The arrow was nocked to the string, spiritual power gathering.
Kikyō stood between Kōbe Hikaru and Uesugi Kenshin, her longbow held level, its point aimed at the girl ten paces away.
Her shrine-maiden robes whipped fiercely, the white upper garment pressed flat against her shoulders and back by the night wind, the red hakama sheathing her straight legs, the sash cinching her slender waist. Her stance was upright, unyielding by even a hair.
Her black hair hung loose, spilling over her shoulders and down her back, a few stray strands blown to the side of her face—yet they did not veil the cold within those jet-black eyes.
It was an exceedingly rare thing, an emotion of Kikyō's laid bare.
It was fury.
The fury of one whose precious, rightful possession someone means to take away.
Uesugi Kenshin looked at that arrow.
The light of spiritual power had condensed at the arrowhead into a white orb the size of a fist, clear and blazing. Even across the few paces between them, the destructive force it held could be felt.
If this arrow were loosed and struck true, even an exceedingly powerful yōkai would be blown to fragments.
But Uesugi Kenshin was no yōkai, and she did not dodge.
She did not even take a defensive posture.
She merely stood there, silver-white hair draping down either side of her monastic robes, the night wind brushing the edge of her gauze veil to reveal half of an exquisite jaw.
Those eyes, deep as an ancient well, watched Kikyō—the gaze calm, without hostility, without contempt.
Only watching.
Watching something interesting but not particularly important.
"Shrine maiden."
She spoke, her voice still that flat, inflectionless calm, like an old monk chanting sutras in a temple. "I have heard your name, Kikyō—heard that the spiritual power you were born with is exceedingly strong and pure. Now that I see it, so it truly is."
"If we speak only of the strength and purity of one's innate spiritual power, then in this age you could likely be called the strongest. Even those great onmyōji in Kyoto would scarcely surpass you."
"But spiritual power is the bane of demonic fiends—not of me. And the power I wield can, on the contrary, suppress the likes of you!"
She raised a hand, palm turned upward.
No attack, merely a simple gesture.
Yet the very air changed with it.
There was no pressure of yōkai aura, nor the clash of spiritual power.
It was something more fundamental, spreading out from within Uesugi Kenshin—like ripples slowly unfurling across the surface of water, soundless and without a trace, yet turning everything within some hundred feet, several dozen meters, heavy.
The loose stones on the ground began to tremble faintly, and the wooden pillars of the torii let out a soft creak.
Fine cracks appeared in the earth beneath Kikyō's feet.
That was… the power of the gods and buddhas.
It was faith given concrete form.
It was the prayers, offerings, and awe of the countless multitudes of Echigo's people toward Bishamonten, gathered into this single person and forged into weight and suppression.
Suppression of all that was extraordinary.
In this respect, yōkai aura and spiritual power were in truth the same.
Neither belonged to mortals, to the mundane world.
Kōbe Hikaru stood behind Kikyō, and he could feel that pressure just the same.
Heavy.
It truly felt as if an invisible mountain were slowly bearing down.
The oppression was total.
"It doesn't yet reach the oppression of Kibōmaru, but it has already surpassed an ordinary Seven Mutations yōkai—reaching a yōkai aura on par with Eight Mutations, even Nine Mutations," Kōbe Hikaru judged inwardly.
Kibōmaru was a supreme yōkai above the twelve-mutation tier, infinitely close to a great yōkai, the ultimate practitioner of the mutation of speed, and the strongest being Kōbe Hikaru had ever encountered.
Within the domain of his Rashōmon Reality Marble, his speed might even have exceeded that of an ordinary great yōkai unspecialized in speed.
The clash of that night was still fresh in Kōbe Hikaru's memory.
The reincarnated avatar of a divine and buddhaic being before him was, in the end, only the re-reincarnation of an avatar, and naturally could not compare to a yōkai like that.
But to surpass an ordinary Seven Mutations yōkai was already astonishing enough.
After all, the girl before him possessed, in the end, a human body, and what she displayed seemed to be purely the power of flesh, the pressure of the physical form.
And yet within it was contained a power of incomparable purity.
It was a will taken for granted, requiring no negotiation, descending from above.
It was the so-called truth that before the gods and buddhas, all living things are equal.
Truly worthy of what they called "a divine and buddhaic being descended into the world," Kōbe Hikaru thought.
To wield such a body and manifest such oppression.
If she truly struck with full force—it likely was not something he and Kikyō could settle in short order. Kikyō's spiritual power held no bane over her, and he himself was at most her near equal, hard-pressed to surpass her.
But even suppressed in attribute, Kikyō did not retreat.
The bowstring drew fuller still.
The arrow held steady as a nail driven into the air, and the orb of spiritual power at its point swelled another ring.
"What you say is true."
Kikyō's voice remained calm, yet that calm was unlike Uesugi Kenshin's.
Uesugi Kenshin's calm was the indifference of one who looks down from on high.
Kikyō's calm was the stillness before the blade leaves its sheath, the coiled force before the mountain flood breaks loose. "My spiritual power can indeed only be the bane of yōkai, but that does not mean my arrow is effective only against demonic fiends."
What she said was fact.
The essence of spiritual power was the condensation and manifestation of clear energy. It could purify turbid energy and stand directly opposed to yōkai aura, but it too belonged to the extraordinary, and would be suppressed by the power of the gods and buddhas.
But Kikyō's arrow was not weak in itself.
Just as Kōbe Hikaru could turn a bone into the avatar of a divine artifact.
As a divine archer who never missed, one who could directly amplify her own force with spiritual power, Kikyō could do the same!
Her spiritual power was mighty, and even with its attribute suppressed, she might yet suppress her opponent in turn through sheer magnitude.
Suppression had always been relative, never absolute.
Who would win and who would lose was still hard to say.
In a real fight, it would only become a war of attrition.
Of course, that rested on one premise—that it was Kikyō against Uesugi Kenshin one-on-one, a duel. And at present, Uesugi Kenshin was alone, while they were two.
With Kōbe Hikaru and Kikyō joining hands against her, their odds of victory were great.
"Cannot be settled in short order" did not mean it could not be settled at all.
Uesugi Kenshin seemed to have seen through this as well.
She looked at Kikyō's fully drawn bow, then at Kōbe Hikaru standing behind her.
She fell silent for an instant.
And then—
she withdrew her hand.
That oppression suffusing the air, the kind that made ordinary people want to fall prostrate, receded swiftly like an ebbing tide.
The loose stones trembled no more, the torii's wooden pillars returned to stillness, and the cracks in the earth stopped spreading.
Uesugi Kenshin drew her hand back into her sleeve, the motion unhurried, even carrying a faint air of ceremony.
"Never mind, then."
She said, her voice still without a ripple.
"It seems tonight it cannot be forced—but what I have said still holds."
She turned around.
Her silver-white monastic robes gave off a soft luster in the moonlight, the white gauze veil falling to hide half her face, leaving only those eyes, deep and dark as an ancient well.
"I will come again, and bring all of my divine artifacts. If you refuse me next time, then it will not end as it did tonight."
"You would do well to consider it more carefully."
Her last words drifted and floated, settling behind her.
And then she left.
Just like that, she left.
Her steps neither fast nor slow, along the mountain path by which she had come, alone, vanishing into the northern night.
Her retreating figure was solitary yet not forlorn, like a moving statue of the Buddha that never needed to look back at anyone.
Kikyō did not lower her bow at once. Only when that figure had passed entirely beyond the sensing range of the blood mist did she slowly ease the string.
The orb of spiritual power at the arrowhead dissipated, the white light shattering into fine motes that scattered on the night wind.
She lowered the bow and let out a long breath.
Her breathing was a little quicker than usual.
That fury of a moment ago, the fury of one whose reverse scale had been touched, only now began to ebb from her blood.
"She's gone."
Kōbe Hikaru's voice came from behind her.
Kikyō nodded without turning, only glancing sidelong, nodding, a faint light glimmering in those black yet clear eyes.
Nothing was said aloud, but just now, neither of them had given chase.
Because they could not catch her, and because there was no need.
Two against one, they truly had the confidence to suppress a lone Uesugi Kenshin, to win—but if she wished to leave, they could not hold her.
In the end she was no yōkai, but a human, a divine and buddhaic being descended into the world.
The effect of Kikyō's power could not be brought to its fullest.
In that interval Kōbe Hikaru walked to Kikyō's side, the crimson oni mask already removed, revealing a pale, handsome face.
His eyes were still turned to the north.
But Kikyō said:
"She came alone, which means she had confidence enough to withdraw unharmed. But if she truly meant to fight, she would not have come with only her words."
"So those words just now—at least half of them were sincere."
"She really does want you for her divine artifact."
Kikyō turned, her black eyes fixed on him. "Have you ever considered agreeing?"
Her tone was flat, flat enough that no emotion could be heard in it.
But Kōbe Hikaru knew her too well.
Behind that flatness lay a volcano on the verge of eruption.
Kōbe Hikaru had no words, yet he answered plainly all the same:
"No."
That too was the truth.
In fairness, Uesugi Kenshin's looks were not bad—in fact they suited his taste—but that lofty, condescending manner was not to Kōbe Hikaru's liking.
And he had truly not the slightest interest in playing another's dog.
Even if it could genuinely bring him power—power not under his own control was, to Kōbe Hikaru, of not the slightest value.
Kikyō watched him, and once more a slight ripple stirred in those jet-black eyes.
A very faint softness, flickering past in an instant.
Then she pressed it back down. "Mm."
Just a single sound of acknowledgment.
But the fingers hanging at her side brushed against the back of his hand once more.
Her fingertips were still faintly cool, though this time, Kōbe Hikaru clasped them back.
The tips of Kikyō's ears reddened, but her expression did not change.
"There is one more thing."
She did not withdraw her hand, but her voice had already returned to its habitual cool clarity. "To the north, there is an army, encamped."
Kōbe Hikaru's gaze sharpened.
"How do you know?"
"I did not sleep tonight."
Because she had not slept, she had been able to arrive here in time.
Kikyō's gaze turned north. "That Uesugi Kenshin—before she arrived, the warning layer of the barrier had already reacted. Not to yōkai aura, but to the presence of people—a great, dense presence of people, pressing in on the wind from the north."
"I walked north along the sensing edge of the barrier."
She paused.
"About a hundred li away, at the pass of a mountain valley, an army is encamped."
"Banners bearing the character '毘' (Bi, for Bishamonten)."
"Their number… at least three thousand."
"Twice as many as last time."
Kōbe Hikaru fell silent.
Last time it had been a thousand men, led by Kakizaki Kageie, who withdrew after he cut down their commander with a single stroke.
This time three thousand had come—and at the very moment Uesugi Kenshin herself came alone to extend her invitation.
In other words, if he agreed, those three thousand would be his comrades.
If he refused—
then those three thousand would be soldiers come to attack.
"Courtesy first, force after."
Kōbe Hikaru spoke the four words.
Kikyō said nothing, but she slung the longbow onto her back once more.
That motion meant one thing—she was ready.
The two stood beneath the torii, the moonlight drawing their shadows long.
The north wind was rising.
It carried the scent of iron and cold.
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