Scion – Petro Campaign – Session 46
This account was originally found on Livejournal, I am not the original author—I am just a fan of the journal and have found reading it on livejournal clunky to navigate and rife with errors/instability (such as having to refresh multiple times due to the page in questions becoming unavailable often requiring multiple refreshes. The original post can be found here, published by DJ-Yomi, and was published on Mar 8th 2009
Well, phase two of our master plan has been completed. We have the second eye of Pika Don. Now we just have to retrieve the Orb of Chaos and the ghost of Little Boy and we’re good to go. If only it were so easy! >_<
Anyway, before I go on about the horrors of Di Yu, I need to mention something very important that happened earlier in the day while we were waiting to join my mother for dinner. While Pierre and Elisa were out taking in Yomi’s beautiful scenery (no, really, it is beautiful in its way, you just have to be able to appreciate death to really get it ^_^), they were approached by some ghosts who presented them with a prisoner: another ghost named Keiko.
Keiko is the ghost of Daitokuji’s mother. She was essentially raped by Mikaboshi when her boyfriend was consumed by the titan (he’d donned a mask of Mikaboshi’s face). And after she gave birth, she was decapitated by a falling light fixture while being wheeled from the delivery room. Her head was never found. Creepy, huh? Since then the poor girl’s been a prisoner among the ghosts of Yomi, suffering occasional bites from the shikome who taste her flesh to see if she’s awakening as a specter. If she does awaken as a specter, she’ll be extremely dangerous, so no one’s taken any chances with her.
To top things off, making her suffer apparently draws Daitokuji’s attention. He’d like to get his hands on her and is vaguely obsessed with finding her head. I don’t know whether he just wants his mother back or has some more nefarious purpose in mind for her, but the ghosts basically turned her over to us so that we could use her against Daitokuji if we wanted.
After Elisa and Pierre introduced her to the rest of us, we discussed what to do with her. We certainly didn’t want her to suffer any more. She doesn’t deserve it, and she’s so sad and frightened…it’s heart-breaking! T_T We briefly discussed freeing her…but if she has the potential to become a powerful specter, that could be dangerous.
While we were talking about it, a powerful voice suddenly spoke in my head, warning against releasing Keiko lest she fall into Mikaboshi’s hands. I don’t know exactly what would happen, but the voice gave the impression that it would be bad. It took me a few moments to recover from the disorientation, but then I told the others what I’d heard.
Sighing, Adam finally decided to consult the wisdom of mystery and probed fate for some answers. He first asked who it was that spoke into my head. It turns out it was Erebus, another titan of darkness. >_< That was not a comforting revelation. Among other things, it implied that he had been eavesdropping and had some sort of presence in Yomi, though I later learned that his influence could only stretch this far because of the recent invasion by Suku-no-kuni. It also made me wonder why the hell he was talking to me, though I thought that could be easily explained by my existing relationship to darkness…
Adam next asked where Keiko’s missing head was. We need to find it before Daitokuji does. I mean, who knows what he could do with it if he got his hands on it. Apparently the head is on Susano-o’s island terra incognita in the Pacific Ocean.
Finally, we asked how we could get to the island (in case Anna can’t get us there, since she’s been out of touch a lot lately). It seems that sailing into a storm will do the trick. So whenever all this Pika Don stuff is over, we’ll probably need to head to that island and see if we can’t get Keiko’s head, if only to keep it away from Mikaboshi.
Of course, none of this really helped us figure out what to do with Keiko, but it was obvious that we couldn’t actually free her. We couldn’t leave her in tortured captivity, though. So I told the others I’d take care of it and went to speak to mother. She was happy to see me (well, as happy as she ever is…ironically, I think she’s actually enjoyed having guests around for a change ^_^), and we ended up getting into a pretty deep conversation. In the end, though, I asked her if I could appoint Miyako as Keiko’s steward. My sister likes ghosts, so I doubted she’d mind, and this way we could keep Keiko safe and comfortable, and out of the hands of bitey shikome. Of course, she’d still have to keep her collar and shackles…which is sad but unavoidable at this point. They keep her from leaving Yomi, and while I don’t think she’d leave Yomi of her own volition, there’s no telling what the specter lurking within her might make her do. I actually get the distinct impression that her shackles are helping to keep that dark potential in check.
Still, I’m sure my sister can keep her comfortable and safe.
[Note: The following section of the journal exists on Erika’s private copy, but she’s not including it in the entry that she posts online.
Mom and I also talked about something else that left me feeling quite disturbed. I asked her about Erebus. That’s one way I figured out that his presence in Yomi was only a temporary echo of Suku-no-kuni’s invasion. Erebus is imprisoned within the primordial darkness that Mikaboshi represents, but he’s not a part of Mikaboshi. In fact, he despises Mikaboshi, whom he sees as a captor, and would gladly destroy him. That’s one reason he warned me against releasing Keiko.
But there’s more to it than that. I had to ask questions that my mother didn’t really want to answer…but she did answer them. In the end, I learned the Erebus has more to do with Yomi than I’d ever imagined. My mother didn’t come out and say it, but she more-or-less admitted that the shikome taint itself comes from Erebus. The same is true of maenads. I don’t know whether or not my mother made a deal with Erebus all those millennia ago when Izanagi first discovered her in her corpse-like state, but I now know that it’s his power that makes us what we are, at least in part. It explains a lot, actually…I guess Sam was more right than I thought when we had our argument several months ago. But despite what some of my companions might argue, shikome are different from the titanspawn.
Still, I’m disturbed by this. Have I really been harboring a titan’s taint all this time? Spreading it? And is it all bad? I mean, my shikome have helped achieve great victories over the titans, and I know I’ve actually improved some of these girls’ lives. The shikome of Yomi have been stalwart defenders of the Underworld for thousands of years, holding back the titanspawn that would otherwise overrun Yomi like a plague.
In part, I feel like I should purify myself. I mean, what’s good enough for Miko is good enough for me, right? But the stronger part of me sees this as an opportunity. I have a connection to Erebus, and I can use that connection as a weapon to play Erebus against Mikaboshi. It could even be possible to use Erebus to destroy Mikaboshi. Certainly not yet…but in time, when I’ve become a goddess. Ultimately Erebus will need to be dealt with as well, but until then, he could be our secret weapon against my pantheon’s greatest nemesis. And chances are his conflict with Mikaboshi will leave him weakened and vulnerable…
I’m not sure if I should share this information with my companions. Some of them already look at me as though I’m going to turn on them at any time, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m almost frightened of what Ray’s response to this information would be. I may consult Adam, however. He may be able to help me formulate a plan for using this against Mikaboshi. For now, though, I’ll keep this dark secret to myself. ]
Dinner with mom was nice. I think the others were a bit uncomfortable, but even so they comported themselves very well. Mother asked each of them to talk a bit about themselves. I’m not sure, but I think she was more interested in testing their capacity for courtesy than hearing about the details of their lives. She seemed pleased. ^_^
During dinner I announced Tabby and Robin’s engagement, much to the surprise of my friends. They didn’t really see it coming like I did since they spend as little time with the shikome as possible. I also shared my observations on shikome lesbianism with Adam (see last entry) and he found it to be quite enlightening. ^_^
As soon as dinner was over and we had mother’s letter of introduction, we hurried to the harbor and boarded the boat to Di Yu. I left Tabby, Robin, Audrey, and Sophie in my mother’s palace since I was unsure how dangerous the Hell of burrowing Maggots would be to them. The trip to Di Yu felt extremely long…but also very short. In the end, I don’t think it was more than five or six hours, but with the anxiety of our four-day time limit, it felt like forever! >_< Eventually, however, we reached the entrance to Di Yu and soon found ourselves mired in the bureaucracy of the Celestial…Bureaucracy. Actually, it wasn’t all that bad. The letter of introduction helped, and in fact Ray had a letter of introduction himself…from Raiden or Hades, I think. That helped smooth the wheels.
You know, I was surprised by how modern the bureaucracy of Di Yu was. Offices with computers and all the other modern trappings filled the halls of Emma-o’s palace-office. A guard quickly led us to the desk of a young woman named Feng Yi. She’s apparently a scion daughter of Emma-o and despite the obvious distaste she felt for me and Ray (being Amatsukami), she agreed to help us find the Hell of Burrowing Maggots so that we could retrieve the second eye of Pika Don. She actually spoke to her father on our behalf…though I think he was more interested in helping us that she was. Actually, Emma-o was quite charming and gentlemanly. I’ve heard he’s a bit of a maverick. I was impressed…and I tried to convey my mother’s good wishes, such as they are. And to help us locate the eye, Emma-o gave us a golden mask that would allow its wearer to sense the eye’s location. So Adam became our compass.
To be honest…even when we first met Feng Yi, I could tell that she kinda had the hots for me…or was at least interested in me in some regard. But knowing that I was Amatsukami put a damper on that very quickly. ^_^ I was kinda upset by that. I mean, she’s really attractive too, and seemed very nice when she’s wasn’t being hateful. We definitely agree in terms of fashion (she had on an awesome outfit, pretty similar to one I wear from time to time, in fact!). Both being daughters of death gods, I thought we’d probably have a lot in common if she could see past the Amatsukami barrier. Then again, Helena and I only had so much in common, and she’s the daughter of a death god too.
Eventually, Feng Yi led us through halls that intersected some of the multitude of Chinese hells. We passed windows opening on hells of being skinned alive, hells of boiling flesh, and other horrors that I’d rather not write about. I mean, I like creepy things, not torture, so I gotta admit that Di Yu isn’t my favorite Underworld.
Anyway, we eventually found the hell of being hung upside down (from barbed chains, apparently). Countless bodies writhed in agony as they hung suspended above a dark pit. At the bottom of that pit, Feng Yi informed us, was the Hell of Burrowing Maggots. We simply had to fly down through the black cloud of huge carrion flies to reach it.
And so, steeling our stomachs against what might be the most disgusting thing we’ve ever encountered, we flew down into the pit of swarming maggots below. Ray created a barrier to keep the maggots at bay (which reinforced his status as one of my favorite people ever ^_^), but we still had to swim through the white, squirming seas until we finally reached the necrotic gray flesh of…something. I’m not sure what it was, but it didn’t take Ray, Elisa and Pierre long to cut through it. We all had to crawl through the gaping wound to get to the interior of the corpse, but thanks to the mask Emma-o had given us, it didn’t take too long to find the second eye.
It was suspended on a pedestal much like the other had been, and like the other, it was defended by corrupted demons, hoh-sheng, and chaos-warped celestial dogs. The fight was a blur to me…I mean, it was a blood-drenched fight in the middle of a rotting, blood-drenched corpse crawling with maggots. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a gorier situation. But we dealt with the titanspawn with our usual speed. I even killed a hoh-sheng with my power over health. Of course, I mimed shooting him just for fun. I think I might have upset the kami of my gun—forcing the hoh-sheng to waste away from the inside out was a lot more effective than just shooting him, even when my kami’s helping me out. >_<
Like the previous pedestal, this one contained one of Coppa Kamui’s artifacts, a set of matched bracelets that give power over the cycles of the moon and the ways of the psychopomp. We made sure to keep it with the necklace we got before (Ray’s holding onto them for the time being). Hopefully returning them to the Ainu will help heal the wounds caused by Japan’s past indiscretions (wow…that’s an understatement!).
With the second eye safely in hand, we swam free of the maggots and left the Hell of Burrowing Maggots. Feng Yi was there to greet us, and seemed somewhat surprised by the speed with which we’d returned. As we began to follow her back to the entrance of Di Yu, however, Feng Yi drew me aside to speak to me privately…
And it seems all that stuff I thought about her was more or less true. We do have a lot in common. See, even though she kinda wanted to hate me because I’m Amatsukami, she couldn’t really bring herself to do it. For one thing, she’s really attracted to me (not that that’s anything new). But more importantly, it turns out she’s a fan! She loves my music, and opened our conversation by commenting on how much she enjoyed it! ^___^ From there, we got to know each other a little better. It turns out she’s filled with anger and hatred toward the Japanese for what they did during WWII, and especially what they did to her family. That’s understandable, really, but holding onto that anger like that is causing her problems and throwing off her karmic balance.
So I talked to her for awhile and helped her sort through some of those issues, and by the time we’d reached Emma-o’s offices, she seemed to have let go of a little of her anger. She did express some surprise that she opened up to me like she did, but I assured her that it was because she needed to let it out. And hopefully our friendship will help her overcome a lot of her anger issues.
And personally, I’m thrilled to have befriended Feng Yi. We really do have a lot in common. She gets me in a way that few other people really do. She sees the beauty in darkness and death, for instance, not as things that are evil or hidden or sad, but as things that are comforting and serene and lovely. ^_^
We shared contact info, so hopefully we’ll be able to get together and hang out once this Pika Don stuff is over! I can’t wait!