She shook her head sadly, sorrow in her voice.
“I forced no one’s hand. Twisted no one’s will. Such is not within my power to do. This, your ruin, is a product of your own artistry.”
“You knew what blood lotus would do. You knew where it would lead us.”
“To me.” A bottomless smile. “Into my arms.”
“But why?” Yukiko screamed. “It’s not our fault you died! We didn’t want this. We didn’t ask for any of this!”
“Because I love you…” She shook her head, black tresses moving like the tides. “Because I miss you. Because I made you. You are mine, all of you. You belong with me.”
A whisper of wind, Yukiko’s hair drifting about her face as if in a breeze. And then the goddess stood behind her, gentle arms snaking around her waist, caressing her belly with bloody hands, black lips pressed cold against her ear.
“You do not know a mother’s love. It is only a concept for you. The pale shadow of an idea. But once you lay eyes on those within you, once you bring them into life, you will know what it is to love absolutely. To wish to be with them, always. The cruel press of time or fate dragging them away. It will break your heart. It will end you, as it ended me. As now, I end you.”
“Not today,” Yukiko hissed. “I won’t let you…”
Black lips pressed against her cheek, so cold they burned. Her voice was the wind howling through cemetery gates, blowing across fields of newly made corpses.
“Mother knows best, child.”
Yukiko pulled away, turned to face her, horror and rage in her eyes. Her hands were pressed to her belly, smeared with the blood Izanami had left behind.
“You know nothing…”
“You never wanted them, did you? That poisoned cup in your womb. Is that why you seek this grand sacrifice? Because it is easier to die gloriously than face a future so terrifying?”
“I haven’t died yet. And I’m sure as hells not planning on doing it today…”
Izanami blinked, a slow, deadly smile forming on blackened lips. “Oh, my dear. Oh my dear, precious girl. You do not know, do you?”
“… Know what?”
“The gate. How to close it. What it will cost you…”
“Tell me.”
Hollow, soulless laughter. The cry of lonely wolves, the wind moaning through granite crags crusted with winter’s bite.
“She does not even know the part she plays. I should have known. This, their hero. Beloved of all. And neither they nor you can see the truth of who you really are.” The goddess shook her head. “A coward. A weak and tiny child, now begging the answer from she whom it would thwart. I love you dearly, but do you think me fool, my daughter?”
“I am frightened,” Yukiko said. “But that doesn’t make me a coward. And I may be young, but that doesn’t make me weak.” Her hand slipped to her waist, to the tantō tied there. Her father’s gift. “But no, I don’t think you’re a fool.”
“Oh?” The goddess tilted her head.
“I think you’re afraid. Of me. Of us. Together.”
A smile.
“You’re afraid.”
She drew the blade, a gleaming flash of folded steel in the light of Izanami’s ghostly lantern. She heard a faint tearing sound, chill laughter, a rushing, roaring gale. And then she was cold, the freezing air cutting her like knives, the brightness of gloomy daylight almost blinding after the black. The heat of the burning shadow bird at her back, Buruu’s warmth beneath her, the skies filled with blood and thunder and the roars of the arashitora pack all around.
Back in the world again.
YUKIKO!
Buruu’s voice echoing in her mind, edged with bright fear.
YUKIKO!
I’m here brother. I’m here.
I COULD NOT FEEL YOU. AS IF YOU HAD CEASED TO BE.
I saw her. Izanami. She spoke to me in my mind.
AND SHE SAID WHAT?
Yukiko closed her eyes amidst the chaos, the screaming, swirling death all around, replaying the conversation in her head. The goddess assumed she was here to sacrifice herself, that she already considered death a certainty. As if there was no way to close the hellgate and survive. But if so, how? How had it been done before? Tora Takehiko had closed the last hellgate, but he’d never returned to tell the tale.
But there must be a way.
There must be …
“Hana!” She looked to the girl circling above. “Hana!”
The girl split an abomination’s skull apart, her face and arms drenched in dark gore, Kaiah’s frenzy filling Yukiko’s mind.
“What?”
“The tales of the last hell war! What did they say about Tora Takehiko’s charge? Exactly! Word for word!”
“They said nothing, I told you!” Hana ducked a fistful of talons, struck at the shapes around her. “Only that he and his arashitora charged into the hellgate and sealed it closed!”
Pulse pounding in her ears.