This story is dedicated to the two most important women in my life:

My mother and my grandmother.

I love you.

Phantasmagoria

Midnight, and autumn’s full moon was high in the sky, her silvery light dancing across the hip-gabled rooftops of dark houses, casting long shadows across the empty streets.

Midnight, and Kitsuneyama was still and silent. The surrounding mountains were impassive; their peaks a thorny crown protecting the tiny village in the valley from the dangers of the outside world, and they from the horrors that dwelt, hidden, within the ageless hills.

Ancient history steeped in prejudice kept Kitsuneyama’s superstitious villagers bound to her – the same code that had once known them as the greatest warriors in the north now tied them to the same strip of land their forefathers had fought decade wars to defend.

The wind picked up, blowing the first of the cherry blossoms from the trees, the clouds across the moon.

-

Two guards shifted at their station at the village gate, ill at ease. A low mist had crept in from the east to shroud the mountains in shimmering grey.

One man turned to the other, his dark Tsuki eyes glimmering in the low light.

“Bakemono no soku.”

Both he and his companion laughed, albeit uneasily, and corded muscles moved to grip Tsuki blades, their laughter escaping through the fog rising from their nostrils, drifting up towards the heavens and dissipating like the smoke that would soon fill the early morning sky and send the carrion birds screaming and wheeling.

The moon slipped behind another cloud, and the first man began to pace restlessly. Having always relied upon the brilliance of the moon to light their autumn watch, they had never required the illumination and warmth a fire rendered.

His eyes darted to the silent forest before them, bordering the only path that led both to and from the village – a treacherous road through the mountains, then to the mountain tops themselves, invisible now behind their cloak of silver mist.

The mists – by large – heralded the arrival of winter and, as the mountain peaks were without their first covering of snow – and would not be so until the beginning of the next full moon – mist this early in the year was unseasonal – unsettling.

A sudden deafening blast wrought the night air, and both guards leapt to their feet as a ball of earth and fire exploded from the summit of one of the taller mountains, the flame tearing the mists aside like a curtain. The earth groaned, and both men watched in horror as a wall of rock and debris slid from the mountain’s eastern-most peak, thundering down its side towards them, rubble bouncing from the loose sheet of earth, flattening all in its path, sending the forest birds flying before it. It came to a roaring halt in the depths of the forest, a huge cloud of dust rising from the midst of the trees, and as quickly as it had begun, the landside had stopped, leaving a long jagged expanse of exposed rock and soil in its path, an ugly scar on the mountain’s face.

The two men exhaled heavily, one gripping his knees as the trembling earth fell still, the trees stopped groaning.

“Thank the merciful heavens—”

His prayer was cut short as a sudden, inhuman cry pulled itself his mouth, and from that of his partner’s. Blood bubbled and hissed, pouring from the newly carved lips on their throats, carotid and jugular spraying messily as both men toppled forward under the weight of their own forsaken bodies, their assailants silent behind them, limbs stricken with a temporary rigor mortis brought on by the sudden savagery of their actions.

Then, they relaxed.

Four others pulled themselves from the forest, branches tugging hesitantly at their clothes like the hands of small children.

Wiping carmine blades clean, the two assassins lifted their eyes to meet those of their associates, a single male figure standing slightly ahead of the others.

He nodded slightly, and the two waited until the village gate opened from within before following their comrades in silence.

Identical black cloaks streaming out behind them as they passed in to Kitsuneyama.

The gift of invisibility had been granted to a select few.

-

Eyes opened, and Tsuki Yuugao was jerked from her dream of chasing something just beyond her grasp.

Her husband sat upright beside her on the futon they shared, shirtless, the luminosity of the full moon reflected in his dark eyes. A cool breeze blew in from the open window, ruffling his coal-black hair like grass on winter fields.

Yuugao lifted herself awkwardly in to a sitting position, her body sluggish with the added bulk of child. Placing a hand on his shoulder, she breathed his name.

“Kagetsu?”

He turned slowly to look at his wife, her eyes heavily lidded and dark from lack of sleep, body fatigued from the labour of a hard life about to be cut short. His gaze returned to the starless sky.

“Something is wrong.” A thin wisp of cloud closed over the full moon. “The air has changed.”

There had been no clouds when he had lain down to sleep.

Her rough hand tensed on his shoulder as the room grew dark.

“What is it?”

He looked at her again. Her white lips were pressed in to a thin line, but there was no fear in her eyes.

Smiling at his wife, he stood slowly.

“Go back to sleep, Yuugao.”

She watched in silence as he dressed and took up his sword, leaving without a word, unaware that this would be the last time she would see her husband alive.

Hindsight making a mockery of him as his unborn child gave its first feeble kick in its mother’s womb.

-

He could only draw comfort from the way in which his katana bumped rhythmically against his leg as he walked hurriedly down the streets of Kitsuneyama, the same boyhood knowledge that had led him to his favourite hiding places from his teachers now carrying his being towards the town square. He recalled these memories with a small smile; his reluctance to study the art of the sword or spear or bow that were now as much a part of him as his own beating heart.

As he rounded the corner, he saw that he had not been alone in his premonition. The bulk of the small Kitsuneyama army stood straight-backed and proud around the raised stone platform, weapons at their side or in hand, men that knelt as he passed and called him their captain, men that would fight by his side and follow him to death to protect their beloved village.

They cheered as he approached, and he didn’t make to quiet them, didn’t have the heart to challenge their faith in him.

He gave the order for a runner to be sent to investigate, and ascended the stairs to stand alone atop the stone platform. There, he had a somewhat better view of the village before him. To the south-west, the break in the mountains indicated the only easily accessible point of entry in to Kitsuneyama. The broad side of one of the greater mountains bore an ugly chasm along its southern flank that, he speculated, had been the source of the noise that had awoken him earlier. The shifting tectonics beneath the earth the village was built upon meant that landsides and tremors were common occurrences, but this did little to ease his restlessness.

Turning to the south, his eyes came to a rest on what, from his position above ground level – or to those who didn’t know better – appeared to be a large expanse of undeveloped land. While it was true the land above was not being used, the space below certainly was.

His thoughts flickered with a discomforting frequency to her – the bastard child, carrier of the royal Tsuki bloodline – and the site of her resting spot filled him with chill dread. He couldn’t begin, didn’t want to imagine the terror that would ensue if she had been the root of all these discomforting omens…

A loud cry signalled that his runner had returned, but the cheers turned quickly to gasps of horror, and the soldiers before him dropped to their knees, foreheads pressed against the earth.

Before them stood a dead man, his left arm below the elbow naught but a grotesque mess of mangled flesh and artery as if it had been torn from its very socket. His bloody right hand clutched the abdomen, holding his own entrails as they fought against the force that held them here. Blood had trickled down from his temples to fill his wide eyes, and he stumbled as he made his way through the prostrate crowd towards his captain.

“H-help me…”

He coughed once, then crumpled to the ground. Kagetsu rushed forward to kneel at his soldier’s side. His hand had fallen away from his torso and now Kagetsu could see with glistening, scent-pervading clarity the pulsating of this man’s small intestine.

Swallowing the bile that rose in his throat, he took the man’s hand.

“What did you see?”

The man’s eyes opened, his jaw quivering, bands of saliva and blood stretching between his parted lips.

“Ba… Bakemono…”

He coughed again, the blood bubbled from his mouth, then his body became still, his hand limp, and Kagetsu drew back in horror.

Bakemono…

Kagetsu stared down at his kinsman’s body, felt the blood pound in his ears. Around him, his remaining soldiers had straightened up, their fearful murmurs and whispered prayers rising up around him.

Slowly – mechanically – he stood, dimly aware of the blood that coated his right hand as he made his way back to the platform, his feet leaden and dragging as he climbed the stone steps. His thoughts flickered to his wife, his unborn child, his two sons, and the frantic, primitive wish that he could have had the chance to say goodbye.

Too late for that now.

He thought of the little girl he had seen walking with her mother, her eyes wide with childish curiosity and laughter.

From within the darkest recesses of his mind, the same girl – older now, her features more pronounced – shrieked with maniacal laughter, her arms outstretched to him as she called his name, and whispered…

Bakemono, bakemono, bakemono…

His eyes snapped open. His men were staring up at him, and he saw in their eyes his own inadequacy reflected back at him, felt the pressure in their collected gaze, begging him for salvation that he could not bring, for the false hope he would instil in them.

He licked his dry lips to moisten them, and spoke, his quiet voice carrying across the crowd.

“We will go and meet them.”

His heart ached with fear. This was the choice the elders and prophets of yesteryear had spoken of. He would make that choice, the choice that none other could make.

The right choice.

He spoke again.

“We will go out and meet these monsters, and drive them from our village.”

The muttering broke out again, like the angry buzzing of a hive of bees.

“But – Captain—!”

“What will you have me do?” His voice broke and a cold sweat prickled on his forehead. “I will not hand over Kitsuneyama to these monsters without a fight!”

The girl inside his head was laughing mirthlessly, her pale skin stretched tight across the emaciated bones of her face, giving her a skeletal, ethereal appearance as she doubled over with malicious laughter.

Where is your God now?

“But we cannot win! How can we defeat a foe whose abilities and power we do not even know –”

Forcing a confidence in to his voice, he lifted his head, meeting, unflinching, the eyes of his soldiers.

Hope is not lost.

“We will not be going alone.”

Raising his left hand to his lip, he extended his thumb, placing it in between his teeth and biting down hard to draw blood, allowing it to well up before running the digit across the already flecked palm of his right hand. The dark liquid coursed through deep creases forty years old, creases that knew a sword intimately, and he clenched his fist. He didn’t want to see his own blood flowing through his lifeline. Crouching, he performed the hand seals taught to every Tsuki child, then placed his spattered palm against the cool stone.

“Kuchiyose no Jutsu.”

Smoke bloomed around him, and a large fox appeared amongst the miasma, shaking its head, his fur the colour of brick baked red by the sun, streaked with grey. Eyes that had once been piercingly black were milky white.

He was blind.

His mighty head swung around, lip curling back to show powerful teeth, nose twitching as he sniffed the wind.

There was a long moment of silence, then a chorus of “Kuchiyose no Jutsu!” rang out, and the sound of foxes screaming and snarling filled the night air, their songs harmonizing with one another and lifting the lilting tune up to the autumn sky.

Tsuki Kagetsu’s gaze swept over his men, fierce determination etched on their weathered faces. Hand falling to his hip, he gripped the hilt of his katana, drawing the long sword and holding it aloft.

“For Kitsuneyama,” he said quietly, the moonlight illuminating the four characters etched in to the blade’s face.

“For Kitsuneyama!” the men echoed.

-

In her cell in the village’s prison, Tsuki Tae opened her indigo eyes.

This is just self-induced terror
There's more to come, this is just a glimpse
I tell myself it's all in my head
But I'm pretty hard to convince
- To A Friend, Alexisonfire

Comments & reviews would be greatly appreciated.

Thankyoux