The well water was every bit as cold as it had looked from above, Kantarou thought dazedly as he watched streamers of bubbles foam up around him. They looked more green than white in the dark water, ghostly against the mossy stone walls surrounding him as he started to move his stunned limbs, thrashing towards the surface. The well was deeper than he had thought, and the surface looked like a small round mirror far above his head.
His body didn't really want to obey him, his arms and legs refusing to work in coordinated motions as he struggled to push himself upwards. He wasn't afraid, at least not just yet, although he wasn't a strong swimmer. He was happy that he had hit the water cleanly, and not the sides of the well first. It had been a long fall, and getting back to the surface would have been even more difficult with broken limbs.
His thick winter over robe billowed around his body and weighed him down more, making his arms and legs feel like blocks of granite in the water. The robe seemed to wrap itself around him the more he floundered, and he felt like he was being slowly dragged towards the darkness that hid the bottom of the well from view. He strained his muscles, flailing uselessly for a moment before realizing that he wasn't moving any faster towards the surface as the clinging garment resisted his efforts.
He didn't want to waste any of his air, but he was forced to finally wrestle the bulky robe off of his arms and release it. With regret, he watched it slowly drift downwards. It looked almost alive as it moved, the bright red of the cloth making it a bloody stain in the murky water.
He wanted to mourn one of his favorite robes, but now wasn't the time. His chest was already starting to feel a burning ache as his air disappeared, and he wished that he could tell his lungs not to be so greedy in an emergency. But it wasn't the only thing worrying him, although it was a big enough issue on its own.
The water literally was freezing, and he was already beginning to have trouble feeling his body properly. A heavy lassitude crept over him, slowing him down more even as his lungs cried out for air. Where was Haruka? It seemed like he had been underwater for hours, fighting to swim upwards as the circle overhead that marked the precious boundary to air grew no closer.
He gritted his teeth in frustration and stroked clumsily to the side of the well. From there he managed to push his legs against it for an extra boost towards the surface. The walls were furry with moss and his feet didn't allow him to gain much purchase, but it was enough to finally give him a little bit of momentum. As he floated up off the wall, he moved his arms and legs furiously, putting all of his remaining energy into a last-ditch effort to reach that beckoning circle of light.
His chest now felt like a hand was crushing it in a merciless iron fist, and as he neared the surface the last of his air unwillingly released from his mouth into a spiral of desperate bubbles that danced mockingly above him. And he was so very close. His body started to tell him to just let go, to embrace the drowsiness that sucked at him and wanted to pull him back down into the grey-green water and hold him there.
But his mind screamed at him to keep going, to just keep swimming, it's so close, and for a few seconds he balanced between the urgings of his body and brain, wavering….and then he suddenly felt a hot surge of triumph break through the hold the icy water was forcing onto him as his fingers finally flailed out of the water and hit the slippery stones at the water's edge.
He gave a last weak kick with his legs and his head finally broke the dark surface, his hair streaming across his face. He reflexively sucked in a great gasping breath of cold air, and then coughed as his lungs protested the sudden change, sending his nose and mouth back into the water as he slipped down a little.
He kicked slowly again, pushing himself up again and over to the side of the well as he tried to convince his rebellious body to take slower, calming breaths. His hands reached out and touched the stones making up the walls, feeling for a handhold, anything he could get a grip on. A fine layer of moss carpeted the stones around the waterline, painting them dark green and slick. His hands slipped and scrabbled uselessly across them as he tried to find a way to pull himself up.
He made his way around the entire perimeter of his tiny aquatic prison, and then a chill shuddered through his body, making the water ripple around him as he realized that there was nothing to hold onto. There was no way to keep himself above the water once he grew tired. Or if something tried to pull him down. That particular thought brought another involuntary shudder through his spine, and he angrily shook it off, refusing to give up that easily.
He leaned back, allowing his hair to float back into the water as he looked upwards at the well's mouth. It looked impossibly far away, and the rope tied around the well-shaft was looped conscientiously around itself so that it didn't tangle or get fouled in the water. There wouldn't be any exit from climbing or scaling his way out, then. At this point it seemed that his only means of escaping the well really was Haruka.
If that was his only option…then he needed to work on it. He prayed that he wouldn't sink or swallow more water and slowly floated himself a little more onto his back and then tried shouting as loudly as he could.
"Haruka! I need help….hey, Haruka! Haruuu-kaaa!"
His voice was hoarse and not nearly as loud as he wanted it to be, and it seemed to catch in the throat of the well, muffling it from the outside. He was thankful that at least with Haruka's keen ears, if he was anywhere remotely close by he should have heard it. There was nothing else he could do at the moment except work on keeping himself afloat and to wait…and dwell how he had got gotten himself into this particular mess in the first place.
Not for the first time, Kantarou regretted his own overdeveloped sense of curiosity. The owner of the house that they had found themselves in hadn't said anything about a well on the property. That omission had been all it had taken for him to immediately want to explore the crumbling structure once he had spotted it lurking behind the manor and glassed in greenhouses.
It was cold outside, and the early winter air had had a definite bite to it today. Haruka could be surprisingly catlike in his dislike of the cold and wet, and had very firmly (and vocally) decided to wait in the house if Kantarou really needed to go and satisfy his curiosity that badly being heading home.
Normally he would have been forced to come along anyway, but Kantarou had been in a more thoughtful mood than usual and didn't feel like jeopardizing his ride home over teasing Haruka. It had been hard enough getting the tengu to leave the comfort of his futon just to fly them there in the first place.
Instead Kantarou had wandered off by himself to take a look at the fascinating structure that looked so much older than the house, and then he naturally had to lean over the edge to see how deep it was. There were several interesting well legends he had already researched involving youkai or spirits. He half-hoped to find something in or about this one, perhaps some sordid history buried in the depths of the cloudy water he looked down into. Maybe he would get enough information to write up an extra story for Reiko while he was at it.
He didn't know exactly what had happened next, but it had felt like something from inside of the well had snatched up and caught on the front of his robes while he was daydreaming about extra income. Then he had immediately been yanked abruptly downwards with a single violent tug. It had taken him by surprise, so much so that he couldn't find his voice to shout until after the frigid water had already closed over his head and pulled him down.
It had been a long time since he had been caught off-guard like this, and it hadn't ended well that time either. His scar itself was a souvenir from being too careless when dealing with unknown youkai, although surprisingly it hadn't given him any warning this time, which was his only excuse for not being more alert around the well. Not a good enough reason for an exorcist, he realized. He relied on it a little too much as a barometer for predicting the presence of negative energy. Small wonder Haruka and Youko always harped on him to be more cautious when dealing with the unknown.
And so he had been stupid and had again ended up like this, stuck in another mess of his own making. He tried to keep his limbs moving slowly as he floated on his back in the murky well and hoped that Haruka would hurry up. He tried not to think about what was very likely hiding in the water with him. If whatever had pulled him in hadn't drowned him yet, he didn't want to invite its attention by disturbing it. Heck, for the moment he didn't really want toeven think about what could be lurking below him while his feet dangled helplessly in the water.
His body shivered hard again, and the water quivered and sent tiny wavelets against the walls as he shook. He couldn't control the tremors, and he knew that it wasn't a promising sign. He couldn't keep himself moving and above the water for much longer-his muscles were already rebelling against him. He needed to get out, and soon. Drowning in a well while his ogre-eating tengu relaxed inside with a cup of hot tea was not really one of the ways he had expected to die. It seemed so…anticlimactic.
And then his scar suddenly came to searing life, making him flail out briefly in pained surprise. It was enough to send him under the water again as his limbs thrashed in different directions. His eyes were still open, and as he automatically looked down into the gloom he saw a wispy swirl of white coalesce out of the darkness shrouding the bottom and coil towards him. It reminded him a little of the mist he had sometimes seen crawl over graveyards, pale and somehow threatening. It wasn't something he was happy to see underwater, much less approaching him.
He quickly pulled his head back out of the water, gasping for breath and with a renewed sense of urgency, and slapped his open palms against the slick stones. He drummed on them, and called out again for Haruka, every cell in his body temporarily on alert and sending danger signals to his brain. Come on, come on….!
He didn't even feel it, his hands were so numb from the cold, but a flash of red shining on the left one caught his attention and he hesitated a minute, stopping and turning the palm towards his face. A thin trickle of blood traced its way across his hand and slid down his wrist from a narrow slash at the base of his thumb.
Huh…I didn't think there was anything there to catch myself on, he thought to himself as he watched his blood glisten in the dim light. Another spasm of shivering wracked him, and a few droplets hesitated on the bend of his wrist before dropping down to sink into the water as his muscles tensed and trembled.
That can't be good either, if there really is something in here with me. Blood tends to attract a hell of a lot more than it repels when it comes to this sort of thing….hopefully if there is something bad in here…well..I can hopefully hold it up until Haruka shows up. Water is not my strong suit.
He pointedly refused to allow the sneaky thought that Haruka might not show up in time into the front of his mind. Instead he awkwardly bent his arm and used his injured hand to fish inside of the top of his under robe for the cool comfort of the prayer beads he always kept close to him. He felt a little better with the hard knobs of the beads wrapped around his wrist and hand, and before he could lose his nerve and anymore of his muscle control, he took a deep breath and ducked his head back under the water.
And very quickly wished that he hadn't. The ghostly threads of water-mist he had seen earlier were most definitely closer now, squirming and coiling and coalescing into a milky solidity as they climbed. He drew his still bleeding hand out of his robes and allowed himself to hang in the water for a moment, focusing downward. His blood looked more green than red under the surface, he noted absently as it clouded around his hand and misted downwards towards the white. Really, now would be a fantastic time for Haruka to show up.
As he watched, the wraithlike white mist suddenly froze, forming an opaque layer between him and the depths of the well, a few tendrils twitching and curling upwards. He held his breath, not wanting to take his eyes off of…whatever it was. He had never heard of a particular youkai like this, but there could be several other possibilities at this point, not excluding spirits or even water gods. He still couldn't be sure that it was a malevolent force at this point, after all. He tried to be optimistic in general.
He noticed that he could actually make out the point where his blood made contact with it, mixing through the misty layer and causing faint swirls that settled back before disappearing from sight. He started to wonder if it would have any kind of reaction before a sudden violent explosion of white shuddered through the entire water column, reverberating through the stones of the well, and sending a frenzy of boiling white up towards him much faster than he would have liked. Not that he would have liked it regardless, but it didn't help that as he looked there seemed to be countless hands rearing up out of it, fingers clawed and twisting towards him, melting and re-forming in the thickening…something. It looked uncomfortably solid as it reached towards him. He lifted his head and gulped a last frantic breath of fetid air, and then forced himself back under, half floating on his belly with his arms by his sides. He tried to ignore another bout of shivering as his muscles locked and cramped, and readied himself (as best he could underwater) for a fight.
The wall of white writhed upwards, reaching for him, and he could sense its eagerness now. Definitely malevolent intent. His scar throbbed again, hard and deep and agonizing in the cold surrounding him, and he defiantly pushed his bleeding hand down in the water, palm open and facing the milky mass rushing at him, and he focused for a moment. His spiritual power flared out from the beads wrapped around his palm, golden-green in the dark water, and cast a bright sphere of light around his body. The whiteness hesitated, pulsing softly, and sending more spiky little rills of pain through his scar as it did so.
He felt a brief thrill of triumph that quickly faded as another spasm sent his muscles clenching against each other, impossible to ignore. Even if his power could hold back this thing indefinitely, his body was going to give out soon. But still…it wasn't really in his nature to give up in a fight. If he went down, he'd at least go out fighting. He gritted his teeth and tried to push the discomfort away. It would have helped if he only knew what he was facing off against-different methods worked better for different situations.
In his current position, he could only do so much. His scar alone was always a considerable distraction that he had to slide aside each time he encountered demons or evil spirits. Now the familiar pain battled for his attention with the bone-squeezing ache of his muscles contracting from the freezing water, and his lungs were burning again with the need for fresh air. He didn't dare break his concentration to lift his head up of the water, so he was effectively stuck. He'd seen how fast the thing moved. He probably wouldn't even have time to finish taking a breath before it reached it.
And he knew that either way he obviously wouldn't be stuck in this stand-off for long. He was pretty sure that whatever-it-was that was attacking him could stay submerged much longer than he could.
A surge of anger and frustration welled up in him, and the glow of energy around him intensified, illuminating the inside of the well and sending light spilling upwards. The whiteness drew back a little, cautiously, he hoped, as he held on grimly and waited.