The storm in my soul is like a silent supernova

@"Iridian Death"

Ishikawa Yuuto

It was well into dusk when Ishikawa's mind finally started to snap out of the haze which had settled in and clouded up his thoughts after -after something. Awareness returned slowly, with muted scraps of things that could have been memories or simply bits of dreams. Most importantly, however, was a desperate, panicked self-command. Do not look it in the eyes. But the context had all been washed away and the feelings themselves were now muted by the disconnection.

He sat up, only realizing just then that he had been lying down. His entire body felt numb and strange, like it belonged to somebody else and he was simply looking out of it like a spectator. The foliage under his hands felt like pockets of air and he remembered, too, that he had a very real reason for being there. An important one. But that was as far as his memory would extend.

Ishikawa frowned deeply. What was it, what was it? Without him meaning to, the voice in his head alternated between confused and simply scared. What was that- The memory refused to be found.

He knew that he should get up. He knew that he needed to do something. He knew that the forest was not safe. He knew that he had to be fast. But barring that first point, the rest were blocked by instinctive self-preservation from -from something. The lack of clarity frustrated him.

Never one to simply sit around and wait, Ishikawa rose to his feet. The fog in his head remained but he, to the best of his abilities, chose a direction through the trees and began the vague search for answers.

Ishikawa Yuuto

The sound of a real, human voice came to in a bell tone him as if the noise were passing through water. Ishikawa whipped around to face the being that was approaching, stumbling a bit as he did. Even now, this mental fog refused to lift. Knowing that he should be wary, he frowned at the person's body from the neck down and forced away his true sight. Only when the image remained the same did he relax a little. That meant it truly was a human or, at the very least, not a disguised spirit.

"Go back home," he said to the girl when she came closer, because even despite the circumstances, it still would have been callous of him to simply ignore her and let her wander deeper into the woods on her own. "There are safer places to be than here. They named it the Forbidden Forest for a reason, you understand."

Another odd sensation was creeping across his skin and Ishikawa glanced behind himself, scowling worriedly as his true sight came back at full strength. He knew that he was not being as careful as he should but it was hard to be when there was already this feeling something had gone horribly wrong and he was overlooking an obvious reason for it.

His gaze fell on a shaft of dying sunlight. The shadows of the trees were growing longer with each minute. After a moment, his eyes widened. It had been early morning when he had set out so why was the sun setting?

"Fuck," Ishikawa breathed with elegant precision. "I wasted too much time already." Now what was he supposed to do?

Ishikawa Yuuto

Ishikawa sighed irritably but if she really was lost, and he did not doubt that fact for a moment, then there was really nothing that could be done. He had lost his chance anyways and that was entirely his own fault. "I was following something," he said, trying to give the briefest possible summary before his entire thought process was dragged to a halt.

Confusion clouded his features for a moment before evaporating. He started again, scowling but troubled. "I forgot what happened afterwards." It pained him to admit it. If his siblings had been there, between the two of them, it seemed nothing was forgotten. "This is rather deep into the forest, however. I do not suppose that you have found anything unusual in way of what I was searching for, because if you had, I do not think you would be standing here now."

Which way was out, anyways? His eyes darted back and forth across the possible paths. Certainly, he had known where he was going before, but it seemed like he had lost all of his tools on the way, including the map. "I would not worry about the matter too deeply. It seems to have withdrawn from the area in any case."

Ishikawa Yuuto

While the idea of necromancy was usually met with some hesitation and perhaps fear, it was not so far removed from Ishikawa's own powers that he could really be taken back by that kind of confession. After all, necromancers walked the line between the living world and the spiritual one just as he often did. "My name is Ishikawa Yuuto," he said, introducing himself in the Japanese way with his family first. In this situation, it was more important in any case. It never particularly mattered which member of the family was dealing with an anomaly, just that somebody was.

Continuing on, Ishikawa said, "As I am a priest, your type of craft is familiar to me." Actually, the fact that she was a necromancer made him more liable to be open about matters to her. She was, in his judgment, too young to be a corrupted one and also too young to be a serious threat. Through his true sight, too, he saw that she was, for the time, unaccompanied by other beings.

"Have you found many spirits since you entered?" The man asked her. "When I began, I did not encounter even a single one." The amount that she named would give him some sense of the time which passed. Spirits often would not quickly return to an area where such evil had been present.

Ishikawa Yuuto

He nodded sharply. "Exorcisms are part of it, yes," Ishikawa said. "There are not too many necromancers in Japan so you will often find that some priests will dabble in that craft. My family in particular specializes more on the divine side of the profession but we all are able to at least perceive deceased spirits and have some knowledge of how to deal with them on a basic level."

There was a familiar source of power leaking through the trees and the man instantly recognized it as his own. That would be one of the markers he had left behind, although the fact that any was trickling out at all was very worrying to him. Had he been gone for only a few hours, all of the power he had fed into it would have held. "Come with me," he ordered Iridian, before hastily making his way over to it. The end bit of what she said was completely lost on him in his rush.

On the trunk of a tree, Ishikawa had stuck an ofuda imbued with pure pieces of his soul. He had, at some time earlier, infused enough divine energy into it to keep lesser malicious spirits at bay. Now, however, he barely felt anything at all as he removed the sheet, crumpling it up in his hand to reabsorb the little still left.

"Talismans like this are supposed to last for a week when done properly," he said, mostly to himself as his worry grew. "They are not supposed to bled dry so quickly, so what has happened?" Ishikawa estimated that he had place them some five or six days prior but that seemed impossible to him. Despite the giant blank spot in his memory, it simply did not feel logical that it could contain that much time.

"Are you quite sure that you have seen nothing else wandering?"