Ekobean: Ok, so Rioichi has sustained an injury and...well..you'll just have to read and find out.

Midnight Flight chapter 4

Rioichi reached the top of the staircase in fairly good time. Each flight of the aged stairs had a sticky cedar rail clinging to the sidewall. It surprised Rioichi that the daimyo would live in such an aged dwelling.

Rioichi leapt nimbly out of the doorway and landed in a crouched position, immediately activating the invisibility technique. He scanned the enormous room that he found himself in nervously. The room was square with dirty, chipped stone lining the twenty-foot walls. The room was extremely well lit, with oil lamps burning merrily on hooks leading all the way across the top of the ceiling. The bottom of the room was nothing less than horrifying.

A stone square platform about twenty feet across stood erected in the center of the room. It stood slightly over five feet tall and was covered with large, uneven white tiles. The tiles were broken and chipped, and worn with age.

As for the area around the platform, this was the part of the room that Rioichi found to be horrifying. The pit was filled halfway with uncountable bones. Most of them were white with every bit of meat stripped from them, but some of them were fresher with bits of rotting meat still clinging to them.

Rioichi was not afraid of death. Death was an honorable thing, and if someone died with honor they were an honorable creature. But these poor creatures' deaths had not been honorable. These were the people whom the daimyo had despised, and had tortured to death.

Many people did not mind torture, some reveled in it, loving to hear the screams of pain as the victim was slowly killed in the way the torturer saw fit. Rioichi despised torture. It took all the dignity and honor out of death. The victim died as a wretched creature, only a shell of it's former self. And now here their bodies were defiled, thrown in a small pit as decoration of sorts.

Rioichi shook his head and cleared the thoughts from his mind. This was obviously a trap to him, and if the daimyo expected him to leap down to the platform he did not know Rioichi very well.

Slowly and carefully he examined his surroundings, taking in every detail, every crack, every line, searching for the slightest twinkle of an aura.

At first the raccoon didn't spot them, but then on his third sweep of the room he spotted out of the corner of his eye one small blue spark dancing about the hook from which the first oil lantern was hanging. "How could I have missed it?" Rioichi thought to himself.

The raccoon launched himself off of the small stone balcony and caught the hook in midair with the tip of his cane. He immediately began pumping his legs to build up momentum, and then flew across to the next hook, and then the next, and the next.

He was halfway across the room; only five more hooks to go. He slowed time, increasing his chances of accuracy. However, just before his cane latched around the hook, his eyes widened in shock and horror. The hook had no blue auras floating about it. The cane latched around the hook, and Rioichi's momentum carried him forward, and he felt the hook give way.

Rioichi fell head first to the ground, concrete and rock particles and fragments falling with him. Rioichi tried to execute a midair flip to right himself, but it was executed too late. He landed on his back, the wind knocked out of him.

He immediately rolled onto his stomach and attempted to raise himself to his feet, still gasping, trying to reopen his lungs. Rioichi looked up at the doorway. It seemed to far away now, nearly impossible to reach.

His ears twitched suddenly, tuning into the sound of footsteps. Rioichi looked up at the doorway to find five burly guards emerging. Each of them leapt down from the doorway to the platform below, swords already drawn and ready.

Without hesitation Rioichi drew his canes and readied for the inevitable charge. Seconds passed, slowly turning to minutes. Sweat beaded on Rioichi's forehead. "What are they waiting for?"

And then suddenly his question was answered. An almost wavy voice drifted through room, it's source was coming from the doorway up above. The voice was high and rich, that of a man who's entire life had been spent around riches and power. There was no mistaking it. This was the voice of Shin Masaiya. "Kill him," it said, and then disappeared.

The guards roared, throwing their heads high, swords raised up and shaking. Then, without even the slightest hesitation, they charged, and Rioichi charged along with them.