Book 1: Chapter 8: Taking out the trash

It's close to the time when the operation was going to start, I was walking through the town in my armour and my Spear that I bought from William. I had to make my way through the back streets to try and not draw any attention to myself. Safe to say these back streets were filthy, there was trash everywhere and the ammonia was strong. I could notice people sleeping in their own little corners, or at least I hope they were sleeping and not dead. Another part of this town I had to clean up, this was when I heard a woman screaming not too far away.

'Another kidnapping?'

I formed my blunt staff and then sped forward at my fastest speed possible. The woman there was surrounded by 2 men and another woman. The men there looked out of it, completely brainwashed. They were also filthy in every way from the clothes they wore looking torn, to their faces which were practically black from the dirt. The woman leading them looked like a noble, Blonde curly hair that reached half way down her back. She looked clean but she was behind her men.

"Not planning to get your own hands dirty then?" When I revealed myself the four of them turned to me, the woman on the ground stared at me with a pleading face asking for help, her hair was long and silky black, face looking marred from being punched, her clothes torn, almost revealing her sizeable chest and her clothes looked common, this was clearly an act out of jealousy. I turned back to the noble woman. "You know, jealousy is unbecoming of a lady." If looks could kill, I would have died instantly from the death glare this noble gave me. She took in a deep breath to calm down and decided to probe me for answers.

"Are you going to help her?"

"I was planning on it, there's no reason I could leave someone so poor defenceless. I'll be taking her straight home as well so she has nothing to fear."

"Pah, taking her straight home? Aren't you the noble one. This wench was far too confident, entrancing all the men around her with those large bags of meat strapped to her chest."

"So that led you to brainwash those men to do your bidding? Who are they anyway?" The Noblewoman was pissed that I was ignoring her and paying more attention to those around her.

"How dare you ignore me. Men change targets, attack him and kill him for his impudent behaviour."

"Please don't kill them, they're my precious brother and father." The damaged woman on the floor pleaded.

Within a flash, I quickly knocked the two men by striking the back of their necks with my staff.

"Thanks for answering my question." I gave the woman on the floor a gentle smile, she looked up at me for a moment before deciding to get up and hide behind me. I then turned to the Noblewoman.

"Now I'll give you what you so desperately want, attention. Who are you and why were you really attacking her?" The Noblewoman was scared now that she was on the back foot.

"I'm Clarice Esta, Winston Jr. Esta's Ex-wife. The girl behind you was a Maid for my late husband. I attacked her out of jealousy because he would give all his other women around him attention but not me."

"Oh, so you're not his wife any more? Did you divorce him?" Her eyes looked fierce and life in them again.

"I did, I took what was owed to me and ran. What's it to you anyway?" I didn't answer that question. Instead I asked a different question.

"You haven't taken the people's owed tax money and ran have you?" I glared at her, her eyes widened in shock.

"You're the new Lord of the town threatening to take his place." I smiled at her. Mentally thanking Ruby for spreading the rumours earlier, I have to say the girl knows how to work quickly.

"Do you need me to repeat my question?" She got down on her knees with her head down.

"I swear to you I haven't taken the town's people's money, I can help you if you spare me. I can help you retrieve the gold and help you give it back to the people. I know where it is." The other lady I hadn't learned the name of yet, had moved to my side.

"I know how to get you inside the mansion as well without being seen, as you heard I was a favourite of the Lord for reasons you can probably imagine why. He told me how to get in and out of the mansion without being seen. If you are able to give the town back what he owes I'll pledge allegiance to you." This seemed awfully suspicious, but I'll go along with it.

"Okay you two. I'll accept your offers, but you will have to overcome your differences and work together in this one, I'll have no fighting or brainwashing." I reached down and healed the two men. I didn't know how to cure brainwashing but I healed the wounds they had on their body. I just had to hope they would come to their senses when they woke up. I picked up the men's bodies afterwards and started following the Servant and Clarice.

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We exited the back Alley's close to the Mansion and I saw Yuna there, pacing back and forth looking impatient.

"I'm sorry I kept you waiting Yuna, I brought some help." I whispered to her. She looked back at me and rolled her eyes when she saw two bodies on my shoulders and I had two women at my sides.

"Is this going to be a habit of yours, being surrounded by women every time you make an entrance?"

"Hey that was uncalled for, The servant here was being attacked and would have died if it weren't for my intervention. The noblewoman here asked me to spare her life for information on the treasury. The servant here knows how to get into the mansion unseen." Yuna narrowed her eyes at the pair of them.

"What of the men that are on your shoulders?"

"The servant's brother and father, she asked me not to kill them. They had been brainwashed to attack her. I knocked them out and then healed them, is there anything you can do to lift the spell?" Yuna walked over, her tails distracted me as she took a look at the pair, she mumbled a chant under her breath and she began to glow. An aura surrounding her and the men on my shoulder. I could feel her magic, it was calm and soothing but it didn't last long. Yuna took a step back and glared at Clarice. Clarice looked frightened and was shaking in her boots.

"You do realise the spell you cast on them was outlawed by the God Tsukuyomi right? What possessed you to break a fundamental law? I decided to cut in there with a simple answer.

"Jealousy, she was jealous of the servant's beauty and wanted attention she couldn't get." Clarice got to her knees and begged for forgiveness. Yuna looked at her disdain, disgusted by her behaviour.

"Using this kind of magic is punishable by death, you better make yourself useful if you want to atone for your crimes." Clarice got back up on her feet, her eyes looked fierce but that was difficult to believe with the tears still streaming down her face.

"Right, let's cut this short, Servant girl, what's your name?" She stood to attention and bowed her head. Not missing the ample eyeful of cleavage I got as she bowed.

"My name is Sarah, what do I call the new Lord?"

"The name is Gaël Brand, show us this secret entrance you were telling me about before." She lowered her head for a moment and then turned to a tall, brick wall around the mansion. She pushed a brick in and as she said, a secret passage opened up with stairs leading down to a dark area. I handed Sarah her brother and father and ordered her to take them somewhere safe. While the rest of us headed inside.

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It didn't take us long to reach the bottom of the steps, the hallway was uneventful, so we passed straight through and reached what looked like a dead end at the end of the hallway, Sarah stepped forward.

"Here, I'll get this door open for you." Clarice was shocked, she didn't know about this hidden passage at all.

It wasn't even a moment later that Sarah pushed a brick in, and the door opened by moving back and then to the right. I simply marvelled at the sight. Though when I opened the door, it was anything but marvellous. What we all saw were people in cages. Men, women and children even.

"We're freeing them right Yuna?" Yuna had a determined look on her face when I turned around to see her. The stench in the air was terrible and I had to cover my nose as I looked around.

"I thought you would never ask, Sarah, do you know where the keys are to these cages?"

"The keys are on Winston Jr's person at all times." As she said this one of the prisoners overheard us, it was an older man, he crawled up to the cage.

"Good sir, have you come to free us?" I greeted him with a grim smile as I got closer to the cage. The man was practically rotting and wasting away.

"It's going to be one of the many things I do here, yes. It appears no one knew you were here from the town, tell me, why were you all thrown in this place and left to rot?"

"Everyone here are still believers of the Goddess Amaterasu, we were kidnapped by people under the Lord's control from brainwashing." I stood and thought for a moment.

'Hey Amat, couldn't I just use my fire power to cut through the bars?'

'With your level of basic fire control you could but where could they go that would be safe for them?'

'Good point but I can't just leave them here. Let's at least ask them.' I turned back to the middle aged man kneeling on the cage.

"Hey, if I were to let you all out here right now, would you all have somewhere to go that would be safe for you all?" The man thought for a moment but he couldn't think of anything. "I see then I'll have to resolve this situation with Winston, grab the keys and come back for you all. I can't just let you all out only to die or get captured again." I turned back to Yuna. "Do you agree with my assessment of the situation?" Yuna nodded in agreement. I turned back to the prisoner and he had a smile on his face. I smiled back to him and as a silent vow to come back and free everyone here.

"Okay let's go everyone, we will come back later to free everyone here." The prisoners took this as their queue to stay quiet as I opened the door and saw dark passage ways everywhere, it felt like a maze.

"Alright Sarah, lead the way." With Sarah's lead, we made our way through the passageways, there were guards sitting and lounging around. Me and Yuna took them out silently as we moved forward. Every now and again, I would look back at Clarice and she looked green in the face. Still thinking about those prisoners probably.

"Get your head in the game Clarice, we will be getting them out of there soon. By the looks of things you didn't know anything about that, considering you didn't even know about the passageway either." I came to a sudden stop. "Although, Sarah, you knew about the passageway and the prisoners. You didn't even look disturbed that they were there. Why did you never go and get help? Or even reach out for the town guardsman?" Sarah looked like I punched her in the gut.

"I had just found out about them yesterday when Winston had introduced me to them. Thinking that he could trust me, he had no idea I would leave today to go get help. I was on my way to the guard house when we met and Clarice tried to have me killed."

"Did you know about the brainwashing incidents and the burning down of Amaterasu's shrine?"

"That I did know about but if I had done anything in rebellion. I would be in their position as well. I had to remain faithful to Winston so I didn't end up like them." I thought for a moment and asked Yuna for her opinion on the matter.

"What do I think?" She looked shocked that I would consider her considering how much I've taken control of the situation. "To be honest with you. I don't trust either Clarice or Sarah and I would implore that you don't trust them either. Keep them with us so we can monitor them and if the situation arises that their loyalty would be checked. Then you will know what to do." A sound argument if I do say so myself.

"Alright, I'll be following your advice then Yuna. Clarice, Sarah." I turned back to them and glared at both of them menacingly. "I'll be keeping an eye on you two, if you want my trust, you're going to have to earn it. Got it?" They both nodded profusely.

"Alright, we're almost out of here, lead the way again Sarah."

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About ten minutes later we reached the exit of the secret passageway. Sarah was going to open the door when I stopped her.

"If you open this door, where is it going to lead us?" I whispered, not knowing what could possibly be on the other side.

"It leads us to the dining room, Winston always dines in his bedroom these days. There could potentially be guards on the other side though." It's a good thing that I asked, I thought to myself.

"You first, if there are guards, distract them for us. We'll knock them out cold."

"Yes sir."

We all hid on the opposite side of the way the door opened and listened out for what was going on. There were two of them, and the one I could see was sat there

"Ms. Sarah, I didn't know you came back from your trip so soon, did you manage to get reinforcements against the heathens that follow Amaterasu?"

"Ahh yes, they're just in the secret passageway that I've just come from right now. They have asked you to go meet them."

The guards turned around and opened the door, saw me there and froze for a second.

"Hey, don't I know you?" He didn't last long as I knocked him out instantly with my staff. He looked like he was seeing stars as he fell unconscious, the other soldier ran over to check him out when I smacked him over the head as well.

"That was easy, I didn't have to kill them." Yuna had a pang of regret in her voice, I think she was feeling useless.

"Need I remind you that we don't know who's being controlled and who's acting of their own free will? As far as I know, the only people who are acting of their own free will are the 4 of us and the prisoners underground." Yuna did nothing but pout, but I ignored it. I have no room for dealing with a battle maniac right now. I had to make sure everyone could be sorted accordingly so the appropriate punishments could then be handed out to those responsible.

"Let's tie them up and then keep moving."

We snuck through the mansion unhindered, besides the guards we saw looked abandoned. The house was collecting dust from and cobwebs from all the neglect. Sarah told us that Winston Jr's bedroom was in a far room on the other side of the compound. We moved through the mansion's right hand side, from the dining room to a whole way leading to the first area of the main house. There were more guards ahead, three of them this time round. This time Yuna tapped me on the back, I gave her a nod and she dove into the shadows and sped up to them. The guards didn't know what hit them. They were just sucked down into the depths of the shadows for a few moments and then were spat back out again, unarmoured, disarmed and most of all out cold.

Yuna came back out again without a scratch on her and nodded to the three of us to follow after her. We caught up to her and carried on up the stairs at the end of the hallway.

'Not too long left to go my dear Descendant, I can feel a large amount of malice coming from just to our right.'

I ran up to where Amaterasu told me she sensed all the malice then signalled to the girls over holding a finger up to my lips, making sure to stay quiet. On the count of three, Yuna and I burst down the door.

"Agh, please don't hurt me!" When me and Yuna burst into the room, I imagined the stereotypical fat man, who blew up on wealth but what we found was a small scrawny man. Scared for his life, he had a moustache, a widow peak hairline, his clothes were dishevelled and he was tied up to the bedpost unable to free himself.

'Are you sure this is him, Amaterasu?'

'Yes I'm most certain.' I had to get a second opinion just in case.

"Sarah, Clarice. Are you sure this is Winston Jr.?" I turned back to them, and the pair of them looked disgusted at the man they once served and was married to.

"Yes this is him. We are most certain of it." Even with their confirmation I still felt uneasy. This felt too easy. I imagined there to be a tonne of elite guards around and him to give me a difficult time. I turned to Winston Jr. "First off, why are you tied up like that? I want an explanation of the events leading up to this moment."

Winston looked like he was about to cry but I slammed my spear I got from William into the wall next to his head. "Start, explaining yourself." I was in no mood and my temper was growing shorter by the minute.

"Alright, alright. I'll tell you, I was forced into all of this by Izanami-no-mikoto. The great Goddess herself ascended from Jigoku, told me to take everything from the town, closed the borders and made the town believe that Amaterasu had betrayed them. I ordered the townspeople to try and destroy Amaterasu's Shrine Temple so she could build one for herself. That way she could make her presence more permanent on this plain. Anyone who still worshipped Amaterasu was thrown into the dungeon underground and left to rot. I've told you everything I know, just please don't kill me."

The four of us looked at him with disgust. I really wanted to end his life there at that moment.

"Where is she now?" I moved the spear closer to his neck.

"I don't know, that's what I want to know as well. She could come up at any moment to claim my life for failing my recent transgressions."

"Yuna, tie him up and then take the key for the dungeon below, Winston, where's the treasury. I want the key to that as well."

"The keys to everything are all in my office next door. They're all on my desk, the key to the desk is on this necklace around my neck." I started walking over to the bed.

'Wait, I don't trust that key around his neck, it's been cursed.' I stopped Yuna from moving over.

"What are you doing? We have to grab it so we can free everyone and this will be over."

"The key is cursed, we're not going to use it and just smash everything open. So whatever you do. Don't touch it. We will just tie him up and take him to the guard house."

"You're going to destroy your own property?" Winston was shocked to hear this statement. "Why do you have that look on your face? You don't deserve to be the Lord of this town." Winston knew this was true. His face fell and looked sullen. I interjected with:

"Your fate is in the hands of your brother William. You can leave the Goddess Izanami to us." Winston nodded his head and like that his fate was sealed.

"Yuna, can you try and get more information out of him like how to undo the spell that he's put on the town? I'm going to free the prisoners." Before she replied, I had left the room, moved next door and kicked the door down. What I saw was too much for my eyes.

The room was filled to the brim with gold.

'Well, it looks like we don't have to worry about money any time soon. We should still have a good chunk of it left to ourselves once we hand all this back to the people. Do you know how many people are in this town Amaterasu?'

'I can only count how many followers I have in this town and including the guards, yourself, your followers and the prisoners down in the dungeon it makes up to about 100 people.'

'We will help those in the dungeon first, help them get home once we lift this spell off the town. For now, let's go down to the dungeon and free them.'

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"Thank you so much, how can we ever repay you?"

"Just carry on your belief in the Goddess Amaterasu is all I ask. I will be refunding this town everything the previous Lord had taken away from you all. I want you all to stay in the mansion for now, until I can get you all home safely. There's currently a spell that's on the town that makes people want to kill followers of Amaterasu. So follow me up to the mansion. I hope the food is still good here and plentiful."

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Meanwhile back with Yuna, Clarice, Sarah and Winston Jr.

"So, how do we release the spell? I'm not currently able to do it as it was never a Tsukuyomi spell in the first place." Yuna was in the middle of interrogation. "Also who in Tsukuyomi's name tied you up to your bed?" Winston didn't say a word, he just looked at Sarah. Yuna followed his gaze to see where he was looking to understand. Sarah then chimed in:

"I used to work for Esta Shrine, my family were shinto priests there until they were killed on Winston's orders. You really didn't think I would just allow myself to be your faithful servant my entire life did you?" Yuna's only reaction was a smirk, Clarice also liked the sound of the way Sarah was speaking at the moment, the girls had a lot more in command than they thought they did. Clarice turned to Sarah to apologise:

"I'm terribly sorry for the way I treated you before. The way I acted was out of line towards you." She bowed deeply to show her remorse.

"It's fine, I imagine the new lord will allow me to continue my duties as a priest at the shrine in this town. I sense a strong divine power emanating from his being." Winston's ears perked up at the sound of this.

"I remembered, to remove the spell from everyone affected is to touch them with a counteracting divine power, Since the spell is from Izanami in the depths of Jigoku, You the fox girl and the man earlier should be able to dispel it with your divine healing." An idea popped into Yuna's head.

"Well in that case, I should be able to touch that key around your neck with my divine abilities."

"I don't know in all honesty." Winston was sweating at this point, he just didn't want to die.

"I guess there is only one way to find out then." She muttered a small chant underneath her breath and coated her arm in a pale blue aura, her eyes glowed silver and she grabbed the key from around his neck, pulling on it, breaking the chain. Yuna looked at the key in her hand, it was emitting a darkness she had never seen before. The smoke was not going away though, it started to reach out to her. Yuna then started hearing a voice in her head.

"Join me, join me and destroy everything." She did not like what she was hearing at all. She tried to throw the key away but it clung onto her. Sarah and Clarice tried crying out to the Kitsune Yuna couldn't hear them.

"Stay away from me! Get everyone far away from me! Run!" With that, Yuna ran out of the room and leapt out of the window, smashing the glass as she ran but collapsed into the courtyard.

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The residents of the town and I had just heard glass smashing as we reached the end of the passageway. I turned around to the residents.

"Everyone, Stay safe, stay out of sight. I'm going to go check what's going on ahead."

I sped forward out of the passage, and looked around. Didn't see anything, I moved into the courtyard and there I saw the malice growing in the middle, the aura was massive. It was pitch black and when I looked a bit harder as I moved closer I thought I saw.

'Tails?'

"Yuna! Yuna, is that you!?" I didn't get a response, instead, she floated in the air. Her face looked to be in pain.

'Amaterasu, quick, what do we do?'

'She must have grabbed ahold of the key, but why? You told her not to touch it.' Yuna's eyes shot open, they were glowing silver, the silver aura was mixed in with the black aura.

"Gaël, run. I tried to grab the key with my divine energy thinking it would be dispelled. I didn't think this would happen!" She cried in pain and terror, her tails were frantically moving about in the air.

'It's clear that she's still trying to fight off my Mother's influence. If my mother takes hold of her, the town will be destroyed and everyone will be killed.' Is it too late to say I jinxed myself. Clearly, this is a mess I'll have to clean up.

'What do we do, it looks like we don't have much time.'

`We need to drive Izanami influence away from her body, You have enough power to do so. You need to coat your entire body with your power and find a way to connect you two together, once you do that. I'll take care of the rest from there.'

'Right!' I started to focus my power when I felt the malice attacking me. It was one of Yuna's tails swiping at me, a crescent black moon shaped power flew towards me. With no time to think I dodged out of the way, flying into a combat roll, I readied my spear.

'It looks like Izanami's not going to make this easy on us. Prepare yourself Gaël, we may need to fight our way out of this one.' I formed my most powerful spear with my magic and held it at the ready. The blades this time, at the end this time were like my Halberd on opposite sides of the spear end and the blade was an extra 2ft long on top of my 7ft staff.

'Any tips and tricks for a Ninja Fox that's clearly more powerful than me Amat?'

'Stick to the basics, coat your weapon and your body in your fire and try not to kill her.' I rolled my eyes at the last tip. Thanking Captain Obvious internally.