AIC teaser

For once, Sanbi was dead silent. Aiko wasn’t breathing. The light coming off the sun goddess was boring into her brain.

“Go into the Land of the Dead.” Amaterasu adjusted the long hem of her many layered kimono. “Bring back my mother, Izanami no Mikoto.”

...Aiko opened her mouth and then closed it just as fast. Wasn’t Izanami the ruling deity in Hell? Did she really need help? Or… Aiko felt a sinking feeling.

‘I’m not being asked to drag a Goddess somewhere she doesn’t want to be. Am I?’

Amaterasu sighed in a way that made Aiko shrink back into herself. “Izanami No Mikoto cannot leave because she ate the fruit of the trees in Hell and has no connection to the land of the living. You, little thing, have a connection to both realms. You may go where I do not.” She stood, clearly done with the conversation. “When he calls, follow my representative. Move the boulder placed by my father to keep Izanami no Mikoto in Hell. Go inside, and retrieve her.”

Aiko wanted to look up, but she couldn’t see anything anymore. There was too much white hot light. She blinked, swaying. And then the room was empty.

She put a hand down to steady herself. Gradually, her vision came back.

“Sanbi?”

Her voice was exceptionally quiet in the room.

“Yes, Aiko.”

“That was the highest deity in Shinto. Right?”

He paused. “Well. You are in her house.”

Aiko looked around the shadowy shrine, made much darker by the haloes left on her vision. “So I am,” she murmured. She got to her feet unsteadily and wavered, lost. “I… I should get ready to go somewhere?” She didn’t know why she was asking him. “I… Is Hell hot?”

Sanbi was conspicuously silent. “There are hot hells and freezing hells,” he said, after contemplation. “I don’t think you’ll need to visit either. Surely the Goddess has temperature control technology.”

Aiko picked up her Mizukage jacket anyway, holding it for comfort. Then something occurred to her. “...She called me a god,” Aiko said slowly. She blinked. “What the fuck?”

Sanbi seemed to turn that over. “So she did.” He seemed mildly surprised to process the concept as well. “This could be very useful. Perhaps you are not so helpless as we supposed.”

She frowned. “Helpless is a strong word.”

“No,” Sanbi said promptly. “You have been wallowing in the despair of the damned, incapable of affecting your fate.”

“I have not,” Aiko protested, 100% aware she was lying. “Shut up, turtle. Let’s go to Hell.”