Chapter 1; God Hunters

The sky above you is a cool inky black, it covers everything above you. The stars are invisible because of the artificial light around you, city life blocking the light out. Work or life has brought you to the shopping district near Hisashiro station, close enough that you can hear the trains thundering past. Each time they do it causes the gravel in the gutters beside the road to rattle.

No one’s around, which suits you just fine. Why? Because you came to the district following that which was untoward. You first felt the presence of the mononoke while taking the train, but you recognised the danger it presented. As an awakened, you can sense the blood lust of a wandering god. You decided to investigate later on, personally, but you can’t quite put your finger on why.As you pass by shops you’ve never seen before, your thoughts dwell on how the world has taken a turn for the unusual. This isn't your part of the city. The eerily pristine streets, free of on street parking, are unfamiliar and you glance at your phone to see where you are. The screen flickers, and you notice something's interfering with the electronics. It's the same with the lamposts. A weird aura comes and goes with each flicker, and you’re just about to give up when something causes the hair on the back of your neck to stand up.

The roar echoes around you, and you wheel around to face the direction it came from. As you strain yourself to hear anything else, you catch the sound of odd laughter before the sound of a girl sobbing.

"Someone, anyone." She screams. "Help me!"

Akane stalks the streets of the city. The city which is not really hers, but which she knows quite well. She knows that she should have been back in Okamitaira at this hour, but the sense of the mononoke had distracted her, made her track it. Besides, who really cared about the rules anyway?

The streets seem empty. Cold even. As Akane follows the trail, the scent of blood lust she notices a blue car on the streets. All four doors are wide open, but there is not a person in sight. It's headlights illuminate the darkness and it's directional lights light the streets an eerie orange each time they blink simultaneously.

"Hello?" she says in a combination of a shout and whisper at once, hoping to attract the owner of this abandonned vehicle. She checks in the car. The keys are still in the contact. Who'd abandon their car like this? Why?

As she hears the screams, she realizes someone might be in danger. She hurries towards the cries. Her mind is already focussed on drawing Moonfang from her Barrier.

Tami stops her bike and takes off her helmet. She fixes her long hair and scans her surroundings. "You better not dragged me here tonight for nothing, mum..." she thought with a bit of anger. Half an hour ago her mother had a vision and called to tell her to check the shopping district for a Kami. She was at her boyfriend's home and it was a good night, but her role as an Awakened, and a protector of House Karasu, was more important. Or that's what her parents always said.

However this area tonight... something was amiss tonight. Maybe her mother was right, maybe it was her idea. Either way, she had to investigate it. She gets off the bike and starts walking down the road, the streets are familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. The shops she knows are there but someting is wrong with them, she cannot describe it but she feels it on her skin. She had the same feeling the other day at the train, but she paid no attention, her normal life was more important she thought.

Suddenly he hears a girl sobbing and then a scream. "There!" She does not hesitate, she holds her axe pendant and pulls it, thus activating her Spirit Barrier. A smoldering red hot bec le corbin manifests on her other hand. She starts running towards the area where she thinks the scream came.

Eun was just passing an alley as the scream came. She instinctively listened for the echo to try and determine which way to go. But... in all these buildings - hard surfaces, every one of them - there wasn't a single echo? It was as if something was dampening the air, making it too heavy to carry the smaller sounds of the echoes that should have happened. And then she noticed the shadows. Instead of being on the opposite side from the light, they were all off just a bit, as if they were pointing somewhere....

Did the mononoke want her to find it, or not? Was there more than one power at play here? She subconsciously dropped into a more wary stance, and her staff began to crystallize into her hand.

She had felt the presence while Mayumi had simply been tending the garden of the shrine. Then the stag slowly wandered up. It had been beautiful and, she was sure, it was a sign she was needed. The kami could be like that, sending nature to help do what needed to be done.

So, the young Miko rode a deer to get here instead of the train. She walked carefully through the changed district, her senses on high alert. The cry for help drew her off the deer’s back as she gave it a carrot, "Go, this is no place for you any longer. I will do what must be done." She ensured her bow was ready and began moving quickly to where the shout came from.

When Akane passed through the spirit barrier is hard to say. Logically, it must've been before she arrived in the shopping district, but nothing about the world before that car tipped her off. As she sprints toward the sound of the scream she begins to notice other things though. It's almost as though everyone who would've been there, not many at this time but some at least, vanished in the middle of what they were doing. An abandoned coffee cup sits next to a bench, gently steaming, or a phone lies discarded as though dropped on the sidewalk.

Not more than a few steps behind her, Tami charges with her weapon in hand. The two barely have time to acknowledge each other as they hare around the corner. They emerge onto a small patio at the rear of a Kombini, currently vacant except for a pair of bins. In front of them is a road leading under the rail bridge, a single pavement at the side. It all looks as though it should be shrouded in darkness, except for the unusual light source.

Something just beyond their sight, at the far side of the tunnel, approaches. It's giving off too much light for them to see what it is, and drawing deep black shadows that seem to point to it's presence. Closer by, a young girl stumbles out of the darkness. Her eyes are wide and wild, and she's slick with the sweat of panic and fresh blood.

She looks to be around sixteen to seventeen, and wears a school uniform. Her blazer is torn, and blood seeps down one arm. Dirt marks her skirt, and cuts and scrapes crisscross her arms and legs. She's running without coordination, and soon trips to fall against the wall of the bridge where she slumps down unable to run any longer.

As she does, two further arrivals make their way onto the scene. Eunbyeol and Mayumi arrive at the same time, drawn by the scream as well. Time for all four of them is running out, though, as the light source crosses the boundary beneath the bridge.

Tami acknowledges the other girl, was her name Akane? She never was good at remembering names. Two more girls follow, she remembers the one from the shrine but not the other. She understands that they are all together and nods at them as they follow through towards the tunnel. She feels the hair at the back of her neck stand up with what she sees. The shadows feel wrong to her, and what that girl is doing standing there of all places? She looks familiar and tries to remember, a friend of her little brother perhaps?

Eun hadn't been here long enough to recall all the uniforms the schools used, but something tugged at the back of her mind about this one. She should recognize her... It wasn't coming immediately.

Akane draws Moonfang. She eyes the girl, who seems only sligjtly younger than herself. She sees if she knows this girl, but doesn't give herself a lot of yime to do so. She tries to position herself between the girl and the mysterious light.

Mayumi acknowledged the others with a quick nod and then she takes out her bow and strings an arrow. She remembers her training, master Saito is in her ears, "Feel what is not natural, what does not belong, reach out with all of your senses." She does exactly that reaching out to try and sense what might be coming or even what does not belong.

The girl looks between you and the light source. She tries to stand, but it looks like her legs don't want to move any more and she falls back. She runs out of time as the creature causing the light steps into the open.

A massive silver wolf, one marked with black swirling patterns reminiscent of tattoos, of almost five meters in length pads along the road. Its lips are pulled back to bear a snarl of sharp, jagged teeth as thick as a person’s forearms. Above its eyes, in the middle of its forehead, a third eye darts around. It glows with spectral light and bears a spirit crest. Where its feet contact the ground, small pools of fire form and the concrete melts into a heat haze.

Your appearance makes the beast falter. In it's moment of hesitation you feel a wash of spiritual pressure radiating off it. With a snarl it turns its bared fangs to you all, and stars moving toward you. It doesn’t seem to look directly at you though, but rather it looks through you. You can tell there’s something wrong with the way its eyes move.

It lifts its snout, sniffing at the air, before opening its mouth to produce an ear-splitting howl. The sound is loud enough that it rattles through the ground and shakes the nearby buildings. The sound rattles up to a small cache of construction materials on the railroad and sends them tumbling, heading right for the girl.

Spirit dice

Akane looks in shock, noticing the wolf mononoke. Feeling the urge and the powers inside her.

Tami sees the wolf and feels rage and compassion at the same time. She feels the crow spirit mark burning on her chest, resonating to the presence of the kami. "What happened to you?" she thinks, as her clan respects the wolf kami. She gets on a defencive stance.

"The Mononoke is beyond, it is not this wolf and that girl feels strange. I sense no soul in her and yet there she is…" Mayumi informed the others as best she could while keeping an eye on the wolf and the girl. Her bow was still strung, an arrow was knocked but, she had not pulled back on the string. Best to save energy and keep a keen eye out for now.

"That's not a lot to go on! At any rate, we've got to get this thing to stand down. Any ideas other than just putting it down?"

Mayumi nods, "You are correct miss, it will not stand down so it must be put down. Some of us will face the wolf and the others must face the Mononoke that is controlling the wolf. I am Mayumi Seifun, Miko of the local shrine, I will face the wolf and ensure it does not harm the innocent. Those who wish to assist me may, the others must face the Mononoke quickly."

"So it might be, but I'd rather not fight it," Akane says with a sadness in her voice. She steps forward to the wolf, focussing on her own origins. She raises one hand to the wolf, partially to pacify it, partially to keep distance. "Calm there, big guy" she says, trying to soothe it.

The wolf growls at Akane, clearly intent on hostility for now. Seeing the opportunity for it's attention to move, the girl darts away from the wall to see refuge behind you all. The falling construction equipment catches her at an odd angle though, and you hear something snap. She screams again and falls to her knees.

The wolf's attention begins to drift back to her.