Kofuku stared idly at the bank of screens before her, having slid down in the pilot’s chair over the course of the past few hours. The navigational computer showed that they were slowly approaching the planet of Utarapura, long since abandoned by some other warlord she had no recollection of. The data on Yamashiro’s tablet told her two things: that there was a station in orbit scarcely visited by anything other than wayward traders and the occasional ship in need of refuelling; and several sparse settlements untouched by the UHE, at least for now, the biggest of which was Yuuyami-Saigo, an island among a vast archipelago, shrouded by fog and rain.

Her destination, however, according to the return signal Adam had captured, answering their manufactured call, came from almost the exact opposite side of the planet. Here, on a large continent, once ripe for colonisation, the skeletons of failed cities remained, massive towering structures visible even from orbit, now unmaintained and uninhabited. It was, in some ways, not much different from the dead god that laid across the land of her home. Perhaps Orochi too had been left behind by some greater power, one that was still stained by the same mistakes as they were.

The doors to the bridge behind her slid open, and Kofuku turned her chair around to find Falano, his black armour polished and looking spanking brand-new, standing by their makeshift dinner table. “You wanted to see me?”

“We should be in range. Wanna hail the station?”

“Isn’t it a UCF world? You have the credentials.”

“I’m not sure who’s listening. They’d probably take more kindly to a mercenary than someone related to the people that left this planet to rot.”

“Oh that gives me so much confidence.” He shooed her out of the seat and extended his mechanical left arm, a large motorised cable emerging from his palm to plug into the dashboard. “Unknown orbital station, this is the Tengoku. We’ve been travelling for a while, and we’re only lightly armed. Requesting permission to dock for supplies?”

They both stayed there, waiting for a reply. It never came.

“Orbital station, do you read me?” Falano asked, and looked at one of the screens as it changed to a view of the outside of their ship. “What the hell…?”

Kofuku squinted at the screen. “What’s wrong?”

“Their transponder is still running, but…” The heavy shutters on the bridge windows unlocked, and fluid up, revealing the empty vastness of space dotted with distant stars, and the bulk of the blue planet below.

She stepped up to the windows, and spotted tiny little asteroids just stuck in orbit, ahead of them, that the ship automatically shifted to avoid. “What are…oh.”

They weren’t asteroids. A piece of panelling floated by, then a forklift, and then an engineer in overalls, frozen solid and surrounded by ice formed from the blood that had been pulled out of his body.

“Looks like the station’s gone,” Falano said. “Major hull rupture. With how much debris I’m picking up just locally, I don’t think anybody made it. Even if they did…I kind of don’t want to think about what’s left on that wreck.”

“But their transponder is on?” Kofuku asked, turning away from the window.

“Must be their black box, which only turns on if there’s a catastrophic failure. Which also means it’s been less than, I don’t know, five days?”

Kofuku felt her heart in her throat. “Our signal. That was…”

“Almost five days ago.”

“Someone’s got here first,” she surmised, and turned to Falano. “Are you picking up what did this?”

“You know, this isn’t exactly a military picket destroyer.”

She glared at him.

“Look, whoever destroyed the station also took out the system’s buoy. We don’t have long-range sensors so we’re pretty much blind. And there’s a moon right there.” He pointed out the window, at the dark shape in the shadow of the planet. “Anything could be behind this. You thinking what I’m thinking?”

She turned towards the planet. So close, and yet so far. As she stared at the green-and-brown continent the signal originated from, a tingling went down her arm. She turned the back of her hand, and the branched scar, towards herself, and the tingling sensation intensified. The sword was down there, she was sure of it. “Take us down.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m not asking. Bring us down and set us down a distance from the source. We’ll walk the rest of the way.” She turned and went to sit in one of the other chairs, picking up the sheathed sword and machine pistol she dredged up from what little was left in the ship’s armoury. The blade was ceremonial - still sharp, but ornate - and there was barely any ammunition, especially for walking directly into a trap, but it was the best they could do given their circumstances. Without the sword, there was no telling what the Tidekeepers would do next. Even if her mother could kill them all, a purge was the last thing they needed.

The blast shield shutters came back down and their ship began to descend, shaking as the atmosphere rubbed against their hull, causing the whole thing to shake. Kofuku got up, and went through the door in the back, banging on the door to Richard’s room. “Get ready!” She walked past the galley and into the empty cargo hold in the back, grabbing onto the railing of the catwalk to steady herself against another shake. With a graviton generator, there was no sensation of falling, no flip of the stomach, nothing to make her think about where she was going to or leaving. During the next lull she dropped down the latter into the hold with the ramp, and braced herself against a pillar.

It didn’t take long before the shaking stopped, their entry successful, and she heard the wings fold out into place. The ship’s gravity, growing more intense, switched off, softly pushing her against the wall as she was subject to the planet’s instead, their craft pointed downwards, which was quickly being corrected by the moment. Falano brought them into a vertical landing using the thrusters, and the ship settled down far more softly than she was used to.

Kofuku stepped over to a button hanging from the ceiling, and pressed it, causing the ramp to unseal and fold outwards, pressing down on some tall, golden grass and flattening it. She took a deep breath, savouring the hay-like smell of dried grasses, of the earth, of smoke. A few steps out and a glance around later, past the ruins of the former city, she saw the black pillars puffing into the sky. Right where the signal was coming from, there was a village, or at least what was left of it. Parts of the wooden huts she could see at the edge were still smouldering. There was no movement, and even weirder, no trace of any animal life. Just a large plain, the occasional tree, and the smoking village.

“I fucking hate that,” Falano said, appearing beside her and zooming into the distance. “It’s all wrong.”

Kofuku glanced back to watch Richard descend the ladder, looking bored out of his mind, and turned back towards the village. “Better get moving then.”

Their long trek was, unnervingly, entirely uneventful. The entire time, Kofuku expected a hostile aircraft to pass overhead, or hear some sort of chanting from in the tall grass, or even for the glint of a sniper scope she could pick out. But there was no such thing, and there were still no animals as they crossed the breadth of the windswept savannah, dead except for the movement of the vegetation in the wind.

The village was empty. There was not a sound or a soul, even though many of the homes were still intact, and each structure from the town hall to the barns on the outer edge were arranged in a series of circles that implied there was some sort of centre. As they moved in past the outer houses and farms, Falano and Kofuku sweeping every sightline they could see, they reached the simple temple building with its bright red roof, still burning and spitting out pieces of wood, and diverted around it, allowing them vision into the area it was built facing towards.

In the middle of the village there were stone circles, built into the dirt itself just like the shape of the entire place. Characters adorned each ring at intervals that Kofuku couldn’t exactly read, but she knew immediately it was a site enchanted in the language of the former Coalition’s Samudra sect, known far and wide for their spirituality. She didn't need to understand the inscriptions to know that it was the perfect place to seal a god-infused weapon - the growing static crackingling across the scar on her arm and torso was enough indication that this was, in fact, the correct place. At the centre of the circle was an open well, with the rungs of a metal ladder curving down into it.

Kofuku didn’t wait for the other two, swinging herself onto the ladder and descending. The singular shaft of light from the opening made it impossible to see anything, but she could smell it, the ozone in the air, like an approaching storm. After several metres, her boots touched down on the damp, muddy floor underneath, and she flipped on the flashlight on her machine pistol. To nobody’s surprise, the cavern was circular, with a dome ceiling supported by a ring of six pillars, each one arched into the next. Beyond it were several tunnels leading into what looked like other caverns, though it was too dark to see all the way down them, except for one wall, which had an inset alcove in it, containing a stone altar with a long, cloth-wrapped object lying upon it, the sight of which set her nerves aflame.

Twenty years. The last time she had glimpsed it was when she watched the shuttle carrying her father take off to join the fleet in the skies of Daizo-Shikigami, the last moment she had ever seen him alive, and now the blade was just here, sitting there as if its owner had simply forgotten where it was.

The moment she took more than three steps towards it, however, the purpose of the village became clear: suddenly her mind went blank, and was replaced with a strange pressure that didn’t hurt, but suddenly, she found herself stepping backwards from the shrine. Blinking, she strode forwards again, and the pressure returned, and as if on autopilot, her legs made the decision to have her step away.

“What’s wrong?” Falano asked.

“You try. Approach it.”

“You’re not sending me to my death.”

“No really. Just try. It’s not going to kill you.”

Falano cocked his head, and then stepped forwards, only to begin shaking, and he stepped right back. “What the actual fuck?”

Kofuku dug a small jar of white powder from her pocket, and unscrewed the cap. “There’s some sort of enchantment that projects something into you.” She grabbed some of the powder and tossed it ahead. The particles slowed in an arc as they caught at the edge of the field. “Richard, you should be immune. Try it?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever boss.” He stepped forwards, into the invisible field, and just as quickly as Falano, backed out. “Huh? What?”

“Okay, so maybe it’s not entirely magic,” she admitted. She made a circle of the chamber, scattering more bone dust around her to see if anything would stick.

At the first pillar, some of the dust let off a spark.

She put down the jar and overlapped the index and middle fingers of both hands, creating a gap between them, which she then twisted, connecting the tips of her finger, then inverting both hands and peering through the new space. A quick and dirty spell, but all she wanted was a glimpse.

The air between each pillar was slightly distorted, like a series of fishing lines she couldn’t see. The distortions all led back to the altar, which was covered in refracted light as her spell-lens passed over it. She did a full three-sixty, noting how the density of the distortion was different between the pillars. “I assume it’s some kind of psychosomatic ward. Really strange.”

“All wards can be undone, in my experience,” Falano said. “Just gotta get rid of the source.”

“That’s the problem. This phone place is a focus. The entire village was made to reflect Orochi’s own power back at him, like a toroid. If we destabilise it…I don’t know what will happen. Maybe there’s be storms like there used to be back home.”

“So we’re fucked?”

“It’s damaged, though.” She double-checked some of the distorted spaces. “From the inside. But that means-” She looked at Falano. “Tell me you still have one of Adam’s recorded phrases.”

He shrugged. “I have the one that got us the ping.”

“Yeah. Can you play that back aimed at the sword?”

Falano turned his head towards the sword, and leaned in, producing a high-pitched noise just outside the range of Kofuku’s hearing.

Through her spell-lens, she saw the bubble of distorted air quiver, relaxing just for a second. “Stop!”

Falano stepped back. “What?”

“The pillars are connected to this, so we gotta go slow or the spell blows. Pulse in time with my steps, okay? Just one second at a time.”

He faced the altar again. “Ready.”

Kofuku took a step over the edge, feeling the sensation of pressure in her head again, but it vanished, pushed out of her mind by not the signal, but a return pulse from the sword itself. She took another step, and this time Falano was on point, clearing her brain instantly. It was four or five more steps until she was able to lurch right up to the altar, looking down upon the wrapped sword. She held out a hand for him to stop. “I’m past the ward. We need to do the same thing on the way out.”

“Ready when you are.”

She reached down and grabbed the blade in its sheath and cloth wrapping. It was dusty and ice-cold. Her scar was dead still all of a sudden, like the connection had simply vanished. Tried as she might, she failed to sense anything at all coming from it or the sword. Doubt seeped into her thoughts. Had it been too long? Had Orochi already faded? “I thought…I thought I was…”

“Was what, hmm?” said a new, yet familiar voice from behind them.

Falano drew his pistol and pointed it at a figure emerging from the tunnel opposite the altar, wearing a dark cloak over samurai gear, a sword at either side of his waist; and then the barrel of a gun tapped against the back of his helmet as what appeared to be ashigaru just like the ones back home poured out of the surrounding tunnels, surrounding them with rifles. They gear was filthy, bearing an emblem Kofuku didn’t disguise.

Richard raised his hands. “Where’d you fucking cowards come from?”

“I was wondering if it was really you.” The dark figure lowered his hood, revealing a mop of white hair tied back in a bun, and a matching goatee and sharply-cut moustache. The facial hair was new, of course, but it was impossible for Kofuku to mistake that face, even though it was much older and weathered than she remembered.

And she didn’t want to remember, because it had hurt more than anything to see him leave.

“What’s the matter, hime-sama? Didn’t you miss me?” Kōhei Kimura asked.