The end of autumn, during most years, marked the start of the trouble. With the construction of the dam at the northern edge of the lake, now possible due to near-zero risk of targeted lightning strikes, the valley it closed off was due to be flooded and the forest beyond condemned to be buried in an ever-growing pile of sedimentary deposit from the mining operations upstream. Charismatic as he was, the divide between human and yokai was ultimately too great, and ultimately it was only the kama-itachi who agreed to Kofuku Takeshi’s terms to relocate to a reserved out of the way, fortified with the promise of future development following the expansion of the capital. How many yokai remained beyond the half-finished wall, nobody could say, but with her father offworld and her mother occupied with a sensitive situation back at the palace, it fell to Kimura and the ever-capable Yasahiro Shuu, chief retainer handpicked by Takechi himself and multitalented estate caretaker of the summer palace, to respond to reports of an attack first thing in the morning.

It was, naturally, a decision on the part of Kimura himself  to bring ten-year-old Akiraka along, citing the potential trove of experience in the field. Her training had barely begun, but with the sort of determination and enthusiasm she possessed for practical skills, her progress quickly surpassed all their expectations. As the daughter of the next in line to be shogun it was her foremost and greatest duty to follow in his footsteps.

The armoured car hit a pit in the road, its suspension rocking and jolting Kofuku from the edges of her sleep. Willing as she may be, it was far, far too early even by their standards, and she was losing the fight against the allure of a deep, extended slumber. The two adults in the front seat seemed unaffected, but to her that was no surprise; Kimura was adept at hiding anything he actually felt, as she had figured by now, and she wasn’t sure she had ever seen Shuu sleep. “Are we there yet?”

“Patience, hime-sama,” Kimura said, eyeing her through the rearview mirror. “Sit up. Look around. Tell me what you see.”

Kofuku lifted herself up and pressed herself back in the seat, taking the pressure off the seatbelt at her front. For the first few minutes of just watching through the windows it was just a mishmash of green and yellowed leaves , with the occasional red tree, and then suddenly her vision was cut by a huge mass of grey and even darker steel rebar, flashing past at an incredibly high rate as their car mounted a ramp and began climbing. She saw the workers clinging to scaffolding on the side of the wall section, standing on it, propping up sheets of timber to mould the next level up. By craning her neck near the window, he could make out the height of the hills to either side, allowing her to roughly guess how tall it would be when finished.

The car went over a road on the hill next to the dam, and for the first time, she was able to look right down into the valley on the other side. For some reason, given how incomplete the arc of the dam was, she had imagined a fledgeling stream or a small creek at most that over time would grow into a reservoir once the water stopped flowing downstream. Instead she found rapids, water with real power tumbling down from the falls at the base of the mountain, and it would have overrun the build site if not for the piles of dirt and stone and wood that redirected them into tunnels in the side of the valley. Further up stream, a walker belched black smoke as its sawing arm tore through several pine-like trees at a time before it picked them up and slid them over itself and onto a wagon it towed along. Beside it were ashigaru with handheld flamethrowers, incinerating any small shrubs or bushes as they made their way upriver.

A stray thought crossed her mind, and Kofuku put her hand on the window. There was something other than the engine, other than the contours of the road before them, and she could feel it reverberating through the glass, into her bones. “What is that?”

“Very good, hime-sama,” Kimura said. “That is a warding signal. Almost imperceptible to the human ear. It’s good that you hear it. Means you have ample magical potential.”

“But what does it do?”

“Think about what I just said for a second.”

Kofuku rested her chin on the window frame, feeling the pulse through her forehead. As the beat echoed through her skull, a dull, wide ache began all over her head, prompting her to jerk back from the glass. “It drives them away.”

“Yokai are even more magical than we are,” Yasahiro said, shifting his hands on the steering wheel. “It sends them packing. No need for unnecessary bloodshed.”

“But there’s still attacks,” Kofuku said.

Kimura looked at her in the reflection. “Unfortunately yokai are very varied. Not every single type is affected in the same way. None have gone mad, but this one seems to be standing its ground.”

“But…aren’t we the ones in their home? And we’re just cutting and burning everything. We’d do the same if it was a village or a city.”

“Very astute. What do you suppose is the answer?”

“Maybe we should just leave them be.”

“The dam’s purpose is not to just flood the valley, hime-sama. Having a reservoir is useful in a lot of respects. Irrigation for crops, power generation, and drinking water. Maybe there are no more superstorms, but this stream originally led straight into the foundations of the palace. Now we can channel it to cool the reactor and not have to deal with erosion. I could go on but you get the point.”

“If the shogun hadn’t forced us to come here, maybe we could have left it alone.”

“And therein lies the problem. Even if we could control what the shogunate really wants, there would still be problems. If not here, then somewhere else, with some other forest that needs to be chopped down. You and many other people have to live here, hime-sama…this is the price.”

“Isn’t there another way?”

“There is, but not without consequences. If you could trade your comfort and wellbeing for the people’s would you?”

“A lot of people would.”

“A lot of people would do a lot of things. It’s what you choose to do that matters. It’s the only thing you can…ah.”

Yamashiro switched gears and pulled them over at the top of a downward slope leading into the valley. Before them, a samurai and his entourage were wading through a shallow section of river, waving at them.

Kimura got out first, slotting his sheathed swords into the holster on his hip opposite his pistol. “You found it?”

“Burrow was hidden by vegetation. Deforestation team just cleared it out, but we think it’s in there,” the samurai said. He spotted Kofuku climbing out with her sword blade. “Kōhei…this is no place for a child. We’ve already lost-”

Kimura silenced him with just a look. “She won’t be fighting the thing, if that’s what you’re worried about. There comes a time when we have to grow up, and part of that is getting to see how the real world works. Don’t you agree?”

He gave a slight nod and bow. “I understand, karo-dono. I will lead the way.” He marched back down the slope, signalling to his unit to turn along the bank.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Yamashiro leaned down to whisper to Kofuku, before nudging her along.

It wasn't the most difficult walk Kofuku had been on - her training included ample exercise after all - but because of the matter at hand, the air felt like it was strung up around them, making it hard to breathe as she marched behind the unit. Across the river, up ahead, she saw the bulky transport drone descend on the wagon behind the logging mech, latching onto the entire trailing and lifting it into the sky. The lumbering machine itself turned to the side, and with another puff of acrid smoke, waded into the river.

Kimura held a hand back, stopping Kofuku and Yamashiro in their tracks. He pointed along the side of the valley, and in between the charred remains of some bushes, Kofuku spotted a gap in the dirt and rock, angled downwards into the ground.

The ashiragu unit fanned out, with the man with the light machine gun propping it up on a rock by the river, while others took cover behind large tree stumps or boulders. The samurai unclipped a grenade from his bandolier, slowly stepped up to the mouth of the burrow, and swiftly armed and tossed it in before hopping backwards to a safe distance.

The grenade going off in a small tunnel channeled loose dirt and rocks in an explosive geyser, raining little pebbles down on the and a rain of gravel down on the soldiers. They didn’t flinch, just waited, their weapons pointed at the hole.

“Is it even in there?” Kofuku whispered to Yamashiro, who just shrugged.

The hole suddenly erupted again, a fur-covered shape rocketing out of it and landing in between the soldiers. The LMG blazed to life, its tracer rounds cutting through the dust and into the beast’s side, but its muscular tail swung around and send both the gun and its operator flying several metres back. The other soldiers began to retreat while shooting, only for the creature to turn, hardened plates expanding from around its shoulders like a fan and absorbing most of the force of each bullet.

Kofuku watched it stand there, poised to strike at its leisure, its skull more elongated than a bear and featuring a line of three black eyes on each side, rotating back and forth in their sockets.

When it finally struck it was quick as a flash, crushing an ashigaru against the dirt slope and turning around to whip its tail in a wide arc, something Kimura and the other samurai leapt backwards to avoid. With a steady mechanical thrumming the logging mech reached the bank and climbed up with its short, thick legs, claw and blade poised to strike. The yokai spotted it immediately and launched itself at the machine, slipping past the grabbers and impacting directly onto the front of the control unit, hammering its teeth into the glass cockpit. The operator swung the claw back around, grasping it around the midsection of its body and then driving the logging saw into its left shoulder. Bits of the hardened shield-like protrusions shout in all directions, then fur, then bright red blood as the sawblade finally reached flesh, eliciting an agonised roar from the creature. Desperate to break free, it folded its lower body downwards, kicking with its larger hind legs and pushing the mech with such force that it toppled into the river. The beast, now free, clawed its way onto shore…directly between the squad and Kofuku. Its three right-side eyes blinked at her in sequence, before its mouth opened, revealing rows of jagged teeth and a long, serpentine tongue.

Yamshiro quite literally picked her up and started running up the side of the hill while the monster scrambled for them. The soldiers hadn’t resumed shooting, afraid to hit them if they missed, but then she saw a flash.

Kimura appeared between them and the bear-thing, his left hand glowing with a brilliant light. The tattoos under his skin were dark clear against it, and in one motion, he shoved his entire firearm into the wound on the beast’s shoulder wound. The light extended inside of it, rendering its skin translucent from sheer intensity, and smoke issued forth from its mouth and nose, and then its ears too. The creature shuddered and spasmed as it was cooked from the inside out, and went limp on the ground. Kimura fell on his knees, cradling his burnt hand, gritting his teeth and trying not to scream. With his undamaged hand, he removed the shorter of his two blades, and held it out, towards Kofuku. “Finish it.”

She stared at him. The smell of burnt blesh almost like cooked pork, coming from him and from the monster, the trembling wakizashi that was still a little too big for her, and the monster’s chest, still rising and falling with ragged breathing that degraded with each cycle. “It’s already going to-”

“Take it and finish it!” Kimura half-shouted, dropping the sword onto the dirt.

She slowly bent over and picked it up, the light reflecting her own horrified expression onto it. “I don’t think father…would…”

“Your father wouldn’t hesitate.” He winced as he touched his charred hand. “Finish it…hime-sama.”

Kofuku stepped over to the creature. All eyes were on her, from the ashigaru to Yamashiro behind her - she could feel it. Even the creature was looking at her, one of its three eyeballs she could hee having melted from Kimura’s spell. Just a moment ago, it was about to tear her to shreds, but now looking at it like this, she felt a pang of…what, empathy? Guilt? Pity? What was there to relate to in those gnashing teeth and monstrous jaws? Steeling herself, she lifted the tip of Kimura’s sword above the thing’s skull, moving it slightly behind, and brought it down in a single fluid motion, directly into the brain stem. Its jaw flapped open and it let out a hoarse sputter, and then the light in its eyes was gone. A part of her had hoped that it would give her something. She did just execute a foe, a dying one at that.

But there was nothing.

Kimura struggled to his feet, braced by Yamashiro. “Remember, hime-sama: victory is not always beautiful. But hesitation is always fatal.”