Post by sailornull on Aug 4, 2021 16:32:14 GMT -5
((One last warning: This is Madoka levels of dark and disturbing. Not surprising to anyone who knows Akiko's history, but I wanted to be sure no one forged ahead without a chance to turn back.))
Akiko walked to the front of the classroom with a binder stuffed with note paper, printouts, and sticky notes. She looked at her classmates, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath as she opened the binder.
“I need to tell you all a story. It starts a thousand years ago, when a priestess of the Chichibu clan – some stories say her name was Kimiko – traveled with her four acolytes, who one story names Akio, Hideyoshi, Yudai, and Kenshin, in the train of the man who became Edo Shigetsugu when he settled on the bank of the Iruma River and built the first Edo Castle. As the Edo Clan grew, the priestess was disturbed by the sin she saw around her, and searched for a way to purify the clan.
“Somehow, she came to possess a ritual that would, indeed, purge the impulses toward evil in everyone covered by the ritual’s area. She and her acolytes studied until they had mastered the ritual, and then on the appointed day, they performed it.
“The ritual worked. The pulse of magic spread across the plain, cleansing every person of their evil impulses. In Edo, all was well for the next generation. People looked back on it afterward as a golden age.”
Akiko stopped and looked across the room as she said, gravely, “What neither the priestess nor her acolytes considered was what happened to all those evil impulses.” She turned to the board and drew a very rough map, like a treasure map, centered on Edo Castle. She drew a circle around quickly-sketched city, centered on the castle, enclosing nearly the entire height of the board, and much of its width, then drew a field of diagonal lines to fill in the circle as she continued talking. “Everything within this circle was purged of its evil. But, the energy of the ritual interacted with the evil it was purging and created a … what would you call it, Miss Hunter? It’s bigger than a building, but smaller than the world, so would it still be a pocket dimension? Anyway, the entire area affected by the ritual now had a shadow counterpart. A shadow world in which every part of Edo was copied in a twisted, shadowy form, and every one of the evil impulses the ritual had purged of the people of Edo was now embodied in bodies that looked like the people it had been purged from. Right in the center of it all was a twisted, shadowy copy of Edo Castle, with the shadow versions of the priestess and her four acolytes ruling over the entire realm.”
“The shadow copies of the people of Edo were little better than beasts, ruled by their impulses, with no capacity for higher thought. The priestess and her acolytes, though, they were a different matter entirely. The shadow copies of the acolytes, freed of the restraint required of acolytes, became… well, quite frankly, megalomaniacs. Each claimed rulership of an element or concept, with her closest acolyte’s copy calling himself Diamond, the General of Glory. The others were Amethyst, the General of the Mind, Obsidian, the General of Shadows, and Ruby, the General of Fire. The only thing that united them was their devotion to the Queen.
“Not knowing what she had created, the priestess lived out her life, secure in the knowledge that she had made Edo a place of purity and light, and when she died, her acolytes – and most especially her husband, Akio – mourned her as someone they truly loved.
“Meanwhile, in the shadow realm they had created, times were hard. The shadow copies the ritual had created were suffering, because only intelligent beings had the hidden impulses needed to become shadow beings, and only humans had no magic of their own to protect them from the effects of the ritual, so the realm they lived in – the twisted, dark reflection of Edo – had no yokai, no crops, no game or herds, nothing for them to survive on. In desperation, the stronger ones turned on the weaker, and they discovered that pain and terror was as nourishing to them as food had once been. Then Amethyst – the shadow copy of Hideyoshi – created a way to open portals to the real world, so they could kidnap living humans to feed on. For the next six hundred years, the shadow copies – the yoma – would venture into the real world and kidnap humans to take back to their nightmare kingdom, where they would torture them and feed on their pain and terror. Sometime during that period, they discovered that the magic of the Generals could keep their victims alive, but eventually the suffering of any individual would no longer be satisfying, and they would be killed and eaten. They got away with it for so long because, even in Edo, people still disappeared due to wild animals, or bandits, or falling into the river and being washed out to sea, or any number of other mundane causes. Diamond – the yoma of Akio – enforced strict limits on their hunting, both to keep humans from realizing what was happening, and to keep the lesser yoma constantly craving more.”
Akiko flipped a couple pages in her notebook and nodded.
“Then Lord Tokugawa and his retainers were attacked, right in Edo Castle, by a party of lesser yoma. Suddenly, humans were fighting back, and even occasionally winning. Meanwhile, in the Nightmare Kingdom, the Queen retreated to her chambers and spoke to her generals only of correcting the mistake she had made. With no guidance from her, the generals each followed their impulses to the full. Amethyst began transforming the humans his lesser yoma captured into works of art that would make H R Giger vomit. Obsidian toyed with the limits human fear could be taken before the humans broke. Ruby claimed a part of the kingdom and turned it into a great pit of flames into which his victims were cast alive. Diamond ignored all they did – and then vanished from the Nightmare Kingdom.
“In Edo, a warrior appeared to fight the yoma. He called himself Kagayakashī Kamen, and he was impressive enough to be mentioned in several stories, even he only appeared two or three times before he was replaced by a girl who glowed with the same glorious light as he had. For all of you who don’t speak Japanese, that means Glorious Mask, by the way. The girl he was replaced by was probably from the palace, since she hunted yoma mostly in the districts closest to it. She was younger than anyone in this room. She hunted yoma for five or six years, and then she vanished, just like he had.
“Ten years later, another girl appeared and began hunting yoma, and just like the first, she disappeared after five or six years. This pattern continued for the next four hundred years, until a week before the 2020 Prom. That was when the latest girl fought back against him when he attempted to impregnate her, just as he had every girl before her, and in a fit of pique, he killed the cat he had granted the ability to speak and plan her hunts, so it could guide her when he wasn’t there, took his power from her and declared her to be nothing, and hurled her through a portal to a place she knew nothing about, expecting that it would break her so she would be more pliant when he reclaimed her.”
Akiko closed the binder, took a deep breath, and then continued, her voice as flat as if she were reciting the items on a shopping list. “I would have taken this class last year, except Diamond – Glorious Mask – my father – kidnapped me and took me to the Nightmare Kingdom. I was a prisoner there for ten months before I was able to escape.” She looked into the distance and shook her head. “I would suppose he had no further use for me by then, if not for the recent incidents.”
“What I saw there, though, makes me suspicious. Diamond is no longer loyal to the Queen, and now he has a daughter he can replace her with. The other generals are also suspicious, but the only way they would ever work together is if the Queen herself commanded it, and she…,” Akiko shrugged. “She has not spoken in four hundred years. Given how ambitious Diamond is, I would not be surprised if he used the baby as a figurehead to legitimize his ruling the Nightmare Kingdom, and he is the only one of the generals who knows anything about the modern world. The others are still medieval in their thinking, but he poses a real threat if he is able to unite the Nightmare Kingdom under him.”
She frowned and looked at Hunter. “Have I missed anything you can think of? Does anyone have any questions?”
Akiko walked to the front of the classroom with a binder stuffed with note paper, printouts, and sticky notes. She looked at her classmates, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath as she opened the binder.
“I need to tell you all a story. It starts a thousand years ago, when a priestess of the Chichibu clan – some stories say her name was Kimiko – traveled with her four acolytes, who one story names Akio, Hideyoshi, Yudai, and Kenshin, in the train of the man who became Edo Shigetsugu when he settled on the bank of the Iruma River and built the first Edo Castle. As the Edo Clan grew, the priestess was disturbed by the sin she saw around her, and searched for a way to purify the clan.
“Somehow, she came to possess a ritual that would, indeed, purge the impulses toward evil in everyone covered by the ritual’s area. She and her acolytes studied until they had mastered the ritual, and then on the appointed day, they performed it.
“The ritual worked. The pulse of magic spread across the plain, cleansing every person of their evil impulses. In Edo, all was well for the next generation. People looked back on it afterward as a golden age.”
Akiko stopped and looked across the room as she said, gravely, “What neither the priestess nor her acolytes considered was what happened to all those evil impulses.” She turned to the board and drew a very rough map, like a treasure map, centered on Edo Castle. She drew a circle around quickly-sketched city, centered on the castle, enclosing nearly the entire height of the board, and much of its width, then drew a field of diagonal lines to fill in the circle as she continued talking. “Everything within this circle was purged of its evil. But, the energy of the ritual interacted with the evil it was purging and created a … what would you call it, Miss Hunter? It’s bigger than a building, but smaller than the world, so would it still be a pocket dimension? Anyway, the entire area affected by the ritual now had a shadow counterpart. A shadow world in which every part of Edo was copied in a twisted, shadowy form, and every one of the evil impulses the ritual had purged of the people of Edo was now embodied in bodies that looked like the people it had been purged from. Right in the center of it all was a twisted, shadowy copy of Edo Castle, with the shadow versions of the priestess and her four acolytes ruling over the entire realm.”
“The shadow copies of the people of Edo were little better than beasts, ruled by their impulses, with no capacity for higher thought. The priestess and her acolytes, though, they were a different matter entirely. The shadow copies of the acolytes, freed of the restraint required of acolytes, became… well, quite frankly, megalomaniacs. Each claimed rulership of an element or concept, with her closest acolyte’s copy calling himself Diamond, the General of Glory. The others were Amethyst, the General of the Mind, Obsidian, the General of Shadows, and Ruby, the General of Fire. The only thing that united them was their devotion to the Queen.
“Not knowing what she had created, the priestess lived out her life, secure in the knowledge that she had made Edo a place of purity and light, and when she died, her acolytes – and most especially her husband, Akio – mourned her as someone they truly loved.
“Meanwhile, in the shadow realm they had created, times were hard. The shadow copies the ritual had created were suffering, because only intelligent beings had the hidden impulses needed to become shadow beings, and only humans had no magic of their own to protect them from the effects of the ritual, so the realm they lived in – the twisted, dark reflection of Edo – had no yokai, no crops, no game or herds, nothing for them to survive on. In desperation, the stronger ones turned on the weaker, and they discovered that pain and terror was as nourishing to them as food had once been. Then Amethyst – the shadow copy of Hideyoshi – created a way to open portals to the real world, so they could kidnap living humans to feed on. For the next six hundred years, the shadow copies – the yoma – would venture into the real world and kidnap humans to take back to their nightmare kingdom, where they would torture them and feed on their pain and terror. Sometime during that period, they discovered that the magic of the Generals could keep their victims alive, but eventually the suffering of any individual would no longer be satisfying, and they would be killed and eaten. They got away with it for so long because, even in Edo, people still disappeared due to wild animals, or bandits, or falling into the river and being washed out to sea, or any number of other mundane causes. Diamond – the yoma of Akio – enforced strict limits on their hunting, both to keep humans from realizing what was happening, and to keep the lesser yoma constantly craving more.”
Akiko flipped a couple pages in her notebook and nodded.
“Then Lord Tokugawa and his retainers were attacked, right in Edo Castle, by a party of lesser yoma. Suddenly, humans were fighting back, and even occasionally winning. Meanwhile, in the Nightmare Kingdom, the Queen retreated to her chambers and spoke to her generals only of correcting the mistake she had made. With no guidance from her, the generals each followed their impulses to the full. Amethyst began transforming the humans his lesser yoma captured into works of art that would make H R Giger vomit. Obsidian toyed with the limits human fear could be taken before the humans broke. Ruby claimed a part of the kingdom and turned it into a great pit of flames into which his victims were cast alive. Diamond ignored all they did – and then vanished from the Nightmare Kingdom.
“In Edo, a warrior appeared to fight the yoma. He called himself Kagayakashī Kamen, and he was impressive enough to be mentioned in several stories, even he only appeared two or three times before he was replaced by a girl who glowed with the same glorious light as he had. For all of you who don’t speak Japanese, that means Glorious Mask, by the way. The girl he was replaced by was probably from the palace, since she hunted yoma mostly in the districts closest to it. She was younger than anyone in this room. She hunted yoma for five or six years, and then she vanished, just like he had.
“Ten years later, another girl appeared and began hunting yoma, and just like the first, she disappeared after five or six years. This pattern continued for the next four hundred years, until a week before the 2020 Prom. That was when the latest girl fought back against him when he attempted to impregnate her, just as he had every girl before her, and in a fit of pique, he killed the cat he had granted the ability to speak and plan her hunts, so it could guide her when he wasn’t there, took his power from her and declared her to be nothing, and hurled her through a portal to a place she knew nothing about, expecting that it would break her so she would be more pliant when he reclaimed her.”
Akiko closed the binder, took a deep breath, and then continued, her voice as flat as if she were reciting the items on a shopping list. “I would have taken this class last year, except Diamond – Glorious Mask – my father – kidnapped me and took me to the Nightmare Kingdom. I was a prisoner there for ten months before I was able to escape.” She looked into the distance and shook her head. “I would suppose he had no further use for me by then, if not for the recent incidents.”
“What I saw there, though, makes me suspicious. Diamond is no longer loyal to the Queen, and now he has a daughter he can replace her with. The other generals are also suspicious, but the only way they would ever work together is if the Queen herself commanded it, and she…,” Akiko shrugged. “She has not spoken in four hundred years. Given how ambitious Diamond is, I would not be surprised if he used the baby as a figurehead to legitimize his ruling the Nightmare Kingdom, and he is the only one of the generals who knows anything about the modern world. The others are still medieval in their thinking, but he poses a real threat if he is able to unite the Nightmare Kingdom under him.”
She frowned and looked at Hunter. “Have I missed anything you can think of? Does anyone have any questions?”