Tamamo-no-Mae / The Killing Stone (玉藻前／殺生石)

In the final years of the Heian era, a court lady appeared without warning in the palace of Retired Emperor Toba. Her name was Tamamo-no-Mae. Her beauty was like moonlight on still water, and when questioned on any field of learning she answered without the slightest hesitation. People whispered that she must be a celestial being reborn into flesh — yet her loveliness seemed to cast one shadow too many.

Before long the Retired Emperor was consumed by a listlessness he could not explain, and day after day he could not rise from his bed. The physicians of the Imperial Medical Office could only tilt their heads in bewilderment. It was the onmyoji Abe Yasunari whose arts finally brought the truth to light. The moment he intoned his incantations, nine tails seeped into view from the hem of Tamamo-no-Mae's robes like ink spreading through silk — and then the fox dissolved into the darkness of the night, leaving behind nothing but the stale perfume of malevolence.

The nine-tailed fox fled to the Nasuno plain, wielding mist and thunder to confound the armies sent to destroy her. Yet fate cannot be overturned. The arrows of Miura-no-suke and Kazusa-no-suke found their mark, and at last the fox fell upon the soil of Nasu. But her body did not rot — it transformed into stone, and breathed poison upon all who drew near. This is the Killing Stone.

According to legend, Tamamo-no-Mae was not the first vessel for this nine-tailed soul. In the distant age of the Shang dynasty it is said to have lived as Daji; in the time of the Zhou, as Bao Si; in the land of Tianzhu, as the consort of King Banzoku — time and again it drew close to sovereign power, and time and again it brought kingdoms to ruin. There are those who say the nine tails mark the nine ages of sin the creature has carved into the world.

The Killing Stone of Nasu was later shattered by the monk Gennō, and its fragments are said to have scattered to every corner of the land. The stone was broken, but the poison only spread. The rumor still drifts through the winds of Nasu, and on nights when the mist runs thick, it is said that from deep within the moorland one can sense the slow, unmistakable stirring of nine tails.