As her body transmuted into pure light, Yuki could feel herself – and something else with her – being ripped free and hurtling across the line of attunement that bound her to the mysterious Naga Shrine in the Spirit World. It was strangely reminiscent of Roka’s trip through the Heart of Creation that Yuki had witnessed second-hand through her Postcognition spell on Roka.
Was this what Sakura and Kaitaro had experienced? Was she dead? Would she…
*Nothingness…
---
Consciousness washed back into Yuki’s mind like tiny ripples dancing across a tranquil pond.
She opened her eyes and became abruptly aware that she was falling – literally!
Before she could do anything about it however, she crashed down into a crunchy pile of old bones, that softened her landing enough that she took no damage.
Looking around, Yuki recognized her surroundings. She was in the Inner Sanctum of the Naga Shrine. Only now, the place was completely desecrated and filled with the bones of fallen heroes that the Samurai had recovered from Sendai. The bones that Yunikawa had betrayed Sendai and murdered her people for.
The bones entirely choked the well, over which Sakura and Kaitaro’s bodies had once hung, and onto which Yuki had just fallen. And bones were scattered across the floor and piled along the walls of the circular chamber.
It was a lot of bones – only these were just half of the bones Yunikawa had stolen.
Then Yuki remembered that powerful magics had once protected this chamber from human intrusion – yet here Yuki was, inside and free of any restraint. In fact, she felt quite whole and completely re-energized. It was like none of the stresses and exertions of the recent past had even been real – though Yuki then realized that she still wore her Divine Ephemeral Soulsteel Scale armor.
‘Strange… something in its properties must have allowed it to come along with me to the Shrine when I was… Killed?’ Yuki finds herself getting distracted.
Focusing, Yuki noticed that the inlaid starmetal and oriculum script that had once been on the green soapstone columns had all been pulled out and was now completely ransacked. It was the power of the script that had caused the Samurai harm the last time they were here – when they had seen Sakura and Kaitaro’s bodies hanging naked in stasis over the well.
‘Speaking of Sakura and Kaitaro, where were they?’ Yuki’s thoughts continued to ramble.
Taking a moment to walk the perimeter, Yuki found two perfectly rendered stone statues – one of Sakura and one of Kaitaro; both in nude.
Using her Sorcerer’s Sight, Yuki checked the lines of attunement from the center of the Shrine. Two of them went to these statues; one to herself still; and two to the south-by-southeast; and one barely visible, pointing only a few inches to the south before disappearing entirely.
So, the statues really were Sakura and Kaitaro – and Yunikawa was still alive after all – as well as Roka and Udo.
‘Roka and Udo!’ Yuki gasped – suddenly remembering the battle that they had been involved in before she inexplicably ended up here…
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Topic: Desecration (Read 13358 times)