“My, my, my,” Kikiou exclaimed in a hoarse voice, tinged by both curiosity and fatigue. “Trees, shrubs, grasses—billions of them. How to go about replanting every one?”
The color of the world changed again. The spectrum of the sun hadn’t altered. The sun alone poured down its light with an intensity that made him squint.
“Oh.” Kikiou’s lips trembled. “Finally, the day has come. The heavens are opening.”
What was he looking at? The sky, the infinite blue sky—it was being torn asunder. A band slowly traversing the heavens and the earth in unison, of infinite width and length, as if drawn by a giant brush wielded by a great and whimsical god. From it poured forth a languid light tinged an ugly orange.
“A room,” Kikiou said to himself, though his meaning was not immediately clear.
At that moment appeared a giant sphere. The vertical edges of the sphere were cut off by the band, placing the sphere beyond it. The sphere glistened, as if submerged in water. Inside it—that could be just as well described as jet black—eerily shimmered another sphere twice as small.
The only agitation and movement, in fact, came from the fluid that contained it. The small sphere didn’t move at all.
But the most unsettling thing in view stretched out behind the sphere, garish red threads like radiating electromagnetic waves. Strange and spindly limbs of varying thickness through which, it became clear, flowed a liquid of the same color.
Now the band of light changed to white. And yet the unsettling orange glow from before continued to spill in and stain the world below.
For a moment, the big black star glared down at Kikiou and the world. A moment later, a pink cover or membrane or something fell from a great height, extinguishing everything in front of the band of light.
And then a moment after that, jutting toward him from that base of that membrane, was a line of tall, black, pointed pines. At the same time, the upper part of the band fell, narrowed to a line, and vanished.
Kikiou’s view was again suffused with blue. As if shrugging off a fleeting dream, the world regained its original color and configuration. He blinked several times and rubbed his eyes. He knew that these strange phenomena he’d just witnessed were closely intertwined.
“That this world would be touched by the likes of that. White tiger, dragon, what are you slacking off for? This is the one time you should be making your appearance.”
A strong current buffeted his face, the wind kicked up by the movement of that membrane. The gale roared through the upside-down forest and faded off into the distance.
“That was one big blink,” he said to himself.
The old man stuck his right hand out the window. Less than ten seconds later, a soft cooing and the beating of wings came to rest on the tip of his finger.
The silver bird deftly folded its metal wings. The joints in its tiny legs bent and flexed as it scurried from the fingers to the wrist, up the arm and came to a halt on his shoulder. Kikiou cocked his head to hear what the whispering clockwork voice said.
“I see. Mephisto and Yakou too. Princess never left the hot springs. Setsura alone got out. A good thing I wasted no time constructing you. Don’t forget the task ahead of you. Now go.”
As if following the intent of his waving hand, the steel searching bird glittered beneath the sun and fluttered back into the sky. It soon became a dot in the distance and disappeared from view.
Having once allowed Setsura to invade their precincts as far as Princess’s mausoleum, and in order to prevent any additional blunders from not detecting his presence, he’d made and released a hundred of these birds into the air.
Their eyes peered into every nook and corner of the world, relaying everything they found to their closest compatriot and so on until the information reached their creator’s ears.
Kikiou left the manor house a dozen minutes later. He was wrapped in long gray robes, his favorite staff in hand, but there was no telling what was up when it came to this old man. Only that this was the world he had created.
After strolling unconcerned through the upside-down forest, the wizardly figure arrived at the Crystal Pavilion where Mephisto was being held.
The great warlock opened the door. There was nothing about the place to indicate that it had been affected at all by the strange phenomena. Without hesitation, he marched into the room.
As expected, he found Takako Kanan asleep on an old-style ebony bed. After her doppelganger had arisen in the Demon Pavilion, the little birds had told him that Mephisto had moved her here for further treatment. She lay there in a thin silk gown, appearing to not even breathe.
“Princess has disappeared. The doctor and Yakou are gone. Before I follow them, something must be done with her.”
His narrow eyes narrowed even further. A fearsome glow poured from his eyes. An almost blinding qi radiated from his body, as if fringed with white fire. Then it vanished, replaced by a different kind of light—not so much ferocious as confused—something that had welled up in his memories.
“I have lived for over four thousand years and have encountered such an illness but once.”
In the year 1704, in a remote village in the Kingdom of Prussia, a fourteen-year-old girl by the name of Ingrid suffered such a split personality. While her body lay upon her bed, her exact double roamed the village, indulging in unspeakable acts of lewd and lascivious behavior. As debauched as the everyday Ingrid was modest and devout, she indulged in every imaginable act of sexual congress with every male from five to ninety-two. However their wives and mothers tried to protect them, she would pass through walls and floors.
“Just before her spirit returned, her body was burned by the enraged villagers. We shall never know what kind of woman she would have been after waking up. No one can say to this day.”
Kikiou spoke these words aloud in a curiously cool voice. The dark and murderous rage directed at Takako was muddled by an equally deep and abiding intellectual curiosity.
He stroked his jowls in an expression of contem-plation. Soon he smiled. “According to the little birds, Setsura still remains here. There is no need to panic. The girl may be useful yet.”