Chapter Eighty-One
A pale violet haze rose from the crevasse, like the breath of a demon.
"Hyuu," the mage sang. Kurogane looked over in annoyance. Somehow, the sound was even more annoying now that he knew the wizard could actually whistle. "That's far. How will we get down there?"
The princess walked up to the rift. She came so close to the edge that Kurogane reflexively stepped forward to stop her. "There are stairs," the girl said, her voice strangely monotone.
"It's a canyon, how the hell could there be—" He broke off as he reached the edge. Just a few feet below, a narrow series of sculpted indents jutted out from the wall, evenly spaced and in decent repair. Stairs.
"They go to the bottom," Sakura said, still sounding half-asleep. "A team of excavators built them on both sides so they could come and go freely without having to wait for the lift."
It was silent for a moment as they stared at her. It's just like Infinity, the ninja thought, remembering how she'd known where to the emergency exit despite it being hidden behind another door. She knows things it doesn't make sense for her to know.
"Guess we're going down there, then," Fai said.
Kurogane walked closer to the edge, then dropped the four feet it took to get to the first platform. "Stay close to the wall. There aren't any railings."
"Oh, Kuro-puu is taking care of us."
He glanced up sharply. "What the hell did you just call me?"
A startled look crossed the mage's face, as if he hadn't realized his slip. After a moment, his face went curiously blank. "Nothing, Kurogane."
He glared up at the mage for a long moment, then started down the stairs, keeping one hand on the wall.
They descended in silence. The stairs were narrow in places, and some were chipped along the edges, as if stones had fallen down on them from above and damaged them. But Kurogane noticed something, as they traveled deeper into the canyon—something that sent quivers of unease through his bones.
The Mist was getting thicker.
The hand that wasn't tracing the wall rested lightly on Souhi's hilt, as if he could combat the thickening fog with a swipe of his sword. The disquiet in him grew the longer they walked.
In Nihon, only the demons beyond the border wards could elicit such unease from him. Then, he'd brushed it off as a psychological effect brought on by his trauma— something to be endured, something to serve as a warning against oncoming threats. But he'd felt the same tension in Outo, when he and the boy had gone off fighting demons for money. The subtle wrongness. "Mage, do you sense anything?" he asked.
For once, the wizard wasn't smiling. "Something," he agreed. "I don't know what."
"Mokona doesn't like this Mist," the white creature piped up. Fai rested a hand on the creature's head, still frowning.
"The things in the Mist . . . They're crying."
At that, everyone paused and turned to Sakura. The princess stared dreamily into the bluish haze.
"Let's keep moving," Kurogane said. It had been a long time since he'd disliked a place so much as this canyon. The sooner they retrieved the feather, the better.
They walked a few minutes more, their footsteps the only sound in the canyon. The Mist grew so thick that if he'd pointed Souhi out in front of him, he wouldn't have been able to see the tip of the blade.
"It's kind of eerie, isn't it?" Fai said.
Eerie. Off-balance. Wrong. Everything about this place was wrong.
It wasn't until an inhuman shriek tore through the air that Kurogane realized why.
Syaoran had known something was wrong with this canyon from the moment he'd peered over the edge and seen the blanket of Mist. But it wasn't until he saw the first body that he began to panic.
He stumbled over it by accident, losing his footing as his heel came down on the rounded end of a femur. If Seishirou hadn't caught him by the arm and yanked him back, he might've tumbled down the stairs and into the abyss. As if the near-fatal fall hadn't been enough, he'd turned back to see what had tripped him and seen the corpse.
"Oh God," he whispered. Not out of shock, but because the sight before him merited some attention from a higher power.
"Bones," the farmer said, sounding shaken.
Seishirou knelt down beside the corpse, moving the ragged clothing out of the way to examine it. Syaoran wanted to look away, but his gaze wouldn't leave the body.
"They're old," his teacher said. "You can tell that from the bleached color they've got to them. But look here." He pointed to the femur Syaoran had tripped over. Dotting the leg were little indents, as if someone had taken a tiny pickaxe to the surface.
"Teeth marks," Syaoran whispered.
The farmer looked away. "Damn."
"And not just scavengers," Seishirou said, and Syaoran was glad he didn't explain the reason for his hypothesis.
"Who was he?"
"Who knows?" Seishirou turned to the farmer. "If you hope to return to your family, you may want to turn back now."
The man shook his head, looking as if he was about to throw up. "No. I want to find out what's doing this."
Seishirou pulled something from his coat pocket and moved it up to his face. His glasses, Syaoran thought, shivering. He'd only ever seen Seishirou don his glasses once before, and that had been when he'd fought Kurogane-san in Outo. He's serious. This isn't a safe place.
We should leave.
He shook off the thought. He and Seishirou would part after this world. A few more hours of fear was a small price to pay to be done with this journey.
"Let's keep moving," Seishirou said.
They walked more cautiously now, keeping their eyes on the stone steps to avoid any disastrous falls. But now a deep silence pervaded their group. Even Seishirou, who was usually inclined to make cryptic remarks to stave off boredom, kept his mouth shut as he carried Fuuma deeper into the chasm.
Deep within the canyon, Syaoran heard something shriek. He knew it at once not to be a human voice, but there was an almost human quality to it, a sound that touched some primal fear in Syaoran and made a shudder run down his back.
"What was that?" he asked. His voice came out in a thin whisper.
Seishirou grinned at his panic, but quickly lost the expression. He didn't answer.
They passed two more bodies shortly after, reduced to bones just as the first. Both were lying facedown, having fallen where they'd died. Judging from the direction their bodies were pointing, they'd been heading up the stairs when something had felled them from behind. Running from something.
But what? Syaoran wondered. That thing that was screeching earlier? Or something else? A shiver ran down his back.
"Best keep going," his teacher said. Syaoran realized he'd stopped to stare at the bodies.
"Right," he said, gingerly stepping over the pair. A rope of golden hair, tied back in a braid, marked one of the corpses as female.
The Mist got thicker as they went down. The change was almost as unnerving as the pervasive silence. Moreover, the stairs themselves were losing their definition. A few minutes ago, every step had been neatly carved, the edges perfect lines. Now, the steps were cracked and chipped, as if the abundance of Mist had accelerated their eventual decay. Like every step we take is another year of damage done, he thought, wrapping his arms around his torso. As he did so, he realized for the first time that the temperature had dropped.
It's cold, he thought, fingers tightening around his sleeves. The further we descend, the colder it gets. His eyes slid over to the others. Seishirou wore an uneasy frown, and his hands were tight around Fuuma's arms, as if he was clutching the man closer for warmth. Bob, the farmer, seemed unaffected by the drop in temperature, despite the light T-shirt he wore. It's not a natural chill, Syaoran thought. I shouldn't feel cold like this, not since Seishirou turned me into a vampire. So why am I so cold?
"There's something wrong with this place," he said, looking up at his teacher for some sort of validation.
Seishirou only nodded and said, "I know."