The Goddess of the Moon

Oriente 6, Heaven

When I woke up, I looked around and found myself back in the lake cabin, with sunlight streaming in through the windows. I was lying on a futon, I could see that my stomach was bandaged, but although it hurt a little, it was clear that I was much better. Once again, I found a glass girl holding my hand, looking at me intently with her eyes, then she puffed out her cheeks to show her displeasure and began to speak angrily.

"Idiot!"
"Do you know how scared you made me yesterday?"
"You disappeared first, only to come back in the middle of the night during a storm, badly injured."
"Do you know how scared I was?"
"I was so excited to come back in the afternoon to go to the spa together and then walk in the gardens.
"I even made the reservations!"
"Since you were in the hospital, I told you to take advantage of these moments to relax."
"You just got out of the army, the best thing you can do now is to try to find peace in your life again."
"If you go on like this, who knows what will happen to you?"

"Are you angry that I got into trouble?"

"Of course I am!"
"Do you know the trouble I went through to help you escape?"
"Months of planning, working up the courage to even set foot on Earth."
"Why don't you realize that I lov....."
"What I want... I want to say... The last thing I want is for my efforts to be in vain."

"I'm so sorry, it wasn't my intention to cause so much trouble."
"I was just looking for someone to help me with the portals so that I could return to my sister sooner."

"A-are you really in such a hurry to go back?"
"Wouldn't you at least like to spend some time with me?"
"Or is it that my transparent appearance bothers you so much that you don't want to be around me?"

"What? No, no."
"You're beautiful just the way you are."
"You're definitely unique and someone I like."
"But I just can't stay here without knowing what happened to my sister."
"I want to go back and make sure she's okay, like they promised me, and also try to talk to my mother again.
"The last time I talked to her, I messed up and we left on bad terms."
"I'm worried that my death has affected her a lot, too."

"Cesar...."

I was about to say something else about Nanami before someone else entered our room. It was Urakaze again, dressed in her full samurai outfit with her katana. She personally brought us breakfast.

"Sorry to interrupt."
"You seem to be doing better after what happened yesterday."
"You have no idea how much you scared me; for a moment I thought I had completely lost you and the hotel."

"Oh, I see."
"Thank you for your genuine concern for my health."

"Our infirmary is quite good, despite the old look of the rest of the place."
"The doctor was able to treat you without any problems and even took the liberty of preventing you from getting a scar."
"Unfortunately, I will have to include this medical expense in the bill for your stay."
"Don't worry, I'll make sure to send the bill to your father personally the next time I see him."
"....... "
"Moving on to a much more serious matter."
"May I know what the hell attacked you?"
"For someone to wound the legendary Cesar, they must have caught you completely off guard, or with some pretty dangerous force."

"I don't know, I don't know who she was."
"I started walking the road you told me, I wandered a bit and got lost in the forest."
"I walked for a while until I found a temple near a river."
"After that, a blonde girl appeared, she seemed to be coming back from hunting."
"At first she was very friendly and even helped me find my way back.
"Then, while we were talking, fox ears popped out of her head."
"And a bunch of tails, I didn't count them, but there were definitely a lot."
"After I asked her if she was also a Kitsune, she got angry and attacked me."
"Are all Kitsunes so violent?"

"......."
"Shit."
"....."
" By any chance, did you enter the temple near the river?"
"What did you see? Please be specific."

"Well, there was a strange spear, a metal hand-fan, a very beautiful kimono with a full moon pattern that moved."

"What about the stone?"
"The stone on the pedestal!"

"Oh yes, there was a stone on a pedestal."
"It was split in two, and there was also a broken rope and some slightly burnt talismans."

"....."
"Oh damn, this is bad."
"Really bad."

"Is it serious? Is it that bad?"
"How bad?" Momo asked, a little scared.

"Bad enough that I'll have to close the hotel."
"And it will probably end up in ruins."

"Oh dear, that is bad."
"What the hell happened?"
"Can you explain what's going on?"

"......."
"I think, as Momo surely told you, I was assigned to hunt down a certain kitsune a long, long time ago."
" Supposedly, she had deceived an important lord in the region."
"Unfortunately, it wasn't until much later that I realized that something was very wrong with that mission."
"Something didn't add up."
"At first, I thought it would be easy because of my experience hunting other monsters and demons, but this hunt was completely different from the others."
"The kitsune I fought that day was none other than Tamamo-no-Mae, the evil goddess of the moon."
"And it was against her that I lost my battle."
"......"

Urakaze began to tell what she knew about the legend of Tamamo-no-Mae and how she herself was a part of it.

She was a kitsune created by Amaterasu, the sun goddess and ruler of Japanese folklore, who disguised herself as a human to help Emperor Konoe. She was not specifically a goddess in the sense of a new goddess, since she was created by another goddess. But if she was the counterpart of the Sun Goddess, she could be considered the Moon Goddess. She was a beautiful woman, the most intelligent of the court, there was no subject she was not an expert in, astrology, science, philosophy, music, religion. Some claimed that she was a legendary sorceress. It was said that she always smelled good and her clothes never got dirty or torn. The young emperor was said to be in love with her, but one day, before he could ask the beautiful Tamamo-no-mae to marry him, he fell ill. Apparently with a terrible disease that even the best doctors in the empire could not identify, until one day the chief court magician said it was the girl's fault, as he had apparently noticed something strange in her head, and he cast a malefic on her to reveal her true identity, which they discovered was actually a demon, a Yokai disguised as a human, a fox girl, a kitsune. Apparently, the sorcerer accused her of working for an enemy daimyo and trying to kill the Emperor with some kind of poison. The emperor himself, far from believing her lover and her counter-argument, only wanted to save his own life at all costs and was full of rage. He gave the order to kill her personally, to persecute her to the end of the world if necessary, all for a betrayal for which there was no proof other than spoken words. Fearing for her own life, she escaped from the palace, attacking several guards to get out. She was then pursued by two of the best demon hunters sent by the Emperor himself. Tamamo fought back, killing up to 60,000 of the Emperor's soldiers in her final escape. She begged the hunters for her life, but we cruelly refused.

In the end, it took a huge army and the best magicians to stop them, already tired from so much fighting. They managed to kill her with a rain of arrows, layers of which blotted out the sun. Then the mages sealed her soul in a stone, from which her soul could not escape, but eventually the seal weakened and a curse came out of it, killing whoever tried to do it. The emperor also died at the age of 16 from an illness that turned out to be caused by a poison from the sorcerer who accused Tamamo. After sending the best priest who had managed to appease Tamamo's soul. She promised not to kill again if they left the stone where she died alone.

"So that's what happened."
"Surely, then, she has plenty of reasons to seek revenge, quite justifiably."
"But there's still something I don't understand."
"If she was trapped inside the stone, and the stone is in normal Japan,"
"What is the cursed stone doing here instead?"

"Well, we wouldn't leave a killer stone with a dangerous evil goddess trapped inside somewhere where tourists would eventually go."
"We replaced it with a replica about 300 years ago."
"It was quite an operation not to awaken her, the angels had to help us a lot with the transfer."
"After that, we built the temple deep in the forest, so that if she arose or found a way to escape, she wouldn't do any more damage."
"The truth is, there aren't any settlers around here, most of us who live here are actually hunters by profession."
"That's why I live here."
"If the evil goddess Tamamo-no-Mae were to escape,"
"We would be the first to notice her and try to catch her again.
"That's why the forest was forbidden in the first place,"
"Which, ironically, made it a good hunting ground for the hunter families who lived around here."
"But no one ventured that deep into the forest, no one was that foolish."

"This is where I come in! I was the first!"
"When can I claim my trophy?"

"This is pretty bad, Tamamo-no-Mae has escaped from her confinement."
"She might be planning a big attack right now."
"We must stop her."
"I must leave immediately and tell the council the bad news."
"I think after that I'll have to figure out how to get the guests out of the hotel."
"I have to go!"
"Ah, you two stay here for now, and under no circumstances should you even think about going into the forest!"

Urakaze spoke quickly as she hurried out of the room. As soon as she was gone, Momo turned her head to speak to me.

"So you faced an evil goddess and came out alive."
"I have a new respect for you now."
"So what is your excuse for wanting to see her again?"

"Urakaze said that Tamamo-no-Mae is a goddess."
"And that's exactly what we need to get the portal working again."
" I thought that if I could convince her to help me..."
"Wait, were you hoping that I would try to find her again?"

"It's Cesar we're talking about, of course he'll get into trouble at the slightest opportunity."
"And he's the kind of guy who makes a simple task like talking to him honestly and getting a straight answer impossible even for me."
"..."
"Yes, the portal could work smoothly with a goddess like Tamamo-no-Mae giving it energy."
"Though it has to be the right amount, too little and it won't turn on, too much and it could burn the whole machine."
"Maybe I can buy enough things to improvise a single use battery to keep it from burning."
"..."
"But how are you going to talk to the evil goddess who tried to kill you yesterday?"

"I know where she lives, but I must hurry."
"She's probably planning to leave soon."
"Besides, she didn't seem like a really bad person."
"I mean, for an evil goddess, she still helped me out of the forest and even let me leave alive despite all the advantages."
"Maybe if I tell her that I can intervene in her police problem, she might help me."

"......"
"Oh, why do I keep following someone as dense as you?"
"All right, I'll help you."
"If she's a girl, she must have a sweet tooth."
"Especially if she survived in the forest."
"If you bring her something like a cake, she'll probably listen to you enough to laugh at your plan."

After talking, Momo left the room and returned a short time later with a sweet fruit cake. After taking some painkillers and getting a scarf for the cold, I made my way back to the forest to talk to the evil goddess. I didn't have much time if I wanted to talk to her before she escaped, or worse, before Urakaze and his people found her first.