
“Stop this Yuuka!”
The flower youkai laughs.
“I can’t stop it, even if I wanted to! She’s just my flower now, who can do nothing but grow to serve me.”
“…Serve Yuuka…”
Shit. Shit. You need to break her hold over them somehow! Maybe something big and lethal and distracting like…
In the corner of your eye, you see Shikieiki wink at you. You stop your plan and instead focus on looking like you’re really terrified.
Yuuka walks the length of the ballroom until she’s right in front of all of you. She reaches down to touch Shikieiki’s face like she had done to the dancers.
“Such an interesting flowAaarrgh!”
Shikieiki whips her across the face with her weird looking stick, having seemingly pulled it out of nowhere.
“I don’t know what happened to you Yuuka, but it’s clearly made you an idiot! I won’t be moved by parlour tricks like that.”
The flower youkai falls over from the blow, staring in uncomprehending shock. You take this as your cue to lunge in, unsheathing your Shade Knife as you do so. Raising the blade, you find yourself hesitating. She can survive this but…this comes uncomfortably close to what you said you’d never do again.
Putting it out for mind now, you push the three-foot Shade Knife into Yuuka’s stomach, impaling her. She spasms before letting out an ear piercing shriek as the blade ignites inside of her, pinning her to the ground with a sword of green fire.
There’s still no blood.
“Good work. That’ll stop her from moving for some time.” Shikieiki says. “Now we should probably be running.”
Your unasked question is answered as the room explodes around you, the roof sliding back and the walls falling down.
Standing outside, you see the true form of the dream mansion. A twisted hollow sphere who’s interior is covered in the buildings of the mansion, each one looping around each other. An endless mansion that’s spatially twisted into a mobius loop.
“When I said that I’d never been in much Wyld before, that wasn’t really an invitation to start dumping me in it repeatedly.”
“Who are you talking to?”
Shikieiki is behind you, holding an unconscious flower Daiyousei. Really, today has not been a good day for the fairy’s ability to stay awake.
“Myself.”
“Ech. This is why I dislike the dream world. You’re just asking to be crammed into some nonsensical geography and it’s equally odd inhabitants. I thought Yuuka was one of the more sensible ones.”
“You said you knew a way out?”
“Yes. No matter what forms her mansion take; Yuuka has always had a single immutable entrance linking it to a certain point in Gensokyo that never changed. Or at least, the old Yuuka did.”
“That sounds less than promising.”
“ Well we have to keep moving anyway. Yuuka isn’t going to stay immobilised and it’s only a matter of time before the rest of the mansion becomes hostile towards us.”
Following her lead, you once again start making your way through the endless network of corridors and rooms. This time though, they aren’t always identical. There were huge parts of the mansion that were entirely different types of architectural style, as if Yuuka had never gotten round to updating her mansion’s style fully.
Running through a corridor hewn roughly out of green stone and filled with paper lanterns, you’re still coming to terms with the loss of your Shade Knife to hold Yuuka in place.
“Well, at least I still have this scythe!”
“Give that back to me!”
“No! It’s mine now, Eiki!”
Eventually, you find yourself and Shikieiki standing in an atrium of white marble, in front of an ordinary brown door. The Yama seems pleased with herself.
“She might change its appearance but it’s always here, the border between dream and reality. And I imagine that her two guards are too busy tending to their mistress to be here.”
Walking through the door, you find yourself on a small island in the middle of a lake surrounded by mountains. A moon hangs in the night sky above you, disturbingly similar to the one you knew in Creation.
Shikieiki puts Daiyousei down on the ground before marking a seal of green and white light across the doorway, causing it to vanish completely. That job done, she sits down next to you by the shore.
“That should prevent anything getting out of that world for a few days. Enough time for us to get Yuuka exorcised.”
“So she’s not normally like this?”
“No. She’s usually one of the most balanced dream youkai to exist. And this ‘flower’ idea of hers is…terrifying. She nearly had me. I don’t know what’s happened to her. Maybe…”
She gazes up into the night sky unhappily.
“The dream world reflects our own in more ways than is obvious. Perhaps if some terrible event was happening to Gensokyo, the change would first be felt in the world of dreams.”
“Like the way a weathervane tells you which way the wind’s blowing?”
“Perhaps. And the fact that a thing like you ends up in Gensokyo the same day is worrying.”
“Oh, a ‘thing like me’. That’s real nice. And I’m really not causing whatever it is. All I wanted to do was get a drink with a girl and take her scythe.”
Shikieiki glares at you, not taking well to being reminded of her inability to make you let go of the scythe.
“Those scythes are a shinigami’s honoured tools, passed down through centuries. You’re lucky I don’t just beat you silly and take it off your body.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“Anyway, I don’t think you’re the cause of it, even though I don’t know just what you are. I think you’re more of a symptom than the actual disease, just like Yuuka.”
“I think that’s even less flattering, actually.”
You pull a small golden candelabra out of your cloak, just one of a few interesting morsels you appropriated from Yuuka’s fancy ballroom. Taking a bite out of it, you feel Shikieiki’s gaze landing on your visible Caste mark again.
“I have far too much work waiting for me. I’m off.”
She goes to rise into the air only to be interrupted by you grabbing her leg.
“Hey, what about me and Daiyousei? You just leaving us here? On this island? And what about Komachi?”
Shikieiki shrugs before ripping free of your grasp.
“Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten about what you did. If anything else, I’ll be back at some point to lecture you on the values of truth and good living. As for Komachi…we’ll see.”
She flies off into the night sky, leaving you to bury the temptation of throwing something after her as she does so.
You lie down with a sigh, cramming the rest of the candelabra into your mouth. Oh yes, that’s certainly much more palatable than dirt, leaf mould and pebbles. Gold must be one of the kings of epicurean metals.
Yawning mightily, you think about your current situation. It hasn’t been a terrible first day really. Not in this strange place that mimics Creation so well in some respects while being completely wrong in others.
It’d probably be good to sleep here for a bit. That door’s not coming back anytime soon, so it should be safe. Daiyousei will probably wake in the morning too.
Maybe then you can finally get to that fucking human village.
[ ] Sleeping here’s fine.
[ ] Why not get to the other shore, where you aren’t sleeping next to the sealed portal?
[ ] See if you can find a way back into the dream mansion (why?).
[ ] These are some really lacklustre choices. Write something cooler in.
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