Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach, but all OCs belong to me. That includes Saiu.

DEVIL'S SWAY

Chapter 10

Ichigo braced his hands on his knees and tried not to throw up.

His whole body ached like he had a fever. His lungs hurt from breathing the thick, rough air of Hell. Random bursts of shivering racked his body every few minutes, further exhausting his tired muscles. He had a splitting headache from tightly suppressing his reiatsu for nearly twelve hours, and his nerves were shot from the constant strain of sneaking around in such a lethally dangerous place.

On the bright side, they'd made it through the Eighth Circle alive and undiscovered.

Nozomi sat in the grass beside him, breathing hard with both hands pressed over her eyes. Seiko stood beside her, sharp lines of tension etched in his face. His left arm was wrapped in a makeshift bandage.

The Valley of Death was aptly named. They'd almost died at least nine times. Four from demon attacks Nozomi hadn't seen coming. Two from the nefarious plant life of Hell, including a patch of long grass that tried to tie them down and strangle them. And three from the terrain itself, the worst of which had been a patch of dirt that turned out to be quicksand. Ichigo and Nozomi had to think fast to get Seiko out before he completely sank. Ichigo almost lost Tensa Zangetsu into the bottomless pit of muck by trying to use it as a lever.

They'd had even more problems than that, but those nine stood out the most in his memory. The rest were just a horrible blur of running, panicked shouts, raging animal screams, and a lot of blood. For him, the absolute worst part was his inability to fight. He'd been useless. Aside from punching one demon out cold, he hadn't done a damn thing.

The boundary line of the Ninth Circle was just ahead, the most clearly visible border of them all. Cold black sand disappeared under a plain of sleek, crystalline ice. The lake.

The demon palace was in sight now, rising from the peak of the massive mountain in the center of the sprawling lake. The sun had set an hour before, and the black stone was visible only where it blotted out the glittering red and orange stars.

Ichigo glanced at the multicoloured starlight and shuddered. So wrong.

About half a mile away along the edge of the lake, a bridge of black stone rose in a shallow arch to cross the length of the lake until it met the base of the mountain. This single narrow path was the only way in and out of the demon palace; walking on air was impossible this deep in Hell. According to Nozomi, walking across the frozen lake was impossible. To touch the ice was instant death.

With lethal ice on either side of that footbridge, which didn't even have railings, Ichigo was not looking forward to crossing it. They were taking a short break to get ready for the mad dash across it. Once they got on the bridge, they wouldn't be able to stop for anything.

"Okay," Nozomi finally said, rising to her feet. "I just checked, and there are no demons heading for the bridge right now. This is our best chance."

"They don't have guards?" Ichigo asked suspiciously. What kind of palace didn't have guards?

"They don't need them. Who would enter the home of the demon lords if they weren't welcome?"

Seiko glanced at Ichigo with a wry grin. "How about stupid people like us?"

Nozomi huffed and strode away. Seiko moved after her, and Ichigo put himself last in line. As he watched the two Hunters ahead of him, he considered a few things. When he'd known them outside of Hell, they were both fairly cheerful, light-hearted personalities. In Hell, however, neither of them had laughed even once. Nozomi was cold and distant, and Seiko smiled only when cracking the occasional joke—and most of those leaned more toward sadism than humour. After most of the day there, Ichigo could hardly remember what if felt like to smile, but it seemed that Hell's miasma wasn't affecting only him. Even the damned themselves weren't immune.

In single-file, they approached the bridge at a fast walk. For a long moment, they bunched up in front of the boundary between hard-packed dirt and the glossy black stone of the bridge, unwilling to step into the Ninth Circle. The bridge was only a few feet wide, just enough that Ichigo could have stood side-by-side with Nozomi if he had to. It wasn't wide enough for him to stand beside Seiko.

"Let's go then," Seiko grunted. With a deep breath, he launched himself onto the bridge.

Nozomi sprang after him, and Ichigo pushed himself into motion. His foot came down on stone—and almost flew out from under him. He scrambled for balance, belatedly realizing that the rock was so shiny because it was coated in a layer of crystal-clear ice. He ran after Nozomi, moving as fast as he dared on the slick surface.

The bridge was over a mile long. They loped across it, not quite able to run all out, not daring to stop. Ichigo was relieved that darkness had fallen, or else they would have been horribly visible and exposed on the bridge. The discoloured starlight was enough to see by with the contrast of white ice beneath the black stone bridge.

Five hundred yards to go. Ichigo counted down in his head, concentrating on each perilous step. Three hundred. The black mountain filled his vision, blotting out the sky. Two hundred. He could dimly make out the shape of an archway where the bridge joined the mountain. Almost there!

At one hundred yards away, Seiko stopped.

Nozomi skidded, her arms thrown out in front of her as she slid right into Seiko's back. Ichigo gave up all dignity and dropped onto his butt, gliding at least ten feet like he was on the world's deadliest slide. The moment he stopped moving, he snapped to his feet and crowded up behind Nozomi.

"Damn it!" she hissed. "We took too long."

Halfway between them and the archway stood a dark figure. His hair was flaming red, his eyes glowing even brighter, but those were the only details Ichigo could make out.

"Class 2," Nozomi exclaimed in a whisper. "We'll have to chance it. Let me by you, Seiko-san."

"Nozo—"

"Just do it!"

With an angry shove, she slid around him and strode out in front of her protector. Seiko marched after her, and Ichigo hurried to keep up. The demon waited for them. As they came within a few yards, Ichigo was able to pick out the shadowed features of the demon, the tiny horns that circled his forehead like a fallen halo, and the smirk on his face.

"Demon-sama," Nozomi said breathily, lowering herself in a deep bow. "We have come to see our master, the Warlord."

"The Warlord?" the demon repeated. "Why has he summoned you?"

"I do not know, demon-sama." Her voice took on a pleading note. "But it took us so long to arrive, he'll be furious if we do not attend him immediately. Please—do you know where in the palace he is?"

The demon's lips curled in a sneer. "He is not in the palace any longer. He left well over an hour ago. I imagine he is returning to your headquarters. You should have come sooner."

"I—but he—but—"

"The Warlord has never sent his soldiers here before. Why would he contaminate the palace with scum like you?" The demon's eyes were glowing brighter, and his gaze flicked over Seiko's shoulder as he tried to get a look at Ichigo. "Who—"

"Demon-sama!" Nozomi interrupted in fearful gasp. She threw herself forward, folding into a bow of utter submission at the creature's feet. "Please forgive us! We were only following orders."

"Why would I—what did you say?"

Nozomi mumbled incoherently, her face pressed into her knees. Then she jerked upright so fast Ichigo lurched with surprise—and so did the demon.

A gold chain whipped out from her hands, snapping around the demon's legs in a flash of yellow light. In the same motion, Nozomi threw the other end of the Kidō chain over her shoulder and ducked out of the way.

Seiko caught the other end of the chain and threw his whole weight backward. The demon, tangled in the other end, was yanked right off his feet. He landed on his back in the middle of the bridge.

"Shō!" Nozomi yelled.

The simplest of all Kidō spells caught the demon in the chest just as he shot upright. Horror blanked his face as the simple thrust spell sent him skating sideways across the icy bridge—right off the edge.

He screamed as he went over. For just a second before gravity took over, he scrabbled desperately at the slick edge of stone. Then he dropped with a shriek of terror. Five feet down, he hit the ice—only it suddenly wasn't ice. A huge splash erupted at the point of impact, and white water sprayed high into the air. Instead of splashing outward, the waves of water curled inward like a closing fist and slammed back down, sucking the howling demon deep underwater with them.

A moment later, the lake was still white ice once more.

"Damn," Ichigo said shakily.

"We got lucky," Nozomi said, carefully getting to her feet. "He wasn't expecting an attack, or it never would have worked."

"And if he'd been a demon lord instead of a Class 2, he would have been too strong," Seiko added. "We need to get off this bridge now."

Ichigo stared at the ice—or was it actually water? "Won't he swim back up to the surface?"

Seiko grabbed his arm and dragged him away from the spot where the demon had gone over. "Told you, touching the water is instant death. Nothing that ends up in that lake ever comes out again."

Ichigo shuddered and looked away. Together, they sprinted the last of the bridge and into the archway. The entrance into the mountain was twice Ichigo's height, and the corridor beyond it was polished obsidian, the endless black relieved by small lights spaced along the walls that glowed an eerie blue. Nozomi paused to invoke her Diviner's Sight.

"All clear," she whispered. "I can See a route that might work . . . I think it's a servant's passageway." She blinked her eyes back into focus. "Let's go."

She raced down the dimly lit hall. Ichigo followed on Seiko's heels, his heart pounding in his throat and his stomach trying to crawl into his mouth. Three steps into the mountain, and he'd felt the thick pulse of Hell's taint triple. They ran down the long hall, which gradually curved to one side and rose upward. After nearly twenty minutes, they came out of the corridor and into a blaze of golden light.

A huge entrance hall opened before them, stretching half a football field before ending in a grand staircase that rose out of sight. Several archways branched off either side of the narrow room, the tall doorways dwarfed by even higher ceilings. Silver and gold were inlaid in the floor, walls and ceiling, and elaborate, polished metal stands held glowing balls of golden light.

Ichigo had only a moment to gape at the opulence before Nozomi rushed toward the first archway on their right. Shadows engulfed them immediately, and the hall soon shrank to normal proportions. No more gold and silver extravagance here; the walls weren't even sanded to a smooth finish. Ichigo figured they were in the servants' passageway now.

"This hallway will take us to a different stairway than that big one," Nozomi told them as they ran. "We'll have to go up a ways, then we'll cross an intersection where we can get across to the proper part of these underground passageways—they maze around all through the base of the mountain!"

They reached a set of steep, narrow stairs and started up. Ichigo clutched a stitch in his side, gasping in the thick, somehow empty air. The stairway was claustrophobic and dark, lit by the same dim blue lights as the first corridor. They climbed for what he judged to be nearly half an hour before they reached the intersection of halls.

Nozomi stopped in the middle of the junction to check her Sight, then pointed right. "We need to go down this one, then—"

Her mouth snapped shut and she spun, her eyes wide with horror. Ichigo clutched Tensa Zangetsu in both hands, teeth clenched, and Seiko summoned his Akkihasaiki in a flash of red light.

Voices drifted into the hall, echoing against stone and distorting the words. The echo made it impossible to tell from which branch the voices were coming—the hall they wanted? The one in the opposite direction? Or—

Two demons came into view around a sharp bend in the hallway directly across from them and stopped in their tracks.

For a moment, all five of them were completely still, staring in shock. One of the demons was some kind of servant, ugly and clothed in a simple cotton kimono, with too many horns to count and bulging red eyes.

His master was the opposite of ugly. She was a demoness.

If Ichigo hadn't already met the lady demoness Tsuibosana, he would have thought this one to be more beautiful than anything, with silvery hair like icicles, huge dark eyes, and full, pouty lips that begged for all sorts of inappropriate attention. She had white markings on her face too, edged in a dusty rose colour. Next to Tsuibosana though, this demoness would come in a poor second—rather like Ichigo standing beside Saiu and expecting anyone female to so much as notice him.

The demoness blinked, her gaze moving bemusedly from Seiko to Nozomi before landing on Ichigo.

Her eyes went wide. "Shinigami!" she gasped.

"Oy!" Seiko yelled. With a roar, he lunged at the demons.

The servant demon howled, his voice jabbing like ice picks into Ichigo's head. The demoness whirled out of the way of Seiko's charge, and the servant's cry cut off abruptly as Seiko's broadsword took off its head. He spun around to face the demoness.

She screamed in what appeared to be utter terror and clamped her arms over her head, shielding herself from attack. Seiko lunged forward—and the demoness' body lit with light white. Seiko dropped in his tracks, a sharp cry of pain escaping him.

"Seiko!" Ichigo yelled. He sprang forward, not knowing what sort of invisible attack had downed the Hunter.

"No, Ichigo!" Nozomi cried. "Don't!"

She darted in front of him and shoved him back. The demoness scrambled away from them, but Nozomi lunged in. She held both hands out from her body, and twin kodachi swirled into existence in her hands.

The demoness, sensing the threat from behind, spun around in a swirl of silk kimono and barely managed to duck Nozomi's slash in time. The demoness lost her balance and fell, her face slack with fright. Nozomi raised her swords over the fallen creature and drove them down, aimed for the demoness' chest.

Ichigo's hands closed around Nozomi's wrists without a moment to spare.

For a heartbeat, the Diviner just stared at him, her eyes blank with disbelief. Then rage contorted her face and she jerked back, pulling herself free.

"Ichigo!" she shrieked. "What do you think you're doing?"

He pulled Tensa Zangetsu from the rock floor, where he'd shoved the tip so he could use both hands. Standing with the demoness at his back, he glared at the Hunter.

"Does she look like a threat to you, Nozomi?" he demanded, pointing at the woman cowering on the floor behind him. "She doesn't even have a weapon!"

"She's a demon!" Nozomi spat. "Get out of the way!"

"No."

"Use your brain, Ichigo! A pretty face doesn't make her any less dangerous than a male demon! Even if she's not attacking, we can't just let her run off and tell all the demon lords about you!"

Ichigo folded his arms, his sword dangling from one hand. "It doesn't matter. I'm not letting you kill anyone who isn't even trying to hurt us."

A scuffling sound made him look over his shoulder. The demoness had regained her feet and was running up the stairs, her kimono flying out behind her. He pressed his lips together with grim stubbornness. Demon or not, that woman had clearly had no fighting skills at all. Killing her would have been wrong, even if it was going to make their mission more difficult.

"Stupid boy!" Nozomi shrieked, her eyes popping with rage. "Do you realize what you've done? We're going to have swarms of demon lords down here in no time!"

"Then we'd better hurry up and keep moving," he said, trying to keep anger out of his voice.

Nozomi stepped back, shaking her head sharply. "Oh no, Ichigo. We either leave this moment, or we die. There's no going forward now."

Seiko grunted as he regained his feet. "'Fraid she's right, Ichigo," he said. He rubbed one shoulder. "Damn, that bitch's aura really had some bite to it."

"I'm not turning back now," Ichigo growled.

"We can't keep going. They know we're here!" Nozomi's lip curled in a sneer. "Not that we couldn't have prevented that from happening. This is your own fault!"

"Cut him some slack, Nozomi," Seiko said gruffly. "He's not a damned soul, remember? Killing ain't so easy for pure souls."

"He's a damned fool, that's what he is! Now quit arguing and come on. We have only minutes at best."

Ichigo stared at her with narrowed eyes, and for a moment, he missed Nakita so much it was a sharp ache in his stomach. She wouldn't have considered turning back even for a moment. "Go on, then," he said. "I'll see you two when I'm done here."

Both Hunters froze in the act of starting back down the stairs. "What?" Nozomi demanded.

Ichigo turned to face the hallway the Diviner had pointed down earlier. "This way, right? Look, I said I wasn't turning back now. I'm going to finish this no matter what."

"You're signing your own death warrant!"

Ichigo shrugged. "Honestly, I've faced worse odds than this before." Aizen's mutated Hollow face flashed through his mind's eye. He shrugged it off. "You two better go though."

"Ichigo, don't—"

"Nozomi," Seiko interrupted, "listen to him."

She whirled on her partner, teeth bared.

"Use your head, girl," he rumbled. "Ichigo is still wrapped in the muffling Kidō. The demon lords are going to follow us, not him. If he's that determined to go, let him."

Her eyes widened. Ichigo gave her a look like Seiko's comment had been obvious—even though he hadn't actually realized it himself. If Nozomi and Seiko could lure the demon lords' attention away from him, even better.

"Go quick," Ichigo said. "Before they catch you. Don't make me come rescue you."

Seiko snorted. "Yeah right. Good luck, kid. If you make it out, we'll wait until sunset for you in the Seventh Circle forest. Oh—and if you run into any more female demons, run for it, okay?"

Ichigo stopped halfway through turning. "What?"

"Demonesses can't be hurt or killed by men. It's part of their auras, to keep the male demons from wiping them out." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at his partner. "Nozomi was the only one of us who could have killed that one you let go, no matter how helpless she was."

He blinked, caught by a memory of Tsuibosana. He was definitely glad that demoness hadn't been in an attacking mood either.

"Good to know, thanks." With a quick wave, he broke into a fast run down the hall and left the two Demon Hunters staring after him, worry in their eyes.

He was on his own now.

. o : O : o .

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

The other day, I was pondering the differences in plot/pacing between Devil's Sway and Devil's Smile. I know this one is a little different—but if I did it exactly the same as the original, it wouldn't be very much fun! Reviews for Devil's Sway have been really positive (aside from this vibe of unsatisfed impatience I've been getting . . . hmm) but since the average chapter gets 4 reviews out of 325 hits, I can't be sure how the other 200–300 people are enjoying the story—but I hope you're liking it!

And let me add . . . I have some surprises in store for you, oh yes. ;)

To those who have reviewed lately—thank you so much! I really appreciate the encouragement, and it helps more than you know when I'm trying to dredge up the energy to write after a long day.

Since I doubt I'll have time to update next weekend, one last thing:

Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays! I hope you all, whatever your plans next weekend, have a chance to spend time with loved ones and celebrate the joy of family.