~Hakurei Shrine~ > Patchouli's Scarlet Library

And What Alice Found There

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ninryu:
Another great chapter.  I really hope Alice isn't into some trouble.

Wild Witchy West:
Alice has already demonstrated herself to be both independent and resourceful!

On the other hand, a shipful of concerned human adults looking for stowaways and a whole mountainside full of youkai possibly looking for live food or people to haunt are two very different obstacles... :ohdear:

KimikoMuffin:
Well of COURSE Alice was gonna get lost! I mean, it didn't occur to me that this might happen until after it already had, but if the Akis didn't make any personal appearance, there's pretty much no way it wasn't gonna be that.

Also:

--- Quote ---[a drink made from] "apples. Well, mostly apples."
--- End quote ---

Yayifications:
Search parties were organized. These search parties organized more search parties, which spawned yet more, and each group of seekers stumbled over one another and got into everyone else's way, like raindrops on a puddle forming ripples that intersected and interfered with each other, obscuring what used to be clear.

But they meant well. Everyone meant well, even if they were searching only because the Hieda family name was not to be trifled with.

Aya had installed herself in the teahouse overlooking the main square, now converted into an impromptu base of operations for the search. Every few minutes, another breathless runner gasped out a report, mostly to the theme of a negative result. Nobody knew where Alice had gone, and nobody knew how she had gone.

In the time since the discovery of Alice's disappearance, Minerva had run through the full gamut of human emotion, each one amplified to a piercing intensity. Panic, fear, desperation, hope, fury, despair, and infinite others besides; now, she was drained, spent. Everything had been burned away, leaving only cold, empty calculation.

She collared Aya's servants, who had officially been accompanying their mistress to the festival. Minerva recognized the pair as the young couple in love, or something very much like it. They had no doubt thought their assignment this night to be a perfect opportunity to deepen their relationship, with the tacit approval of the Hieda household management. After all, what dangers would the young mistress of the Hieda family face, surrounded by the good people of the village?

The servants stared at Minerva with the bloodless shock of a pleasant excursion rudely interrupted by a nightmare.

"I want you to go to my room in the mansion," Minerva said, enunciating clearly and firmly. "Somewhere among my belongings, you will find a leather bag with a large strap, sealed with silver buckles. It will be heavy, and full of equipment and items. Bring it to me. Also in my room, somewhere on the desk, will be a small plain wooden box, about this size. If you check inside, it will be filled with cotton. Bring it to me as well; if you are unsure, gather all the boxes that fit the description, and I'll sort them out here. Do you understand?"

The servants nodded, the woman recovering faster than her partner.

"Good. Now go, quickly."

The rain continued to fall steadily, a low, angry mutter on the rooftops and the ground. Minerva splashed over back to the teahouse; Aya sat there alone, surrounded by the light of lanterns and candles. She turned at Minerva's approach, her face carefully smoothed of all expresssion.

"The patrollers around the village perimeter have reported no noteworthy incidents," Aya said. "Nobody was seen venturing in or out. The search has been concentrated inside the village for now. I can ask them to do no more, at least for the moment."

Minerva accepted this acknowledgement of futility with a nod. The sequence of events during the festival had been confusingly, infuriatingly simple. Maria had been located early on, and recounted a tale of Alice having grown bored of the attractions at and around the Kirisame stall. Someone else had offered to escort Alice around the festival; this turned out to be the wife of a restauranteur whom Maria trusted implicitly. Minerva could not bring herself to criticize Maria's judgment; Maria was beside herself, utterly convinced that Alice's predicament was all her fault.

The restauranteur's wife was brought before Aya and Minerva to give her nervous report: she had brought Alice to the main stage, where she taught Alice the basic steps of the folk dance. Alice happily joined the circle of dancers for a couple of revolutions around the tower stage; this was corroborated by Aya, who had spotted Alice at a distance, but had been too much in a hurry to make her presence known to the child. This, at least, narrowed the time of disappearance.

Alice had unexpectedly been mobbed by a group of children from the school, eager to play with their strange foreign classmate. The woman had kept tabs on the blonde head at Alice-height in the crowd, and was satisfied with that. For how many little blonde girls were in Gensokyo, after all?

Several representatives from the children were produced. They reported Alice leaving with a woman they could only describe as tall and foreign, both in dress and manner. Minerva having been watching Hakurei's dance at the time, she was certain this did not refer to herself.

Recollections grew vague at this point. Some people claimed to have seen a small blonde child at various locations in the village during the festival; these sightings began to contradict each other. None except the children had seen the other foreign woman.

The conclusion to this tale was obvious, even if most of the villagers refused to believe it.

"I thought youkai did not enter the village, Aya-san," Minerva said. Her voice held no accusation; it would not help matters now.

"They do not," Aya said. "This is unprecedented. No youkai attack on the village itself has been recorded in millennia, and the village is larger today than it was then."

"Yet should they choose to do so, this night would have been the most likely time." Hakurei materialized out of the rain into the circle of light within the teahouse. She doffed the woven straw hat and cloak that constituted rainwear in Japan, setting them carelessly on another table. "It has not been done in many years, true. But there are stories of youkai holding their own festivals in parallel among the humans. They do not attack, for that is not their intention. Rather, they wish to join the celebrations, and disguise themselves appropriately."

"But they still took Alice," Minerva snapped. "They were not in the village with peaceful intentions."

"Yes. Something about that child may have triggered some instinct that overrode all others."

"We may assume that Alice, and the youkai that took her, are no longer within the village," Aya said heavily. "How they escaped the patrollers will be a matter of much debate in the days to come. But what is done is done."

"Someone get me a map," Minerva decided. "As detailed a map of Gensokyo as possible. And someone else boil some water in a bowl. In fact, they should boil a needle at the same time."

"Margatroid-san?" This from both Aya and Hakurei.

"I did not come all the way to Gensokyo to expire of tetanus," Minerva said unhelpfully.

The arrival of map, bowl, and needle coincided with the return of the servants carrying Minerva's equipment from the Hieda mansion. Minerva slung the leather bag over her shoulder, and cleared out a space on a nearby table to lay out the map, placing the other instruments carefully at the side. Eyeing the bowl of water critically, she emptied out most of it, leaving only a shallow puddle lurking at the bottom. To this, Minerva introduced a drop of her own blood, drawn with the needle from a finger.

These bizarre proceedings had drawn a small crowd of spectators. Minerva spotted a likely candidate. "Seiji-san! I need your assistance."

Seiji approached reluctantly, his wariness of foreign magic clearly warring with his desire to help find Alice.

Minerva plucked out a strand of hair from her head, giving it to Seiji. "Be careful with this," she ordered, thrusting the wooden box at him next. "You'll find a small tooth inside, padded with cotton; it's the one Alice lost a good while back. With any luck, it should still work."

"Er, what should I do with it?"

"Tie the hair securely around the tooth, and then give it to me. Hurry; Alice's life may depend on some speed."

"You kept Alice's tooth?" Aya said with morbid fascination.

"I'd paid her for it, hadn't I? Well, the Tooth Fairy did, by proxy." Minerva's words were muffled around the finger in her mouth, in lieu of proper medical care and bandages. "Alice had mentioned some story of Miho-san's, about Japanese customs for children's teeth, and wanted to try it out. We never did get around to it, of course, and Alice probably forgot about the tooth. To be honest, I almost forgot myself."

Seiji handed the tooth and hair back to Minerva, who dunked it into the bowl of water. Muttering something long and complex, she let it stew for a moment, before lifting it out and holding the tooth, suspended by the strand of hair, over the map.

"Dowsing?" Seiji said dubiously.

"Quiet," Minerva said, before returning to her low-voiced incantations. The tooth hovered close above the map, slowly tracing an unsteady spiral emanating outwards from the icons representing the village. An uneasy murmur rose among the gathered villagers. Out of the corner of her eye, Minerva noticed many of them glancing towards Hakurei, as though for reassurance.

Hakurei simply watched, calm and silent.

The spiral finally terminated at an unlabelled spot on the map, distressingly far from the village. "What is this place?" Minerva demanded, jabbing a finger at the map.

"It doesn't have a name," Aya said. "It is a hill where... never mind. Are you sure Alice is there?"

There was always the possibility of magical bafflement caused by counter-spells, but this was not the time to second-guess oneself. "Yes," Minerva said. "What were you about to say, Aya-san? Do you know why a youkai would take Alice there?"

Aya and Hakurei took the time to exchange a significant look. Most of the bystanders, including Seiji, merely looked uncomfortable.

"It is a place with special significance to Gensokyo," Aya finally said. "It is where we take our children to die."

Minerva took a deep breath.

Hakurei quickly held up a hand. "Not now, Margatroid-san. Remember that Alice's welfare comes first. We will admit to our tragedies, and attempt to explain ourselves, whether or not you believe us justified. But accusing us of barbarity now will not help Alice. Margatroid-san! Listen to me! That nameless hill may be where children die, but Alice need not be one of them!"

Minerva let out that breath slowly, controlling herself with great effort. "All right. This is not over, Aya-san, Hakurei-san. But you are correct that Alice takes priority. Seiji-san? Go wake a stablehand and get us some horses."

Seiji swallowed hard. "But even with horses, getting to that hill would take-"

"Just do it!"

As Seiji fled, Aya turned to the other villagers. "Thank you for your assistance," she said formally. "Please remain in the village, and in your homes. Your parts in this incident will not be forgotten, and our gratitude shall not be found wanting."

This failed to placate the villagers, but none dared speak out against a member of the Hieda family. Hakurei drifted to a quiet corner, beckoning Minerva to join her.

"They do not know why we are expending so much resources to find Alice," the shrine maiden said quietly, apparently trusting in the ever-present hiss of rain to mask the conversation. "To them, finding a child lost to youkai is a futile endeavour. There is despair at first, but this is Gensokyo, and we have had thousands of years to learn the meaning of acceptance."

"Hakurei-san, if I find out that you, or any of your associates, were in any way responsible for-"

"Later, Margatroid-san, later." Hakurei sighed. "If it would appease you, I did not know about Alice's disappearance until I was... told. I do not harm children, Margatroid-san. I do not think my... associates do either. Whatever the truth of the matter, I only wish to help. Please accept my sincerity, and leave the recriminations for tomorrow."

Because however things turned out, it would all have settled tomorrow, one way or another. "So? What sort of help are you willing to give?"

"Your watch."

"What?"

"Your pocketwatch. The silver one."

Frowning, Minerva took out the silver pocketwatch, and deposited it in Hakurei's waiting hand. Hakurei produced an oversized paper talisman from somewhere about her person; Minerva caught a glimpse of an illegible scribble on the paper, as Hakurei neatly folded it around the pocketwatch.

The resulting packet was returned to Minerva. "This will last until dawn," Hakurei said. "Don't remove the charm until then."

"What did you do?"

"Trust me, Margatroid-san."

Seiji returned with two horses in tow. The animals looked none too pleased about being roused in the middle of a dark and stormy night, but were placid enough not to make too much of a fuss about it.

Hakurei, donning her hat and cloak again, mounted one easily, her traditional hakama trousers allowing her to sit astride. Minerva pondered briefly on the mystery of a shrine maiden with equestrian training, as she settled side-saddle behind. Someone handed her a waxed lantern, its unsteady light casting a pool of visibility around the horse.

Seiji was already on the other horse. "I'm coming with you," he said, shifting reins and lantern from hand to hand. "Don't try to argue with me. Please."

"Hardly the time for it," Minerva muttered. "All right, Seiji-san. But keep close behind us."

"I know a shortcut," Hakurei said, deliberately loud. "It should get us there quicker."

If Seiji had any doubts about this excuse for supernatural interference, he chose not to voice them. "Lead on, Hakurei-san, Margatroid-san."

"Wait." Aya darted to Seiji's side. "Help me up." Seiji, nonplussed by this sudden development, did so.

"What are you doing, Aya-san?" Minerva exclaimed.

"Cutting the strings," Aya replied cryptically. "Go!"

-----

They rode for an eternity. Minerva clung grimly onto Hakurei's waist, the cold rain lashing at her face. She could see nothing but visions of barren scenery flashing past them, and hear nothing but hooves on sodden dirt.

They dared not ride too quickly, in the darkness and the rain. The horses were jittery, and very much unhappy with the task at hand. In comparison, the curiously irregular passage of distance throughout the journey was a mere irrelevant distraction.

Time lost all meaning, in their mad ride through the unending night. Minerva could feel the hard lump of the silver watch in her pocket. What had Hakurei done with it? How had she known what to do with it? How had she known to prepare for it?

All of Minerva's hypotheses, all the available evidence, pointed towards Violet Hearn. But Hakurei had appeared sincere enough when she claimed she intended no harm towards Alice, and neither did her poorly-concealed youkai associate.

Of course, intentions often meant little, in the end.

Eternity ended abruptly, with a flash of lightning that caused the horses to whinny madly, skidding to a sudden halt. Minerva managed to turn the unexpected stop into a controlled dismount; miraculously, the waxed paper lantern stayed lit.

"This is as far as we can go," Hakurei announced, raising her voice to be heard through the rain. "I don't-" Her horse reared, and Hakurei clutched at the reins, fighting to keep the beast under control.

"What? Are we there yet?" Seiji's horse was less demonstrative in its displeasure, confining itself to snorts and stamping. Seiji took this opportunity to dismount, helping Aya down as well. "How long has it been since we left the village?"

"Too long," Minerva said. She took out a small navigational compass from her bag. The needle swung jerkily, refusing to settle on a single direction. "Well? Are we there yet, Aya-san?"

Aya crouched for a moment. When she straightened, her face in the lantern-light was even paler than usual. "Yes," she said. "We have reached the fields where the suzuran grow."

"Suzuran?"

"You may know it as the lily of the valley."

Seiji was about to comment, when his horse decided to bolt. Sensibly, he let go of the reins, rather than be dragged under and trampled. "Hey!"

"I'll take care of the horses," Hakurei said, wheeling about. "The rest of you, go find Alice. Hurry!"

"Hakurei-san! Hakurei-san, wait!" But Hakurei was gone, and Minerva was left feeling less betrayed by the Hakurei's abandonment of the mission, and more by her tran3parent excuses. Grumbling, she trudged forth through the flowers, the others following close behind. "Wonderful. Did the horses sense the presence of youkai?"

"Entirely possible," Aya said, her voice muffled. "But it should be obvious to anyone that this place is unnatural."

"Yes, I'd imagine a graveyard for children would make any right-thinking human uneasy."

"Margatroid-san, do cease your self-righteous indignation for just one moment. We may have used this nameless hill for certain purposes in times past, but this is no longer true. Progress, as you said, is inevitable."

"I've not heard stories for a long time about`children being... left to the flowers," Seiji said. "It's something our grandparents did, and their grandparents. Not us." His voice was also muffled, enough for Minerva to stop and turn around, to see that the other two were trying to breathe shallowly through their sleeves.

"What's the matter?"

"Look down," Aya instructed.

Minerva did so. "... I assume this is also the work of youkai."

"For flowers blooming en masse out of season, that would be a reasonable assumption."

"I heard stories about this too," Seiji said. "Happened... what, fifty, sixty years ago? Just lots of flowers blooming when they shouldn't. I don't know the details myself; I can tell the difference between a mushroom and a tree, and that's about all."

Minerva dragged her leather bag open, and rummaged inside for a kerchief, which she efficiently tied loosely around her face. The rain promptly made it damp and useless, but she kept it on anyway. "And from the way the two of you are acting, I take it the lily-ofmthe-valley that grows in Gensokyo is poisonous even without being ingested."

"We should not spend too much time here," Aya agreed.

Left unspoken was the implication of what the poisonous plants would have done to Alice by now. "I have another kerchief in here, and a cloth pouch that should serve as well once dismantled," Minerva said, handing them out to the others. "After the incident in the forest, I decided a well-prepared suite of equipment would not be amiss."

Seiji ripped apart the cloth bag, tying it around his nose and mouth with a rough knot, as Minerva helped Aya with her kerchief. "Do we even know where Alice is, in all of this?" he said. "It's a big field to search."

Something caught Minerva's eye in the pool of light surrounding them, and she bent down to pick it up. "Here's your proof," she dec,ared, holding the object to the light. It had once been a cheap bamboo fan, its fabric now in tatters. The handle had been broken into a sharp point, on which something sticky too dark to be human blood was rapidly crusting.

"She fought back," Aya said, a hint of approval in her voice.

"Yes," Minerva said with pride, "she did." Inhaling: "Alice! Alice, where are you? Alice, we're here to rescue you! Alice!"

The rain baffled their shouts, mocking them with crashing thunder that echoed through the hills. Aya grew hoarse quickly, descending into a coughing fit. Seiji had to support her, as they stumbled through the darkness.

Finally, Minerva called for a halt. "Aya-san, you know the habits of youkai. You told me they attack lone travellers. Will they attack that traveller if she has a companion beside her? Is the minimum number necessary for safety two?"

Aya blinked. "Two is... sufficient," she managed to croak. "Sometimes. Mostly."

"All right. Seiji-san, stay with Aya-san, and make sure she doesn't move. Keep the lantern burning, so I'll know where you are."

"Margatroid-san, you can't be serious-" Seiji protested.

Minerva cut him off with a sharp gesture. "I am perfectly capable of handling myself. I promise to keep my lantern alight as well, and I'll be hollering as loudly as I can anyway. What's important now is Aya-san's condition."

"I'm all right," Aya said, attempting to stand on her own. "I just needed... a moment to recover..."

"Shut up, Aya-san," Minerva said pleasantly. "Sit if you want, unless you're worried about mud on your kimono. Considering we're all drenched anyway, I do not think it matters. Just stay here, and do not move. Seiji-san, you have my permission to knock Aya-san down and sit on her if necessary."

Seiji and Aya shared a pained expression, plainly visible above the cloth around the lower half of their faces. "Margatroid-san..." Seiji beg!n.

"You can always tell anyone who objects that it was on my orders," Minerva said, already moving away. "After all, as an ignorant Westerner, I can hardly be expected to understand the nuances of class etiquette."

Perception, Minerva mused, as she splashed through the mud and flowers. When frames of reference were removed, all that was left was one's own personal perception. Here, everything was seen from a relative position, where the self was the origin point of a Cartesian coordinate system.

As such, an effective search of an area of unknown size must utilize something more complex than a simple marking of point A to point B. For when the origin was in flux, then nothing else could`be fixed, save one's own perspective. What was needed was a way to measure the world, on a plane of infinite dimensions, when everything was mutable.

Of course, none of this applied to Minerva at this particular point in time. For hers was not the only light in the darkness, and with two known points, an entire coordinate system could be extrapolated.

Now, if only she could confirm that the erratic bobbing of that other source of lantern-light was merely a negligible example of nervous jitters on Seiji's part, and thus could be safely ignored. Otherwise, it would seem that both Seiji and Aya had disobeyed her clear instructions, and were beginning to move again.

Minerva stopped in her tracks, peering at the distant light. It appeared quite stationary, or at least as stationary as it could be in a world that was spinning dizzily around her. The ever-present sound of rainfall was skewing her perception of space, a state of affairs exacerbated by the irregular thunderclaps that stunned the senses.

Minerva took a step a towards the other light, when everything plunged into night.

Of course. It could never be as easy as that. One lantern-flame dousing itself was unremarkable. Two at once was enemy action.

Minerva crouched down, cautiously feeling her way through the contents of the leather bag, trying keep them as dry as possible. Her fingers closed around a long, slim vial, stoppered with a rubber bung. Nimble probing of raised symbols on labels confirmed her find, and she slowly worked the stopper out with exquisite care.

The tell-tale pop and hiss would be impossible to hear over the rain. Minerva counted out several heartbeats, before restoppering the vial, and extracting it from the bag, where it glowed with a bright, eldritch light.

"Margatroid-san!"

Holding the vial aloft, Minerva briskly made her way to Seiji, who was shouting desperately, waving his arms about, and, quite unfortunately, alone.

The sight of the glowing vial arrested Seiji's thoughts. "What is that thing?"

"A derivative of phosphor," Minerva said shortly. "Take it. Keep it high, so we can see."

Seiji accepted the charge with thinly-disguised trepidation. "Is it dangerous?"

"It generates fumes that causes severe necrosis of the skeleton, and it has a tendency to set careless apprentices ablaze. So, yes. Where is Aya-san?"

"She ran off," Seiji said, holding the vial as far away from him as he could. "Over there."

"I didn't think Aya-san was in any shape to run off," Minerva said, setting off in the indicated direction.

"Neither did I. Hieda-san was all quiet for a really long time, but when the lantern went out, she started dragging me away. I tripped over something, stumbled, and when I recovered, she was gone."

"I see. Well, if we're going to rescue one little lady in distress, we may as well rescue two. Alice! Aya-san!"

And now there was only the one point of reference in an unknown and unknowable universe. Never mind saving Alice and Aya; were Seiji and Minerva doomed to wander this accursed hill of flowers until they succumbed to its poison? They were hardly children, but Gensokyo's lethality had proven unconcerned with such details.

Saving humans from monsters. Saving humans from themselves, was more like it. The monsters just provided the backdrop for the horrors that had men and women did to one another. A small village, beset by youkai, and unable to sustain more than a very few extra mouths, much less those who had no hope of sustaining themselves. They must have thought they were doing the children a kindness, by laying them down among flowers, to go to sleep and never wake up.

A mother's duty and fear, through the ages. And the light of civilization had advanced even into the deepest reaches of Japan, into Gensokyo, and there was no more need for sacrifices. And the light shone on the darkest shadows of history, and demanded a reckoning for what it found there.

"Saving humans from the monsters within ourselves," Minerva muttered, gathering her strength for another bout of shouting.

"What was that?"

"Nothing, Seiji-san. Alice! Aya-san-"

"No, what's that sound?" Seiji clutched at Minerva's sleeve. "There it is again! Like some sort of... ringing..."

But Minerva heard it too, now. Fighting her way through roots that seemed to try to drag her down, she clambered inexorably towards the unmistakable, clear sound of a silver bell being rung as hard as it could.

Aya was in a bad way; her breaths came in irregular wheezes, each lungful a painful struggle. But even as she slumped over the tiny, ominously still form of Alice, one hand grasped the bell's handle with a grip firm with desperation, waving the bell wildly in the air, a beacon for her rescuers.

"How did Hieda-san find Alice?" Seiji exclaimed, kneeling down to engulf both Aya and Alice in a protective embrace. He gently pried the bell out of Aya's hand, which fell back limply at her side.

"Never mind that," Minerva said, checking on Alice. The little girl was still alive, but only barely; her pulse was faint and thready, and she did not respond to Minerva's ministrations.

Seiji was poking vaguely at the ground, looking for some fallen trifle.

"What are you doing?" Minerva demanded.

"Alice's doll," Seiji mumbled. "She probably dropped it somewhere around here..."

"Forget the doll!"

One point of light in the darkness. The lilies of the valley stretched out to infinity on all sides, and they were trapped in the middle of it all.

No choice around it.

"Seiji-san, hold that light as steady as you can," Minerva commanded, "and keep close to me."

"Margatroid-san?" Seiji followed her orders, even as his voice and eyes questioned her.

Back to the basics. First, Intent. That much was not an issue; Minerva had Intent steaming out of her ears by now.

Next, Ritual. Minerva dug through her bag of tricks, as her mind considered and discarded possibilities. She had packed the bag with solutions for as many contingencies as she could think of, while still keeping the total weight portable. She had not considered the possibility of being lost in a field of deadly flowers, but surely there was something that might help...

"Margatroid-san?"

"Be quiet, Seiji-san," Minerva said. She took out a piece of paper, and slapped it wetly onto the ground. The rain immediately began to obscure the designs drawn onto the paper. That being accomplished, she recited syllables from memory, concentrating fiercely.

Next, Power. This was what defeated most practitioners of the magical arts; producing enough Power for spells often required a whole other spell of their own, and another spell to power that spell, even unto an infinite procession of power-spells.

Gensokyo had power. Minerva had finally understood this, not so very long ago. It had more power than any other place Minerva had been, gathered here by mysterious forces for purposes unknown. Tapping into it was easy enough, but it was dissipated, unfocused, and inconstant. Was there time to focus that power into the spell?

"Margatroid-san-"

Minerva snatched the glowing vial out of Seiji's hand, and hurled it to the ground. The thick glass smashed, and a thin line of blinding white fire raced around the four lost humans, tracing out a perfect circle which hissed and sparked in the rain.

Thunder rolled.

"Margatroid-san!" Seiji tried one final time. "Margatroid-san, I don't think Hieda-san's breathing!"

A second, tiny glass bottle was extracted and uncorked. This released a billowing cloud of dark vapours, far more than should have been in so small a volume. Minerva was shouting now, her voice strident and commanding, the spell taking shape by her words. The dark cloud twisted and writhed, unaffected by the storm overhead. The shadows inside the cloud reached out, a negative space that suggested a form resembling a humanoid head and torso.

The shadows touched Minerva's forehead in benediction. A question was asked.

"Home," Minerva replied.

Lightning flashed, and thunder answered. When they faded, they left behind an empty field of flowers.

Yuuyiced Fairy:
And so we see Minerva finally cutting loose with the high level stuff.  For good reason though.  I liked her use of ritual and magical stylisms.

I have some curiosity as to who the youkai in question is, though I'm guessing I know what happened with the doll.  I'm also a bit curious as to some of the other actions of the night, but we'll see what people are willing to say when they wake.

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