Web of light. Part 1.2

"Where... are we...?"

"A cave in the mountains, a shelter."

The guy looked around, forced a smile.

"The bad stuff... The shelter... does not hide... auras..."

"There's a further passage," the Corpse Eater reminded himself. "It allows you to quickly move deeper into the mountains..."

"Thank you... better... in a different way... Rinko, help me..."

The girl grabbed the guy by the arms and helped him stand up. Leaning on her hand, he took a couple of steps to the nearest wall and, putting his hand on it, closed his eyes. He opened it and peered at the wall. Kashi watched these manipulations with some bewilderment, lighting additional lamps. Not all yokai can see well in the dark. And... damn it! The sinking feeling of death and battle spilled over the foothills was gone, as if cut off! Yokai cast a scanning spell, one of the few in his arsenal... and it sank into the wall like into water!

"How?!"

"Generic abilities... Let... I'll introduce myself... Yuto no Amakawa, the head and last of the family."

The thoughts in Kashi's "head" made a desperate somersault: everything, everything was falling into place! The clan of the artefactors, the clan of the "taming" Yokai, a clan with up to a dozen active members for centuries, the masters of the Blades and Claws of Noihara. The legendary ability, "the introduction of the changing light", allows you to turn any object into a powerful artifact... even a stone, even a branch... even a whole cave! No, it wasn't Mizuchi who brought them, it was Amakawa who came with Mizuchi. Two retinue warriors, a yokai and a human swordswoman... hung with artifacts so as to take out five strong yokai of his, the devourer's, level in five seconds. They say all the Amakawa are dead. It is said that the heir still survived and is hiding under an overwhelming seal. Is this HIDING?! Kashi has been interested in this clan for a long time. And I was able to find out something from what is usually called a "clan secret." There were various rumors, and once he was able to talk to yokai, who refused the vassal oath. He was not ready and could not accept her, but his girlfriend had no other chance. He was not ready and could not accept her, but his girlfriend had no other chance. But he made sure that the oath worked, and he understood and remembered something. In particular, her vows, the text.

Logic. Why did Amakawa's heir come? For some reason... by agreement. For what reason? Why go to them? Because Mizuchi told Yuto Amakawa quite a lot about their community. After all, the oath of allegiance, the vassal oath of the Amakawa, which is provided by their ability to "introduce light", is a simple, in fact, primitive thing. It's just an opportunity to step over yourself in exchange for a promise of service. When you hit the ceiling of your own limitations, strength, kind, soul, whatever. A wild, impossible chance to become someone else, in exchange for a voluntary restriction of freedom. What most yokai and humans are afraid of is fire. His hope died today. You can just live. His hope brought him an incredibly rare chance. And to kami the details! To believe in Shizuka's choice. After looking at the Hawk-Nosed man entering the lighted cave (he was carrying several survivors just in his arms), Mizuchi (two people who could not walk on their own were literally hanging on it), accompanied by several yokai, Kashi, taking three long steps, appeared in front of the last Amakawa. He smoothly knelt down and bowed his head so that it was below the level of the child's chin.

"Amakawa-sama. I am Kashi of the Kashi Yokai clan, the leader of the mountainside spirit community, I ask you to accept my oath and the oath of those who decide to follow me." By the oath of the family, by the oath of loyalty, and by the oath of freedom, may the one who is ready rise.

Yokai could have sworn that a series of expressions were flashing in the child's eyes now: amazement, surprise, understanding, and they were replaced by a concentrated squint. I felt children's hands on his temples.

"Think, desire what you want most, and remember to be faithful to the word. Otherwise, the oath is easy for you... It will break." Amakawa hissed in his ear and spoke loudly, clearly: "So be it."

And... nothing else. No flashes of light. No thunderclaps. No external effects. Yuto just took his hands off yokai's head, and Kashi stood up. What did he desire more than anything else? What limited him? The ceiling of the mind, the limit of consciousness? Kashi grinned, his lips curling into a harsh smile that was so unusual for him. Is serving the master humiliating and bad? Does serving ideals mean freedom?

"Those who still believe me as a teacher, who wanted to follow the path I suggested, come and swear Amakawa. You've all heard the words. The rest are free, everyone knows where the passage in the cave is. The Yokai, who were crowding at the entrance, rustled, murmured, darted their glances at the people, and Kashi approached and stood to the left of his overlord.

And he was almost not surprised to see Mizuchi on the right. The Hawk-nosed man standing among the "small fry" made a hand-to-face gesture face-palm and calmly approached the boy. He squatted down, exposing his forehead. Well, let's take this oath, or something. And a little quieter and to the side. If pathos could be surgically removed, I would send someone for surgery... Sensei sucks.

Interlude 13. Hokkaido Island. The ancestral lands of Jinguji. The mansion of the eldest family. A spell of peace. Mother and daughter, Meruhi and Kues Jinguji.

"Well, mom," the girl drawled, "Why is this happening again? I'm cold and hard. And boring!"

"I guess you've already forgotten, dear, how you couldn't even sleep properly until you were seven years old. Do you remember how many times you woke up with burns? And with the bruises? Do you want a repeat?"

The girl rolled her eyes. Her long, raven-colored hair was pulled back in a neat wave over the edge of the altar and hung almost to the ground. Apart from talking, the girl did not allow herself a single unnecessary movement.: She knew perfectly well what a failure in a magical ritual was and how unpleasant the consequences could be. Her mother continued to wave her hands at the Kues, answered questions in monosyllables and without much thought, and the "princess" Jinguji, who was freezing without clothes, could only close her eyes and try to distract herself from the tedious procedure with some pleasant memories.

For example, how she was cured of the "curse of magicians." There is a saying among British wizards — "there is never much power." One can only feel sorry for them, because they really don't know what a lot of power is. Too much for a fragile human body. One of the immutable laws of magic says that like wins like. And so, no matter how many prickly hedgehogs of sealing embedded spells were placed in her body, her power tore them apart time after time. While little Kues was awake, she was in full control of herself, quickly learned that the transparent-warm wave of energy did not burn her skin... or her insides. The nightmare started when she was falling asleep. Two times out of three, she managed to wake up before her magic could do damage, but sometimes the sleep was too deep...

"What do we need the power for, Mom? It hurts me..."

"To kill the Yokai, dear."

"Killing bad yokai?"

"There are no good yokays, daughter."

She was taught early, and at the age of five, little Kues was able to send energy outside the body, light candles by touching the wick, and move objects with telekinesis. For a while, the seizures turned from dangerous to something just painful and unpleasant, but it could be ignored. It was just necessary to do enough of these very, very interesting manipulations with objects or bright sparks of spells. And then her reserve began to grow. It happens that way. It is believed that if the reserve in childhood is higher than the average level, then the child usually has a fully manifested gift. Kues turned out to have the rarest gift in terms of power. And he was ready to kill her.

Merukhi Jinguji tiredly wiped away the beads of sweat that had appeared on her forehead and continued scanning-researching-reprinting her daughter's power. Considering that the Kues had an order of magnitude bigger reserve than a very small measure, it was not an easy job. Then, realizing that the child might just not survive, the mother finally turned to the Old Clans for help.

The appeal to political opponents, as expected, was far from smooth. The mirror priests were ready to save the child for free, sealing the gift... entirely. That this would have left Kues half-witted at best was not said, but it was clear as day to anyone familiar with the theory of magic. Tsuchimikado, smiling politely, said that there was not a single one among the clan techniques that could be useful. The Dungeon of the Gift? Well, this is fiction, there is no such technique and there can be no way to regulate the current of mana inside the source, modern magical thought strongly denies this. And then I had to turn to the "nuts" of Amakawa.

There were the most incredible rumors about the artifact tamer clan, ranging from what exactly they do with their yokai in their free time (and that this is what ensures the extreme devotion of tamed monsters) to the fact that anyone they touch no longer remains the same. But, there was no choice. The meeting with the head of the clan was held in a warm, friendly atmosphere... apart from the fact that Merukhi twitched every time she was served tea or cakes by zashiki-varashi, the spirit of the place, the power is such that sparks begin to appear in her hair. Very atmospheric! It is quite understandable why no one seeks to interrupt Amakawa's self-imposed seclusion. But there was still no other choice.

At the end of the week, Jinguji brought her seven-year-old daughter to Noihara. After only briefly examining the child, the head of Amakawa agreed to carry out the "treatment". And announced the price. It wasn't that high: it was just a life for a life. Kues was supposed to become a family with the "power of changing light."

"Understand, Meruhi-san, your daughter doesn't have her own destiny now anyway: never before has such a strong gift lived up to such a gigantic 7-year period. No one knows how the energy gathered in such a quantity in just one body will behave. That's why the others didn't take it on — arrogant fools are afraid to admit their own impotence, they're not idiots after all. And you brought her to me on time: she doesn't have more than a year left. I'm already surprised that she was able to tame her power for so long. Only as the wife of the heir who possesses the gift of our blood will she be able to live as a human being without the risk of her power taking over her. Only those who possess the "light" can protect her from what is inside her.

Meruhi finished and wearily sank into a chair next to the stone parallelepiped of the altar. The daughter fidgeted, stretching, stretching her cramped muscles, swung her legs to the floor and reached for her clothes. "Why, to give her up for some kind of almost incompetent," Jinguji Sr. continued her long-standing argument with herself by inertia, "yes, every department head in a small town is stronger than this Amakawa. And his grandson didn't impress me either. Ask him to join my clan... I wouldn't have sent him to sweep the street, of course, but I wouldn't have let him near the eldest family to be struck by lightning either! But if there had not been a split in the clan of the "light carriers", the daughter would have had to be wooed anyway. And now there's only one heir left, suppressed and untrained... They even keep an eye on him from time to time, just in case... But I'll choose a better match for my daughter!" She examined the Kues again with a scanning spell and was again forced to sign that she did not understand what was going on inside its source. And no one understands. The limiters are external, the limiters are internal, but will they be enough if what old man Amakawa warned about happens? A nagging sense of her own powerlessness made her heart lose its rhythm, but the eldest of the women pulled herself together. Not the time. Maybe it will be okay.

"I've heard, daughter, that you've become close friends with the Malcolm offspring this year?" She spoke casually. "Won't you tell Alexandr about this?"

Interlude 14. The new Shimomuro house. Shimomuro Yu.

The Shimomuro family was settling into a new place: movers brought in boxes, dragged in furniture and household appliances, even a palm tree in a tub. Her father meticulously checked the list of what was accepted, and his mother tried to make sure that everything was put exactly where it belonged, and that the naughty Yu would not drop a heavy box on herself, and that she would not dare to involve little Sato in her fun. It didn't work out very well: the workers didn't understand the inner beauty and harmony of the rooms at all, and tried to put everything in such a way that the combination turned out to be as terrible as possible. In addition, Sato did not understand in any way that an asthmatic child should not circle after their healthy daughter in the dust of moving and try to climb a palm tree, which, oh, woe! — they put it in the wrong place again, it's not worth it either. But the move did happen. Harmony was finally achieved between the three-dimensional world and the mother of a respectable family's idea of beauty, the children were fed, washed and installed in their rooms, and the palm tree did not even lose all its leaves. And while the adults were doing boring adult things, like cooking breakfast in order to warm it up in the morning, checking if the washing machine was leaking and where the soap and the box had been put away, Yu, who finally got her own private room, began to gut her personal belongings. To begin with, a Mystical Crystal Ball was extracted from a larger box: it was so mysterious and mystical that there was no need to explain it. Then there were: mystical incense sticks, mystical candles, a very mystical round mirror and a deck of Magical Enchanted (for a change) Tarot cards. Oh! Well, now it's all right, you can start the ritual of enchanting the house. Well, or at least the rooms, because everything around is so mystical, and the room, even if it has its own, is outrageously ordinary!

The process, as it happens in any household arrangement, at least ten times mythical, dragged on. Firstly, the girl definitely did not reach the ceiling even from the table, not to mention a more mundane and not a bit mystical chair. And the ceiling was needed: who would paste the mysterious pattern of mysterious constellations on the ceiling with glowing stars and planets? And you certainly shouldn't ask your dad: an extremely phlegmatic and pedantic father won't stick stars on anything (that is, mysteriously!) and in the constellation scheme (for added benefit), and even divide the applications by color and luminosity so that they match. Yu's father was well versed in constellations, precise mechanisms, and mathematical calculations. Now an aircraft engineer, and previously a test pilot, he had a decent amount of "emergency" knowledge. But he was being boring!