I can’t recall much of what happened when we fought the being made of stars. I know that in our fight, the earth was destroyed, that we lost, and that I made a wish… This led to my life as Tsuki as a shepherd and Kanga as someone trying to preserve humanity on a restored earth… a wish granted by me requires one to pay a price – a sacrifice… Memories are the most important things in my life. I guess I have my mother to thank for that. But what truly mattered was that I had saved Kanga one way or another, and the me as Tsuki, or, should I now say, the Knight in the past, knew nothing of that. Yet Hoomaikai, who is Kanga, knew of this fact very well. Haaa…I can guess how much in pain she was when I escaped from the tall tower together with Alice.

But this brings me back to when one of the emperor’s shadows was pushed back by Hoomaikai’s lightning. Now that I think about it, this silly shadow completely misunderstood his master words, who only wanted him to FIND who was responsible for the petals during the closing festivities…

❀

After casting a wave of lighting and uncovering the hidden shadowy figure sent by the emperor, Hoomaikai forced a thunderbolt to fall from the sky onto the figure. It shattered the darkness momentarily and barely missed the shadow. Still, the lightning landed so close to the shadow that it turned it blind from the brightness. Whatever it was was rolling on the ground with a shadow akin to a blanket above their figure. It clearly wasn’t human – the seven or so limbs propping the blanket up were too long to be a leg or an arm. But no matter what it was, Hoomaikai did not care for it. It could have been a renown hero or a savior of the people; the star-like eyes she saw shining on a body of pure darkness arose too many nightmares for her to be reasonable. She dashed forward with lightning spreading over her skin like an instinctual armor of a bygone time and stumbled down – her leg, still lame, wasn’t responding to her intent. Then, before hitting the ground and eating a ball of grass, she created two large raven wings shading her back from the moonlight and flew momentarily, only to crash a few meters away.

The girl was drained. She wasn’t the same sorceress who fought against mysterious gods; she was just a weak girl with a missing arm and a wounded leg. Her real strength was all too quickly whisked away after being defeated by the gods back then, and she has been even more weakened since coming to this crude world. She couldn’t even protect herself against some walking sardines, much less the young boy who had to be thrown into the pyre back when Tsuki first awoke inside the carriage – her brother of this world… So, the girl commending a fraction of her past glory was too much for her.

The ‘thing’ hiding inside the shadowy blanket slowly managed to get up, and it looked with terror at the young girl who had almost whisked away its life. Little stars in the night, cold and frozen, bitter sight to muddy a basin of water. For Hoomaikai, that thing was the same god who had ruined her life. The pain of many years of regret came back instantly as if a deep gash had been left unattended, and with all the vileness it had accumulated like puss under a scar, the sorceress ordered her magic forward into a miniature and insignificant point: a star like the one she used to throw like pebbles, albeit weaker.

This star, no bigger than a grain of sand, was sent toward the shadow and would likely do great damage if it hit, but it never reached its destination. With strange light posts growing from the ground, a large being took the hit and protected his spy. The emperor, who appeared as if he had always been present, caught the star in his gray hand. Gray, as when the star exploded, the shadows covering his hand were blown away.

One singular string of blood appeared on the ashen skin of the emperor before being consumed by shadow and eternally made unseen. He looked down at his shameful wound and then toward the culprit as if he was a god pondering what judgment to enforce. "Take them all in," he said. "Lightning raged upon one of my men on this joyous day. Each participant shall be investigated at a later time." This emperor did expect the possibility of his spy clashing with his target, among many other possible outcomes. In this predicted situation, he could technically capture and interrogate the one behind the rain of mysterious petals with the excuse of resolving a conflict during a major event. Still, he hadn’t expected to be wounded in the process.

"My lord," closed in the shadow that Hoomaikai attacked. "I was but following your order, then was attacked like a simple bandit by this Outsider!"

The last part the shadow uttered was like a burning rod marking the young sorceress’ heart. The capital was well known for its elitism of pure-blooded westerners. As for Hoomaikai, she was originally born far in the east, which was renowned for its great plains and crystal structures, which made the sun hard to bear for most. Her origin could be seen in her almond-colored skin, which ascribed her as a lowly noble in the far east. Back when she was Kanga, her skin color did cause her problems due to racism, but now as Hoomaikai, she was finding herself in a different yet similar situation. It couldn’t even be called racism, but more like a rightful mix of fear and pity.

The eastern country was a theocracy whose most zealous members drowned in their belief of a certain sun god who rewarded only the most faithful. Seeing the carbon deposit that a flame can cause inspired most priests to char their own skin by any means necessary. They created crystal temples to amplify light to forcefully darken their and the followers’ skin through evolution. They did quickly reach the darkest shade of skin they could, but this wasn’t sufficient. To say the least, they became hosts for cancer cells, which in their madness found out how to share…

It was thus because of a mad minority of simple cultists that Hoomaikai’s skin troubled her. As for the elitism of those in the west, it was because they could use shadowy power through the purity of their blood. The emperor, being a direct descendant of this shadowy lineage, was thus a complete opposition to Hoomaikai's simple birth in the east.

The emperor looked at the shadow who had spoken his elitist marble and beheaded him with a swift strike of his hand. The spy’s shadow vanished in an instant as his disfigured head, which shared similarities with an elephant, crashed heavily on the cold grass. "Take Them ALL in and EACH participant," suddenly added the shadowed emperor before leaving at once.

A few knights surrounded the two girls and the dead spy with the intent of detaining them…

❀

Past midnight high, two girls were running inside a forest whose limbs created shadowy apparitions from the cascading moonlight. The silence of the night was shattered constantly by the screams and laments of people trying to capture them both. Still, the girls advance forward in the dark while guided by the calming blue light of a lantern one was holding. One that was wounded and tired stumbled down, and the time it took for her to be back on her two feet allowed their assailant to close in on them. Flower-corrupted, a heap of the detractors surrounded the two girls and called on to their lord almighty; and appeared he who was made of stars… Nay, it was but the emperor.

Tsuki, out of instinct, had done everything she could to escape from the situation they were in. She didn’t quite understand but still allowed her body to move on as if it had already done something similar. It was all so unfair, in her opinion, as the scary shadow, who hadn’t even said who he was, clearly had bad intentions from the beginning. They had done nothing wrong at all, yet they were attacked on all sides by strange shadows.

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Tsuki pulled out her glaive, which shone brilliantly in the moonlight, and stuck it down on the ground to create an explosion of petals and followed by focusing her mind on the knights she had already infected with flowers during her escape to forcefully make them spread. She heard screams of pain and dashed forward to cleave where she thought the screams were coming from.

Tanggggggg!!!!!!!!

She struck a strange light post, which didn’t give way. The hard impact caused the skin of her hand to split open. Transforming her overly long weapon into its small dagger form, she followed through on the first strike and cut the post cleanly to stop it from creating light, but with this done, she felt a disgusting hand grab her leg. It did everything it could to keep her in place, but she changed herself into a bundle of petals to escape.

"Sinorous!" she called the otherworldly hound, whom she then ordered to escape with Hoomaikai. A useless order as a cage of shadows formed around the two girls. Sinorous could technically escape, but not with the wounded girl.

In said wounded girl’s mind, dread started to drown out any hope. It was all like in the past, albeit on a smaller scale. She tried to pull on any remaining strength that she had, and caused a lightning bolt to fall from the sky. It lacked any power to wound even a fly, but it was still a mark put in the sky like a call for help. She didn’t know if anyone would see it, but it was her last hope as she knew very well that the emperor couldn’t be challenged by them.

As for Tsuki, she was doing her best to avoid an assault of shadowy hands and did a pretty good job at it. Sadly, it was just a distraction, for a flurry of spears came from all directions and forced her to escape once again into a cloud of petals. Three times was her limit, and she was nearing it. The moment she would return to her normal self, she would be impaled with no way to fight back.

When the mind forgets, the body remembers; when the body forgets, the soul remembers. Past and present are but one, and Tsuki acted like she had already done. Like how she created her glaive that could bloom flowers, she simply needed to make a certain wish with a cost added… After all, what needs can a simple knight have – a knight of malt and with sweet, intoxicating blood... a deep color like ink to both allow life to be and stories to be made.

Tsuki returned to her fleshy self and waved her right hand – which now held a golden metallic fan. She wanted to be as gracious as the girls who went up on stage during the night. They danced in her rain of petals as if they were beautiful fairies playing in the wind on a raft of dandelion seeds… She wished to be more like them and grace her beauty on this bloody stage. As for the cost… something precious again.

From the girl's brush of the new metallic fan, a wave of ink formed and pushed the darkness away, leaving only a moonlit stage of petals. The wave continued onward slowly, and as they neared the knights following the emperor, it changed into bloated goldfish and then… nothing. All the ink fell to the ground powerlessly, just as its creator did. Tsuki fell down powerlessly. Not dead, but close to it. She had simply strained herself past her limit.

"Alright boys, just tie them up already and place them in detention until tomorrow," said the emperor, who walked by the now unconscious girl. Hoomaikai looked in despair, as this time something had changed. Tsuki didn’t slay the one she faced like in the past. After all, she had almost nothing of value to sacrifice this time.

The girls were lifted up and taken by the knights… Sinorous was grappled by the emperor himself as if the beast was a small cat.

"Oy, mister!" exclaimed someone from the forest. "Won't you entertain me with an explanation for kidnapping those little ones?" The unknown voice came echoing from every direction as if each leaf, each tree, and each stone were asking this simple question.

For some reason, even unknown to them, everyone other than the two girls started to have a shiver run down their spine. The branches waved and cracked while dying leaves fell at the border of everyone’s vision. They felt like they were surrounded by the forest itself – not in the sense of being inside the forest but in the sense that every blade of grass hid something lurking in the darkness.

"This has nothing to do with you. Go back to where you came unless you want trouble," snarled the emperor, who was trying to pull on the strange hound’s limbs as if it was a doll. He stomped a foot down, and an impressive number of light posts grew from the ground in an instant.

Two figures appeared from this sudden brightness, which the knights all turned their weapons to. One was a small creature like a walking mushroom, and the other was a horned girl with long scarlet hair. "Such a boor of a lord," she said. "Ya try to kidnap a little student of mine and think it has nothing to do with me?" This was Yuu’s puppet, who came back from the snowy mountains where dangerous creatures lurked, ready to invade and change all that ever was. She pulled a large halberd from emptiness, which gave people the feeling that the cold metal was resting at the back of their heads, ready to sever anything.

"You dare threaten us?" responded the emperor. He wanted to say more, but only air left his lips as he saw all his men falling lifelessly to the ground. He had no idea what happened to them, as neither the girl nor the mushroom had moved an inch.

"Go back to sucking on your father's glory like a leech, my lord. Let those who are actually important alone."

This enraged this man, but before he could do anything, the tip of a halberd was put to his neck. It wasn’t an attack that could come close to killing him, but he felt a few hints of divinity from this almost instant attack. Hoomaikai, who was still awake, was forced to watch the confrontation. She glanced first with horror at the small mushroom on two legs, only to feel more at peace with him also being scared. He was used to Yuu’s carnage and, in truth, was scared as he, a royal of his race, was in front of the son of the old emperor. This bloodline was the thing scaring him more than anything else, as if something in his soul was screaming to run.

Yuu’s back opened to create fleshy wings, which she used to secure the two girls. They detached from her back to become a twig-like tree, which held them up high from any possible danger. "Hey, my lord. Didn’t you get the report of what I found north? Are you so useless to take vacancies and not deal with it?"

The man under heavy shadow raised an eyebrow at this question thrown out of nowhere. He did receive the report but didn’t have the means to do anything about the situation. Those creatures of change were obviously a threat and could decimate towns in an instant, so sending his army to deal with them would only open the capital to being attacked from another side. And even then, their nest was at the very top of the tallest mountain in the region, which made it impossible for a large number of soldiers to simply survive for an extended period of time. Was she, that strange goddess hiding as a simple mercenary, in the belief he could do anything in this situation? In truth, his attempt to capture Tsuki was in the hope of learning or using her power. It was a shame that the spy he sent caused a confrontation and made any amicable relationship almost impossible, but it was better to simply spread the girl's power to every soldier instead of having only one person able to do something useful.

"Then," stated the emperor, "how should someone as useless as me deal with this invasion? You understand that an incoming tide from the sea of void will tie my precious soldiers – the same you have brutally killed – to the capital?"

It was a sound question, to which she responded by flatly saying, "Your neighbors have much to give if only you didn’t look at the surface layer of their frontier. The south begs with its hands, while the north empties its lands to rekindle its hearth. Even the east flees from its sickness like that girl’s parents should have done." Yuu simply stated the state of the world and pointed at Hoomaikai, whose parents did actually flee the east after her birth. The world was tumultuous as chaos brought carnage to each of their borders individually. With time, it caused many rulers to only see other countries as foes where resources were plentiful.

The emperor sighed, as they were all options he investigated. He tried to open trade with the north and offer his help to the south, but somehow things ended sourly. His own land was corrupt beyond repair, such that he had almost given up on it. Although Yuu’s points were good, they could never be done on time. "You said your little student was important? Then go make her deal with this cataclysm or stop playing house like a child in my land." With this said, the emperor disappeared into the dark, giving up on using the young girl's strange power.