Zoro couldn't tell if his eyes were open, the darkness so absolute it was like going blind. Suffocating, for all the air smelled fresh, not stale or musty like a dungeon should. But the weight of the walls around him was palpable, pressure like the black depths of the ocean. He put his hands to the carved granite, shoved hard but felt no give, and when he rammed one katana's hilt against it there was only a dull thud. Groping along the wall, he felt no outline of the door which had opened there seconds before.
Somewhere in the darkness behind him there was merry trickling, falling water, nothing more. He shouted, and the stone bounced his call back to him.
That damn priest--though Zoro was really to blame, letting his guard down that much. He rubbed his sore jaw. Hits like a girl, Sanji had said. Maybe if the girl was a Baroque Works agent. Or Nami, who had one hell of a fist on her.
The son of a bitch had another thing coming, if he thought Zoro would just sit here for the duration. If he couldn't figure out how to reopen the door he would just make a new one. Pressing one hand to the granite, he knocked the hilt against it again, this time feeling the minute vibration through the stone, cancelled by that mass almost before it began. But everything has a breaking point.
It had only been a minute or two. Still long enough that he might not be able to find them, and that could have been the point, delay him enough to get Sanji to the ceremony. And the bastard wasn't even fighting it. If he had resisted, given Zoro a chance to catch up--this wasn't about strength anymore, not about proving himself to these mad priests or anyone else; Sanji had to understand that.
He and Sanji had always been able to work together before, when they really had to, when it was the only way to win. But Sanji now was...
It felt like a betrayal, a blow to the gut much harder than that admonishing kick before. Losing, because only losing could be this painful. Seventh death, they were this close, and now the damn cook..."Bastard," Zoro grated, as if there were any way Sanji could hear him, and his throat was closed over, so he had to clear it even to hear himself. "You stupid idiot, you better..."
The stone resounded weirdly under his next tap; he spread his fingers over it, rapped the spot again. Weak point here, and he drew his swords, all three. In the darkness he measured his pace back carefully. One blow was all it would take, and vision wasn't crucial; in the midst of battle his strikes were too quick to follow with the eye anyway. He did hope this wasn't a load-bearing wall. Damn lot of good he could do buried under the tower if it fell.
Holding his swords parallel, he set his stance, preparing to converge the force of all three blades on that single point. But before he could bring them to bear, he was checked by a scraping sound behind him.
A glimmer broke the blackness. Turning, he saw a wavering flame behind lantern glass, barely outlining the engraving on the stone walls and shining on flowing water. That same central pillar as in the other chambers was a fountain here. The water spilling down the column followed grooves to spouts of polished stone, which poured it out in arcs, just ghostly shimmers in that dim light, falling into a wide pool ringing the pillar.
Even in the shadows, it was obviously quite a fancy set-up; this place was no dungeon. And between two of those falling streams extended an arm holding the lamp. It took a couple seconds for Zoro's eyes to adjust to make out the face behind it, but he was spotted without trouble. "Mr. Pirate? You are here!"
It was the dark-haired kid. The blur of his figure turned away to call out, "He's here!" and his voice echoed as if he had shouted into a tunnel. Then he was gesturing animatedly with both hands, the lamp swinging to cast crazy shadows on the walls. "Come here!"
Zoro wasted no time, sheathing his swords as he stepped into the fountain, the water splashing on his boots. It only came up to his ankles. Closer, he saw the boy was not actually in the fountain, but behind it, crouched in a narrow opening within the pillar itself. He sidled back on hands and knees, farther into the space, and beckoned Zoro to climb in.
It was a tight fit through the gap in the stone, but he made it, twisting his hips to get his swords through. The space within was cramped, but illuminated by a purer glow than just the lamp. A rumbling echoed around them, like constant, distant thunder, and the air was thick with moisture. Looking up, Zoro saw a long, narrow flue, strung with an array of pulleys and chains and buckets. At the very top a round portal opened to the gray sky.
The boy squatted on the cover of one of the broad wooden buckets. As soon as Zoro was settled on it as well, the kid flipped up a couple hooks, and with a stomach-churning lurch, the bucket dropped. Chains jangled as they plummeted, the stone walls flying past.
It took Zoro a couple seconds to realize they weren't quite falling, the suspending chains unspooling at a measured rate, though their combined weight made their descent faster than usual, to tell from the boy's wide eyes. He looked like he was enjoying himself, however, and when the bucket jerked to a stop he grinned as he hopped off.
His two friends were waiting at the bottom, their expressions envious in the glow of their lamp. Zoro climbed off, and the red-headed boy released the chain in his hands. The bucket dropped away with a splash, barely audible over the rushing water, louder here. They stood on a ledge beside an underground pool. The circle of light from the skylight high above shimmered on the dark water before them, the ripples scattering that glow over the roughly hewn granite walls. A waterfall gushing from a stone archway turned a creaking wooden waterwheel, in turn working gears and the clanking chains.
"Isn't it cool?" the dark-haired boy asked, his bright voice echoing. "Lonlin actually figured out how to get inside, last year--that was her room you were in. Well, it will be her room, when she becomes the moon goddess's, but her room now's got a fountain, too, and one day she asked where the water came from, and they showed her--"
"We're sort of not supposed to be here," the red-haired boy confided, though Zoro had already guessed that.
"You probably weren't supposed to let me out, either." He looked around. "Now, how do we get out of here?" Wooden rungs pegged into the stone behind the kids led up to a round portal, but before he could climb them the girl shook her head.
"No, you have to go that way." She pointed toward the waterfall and the archway. "That's where her cascade is, that's where they're taking him."
"Taking him? --My friend?"
The girl pushed her lamp into his hand. "There's a ledge to walk on, all the way," her brother explained. "It's early spring, so it's not flooded yet."
"But you have to go quickly," the girl said. "This is the shorter path, but they're riding."
Zoro peered into the shadows beyond the stone archway. He could make out little through the dusty mist of the waterfall, but the rushing of water sounded a long way down into that darkness. "How far is it?"
"It takes an hour or so to walk it," the dark-haired boy said. "But sunset's before that, so you'll have to run. Elder Orwalsh said you'd definitely make it, though--"
"Orwalsh?" Zoro repeated, spinning back toward the kids. "The high priest?"
"Dabirnak, you moron!" The red-headed kid smacked the other boy. "He told us not to tell him!"
The girl bowed her head. "Elder Orwalsh told us you'd be in the goddess's chamber. He asked us to get you, and show you the way to the cascade."
"And you're the idiot!" the dark-haired kid retorted, shoving his friend back. "You said he didn't know we came down here!"
"I said we had to keep it secret, I didn't say he didn't know. He's high priest!" Apparently deciding the argument wasn't worth his time, the red-haired boy forwent retaliation to look solemnly to Zoro. "Elder Orwalsh said you wouldn't trust him, but you might trust us. You have to, sir. That's the right way. But you have to go now, or you won't be in time."
Zoro studied the three of them for a moment, then nodded and started for the archway. High steps had been chopped in the stone; he took them two at a time, then raised the lamp to look down the dark tunnel, a conduit with a narrow path running along the left side, barely above the level of the water.
"Mr. Pirate," the girl called, and he turned back. "Inste told me to tell you," she said, "you must go straight, all the way to the end. There's some ducts that branch off, but you have to be careful to stay on the main channel, until you reach the other archway like this one."
"Got it." He looked down the steps at the three round faces turned up toward him, solemn and sincere in the lamplight. "Thanks," he said, and didn't wait for them to answer before he plunged into the tunnel.
The twinkle of the kids' lamp behind him soon was gone, and the booming of the waterfall didn't take much longer to fade, so the only sound was the gurgling of the stream through the tunnel and the pounding of his footsteps. The air was cool and damp, a fine mist against his face which thinned the light of the lamp in his hand to a ghostly glow. He kept his eyes on the foggy stone under his boots as he ran. Slick with water, it would be easy to slip and fall off that narrow ledge. He couldn't tell how deep the stream beside it was, but the water was moving fast, splashing against the channel walls and up onto the path.
After jogging for some minutes, he realized that the tunnel had started to slope up. Occasional steps were built into the stone, the water alongside coursing over small falls. He came across some of the ducts the girl had mentioned, low tunnels forking off from the main channel. None were high enough for him to enter without ducking, so he assumed he was still on the right track.
The farther he got, however, the less certain he became. If this hadn't all been a trick to begin with. No end to the passage in sight, and he wondered if he might be better off following one of the other conduits, find an exit to outside and get his bearings where he could see something besides dark water and stone.
--What bearings? demanded an internal voice that sounded far too much like an obnoxious cook. You don't even know where the hell you're supposed to be going.
"Shut up," Zoro muttered between measured pants. The impact of his boots on the rock echoed through the darkness, ticking by seconds as surely as a clock's pendulum. "This is all your damn fault anyway."
He better be in time.
He picked up the pace a little. The steps were easily bounded over, but he didn't see the fallen block, crumbled from the ceiling, until it was too late. He went sprawling, and the lamp flew out of his hand to splash into the water. It sank with a glug, the fire shining under the ripples for a moment before the water rushed behind the glass and extinguished it.
"Shit!" The curse resounded through the blackness around him. Zoro picked himself up off the floor, reached out and felt the wall. There was a sticky patch of blood on his elbow, but no bruises worth paying attention to. The darkness was harder to ignore, but if he kept within an arm's length of the wall he wouldn't fall off the ledge. Brushing his fingers against the stone, he continued on. Walking now, had no choice, but he canted his body forward, his strides long and fast. He swore when he stubbed his toes on the next step, hopped up it and kept going.
He hadn't gotten very far when he realized he could see, just barely, but enough to make out the vague shape of the walls around him. The faintest light reflected off the rippling water. Looking ahead, he saw a small gleam, only a pinhole in the dark, but it grew as he approached, until it was clearly the mouth of the tunnel. There was enough illumination filtering down that he could see the remaining steps, climbing up toward that opening. He ran up them, the air becoming cooler and brighter with every step, and the roar of the water louder, until he emerged, blinking, into the orange light of sunset, made pale by mist.
He had made it to the mountains after all. Took him two days but he was here, the air sharp with the scent of the dark pines. He was on the edge of a river which had worn a chasm into the rocky mountainside. A thick dam forked the waterway, so half flowed into that tunnel and the rest continued in a broad stream down the slope.
There would have been plenty of places to train here, he fleetingly observed, as he climbed along the steep river bank, ducking under drooping pine boughs and circling the boulders scattered through the gorge like a giant's dropped marbles. Zoro absently rubbed his bare arms as he hiked up. There was a little snow in patches on the ground, and cold wind blowing between the trees, though the rustle of those branches was drowned in a relentless, low thundering.
The source of that noise was revealed when he pushed through a clump of brambles and found himself looking up a cliff four times the height of the Going Merry's mast. At the crest of the rock face, water poured through a narrow gap, a crystal-clear curtain tumbling down past lichen-draped granite and hardy pine brush, to crash frothing into a pool from which the river flowed.
Cascade of the goddess, the girl had said. Zoro was on the crest of the far rim of that basin. The water below flowed fast, but smooth enough to see into the pool's depths, some five meters or more, the stone bottom worn flat as the carved and polished fountains in the temple. The mountain peaks hid the sun, but the clouds were brilliantly streaked with its long rays, shining roses and golds reflecting in the falling water.
Farther down the rim's slope were gathered the priests and acolytes, their vestments darkened and dulled by the ruddy light. Zoro ducked back into the brush before he could be spotted. He doubted anyone could hear him, at least, this close to the waterfall. But half the damn temple must be here, counting all those robes fluttering in the wind, some gathered at the water's edge, the rest trailing up a horn of stone jutting out over the pool.
At the tip of the horn, over the clear center of the pool, were three figures, haloed in the sun beams stretching between mountaintops. The high priest's bulk dwarfed the priestess, the white and silver trim of her robes stained golden in the sunset. And between them was a pallid shape in profile, insubstantial as a phantom in the waterfall's rising mist.
Sanji was stripped bare to the chest save for the bandages, his arms crossed for warmth but his back straight. The wind disheveled his hair and Zoro could see him shiver even from this distance, but his shoulders remained squared as he stared ahead at the dark trees on the opposite shore.
The high priest stepped before him. "Seventh death," he pronounced, and his baritone sounded over the waterfall's thunder, resonating through the gorge. Small wonder he was such an orator, if this was where he practiced. "We have come here, to the goddess's gift, to witness the final death of the sinner." His gray eyes raked over his assembled brethren, and then he turned toward the cascade. "With her breath she melts the ice; with these waters she gives us life. May she wash away his sin."
The high priest turned back, and this time his gaze passed over the watching priests, raising to the ridge above the river mouth where Zoro was watching. The priest only paused an instant, and he was too far away to be certain where his eyes were actually falling, but Zoro's skin prickled as he felt that concerted study. He didn't dare move. It occurred to him that his white shirt was hardly the best camouflage in this dark brush, and his hair was a few shades too light a green.
Then the high priest's gaze raised to the sky above, blazing with the final sunlight. "Seventh death," he proclaimed to the coral clouds. "The death of breath." He held up a silver cup, tilted it slightly so its polished metal gleamed in those slanting rays. "See the last breath of the sinner. May its loss purify."
He put the shining cup to Sanji's lips, tilted it up, and the blond head rocked back as he drank, without hesitation or protest. Then the priest took the cup away, raised it high again and turned it over. Nothing spilled, no drops catching that last light.
Sanji coughed, a choked and quiet rattle that Zoro shouldn't have been able to hear over the waterfall. The sun sank farther, so the three on the outcropping were cast in the same shade as the rest of the pool, and Zoro shouldn't have been able to so clearly see the blue shadows on his white and drawn face, his head still tipped back toward the sky.
The little priestess stepped forward, her arm also raised. In her hand fluttered a long white banner, beads glittering at the ends, the trailing silk curling and waving in the wind. "See--see the breath of the goddess," she called, her high voice clear and pure enough to sound over the roar of the cascade, after that first falter. "May it give life as she wills."
She opened her fist and the wind caught the cloth, swept it from her hand.
Too slowly Sanji reached for it, his arm outstretched. Weighted by the beads, it was drawn down, a long, rippling streamer, and Sanji staggered, fell to his knees on the edge of the precipice as the banner drifted, swirling, into the water below. His shoulders were heaving, a feverish flush spotting his cheeks. What the hell had been in that cup--
The high priest's robes billowed as the man stooped beside Sanji. His voice was lowered, but the words still carried to Zoro, and the unmistakable urgency in his baritone. "The goddess has claimed your death. Will you accept new life from her?"
Sanji's mouth moved, but if he was actually saying anything he was too far away for Zoro to make it out. The priestess's small hands were clasped before her, and he didn't need to hear her voice to read her lips. 'Please.'
But Sanji was pulling back, turning away from them or hunching in on himself, his hands clawing at the rough outcropping. He coughed again, and dark drops spattered the gray rock.
None of the other priests spoke a word, statues dressed in fluttering robes, every face turned up toward that jutting ledge. Waiting, noiselessly, the wind's hiss and the waterfall's thunder swallowing all other sound, until Zoro couldn't even hear himself breathe. And Sanji wasn't moving but for the shaking of his shoulders, wasn't doing anything as the current seized the white banner and pulled it under the water.
The breath of the goddess, and Zoro didn't understand any of this, but the priestess had tears in her eyes again, and the priest had said 'last breath', and Sanji wasn't doing a goddamn thing but kneeling there and dy--
"Dammit!" Zoro cried, smashing the underbrush out of his way with a sweep of his swords. "What are you waiting for, you idiot?" he shouted.
The priest looked toward him, and the priestess twisted around, tripping on her robes. Then, finally, Sanji's head came up, slowly turned back toward his crewmate. "Come on!" Zoro hollered, louder than the cascade's roar. "They're waiting for us, Nami and Luffy and everyone else--get this over with, so we can go home!"
Sanji stared, eyes wide.
Then he drew his legs under himself and stood, shakily but certainly. Two unsteady steps brought him to the edge of the outcropping. He looked down at the pool only for a second before he dove.
He hit the water like a knife stab, straight as an arrow, hardly a splash as he cleaved the waves. Sanji had been raised on the sea; usually he swam like a fish, and even now he managed a couple good strokes before the current caught him. He kicked against it for a moment, flailing, churning that clear flow to froth. Then he was sinking into the translucent shadows, the ripples smoothing to undulating dark and light.
A piercing cry shattered the air. "Now, Zoro!" the priestess screamed. "She says, now, he's--"
And then Zoro had dived, and the water closed over his head.
to be continued...