Kamuro and Touya ran as fast as they could down the twisted path, as fast as they could away from the body of the huge creature they had slain. After a while, the slayer noticed that Touya's pace was slightly slower. He whipped his head to get long bangs out of the way of his eyes, but in that casual movement where Kamuro's head sharply turned in Touya's direction, Kamuro saw that the demon had been wounded. Though Touya was putting up a good enough show of not being injured at all, Kamuro had seen a gash across Touya's chest. He must have acquired it when he first attacked that creature back there, Kamuro thought. Kamuro snapped his attention back towards the front, but remarked casually, "You've been injured."
The glint in Touya's glazy, light-blue eyes flicked towards Kamuro running a little ahead of him. He willed himself to run faster. "It is none of your business," Touya replied stubbornly.
"Unless you are dead when we return back," Kamuro countered. However, the back of his mind was arguing with him on why he was even bothering with the condition of a despicable demon.
"Look ahead!" Touya pointed out a landmark ahead of them and was secretly relieved at the distraction from his wound. He was also losing a considerable amount of blood and needed the rest. They came to a mountain side cavern of sorts. From what the afternoon light showed them at the mouth of the cave, the cavern was filled with sharp icicle-shaped stalactites hanging off the roof of the cavern.
"Do you feel that?" Touya asked. Being a demon, he was more sensitive and in tune with his feelings. And his feelings right now, especially down in his gut, told his this place held an evil.
Kamuro nodded slightly. Meditation had its uses, as he had figured out long ago in his past. He felt a sinister aura coming from within the cavern. Down below, the same screeches they had heard before were growing louder.
Kamuro sucked in his breath and began slowly walking into the cavern.
"What are you doing?" Touya asked almost incredulously. "Can you not feel the evil coming from this place?"
Kamuro stopped for a moment and looked over his shoulder at him. "I think facing this simple cavern is much better than facing a horde of whatever those creatures are," he replied. "Besides, your blood will just attract those things even further." Kamuro continued on.
Touya put a hand over the cut on his chest. It was not that deep, for the monster they had killed before did not get a good hit at him. The good sign was that the earlier bleeding had stopped, but the bad sign was that Touya was much more tired from the loss of blood. Deciding that sticking together was the best course for now, Touya hurried to catch up to his determined partner.
The cavern seemed to travel for miles. There seemed to be a curious light at the end of the long tunnel they walked in, but they didnt seemed to be getting any closer than when they had first walked into the cavern. Both were alert, however, for anything that they would encounter.
Touya kept very silent since first entering the cavern. He knew they were walking straight into a trap. This wasn't just a "simple cavern". There was more to it than what the slayer thought it was. His gut was telling him they must get out of there as soon as possible. "Night-"
"Shh! Listen! Do you hear that?" Kamuro cut him off. They stopped walking and listened hard to their surroundings. As soon as the last reverberating sounds of their footsteps ended, they heard hissing; hissing coming from all directions, surrounding them.
"Where could it be coming from?" Touya wondered out loud.
Kamuro turned to him. "Can't you use those sensitive ears of yours to find the location?" he asked.
Touya was taken aback at the unexpected recognition of his demon ability but shook off his surprise. He closed his eyes and focused on the sounds surrounding him. After a moment, he popped open his eyes and pointed off to the side closest to Kamuro. "It's coming from over there," he said.
Kamuro nodded and slowly walked towards the area Touya had pointed to. A few feet from where he had been originally standing, there was a chasm between a few rocks that jutted where the cavern floor and wall met. "Holy god," Kamuro breathed as he steadied himself near the edge of the chasm and looked down. Down below was a colony of deadly king cobras.
"It must be mating season for them."
Kamuro nearly jumped out of his skin in surprise at Touya's sudden presence next to him. So wrapped up at the sight below him, he hadn't been aware that the demon had come closer to also look.
"We should hurry up out of here," Touya continued and continued down the cavern.
Kamuro stayed put, however. There must be more of these in here, he thought. This can't be the only ones here. But then that must mean-
"Ahhh!" Touya's yell echoed off the cavern walls and almost sent Kamuro stumbling into the chasm. He snapped towards the direction the demon had taken. "What the hell is wrong with you fool?" he shouted angrily. Touya's screams suddenly stopped, but sounds of falling rocks and scuffling replaced it. Kamuro sensed something very wrong and ran towards the place where he had heard Touya. "Touya? Touya, you baka youkai, where are you?!" Kamuro called. "Answer me!"
"Down here!"
Kamuro turned to the left and spotted a few rocks that jutted out just like the other ones they had seen. He cautiously moved towards the opening where the rocks laid around and saw pale fingers holding onto the ledge. "Touya!" The demon was so pale, whether from being afraid of falling into the pit of deadly cobras or from loss of blood from his wound, Kamuro didn't know which. As he stared at the Ice Master, he thought how easy it would be to just let him die there. Then he could find the kunai by himself and then go back to Nightfire, saying that Touya had died in a tragic death by a pit of snakes.
"Kamuro, help me why don't you! Stop standing there!" Touya yelled from below. He was slowly losing his grip for fatigue. He looked down, and his eyes widened as one of the male cobras slithered closer to his right foot, nearly naked because of his open-toed sandal.
Kamuro's hawk-like eyes widened in surprise, and he was jolted out of his traitorous thoughts at the recognition of his name from the demon lips. Acting quickly, Kamuro kneeled on the ground and extended his right hand out. Touya quickly caught it and together got him out of the pit. They sat there for a long while; the only sounds were Touya catching his breath and the angry hissing of the cobras down below in the chasm.
There were no words exchanged between Touya and Kamuro, but the latter knew that the other would do no thanking. He did not want it anyway for it would just prickle his conscience. Kamuro didn't need that. He also didn't need to start thinking demons actually as living beings and almost like humans too. Kamuro looked over to Touya and saw that his glazed eyes were hidden behind his closed eyelids. He was sweating profusely, and even paler than from when Kamuro had seen him dangling in between life and death a few moments before.
Touya was in a similar predicament like Kamuro. His mind was a confliction of new ideas about humans, like how not all of them seem to be bad now that he had been saved by Kamuro. The slayer could have just let Touya die back there, but he didn't. Or, and there was a suspicion, was the only reason he, Touya, was even saved was because Nightfire would have killed Kamuro if he had let Touya died?
"Come on, get up. We're almost at the end," said Kamuro and stood up. He thought a moment, turned to Touya, and extended a hand towards him.
Touya looked at the hand for a long time, and then slowly took it, allowing Kamuro to help him up and building a shaky bond of trust between them.
"So is this your fault we are in this predicament, or mine?" Amaya asked sarcastically. She and Jin had finally tracked down the shadow soldier, and it had grown in power in the space of time it took them to find it.
Amaya and Jin had fallen into a trap upon entering the bottom of a canyon after the soldier. They were bound on the rocky canyon wall with bonds made of shadows.
Jin looked around, feeling more curious than fearful, for the shadow soldier that had so suddenly disappeared. "Hey lassie, why's ever'thing turning grey?" he asked.
Amaya snapped her head up in alarm and quickly scanned the area. True to the Wind Master's words, the area around them was turning grey, despite how the afternoon sun was blaring down on them from above. Like a disease, the grey was spreading rapidly up the walls of the canyon. The water of the narrow stream before them was a deep black. Amaya looked towards the binds that held them and jingled her left arm. It must be these. The soldier must be acquiring so much energy that the energy it used for these binds is affecting the whole canyon, she thought. She turned her head to Jin and told him her suspicions.
"Can't ya stop tha' soldier?" Jin asked.
Amaya shook her head. She was in deep thought, but explained, "I can only control a soldier to a certain degree, but this one has found for itself a great deal of power that keeps it from listening to me."
Jin whistled low. "D'ya know a way tah get us outta here?" he asked.
"Maybe," Amaya murmured. "Don't interrupt me." She closed her eyes and began to gather her shadow powers.
Touya and Kamuro were walking with a steady pace, and they were finally getting closer towards the light at the end of the cavern tunnel. A sharp crack, from perhaps a twig, echoed off the cavern walls. Touya looked down out of instinct and saw that he had stepped on, not on a twig as he had expected, but from a skeleton of a bat. He looked up at the stalactites in search for bats, but found none. Another crack and he knew Kamuro had also stepped on a bat skeleton. It seemed that the closer they were coming towards the end of the tunnel, the more they stepped on old bones of bat skeletons. And then, Touya heard something. "Do you hear that?" he asked Kamuro.
They stopped walking and listened for a moment. There was a curious noise, faint though. "It sounds like something with many legs," Kamuro muttered. He looked ahead of the path they traveled on and saw it sloping upwards. "It must be coming from up there. Come on." They climbed up the small hill and as they came towards the top, the noise became much louder, and when they reached the top, they froze.
Down below, large venomous centipede lay all over the cavern floor. Many of these long multi-legged, thin bodied bugs were as big as Touya or Kamuro themselves. They heard a frantic cry and watched in the distance below as a bat that had been flying in the air unnoticed until then fell to the ground. As soon as the unfortunate bat hit the floor, the centipedes closest to it began swarming all over the bat, piercing it with their venomous tail like a scorpion would to its own prey. Touya and Kamuro watched in fascination and horror as the bat screeched and screeched until the poison took over its small body and it made no more noise. Then, the centipedes quickly acted and began to slowly eat the dead bats body, fighting each other for a bite of it. What was left as the deadly carnivores retreated was just another skeleton.
Touya stepped forward. "I can take care of this," he said. Touya kneeled down on one knee and placed both his hands on the ground. Touyas whole body began to glow blue, the color of his spirit energy. Kamuro felt the rise of power in his comrade and observed as the blue aura around Touya moved towards his outstretched hands. With his brow furrowed in concentration, Touya froze the ground with his ice powers, freezing the majority of the centipedes that he could reach. Seeing that there were a few of the bugs he hadn't managed to freeze, Kamuro took out from a hidden place in his leather jacket a pair of cherry bombs. Taking a plain, silver lighter from his pants pocket, he lit the fuses and threw the bombs far down the cavern. "I suggest you cover your ears," he told Touya and did so himself.
Touya clamped his hands over his sensitive ears and bowed his head on his bent knee. The bombs soared over the frozen centipedes and landed in the center of the ones still alive. The cavern shook with the intensity of the bombs explosion, and even with his ears covered, Touya felt himself shaken to the core at the massive after-sounds of the explosion.
Without a sideways glance at how his partner was doing, Kamuro watched calmly as many of the caverns stalactites fell upon the frozen centipedes at the explosion, instantly killing the poisonous bugs. When he was certain it was all over, Kamuro uncovered his ears and gestured for Touya to do the same. "Let's go," he said emotionlessly and Touya nodded.
Descending the small hill in which they had stood on, they stepped over broken rock and dead centipedes, getting much closer towards the light. With eyes like a newborn, they blinked hard to adjust to the light of the setting sun, and each breathed a silent sigh of relief that the cavern ordeal was over with.
Touya was the first to adjust and was the first to see that there was something very wrong in the area they had found themselves in.
"Kamuro," Touya said slowly, trying hard to comprehend this phenomenon, "everything around us is grey."
Finally, with her stronger shadow powers than that of the shadow soldier, Amaya managed to break both her and Jin free from the bonds that had held them to the canyon wall. It hadn't been easy freeing them, and Amaya was nearly exhausted, having been forced to revert back to her humane form from under her cloak to preserve the rest of her spirit energy. Her feet hit the ground and she stumbled forward. A strong arm wrapped itself around her middle and steadied her before she could fall. For a shining moment, Amaya thought it was Hiei who had helped her, but when she turned around it was to her dismay and embarrassment that it was Jin's happy green eyes that she saw, not Hiei's intense crimson orbs.
Amaya pulled herself away from Jin with a small nod of thanks and looked up. The sun that had been hovering above them for hours was gone, and a red-orange glow was what could be seen above the cliff tops. The canyon was almost fully grey now. She turned to Jin and was about to suggest camping here for the moment when something zoomed past her head and struck Jin on his right shoulder, wounding him severely.
Jin cried out from pain and surprise and stumbled back.
Amaya spun around and saw on top of the canyon wall opposite of theirs the soldier standing there, a black bow and arrow emitting as much dark smoke as the soldier was in its hands.
"Lassie!" Jin cried behind her.
Amaya looked over her shoulder and her eyes widened in alarm. Jin's complexion was beginning to turn an ashy-grey color. Since the arrow lodged in his shoulder was made of pure shadow, it was slowly affecting Jin with the evil spirit energy it was also made of. The arrow itself was drawing itself in deeper into Jin's shoulder. It was a matter of time until the shadow and spirit energy made Jin useless and feeling numb.
"Jin, remove that arrow immediately!" Amaya ordered and turned back towards the soldier. She drew out her katana and changed back to her powerful form. Charging up, she put much of her spirit energy into the katana, making it glow a combination of red and black. Behind her, she heard Jin grunt a few times and knew he was working on removing the arrow.
Amaya bent her knees and then jumped up towards the soldier with her katana raised. In the back of her mind, she heard something close to a bell ringing and knew what it was immediately. As she clashed her katana with the soldiers huge conjured sword, she thought, They've found it too.