The Missing Worlds - Firelands I
Rating: PG-13; some gruesome imagery and descriptions of violence in this section.
Summary: Everybody tries very hard not to talk about things.

Author's Notes: Wooooow. Sorry about the delay, guys, I really have no excuses to offer. All I can say is that I was waiting to start this chapter until I had time to write all three chapters at once - so the next chapter should be up by next week, and the final one shortly after that. Whew!

Fai felt the approaching magic of the others' return half an hour before they actually arrived. He wasn't sure why the delay; no doubt it had something to do with the strange distortion of time between different worlds, since the transition never seemed to take that long in person. Nevertheless, that gave him time to put tea on to steep and make sandwiches, gather towels and a first-aid kit (just in case) and take them out to the courtyard to wait. He figured the tea and sandwiches, at the very least, would provide a diversion that might head off any uncomfortable questions; and after that he could probably distract them by asking about their adventures.

He sat on the edge of the wooden deck with his chin propped on his fists and watched as the sky stretched and warped, dark figures slowly coalescing within it. He'd never seen this process from the outside before - the way Mokona made transitions was quite different from how the magicians of Ceres had done it - so he wasn't quite sure what to expect, but it probably wasn't a sudden rushing roar as air blasted out of the tunnel between worlds, followed by three falling bodies hitting the pond with an almighty splash (one splash bigger than the others.)

Fai's jaw dropped and he stared in shock for several moments, long enough for Syaoran, Sakura and Kurogane to come sputtering to the surface. (And what a marvel it was that a giant like Kurogane managing to tread water his full height in the pond? Fai could have sworn it was no more than two or three feet deep up until today.) Not until he saw the little white bundle bobbing up in Sakura's clutching hands did he grab several of the towels and hurry forward.

"...in the fucking pond!" Kurogane was saying, his voice strangled and sharp with stress. "Last thing we need is getting sick from the filthy water in this place!"

"It's-it's probably for the best," Syaoran said, through a jaw that chattered. "After dropping from that high up, the water was probably the only place we could land where we wouldn't get hurt..."

"Mokona got rid of as much momentum as possible!" the little creature said stridently. "Mokona can't do everything!"

"Oh, my," Fai said, surveying his fellow travelers' condition with some concern. Apart from all being dripping wet, the three of them looked rather alarmingly bedraggled; Kurogane and Syaoran's clothes were pierced with rents, and blood was beginning to slowly leak from cuts on Syaoran's arms and Kurogane's face from where they had been rinsed off by the water. Sakura seemed unscathed, but she was wrapped in an unfamiliar white garment and clutched Mokona like a talisman. "Run into some problems, did you?"

He meant it as a joke, a way to lighten the mood and welcome them back; but instead the three of them looked quickly at him and then away. The returned travelers staggered to the edge of the pond and pulled themselves out of the water.

Fai went first to Sakura's side and wrapped one of the fluffy towels around Sakura's shoulders, rubbing one corner of it over her water-darkened hair. "Everything all right, Princess?" he asked.

In response, Sakura launched herself at him with a wail, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her face in his chest. "Oh, Fai, it's so awful!" she sobbed. "He's all alone - he's just so lonely - and it's never going to stop! It's just going to go on for ever and ever!"

Fai looked from her tear-ravaged face, to the drooping ears of Mokona, to the averted faces and downcast gazes of his other two companions, and didn't ask.

For one awful moment Syaoran was sure that Fai was going to ask what had happened: how Syaoran and Kurogane had been injured, what had made Sakura cry so. But the blond-haired mage clapped his hands together, a bright smile on his face that made Syaoran momentarily dizzy with deja-vu, and said "So! Did you get the feather, then?"

"Um... yes!" Syaoran said, recovering after a beat. Sakura was still struggling to get her composure back after her crying jag, and his teacher was looking especially grim and forbidding even for Kurogane. "We got it - but it's..."

For a moment Syaoran hesitated, torn between two impulses. Part of him wished that they could keep the feather in its current form forever; it had protected Sakura, who had come out of the frantic escape from the floating castle without a scratch on her skin (though many on her too-tender heart.) On the other hand, the longer the feather remained in this form, the more likely it was that it could be stolen by some unscrupulous bastard - and was it really fair to keep Sakura from getting her memory back...?

The next moment, Sakura took the decision away from him when she pushed back from Fai's arms, sniffed heavily, and said "We got the feather, but it's stuck in this shape." She raised her hands and unclasped the cloak, shaking her shoulders to free it and swinging it around to hold it out towards Fai. "Is there anything you can do to put it back?"

Fai's eyebrows went up, and he took the cloak and puzzled over it. "It is one of your feathers," he exclaimed. "But someone has managed to stretch the strings enough to reshape it into this form. That must have taken..." He trailed off abruptly, his brows pinching in slightly as he studied the seams of the cloak more closely. After a moment, he blinked and looked up at Sakura with a smile. "Well. Whoever did this certainly knew what they were doing, is what I mean to say."

"Yes," Sakura said with a catch in her voice. "But - does that mean it's going to be like this forever?"

Fai's expression softened. "Now, I wouldn't say that," he said. "Let me see what I can do."

As he fell to studying the cloak more carefully, sitting cross-legged on the ground and spreading the garment out on his lap like a tailor, a heavy hand fell on Syaoran's shoulder. He jumped slightly, then looked up into the face of his teacher, who jerked his chin towards the door to the shop. "Let's get cleaned up," he muttered under his breath, and Syaoran nodded and followed along.

Fai had thoughtfully brought out the first-aid supplies along with everything else, just in case; Syaoran left the sliding door partially open as Kurogane emptied the contents carelessly on the tatami mat. Through the cracked open door he watched Fai working with the feather-cloak, his expression blank and focused, and tried not to think too hard of the last few moments in the last world.

Before long the two of them had cleaned and bandaged the worst of their cuts - Kurogane had more of them than Syaoran, but then, there was more of him to have, and all evidence of the gauze and plasters quickly disappeared back under his traveling clothes. Syaoran lingered by the sliding door, watching Sakura, and when the tone of murmuring voices out in the courtyard abruptly shifted he was back outside in an instant.

Sakura was sitting up straight, staring intently at the white mass of cloth in Fai's hands, which seemed to have changed shape slightly since Syaoran last saw it - it had gone from being a distinctly hooded cloak-shape to a vague round outline of flat cloth. Now Fai reached down and plucked a single thread - from where, Syaoran couldn't tell - and pulled. The cloak abruptly shrivelled - like a dried leaf going up in flame, all at once - and all that was left was a small white glow in Fai's hands, in the triangular shape of a feather. "There we are!" Fai said triumphantly, holding it out towards Sakura with a smile. "Good as new."

"Thank you!" Sakura said heartfeltly, throwing her arms around Fai in a hug. "Oh, thank you!"

Syaoran repressed the urge to lunge forward and snatch the feather out of Fai's hands, in order to deliver it to Sakura with his own two hands. Fai had earned this one, he thought, and besides, it didn't really matter which of them gave it back to her. Not really. So he just watched, feeling equal parts jealous and foolish, as Fai gently settled the feather against Sakura's chest, and it vanished with a pure tone into her heart.

"Fai-san, you're so kind to me," she whispered as her eyelids fluttered shut. "I'm sorry we had to..."

Then her voice trailed off into sleep, and Syaoran was suddenly acutely aware of Fai standing next to them. He looked up cautiously, sure now that they were alone that Fai was going to ask what Sakura had meant - why was she sorry, exactly who it was that had made the feather that way. But Fai kept his mouth shut, and just kept smiling.

They spent the remainder of that day and night in the shop, resting up after the last world and waiting for Sakura to awaken. Conversation was strained; Syaoran was reluctant to talk too much about the last world they'd visited, and Kurogane kept a grim silence. That left all the talking to Fai, who seemed similarly allergic to the elephant in the room - instead, he filled the air with a nonstop monologue about all the little chores and diversions that had passed his time in the days they'd been gone. For some reason the older man insisted on clinging to Syaoran's side like a burr, refusing to let Syaoran go anywhere within the shop on his own - or was it, that Fai refused to be left in a room alone with Kurogane and the sleeping Sakura-chan?

The next morning, though, Sakura-chan was awake again and as lively as ever, despite a certain miserable redness about her eyes. As Fai and Sakura together worked to pack up their supplies, Syaoran managed to escape Fai's presence for a few moments to talk with Kurogane.

"You sure you're ready?" Kurogane asked him once they were alone.

Syaoran blinked at him. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"You know what this means," Kurogane told him. "You, the princess, and the mage have all sat out a world. That means it's going to be my turn next for the time-out corner." He looked Syaoran straight in the eye and asked him, "And that means that any enemies you run into, you'll be the one who has to deal with it. Are you okay with this?"

"I'm glad that I won't be separated from Princess Sakura again, but..." Syaoran bit his lip. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little worried. Despite all you've done to try to teach me, I know I'm not anything like as strong as you."

"No, you aren't," Kurogane agreed matter-of-factly. "But you're stronger than you think you are. Most people out there, even the ones who carry weapons and think they're hot stuff, are actually crap. You already know more than enough to kick the stuffing out of them; you had all your training from before we started traveling, and you've only gotten stronger since then.

"We always knew that there might come a time when I wouldn't be there, when it would be up to you to protect everyone," Kurogane continued, his tone even and his face serious. "That was the whole reason I agreed to teach you in the first place. It's come a little sooner than I would have liked, but it doesn't matter now. I trust you to be able to do whatever it takes to protect what matters to you, and you can bet I don't say that about just anyone."

"Right," Syaoran nodded. Kurogane's words didn't actually change anything, but it made him feel a little better to hear it.

Instead of releasing Syaoran, though, Kurogane gripped his shoulder a little harder, drawing him a little further away from the main room. His voice dropped to a lower volume, a soft growl more felt than heard. "And if things get hairy, keep an eye on the wizard," he said. "He likes to pretend to be useless, but in a tight situation he's got more tricks up his sleeve than he's letting on. Watch out for him."

"Don't you mean he should be watching out for me?" Syaoran said with a smile, but Kurogane shook his head minutely and leaned down even further. His next words were spoken softly, almost in Syaoran's very ear.

"Just don't let him do anything stupid," Kurogane said, before releasing Syaoran's shoulder with a pat.

Kurogane moved off towards the interior of the shop, and almost right away Syaoran heard his and Yuuko's voice raised in argument. Kurogane was bitching that he wasn't going to labor like a common servant, and Yuuko was heaping withering scorn on lazy freeloaders who couldn't even offer to help out with the simplest tasks in exchange for free room and board.

Syaoran turned back to the garden where Sakura and Fai and Mokona waited, back in their usual traveling clothes - Fai in his white coat and Sakura in her tan desert cloak. For a moment he was struck by an overwhelming surge of protectiveness towards them, and accompanying anxiety. There were so many worlds out there, and so many things that could go wrong; without Kurogane's solid strength, how was Syaoran supposed to handle it?

"Syaoran-kun!" Sakura called to him, spotting him with a delighted smile and a wave. "Are you ready to go? Mokona thinks she's found the last world that she couldn't get to before!"

Sakura's feathers. The reminder of what he searched for, of what he had to do, buoyed him up. Syaoran squared his shoulders and raised his chin, stepping forward towards the others. He would do it, because he had to do it. Because he had decided that he wouldn't back down.

That was all there was to it.

No matter how many times he'd seen it, Fai couldn't help but admire the artistry of Mokona's magic.

It wasn't just that it was pretty (although it was that;) it was the completeness of the illusion. Mokona enfolded them in magic, drew the fabric of reality itself in a tight twist around them, so smooth and seamless that they seemed to be falling through an endless tunnel of golden light, dropping weightlessly through rings of pulsing light and dark.

In truth, Fai knew, they weren't moving at all; it was the universe that moved about them. He could just barely make out - at the edges of his perception - the multitude of universes, each one compressed into a single ring and bleeding seamlessly into the next. An endless flattened spiral of potential realities that Mokona wound steadily past them, feeding one into another as she searched instinctively for that which she was born to find.

Mokona really was amazing, Fai thought. Clow's craftsmanship put his own humble efforts at creating magical life to shame.

A flicker of darkness out of the corner of his eye - even as he glanced that way, it slid around before them and expanded in a sudden inrush of air, the gape of a mouth opening, and the four of them fell forward together into the new world.

Dark was the first impression the new world left on him, and then dry and warm after that. They were surrounded by stone - Fai could feel it under his feet and fingertips, hear it in the "ow!" noises that Sakura made when she moved too quickly and banged her shins and elbows on the walls, in the scraping sound of Syaoran's boots and his scabbard where it dragged against the wall.

"Where are we?" Sakura asked, her voice hushed.

"Well, it's hard to discern too much about this world just yet, but I'd say it looks like we're in a cave," Fai said, bright and chipper, designed to make her giggle and break the tension.

The air around them was dry and warm - not uncomfortably so, but enough that they certainly wouldn't need coats in this new world. But there was a strange tang to it, a sharpness that made the eyes water slightly and caught in his throat like a cold. Beside him, Syaoran drew in a deep breath and almost immediately began to cough.

"What's that smell?" Sakura asked, her voice hushed. "It smells like something's burning."

"We won't find out unless we go looking," Syaoran said, his usual firm confidence somewhat belied by his cough-roughened voice. "Come on, let's get out of this cave."

A featureless grey light from up ahead marked the end of the cave system, and the travelers headed towards it. Kurogane, with his unparalleled night vision, could have come in handy here - the cave they were in was obviously natural, rough and unfinished with an uneven floor and walls. Fai barked his shin once and his shoulder painfully against jutting rock ledges before they made it to the cave mouth and looked out.

The cave they had arrived in was about a third of a way up a rocky ridge that rolled off to either side, climbing steeply behind them. Before them the ground dropped over rocky steppes towards a wide basin of ruddy, reddish-brown rock and dust. A few trees stuck up here and there in the ground, dark and leafless, and dry and withered grass covered the lower slopes. Far off on the horizon, at the edge of their vision, was the silvery-gray glint of the sea.

Dominating the scene, however, was the huge billowing smoke cloud that covered the entire eastern sky to their right. Churning black clouds underlit by vivid orange and red cast an eerie red glow over the landscape, doubling up with the fading sunset on the west to cast a confusing array of shadows. When the wind veered around to blow from the east, it blew hot and dry with the sharp and cutting tang of ash and cinders.

The black clouds moved in slow, bulging waves, tracing back downwards from the sky to the horizon that jutted up to meet them. Even from this distance, the sullen red glow of molten rock was clearly visible - a mountain afire, belching its soot and ash over the ground below.

As the travelers climbed down the side of the stony ridge, they began to see signs of civilization; it was hard to say when exactly the gravel-coated gullies and brush-free clearings turned into a proper road winding among the foothills. Next they began to see the stepped terraces and straight-cut lines of fields, now lying bare, and the marching lines of trees kept in orchards, their leafless branches jutting up to the sky. When they finally spotted the village up ahead, it was hard to distinguish its color from the drab rocky ground that surrounded it; only the blocky square lines of the stone foundations stood out.

The town - village, really - was not much more than a loosely clustered array of houses and barns surrounding a common area, with the broad gravel road stretching beside it. A few goats browsed at the dead grass by the verge, tended by a herdsboy who watched them pass with curious eyes but did not approach.

The sun was rapidly sinking in the sky, the oncoming twilight reinforced by the heavy grey-black clouds covering much of the sky, and after a brief flurry of consultation the travelers decided to try to find a place in the village to spend the night rather than pressing onwards and trying to camp out in the open. Decision made, they turned off the road into a stone-paved plaza in what seemed to be the center of the town, and Syaoran approached a local woman who was sweeping ash from the stones with a rush broom.

She wore a red skirt with a white apron-like pleat down the front, a red cap over her greying dark hair, and a tan-colored vest-like top sewn of two swathes of cloth crossing over her chest to create a V-shaped pattern. This seemed to be the common style in the village, as men and women wore similar styles, albeit the men's outfits were in darker, duller colors and the ends of their kilts tucked pants-like into their boots.

"Excuse me, ma'am," Syaoran said, as polite and deferential as he ever was. "But my friends and I have lost our map, and I'm afraid we've gotten a bit turned around. What town is this?"

The woman looked a bit surprised to be addressed, but returned his greeting; "Good evening, young sir," she said politely, but with a certain wariness in her manner. "This town is called Gossos, but you won't find it on any maps, I'm afraid. Where were you on your way to?"

"We're new to the area, and we're just looking to see the sights," Syaoran explained earnestly. "Is there anything around here that you'd recommend for a few travellers, any big temples or shrines, or legends of wondrous miracles that have taken place?"

It was a not-so-subtle way to fish for rumors of the feather, in Fai's opinion, but they'd learned in many worlds past that it was most efficient just to cut to the chase and be direct. If they were likely to get into trouble for it, they would have run into the same trouble sooner or later anyway; and most people really were happy to be helpful.

But despite her friendly demeanor, the townswoman only closed up further at Syaoran's question; she looked... wary, at the least, and uneasy. "Well, now, and what would a trio of nice-looking young folks have want with any of that?" she asked suspiciously. "You look much too clever to be treasure-hunters like the rest of them."

"We're gathering research about all sorts of different cultures to write a book," Syaoran said with a completely earnest expression. Fai wondered idly just how far Mokona's translation skills extended; in a culture that didn't even have books, what would the locals make of this excuse? Or would they naturally hear it as something that made sense to them?

"Oh, really!" However it came across, the usual excuse worked like a charm; in an instant the woman's stiff wariness had vanished, and she smiled at them warmly. "Please forgive me, there have been too many disreputable folk through here lately; we don't usually get very many travelers, you see, especially not in the wintertime."

"Wintertime?" Syaoran said with surprise. "This is your wintertime?"

The old lady gave them a dry look. "Certainly," she said. "Why else would the trees and the ground be so bare, except for the season?"

"But it's so warm!" Syaoran exclaimed, a feeling that Fai echoed; this was what passed for winter in this place? It was barely cool enough to be uncomfortable!

"Well, what can you expect with old Theras going off in the background?" she said, gesturing in the direction of the burning volcano in the distance. "In a way we're only grateful that he chose these barren months to vent his fury; we won't lose any of the crops this way, and we still have a good harvest from last autumn to hold us through the winter months. Come spring, the ash and cinders will be settled, and good for the crops. It's a shame you came to our valley at this time of the year, travelers; when the poppies bloom in the springtime, our village is truly a sight to behold."

"Oh, thank goodness!" Sakura whispered to Fai heartfeltly. "I felt so awful thinking that these people would have to live in this bleak place all the time. But if it's only for a season, then it's not so bad!"

"My name is Sophia," the woman was introducing herself, and she gestured to a farmhouse not far away. "I live just over there; you should come by my house a little later, and have some of my soup."

"That's very generous of you," Syaoran said sincerely. "Is there an inn nearby, where we can stay for the night?" Syaoran asked.

"Well, now, we're not nearly grand enough to have a whole inn to ourselves," she said. "But if you need a place to rest, you can stay in the lesche."

She raised her arm and pointed to a wide, open structure at the corner of the town square. The lesche - for some reason, the word did not translate through Mokona, perhaps because neither of Fai's home cultures could have envisioned such a shelterless shelter - took up a corner of the town square. Like the other buildings it consisted of chiseled stone pillars holding up a slate tile roof, but unlike the other building, there were no walls - only woven screens positioned to break the wind and sun. Within the open space, an assortment of chairs and benches were arranged on a clay-tiled floor, obviously some kind of communal meeting place; another screen cast a shade of privacy over an assortment of straw pallets lying on the floor.

They'd had worse shelters, that was for sure. "Thank you, that's very kind," Syaoran said. "Is there any way we can pay you back? We don't have very much cash, but we have a few goods to trade -"

Sophia waved away the offer with a scoff. "You three are our guests! " she said, scandalized that they should offer. "Let's have no talk of payment, not for the first night. What sort of world would it be if travelers were not made welcome in any home they came to?"

Shortly after they had settled into the lesche (not that they had much in the way of baggage to unpack,) Sophia appeared with a tray of three steaming bowls of soup. Despite the fact that the night air was quite mild, almost warm, she urged Syaoran and Sakura to drink up so that they wouldn't catch cold, then scolded at Fai to "get some meat on your long bones." Fai laughed and joked with her in a friendly way, carefully drawing her into their circle, and before long the elderly woman was seated at their table, rattling on confidingly about the history of Gossos and its surroundings.

Before long, her story drew to the most lurid - and therefore the most interesting - element of local history: the shrine at Akros. Apparently it had been not just a shrine but a small city, rings of roads and buildings spreading outwards from the temple and the road leading up to it as the population slowly grew. It had started as a home for the Oracle of Theras, then became an administrative center for the surrounding area, then a town under siege when a small but fierce civil war had beset the region. Then, in the years after the Oracle had died and the war moved on, its power had slowly begun to wane - until all at once, one dark bloody evening, it had been wiped out.

"The town is cursed," Sophia told them in a dramatic whisper, shivering with a combination of fear and a certain dramatic delight. "Cursed! They had grown full of themselves, those city folk, thought themselves better than they were. Their pride drove away the the blessings of the gods, and malice crept in its place. A dark shadow grew over that town. But still the stubborn cityfolk refused to leave! Still they stayed! Until at last the final blessings of the gods deserted them, and the demons swept in and killed them all!"

Sakura gasped in dismay, and Syaoran sat bolt upright, focusing on the old lady with a laser-like intensity. "Demons?" he asked. "Are you sure? Did anyone ever see them?"

"Who could have seen them, and lived to tell the tale?" Sophia scoffed. "I was but a child then. But that's the story. A few brave men have ventured up there since then, seen the bodies lying in the street. Some of them dared to enter the temple - they never returned. The smarter ones fled. But still they brought back tales of a sinister presence that haunts the temple, a monster that devours all who dare to enter. The Black Beast. Even today, none who have seen it have lived to tell the tale."

"But why would anyone go there when it's so dangerous?!" Sakura exclaimed.

Sophia sighed. "Why else but overconfidence, and greed?" she said. "They say that a great treasure was hidden in the heart of that temple, a relic that shone even in the darkness. There's no end of adventurers and treasure hunters who go to the temple, certain that they can accomplish what all those before them could not - to slay the beast and claim the treasure for themselves. Why, just the other day a grim man, all in black, passed by that road that leads up to the temple. Dressed all in armor, clanking mail and a great bloody sword as black as he was. As if he will fare any better than the rest!"

Syaoran and Fai exchanged a glance behind Sophia's back. Strange happenings, curses and disappearances, sacred objects shining with their own light - it all pointed to Sakura's missing feather.

As the last of the light faded, Sophia excused herself to return to her home; in this rural village, it seemed, people rarely had reason to stay awake later than the sun. In the darkening gloam, Sakura turned to Fai and Syaoran and asked the question they had all been thinking. "That treasure-hunter that the lady described - do you think it could have been Kurogane? Or, well, not Kurogane but another Kurogane, the Kurogane of this world?"

"It's not really enough to go on, Sakura-chan," Fai replied. For himself, he privately admitted he hoped it was not. Kurogane in any world was far too perceptive, and more than capable of presenting an obstacle to them if he reached the feather before they did and then did not wish to part from it.

"Still, if it is him, it might be incredibly lucky," Syaoran said, as usual displaying a much more optimistic view of the world. "He's only a day or so ahead of us. We might catch up to him! If so, he might be able to help us."

"But this treasure-hunter had a horse, and we have none," Fai pointed out. "It's extremely unlikely that we'd cross paths before reaching the shrine."

Sakura chewed on her lip for a moment, face scrunched in thought. After a long silence, she blurted out:

"The Witch - I mean, Yuuko-san - told me back in the shop that things like that don't matter," she said. "How likely or unlikely something is, I mean, the chances or odds of something happening. She said that if it's meant to happen for a reason, then it will happen, no matter how incredible it seems. She called that hitsuzen. "

Syaoran frowned. Fai smiled brightly. "Well, if that's the case then there's no point worrying our heads about it," he said. "Nothing we can do will change the outcome one way or the other. Now, come on and let's go to sleep. It sounds like we've got some hiking to do in the morning!"

The children acquiesced, and the three of them settled down on the straw pallets under the tile roof of the lesche. They dropped off fairly quickly - Sakura first, as she always tended to do, and Syaoran soon after. Fai lay awake for a long time, watching the last of the light fade from the western sky.

He did not want to spend too much time thinking. He actively avoided most thoughts of the past, or the future. There was only ever the now, and this now, in this place, was a good place to be. He would do whatever he had to in order to make sure that the present stayed as it was, as long as he could manage.

Fai rolled over on his stomach and closed his eyes, letting out a long breath. Around them, the burning volcano bathed the dark land in its furnace glow.

It was not midafternoon by the time they reached the shrine the next day. Yet the air darkened steadily as they climbed the slopes towards the shrine, the weak light filtering through the ash cloud casting an eerie midwinter gloom over the landscape that contrasted oddly with the mild - even warm - temperatures.

Through his life, and especially since starting on their journey, Fai had come to accept the fact that all different climes had their own special beauty. A landscape didn't need to be covered with rich deep pine trees and hooded with white crystal snow to be beautiful: you could find equal worth in the lush rolling greenery of verdant farmland, the heavy majesty of a mountain range, the complex and vibrant ecology of a swampland or the lively, hectic atmosphere of a big city. Even the serene emptiness of a desert had its own beauty in the wideness of the blue sky, the colors painted by a sunset on the smooth lines of a flat horizon.

But he was having a hard time finding beauty in the terrain they were climbing through now. Admittedly they weren't seeing it in its best light; all the plants were dead and withered, all the rocks dusted over with a fine grey layer of volcanic ash. Still, the only adjective Fai could come up with to describe this land was 'stony;' the soil was thin and gravelly over sharp bones that poked out of the soil at every hilltop and plateau. No wonder even the peasants of the village had built their houses out of rubble and stone; it was practically the only thing that this country had. The trees they passed tended to be stunted - many of them barely over Fai's head - and grew in twisted, kinked directions without leaves to soften their outlines.

And above it all, the sullen orange light of the volcano reflected off the black cloud of smoke that towered overhead, painting everything in the dull glow of an open kiln.

Perhaps it was the poor lighting, but they didn't see the shrine city until they had stumbled nearly upon it. The size of it took them by surprise - they had been looking for a few large buildings, and hadn't realized they were walking through the outskirts of a whole town until they came across the first broken-down fountain. The fountain, the streets and the buildings had all been built of the same native stone as the tiny village of Gossos, but the sharp straight lines that delimited the other buildings from the landscape had broken and crumbled into ruin here. Hardly any building even had a roof left; all that remained were pillars and partial walls.

"This is just like the town in the last world," Sakura said, her voice tense and edged with upset. Syaoran put a hand on her shoulder in comfort.

"Well, one thing's for sure," he said, trying to keep up a cheerful and optimistic tone. "There's no mystery here as to why the people left. It looks like a great battle took place here."

Indeed, the signs of it were all around them. Not all of the buildings had crumbled with time; several bore signs of violence, with doors or walls smashed in by some great force, piles of shattered stones or discarded weapons littering doorways and alleys. There was no sign of any bodies, however, nor of the great beast that the townswoman had spoken of.

"Mokona, can you sense a feather?" Fai asked her, even as he could already guess at the answer. The city had been built up around the shrine, and whatever treasures this forlorn place still hid would be in the shrine as well. There was only one way to go - inwards.

Mokona nodded, her small expression solemn. "Up there," she said in a hushed voice, flicking her long white ears up the slope. The streets of the ruined city fanned out from the center like the spokes of a wheel, with long curving boulevards extending in concentric circles with each step down the mountain. Where all the roads converged, where the center of the wheel turned - that was where the shrine would be. And likewise, Sakura's feather.

The travelers couldn't help but feel a sense of awe as they approached the temple; they might not have been worshippers of whatever gods once dwelt here, but the architect of this place must have had great mastery of his craft. Tall stone columns stood in a row across the lintel of the entryway; they had been carved to grow subtly narrower at the top, giving the illusion of greater height. Intricate marble carvings and colored frescoes decorated the walls and floors and roofs - the paint chipped and fading with the weight of years, but their beauty preserved.

The temple had been carved out of the very face of the mountain; only part of the building emerged from the cliff behind it. The roof and walls faded back into the stone behind it, lending it a great imposing weight as though the whole great volcano were all part of the monument to the gods.

Fai thought it looked cold, unwelcoming - but others in his party had a different opinion.

"This is incredible," Syaoran said, his voice charged with the enthusiasm that only great works of lost art could inspire in him. "Look at the detailed fluting on these columns. Look at the craftsmanship! Look at this, the way the coloring is subtly different on each facing - it's meant to change how it reflects the light and cast shadows as the sun travels across the sky, presenting the best face no matter what time of day it is. What I wouldn't give to see this place at sunrise!"

"That might not be wise," Fai reminded him, keeping an ear cocked for sounds of movement or habitation in the temple. Nothing came out of the dark mouth to greet them but silence. "Remember, this town was abandoned for a reason. And none of the treasure hunters who came here ever came back."

Syaoran's enthusiasm dimmed slightly, and Sakura frowned in distress. "But we aren't treasure hunters," she insisted. "We haven't come to steal or destroy anything!"

"Whoever or... whatever lives here might see it differently, Sakura-chan," Fai corrected her gently. "Just be careful."

The interior of the temple was as grand and richly carved as the facade, but the beauty of the architecture faded quickly as they went further inside. There were no lamps or torches, and as the complex extended further into the mountainside, the ash-filtered daylight could no longer penetrate the gloom. They stopped to retrieve a couple of lanterns from their luggage (that is to say, Mokona's magical storage) and continued on.

Mokona reported that there was a feather somewhere beyond them in the shrine, but she was unable to tell them which route to take in order to get to it. The corridors branched and bent at angles as they delved further into the complex, and if there had ever been distinguishing features or signposts among them, they had long since been obliterated.

Dark grime covered the floor, the a mixture of ash and damp and burned-out cinders, perhaps some other less savory substances ground into the muck. The only tracks were the tiny ones of rodents scampering here and there near the base of the walls, where mortar had crumbled enough to provide passage. There were many such places; the walls were battered and broken along the large hallways, mosaics and frescoes spilling splintered stone tiles onto the floor and leaving only patchy remnants of their subjects behind. In more than one place the walls themselves were smeared with dirt, or hung with the withered remains of dried moss or curtains of cobwebs.

Syaoran, as practical as ever, took a piece of white chalk out of his pocket and began marking the walls as they went, arrows at every turn showing which way they had turned and which way they were facing. "Just so that we don't get lost," he explained, glancing at Fai for approval. Fai merely shrugged. Syaoran had a point that this place was downright labyrinthine; on the other hand, the marks Syaoran made were also an excellent signposts for anything that wanted to follow them.

Assuming, of course, that whatever might be following them in such a place as this was smart enough to read the signs.

They reached a round, broad chamber with black stone walls, obviously carved out of a native cavern inside the mountain. Niches in four corners of the room branched off into winding staircases, some leading up, some leading down.

"Which way should we go?" Sakura asked nervously. Her sunny disposition was holding up well so far, but the dank and gloomy atmosphere of the temple was getting to all of them.

"Mokona? Can you tell which way leads to the feather?"

The little creature flipped her ears, hopped back and forth from one of Syaoran's shoulders to the other, turning to face different directions. "Mokona isn't sure," she apologized. "But the feather feels a little bit lower than we are now."

"Down, then," Syaoran said firmly.

The curving, spiraling staircase got them turned around, made it hard to orient themselves once more when they got to the bottom of the staircase and found a wide corridor arching away in both directions. After consulting Mokona once again they picked a direction and set off, Syaoran dutifully marking the passages as they went; but soon the curving passages twisted and doubled back on themselves, a hopelessly tangled maze of corridors.

What made them even more uneasy was that some of the passages rose in a gradual slope, while others fell, subtly enough that it was hard to tell what level of the complex they were even on any longer. They located another staircase and went up it, hoping to retrace their passage to the antechamber of stairways and try to map the route from another direction; but they soon found that not all the stairways led to the same floors, sometimes skipping a flight altogether or curving around to deposit them in another place on the same floor.

As they went deeper, a foul smell was beginning to gather in the air. Their noses had by now numbed to the acrid, sharp smell of sulfur and ozone that the volcano spewed forth, but this was a new smell - something wet and organic, like rancid milk.

For all his close and personal experience with death, Fai had not actually personally witnessed the decomposition of human remains. Rather definitively the opposite, in fact; in the cold pit the passage of time itself had frozen, and in Ceres the bodies of the slain had generally frozen into ice before they had a chance to rot. So perhaps that was why Fai didn't make the connection until they turned a corner into a broad circular chamber that opened up before them like a theater. High up above, a hole in the arched ceiling led to some open space above, a dim greenish light shining down and drops of liquid occasionally falling from the sky like rain. A pool of water had gathered in a depression in the center of the room, green and slimed, and the pool was clogged full of human bones.

Syaoran gasped, and Sakura gave a strangled little cry, her hands flying up to cover her mouth. It shouldn't have been such a shock. They knew from Sophia's gossip that many aspiring treasure-hunters had come to the shrine and that none had ever returned. It didn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to know that they would still be here in some form. But none of that had prepared them for the gruesome reality of this place: bones piled on bones, blackened and decayed with the rotting remnants of flesh and the scavengers that had cleaned them of it. They carpeted the circular room, here and there piled up in careless heaps, and it was impossible to tell just by looking at the decaying mass just how deep it went.

On top of the nearest pile, not far from them, lay the mangled remains of what had once been a tall, bulky man in black armor. His features were unrecognizable, nearly torn off his face by the swipe of some great claw, and the bottom half of his torso and legs were missing, separated by a humongous jagged bite. Near his hand lay the warped and shattered pieces of a thick, heavy short sword and a crumpled shield.

"We have to get out of here," Fai said aloud, breaking the stunned shock that had fallen over the three of them at the grisly sight. He put an arm around Sakura's shoulders and turned her around, steering her towards the ground as he blocked the view with his body, and his other hand reached out to tug on Syaoran's cloak. "Now!"

"But -" Syaoran choked out, but his eyes darted to Sakura's ashen-grey face and he didn't argue further. They stumbled out through the blackened corridor, their torchlight playing over dark smears and black-stained gouges in the stone wall.

Finding their way out again was easier said than done. Without Syaoran's marks they would have been completely lost, but even following the marks was not as straightforward as they assumed it would be. They hurried quickly through the corridors from mark to mark, traveling in the opposite direction they had come, but on more than one occasion they went for a long time down a stone corridor before seeing one before they realized they must have missed a turn and hurried back to search for the trail again. Once they lost it entirely, becoming increasingly frantic as they searched through a stone loop of branching corridors none of them recognized before Fai realized that they had gone up a level from Syaoran's last mark without realizing it; they had to retrace their steps and find the mark again before they could continue.

All the while Fai strained his hearing for some sign of pursuit, of danger; was that knocking sound heavy footsteps on the floor above them, or merely the pounding of his own heart? Was that rushing noise the heavy breathing of a demon on the back of his neck, or only Sakura's near-sobs as she stumbled along through the darkness? Syaoran held onto Hien like a talisman, his brown eyes darting around at every corner and cross-corridor, but they all knew that he was still not much more than a beginner with the sword.

If only Kurogane had been here, they would not have been so afraid; Fai knew enough about the swordsman's past to know that he was unparalleled at fighting. Kurogane probably would protest their running away, would been eager to test his skill and to dispatch the hell-beast to the underworld it deserved. He would see this whole episode as a challenge he could rise to, a pleasant respite from the oh-so-boring worlds where there was nothing to fight at all.

Why did it have to be this world, of all possible worlds, that Kurogane couldn't be here?

"Look! Up ahead!" Mokona shouted, bouncing up and nearly vibrating in eagerness as she pointed down the corridor ahead. They'd gotten turned around again somehow, or put off the trail of Syaoran's marks - but that didn't matter because at the end of the tunnel, a long stretch of carved stone, was the distinct red-tinted color of sunlight.

"But we're on the wrong side of the temple!" Syaoran exclaimed, looking up and down the corridor. "There's no possible way we could have come to the exterior facing of the structure, not from here!"

"The mountain is hollow," Fai realized suddenly, comparing the shape of the mountain they'd climbed to the others around it. "It was a volcano once, like Thera. It's dormant now, but there's a crater on the inside of it, and part of the temple in the caldera would be open to the sky."

"And they built their temple there!" Syaoran finished the thought for him. "Completely inaccessible from the outside - no wonder they used this place as a fortress during the war."

"But does that mean that my feather is there, as well?" Sakura said anxiously.

"Mokona thinks so!" Mokona cried. "It feels like it's not far away now."

"Then that means we've almost finished!" Syaoran said enthusiastically. The relief was plain on Sakura's face as that realization sank in, and Fai let out a breath himself, despite the fact that he knew perfectly well that they weren't yet -

The light went out.

The circle of lantern-light was all that was left to them, and in that light Fai saw Syaoran's expression turned to horror as Sakura's turned pale. Something had moved into the corridor ahead of them - something big enough that its body alone blocked out the view of the corridor ahead.

Of course, they should have thought of this. Of course, if the caldera was the heart of the temple, the place where its greatest treasures were kept, then that would also be where they would find any of the shrine's protectors.

Fai could hear the sounds of the thing's passage now, and knew it was not his imagination; the echo of claws - or hooves? - on stone, the heavy breathing that drew across the air of the corridor like a metal file, the low rumbling growl that sounded like it came from the earth itself.

"The black beast," Syaoran breathed.

From far down the corridor, light gleamed on something wet and white, on two points of red like dull coals in a bed of black ashes. They seemed to grow in size even as they watched, the noises echoing up the corridor growing in intensity as they stood frozen.

Syaoran was the one to move, stepping in front of them and drawing Hien. "Get Sakura out of here," he ordered Fai. He didn't turn his head to look at them, keeping his gaze unwavering on the nightmare that came steadily up the hallway towards them. "Run!"

Fai snatched Sakura into his arms, and ran.

Behind him he heard a deafening roar reverberating along the rock corridor, trapped in the stone just like they were, but he didn't look back to see what had become of Syaoran - he just ran. It was something he was good at, probably the thing he was very best at in the worlds (even more so than magic.) But even though Sakura was not a big girl, she was still an added hundred pounds of dead weight in his arms, and he was lost in the maze of twisting hallways and winding stairs. There was no time to stop and look at any of Syaoran's markings, he just bolted headlong and hoped for the best.

"Syaoran-kun -" Sakura cried out, then gulped back a sob and concentrated on making herself as small as she could in Fai's arms. It didn't help much, there was really no non-awkward way for Fai to carry Sakura in his arms; already he was beginning to feel winded from their flight, his steps beginning to drag down with fatigue. They'd covered over a mile of actual ground, he estimated, but so much of it had been doubling back or going off in an unintended direction that he had no idea how far it actually was to the exit.

And they were being followed. There was no sound or sign of Syaoran, which Fai couldn't let himself think about right now. But sometimes when he turned a corner or ducked into a stairwell he caught a glimpse of the thing that was chasing them - a huge, black-furred hulk that took up the whole tunnel, its humped neck scraping the ceiling even as it carried its black body horizontal to the ground on four legs behind it. Some of the marks on the corridor walls became clear to Fai, now, as he imagined the impressions made by the passage of the beast through the corridors. As did some of the marks on the bodies they'd found in the pit.

The dark entrance to a stairwell flashed by him, and Fai rebounded off the nearest wall to turn himself into it. He hoped that the confined space of the narrow stairwell would be too small for the beast to follow. Still, the steep steps took a toll from his body, and despite the urgency of his blood thrumming through his ears Fai couldn't stop himself from slowing down as they approached the top of the stairs, gasping for air. His legs felt like jelly, and his arms where they clutched Sakura to him were numb.

"I can walk," Sakura gasped, squirming slightly (though not enough to upset his balance.) "Please, Fai-san, I'm not a child - please don't exhaust yourself trying to make up for me, I can keep up -"

"We're on the top level again!" Mokona interrupted, speaking up from her nest in Sakura's hands. "Look - there's Syaoran's markings! If we go left down the hallway, we can get out the main hall!"

Freedom - perhaps safety. It was so close to them that they almost thirsted for it, for sunlight and clear air. But before they could take more than a few steps down the hallway, the walls shook and a terrible roar sounded from the corridor just past the next juncture.

They were out of time. Fai threw Sakura away from him as hard as he could, setting her on her feet for a bare moment before he propelled her slight body away from him down the corridor, and then he turned to face his pursuer. He could only pray to whatever gods were listening that he was able to delay the beast for longer than Syaoran had.

There was no chance to Fai to even consider whether it would be worth it, at this late juncture, to break his self-made promise not to use magic - he never even got the opportunity. Instead he felt a blow along his back that jolted him off his feet, the walls and floor tilting around him. The world spun nauseatingly and then he felt his back strike the wall with an impact that left stars across his vision as his head hit the stone.

Something hot and stone-hard held him pinned there, a colossal grip that trapped his right arm against his body and pressed him bruisingly against the wall. A monstrous head loomed into his vision, red eyes blazing; dark lips peeled back around a double row of razor-sharp teeth that opened like the gates of Gehenna. And then the beast spoke.

"YOU!"the beast roared, the volume of its voice almost as stunning as the fact that it could speak at all. But it wasn't only the volume, but - "YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD!"

- not only the volume, but the pitch and timbre of that voice, deeper and louder than he had ever heard it but still so familiar, oh so familiar. It was the exact shade of red in its eyes, eyes the size of saucers and with slit black pupils like a cat's - and yet the exact shape of those eyes as they narrowed in a glare at him, he knew. He knew it as he knew the shape of those features, swollen and distorted now in their new settings, split with a double mouthful of razor-sharp fangs - he knew that face.

"Kurogane?" Fai choked out with the last of his air, and reached up to touch the beast's cheek.

~to be continued...