Kitsune in the Shadows
Chapter 114 – Divine Intervention

[Ellaria POV]

“Sister! Please calm down,” I said as I took the pendant off, not wanting to worry the little kitsune any more than she likely already was, “You know that there isn’t a dragon there. We both checked.”

“B-but I don’t know that!” She continued to pace around the room, “I-I don’t know what’s happening. It could be a d-d-… I-It could be one of them. I don’t know for sure.”

“Sister, even if it-” I stopped myself before finishing my sentence.

I was going to try to explain to her that even if it was a dragon, that didn’t necessarily mean the Goddess she was worried about would be involved, but I decided that it would likely do more harm than good in that situation.

“Look, what we need to do right now is to figure out what exactly is happening at the moment, alright?” I said as I brought up a number of panels, “That’s the best thing we can do for those three.”

“I- But-…” Without saying much, Sister eventually relented and sat down next to me.

“There we go,” I ran my fingers through her hair as I pulled her a little closer.

…

I really hope we can figure out what is happening… for everyone’s sake.

There was a lot that was unusual about the current situation, and that was before taking into account all of the other strange things that had been happening in the area before this, from the ships crashing to the numerous complaints about strange presences in the forest, even one such complaint coming from our own little kitsune.

It didn’t help that, in truth, none of the divinities between us were even much of a help in trying to figure this out. So I did the only thing I could hope would shed some light on everything and started carefully combing through the forest, paying particular attention to the mana in the area.

It didn’t take long for it to become apparent just how large the scale of what was going on was. Through the entire forest, there were numerous unnatural areas of both high concentrations of mana and low concentrations of mana. It was already to the extent that a number of common and adept spirits had begun to congregate in the area in an attempt to restore the levels back to what they should have been, even if they didn’t seem to have much, if any, effect.

“Hmm…” I mindlessly hummed to myself as I tried to come up with any potential explanations for what I had found.

Unfortunately, this caused Sister’s fur on her tail to stand on end.

“I-Is it that bad?” She asked as her eyes darted from panel to panel.

“No,” I lied, not wanting her to get up and start pacing around aimlessly again.

The first possible suspect for something like this could be some number of the spirits that had been congregating, in other words, a few that had decided to act out, but from what I had seen, there was nothing of the sort at play. Even if it were, it would likely need a spirit king to be present, or at a stretch, a number of elders acting together. Not that they would ever take action like this unprompted.

What am I thinking?

If it were a spirit, there would be some kind of trace.

…

Is there even anything that wouldn’t leave any recognisable traces like this?

With something of this scale…

That moment was when a very worrying idea crossed my mind. There were very few things that could go completely unnoticed by a deity, let alone the two of us… that was, unless this was a work of-

“… -Divinity,” I accidentally whispered aloud as the word crossed my mind.

“What?!” It only took a second for Sister to register the word, “Divinity? A-Another Deity is involved!”

“We don’t know that for sure,” I said in a bit of a panic as I scrambled to calm her down again, “I was just guessing at what it might be. There was nothing down there that implied a Deity did this. I couldn’t even come up with a reason for it if I tried…. Beyond that, John would surely have gotten involved. He doesn’t let anyone interfere with the mortal realm at this scale without reason.”

My own words got to me in that moment. It was true that John always stepped in to prevent Deities from overstepping their boundaries, but even if it wasn’t a Deity, he should still have been here. What’s happening clearly wasn’t normal.

It really didn’t make any sense that he hadn’t shown up, or even left some kind of warning in advance. In all honesty, I was surprised that he would have even let something like this happen.

Unless this was something that was ‘supposed’ to happen…

I quickly looked back over the panel as I tried to shake off that awful feeling, but as I did, I saw something quite alarming. There was an area deep into the forest where the mana concentration was in a constant state of flux, going up and down without reason. Yet somehow, that wasn’t the strangest thing about it; even though the specific area’s mana concentration was all over the place, it had no effect on the areas around it.

Sister seemed to notice this at the same moment I did.

“I-I-” She jumped up, “I’ll go down there. I-I’ll do something.”

…

What?

It took me a moment to fully process what Sister had just said. Yet in that short time, she managed to put on those clawed gloves I thought she had retired years ago and was getting ready to descend.

“No! No matter what, that isn’t an option,” I grabbed onto her wrist to stop her, “You know that we can’t just descend like that.”

“B-but what else am I supposed to do?!” Sister shouted back.

“I don’t know!” I accidentally shouted back, “That’s what we were trying to figure out.”

“But what if it is another Deity?” Sister continued to push back, “Then we have to do something. W-we have to.”

“That…” In truth, there wasn’t anything I could say to dispute her, “We’re not allowed to… not until we know beyond any doubt that another deity is involved.”

“…”

That seemed to finally slow her down.

“Let’s just think this through properly, alright,” I tried to guide her back to our seats, “I’m sure we can come up with another solution.”

“No,” She said as she wrenched her wrist free, “If it was a problem for me to descend J-John would be here to stop me. B-but he’s not!”

…

Why… isn’t he here?

Was our last meeting supposed to be our warning?

But he didn’t say anything about this…

He wouldn’t have left us in the dark if something this big was about to happen.

“… I don’t know why he isn’t here,” I eventually admitted, “… but I still don’t think descending is the right answer. What if you end up getting sealed away because of it?”

Just putting that thought into her mind was enough to stop her, not that I could blame her.

…

“But I-I have to do something…”

“And I agree. So let’s figure out exactly what we can do without descending,” I suggested again.

“…” She didn’t say anything, instead finally coming and sitting back down with me.

We then went through a number of different options, coming up with any way we could influence what was happening down below.

Unfortunately, none of our ideas were satisfactory.

One of the first ideas was to bestow a blessing onto someone nearby, but there was just no guarantee that it would solve anything, even if we somehow decided on a person who had the opportunity to have a significant impact. That wasn’t even taking into account that the blessings we could give out likely weren’t suited to the situation at hand.

Another idea we had was to somehow send an item to the little kitsune but it had a similar problem. We still didn’t know exactly what was at the root of the current situation, so deciding on a single item from the divine domain was next to impossible. Well, that was all assuming that we would have even been able to get away with placing the item in the mortal domain.

…

It really seemed like we were being forced into a position of either doing nothing or risking breaking the rules.

“Is there someone else we can send instead?” Sister suddenly asked.

“That… isn’t a bad idea.”

I immediately started trying to come up with a list of names.

The first to come to mind were the Emissaries; it was largely their job to interfere with the mortal domain where we couldn’t. However, the only Emissaries from either me or Sister on the island were still based in Casgolau, much too far to be able to do anything at that moment… however, if this situation continued on for a number of weeks, they may have still be the best option… even if it would be better for it not to come to that.

It wasn’t even worth considering the option of having another Deity descend in our place… but there was at least one other option that showed some promise: spirits.

The only problem was, going by what we could see on the screen, sending any number of common or adept spirits would do next to nothing, especially considering the attributes of the spirits we had at our disposal. If anything was going to be solved, they would need to be a spirit of at least the elder level… but that wasn’t something we could orchestrate on such short notice… at least from my position, but…

“Sister, are there any spirits you could ask to assist the little kitsune?” I asked, “I know the Dark Spirit King is probably busy, but what about the others? Even if they could just spare an Elder or two, it would be better than nothing.”

She was immediately lost in thought, likely trying to figure out who might be available.

“I… I can ask Rya,” She eventually said.

“The Spirit King of Dreams? What would they-?” I stopped myself before asking my question.

A Spirit King was still a Spirit King at the end of the day, they were by far the best option we had at our disposal… even if they were far from the ideal choice.

“Ask her,” I said, “I’ll tell the little kitsune what’s going to happen. Hopefully it will help calm her mind, even if just a little.”

“Y-Yes!” Sister shouted, before running off.

This has to be enough. Just for now.

I picked up the pendant, and prepared myself to send the message.