Makoto's throat tightened as her heart thundered inside her breast. Her hand was still pressing against the canvas painting of Ren's back and the fake atrium. Ren was gone. Either by design or chance, she'd lost her most potent weapon. Now it was just her and three children, lost in the dark lair of the beast.

"Lady Niijima?" said Ann, her voice distant to Makoto's ears. "Makoto!"

Makoto jerked to the sound, her right hand leaving the painting and instinctively resettling on the hilt of her father's holstered gun. Ann and Ryuji were staring at her, their eyes concerned and their mouths grim lines. The rescued hostage, Yusuke, looked dreamily disinterested but stared at her just the same.

Makoto stared back at them as her fingers wrapped around the familiar smoothness of her gun's handle. The texture evoked a sense of strength in Makoto's mind. She'd always wanted to be like Father. Do what Father did. Make Father proud that she could; That she was useful. The feel of the weapon, the polished slickness, the weight of the steel. It was all of her desires in a form that she could literally hold in the palm of her hand.

Get a grip! She'd been alone in the wilds at night. She'd faced ghoul packs and won. And this wasn't her first noble's Palace! Wake up, Makoto! Ren wasn't her only hope! Not by a long shot! She had her old gun. Her new sword. Her gear. She had the Sakamotos! They had guns! Swords! Magical powers, damn it!

Helpless? Useless? Far from it!

"Ryuji!" barked Makoto, her self-determination leaking into her own voice.

"Yes!" said Ryuji, standing slightly at attention like he was still a city guard, Ann's lantern casing a tall shadowy profile on the nearby stone wall.

"Get your lantern lit. And, here. Get mine lit, too. We're not going to let a little darkness frighten us, are we?"

"Yes! Uh- No?!" Ryuji took Makoto's hip lantern, his forehead wrinkled slightly in thought.

"Ann," said Makoto, "Shine your light around. Let's see what else is in this room. And you, Yusuke, where are we?"

"I-... hmmm… I am unsure," said Yusuke, his voice sounding firmer than before. His eyes seemed to gleam with more awareness than when Makoto had first seen him. "I don't think I've ever been in this room, but I think we are in the basement. It smells like the basement."

There was indeed a sort of subterranean scent to the air- dampness, mildew, soil. Faint, but now that Yusuke mentioned it, Makoto's nose was able to pick out the clues. Meanwhile, Ann's lantern revealed an opposite stone wall only a short distance into the dark. She moved along it to the left, eventually coming to a terminating wall and the dark opening of some sort of passage. Ann held the lantern into the darkness.

"There's a hallway this way," said Ann, "I can't see where it goes."

The immediate gloom flared into illumination as Ryuji ignited Makoto's lantern and handed it back to her. As he began to work on his own, Makoto walked in the opposite direction as Ann and found another terminating wall. Another dark passage yawned there, and Makoto directed her lantern's light inside. It was a tight stone hallway which seemed to turn at a right angle just at the edge of the light.

"A hallway here, too," said Makoto. "Yusuke, you said the house moves? What do you mean, exactly?"

"Exactly that."

Makoto glanced back at Yusuke. Was he being obstructionist? Was he toying with them? Was he really a hostage to rescue- or was he just waiting for a chance to backstab them all? The young man's face was calm, but it didn't have that forced sort of look that Ren always had when he was omitting information he wanted to hide.

"But how does it work, Yusuke, do you know? How do you know it moves?"

Yusuke frowned. "I never thought about it before. Just- I know that hallways don't always go to the same places, and doors don't stay in the same spots."

"For real?" said Ryuji, closing the latch on his own illuminated lantern. "That sucks."

"How do you get around, then?" said Ann.

"I-" said Yusuke, his face tightening in apparent mental struggle. "I just know where I'm supposed to go."

"Are you supposed to-"

Makoto abandoned the question. A new sound intruded into their lantern-light world: a distant slapping sound, rapid, and getting louder. Ann seemed to hear it, too. She turned back to the hallway she'd discovered and held up her lantern.

Watching Ann, Makoto took in an excited breath. "Someone is coming. Get ready! Yusuke, stand over by that wall!"

Ann took a few backward steps, resettling her lantern on her belt. Ryuji stepped up next to her and raised his blunderbuss. Ann raised her own pistol and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her brother. Yusuke moved away from them, his attention also on the same dark passage.

Makoto drew out her hand cannon, but as she began to level it at the same dark passage beyond the backs of the Sakamotos, she felt a tingle in her gut, her ear caught some sound she did not consciously identify, but Makoto was filled with sudden alarm at something behind her.

She ducked and spun, a dark something whispered over her head. Her lantern's light whipped around. A darkly dressed man was inches away, his body twisted with the momentum of a sword swing he'd just whiffed. There was another man just behind the first. Two sets of red eyes in gaunt faces. Revenants! Turned humans! Makoto fired, her cannon bucking with familiar eagerness.

KOOM! KOOM!

The nearest man tumbled to his knees as his lower torso erupted with two pulpy wounds, his swung sword spinning out of his grasp as pain loosened his grip. Then, his red eyes went slightly crossed as they stared into the leveled barrel of Makoto's gun.

KOOM!

The muzzle flash and smoke obscured Makoto's vision. It cleared. The limp upper body of the first attacker was tumbling backwards towards the following man. Flashes of light reflected on the stone ceiling above as gunfire erupted from behind Makoto.

CHOOM!

POP! POP!

Makoto was deafened by the blunderbuss blast, but no pellets struck down the second man attacking her. Either the Sakamotos both missed, or they were shooting something else. But Makoto had no time to look behind her.

The second attacker lifted a leg and push-kicked his fallen companion back forward into Makoto. She fell backward under the man's limp weight, but she kept her gun arm free. The headless corpse didn't matter. Her balance didn't matter. The stone rushing up at the back of her head didn't matter. There were only three things in Makoto's entire universe: the notch of the rear sight, the notch of the front sight, and the center point of the second man's chest.

KOOM!