Dark Light

Chapter 12: The Knight

Year 1870

The white and blue lights of the fireflies and the translucent mushrooms that grew like walls of sky-blue all over the tree trunks and the sanctuaries around the cemetery weren't enough to make the place less dark tonight, at least not for Mami. She stood there and looked up for a moment, at the far away ceiling of colorful lights from plants and insects that have always been there. It felt colder than ever, the underground. The cemetery itself. She had her cape and her hood on, and she was still feeling the shivers.

She gazed down and her eyes took in the white marble gravestone by her feet, laid on the black stone altar, large and wide, the proportions of an adult person. The only engravings were the shape of the waning crescent moon right at the center, and the name of the girl who should've been their next great guide.

Tsukuyomi had extremely long funeral and burial ceremonies. Mami thought she wouldn't have liked that in the slightest. Yomi had always been a person of simplicity and warm words, not long monologues and ceremonious statements. Everyone in the village, and the entire clan, saw Tsukuyomi as the chosen one, their next messiah, their next monolith of wisdom and guidance. Mami though... Mami had only known a gentle girl who was even too warm and generous for her own good. Yomi had never been a monolith, she had only been the kindest, most loyal and caring person Mami had ever met. That's exactly why Mami believed in her as a future leader.

She was now gone, however. Their clan was left with no Heir, no light. The previous Master, Yomi's mother, had been dead for over a decade and her daughter was the clan's hope. Yomi's father was the interim Master as his daughter had been prepared for the leadership over the years, but now he had to face her death and the prospect of having to pray for the birth of another monolith from anyone in the clan during his lifetime. The leadership in the Moon clan was not held within a single "royal family", despite the coincidence of Yomi and her own mother having been the latest chosen ones. The royal family would change with every new leader; every generation a girl was born under the blessing of the Goddess Moon, and that girl would then become the next Master. They had never lost an Heir in such circumstances before, not before becoming the actual Master.

None of this was supposed to be, none of this was fate. Mami stopped believing fate the second that soldier's sword went through Tsukuyomi's stomach.

- They decided for a spy, like you said they would. The council, and my father.

Mami looked back and her cousin was there, taking steps towards her. His black and disheveled hair looked even more of a mess those past few days, and his usually fierce black eyes had dark marks around them. She knew he wasn't getting any sleep, and it was for good reason... He had just lost his little sister, whom he believed in with all his might.

When Sano stopped by her side and also looked down at the marble stone, his feet lining up with hers and holding his black cape against his body, Mami closed her eyes and took in a sharp breath. She couldn't be weak, not now.

- You know it has to be me, Susano-o.

- They won't allow it, Mami. First of all, they said the spy has to be male to blend well in the enemy's troops, and I agree. I offered to do it.

- But of course they didn't let you.

- For the same reasons they won't let you, we are too emotionally involved. The three of us grew up together, she was as much your sister as she was mine. They know that too.

- She was my responsibility. I was supposed to protect her in that battlefield, and it's because of my incompetence that she's here under this stone now.