Web of light. Part 1-7

"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!

Having dealt with the stars, having taken away the stepladder from her parents (and the mezzanine can be loaded later), Yu surveyed her mystical room and decided, for the sake of moving in, to conduct another magical experiment. Moreover, the caught cicadas dried perfectly in the box, she already had a mixture of the bark of three oaks, as well as a mortar and pestle. They say, they say, but only — shh! — among the potion recipes in "Harry Potter" there are working ones. Or not much changed. For example, a light collector. Four components, a simple proportion. In the magician's hands, if he concentrates the energy in his palms, an expanding wave of light appears. One of the ideal formulations for identifying potential magicians, Yu herself personally selected several recipes for these formulations from almost two thousand "candidates" that she found on the "Internet magic textbook", various "notebooks of witches" and even in the "Anarchist Cookbook". The girl poured some powder into her palm and concentrated with all her might, "sending energy," but alas. As expected, there was no wave of light, because Yu is simply not a magician. But surely there must be magicians in the world? And it's probably not just the British Magic Academy, they just don't know about it. And Yu's mission is to bring this knowledge to people! And you can start with a simple one — to open a Magic Club in a new school. It will only be necessary to find the first five in order for the club to be approved at all...

Part 22

Chapter 111

You'll find out what a difficult day is by comparison. Until now, I was sure that the most difficult day was the day of the first trip "into the forest." Yeah, right now. I'm not having any luck with this "forest", or vice versa, I'm lucky, as you can see: here, I found ten more "problems" on my neck.

To be honest, the number of events per unit of time has simply gone through the roof: moreover, if the trip to the yokai camp itself is in the category of "unnecessarily risky, but within the norm," then the battle itself is beyond good and evil. It's a good thing that I simply didn't have time to think before deciding. And get scared. Or make a reasonable decision. Because the sensible solution is not to engage in combat under any circumstances. The Yokai from the slopes of the mountains, with all due respect to them, were, if you think about it with your head, an insufficient argument. But when there is no time to think, I have to act on my feelings, fortunately, I was not deceived by them. But, enough self-reflection. We managed to win, now we need to be able to take advantage of the fruits of victory. Of the thirteen participating "locals", ten agreed to accept vassalage, fortunately, the second leader agreed to the procedure immediately after the Corpse Eater, and the "losses" were a "trifle" from the number of the team. Well, that's good. And so, if someone had told me that in one day I would "earn" a dozen vassals, I probably would have laughed for a long time. Thanks to Kashi, whose motives I haven't fully understood yet, I've got into my team not only those who agree to take the oath, but also those with the appropriate character set, yokai. That is, the willingness to follow the leader, even if they don't really understand the meaning of the action. Very good!

The ritual was quite routine: fainting from overload perfectly "wrote off" the inhibitory behavior when applying the "ferry", while I was meditating, feeling for the necessary "vectors" in the nervous system of the next sworn in. The Devourer voiced the text of the oath very much on the subject: my ancestors developed an excellent example of an NLP scheme: it adjusts both the recipient and the receiver to the desired mood. And they also made sure that she was "on the radar." Thanks to this, I did not sit in a puddle, responding to such a generous offer, "I'm sorry, but I do not know how." Of course, on the one hand, the fact that I was practicing not only an experimental (for me) technique, which, in case of failure, would destroy a significant part of consciousness and the second signaling system on intelligent allies, smacked of madness and betrayal at the same time ... But. I definitely didn't have anyone else to train with, and secondly, I was still able to help them in battle, although that doesn't excuse me... Let's go and forget! And so, when the last "small" yokai went through the oath, and those who remained with me "waved their hand" to those who left, who decided to sail independently without the patronage of the "big three" and under the control of Amakawa (words like "traitors fucking" were perhaps the most polite that the "sides" exchanged), I Finally, I was able to think about the sacramental "and what's next?"

Chapter 112.

And then it was definitely worth making an offer, which Mizuchi and I came here with at the beginning of such a long day... By the way, it's not even two o'clock in the afternoon, so all the active actions took a little more than two hours. Looking around the room, I realized that no "revelations" were expected from me at all: the yokai were glad that they had gotten off so easily, and that now they could safely sit out those few hours in a protected cave until a couple of Tsuchimikado operatives got tired of combing the neighborhood. But questions, of course, will arise. I waited until Shizuka returned to the cave to voice my thoughts in front of everyone, but when I came across her sour expression, I decided to find out what was going on first.

"Our weapons were found, you know! It did not melt after processing, only melted slightly. And from this distance, I couldn't destroy it."

Oops! A puncture. On the other hand, the top layer of ice has "frozen off" after all, and no one will find our interesting "fingers" on the shaft and handle. Interestingly, the fact that ice, to put it mildly, has an unusual secondary arrangement of molecules, will it be discovered? And what will they think of the author of the blade and the spear? For example, I would hurry to get out of an area where there is a mizuchi capable of knocking water into comet ice. But come on. Everyone's here, can we still talk?:

"Ladies and gentlemen, Attention, while we are forced to linger under the arches of the cave, I want to tell you how I see our further interaction and describe how I would like to help arrange your future life."

It probably looks funny — an uneven row of sitting men, two women — and a teenager standing in front of them, intently "broadcasting". I forced all the Yokai to change their appearance to a human one, in order to avoid, so to speak. Whether the mindset changes due to a change in shape or not, but the motor skills definitely change, which means that the chance of "missing" in the ferry increases... Fuck it, fuck it!