The Moriya Shrine was beside an immense lake. I could see it across the water, about a thousand feet away. The shrine seemed resplendent and immense, but it was dwarfed by the onbashira, wooden pillars that lined the lake. They were a hundred feet tall and wider than any tree that still existed in the Outside World. Sasha stared up at them in wonder, but I worried that one would fall over and crush me.

“The Wind God’s lake,” I said.

Nitori warned us not to do so much as dip our toes in the lake, and if a kappa gives you that warning, you listen. We walked around the water’s edge and toward the shrine.

“I don’t believe it,” said Arnold.

“Believe what?” I asked. I walked along the water, but not too close.

“That lake’s artificial,” he said. “There’s no way a three-hundred-meter lake could form on a mountain slope like that and have perfectly-round edges. What feeds it? Where’s the outflow? Why doesn’t it erode away? I could buy it if it were between mountains, but this thing’s hydrology is all kinds of implausible!”

“Well, as a matter of fact–” I said.

“Look at that cliffside over there! The strata isn’t even pointing in the same direction as before! What the fuck!”

“You’ve… been staring at the rocks during our hike?” asked Sasha.

“It’s not like we’ve been fighting anyone,” I said.

“I need to go to Moriya Shrine as soon as possible,” said Arnold. “Do you think Kourindou has a rock hammer?”

I sighed. “Lady Yasaka brought the lake with her when she came to Gensokyo. You can ask Wiki about it.”

“Unless he has a rock hammer I can borrow, I prefer to go see it myself!”

“That’ll have to wait for another day,” said Patchouli over the same telepathic line.

“What’s that?” asked Sasha, pointing out a white thing sticking out of the water. I did a double take. A metal column had three immense blades sticking out of it. It was turning slowly.

“A wind power generator,” said Nitori, shaking her head. “It’s not for sale, I already asked.”

“Wait,” I said. “The Moriya Shrine has had electricity this whole time?”

“I guess?” said the kappa. “Mister Wiki sent them a letter, but they turned him down too.”

I was almost mad at Wiki for not telling me, but not quite. He was way too busy for his own good. Telling me everything would be a step too far.

“What do they even use it for?” I asked.

—

While we waited for an audience with Moriya Suwako, the elder god of the Moriya Shrine, Kochiya Sanae showed us her videogame collection. We sat in a cozy paper-walled room, with a little wood oven going in one corner and an immense flatscreen TV in the other.

“This one’s called a Switch!” said the wind priestess. “They’re brand new!”

“False,” came Patchouli’s voice.

“How do you even know that?” I asked.

“Antique magazines,” she said. “Kourindou stocks Game Informer.”

“I prefer Gamecube,” said one of the shrine maidens. “No suspect hand motions.”

“Game what?” I asked.

“Maybe I should work here after all!” said Sasha.

“Wait a second,” I said, flipping through my notebook. “I thought computers didn’t even work in Gensokyo?”

“Console for life,” said Sanae, tossing me an antique controller. “Prepare yourself to get rekt at Smash Bros.”

I wasn’t prepared to battle her, at all.

—

At some point I let the women just keep fighting with each other. I couldn’t keep up with anybody but Sasha, and she had a competitive streak that was on full display. She went after me like a shark.

While they played games, I made notes about possibilities for the Moriya Shrine. Maybe we could borrow some of their electricity, especially if we were to defeat one of them at Danmaku. I thought Sanae might take pity on the humans enough to let me beat her and borrow some power for the good of the village. Or maybe the goddesses would accept some good-old-fashioned prayer.

A wind power generator was a blessing indeed. Wind power, unlike solar, might be useful to keep lights on at night. Neither of them was as good as nuclear, which is what I’d have gone for, but beggars can’t be choosers.

At some point a short blonde girl entered the room. My breath caught in my chest. Although the others pretended not to notice, I could taste cinnamon and freshly-baked bread. The shrine maidens were afraid.

The newcomer wore a wide-brimmed hat not unlike my own, except for the two large, wet eyes on top of it. They rotated in place to look at me, then swiveled to face the television. Her dress was purple and white. Her blonde hair hung on either side of her face in straight, long lines. This was the elder god Moriya Suwako.

I sniffed the lavender Sanae had given me to dull my fear sense. Suwako was a recent and relatively-weak transplant to Gensokyo, according to Wiki. She sat down to play videogames with her followers. All of them were there–she was forgotten in the Outside World, supposedly.

Kanako had supplanted Suwako as the goddess of the Moriya shrine, because the elder god hadn’t been as capable of gathering faith. Now, both goddesses lived in the Moriya Shrine like the elderly founder of a business and the younger CEO that had replaced her, with exactly as much fighting as that would imply. Suwako was fading. Her time had passed, and in the lore she gracefully accepted that.

Except that was all bullshit. The official lore said that even Sanae didn’t always recognize her own goddess and ancestor, but thanks to the Touhou games themselves, millions of people knew about Moriya Suwako. I didn’t know if that counted as the ‘faith’ that the gods of Gensokyo needed to become powerful, but more people knew of Suwako Moriya through Touhou than there were adherents for seven of the top ten religions.

(Probably. I was guessing.)

So how powerful was Suwako, really? Maybe faith couldn’t cross the boundary into Gensokyo, in which case moving there might have been a cruel thing for Yasaka Kanako to insist on. Suwako had millions of followers in the Outside World, in a sense, and only three or four in Gensokyo.

Disregarding all that, I could tell right away that Suwako Moriya was bad at videogames. And not just bad–stunningly bad. Her avatar walked off the edge of the map and died pointlessly more than once. When an opponent approached she’d press some buttons, but it was clear that she wasn’t fast or cogent enough to defeat any of the shrine maidens. She didn’t seem to follow the action, but at least her ineptitude didn’t seem to bother her.

Moriya Suwako played with her adherents, who gave her advantages, but she still lost. After a few rounds the goddess laughed and turned to face me, handing the controller back to Sasha.

“It’s hard to do these things when you have a handicap,” said Suwako.

I looked into her gray eyes. The elder goddess was blind.

“Come with me, Mister Thorne,” she said. “We’ve got important matters to discuss. Leave your rock here, though.”

“I’d really rather–”

“We will be discussing things I don’t think you’d want to share with anyone.”

The crystal stayed with Sasha.

–

Suwako led me out of the building and toward the lake. The sun was descending in the sky. Moriya Suwako carried an oil lantern in her hand, although it wasn’t dark yet.

“I’m sorry to impose, but–”

“You and Sasha may stay the night at the shrine,” said Suwako. “We host guests, and keep them safe from the evils of Youkai Mountain.”

“Thank you,” I said as my shoulders untensed. We’d been playing videogames for longer than I’d realized. Suwako turned toward a lantern hanging from a tree and held her own up to her mouth.

Her tongue extended from her mouth and wrapped around the lantern’s handle. Like a pink tentacle it carried the lantern ten feet into the air. Suwako lit the second lantern, then sucked her tongue back in with a slurp.

I tried not to turn and run. Writing the ability down in my notebook helped.

“What insight did you have?” asked the goddess. She didn’t quite look at me. I realized that she must be lighting the lanterns for my benefit. Had she heard my pen scratching against my notebook? She might not even know that it wasn’t dark out, yet.

“Just that you have a lot of frog-like abilities.”

Suwako nodded. “I’ve the tenacity of a frog, that’s for sure. The hearing of a rabbit, though.” She tapped the side of her hat. “And the imagination of a rat.”

“I se–understand,” I said as we continued on our trek to the lake’s edge.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“The creatures of soil and rock lend me their abilities. I lend them some of mine, in turn.”

We continued to the lake. Eventually we sat next to a campfire that was already burning. It had a kettle on it, and there was a tea set on a small table nearby. Suwako poured some boiling water into two cups. I felt underprepared for a ritual, but fortunately, this didn't seem to be that.

She handed me one of the cups and we sat looking out over the lake. It was green tea. The immense onbashira logs cast long vertical shadows that reached toward us like fingers. Maybe she heard the gentle lapping of water, or the whisper of the wind.

“Mister Thorne,” she said. “Tell me about your curse.”

“Here?” I said, glancing up at the dark spot in the sky. “In the open?”

“How else do you think curses are dealt with?” she asked with a chuckle. “I prefer to do things outside. Don’t worry. If someone tries to eavesdrop, I’ll eat them in one bite.” She tapped her chin. “Maybe two. Depends on how big they are.”

“O-okay,” I said. I took a deep breath.

I began to tell Moriya Suwako how I was turning into a youkai, because I’d inadvertently cursed most of my body.

–

“Ah, humans are so quaint,” said Suwako. “Always trying to paint themselves in the best light.”

“I was as honest and direct as possible,” I said. “I can’t help a bit of bias, but I tried my best.”

“I agree,” she said. “You did well. I promise I won’t tell anyone about your girlfriend.” She winked, and one of her hat’s eyeballs sprouted an eyelid to do the same.

I didn’t respond to that. I’d left out most of the details regarding my information sharing sessions with Sekibanki, but otherwise I really had been as honest as possible with Suwako. I’d been skirting the line with becoming a youkai to heal myself, but not for selfish reasons–so I could carry out my mission and manifest Maroon once more. That wasn’t a lie to make myself seem great, it was the truth.

We sat watching the water on the lake. A wind turbine lazily turned, most of its electricity going to waste.

“I will cure you,” said the goddess. “It won’t come easy. You’ll suffer. You’ll retain your humanity, and maybe even some of your power, unless you curse yourself again. What’s more, this cure will only work once.”

“Thank you,” I said, a weight lifting off my chest.

“Before we get to that, I have a question for you,” said Suwako Moriya. “Is power easy to come by?”

“No,” I said automatically. Part of me wondered why she might ask that question, but the connection was obvious. I looked like a person who was seeking power and had gone too far. Like Icarus, I might soon fall.

I thought of all the times my weakness had caused my defeat. Or I tried to think of them. Human beings can supposedly only hold seven items in memory at once, and I’d been defeated far more than that.

“Every scrap of power is tenuous and hard-won,” I continued. “Power is a zero-sum game, and it’s something that everyone is fighting for all the time. It’s a rare commodity.”

“Everyone?” she asked.

“No,” I corrected myself. “But enough people that power is difficult to acquire.”

“I think you’re wrong,” said the blonde god. She sipped her tea. “Or else, what is in your pocket?”

I put my hand in my pocket, my brow furrowed. I had the vague thought that she might have used magic to put something there, but the only thing I found was my notebook. I pulled out and set it on the low table beside the fire.

“A great power,” she said.

“A notebook?” I asked. “Literacy?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Given freely, these days. I’ve heard that almost all humans have it. The power to make transient thoughts immortal.” She stared at me with her grey, dead eyes. “Power is easy to acquire. All you have to do is recognize it when you see it, and that’s what your little pad there is for, right?”

I shook my head. “It’s not for power, it’s so I can keep track of what’s going on.”

“Same thing,” said the youkai.

“I… I guess. Your notes are only as good as your review of them. And besides, most of the stuff I write is junk. If it doesn’t have merit it’s not ‘immortalized’ anymore than if I’d whispered it to myself.”

Suwako stuck out her hand. “And yet, without that little book, even the most grand and worthy idea would be carried away by the wind and forgotten. Its magic doesn’t turn all words into power. But without its magic, no words become powerful.”

“Fair,” I said. I wondered if it was a metaphor of some kind. “I’ve been taking a lot of notes since I got here, I suppose, but I’m not sure if I’ve actually put them to good use.” I mostly didn’t even read my notebook, except when giving debriefings at our house. Wiki claimed to get a lot out of it, at least.

“Your writing awakens a part of your mind that used to listen to your elders,” said Suwako. “In this age without elders, it is as though you could be both mentor and student. You teach your base self the things you write there, and you learn from your musings.”

I nodded, although I wasn’t sure I understood her very well. I wasn’t using my notes to study.

“A frightening power indeed,” she said.

“This kind of power won’t help me defeat youkai in battle,” I said. Not directly anyway.

“Is that what you want?” she asked. “To defeat youkai?”

I opened my mouth, but hesitated just a moment before speaking. “No. I want to protect humans. But defeating youkai is an instrumental goal, in that case, so yes, I do want to defeat them.”

“You seek power but you’re like a mayfly, with but a few short days to wield it,” she said. “Can I tell you a story?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Once there was a mountain. He grew from the Earth, tall, with a face made of granite. The Earth heaved beneath him, holding up her child, while the stars danced overhead. He walked a finger’s breadth every year. That was how fast the mountain lived.”

She sipped from her tea. I imagined a great stone mountain. It had Arnold’s face, for no good reason.

“Scarcely had he become an adult, before the wind and rain lashed him, making him cry tears of sand and soil. The wind defeated him. His body was carried away, down into a valley. He filled it until water gathered there and he became a lake. When winter came he blinked; when summer came he danced; that was how fast the lake lived.”

Arnold did like dancing. It was easier to imagine him doing that as a lake, than crying as a mountain.

“But scarcely had he become an adult, before seeds settled in the muck and tore him to shreds. A fertile earth foamed from their writhing. Animals came to eat the plants and drink the water. The roots and the calling of birds turned the lake into a forest. He was drained, and defeated, and Earth once more.”

She took a drink of her tea. This time she did not continue.

“A good story,” I said. “I’m not sure what the lesson is.”

“If you want a lesson, you can put one there,” she said.

“Well, it seems like the mountain changed to fit his circumstances,” I said. “He didn’t really die, did he? First he became a lake, then he became a forest. He probably became the animals themselves, next.” I’d heard a poem like that once. I had the thought that the forest might become a subdivision, depending on when the humans arrived.

“In that case, do you even want me to cure you, Mister Thorne?” She peered at me, her eyes amphibian and ruthless. “Your circumstances are changing you into a youkai. Like the mountain, you will take a new form when you are destroyed.”

“Miss Yakumo will execute me if I become a youkai,” I said.

“You don’t know the form her execution takes.” She sipped. “As long as you achieve your goals first, does it matter to you?”

I straightened my back. To hear a powerful god defy Yukari so openly was shocking, and it made me reconsider my stance.

I had assumed that remaining human was a primary goal of mine–because I was protecting humans–but did that really follow? Gensokyo was at stake with the artifact lodged in Hell. If I wanted to protect people, maybe it’d be worth it to grab power, and possibly die later. I looked down at my notebook.

Wiki and I had been trying so hard to convert youkai to the cause of humans. Perhaps it really would be easier to go the other way. To start with an ally, and make them a youkai instead.

“In the Outside World, I was one-hundred percent certain that things were coming to an end,” I told Suwako. “I thought artificial intelligence would supplant humanity. I fought it as hard as I could. I’d never made plans to live into my forties, much less the rest of my life. I played for keeps–and lost.”

She nodded solemnly. People don’t lie about losing to make themselves look better.

“I think I’ll risk becoming a youkai after all.” I set down my teacup. Then I stood and bowed. One man, among four thousand humans, was probably disposable for the cause. “Thank you for your wisdom, Lady Moriya.”

She frowned at me. “I need to tell you another story. Do you know how old I am, Mister Thorne?”

“Thousands of years,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “And humanity–it’s even older. I too expected a lesser being to rise up and supplant me.” She drank her tea. “Humans hated their powerlessness so much, they manifested gods that they could plead with. And we treated them with indifference, just like the ‘nature’ they could not bear. They eventually came to understand that nature, but not by changing it into something more amenable to their whims.”

“By understanding it truly,” I said. “Accepting it.”

“No. By changing themselves.” She drained her tea. “They looked within and tricked themselves into wanting to understand, instead of arguing fruitlessly with unyielding beings. Into accepting, yes, but that wasn’t them acting like the mountain. They instead became the wind. They turned their huge argumentative power inward, a tornado of change, and learned to conquer themselves, and only then the mountains crumbled.”

I nodded. “So I suppose I will have to change, after all.”

“No you don’t!” she said, leaping to her feet. “Youkai are at the mercy of humans! We are beaten back into a tiny corner, where we must dance in circles to cater to the few hundred or thousand of you that still know we exist!” She shook her head and paced back and forth on the path toward the shrine. “You are so eager to throw away your humanity, but you’ll become even less powerful!”

“Lady Suwako,” I said. “I mean no disrespect, but I believe you are wrong. I can barely keep up with even the weakest youkai, who follow rules to give me a fighting chance. If it wasn’t for my youkai transformation, I’d be too injured to continue my expeditions. Twice over. And not all youkai are nice like that. Soon failure will mean death or worse.”

“Learn patience, child,” said the god that looked like a little girl, and had been shouting.

“I can’t afford that,” I said. “Yukari gave us one hundred and eighty days, and we’ve already spent thirty of them.”

“Preempting one failure with another isn’t going to save you,” she said. “Humans always imagine the power hungry as nervous rats, scrambling after whatever scraps they can find. Or as monkeys, greedily taking anything within arm’s reach. But in my thousands of years, I’ve learned the truth of humans who want power. Every power-hungry human thinks that power is a bitter fruit, and they just have to eat it to protect those they love.”

“Is it not?” She glared at me.

“All of them wish they didn’t have to take power, of course! They claim to yearn for a simple life, a life where they are praised for their natural selves–where they can adhere to their nature–but that isn’t the nature of humans! They hate taking power, and they dutifully do it anyway. They destroy themselves to take it. Then they act surprised when they fail to accomplish anything that mattered to them in the first place.”

It was unsettling. I’d seen the same mistakes, and mischaracterized them exactly as she’d said. The people in AI labs wanted power, no matter what they’d said about saving the United States or humanity or their children–or so I’d thought. I’d imagined them as somehow less than human, scrabbling and making excuses.

Half of them had claimed to be alignment researchers.

“If you choose to become a youkai, you’ll turn to feed on the other humans before you’ve done any good at all,” said Suwako. “You damned fool.”

Lady Moriya was scowling at me. Wiki had told me that she was a newcomer to Gensokyo–I’d unconsciously taken that to mean that she might be willing to defy Yukari. But I was starting to understand that even if she was new to Gensokyo, she had more in common with Yukari than any human. This was an old god, for whom a human life was inconsequential.

I’d made a terrible mistake by coming to her for help. She wasn’t asking me what I wanted to do so she could assist me–she was asking me what I wanted as part of deciding what to do about me.

I was a problem first, and a person second, to these beings. Worse: I was far from Human Town. Moriya Suwako was standing between me and Sasha, who had the crystal I used to call for help.

“I will cleanse you, Jake Thorne,” said Suwako. Her tongue dripped out of her mouth like a piece of wet taffy. When she spoke, her mouth no longer moved. The sound of her voice reverberated through the ground and air in the sunset as her limbs distended. “Humans have many ways of doing this, but I’m partial to one in particular.”

I took a step back and my foot touched the water’s edge.