But it was her face that really caught my attention. While she was unquestionably beautiful, I couldn’t help but notice what appeared to be a beak on her face. Not complete Howard the Duck style, as it was more subtle and the same shade as her skin, but it certainly was a beak.

  For a long moment, we stood there, staring at each other. However, as she advanced, I realized she wasn’t standing at all. She moved forward until she was at the edge of the pool, and I could see that her hips became scaley, moving down into a fishtail. Was she some sort of mermaid? I had my answer when another tail emerged, then a third, and I could see that they were all part of her.

  This was no mermaid. Not in the traditional sense. Somewhere in my studies, I had come across her, though none of the writing or images even began to represent her like this.

  “Amabie,” I said, recalling the name. Japanese companies had started referencing her during the most recent pandemic, as she was a mythical Japanese spirit that was believed to ward off plagues.

  “You know of me, and yet… you attack.” Her voice was soft, comforting—to hear it was the same sensation as relaxing in the hot spring.

  I shook my head, bowing it in shame. “Truly, I hadn’t meant to harm you. I didn’t even know…” My words stuck in my throat at the realization that, this whole time, I was standing there before her, completely nude. She was bare-chested, making it slightly less awkward, I supposed, but still. I knelt to better hide myself, bowing slightly in the process. “I wasn’t aware of your presence.”

  Or of her being a reality, but I didn’t need to add that part.

  “You found me in this remote location,” she said, pushing herself up on those tails until two transformed into legs, and she was standing over me looking like a completely normal nude woman—aside from the fishtail that emerged from her backside. “And you have powers, so I can assume you’re in the know, in some sort of way. That being the case, how am I supposed to believe that you finding me is pure coincidence?”

  She towered over me, and that I was forced to keep my head bowed or stare straight at her completely smooth pussy. Yes, she had one, and it was very hard not to notice.

  “Not a coincidence,” I countered. “Simply, I had no idea. A friend of mine brought me here and, for whatever reason, didn’t explain what would happen or that I would even find anyone.” Panic flared and I remembered the sword strike. Looking up to check on her, I was caught off guard at what I saw—the wound had now completely healed, only a thin, red scratch remaining.

  The fun bonus of having decided to check on her was that now I was staring straight at her hips and pussy, and it was a pleasant sight.

  She cleared her throat. “You must be wondering, so I’ll tell you. Water helps me heal. Had you cut me when I wasn’t in the water, I might not have survived the blow.”

  I frowned, wanting to point out that a strike across the hip was surely painful, but not likely lethal. Instead, I decided to push myself up to standing, and folded my hands in front of myself to do my best to hide my arousal. She, of course, noticed.

  “No need to be bashful, I am a creature of stunning beauty. You would have to be truly broken to not be aroused in my presence.”

  “Lucky me, I’m not broken,” I replied with a chuckle, then quickly grimaced and met her gaze. “Listen, my friend brought me here, and I imagine for a reason. She had to have known you were here, I guess. Which means… she sees something in you.”

  “And your friend is?”

  I frowned, then shifted uncomfortably and cast a glance at Basty, who stared back with interest.

  “She’s a monster, so I’m not sure I should say her name,” I explained.

  “Then how would I know if I’m supposed to like this friend of yours, or decide to kill you for being associated with him or her?”

  “It’s a her. An older monster, one that has ears and a tail like a cougar, or of a cougar, I guess. And she can shift. She—”

  “Ahlaksiz,” Amabie interrupted, frowning but with a look of curiosity. She glanced around, then raised her voice to say, “Come on out, Ahlaksiz. Show yourself.”

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to—” I started, but was interrupted by the running form of Ahlaksiz. She came to a stop at the base of the tree to catch her breath, ears and tail no longer concealed.

  “You told her it was me?” Ahlaksiz asked, eyeing me.

  I shook my head. “Not by name.”

  “Doesn’t matter. She knows my name.”

  “How…?” I asked.

  “We have a history.” Amabie eyed Ahlaksiz, though the look in her eyes didn’t give anything away.

  It took my mind a second to process that, then to realize that the emotion I was feeling was no longer terror or confusion, but anger.

  “You set me up for an ambush,” I said, glaring at Ahlaksiz. “And what if I’d really lost it and, instead of slicing her hip open, gone for the chest or head?”

  “I have protections,” Amabie countered. “I doubt you could have landed a fatal blow. But I still don’t like it.” She eyed Ahlaksiz as well. “Explain.”

  “I’d rather not…”

  “And yet, I seem to be able to still manipulate your name. At least, when you’re close by. You wouldn’t believe the number of times I cursed it when we were apart, hoping you would somehow taste my wrath. Tell me, were there nights that you’d wake up puking your guts out, or maybe bleeding from the eyeballs?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s too bad.” Amabie glared at her, waiting.

  Finally, Ahlaksiz turned back to me and said, “In part, I wasn’t sure she would be here, but… also had it on good authority that this was a place she might have returned to. We used to spend many evenings relaxing here, shortly after the Great War. I have fond memories of those evenings, and even fonder memories of the good Amabie did for the world.”

  “That was a long time ago. I don’t get invol—”

  “You weren’t involved in recent history?” Ahlaksiz stood tall, clearly feeling strongly about this. “All of Japan called upon you, and here you are.”

  “I’m not saying I did nothing.” Amabie eyed me, eyes moving along my mud-covered body, and she grunted. “Who’s the boy?”

  “Man,” I corrected.

  She scoffed. “Boy, I’ve been on this Earth longer than most anyone I know. Longer than Ahlaksiz here, you can be sure of that. So when I call you boy, you can be sure I mean it.”

  I was about to let it slide, but shook my head. “Say what you want, but I’m a man. I’ve proven that, much more than many men alive.”

  As far as I could tell, she was impressed. Her eyes met mine and she nodded, then turned back to Ahlaksiz. “Who’s the man?”

  “We’re traveling with three others,” Ahlaksiz replied. “He summoned them from the monsterverse.”

  That caused Amabie to blink as she looked at me. Her eyes were curious, her beak seeming to smile, if beaks could smile.

  “What strange times we live in. Is it true what they say, about the new Protector?”

  “From what we’ve heard,” Ahlaksiz replied. “We haven’t met him, yet.”

  “I should like to. My little friends of the oceans tell me he even managed to bring the Big Bag Wolf back to the side of the Myths, and has fought a great war. That he even went up against Ra.”

  I licked my lips, considering what Momotaro had told us about the eye of Ra being used to find this watcher we were after. Could Amabie have known about that, and be mentioning it now as a test of sorts?

  “Why didn’t you get involved?” Ahlaksiz asked.

  Amabie’s eyes fell to the ground and she shook her head. “The world of humans is not for me. I stick to my ways, find solace in the comfort of Mother Nature’s embrace.”

  “Mother Nature being…?” I asked.

  Both looked at me like I was an idiot, but Ahlaksiz then smiled and said, “Actually, once she did take form, but that was before our time.”

  “I meant it simply,” Amabie explained, “as enjoying this Earth and all it has to offer.”

  “Not all. Humans are part of the package.”

  “It was not my fight. In the end, did they need me?”

  Ahlaksiz nodded. “I wasn’t there, either, to be honest. But now? I’m starting to wonder if that was the right call. Ferris has me thinking again. Feeling.”

  “Is that so?” Amabie clicked her beak, turned to me, and put her hands on her hips. After a few seconds of silence, she said, “I have to admit, you put up quite a fight. Not everyone can find me,” she glared at Ahlaksiz, then back to me again, “let alone manage to draw blood.”

  “He didn’t…” Ahlaksiz looked aghast. “I was hoping you would get her attention, maybe find some way to demonstrate your skills so that she could help you reach your potential. First thing you do when meeting a new Myth is to stab her?”

  “I… she…” I clenched my jaw, motioning at Amabie and forgetting to cover myself. “She tried to kill me!”

  “Not exactly,” Amabie countered.

  “Bullshit. You were dragging me down to some swirling vortex, I don’t know what that was, but it didn’t look pleasant.”

  “It’s how I and my sisters travel,” she explained. “I was surprised to find someone here, as it’s protected by enchantments. My instinct was to get you out of here as quickly as possible, before you exposed it to enemy eyes, and to take you to a place where I could properly question you. Find out what you wanted.”

  “Oh.” I scratched my chin, then sheepishly covered my groin again. “Sisters?”

  She cocked her head, then turned back to Ahlaksiz. “You told him nothing about me?”

  “I wanted him going in with a clear head, not intimidated or pre-infatuated.”

  “Very well.” She gave us each a glance, then said, “Fill him in, if you like. I need to get back into the water. All this air is drying me out.”

  She turned, giving me a view of that strange fishtail that emerged from just over her ass. It was almost like a lizard-man’s tail, except it ended in the wavy part of a fish’s and had the colorful koi patterns. As she reached the water, her other legs transformed back into fishtails, so she was once again the three-tailed version of Amabie from the cartoons and Japanese ads… more or less.

  There she submerged herself to chest level, where white scales rippled across her body, up to her chest, and I wondered if that was some form of armor she could activate. When it faded again, she relaxed, waiting.

  “Ah, right,” Ahlaksiz said, clearly caught in the same spell I was, or maybe some old memory the two of them shared. “You might have heard of at least one of her sisters—she goes by Nivian, the Lady of the Lake. Also, in pop culture, the stories refer to her as a little mermaid.”

  “‘The,’” I corrected her, trying to hide my surprise and amazement. “You mean ‘the,’ not ‘a,’ right?”

  “Correct.”

  Taking this in, I had to laugh. “Wait, you mean she’s the same as from the stories of Arthur? That Lady of the Lake?”

  Ahlaksiz nodded. “Your stories have changed up much of the reality, which makes sense. We wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “At times,” Amabie interjected, “some of our kind have even written the stories, to throw humanity off our trail.”

  I was impressed. Amabie was most certainly out of this world, but to think that her sister actually existed and had inspired such stories, was all a bit overwhelming. And the two had a travel system in the water. Very interesting, but how did it help us?

  “Wait,” I said, eyeing Ahlaksiz. I was about to ask if this was connected to our mission in Nikko, but she gave me a subtle shake of her head, so I didn’t continue. If it was, she didn’t want Amabie to know. So instead, I simply said, “Where do we go from here?”

  “We don’t go anywhere,” Amabie cut in. “You will leave now.”

  With that, she vanished, leaving us to share looks of frustration. Whatever Ahlaksiz had hoped to come to pass here clearly hadn’t, and I couldn’t help but feel it was my fault.

  12

  “What happened here?” I asked Ahlaksiz as I finished using the hot water to rinse mud from my body. It was, of course, at that exact moment that the other ladies appeared on the crest of the hill. What a sight that must have been, my body bent at the side of a steaming pool as I washed mud away, naked.

  “I’m sure we’d all like to know the answer to that question,” Kinara said with a giggle.

  “Did we miss something?” Milrae added, wings bursting out and stretching in a way that caused the rising sun to shine through and cast a warm, red glow.

  “I’ll fill you all in on the way to my friend’s house,” Ahlaksiz said. “And as for you,” she glared at me, “we need to step up your game.”

  “Maybe next time tell me we’re in a stadium?” I started dressing, though I was still wet.

  “Deal.”

  I picked up Basty and guided him to my shoulder, then started up toward them. Using the roots and rocks to climb, I paused halfway up to stare at one of the massive roots under my hand. For a moment I considered it, then attempted what I had done before. It moved, shifting to my arm and wrapping slightly like a snake before returning to its spot.

  “Seriously,” Jalee said in awe, “what did we miss?”

  On our way to the car and as Ahlaksiz drove, I filled them in with my part of the story. When it was over, they all turned to her, completely baffled.

  “What the fuck?” Kinara said. “You’re setting him up to get killed, throwing him in like that.”

  What I hadn’t told them about was the way Ahlaksiz and Amabie shared some sort of history. I watched Ahlaksiz, waiting to see if she’d expound on that, but she simply shook her head and said, “If we can get Amabie on our side, that’s a huge plus. In fact, I’ve been thinking more and more we shouldn’t rely on strictly monsters. Any Myths, even Legends, that we can bring to our side—great.”

  “I thought Legends were the bad guys.”

  “Were, and not exactly.” She turned down a dirt road, driving slowly and looking about. “They are the ones who care less about humans, more about their own kind. They were mostly at war with humans, but with Ra’s downfall and what happened with the new Protector, I imagine there are plenty without a place in this world. If we play our cards right, we might just be able to win them over.”

  “Whoa…” I had only just started to come to grips with the idea of summoning monsters and building an army. Actual fairytales as well? This was so out there.

  “Ah, this way.” Ahlaksiz returned her attention to the road as we passed a house on a hill, then found ourselves on a cement road, passing several small houses and a shop with Japanese writing out front. I thought it said something like hospital or pharmacy.

  As she drove and I glanced around, wondering what we were doing in this rural part of Japan, Kinara leaned forward and put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Were you scared?” she asked.

  I shrugged, distracted.

  “I would have been,” Jalee admitted. “Then again, even the slightest contact with water freaks me out. Being pulled under like that? No thank you!”

  “Well, I hope it was worth it,” Milrae said, clear agitation in her voice. They weren’t happy with Ahlaksiz about this, but I had a different perspective.

  “You know, I think it was,” I admitted. “You saw what I did with that root back there? It was so much more, when it mattered. I made a whole tunnel for myself to crawl through. That doesn’t sound like much, but with a simple touch, the roots moved dirt out of the way and created an escape for me. Imagine how else I could use that in the heat of battle? If I hadn’t been put in that situation, I wouldn’t have known, or been able to reach into that place to make it possible.”

  “So you’re okay with Ahlaksiz throwing you to the wolves?”

  “More like the piranhas,” I countered, trying to be funny. Since nobody laughed aside from the half-chuckle from Ahlaksiz, I shook my head. “No, not okay. But also… it worked. So let’s shrug it off as a one-time thing, and see where this takes us?”

  “And this next friend we’re visiting?” Kinara asked.

  Ahlaksiz glanced back, pursed her lips, then pulled the car to a stop. We were near train tracks alongside an open field, another row of buildings along the hill a bit ahead and to the right. She glanced around to likely ensure no cars were coming, then slowly started for those other buildings.

  “It’s been a while,” she said. “Honestly, I wasn’t certain Amabie would be there, but took the gamble. This friend—let’s call her Yuki—she’s no threat. I only know she was in this area lately because she married a human, and he posts on social media about his backyard barbecues.”

  “Oh?” That had my attention, but mostly because a backyard barbecue in Japan sounded heavenly. “How do you know her?”

  “During the years I spent here, I made a few friends. You’ll see—she’s a low-level monster, but tries not to let it show. Was summoned by a Shinto priest, and actually played a large part in getting many people to safety before the bomb hit Nagasaki.”

  All I could think was, Fuck. Anyone who lived here and went by the name Yuki and who had lived through the bombing had to hate Americans. Right? I’d find out soon enough. The house we had stopped at was on the outskirts of the line of buildings I’d noticed when we’d stopped by the tracks. The house was made of dark wood but was surprisingly modern. With a block shape, it had floor-to-ceiling windows and thick beams running vertically and horizontally to emphasize the recessed front walls versus the side walls. I didn’t understand the design. Was it supposed to be art?

  With a glance at the others, I could tell Ahlaksiz was humored by my expression, but the three monsters I’d summoned didn’t know the difference between this and my apartment, or any other house. By comparison, other houses at least had more of what I thought of as a Japanese style, with their roofs of curved tiles and little gardens.