Desnus 29, 4713 (morning, Namikadame Lagoon)

A grand magnolia tree sits on the shore of the Jikko River just upstream from where it empties into the Namikadame Lagoon. It’s nearly in full bloom, with flowers large enough to cover my hand and a creamy, sweet fragrance that would be the envy of bath houses in Magnimar. We never stop to enjoy wonders like this. Not anymore. Nature’s grandeur has become a backdrop, a measure of our progress as we travel from here to there. How sad is that?

Yugureda Shosaito’s home lies on a small, private island in the middle of the lagoon. The surrounding landscape is unnaturally muted, drained of color, bathed in gloom and breathing stagnant air. Leaving Numataro-sama’s home for Shosaito’s is not a fair trade by any stretch. We’re told his pearl divers have a small village over there. How anyone at all manages to live within that umbra and maintain their sanity is anyone’s guess.

Qatana and I can see there’s magic pretty much everywhere. Not anything overt, but a sort of faint aura that permeates everything. Why do people do this sort of thing to themselves? By all accounts Shosaito’s pearl business is quite lucrative, and he’s clearly a wealthy man: you don’t spend your money on geisha and private islands unless gold flows like water. Yet his home is draped in malaise. What’s the point of opulence if that’s how you live?

One possibility is that it’s a function of the means he used to achieve his success. Some actions leave scars on the world. That thought is certainly disturbing, especially because it’s far from wild speculation. If Numataro-sama is correct, this is a man that killed O-Sayumi’s mother, knowing that she had an infant child. We’re also reasonably certain that he is O-Sayumi’s father, which would mean that he intentionally murdered his wife or lover. What kind of person would do these things? (Uncomfortable answer? Lonjiku Kaijitsu. Which may in part explain why Ameiko has taken a personal interest in the matter.)

We’re leaving Koya here. With someone spying on us that was not an easy decision, but we can, at least, mitigate the risks and it’s arguably less dangerous than her tagging along. Numataro-sama has agreed to let me cover his home with my spell that will keep it, and them, hidden. That way if they try to come for us, it won’t be so easy to do it through her. At least for the immediate future. Long term, we need a better solution.

(late morning, Yugureda Shosaito home)

Sometimes, a coincidence that is far too unlikely to be more than just a coincidence really is just a coincidence. And sometimes that magical trap that you see, which is quite obviously a magical trap, and that you’re told outright is a magical trap, is, in fact, a magical trap. These are the valuable lessons I have learned today.

Honestly, I thought the shogi board was important because shogi just kept coming up: meeting Hatsue and her passion for the game, the large set in Numataro-sama’s home, the piece he gave us that could summon a great shogi player when broken, and even Shosaito himself. So there had to be more to what we were seeing, right? Wrong. It was just a trap for the unwary (or, I suppose, for people with a penchant to out-think themselves); retaliation against anyone motivated and clever enough to come looking for O-Sayumi, but careless enough to casually touch things as they explored.

The shadow realm we were trapped in may not have been entirely real, but the undead shadows that stalked us were no illusions. One of them touched me, and I felt my strength draining away as a horrible chill pierced my heart. It was an unwelcome reminder of my own fragility and mortality.

One odd thing did happen while we were in there. OK, fine, the whole thing was odd, but I mean relatively speaking. Zosimus broke the shogi piece Numataro-sama had given us as soon as we realized we were trapped in giant shogi board made of shadowstuff, and Hatsue appeared. Not her, but a spectral image of her, as though it were some sort of projection. She looked at me and asked, “What are you doing in my dream?” I didn’t really have a good answer.

She may have saved our lives. Her image or projection, or whatever it was, was real enough to the shadows. She tore two of them apart with relative ease.

Curious. I’ll have to ask her about this later.

The shadows were not our only encounter with undead. I recognized his housekeepers as being manananggal, though only after we found them curiously difficult to restrain, both physically and magically. From what I remember of the Tian legends, they are far more formidable (and significantly more hideous) by night, when they tear away from their lower torsos and fly around to feed on the living. This is something we didn’t get to see, though I am not really broken up over it.

Normally, I’d say that invading someone’s home is best done after dark. That makes this the exception that proves the rule. At the same time, our original intent was not to break in, but rather just go see the man and ask a few pointed questions, but things got pretty weird from the moment we landed on his island and they entered a downward spiral soon after.

Yesterday, I asked who would choose to live in this faded landscape, and the answer to that turned out to be “no one”. The pearl divers were lacedons, which implies rather strongly that there was an outbreak of ghoul fever in their village at some point in the past.

I would not be surprised to learn that this was also Shosaito’s doing, because just look at his cleaning staff. It’s not like he could not know, which makes him either complicit or responsible. Ironically, Zosi and I were making offhand remarks (perhaps in poor taste) about using undead, or at least animated dead, for pearl diving. We had no idea how right we were. It seems Shosaito figured out long ago that his pearl business could benefit significantly from employees with no overhead, no upkeep, and no need to breathe air.

All of this went a long way towards answering my other question from yesterday: we more or less know what kind of person we are dealing with, and that’s someone who cares little for human life, or for anything beyond his own self-interests. It’s still not clear how his daughter fits into the picture, but it’s a fair bet that he needs her for something. For what, exactly, is still not clear, but…the fact that they are related by blood must be the key.

Earlier, we came across a set of cards from the Minkai game uta-garuta. I was thumbing through them idly as we explored, and noticed that several of the cards had arcane writings mixed in with the poetry verses. It took me a little time to decipher it all, but the writings were similar to a spell I am vaguely familiar with, though I don’t know myself because it is abhorrent. This spell transfers a person’s consciousness from their own body to a receptacle of some sort, typically a rare gemstone of modest value, which can then be used to forcibly possess any nearby, living body. What I was reading, however, seemed both different from this spell and incomplete in some fashion.

It occurs to me now that we never asked anyone if Shosaito is married, or has a lover, or even any children (other than O-Sayumi). His home looks lived in and neat but…neglected. Hay is molding in the stables, there’s very little food to be found, and the bedrooms are unoccupied with only one showing any sign of use. It’s like he just stopped living here a few weeks ago.

This all occurs to me now because he has taken his own daughter, who he is related to by blood, and who has been missing for a few weeks. Because he was researching a variant of a spell that can transfer a person’s soul. A spell whose material component requires an object of value; a requirement that could quite possibly be satisfied by a pearl, of which I am sure he has plenty.

My gods. What has this man done?