Lost in Paradise

by Experimental

Follows Damaged and Gone to Earth. On the surface, it's return to status quo for Enma-cho, but nothing is the same. Tsuzuki is still missing, for certain in Muraki's clutches. And this time Hisoka isn't sure the damage he caused is something anyone, least of all he, can fix. Though he will try, even if it costs him his existence.

20. Going under

"You two are in luck," the retainer said as she led the way down the hall of the palace. "Lord Sohryuu has agreed to have an audience with you. Not an honor he bestows very frequently these days. Upon those outside his war council, at least."

Behind the woman's back, Nonomiya sent a nod of thanks Yali's way for arranging this. He beamed under his mistress's gracious smile, his hands clasped tight behind his back as though he were literally holding in his happiness.

"It does not go unappreciated, believe me," said Kazuma. "We are most grateful for whatever help he can offer us in our search."

"Well, anything that may help you to locate the offender Kurosaki that much faster and remove him from this world, he would be only too happy to give." The retainer must have noticed the two women's discomfited reaction, as she amended abashedly: "Er, Lord Sohryuu's choice of words, not mine. You must understand, everything that is unfolding now in the other worlds on account of that boy's actions was foreseen. Only Lord Sohryuu made the connection between the omens and Kurosaki's arrival. He has been warning against this day ever since—seemingly on deaf ears."

The two shinigami exchanged a brief glance. Kazuma felt it best to play along. "Well, we are all ears now." After all, it could only hurt their chances for assistance if they insisted Hisoka was innocent of the charges against him. Even that would have been only a half truth. He may have been innocent of Sohryuu's charges, but that did not make him innocent of all wrongdoing. "Kurosaki's a wanted man back in our world. It is very much in our boss's interest to see him returned. We don't want him to darken your doorstep any more than you do."

"My lord will be so glad to hear that," said Sohryuu's retainer. And she waved them into the war room.

Which was already abuzz with activity. Advisors scurrying about, generals in armor with swords at their hips looking tense, and talking in hushed voices by Sohryuu's ear.

The dragon himself, though he sat in the center of all the activity, seemed a world apart from it. Kazuma and Nonomiya had heard whispers of some mysterious madness that afflicted him from Yali's other contacts, but one would hardly know it to look at him. His fine robes were immaculate, his hair neatly coiffed as befitting a king. He still radiated unimaginable power. It was only the distant look in his eyes, the troubled look, while his subjects milled about him, that made Kazuma wonder if there was some truth to the rumor.

The retainer stared, eyes wide. "What's going on . . .?"

"The betrayer, Rikugou, has broken out of his prison."

At the sound of their lord's voice, all other talk ceased. Though everyone must have known this already—it was the reason they were acting so frantically to discharge orders and make calculations—somehow hearing it from Sohryuu's lips gave it a weight it didn't have before.

"We only just received word," Kijin said in the tense silence that followed, knowing the shinigami would want more information than that. "The alarms surrounding his person were tripped. Overhead views show a large hole in the roof of the stronghold that was not there before. We have received only preliminary reports from tengu forces in the area, but it appears as though he escaped."

"B-b-but," the retainer stumbled, "that's . . ."

"Impossible?" said Sohryuu. The corner of his lip twitched wryly. "Hardly. His confinement was in part self-inflicted. We had him hobbled when he returned to us, not maimed. Our mistake. Properly motivated, he could leave any time he chose. And did."

"My lord," said one of the officers, seated before a screen in Tenkuu's wall where data were streaming in. "It seems Kurosaki was spotted entering the fortress some hours before. It is believed he is responsible for Rikugou's break-out, though at this time tengu cannot confirm. Shall they pursue?"

Despite his human form, the roar that tore itself from Sohryuu's throat was all dragon. Officers nearest the throne leaped back as their lord stood. Kijin, Kazuma noticed, watched his father guiltily from the corner of his eye, pretending to be totally focused on the terminal in front of him.

Yali stepped back, blending into the shadows, but the two shinigami stood their ground as the dragon approached them. Though Kazuma knew he could crush the afterlife from her with one talon-tipped hand, even in his anger he would not do it. He needed them as they needed him.

"Every time that demon child comes here he brings nothing but destruction," Sohryuu growled at the women. "He belongs to your world. Find him. Put a permanent end to him if you must, but get him the hell out of my realm!"

"Believe me," Kazuma assured him, "we intend to do just that. Provide us with the resources we need and we will get right on it."

Sohryuu waved his hand. "Done. What do you require?"

"Maps, for starters. Of where we should be looking."

"I can provide you with those," Kijin offered, injecting himself into the conversation. He put a hand on his father's arm, murmured a few gentle words to assure him everything would be taken care of; and when Sohryuu turned back toward his throne and his ministers, Kijin told the women, "Follow me."

He was careful to speak little until he could be sure they would not be overheard. At least, not by anyone who had Sohryuu's ear. "I apologize for my father if he frightened you," he said. "We are in the middle of a war, though I fear we have felt only the tip of the spear so far. These times are trying on us all, but on none more than him."

"I'll bet," said Kazuma with a huff, but Nonomiya had to ask: "Is that all that's bothering him, Kijin, or is it something more, um, psychological?"

"Do you mean, has he gone mad?" The young man thought about how he might answer that tactfully. "You must have heard the rumors, then. I suppose it's impossible not to when the walls really are listening to everything said within them. Suffice it to say Father has had his faith deeply shaken. It is a condition that might have a simple remedy, but in the meantime it has left him . . . well, shall we just say, wanting in decisiveness."

"You fear he can't be the leader this world needs at present."

Nonomiya's question seemed to unsettle the boy, but he kept the smile planted firmly on his lips. "It is something that afflicts the old, I hear. Or, perhaps, when he made me and my sister it fractured a greater part of him than was understood at the time."

"Meaning?" said Kazuma.

"He suspects easily, probably because he forgets things. Things from long ago. Like whether or not the person he loved dearest in all the world even existed."

"Wow, that's harsh. Would make anyone a little paranoid, I guess."

Nonomiya might not have phrased it quite that way, but she agreed. It was hard to imagine what it would be like to exist for so long that she forgot her parents, or Kazuma for that matter. Perhaps it was something that happened to a person without their even being aware of it. Could she ever not know that she had forgotten someone so dear to her?

Yet, in a way—she thought as she looked over at her partner—wasn't that precisely what had happened?

"It happens when your life is measured in millennia. In any case," Kijin went on, "I must insist you and your shiki keep this information between us. We cannot risk further instability in the realm at this moment, and I fear that if word got out—"

"We will be discreet," Nonomiya promised. And with a hard look at her shiki: "Isn't that right, Yali?"

"You have my word, Miss."

"But I said I would help you to find Hisoka," Kijin said, "and I meant it. I trust you are not really going to use 'any means necessary' to bring him in."

"We think we can convince him to come with us peacefully," Kazuma said. "We are Peacekeepers, after all. We have no desire to hurt the kid. Might only piss him off. Besides, he's as much our friend as I'm guessing he is yours, much as you might be trying to keep that from dear old dad."

Kijin's brief, guilty lowering of his gaze told her she'd read that right. "You're not empathic, too, by any chance?"

"Nah. Just a good judge of character."

"But timing is of the essence," said Nonomiya. "We need to get to Kurosaki before he can cause any more trouble—for all of our sakes."

Kijin snorted. "Fair enough. As it happens, I have a good idea of where he's going."

"Care to share that with us?"

"I'll do you one better: I'll take you to him myself."

---

It rained that night. And though the raindrops barely reached the ground beneath the jungle canopy where they stopped to rest, the humidity and the heat made it all but impossible to get comfortable.

"We should reach the outskirts of the desert before sundown tomorrow, if we continue at our current pace," Senrima told them, "and then another day to reach Kurikara's stronghold." The undercurrent in her voice told it plain: She still wasn't convinced this was a good idea. But she had agreed to help Hisoka, and anyway, K had probably told her in whatever language cats communicated by that their destination was non-negotiable. "Of course, it would be faster to travel by wormhole—"

"But dangerously unreliable," Rikugou put in. "The wormholes are impossible to predict. We could end up on the other side of this world—or in another plane of existence altogether."

"We'll keep going as we're going then," Hisoka said, and let that be the end of it.

Rikugou had decided to stay in bird form, settling himself into a position that allowed Hisoka and K to rest against the softer feathers of his flank, while his wing sheltered them from moisture like a well-insulated tent.

Worn out from the trials at the fortress, Hisoka was ready to turn in. But some impression kept him from closing his eyes just yet: an impression of something left unsaid, and burning to be spoken. He opened his eyes to see Rikugou's two left ones staring at him out of that massive head. "What?"

The great bird hesitated. "Nothing," he finally said. "Just thinking. We will speak in the morning."

But morning was almost through when Rikugou finally brought it up. They were flying over the jungle, Senrima and K below them on their eight, when he said to Hisoka: "Do you mind if we take a brief rest? There is something I wish to discuss with you."

His voice was so grave, it seemed impossible for Hisoka to say no. And anyway, it would feel good to stop and stretch his legs, and take a break from the wind whipping in his face. "What's this about?"

"Our relationship, as a matter of fact. I think you would agree that it is in need of some repair. That is why you came here to find me, is it not? I believe that the failure of my summons to the Real World could only in part be attributed to your haste to use me. We had such little time to foment our bond after you won me, and I . . . well, I lament that I was very out of practice. It would be one matter if we had all the time in the world to get to know each other better, but I fear our current circumstances do not allow for a leisurely courtship this time either."

Relationship, courtship. . . . The connotations of what Rikugou was saying were disconcerting, to say the least. "Can't you just download a tutorial on how to use you directly into my brain?" They were in a digital world, after all.

That got a chuckle out of the bird. "Actually, I had something along those lines in mind. Do you suppose you could humor me for a small experiment?"

"Sure. Why not."

At that confirmation, Rikugou let out a screech like the cry of an eagle. Moments later, Hisoka heard Senrima's whinny on the whistle of the wind, saw her toss her head and kick her feet against the sky, leaving ripples in the air as she broke the sound barrier.

Then Rikugou banked right, gliding on a warm current that slowly brought him lower over the forest canopy. The two circled for a few minutes, looking for a landing zone that might accommodate Rikugou's immense size. Eventually they spotted a series of waterfalls, surrounded by boulders and a large enough break in the trees. Rikugou set down there.

And, when Hisoka had climbed down from his shoulders, shrank down to human size again. A robe of maple leaves in muted shades of green and gold covered his shoulders and billowed around his legs. He found a pair of glasses in one of the sleeves, and slipped them on. "Ah, much better," Rikugou said of the change. "I'm not used to staying in that form for so long." He rubbed a hand over his shaved head, which was sporting a more noticeable layer of peach fuzz. "Though there's still room for improvement in this one."

Hisoka looked around the place as he stretched. It was peaceful here, between the sound of the waterfalls and the hush of the trees shaking in the breeze, the distant song of birds. He expected to hear the roar of Senrima's hooves approaching, like a jet passing overhead, but never did. "Won't the others be joining us?"

"They went on ahead. We will catch up with them later. For the moment it's just the two of us. I thought it would be better if we did this in private."

Hisoka spun to look at him. "Did what in private?" What exactly had he agreed to? He remembered what techniques Terazuma and Kokushungei had used to repair their damaged bond. But surely it wasn't expected that all shiki be sexually intimate with their masters. Was it?

"Master Kurosaki. . . ." Rikugou took a step toward him, and Hisoka involuntarily took one back. That made the astrologer pause. "Just what do you think I intend to do to you?"

"Something personal." To say the least.

The other blinked. "Well, of course it is personal. That is how it must be for the two of us to work. If we are to know each other's souls, if you hope to command me and I to obey, then we must know one another completely, flaws and fears and all. No secrets between us. No surprises. There must be total trust. I must be comfortable in your mind, and you in mine."

"My mind?"

"Yes." Then it was Rikugou's turn for embarrassment. He even blushed. "Wait. Did you think I meant . . .?"

"No offense or anything, I'm just not interested in going to bed with anyone, least of all a guy who's also a giant bird." Maybe sex with shikigami seemed perfectly normal for some people, but to Hisoka it seemed to border on bestiality. Though, considering these were gods, he couldn't be sure for which side it was more taboo.

Rikugou smiled as he shook his head. "I apologize if you thought that was what I had planned. I have no interest in you that way, you may rest assured. You're like an infant compared to me. To say it would be inappropriate would be a gross understatement."

Wouldn't it be enough to say you're not interested and leave it at that? His choice of words left Hisoka feeling a little offended. So maybe Hisoka wasn't thousands of years old, but calling him an infant was a little extreme.

Rikugou sobered. "Though I cannot say that what I propose is any less intimate. If anything, it may be more. After all, when two people join together in physical union, they remain separate unto themselves mentally. They can hide their thoughts, their fears, from the other, confident in their sovereign individuality."

"It's . . . different for an empath," Hisoka corrected him before he could censor himself. "Sometimes it's hard to tell where my thoughts begin and the other person's end. Physical touch just makes it worse. It makes it that much easier to lose track of myself in another person."

He detected a wave of warm sympathy from Rikugou's direction. "Then I understand your hesitation. But I ask you to trust me and take a stab at it—as I believe they say in your world. I do believe our bond will be stronger for it."

"Did you do this with Tsuzuki, too?"

The mention of his name seemed to bring with it a tangle of emotions for Rikugou, if the shadow that crossed his face was any indication. "Tsuzuki did not have your particular skills. We had to come to know one another some other way. I seem to recall a lot of time spent gardening and playing strategy games together."

That was a "no," then. Hisoka didn't like the use of past tense so much, either. "Have you ever done this, mind-melded, with one of your masters?"

"I did it with you, last time you were here, when you challenged me and I tested you with a game of go. Of course, that time we met on a neutral ground, I was not inviting you directly into my mind, so this may feel a bit different. But I'm confident that if I didn't fry your synapses before, I won't now. If that's what you're worried about."

"I guess that's somewhat reassuring." But Hisoka also saw the logic to it. An awkward, twisted, science-fictiony logic but a kind of sense nonetheless. If Rikugou were a weapon, and Hisoka his wielder, he had to know what Rikugou was made of before he could use him. He would not fire a gun without learning first how it worked—at least, it wouldn't be very wise to do so. Yet that was precisely what he had done when he summoned Rikugou in the living world the last time.

And he had paid dearly for his haste, his reckless confidence. He could not make that same mistake again.

"Okay. What do I do?"

Rikugou sat cross-legged and patted the rock in front of him. "Sit down with me. I will go first. There is something I want to share with you, a memory which I think represents who I am in a way that may help you call on me later. I think it will be a pleasant beginning point for you. I don't wish to overwhelm you on our first go of it."

"Alright." Hisoka did as asked, mirroring Rikugou's position on the boulder, their knees nearly touching. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, willed himself not to panic. But it was hard to keep calm when he was preparing to share his mind with another.

Rikugou seized his right wrist, and pushed up his sleeve. He gripped Hisoka's arm tight, and urged the boy to do the same to him. Hisoka could feel the eyes in the palms of Rikugou's hands against his skin, rolling beneath their lids, and tried not to focus on how strange and slightly gross that was.

"Now, relax," Rikugou said in low, even tones. "It may help to close your eyes. Free your mind of all pressing thoughts but mine. You will see it coming toward you, like a distant light at the end of a tunnel, gradually growing larger, brighter. . . ."

And then he was surrounded by light.

He was light—roiling, dancing, in all colors of the visible spectrum, and even more that were invisible. He was warm, like a fetus in the womb, and resonant with its mother's heartbeat. And crackling with his own strength, his own energy, growing until it could not be contained. He erupted in a joy so pure and all-encompassing it would have brought tears to his eyes, had he eyes, or tears. But he sang with it, laughed in it, and arced and twisted and stretched his immensity out into the ether, and left the bonds of that which he had been part of, free to fly at his own pleasure.

He heard/saw/felt his brothers/sisters/friends (human words failed where there was no sex or individuality, or even discrete senses) surround him, freed in the same glorious eruption that had released and made him. They flickered and danced and intertwined in an endless world without gravity or bounds, racing each other as fast as the universe would let them. Time stood still all around them, while they sang songs that made the whale's and the nightingale's seem dull. It was bliss, completely and utterly: the bliss of unconditional belonging, and of unbridled freedom at the same time. It was the bliss of seeing endless new horizons stretch out before him, endless questions waiting to be answered; and simultaneously, knowing that he knew everything there was to know, everything he ever needed to know. Being complete, a ray of pure energy, pure power. He wanted to inhabit this feeling forever, and never let it end.

There was a tug on Hisoka's mind, trying to draw him out of the experience. Some distant voice telling him That's enough for now. Time to leave this.

But he was too intoxicated by the thrill of it. He had never felt anything remotely so good, so pure, so whole. And, as though to make up for everything good that he had missed out on in his life, he wanted more. He held on tight, didn't dare let go.

And there was more. Skimming across the ionosphere, watching the greens and reds and violets light up in his wake as the friction tickled his photons. His friends/brothers/sisters danced across the poles, and he danced with them as they swirled off into outer space again, or burned out in a glorious blaze, singing with joy even while disappearing into the ether. They knew no sorrow, even as their brief existence came to an end.

There is another tug—but this one is different. This one seizes hold of him and doesn't let go. He panics. This is a new sensation. He hasn't felt its like before, but he knows he doesn't like it. The curvature of the planet looms too close, too big in his view. And growing larger. His belly burns. Or, rather, it crackles, like he's being poked with a million tiny needles. And it isn't pleasant. He tries to rise, to catch another magnetic wave, but there is nothing. He's sinking, sinking down, dragged down toward the rock and he can't stop his fall can't stop the air tearing at his chest tearing at his insides making him solid like a sinking stone and branches scratch and tear his body as they break his fall. He's charged and the core of the Earth is pulling him in like a magnet. Such pressure, such pain, such fear, such crushing fear he has never known the like, and then—

Then agony. Such agony! Like he's been snapped, compressed, every bone in his body broken into a million pieces. No, not broken: re-made. Shoved down into a mold. He has to choose—what to be, what not. His skin (erupts, singes) tightens, strangles him, choking him, like he's a red-hot sword being plunged into ice water. Someone is cradling him in their hands. (Tatsumi carrying his remains, every movement, every point of contact a flare-up that's excruciating.) It hurts, this new sensation. Everything so raw, so new. He hates it here. But nowhere to go. For the first time he knows scent. The breath of trees, the smell of green. It soothes his aches. A face peers down at him, awash in sunlight. His eyes—he has eyes (snake eyes), he never had to see through such a small lens before—drag it into focus. Such kindness there, though he only just knows these things for the first time. Such beauty—

Tsuzuki. It's Tsuzuki.

And the shock of seeing him there, in Rikugou's memory, is too much.

With an intake of breath—like it was his first breath—Hisoka let Rikugou release his mind. He came back to himself, finding himself alone with Rikugou, much to his disappointment, and clutching the shiki's wrist embarrassingly tightly in both hands. The whole episode was intense—a mix of emotions and physical sensations he no longer knew how to process, now that their freshness was quickly fading.

"I'm sorry," Rikugou said, "you didn't deserve to be subjected to that trauma. I should have guessed, with our connection still relatively untried, that it might be too much too soon. I did not mean for you to feel all of that—"

"No, no, it's all right." Hisoka's voice felt foreign in his own throat, as though he had to consciously remind himself who he was. "I wanted to feel it all. I can handle pain. Yours was different, maybe, but I wouldn't say it was necessarily worse than the things I've experienced." The last feeling still lingered. It was that sense of kindness, felt so intimately and resonating, harmonizing with something deep inside himself, that made Hisoka ask, "Was that how Tsuzuki won you?"

"Tsuzu—" Rikugou was quick to understand. "Ah. I see. It was his face you saw in the memory."

"Yeah. Why, should it have been someone different?"

Rikugou had to think about that one himself. He drew back his arm. "I suppose it's been so long now that I've forgotten what he truly looked like, replaced him with the nearest thing. Perhaps something in Tsuzuki's character reminded me of him."

Or maybe I was projecting unintentionally, Hisoka thought, seeing the person I wanted to see. But he couldn't prove it one way or another. "Then, that wasn't actually Tsuzuki."

"No. That was a memory from a very, very long time ago. There's a story that's told here, of the day a star fell from the heavens and landed in the lap of the Emperor, while he was resting beneath the shade of a paulownia tree. Like a baby bird from its nest. . . ."

"So the Emperor did exist. You didn't just imagine him."

"Ah, but unfortunately even that logic isn't water-tight. I might just as well have created a memory out of my longing for the legend to be a reality."

But Hisoka didn't see how he could actually believe that, even if he had to agree that a memory wasn't evidence, it wasn't proof. Memories could be manipulated.

"What you made me feel just now," he began slowly, unsure how to put the experience into words, when it seemed to defy description so well. "What exactly was that? I felt like I didn't have a body, but I certainly existed."

"What you saw was my very first memory. I guess you might say, it was my birth."

"Then, when you said a falling star. . . . You don't mean a meteor."

Rikugou shook his head. "Maybe in your world, a falling star refers to a meteor; but in mine, it means an actual star. Or, in my case, a piece of star that fell to earth. I began my life as a flare shot off from the sun. I was born in a solar storm—or, I suppose I should say, I was part of that storm. The only part to survive."

"But how is that even possible?" How could something so elemental have any sort of consciousness, Hisoka wondered, let alone be able to transform itself into something so physical as the human form sitting across from him?

Apparently, his confusion was a source of some humor to Rikugou. "If you knew how some of the others you've met here started out, you would not find it strange in the least. The origins of shikigami are strange and baffling to no end. Although, to us, the origins of life in the Real World are no less peculiar.

"Suffice it to say, I acquired this form you see before you, without which I would not have lasted long in the world. I would have dissipated, become part of the ionosphere, like my siblings. But in this body I adapted, went native, and integrated myself into Gensoukai society to the best of my ability. And yet, I have always felt the deepest affinity for the heavens, and its suns in particular. I still feel as though they speak to me, if in a language I no longer understand."

"I guess it makes sense you'd be an alien. How many creatures that evolved on Earth, either the real or imaginary one, have six eyes?"

Admittedly, it hadn't been a very nice thing to say. But Rikugou laughed. In fact, it may have been the first genuine, humorous laugh that Hisoka had heard out of him in a very long time. "You'd be surprised how common that sort of thing actually is here. Even bees in your world have five, and some serpents have essentially three. Of course, neither has anything on a clam—

"But I suppose you make a fair point," Rikugou amended when he saw his fun facts weren't helping. "An alien, huh? I never thought of it that way."

"So, you remember your own birth that clearly—which, by the way, practically no human being can do—but you can't remember what the Emperor looked like."

"I know how it sounds to you, but it's true. I have been a long time without him, and have had many masters in the centuries since, each one's face overwriting the one that came before it, whereas the process of my birth shaped me in the most fundamental way.

"What I do know is that I would never have found the will to continue to exist in those early decades if not for the love of the Emperor. For he loved all of us, every creature and every plant that ever grew upon the soil of Gensoukai or flew in its skies, or swam in its oceans. Even those who sinned against him—he may have punished them, deservedly so for the sake of those affected by their crimes, but in his heart he always forgave. That is why I cannot blame Sohryuu for doubting that he really existed, or Kurikara for insisting he didn't. Can such a being truly exist, who has nothing in his heart for others but love?"

Rikugou tucked his hands into their opposite sleeves, as though to warm himself from a sudden cool breeze, and the pensive look came over his features again.

And Hisoka's thoughts went once again (perhaps they hadn't yet left) to the impression of the Golden Emperor in Rikugou's mind, the one with Tsuzuki's face. It seemed to fit. Hisoka, too, knew someone with that same face who at times seemed to have nothing but love for those around him. A bodhisattva, taking lives that had lingered too long, but with kindness, and mercy, telling himself that it is for the best.

No, he couldn't fool himself. Hate and guilt, anger and fear and doubt and sadness found just as much a home in Tsuzuki as any form of love. Just as they did in any human being. Just as they surely must have even in the Emperor, despite how the denizens of this world remembered him. But Hisoka still thought he could understand what Rikugou had seen in his old partner. He could understand how Tsuzuki's better qualities could overlap with those of being of pure love. Because if there was one thing Tsuzuki excelled at to a fault, it was giving of himself.

"Your Emperor does sound a bit like a legendary creature," Hisoka said, hoping that that wasn't what Tsuzuki was going to become, now that he was in Muraki's hands. "Like a unicorn. Or a kirin."

"Yet I hear those are back."

So maybe there was hope for Tsuzuki to come back, too. His Tsuzuki.

"I envy you and Senrima, you know," Rikugou said, "for seeing one. It is said that to see a kirin is to experience the peace of the True God."

Somehow it surprised Hisoka to hear Rikugou, whom he knew as a god himself, who was literally a piece of the sun, speak so. He didn't know why it should. Surely even the most powerful shikigami had a keen sense of what was larger than themselves. "Is there any truth to the legends about them? I mean, does their being here really mean the Emperor is coming back?"

"Maybe he's already here."

Surely Rikugou could guess what Hisoka had to ask next, though it felt blasphemous somehow to even put it into words: "You're not suggesting I'm an incarnation of the Golden Emperor, are you? I mean, all that nonsense about a flowering wind—Sohryuu sure believed it was a bad omen. Did he think it meant I was some sort of Anti-Emperor or something? Could seeing that kirin be a sign that Tsuzuki will come back—I mean, he does command the most powerful of you, how much of a stretch would it be if he was the Emperor incarnate?"

But Rikugou was shaking his head, holding up his hands to slow Hisoka down. "Now you're asking questions I have no answers to. All I know is what I've known from the day I first met you, that you are somehow a key to our world's survival. Or destruction, as the case may be. Sohryuu weighed the same probabilities that I did, and concluded that the risks of what you could do to this world outweighed any potential benefit. I was not comfortable making that decision without more information."

Gee, when he put it that way . . . "Thanks, I think?"

Perhaps seeing he was not getting his point across, Rikugou tried a different way. "It is like bringing a new child into the world. Any child has the potential to do great things when it grows up and into its own power, or to be a tool of destruction, to itself or others. What it will be depends on how it is raised. Which aspects of its nature are nurtured."

"So, that's what this is all about. You see yourself as raising me." And this not long after calling Hisoka an infant. . . .

"I hope my analogy doesn't offend you." But Hisoka felt no offense this time, nor did he believe that Rikugou meant it in a pedantic way. He only hoped the astrologer wasn't raising him like a lamb to be sacrificed. "It's not that I perceive you to be a child, but your powers are yet raw and unformed and subject to influence, like a child's mind would be. Sohryuu, if he had not destroyed you outright, would have nurtured your growth with distrust and self-hate. Not intentionally, perhaps, it would not be in his nature to do so, but he would not have to act with intention to cause great harm. I would see the opposite happen."

"And you don't worry you might be puffing me up with delusions of my own grandeur, what with all this talk about winning Kurikara?"

"No! In the time I have known you, I have seen you fully capable of testing where your own limits lie, and pushing yourself beyond them when you are unsatisfied with the answer."

"And destroying how many lives in the process?" Didn't Rikugou fear that was only what would happen again if Hisoka went after the Dragon King? That he would only make a bad situation worse?

But Rikugou was not about to buy his attempts at self-deprecation. "Don't you see? You do not allow your failures to be the end. You don't give up because you hit a wall, or mire yourself in pity or self-doubt. You redouble your efforts. But moreover, you find a way! That is what this world needs more than anything: solutions! And, yes, it is selfish of me to want to harness that for my own well-being and the well-being of my world. But is that really so wrong? If I can see what great and terrible things you are capable of, is it not my duty to foster the great to the detriment of the terrible?"

Hisoka had never thought of himself in this world that way before. Each time he came here, it seemed to be with such self-serving goals in mind as gaining ever more powerful shikigami, so that he might make himself more powerful when he returned to the real worlds. He had never stopped to wonder how shikigami might try to profit from him. Or that it was even possible that he might be a tool in their hands, rather than the wielder. It was a terrifying and equally exhilarating thought.

And with that, Hisoka felt a new sense of urgency. "Is this the part where I invite you into my memories, now?" And did he need to give the shiki advance warning, he wondered, about what he would find in Hisoka's mind? He wasn't sure how much Rikugou knew about his past, particularly where it concerned Muraki, and a particular night of the lunar eclipse. And despite what Rikugou had endured, falling to earth, Hisoka wasn't sure he had experience with the kind of pain Muraki had put him through. Or, for that matter, that that was something Hisoka was ready to share with anyone.

"There will be time for that. When you have regained your strength."

"But I feel fine."

"You may not realize it, but the communion of minds does tax one's system. Nothing a nice meal and a tall glass of water won't fix. And speaking of which," Rikugou said as he got back to his feet, "we should rejoin our friends if we hope to continue making good time and outpacing Sohryuu's allies."

---

They made good time toward the desert. When Kijin promised to show them the way, he kept his word.

He flew always ahead of them, a majestic creature that seemed part nightjar and part hawk moth, mottled in stormy grays and blues and violets, who glided along the upper drafts with the silent evenness of a modern-day stealth bomber. Every now and then, he opened his mouth wide, wide as a whale shark sucking in krill, and the discharge of his breath made the very atmosphere ripple and the storm clouds race out of their path, so that though it may rain on either side of them, they enjoyed clear skies all the way.

Like an eagle clutching a fish, Kijin carried Yali in his paws, while his own servant, the iron tiger Suugo no Madara, carried Kazuma and Nonomiya together on his back. That meant occasional layovers—which the two women were grateful for, as it gave them time to stretch and rest their legs. Shinigami had little to worry about from saddle-soreness, but muscles ached after hours spent clinging to a metal body shooting through the air at tremendous speed.

The extra time these rest stops gave them together was another matter. But after another one passed in frigid near-silence, Kazuma could stand it no longer.

When they stopped for the night in a desert canyon, and Nonomiya excused herself to go and search for wood for a fire, Kazuma told Yali to hang back, and seized the chance to accompany her partner herself.

Nonomiya let out a very audible sigh when she realized she couldn't hope to get away from Kazuma this time.

"Kochou, please," Kazuma had to insist, "we've been flying all day, practically in each other's laps, and you can't just let me explain myself to you? My intent was never to abandon you, I swear."

They came to an old tree, long dead and falling apart, and Kazuma hurried to pick up the larger branches. As if the two of them were just animals, she thought with a note of bitter humor, and she was trying to impress Kochou with her firewood gathering skills.

"I just wanted to minimize the damage. I went into that raid with no intention whatsoever of hurting Chief Konoe, or anyone else involved in his break-out, but I couldn't guarantee that someone else from our department might share my concerns. Don't you see? The only way I could ensure a peaceful outcome was if I took charge of the operation myself."

"And I suppose I cancelled out whatever merit points you earned with Chief Todoroki from that, didn't I?" Firewood momentarily forgotten, Nonomiya stood up, and met Kazuma's gaze straight on for what felt like the first time in a long time.

Which was almost worse than not meeting Kazuma's gaze. It meant Kazuma had to see all the hurt and frustration her partner felt dead-on, and feel the responsibility she took for that while Nonomiya was watching. "You could have told me then!" Nonomiya said. "I might have been in a different department, but I wasn't unreachable! Instead, I had to hear everything second-hand, and after the fact—"

"Do you really think that you would have acted any differently, that you would have stayed home that night, if you had just heard my side of the story?"

Nonomiya thought on that for a long moment. "Probably not. But it would have put my conscience at ease. I would have felt better knowing at least the two of us weren't enemies in the whole mess. But I could not allow our chief to send agents with a vendetta against Tsuzuki and Summons into the living world, out in the open like that, knowing there was a very real possibility someone could suffer irreparable harm from it. I had to do something. There were better ways that night could have been handled, and you know it. What our department was doing was wrong. I had to take a stand for what I believed was right."

"And I envied you for it!"

That confession took Nonomiya visibly aback. All of a sudden, Kazuma could stand the distance between them no longer. Forgetting about her pile of firewood, she closed the distance between them, reached out to take Nonomiya's hands—

But Nonomiya shied away from her touch. Kazuma felt her heart break a little more inside her, but at least the truth was out now. That weight had been lifted from her. What Nonomiya did with her confession now was no longer hers to decide.

"I envied you for following your conscience, and doing what I thought was right, too! And I regret," Kazuma said, feeling her voice waver, "I regret to the bottom of my soul that I wasn't strong enough to be right there with you, fighting alongside you. I thought that by following our orders and leading that raid, I was doing what was necessary to keep suspicion away from both of us. But I knew they were bad orders. I knew where I wanted to be that night. Where I should have been, when it was all over. It just took me a little longer to get up the courage to admit that to you, and by then it was too late."

"It's never too late for the truth," Nonomiya said in a small voice. It would have rekindled Kazuma's hopes a little more, but it sounded as though her partner were still trying to convince herself of what she had said. She didn't quite believe her own words.

"So, what do you say? Am I forgiven?"

Nonomiya shook her head. "You should have told me, Shin."

But it wasn't a no. Kazuma had been with Nonomiya long enough to know when a shake meant "never" and when it meant "I need to think it over." This seemed much more like the latter. "We ought to get back to the others before the sun goes down."

"Here, let me take those for you," Kazuma said as she reached for Nonomiya's load of sticks. But Nonomiya shrugged off the transparently chivalrous gesture, insisting stubbornly that she was no helpless damsel and could carry her own firewood, thank you very much.

And she was still mad, even after what Shin had said to her. But what Nonomiya couldn't bring herself to admit to her partner was that much of that hurt and that anger she still felt was aimed at herself. She could kick herself for jumping to conclusions about Kazuma's motives, she knew it was unjust to Shin to treat her as though she had acted on reasons that she, in fact, hadn't.

And yet, Nonomiya couldn't just reason away the sense of betrayal she had felt that night, when Kazuma went one way, towards law and order, and Nonomiya the other, toward what could easily have turned into martyrdom. She couldn't be sure either one of their decisions had been justified. She just knew how she felt. And as stubborn as that pain was, as unreasonable it was, it still existed. It was still an obstruction in her way. And though she wished she could clear it away with dynamite and be done with all this heartache, all she had at the moment was an ice pick.

When they returned to camp, they found Yali pacing nervously. "I don't think we should be staying here tonight," he said to Nonomiya's question of what was bothering him. "I have a really bad feeling about this place."

Over by the stone outline of their hearth, Suugo lay stretched out, utterly calm but for the irritated twitch of his ridiculously long tail. It rang each time it came down in the sand like a dropped steel cable bouncing on the ground. "If Master Kijin sees that we'll be safe," he said in his deep, rattling, metallic voice, "then we will be safe."

"It's indefensible!" Yali insisted. "We're sitting in a blind ditch between two high walls, perfect ledges for archers, not to mention all the caves above us where who-knows-what could be hiding, ready to jump out and devour us all!"

The two women glanced up at the pockmarked walls of the canyon. The sun was still up, but where they were was blanketed completely in twilit shadow. Not great for visibility.

"I know this area well," Kijin assured them. "Other than cave swallows, there's nothing in these canyons you need worry about. Trust me. I wouldn't put the two of you in danger, if I could help it. We're all after the same thing here."

Suugo nodded, as if to say "Told you so." "If Master Kijin says it, it's true."

Yali threw up his hands in frustration and stalked off, and Nonomiya hurried after him to try to convince him to trust Kijin and his experience.

But something told Kazuma that Yali's instincts were on to something. She couldn't have explained what it was, but she didn't like the air in this canyon either. And the young shiki's point about their position being indefensible was true, no matter what powers of prophecy anyone might possess. Just what was Kijin thinking that he wasn't sharing with them?

She cast a surreptitious glance his way—though she never truly felt that there was a time Kijin didn't have some kind of eye on her. Perhaps the foreseeing third one that dot in the center of his forehead represented. Kazuma didn't want to assume the worst about him when he'd gone out of his way to help them, even hiding his own motives where Kurosaki was concerned from his father; but it wouldn't hurt to sleep with one eye open tonight, just to make sure.

---

That little side trip took up more of the day than Hisoka had at first thought. They reached the hills beyond which the desert began by late afternoon, but decided not to risk the passage over the peaks in the chill of night. Besides, Senrima claimed to have spotted several wormholes on her flight to camp, and no one wanted to risk running across them in the dark, and becoming separated, or lost.

The next day saw a dramatic change. The moisture of the rain forests gave way to the scorching heat of the desert, and its air that seemed to dry a person up from the lungs out.

The shiki took turns carrying Hisoka, with Senrima—who, true to her word, never seemed to tire—galloping along the sand dunes with him on her back while Rikugou coasted over their heads in a state of half-sleep. With each stop along the way and transformation, he looked more like himself, even if it was still strange to see him without his knee-length plait. His color was swiftly coming back, particularly to his clothes, which also were increasing in richness despite the heat, as though he were growing new feathers after a forced molt.

Hisoka would have loved to trade transformative powers with the two shiki for a day or two. Or even travel as secure in his nakedness as K did in hers. After just a day in the desert he was sticky with sweat and sand. The bow and quiver slung across his back and chest—which Senrima had returned to him at the first opportunity—didn't help matters any, and he never had been one to stand the heat in the first place. By some miracle they found a kopje that was hiding a watering hole, and Hisoka was able to beg some private time from the others to go and bathe, and wash the grit out of his clothes.

Despite the heat above ground, the water inside the shelter of the rocks was a mild temperature, just enough to cool Hisoka comfortably, and the boulders provided enough privacy that he even managed to catch a short but rejuvenating nap. He emerged feeling as though he had been purified in mind as well as body.

Rikugou had been quieter than usual during the flight that morning. He didn't speak much while he was flying as a rule, but today the silence sat heavy over both rider and mount, as Rikugou had flown deep in thought. Thoughts he kept well shielded from Hisoka.

By the time he rejoined their camp after his bath, Hisoka was expecting it. "I think it's time we reconnect our minds," Rikugou said. "If you are ready for it."

"You want me to open my mind to you this time, right?" Hisoka didn't think he could ever say he was ready for that, but he knew that if he did not try soon, they would run out of time before they reached their destination. Senrima made quite a few trips into the deep desert and assured them they were very close to the steep wadis of Kurikara's domain now.

"Yes, and no," said Rikugou. "I have a different idea, if you will bear with me. Rather than share your memories as I shared mine, I was hoping we might try to make contact with the being inside you."

Hisoka felt his heart skip a beat. As if the snake-like thing had heard itself mentioned and was waking up from its sleep. "Are you sure?"

Rikugou nodded. "I feel that it must be done, and we are running out of time to do it. You said you wish to know what exactly you are."

"Well, yeah, but—"

"If you're going to face Kurikara, it won't help your chances of winning him to your side if you're divided within yourself."

"But if I try this, and I fail, don't I run the risk of going to Kurikara in an even weaker position?"

Rikugou lowered his eyes. "I had considered that. But a weighing of the risks tells me that the greater risk is not to try. You may find within you an even greater strength than you knew you were capable of. You survived my fire, as well as the injuries Futsu no Mitama dealt you when you first came here, neither of which should have been possible. It's time we discover the reason, once and for all. But it will not be easy. I would not recommend you doing this if there is even a chance you might give up as you did when I challenged you."

That episode still caused Hisoka a sharp twinge of shame. To think that he could have sunk so deep into his despair as to want to give up entirely. Not just on himself, but on Tsuzuki, and everyone else who had sacrificed for his sake. From where he stood now, that seemed like a different Hisoka, one he no longer wanted to be.

But was he sure he wanted to be the sort of person this experiment might cause him to become?

"What's this, then?" Senrima, who had been listening along in respectful silence, put her hands on her hips. "You having second thoughts, Kurosaki? 'Cause I'd think there was something wrong with you if you weren't."

That wasn't really helping to alleviate Hisoka's misgivings any, though.

"Hey," she tried when she saw his furrowed brow, "you can do this. So what if you're scared? That's only human. But the Kurosaki I know, the one who made it through all the trials and illusions the Fortress of Dreams could throw at him, he wouldn't let himself be defeated by a little mind worm."

"Thanks," Hisoka told her.

"It's the King Worm that comes after you gotta be afraid of."

Rikugou shot her a warning glare. "Let's just focus on one opponent at a time, shall we?" He turned back to Hisoka, projecting calm and confidence. "In practice, this will be just like when I let you into my mind to share my memories, except for one major difference. We will not be revisiting some past event. You will be conscious, but in your own head. Somewhat like a lucid dream, though with even more control over your surroundings. If the situation becomes too dangerous, you can sever our connection and reawaken at any time."

Hisoka shook his head, as though he could feel Rikugou sharing it with him already. "I still don't like the sound of this." But he didn't see what choice he had either. He had to face the monster inside him sooner or later—and sooner was better.

But he was afraid. For all he made it sound as though he didn't particularly care whether he was human or not, the truth was that he did care. Very much. Not knowing what he was, he was like a leaf blowing on the breeze. As long as he never touched ground, he was fine; but it was inevitable that he would come down, and not knowing where or how was terrifying. He could not say whether he was ready to accept whatever answer he found, but he had to look inside himself, at this thing.

In this journey he was on, he had reached a door at the end of a hallway. He had to confront it, he had to open that door and step through, or he could not move on.

They encamped for the night, and beside the low fire, with K and Senrima watching on, Hisoka let Rikugou take his wrists, and step with him into his own mind.

The cherry grove on his family's property at night, the trees in full bloom, tinted by the blood-red light of a lunar eclipse. . . .

"Don't think about it," Rikugou said. He stood beside Hisoka in that landscape in an oversized trench—almost looking like Muraki himself with the light glinting off his glasses, if not for the long, thick braid that trailed over one shoulder and the extra pair of eyes. "Stay focused, and in the present. We are not here for this memory."

"Not that I want to revisit it anyway." It was something Hisoka simply could not help. Such a traumatic event, which had made him what he was today—it did not give up its hold on him so easily.

But here, now, he was in control. And Rikugou's consciousness there beside his only helped him to reshape their surroundings. The red cast to the landscape slowly faded, changed to the pale green of a normal full moon. It illuminated the overgrown grasses, and seemed to point out a trail through them, as though highlighting the residue of footsteps taken in his dreams. "The lake is this way," he indicated for Rikugou to follow him. "That's where we'll find it."

"You're sure?"

"That's how I see it in my dreams. I don't know how to explain it exactly, but I know it's there. I can feel it." If he closed his eyes and just listened, he could hear it calling as though from beneath still waters. Taunting him. Like a lure. He hardly felt the weeds scratch his legs as he let it reel him in. The weeds, the landscape, everything, it was all in his mind, after all. "It's like . . . like catching yourself humming a song, and you don't even know you're doing it. And you know you know the song—obviously, or you wouldn't be humming it—but you've forgotten what it is and where you heard it."

Rikugou seemed not to like the sound of that. "I don't hear anything. Wait—"

It was the first splash of water around Hisoka's sneakers that made the shiki call out to him in warning. Hisoka waited for him to catch up. "You must let me speak to it first," Rikugou said, an uncharacteristic anxiety working its way into his voice. "If I can get a sense of what kind of entity we're dealing with, I can coach you on how to approach it. Besides, I have been here before. I touched it."

"You were inside my mind? Why wasn't I aware of that?"

"I did it while you were sleeping. Don't worry, I didn't look into any thoughts or memories that were private," Rikugou said when he saw the look of betrayal on Hisoka's face. Never mind that all his thoughts and memories should have been deemed private, Hisoka thought. "I was merely curious. I had to know what piece of the puzzle I was missing. Why the stars kept indicating things about you that seemed to make no sense, that were contradictory. Why, when I asked them for advice in how to deal with the problem of you, they always came back to the constellation of Draco."

"The Dragon?" Somehow that made a sort of sense.

Rikugou nodded. "At first I thought it was a reference to Kurikara, seeing as you were so eager to run off and meet him the first time you came here, or possibly even a warning of Sohryuu's animosity toward you. But upon further reflection, I surmised it must be something else. Draco is also a serpent—a chaos monster, to be exact, who once turned the axis of the sky, before the Earth's tilt shifted him off-center. Draco represents primordial forces—forces that are hidden, or within, as a cave represents the womb of the earth or a passage to deeper truths. Truths about our origins, and the most fundamental questions of our existence."

"You think it was a reference to this thing inside me." It wasn't a question. The answer was clear enough to Hisoka without need for confirmation. "You had no right to peer inside my head without my permission, Rikugou. But," the damage was already done, and if it resulted in something useful, "if you touched it, like you said, then don't you know what it is?"

The shiki shook his head. "I have some idea. But if I am right, the implications are grotesque, horrible to entertain. I don't see how a denizen of this world could compromise his or her ethics to such an extent. Also, it would not be able to hide itself from me so effectively if it were a shikigami. You've seen with Kokushungei and your colleague how, though they share a body in your world, they remain separate individuals in mine."

Hisoka shrugged. "That rules out parasitic shiki, then." Which was somewhat of a relief. "So if it's not something from here, does that mean it's a demon, or something even worse than that?"

But as soon as those words were out of his mouth, a pillar of black water erupted from the lake and rose straight into the air. Hisoka hadn't even time to suck in a breath to hold before it collapsed on top of him, pulling him straight down through the water and mud and soil into darkness. The last thing he knew was Rikugou shouting his name—before that too was disturbingly cut short.

---

It felt to Rikugou as though he had been hit by a truck. Or, to be fair, what he imagined such a thing, commonly spoken of as a means of comparison by humans, would feel like, as there were no trucks in his world. One moment he was standing on the marshy banks of the lake within arm's reach of Hisoka. The next, he was slammed back to consciousness in his own skull, gasping for breath as Senrima's worried face peered uncomfortably close into his.

"I take it that wasn't supposed to happen," she said.

"No. It was not." Rikugou held his head as he sat up, and shooting pain had him seeing stars. For that matter, he did not remember lying down. It must have been the same force that ejected him from Hisoka's mind that had pushed them apart, as if by some explosion of electrical energy.

He crawled to Hisoka, who had fallen onto his back as well, his eyes still closed as though in sleep. Rikugou could see them moving beneath their lids, and could watch the rise and fall of Hisoka's breath, but that was little consolation. He touched a hand gently to Hisoka's forehead, tried to reenter his mind, but it was walled off to him by the same impenetrable, scaled coils that had thwarted Rikugou before. This was bad, no matter how he looked at it. Very bad. K sat on Hisoka's chest and licked his chin in in an attempt to wake him, but of course it didn't work.

"He's still in his own mind." Rikugou sat back on his heels, feeling hope drain out of him as fast as he tried to build it back up again. "Damn it! That thing has him, it's pulled him deeper inside himself and he's all alone with it! I can't believe I let myself be tossed out on my ear like a stray cat. Sorry, K, poor choice of metaphor."

"Should we splash some water on him?" Senrima offered.

But Rikugou urged her with all the feeling he could muster not to do that. "Wake him up now, and we don't know what kind of shape he'll come back to us in. We could tear his mind in half if that thing has a good enough grip on him in there. Or worse, the Kurosaki who wakes up might be under that entity's control. No. Right now there's nothing we can do but hope he can find his own way back to consciousness. And wait."

---

A curious, high-pitched cry woke Kazuma from her light sleep. At first she thought she had just dreamed it, as minutes passed and she didn't hear it again, but she knew better than to doubt her instincts.

Wide awake now, she crawled over to where Nonomiya lay, whispering her name. Yali, who was curled against his mistress in animal form, keeping her warm, raised his leonine head and nudged Nonomiya awake with his nose. "Did you hear it too?" he asked Kazuma.

Then she was right: She hadn't dreamt it. "What was it? Cave swallows?"

"I don't think so," said Yali. "It sounded kinda like mice. Really big mice. I hope it's just mice. I'm starving. . . ."

That was just great, Kazuma thought, as she tried to peer through the dark around them. Even with a moon bright in the sky, the canyon where they had set up camp for the night remained in shadow, only the tops of the cliffs and hoodoos illuminated in stark contrast. And with them, the entrances of caves that dotted this desert landscape like Swiss cheese. Kijin may have assured them that only birds inhabited those caves, but Kazuma only had his word to take for it.

And speaking of . . . "Where's Kijin?" Nonomiya said groggily, as she wiped sleep from her eyes.

That was a good question. Their fire had died down to embers in the night, and the young man who was supposed to be their guide was nowhere to be—

"Right here," came his reassuring voice at their backs, and both the shinigami let out audible sighs of relief. And fright. "Don't sneak up on folks like that!" Kazuma told him. "A person could wet themselves. . . ."

She could practically hear his blush in the moment of silence that followed. Probably wasn't used to that kind of talk at court. "Suugo and I were just scouting the area." Sure enough, the metallic clanging of Suugo's footsteps followed close behind as Kijin went back to his place beside the fire. The youth's cloudy eyes seemed to possess a reflected glow in the low light, like cat's eyes. Suugo's did glow, but with an inner fire. "You three might want to get up. I don't want to alarm you, but it appears we're not alone."

"What!" Nonomiya hissed, and Yali cursed under his breath, "I told you I didn't like this place, I told you we shouldn't stop here—"

"But Kijin knows what he's doing," Kazuma said, though not without a healthy hint of sarcasm. She got out her handgun for good measure, and checked her clip. "Ain't that right? He's looking out for Hisoka's best interest, so if he says this is the way the kid was heading, we don't have much choice but to follow, do we?"

Kijin nodded his thanks for the vote of confidence. "This is the quickest way to him, without a doubt."

"Still," Kazuma added, "if it's all the same to you, I think everyone's awake enough to get a head start on the day and get out of here."

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she again heard the weird screech that had woken her up. And this time, there was an answering cry.

Kazuma raised her pistol, trying desperately to peer through the dark to find the source of the sound. She thought she saw a shadow move over here, something disappear into one of the holes that riddled the cliffs over there. Something long, and spiny.

And then the eyes, winking on in the darkness two at a time. Then four, then eight at a time. So many eyes. They were being surrounded, fast, and she still couldn't tell by what. But she could hear the scuffling, in the sand and against the rocky cliffs. Dozens, hundreds of quick feet, belonging to large bodies—

"Don't fire!" Kijin commanded when Kazuma raised her pistol. "They will do you no harm, so long as you give them no reason to."

Give what no reason, Kazuma wanted to ask, but then one of the creatures stepped out of the shadow and she couldn't speak a word. The only thought that ran through her mind was an instinctual Kill it, kill it, kill it. But the thing stared at her with a human face and human eyes—even if there were eight of said eyes and its mustache looked disturbingly like a pair of functional fangs. And the massive body that stepped into view behind that face was the body of a giant, hairy ground spider. No way Kazuma was going to lower her pistol with that thing coming at her.

She didn't have a choice. A pair of strong metal arms wheeled Kazuma around and wrenched the pistol from her hand. She tried to tear herself free, but it was like fighting against the Terminator, or Gort. Suugo's iron-plated humaniform body pinned her arms to her sides and held her fast, his robotic mask of a face impassive and unsympathetic as it stared down at her.

Yali growled, and Nonomiya cried, "Shin!" She had fuda at the ready—

But Kijin sent a bolt of lightning that zapped the paper charm right from her fingers, and swirled her up where she stood in a gust of wind, trapping her in her own personal, electrically-charged cyclone.

Yali prepared himself to leap at his mistress's attacker, his teeth and tusks bared at Kijin, but Nonomiya shouted, "Yali, run away! Get out of here, that's an order!" She knew she was sending away her last line of defense, but the young shiki stood no chance against those as powerful as Kijin and Suugo. And even if Kijin wasn't lying about the spiders not hurting her and Kazuma, she still couldn't be sure that immunity would extend to him, and she couldn't bear seeing Yali hurt on her account.

It looked like it just about killed him to leave her side at her moment of need. But an order was an order; he could not disobey. With a roar of frustration, Yali turned tail and ran past the giant spiders into the night, the tortured look on his face the last Nonomiya and Kazuma saw of him.

"What's the meaning of this, Kijin?" Kazuma said as the spiders closed in. "You swore to us you would help! I thought we were on the same side!"

"Honestly, I couldn't care less about sides." The youth's voice was calm, despite the terrors that surrounded them, entirely in command. As if even this had been his plan from the beginning. Scratch that, thought Kazuma: It must have been his plan from the beginning. "And helping is precisely what I'm doing. I swore to help Lord Kurosaki, and that means I mustn't let anyone come between him and his destiny. Not even the two of you."

"To think, we trusted you!" Nonomiya gasped, and even Kazuma stopped her struggling. "You snot-nosed little shit," the latter growled, no longer caring if she was talking to a god, "you were just using us!"

"It's true. And I appreciate the sacrifice you two are about to make. I have negotiated a deal with the tsuchigumo," Kijin said of the giant spiders. "They will take us safely to Kurikara by the fastest route, through their underground lair. Upon our arrival, I will present the two of you to the Dragon King as hostages of peace, as I sign of my good will."

"Good will?" Kazuma could have laughed.

"Yes," Kijin said, quite humorlessly. "To prove to him that I am serious about brokering an end to this war. With or without my father's approval. You two will be there to ensure I remain civil while doing so. If I should break my oath of peace while in his court, any attack from me or my servant may be considered an act of war, and Kurikara may choose to do with you as he will. But should he or a member of his court lay a hand upon either of you without just cause, they do so at their own peril, for I will bring the full brunt of my father's justice to bear upon them."

Sure, Kazuma thought, that made her feel so much better. As long as none of these prideful, quick-to-anger shikigami started a fight amongst themselves, she and Nonomiya would be just fine. What could she possibly have to fear in Kijin's good care? "You're as mad as Sohryuu is!"

It was the sort of accusation that might have brought swift retribution from a different shiki. But Kijin only grinned. "I can assure you, Miss Kazuma, I have been mad before, but I am not now. My mind and the path forward are clearer than they have been in a long time.

"And now I must suggest that you ladies come along willingly. If you do so, you may be allowed to walk on your own feet. But if you try to run, the tsuchigumo will be forced to wrap you up and carry you to Kurikara on their backs." The man-spiders in question squeaked in their mousy language and clacked their fangs, and Kazuma had no doubt any one of them would run her down in seconds if she tried to escape. "The choice if yours."

Not much of a choice. Kazuma really didn't want to follow giant spiders anywhere, let alone through creepy underground tunnels, and to her own possible demise; and she doubted Nonomiya was any more enthusiastic about the idea than she was. But if there was anything worse, it was being dragged along against her will, with any single part of those spiders touching her.

She opted to walk.

---

Darkness surrounded him.

And water. He could feel its weight, its viscosity, all around him, and he couldn't tell up from down, couldn't even get free of the coils around his legs. His lungs burned from holding his breath, and he knew that even if they filled with water, his death would only be temporary. But he had no wish to experience a drowning. He wasn't a collector of deaths. Though if he did nothing, he would pass out in seconds. He was already seeing flashes across his vision upon that wall of matte black.

Then it hit him: This was all in his head. He was only as submerged in water as he wanted to be. And at that thought, he gasped for breath, and sucked down air.

Air—but also hate. An intense and righteous anger like he hadn't felt even from Muraki, that kept him more firmly in its grasp than any physical coils. This was a hate that went back a thousand years, a thirst for vengeance the vintage of which was so potent it was as though when he inhaled, that loathsome feeling filled him up inside, leaching into every corner of his person. It made him feel ill to the core, yet he could not retch it back out, could not even scream. What good would that have done him anyway? There was no one to hear him within the confines of his own subconscious.

"So. Now, at last, you come to meet me, face to face. The soul wishes to know itself, and be known. After only . . . what? Twenty-three years of sharing a vessel?"

The voice enveloped Hisoka and filled him, seeming to originate in his own mind.

But it was his own mind, he reminded himself. The coils that surrounded him, beginning to come into focus the harder he fought to tune his eyes to the darkness—they were as much a part of him as his own thoughts, his own memories. When he demanded of the darkness, "Who am I talking to?" he should have expected it when the haughty answer returned to him from everywhere: "Yourself."

"You're the yatonokami." The other consciousness must have hated the name—or hearing him speak it anyway, if the recoil Hisoka could feel in it was any indication. "The one from the legends the people in my village talked about. I thought those were just stories. But if the stories were true, you should have been destroyed long ago, by my ancestor, Kurosaki no Ren—"

"FOOL!" The word resonated in his bones, made his head ring. "You know nothing about what you speak of! Though we share a body, a mind, a soul, still you wander in the dark, grasping for answers you do not truly seek! Perhaps you would rather believe what you choose to believe. Yet once you spoke to me as your only friend, until you let yourself be convinced I was but a figment of your imagination."

"That was you?" Hisoka had all but forgotten that. He had been so young then. How many adventures he and his imaginary playmate had invented, the secrets they passed each other while they played near the marsh. He had tried to introduce his friend to his mother one day, and she, terrified like he had never seen her before that Hisoka was speaking of the ghost of some young girl, had forbidden him from ever mentioning it again. That was long before he ever learned about the sister who died before he was born.

"It was easier to internalize my voice, wasn't it? And then tune it out completely. So much easier to deny my very existence than to face the sin of your hated ancestor—the sin of your own being."

But Hisoka shook his head. Whatever game the serpent was playing with him, he did not want to participate. He strained to see it more clearly, but like something in his dream, the more he tried to focus on any particular feature, the more it seemed to fade into the darkness. Hiding from him.

"I don't want to deny you any more," he told it. "I couldn't even if I wanted to. I want to know what I am—what we are." That seemed to earn him a hiss of amusement from the serpent, or at least curiosity. "I've seen what living in denial about what you really are does to a soul. I don't want that to happen to me."

"Or can't afford it to. That doesn't change that what I am terrifies you. I disgust you—"

"How can I be disgusted if I can't even see you?"

Hisoka should have known that the yatonokami would take his words as a challenge. He had always envisioned his imaginary friend as looking like himself. But what rushed toward him, parting the dark fog, was the head of a massive snake, its fangs bared and dripping with venom, multiple tongues writhing like octopus arms in its maw. He could feel its eagerness to sink those fangs into his flesh, its hatred of anything Kurosaki. He prepared himself for pain, for the fire of its poison.

"You forget we share a mind," echoed the voice inside his head as the creature menaced him, but it did not bite.

It was the eyes more than those wicked teeth that Hisoka feared looking too deeply into, and from which he couldn't turn away. Bright, electric green set in putrid gray-black. The same eyes Watari had seen in Hisoka's charred face.

"You flatter with words, but I see your true heart. And in it you despise me. You despise what I have made you. These gifts that I have bestowed on you, your powers of the mind, your tenacity, this great honor of sharing your existence with the Sword of Night—you wish I had never chosen you for it. You wish you had never been born."

"Chosen?" The rest, Hisoka could deal with later. "What do you mean, you chose me?"

A slew of emotions flared up that made Hisoka reel. The sheer wrath of the thing, and the pride. What vile things that creature had done over a thousand years of terrorizing his family's village. He only wished he could say they were unimaginable. Hisoka pressed his palms to his head, though he could not shut them out, could not stop them from flowing through him like film through a projector.

"That blasphemer Nagare thought he could outwit me!" came the answer Hisoka had not been expecting. "He thought he could rob me of that which was due me by divine right! Did he really believe he was capable of it—a mere mortal, that weak, impetuous man? Outwit me—a god?

"You never knew, did you?" The serpent seemed to snicker at Hisoka's confusion. "You poor creature—you never knew that your parents never wanted you. You were never supposed to exist. The curse, my curse, was supposed to end with him. At least, that was how Nagare planned it, knowing it would thwart all my plans to carry out my vengeance on the Kurosaki line into perpetuity. He planned to die without an heir and take the last of Ren's bloodline with him. If not for Rui's ignorance of the true nature of the Kurosaki curse, her eagerness to honor the man she loved with male issue and redeem her sister's failures, I might never have pulled it off. . . ."

Pulled what off, Hisoka thought.

But no sooner had the question crossed his mind than he wished it hadn't. Images flashed across his mind he could have done without, of a man who looked like a younger version of his father brought to his knees, a young woman who had his mother's face forcing herself upon him—or perhaps she was being forced just as much as he against her will to carry out this unholy act, already too far out into the ocean of that household's sin to swim back to shore. He saw the two of them entwined in passion, in terror, fearing painful retributions. Watching over their shoulders, like two naked dolls made to act out some sick puppeteer's fantasy. Only in this case, there were no hands controlling the strings, only incorporeal coils, living ropes, snaking around the couple, pushing, squeezing, penetrating what was never meant to be penetrated—

Hisoka felt he was going to be sick. It was just flashes, but of things no one is ever meant to see. It was more than enough for the yatonokami to make his meaning clear. "You made me," Hisoka heard himself saying, as though the words belonged to someone else. As though they were being dragged from as deep a place inside himself as his father's reluctant seed had been dragged from him. He saw himself as an egg in his mother's womb, fertilized, and infected with that dark worm, that evil virus. All duplicating in harmony inside the same cell membrane. "When they wouldn't willingly give you the heir you wanted, you made one yourself."

"Yesssss." The serpent hissed a laugh. "It was the only way I could guarantee my survival, but it has worked in ways I could never have anticipated. In creating you, I only hoped to create a vessel that would obey me, that would become my vehicle in the outside world, freeing me once and for all from the tether of my curse. You would not die of my influence, as your father did, and his father before him. Over time, I would adapt you to suit my needs until, eventually, our body became perfected."

It was a horrible future the yatonokami showed to him, of an adult version of himself, his skin sloughing away to reveal scales underneath, his body elongating, teeth stretching into fangs, stretching into a true abomination . . .

Next to what he had glimpsed of his own ruined body from Watari's mind, however, that vision did not inspire the terror it was meant to. What did it matter if that was what the yatonokami had planned for him? It never came to fruition. He wasn't sure it still could. But Hisoka would make sure, if he had to die his final death to do it, that it never would.

"When that man killed you, that Muraki, it could easily have been the end. But, no. Enma made you a shinigami, and gave us this new, beautiful immortal body. In doing so, he has made me invincible—"

"I will never let you have this body," Hisoka swore under his breath.

And as he did so, he felt the hilt of a sword materialize in the palm of his hand. Why not? He was of the blood of Ren, the god-slayer. It seemed appropriate that here, in his own mind, where he controlled reality, that should be the symbol that appeared to him in the company of the demon snake. He plunged the blade deep into the yatonokami's flanks—

And had the breath knocked out of him as stabbing pain tore through his own gut. He put his hand to the source of the pain, somehow not surprised when, despite there being no weapon to have made the wound, his fingers encountered the wet heat of blood.

And through its own agony, the snake just laughed. "You cannot hurt me without hurting yourself! We are one entity, and always have been. Two consciousnesses, inside the same mind. Two souls sharing one vessel. Kill me and you will perish."

"More like a foreign invader," Hisoka hissed as he clutched at his wound.

But he knew he couldn't think that way. He remembered Kijin's words—now they seemed like a warning. Chaos gains a way in when rational beings set theirs minds against one another. A part of him wanted to fight back against the serpent, to refute and refuse it at every turn. That part of him that was Ren's descendant wanted to destroy the yatonokami if it took until his dying breath to do it. For what his parents had suffered, he deserved vengeance. Just as he deserved justice for what had been done to him.

But he could not lower himself to giving in to the yatonokami's taunts, or he would never be worthy of Kurikara, let alone Tsuzuki, or even his own revenge against Muraki. Though it seemed to take more willpower than Hisoka had, he had to fight—not against the yatonokami, but against its hatred, its anger, its fear.

Ignoring the pain in his gut—and finding it fading fast when he did so—Hisoka straightened up to his full height. "If we are one, as you say, and Enma's made you invincible, then we both are. Muraki may have thwarted your plans for my body, but you still have some control over it. You saved me from Rikugou's fire."

"Simple self-preservation," the serpent spat. "Do not read charitable feelings into it when they were not there—"

"It doesn't matter." But it did matter that it bothered Yatonokami so, the accusation that he had saved Hisoka. Not just his vessel, as the snake liked to term it, but Hisoka's existence. His soul. "You took over, even if just briefly, and kept me from perishing when I could have been completely destroyed. Maybe it wasn't compassion, maybe it was entirely self-serving, but you did it nonetheless. At great pain to yourself."

"And to you." Still the yatonokami took some relish from that.

Which Hisoka struggled to quench, as it meant he reveled in that pain, too. "To both of us." He tried to summon up that memory of the Emperor that Rikugou had shown him, and the compassion he had felt in it. He tried to embody that now, though it was a struggle. "Muraki caused you a great deal of pain as well. Didn't he? I'm not talking about his frustrating your plans, either."

The serpent's sudden hiss told him he was not far off the mark at all with that one. Hisoka wasn't the only one who had been violated that night.

"I always wondered how I could bear such pain and not die from the shock. He claimed it was in the spells he wrote into me, but now I wonder if maybe you had something to do with my surviving for so long. You took some of that pain for me, didn't you? When I just wanted it all to end, you wanted desperately to live—"

"Everything I worked so hard over centuries to put in place that man undid in one night!" Yatonokami screamed as the detestable truth could not be contained within him any longer. "I deserved to be reborn! I was patient, generations of Kurosakis were born and died before I could enact my plan. I endured such humiliations in order to achieve my revenge. How dare that mortal scum think he could rob me of it at the hour of my satisfaction! Yes, I wanted to live! Nagare and his bitch sister-wives were not penance enough for the sins committed against me by that man. I would have slain that entire village and ancient promises be damned if it would have defeated that Muraki devil's curse!"

And there we have it, Hisoka thought in triumph, even as the yatonokami's rage filled him up inside until he wanted to explode with it. He pitied the yatonokami. For an almighty god, it was as powerless in the face of its pain as an infant crying for its mother. Even a viper forever trailing around the egg it couldn't hatch out of was a pitiable creature.

Can anyone really hate something so pathetic? Just this very night, before jumping down this rabbit hole, Hisoka would have said yes. Of course he could. Why would feeling sorry for the snake change anything that had happened to him? Why should he try to forgive acts committed against him that he had done nothing to deserve? Save for being born a Kurosaki, that is, but Hisoka was not nearly enough of a Buddhist to think the onus of that sin was truly on himself.

Only now that he was here, hearing his own rage over his murder come out in the yatonokami's voice, did he truly understand. His anger was still there. That wasn't the point.

It wasn't his to bear alone. It never had been.

The sword had vanished from his hand. With empty palm, he reached out to lay it upon the snake's scales, and feel them, truly feel them, for the first time. This horrible creature, this being of sin, moved with warm breath and blood the same as he did, behind a skin as hard and sleek as a steel suit made by a master armorer. But even that armored hide had been pierced, etched with ancient, evil words that glowed red and raw like veins through marble, words that promised only pain. If Hisoka was able to pity himself, if he was able to forgive himself, couldn't he extend the same grace to this thing that bore the exact same scars he did—this thing that was himself?

"I'm sorry—"

The serpent's head whipped around at that gentle touch, and it bit down on Hisoka's hand. It took Hisoka so by surprise that he couldn't even cry out as he felt the needle-like fangs impale muscle and bone. "You have done enough!" its thoughts drilled straight into Hisoka's mind. "Surrender this body!"

"Never!" Hisoka breathed through the pain, feeling as though the teeth were twisting his nerves around themselves like spindles. "You're a menace! I can see everything you've done—all those people you made to suffer before Ren cut you down." And the yatonokami would do it all again, if it was allowed to control a body of its own.

That Hisoka couldn't allow, as long as he had strength in him to fight, to keep the serpent sealed within him. "Your kind deserved to be hunted to extinction. You deserve to be locked up forever!"

The yatonokami roared what it thought of that. The lines of Muraki's curse flared lava-red beneath its scales. "If you will not surrender it to me, then I will take this vessel by force, as I always intended to do!"

Hisoka hadn't thought it possible, but the yatonokami bit down even harder on his hand. Then he did cry out, and dropped to his knees as the serpent wrenched its head and Hisoka along with it. But it was Konoe's face that appeared behind his squeezed-shut eyelids, and Tatsumi's, Watari's and Wakaba's and Terazuma's—Rikugou's and Tsuzuki's. He could not let himself be defeated, for their sakes. If he failed, he did not just fail himself. And compared to that, this pain, sharp as it was, was nothing.

"I won't let you," he gritted out through the agony, staring straight into those hated eyes. "I won't let you take it from me. We are one and the same, always have been, and you can't tear out a piece of yourself and erase it any more than I can erase you. You need me. I'm all you have left!"

The serpent's rage was intense. It seethed, roiled within him, as his own flesh seethed in those jaws.

But Hisoka knew he was right. The yatonokami's thoughts were his thoughts, and he knew that what he had just spoken was what it feared the most. The truth. The circumstances of his death had sealed off the serpent's power. Now it needed him, as much as, if not more than, Hisoka needed it. What remained, though strong enough to survive Rikugou's light, was still only a vestige of what the yatonokami once was, and it was wholly dependent on Hisoka to maintain its meager existence.

"But I have a deal to make with you," Hisoka told it. "One that would benefit us both. If you'd swallow your pride long enough to hear it."

---

Hours had passed since their connection had been broken, and in that time the heavens had tilted, and changed. Though he knew there were always multiple ways the stars could be read, Rikugou liked none of what he saw there.

He felt K jump up from where she had been napping on Hisoka's chest. Her eyes wide, ears and whiskers pointed forward and on alert. Which in itself was not the best sign. Cats and snakes were age-old enemies. If her alarm was a sign that something else was returning to consciousness, Rikugou had best be prepared to act fast to contain it.

He looked down at Hisoka, whose head was pillowed in Rikugou's lap. Hours had gone by where the only change in him had been to his heart rhythm. But now the boy began to stir, his brain waves returning to wakefulness. Senrima, in her restless pacing, noticed the other two's concern and hurried to their sides. "Is he . . ." She was going to say "coming to" but changed it to "Is it still him?"

That Rikugou wished he could answer. "Master Kurosaki? Can you hear me?" He pressed his fingers to Hisoka's temples, searching for a way in. A way to make sure. But he was still locked out. "Please tell me that's you, Master Kurosaki."

"Don't call me that," the boy mumbled as he groggily sat up, and rubbed his eyes.

The shikigami exchanged concerned looks. "What should I call you?" Rikugou asked cautiously.

"Why not just 'Hisoka'? You never had a problem with it the first time I came here."

Senrima let out a squeal of relief at that and threw her arms around him, knocking Hisoka back to the ground. K didn't waste any time adding herself to the love pile, stepping all over Hisoka with her poky little cat feet and rubbing her whole body in his face, purring madly all the while.

"What happened to you in there?" Rikugou was desperate to know once the females had had their fun.

Hisoka's answer of "I met an old friend" was no more illuminating.

"It's a long story," he told Rikugou when he saw the frustration on his shiki's face—as few things frustrated Rikugou more than not having the solution to mystery when someone else did. "I'll fill you in on everything I know. And then we need to discuss plans. I have an idea I want your opinion on, for when I meet Kurikara."

---

More Gensoukai notes. So, Suugo no Madara is a servant of sorts of Kijin in the manga, based on a mythical tiger or tiger-like beast called Zouyu, and has powers similar to Senrima (extreme speed, long-distance endurance, flight) but in feline form. I'm guessing when I call him iron, but he does have a mechanical body, judging by the sound effects, and can land on all fours like a rocket. You never see him in human form, who knows if he's even meant to have one, but I like to think if he did, it would look like a robot.

I'm totally guessing on Kijin's animal form. All I have to go on is he's a storm god and says his true form is ugly compared to his dad's (so modest). So naturally I thought of a thunderbird mixed with Mothra. Nightjars and hawk moths are just two extant creatures I think overlap well visually and can evoke storms and prophecy, but I'm in no ways arguing it's canon. Likewise with Rikugou's origin story.

Tsuchigumo, on the other hand, are monsters from actual Japanese folklore, and you can read more about them on Wikipedia, if drawings of giant spiders with human faces don't creep you out.