Kiara and Keigo soared through the Grass House, flying close to the pollen stream, making it follow on their tailwind. It was as if they left a stroke of paint in the air—multicolored dust drawing a fine brush line, falling only as they rose and let it break away. Kiara was mesmerized, twisting and twirling to see if it would react. It did, and Keigo laughed as he dropped beneath the surface. The girl stopped, unsure if she should follow. Keigo erupted from the pollen a moment later, bringing a geyser high between the bridges overhead. He spun around and it sprayed out. Where it landed flowers bloomed, making Kiara’s eyes light up. She wasn’t comfortable dropping within it, but she could move the wind, stirring it into a whirl. When it looked too strong to fight she lifted her arms, pushing a twister high past Keigo. She pushed it apart and tidal waves fell, covering every bridge with vibrant pictures of spring. Keigo landed and applauded, making her rise to see her work as well. She covered her mouth. It was far better than she imagined, each bridge now a crowded and clever flower arrangement. She marveled, taking it all in, and Keigo snickered again as he watched her react.

"I sometimes forget you guys aren't used to seeing stuff like this." He said and then gave it another thought. "You especially, I guess. There's nothing like this in your world, right?"

Kiara shook her head. There were games, of course, and botanical gardens, but where would she ever find a place where architecture was nature itself? Where would she ever find a place where one small action could grow a garden for miles on end? How could Nandaxia ever match that?

“This is really pretty.” They were the first words to come to mind. “Are Spirit Domains normally like this?” She looked at him, and he stroked his chin.

"No. Definitely not." He shook his head. "It all depends on what type of Spirit formed the domain. The grass house is all about farming and harvesting, all of its powers are about enriching the land. When it's uncontrolled like this, it'll make interesting shapes." He gestured at the bridges. Kiara nodded.

“What does it mean for it to be uncontrolled?”

"Something like it doesn't have any direction? Domains are more about feeling than anything else, and this one is about growing to be healthy and strong. If it was controlled it'd grow in a specific way. Instead, it's more like the spirit has a vague idea of the feeling." Keigo crossed his arms. "Did that make sense?"

Kiara thought about it. “It’s art maybe? Like, if you tell an artist to paint something they think of when they’re sad, they’ll paint whatever comes to mind. It’ll match the prompt, but you have to say something like, "I'd like a melancholic skyscraper painting," if you want something specific.” She smiled. Keigo nodded back but held up his hand.

“What exactly is a skyscraper?" In his mind, he saw towers meant to grab clouds from the sky.

“Big buildings.” Kiara answered flatly, turning to follow the bridge. He was slightly disappointed.

Keigo sighed as he followed, watching her as more of the domain came alive. The strange creatures they saw before popped up between the flowers, clipping some, taking pollen from others, making waterfalls cascade around them. She awed, and he smiled, wishing Diana had come along. He'd have to take her to a different domain later. Now was Kiara's time, and he was happy to show her more of his world. The smell of dirt filled the air and they followed it to a bridge below. Down there, a scarecrow of sorts struck the ground with a hoe, dragging trenches that suddenly filled with stalks. It wiped its gourd head as if sweat ran from it, turning to another patch to till the dirt again.

“What do the different spirits do?” Kiara turned to Keigo.

“The small ones seem to be the populace of this place. They’re like bees in a way, they focus on moving the pollen everywhere. That scarecrow though? It’s probably a soul that liked the domain. It kinda remembers being a farmer, and so it farms here too.”

They watched the scarecrow drink from a gourd at its hip. It swung its head, misting the new patch, puffing its chest out proudly as the smell of dirt thickened. Keigo stroked his chin once more.

“I wonder what channeling that one would be like.” He tried to imagine the magic it’d produce.

“Channeling is when you draw on a spirit’s power, right?” Kiara overheard this during one of his and Diana’s training sessions. “Does that mean you can channel any spirit? These little guys too?”

Keigo looked at them. “Yeah, but the power varies between spirits. Smaller ones don’t produce enough reiki. They’re just pieces of the domain. That scarecrow would be a different story. It’s kind of mechanical, but it has its own sense of purpose you know? It wants to affect the world, not just respond to it.”

“Then does that mean the more of a purpose a spirit has, the more powerful it is?”

“Pretty much, but it’ll vary like with the domains. That farmer spirit is the perfect example actually. When a domain is formed by the will of the living, there tends to be a hierarchy. At the top it’s the Patron Spirit, its domain forms around it and its purpose. The power of the spirits within relate to that purpose. A Farmer to grow. Those Sprites to propagate. The closer they are to the Patron, the more powerful they are. Closer can mean like, literally close, or how close you are to being like a patron.”

Kiara nodded.

“Some domains don’t form from the will of the living, but their regrets instead—the way you feel in the final moments before you die. If it’s anger, sorrow, envy, whatever, the domain that forms isn’t going to be like this one. It’s Purpose will be to spread that feeling, and spirits will get stronger based on how well they can spread it.”

Kiara shivered. “Does that mean spirits can leave domains?”

"Absolutely." Keigo gave her a grave look. "That's part of why the Spirit Guards exist actually. They stop malevolent spirits, and people who'd cause them. The worse part about malevolent spirits is that they're more likely to form around people sensitive to Reiki, but you can never be too safe."

Kiara looked back at the Farmer. It was sitting now, drinking casually as if it was on a break. It shook its head and something rattled inside. Puffing out mist, it looked along the bridge, giving her the distinct feeling of a sigh. This spirit was indeed a farmer, both exhausted but happy to tend to its fields. With a puff, it rose to its feet and raised its hoe high. Behind it, one of the stalks bore its bounty, growing a bud that a flower-headed creature leaped out of. Thorns covered vine-like arms, and though it had no eyes it turned toward the farmer, making it stare back. On stem-like legs the flower spun, whipping through the farmer with arms held out.

Kiara turned to Keigo, ready to ask, “Was that supposed to happen?” But his expression already answered; brow knitting as he produced a sword. Instead, she asked, “What just happened?”

Keigo dragged two fingers down the blade. "That's an invasive spirit." He swooped down without further elaboration, sweeping past the flower, slashing its body.

It teetered back but otherwise remained standing, making Keigo’s eyes widen and his brow knit tighter. Exorcism was not his specialty, but that slash should have been enough against an invasive spirit. This thing was against the purpose of the domain. Its reiki should have been weak enough for him to slice through it. There was barely a scratch, however. It lashed, one arm flying after the other! As he deflected he understood. This was not an invasive spirit. This was a spirit of the Grass House attacking its own domain.

Its arms thrashed, tearing at the ground as he blocked and ducked, claiming bits of him as small scars bled. As he tried to circle it, a spin kept him back. Throwing shuriken instead, he beat his wings to make them faster, only for them to harmlessly pass through. Two more vines stabbed up from the ground, tearing away fabric as he pulled back. This was a long-range fight then. He was not an exorcist, but he had been in a situation like this before.

A rock hit him, fired from a slingshot by a child-like spirit with a big grin. It scooped up more and he ducked behind a tree, watching wood chip as the spirit let loose. He growled to himself, and a chuckle fell from above.

“Need help, Keigo?” It was his father, biting into an apple as he sat on the branch. A wooden staff lay in his lap. For Sanada Yoshito, that’d be all it took to get this job done. Keigo was seven at this time, and far too petulant to give up.

“No!” He yelled back, peeking around the tree, pulling back as a rock flew.

“You sure?” His father chuckled. “You and your mom aren’t good at this type of job. You can ask me for help.”

"It's my job!" He wouldn't because Eisuke could do something like this. If Eisuke could, that meant he could as well. He just had to figure out where things were going wrong.

“Well, I’m going to talk but you don’t have to listen. Spirit Magic is about the flow of your Gyo. To channel, it flows inward. To exorcise, it flows outward. I wonder what that means for sealing then…?”

That statement wasn't precisely right. If it was really about flow, then sealing and exorcising were the same. Both had to go outward to have an effect on a spirit, it was just the difference between the effect. Exorcism broke the flow of reiki, making it impossible to stick around. Sealing changed its flow, forcing it inward. But what was his father trying to say? Keigo wasn't particularly good at sealing either.

"What I really want to know is how seals stick when you're not around. That's something else!" His father laughed to himself. Keigo would later find the answer, but it wouldn't truly stick until Diana explained it her own way.

“I have two questions.” She said after a recent day of training. “First, how do you make a seal work? If mine are easy to break, that means there’s a way to make it difficult, right? Maybe even impossible?”

"I don't know about impossible, but yeah, it's all about the continuity of your aura. Think of a seal as a chain that won't break unless you hit the weakest link. If I hit you with a palm, the weakest link might be the center. Bash the center of the seal and you're free…" Keigo drew a line in the dirt and then made a zigzag through it. "All right, but if I hit you with one of these, how would you break it?"

Diana glanced down. “I guess the center too. I mean, why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because the aura is in constant motion, the center is going to keep moving as long as you sealed it that way. The more complex your seal, the harder it is to break through.”

“So making a strong seal would be a lot like making a good Rune Ballad!”

“I know I probably should, but I don’t read Forward Society books, you know?”

"Then I'm the teacher now. A Rune Ballad is when you string runes together in an expert order. Back in the Nithelan's early days, people thought runes were an alphabet, but they were actually more like music notes. When put together in the right order, you can make a spell effect happen." Diana drew varying shapes on the ground. "Making them mix is the hard part. The Runes react when they're close to each other, but a spell effect can go horribly if they're not spaced right. If they're not looped right, the spell effect could break too. Imagine if you had magic shoes that let you land softly from high places, only for them to break one day!"

“I kinda get the way it overlaps, but where are you going with this?”

“Well runes have to follow rules, but what’s stopping your aura?”

“Oh! A strong seal is just making several rune ballads at once!”

That was still a difficult task, but something he could wrap his head around.

Holding his sword in one hand, Keigo held the other one up, switching between three hand signs. He slashed as he took flight again, letting his aura fly forward. Vines rose to meet him and the slash drank them in. It struck, and the spirit shook angrily, slowly coming to a complete stop. Keigo dropped to the farmer's corpse, grabbing the hoe and coming at it again. He swung for its body and the spirit pulled in, sucked from the world as its vines were before. Keigo tossed the hoe back to the farmer and watched with excitement as the thing grabbed hold. Its parted body became two spirits. They nodded at each other as if this was normal and happily returned to tilling.

Kiara joined Keigo.

“What was that about?”

"I thought that spirit was invasive, but it was actually corrupted. Something's here toying with the domain's purpose." He glowered. Kiara's eyes widened.

“What should we do?”

Keigo pointed his sword upward. "We're going to find out what's behind this." He took off and she hurried after…

⨂⨁⨂

At the center of the Grass House awaited a seed, almost round with a pointed tip, suspended above a pollen lake in the grasp of bridges threading together. A gathering stood in front of it, several masked figures surrounding two young women with white hair. The woman closes to the seed had the shortest. It was cut into a bob around her jawline, baring neck that led to more shown skin. Sashes crossed over her chest, revealing the midriff down to the waistline of a short blue skirt. Her legs were showing too, her body pale from tip to toe.

The girl behind her was younger with longer hair—white strands falling to her middle back. She wore a dress in perfect mirror of a schoolgirl, holding her fingers to a glass clip upon her ear. She seemed to be listening to something. When her hand dropped, she called out.

“Yuzuko, the sigil might fluctuate a little bit. Mokube and Norio have encountered two new threats. They’re requesting permission to draw upon their markings. I’ve granted it, and I’m prepared to mediate the reiki.”

The short-haired woman shook her head. “The Jade Warden wouldn’t be enough, would she? On top of that she’s connecting with that Spirit Guard too.” Yuzuko’s arms stretched out, touching a sigil painted upon the seed’s side. “It’s fine. The structure is good enough that we can move forward.” She took a step back and brought her hands together.

From the bridges beneath them came an intense surge of power. Reiki so potent it was visible to the eyes poured into the sigil, making the seed quake as a stem breached its tip. It speared a beam toward the ceiling, burning away the green and foliage, revealing what looked like a starry night sky. Glitter bled from the wound as the beam subsided, coiling into a fine stream, watering the stem. A line ran down the front of the seed and it peeled open as if something was pushing on double doors. That something stepped out when they fully opened, its body a thin, starved husk, with glitter rising from it like steam from coffee. It surveyed, then sat golden eyes upon Yuzuko, meeting her own strange eyes, changed by her demonic nature.

"I thought that this would take years." It said, then looked at its hand, noting that it wasn't quite physical. Just barely, it could see through.

“It might have, but we had a meeting. Considering how we summoned you before, it seemed possible for us to do it again. It takes a major operation, but this is a good start.”

The thing smiled. “Yes it is. Lord Yoshiki would have been an easy friend I see. You bear his power and do what…turn a domain into a beacon for me?”

“I thought you might understand it that easily.” Yuzuko smiled back. “I know it’s not perfect, but can you still fulfill your part of our deal?”

It offered its hand and Yuzuko took it. Once more there came a surge of energy, though this rose from the woman, pouring into the hand. Its other hand faced down, vines growing from it as it fed more on her power. Five gourds grew along them, and it let her hand go as it offered them next.

“I cannot promise that it will be the Yoshiki power, but it shall do as I have promised.”

"Chosen, step forward!" Called the other woman. Five among their ranks answered the order, standing in a line before her. "I, Cardinal Ayaka of the Yoshiki Sect, have witnessed your services to our goals. Through my title and name, I acknowledge you, welcoming you to an ascended rank. Do any among you fear stepping forward?" She paused and waited. The line remained silent. Taking the gourds from Yuzuko, she placed one in each of their hands. "Then I bid you, drink. Toss your human limits aside."

The chosen drank.

High above and out of sight, Kiara and Keigo listened through winds carrying the words. Most of what they heard told them nothing, but still, emotions swelled within them. Keigo felt it when the reiki was stolen from the domain. It was like a sudden slap; a happy moment instantly going cruel. Of course, that spirit was corrupted. An outward feeling had just turned inward, going back to the root of something invasive and destructive. He wanted to drop and cut them all down but stayed his hand for more information, and to keep Kiara safe. He was so drowned by his rage, that he didn’t quite notice she was raging too.

That emaciated figure was familiar to Kiara. She didn't personally know it, no, had never seen it before. But the glitter rising off it and those cold golden eyes were too fresh in her mind to be easily forgotten. What more, there seemed to be another memory in her, that didn't call back to Feline. She didn't know what it was but it filled her with bile, feeding a flame that burned bright and made her eyes glow. Suddenly, the glittering figure swung its head around, searching the faces of the sect and the shadows of distant bridges.

“What’s wrong?” Yuzuko asked.

“One of those children are here.” It growled, turning its body now.

“What children? Does it have something to do with the sect?”

It looked up next. “No… but they absolutely must die.” It turned the other way.

When golden eyes met scarlet, Kiara felt it. She felt the being's fury just as much as it felt hers. A dweller was looking at her, not just limited to the body of a speckled beast. It was still too different to be mistaken for a human, but it was close enough that she could not mistake its rage. This was not a scorned beast but a furious man, driven mad by memories of what scarlet eyes might mean. Kiara was more than ready to fly down and meet it but stopped herself as its finger rose.

“Up there!” The Dweller barked. “I am indebted Yoshiki Sect but I must ask for another favor. Bring me that girl’s head!”

“Go!” Ayaka called, and the non-chosen took off, enhancing speed and physicality through means the two couldn’t see.

Kiara had not quite shaken her will to fight, but Keigo grabbed her shoulder, stopping her from answering it.

“We have to go!” He urged. “We don’t know enough to fight them all at once.”

She nodded, and they both dove from the bridge, taking off at speeds the sect couldn’t match.

“More intruders.” They heard Yuzuko say through Kiara’s manipulated winds. “Ayaka, contact Miki. He’ll cut them off.”

The two flew faster, turning the gathering into specs in the distance. They cut down from the center, fast past the farmers and the decorated bridges. Remaining vigilant all the while, they kept their eyes peeled for Miki, not sure what they'd find but wary of anything that warranted a second glance. Things remained quiet until they almost swept passed Diana, waving them down with Danson making his way to her. Her hair flew wildly as they came to a rapid stop. As they joined her, a smile turned into a frown.

“So you guys already know about the demon then?”

“You ran into them too?” Keigo asked. “Was their one named Miki?”

“No. In fact, they weren’t quite demons. They were normal guys in masks, at first anyway. It was a somewhat difficult fight.”

Keigo cursed, then hissed through his teeth. “We have to keep going. Kiara I’ll grab Diana, can you fly Danson?”

She twisted the wind around him, bringing Danson to their side.

“That’s a yes.” The elf said as he landed. “But why are you guys in such a panic?”

“We saw what they were doing. One of them wants Kiara dead too. There’s no time to waste.”

Keigo was more right than he knew, for as he said that a beam lanced through several bridges, exploding into a fountain near them. It was clear this was a missed shot, not a warning, and to make sure the second one landed the shooter drew closer. White hair, dark clothes. They didn't have much to go on but he seemed to fit the bill of Yoshiki Miki. Could they run? No, that was out of the question. That beam had gone far and its power was nothing they could shake off. If they fled in a line they'd be easy targets. If they separated any one of them could die. If running was out of the question, they'd have to fight, and each of them stared the demon down as his arms began to glow…

[Chapter 37 ends…]