This is a picture I requested from https://dailyarturiartfgo.tumblr.com
They’re awesome.
Two Judges of the Dead. Shiki Eiki is the Yama for Gensokyo; a small “magic land” where things that are no longer believed in the real world go. (Sorta like the Reverse Side of the World in FGO, but smaller scale.) In terms of Celestial Bureaucracy; she’s technically equal in rank to King Yama (aka The Enma) but a separate, smaller district with Gensokyo treated as a separate plane from Earth. Absolute Law over the dead is unforgiving; so she tries to nag the living into bettering themselves.
Beni-Enma is a lesser Judge. In life on Earth she was abused but virtuous; so when she died King Yama (aka The Enma) and his wife adopted her. Over the millennia in Buddhist Hell she was a guard for a while, and then worked up the ranks to become a lesser judge herself. She was the sparrow in Shita-kiri Suzume who rewarded the old man who treated her well; but punished the old woman who cut out her tongue (she uses magic ventriloquism to talk anyways) Like Shiki Eiki; she has her own way to make people better before they die; her cooking classes which are analogous to Buddhist Hell itself; horrific but it WILL purify and improve her students after a very long but technically not eternal period of time.
My headcanon. (run away!)
I see Beni-Enma as the “Princess” of King Yama’s hell. She earned being a lesser Judge; make no mistake. She served as a guard. She followed and dictated Hell’s Law faithfully. But when she was a guard; there were always 50 other veteran soldiers who happened to be in the same contingent. Her workload as a Judge was never overwhelming; and she tends to get easy open-and-shut cases as opposed to murky situations where one feels bad for condemning someone to punishment. She probably won’t ever advance in authority for being a softy, but she does not abuse the authority she does have.
To give some degree of separation to avoid obvious nepotism; King Yama has requested that Shiki Eiki oversee any required administration. In fact Shiki Eiki dotes on Beni-Enma in the workplace far more than The Enma ever would.
