Dragons of Yokai - Yokai Portal

Yokai Portal — Six descendants answer

The reunion gathers the Jade Rabbit, Dragon, Hound, Monkey, Rooster and Mouse descendants to rescue Miko. Only six could arrive quickly; Miko herself is the Jade Serpent descendant, while the Ox and Ram families are reported dead. Chen presses Baoyu to explain those losses. Baoyu says he is still searching for survivors and begins denying imperial responsibility before Yiren stops the argument. His later account places the attacks during Daisho's reign but identifies no assailants. The conspiracy remains a rumor around an unresolved loss.

Yiren revises the earlier twelve-person plan. Six descendants, the Hanzamune Blade and the shrine's mirror should be enough to make a safe connection, he says, because the artifacts contain sacred metal. He promises protection while he is with the party, then prepares to scout ahead with some of the descendants. This is his proposed solution to their incomplete gathering, not proof that any group of six could safely enter the Realm.

First, the Hero questions Chen about Koschei, carefully repeating her actual hypothetical claim of Shadowscythe allegiance. Chen rejects it as an attempt to unsettle them, then makes a new claim of his own: the Empire was not going to invade this early, and had considered the Isles or Sandsea now that the Alliance was over. The Hero has heard nothing of this from Gravelyn and wants her explanation. Baoyu condemns Chen's wish to see his home destroyed, while Chen resents the service he felt compelled to give it.

The bitter exchange turns briefly absurd when Baoyu says Chen is about sixteen and Chen protests that he turns seventeen next month. Yiren urges the Hero to trust Gravelyn enough to let her speak for herself; Koschei may be weakening them through discord. Chen's account does not establish that she ordered Koschei's attack. Their immediate task is still to cross into a shifting Realm where both the Empress and the puppet-maker remain.

Yokai Portal — A chain of guides

Tense Reunion asks the Hero to speak with Li, Kana and Chen before following the scouting party. Li is delighted to meet the subject of his articles and complains that fearmongering about Doom, Shadows and Evil Elves makes reliable news difficult to hear. Kana introduces herself as the doctor commissioned to work in Seabase Undine's Medical Division. She says the base is acting independently until Victoria explains herself, allowing her to leave and help Miko. These conversations bring Greenguard's unsettled politics into the family rescue without resolving them.

Baoyu stays by the mirror while Haruki and Yue form checkpoints deeper inside. They need to remain within sight because the Realm can shift. Kimon clears fifteen Oni spirits, described as the recently slain invaders beginning to manifest again. Haruki says their lingering grudges survive for now, although their identities will eventually dissolve and be reborn as something else. His own partial Oni ancestry leaves him unsure what will happen to him after death.

Yue believes her inherited magic is strong enough to keep her from dissolving here, as Yiren told her. He has also shown her how to cut Koschei's red strings with magic; ordinary scissors crumpled when she tried them. The cut strings scattered through the landscape lead Yiren to suspect a chase and a powerful defender helping Miko. They are signs of a struggle, rather than a sighting of the Empress herself.

The Hero's dragon nature has meanwhile become a family confidence. Haruki and Yue promise not to spread what Baoyu told them. Yue remembers the old prophecy around the defeat of Chaos Lord Kitsune and jokes about making a giant kimono for the Hero. Yiren acknowledges that they both have secrets and promises a fuller explanation of himself after Miko is safe. His casual talk of ordering renovations to a dragon temple at home supplies another hint, but no explicit identity.

Yokai Portal — Before the Princess was born

Shrine of Love reveals a newly formed copy of Mikoto Shrine and two shades reenacting Daisho's proposal to Yuhuan. Miko could not have witnessed a scene from before her birth. Haruki therefore wonders whether the Realm is reading history in her blood, extending beyond personal memory. The place's response is clear; his explanation for it remains a hypothesis.

Prince Daisho asks Yuhuan to leave the shrine for Akiba and share a life of service to the Isles with him. He promises to protect her dangerous lineage from Kitsune's discovery, while recognizing her freedom to stay. Yuhuan trusts him with her life and asks the same trust in return. If Kitsune learns her origins, she hopes they can persuade him that the world beyond Yokai contains more than evil. The scene joins a declaration of love to a risk neither of them can simply dismiss.

The way onward requires twenty-one Kitsune Flames in Hoshi no Tama. The fox spirits are more cunning than the Oni and may possess the travelers; the task is to ward them off. Haruki explains signs hunters use to recognize possession and the difficulty posed by foxes disguised as brides during sunshowers. The rescue continues through living folklore, even as the Realm presents the family history that brought Miko here.

Yokai Portal — A childhood kept indoors

Childish Nostalgia brings Yue to shades of herself and Baoyu trying to lure Miko outside to swim. The purified river is temporarily safe from Kappa, but Miko has studied every day for months. The cousins worry about distracting the princess and exposing their family relationship. Young Baoyu warns that Kitsune may be coming and tells Yue to hide. Yue's later recognition places Miko's relentless work even before she turned ten; it does not supply an age for Yue.

Simple Wishes moves inside an Akiba house whose interior resembles a palace room. The Hero is asked to examine the letter and shades and collect twenty-one Quicksilver Venom from the silver snakes. Yue identifies the serpents as protective Shikigami Miko could summon, then speculates that she abandoned those studies to avoid Kitsune's suspicion. Yuhuan, tired from purifying a river and already called toward another shrine, praises the girl's hard work and compares her summons to Prince Jiang's.

Young Miko begs her mother to rest. She promises to study enough to let both parents work less, so they can travel together through the Isles and perhaps beyond. She immediately withdraws that last wish because Kitsune would forbid travel beyond the Isles and would never accept the family if he learned their origins. Her effort to protect her parents is already turning love into another demand she makes on herself.

Yuhuan's letter to the absent Daisho gives the worry a private voice. After her collapse, Miko organized warriors, healers and the court with composure, then broke down in her mother's arms. Yuhuan cannot justify overwork when her daughter might imitate it. Miko forgets meals, refuses play and carries the future throne, her people's safety and the danger of her ancestry through all her waking hours. Her mother wants a home that is not a prison.

The same letter preserves Kitsune's concern beside the family's fear of him. He visited the ill Yuhuan, marveled at Miko's self-taught silver serpents and reached toward the girl. Yuhuan prepared to fight, expecting discovery, but he only gave Miko a paper talisman to reward her studies. She could not take it away. After he left, Miko's smile faded: both knew that the affection they had just received depended on keeping their lineage hidden.

Yuhuan writes that Daisho is on a diplomatic tour and will return while she is away serving the Asahina household's shrine. She promises to try to rest, yet more duties already separate them. She wants their heritage to give Miko's life color rather than weariness and shame, and asks how they can make time for their daughter and lift the burden of secrecy. The letter ends with determination to free Ai, without claiming that its hoped-for remedy was achieved.

Yokai Portal — The wish her parents left

Left Behind sends the Hero toward Yiren's cliffside position, clearing puppeted dragonlings for seventy-five Baby Dragon Teeth. Yue is distressed by the young creatures and wonders whether Koschei harmed them or found them already injured. The source does not settle that question. The later request to remove Koschei's red strings from the Dragonlings links them to her control without explaining their earlier injuries.

Our Love presents the last family shades, based on Yuhuan's final moments. She wants Daisho and Ai to live until they are old, grieving that she will not see it. She knows how readily her daughter sacrifices happiness for others and asks Daisho not to let the Isles become a prison. Miko's dearest wish was a life with her family and the freedom to see beyond Yokai's shores.

Daisho answers his failed promise of protection with another vow. He will face Kitsune's anger rather than let the Isles imprison their child, and asks Yuhuan to carry his heart into the next life until they meet again. Miko's shade cries silently and hides her tears, unwilling to add her sorrow to the mourning of her people and father. The forgotten wish her parents wanted to grant survives beneath that self-restraint.

Yiren needs a moment before these parting words. The grieving child reminds him of his own children and pain he failed to ease long ago. He later attributes Yuhuan's death to exhaustion and admires Daisho's willingness to risk his life against Kitsune's wishes. He sees Miko as worthy of both her legacies but burdened by them, and values the friendship supporting her. The admissions deepen the mystery of his own family without yet identifying him.

Yokai Portal — The cave and the corrupted protector

After the dragonlings are thinned, Yiren senses someone behind a boulder. Amano Iwato requires fifteen Fox Soul Pearls, fifteen Seeded Dragon Hearts and removal of the obstruction. He concludes that its occupant kept it sealed against the danger outside, and believes Miko is hiding there. The cave has become a shelter in a Realm they had feared would dissolve her identity.

A familiar fox shade menaces the woman within. In Corrupted Protector, Yiren joins the Hero against Kitsune's puppet, controlled by Koschei's red strings. The task requires its destruction, but the apparent reunion is interrupted: the figure resembling Miko has different eyes and clothes. Yiren stops the Hero from approaching until they understand who is present.

The Great Yokai Spirit speaks through the changed form. She says the enemy was Kitsune's remaining essence, not yet fully dissolved in the Realm, seized by Koschei and sent after Miko. The Spirit arrived to protect the Empress, and Miko allowed part of that divine being to fuse with her soul. It prevented Koschei from completely conquering the Realm. They sheltered here, but the Kitsune puppet followed.

Yokai Portal — Ai No Mikoto

The speaker confirms that she is the Great Yokai Spirit, creator of the Isles and their life. She once blessed Seiwa's bloodline and now greets the Hero who laid Kitsune to rest. She insists that she is not trampling Miko's soul: for now, they are as one, a form that may be called Ai No Mikoto. The rescue has found the Empress, but not restored her separate life. Her altered appearance is the sign of a consensual joining made under attack.

Koschei has taken the rest of the Spirit's being and is adding to her power as she moves through the Realm. Ai No Mikoto says defeating her will allow a safe separation. There is a limit to waiting: too long together will cause one personality to be absorbed by the other. No exact duration is given, and neither the victory nor the separation has yet occurred.

Koschei is searching for the Hero because she regards them as kin. The Hero rejects an actual family relationship, while Yiren deflects the explanation with extravagant praise for a dragon friend who does not eat people. He remains a companion with secrets of his own. Ai No Mikoto's later greeting recalls Miko and an earlier Great Dragon visitor described as rejected by Lady Terrane; the rescuing party arrives after them. She envies the Hero's ability to live among mortals and be accepted as one of their own.

Outside the cave's immediate danger, the family prepares to keep helping. Baoyu says the Jade Tiger and Horse descendants should soon arrive. Haruki remembers Yuhuan as the shrine's youngest Head Priestess, an accomplished onmyoji and Yokai hunter, and hopes Miko can finally rest after so many crises. Yue is relieved that the Great Spirit protected Ai; she had privately feared the story of Wuji's acceptance might only have been told to encourage worship. Relief strengthens their commitment, but does not finish the rescue.

Yokai Portal — The Great Dragon of Nature

A familiar voice supplies the history Yiren asks gods and ancients to state plainly. The speaker calls itself a Shikigami made by the Great Yokai Spirit from remnants of an old life, charged with defending the Isles and their ruler. It appears as a faceless fox flame and mutters its hatred of dragons. It says Koschei's kind invaded long ago to force worship of the Elemental Avatars, and that divine protection helped the Yokai repel them. It does not give its old name.

The warning names Koschei as the youngest of the Great Dragons, comparable in rank to Akriloth. Ai No Mikoto then calls her GenoKratos' eldest child and the Great Dragon of Nature. These are different relationships: youngest among the Great Dragons, eldest child of GenoKratos. The Spirit explains the principle she embodies through death nourishing soil and enabling new life. That account places the corpse-puppets and wars inside a larger elemental conflict without resolving Koschei's full purpose.

The optional Strings of Fate request follows Corrupted Protector. Ai No Mikoto asks for peaceful passage for the Realm's inhabitants through fifteen Kitsune Spirit Incense, fifteen Draconic Red Strings and one of Lord Kitsune's Red Strings. Its completion explains the strings as organic, like veins and arteries extending victims into Koschei, then proposes that she may feed through them as fungi feed on decay. The feeding mechanism remains a suggestion in that account. The captured request is non-once, separate from the ten once-only rescue quests, without an observed reset or unlimited availability.

Yiren offers calm and a promise of tea when the struggle is over, while Baoyu and the others stand ready to support Miko and the Hero. The task ahead has sharpened: confront a Great Dragon, recover what she took from the Spirit and separate the joined personalities before their identities cannot be preserved. Miko's safe return and Yiren's promised explanation of himself remain ahead as the search becomes a direct expedition through the Yokai Realm.