CHAPTER FOUR

Tsuta Ruins

I entered a large chamber, and the first thing I noticed, was everything looked green. Well… Except for-

"Webs." Was all Hiraku said, and that summed it up perfectly. Gigantic webs were strewn across the walls, draped on several places on the ginormous statue in the middle of the cavern, and all over the ceiling of the gigantic room. 'What's going on here?' I wondered to myself. The chamber was about a hundred feet tall, probably more, and a statue of what looked like a Dogu was in the middle of it all- surrounded by water. Several steppingstone-like mounds led from where the path ended, to the base of the statue. However, blocking the base of the statue was a mass of webs. 'How is this possible? I thought that evil vanished from the ruins when my mother killed the spider queen! Or at least, that the spiders did...'

I looked around, all the Konahana blossoms had wilted away, so there was no way to the top of the Dogu statue. I drew a line across the webs blocking the base of the statue- but it was no use. The strings were cursed, and so thickly entwined that the power-slash did nothing. My gaze returned to the ceiling, where many webs were cast across it. There was a huge mass of them at the top of the cavern, knotted closely together, holding up the top of the statue. An idea started to form as I looked at the white-coated ceiling. Since the blossoms were gone, and the base offered no real way in… Maybe there was another way to get to the top yet.

"Hey Hiraku," I said, turning to the tiny poncle. "Yeah?" He said, not turning to look at me, taking in the cavern. "Do you think that we could get up to those top ledges?"

"I suppose so, why?" He asked, looking at me curiously. "Look at all those webs, I think something… Or some things are nesting here in the ruins. Plus, judging by all these webs, the statue is their main lair- so we should try and get in." He nodded in agreement. "Ok, so, first step- find a way into the statue." He said, staring it at it intently. "It would be easier to cross over to the statue from higher up…" I said looking up again, and Hiraku lifted his gaze to the roof as well, scanning the edges of the ceiling. "Hey! Look, over there!" He said, pointing to a small area near the back of the cavern, it was a small tunnel leading off into the wall at the top of the chamber. "If we can find out where that comes from, we can get up there!" He said, and I wagged my tail excitedly. "Ok! Let's get going!"

Hiraku bounced up onto my head as I started to canter towards the right side of the cavern, where there was an opening in the wall. I passed through the door, and into another web-covered room. There were a couple withered trees in the area- and I revived them as I passed by. But before I could cross through the opposing door, a fighting barrier arose, and I had to slide to a sudden halt to avoid running into it.

Clay Soldiers came down from the walls, where they had been perched like statues. The dark brown monsters had very long, flexible limbs, and pulsing green markings etched onto their skin. They looked humanoid, and I recalled that these demons were born from the souls of sacrificial martyrs possessing clay statues… It was a terrible way to die. I hoped, as my weapon smashed through their clay bodies and broke them into fragments, that their angered spirits would now be at peace. "Evil has definitely returned to Tsuta." I murmured quietly as I passed through the door.

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Hiraku and I explored every room after the one with the Clay Soldiers to their extent, we walked through them again and again, but we couldn't find any way that appeared to lead to where we wanted to go. We ran into more Clay Soldiers, one particularly grouchy Bud Ogre, and yet more webs- but not what we needed.

"Argh!" I snapped, frustrated- and slashed through a clay pot standing near the wall. "This is ridiculous! How can there be a tunnel that leads to nowhere?" I fumed, pacing in a room we must have been in three times before. Hiraku was perched on a ledge, one of many that lead up; connected by old logs. "Calm down Akime." He said, cleaning off his beetle-hat from dirt and cobwebs. "That poor pot did nothing to you, and wearing a ravine into the floor isn't going to help anything."

I growled as my thrashing tail got caught in a web close to the ground and I whipped it free with a harsh flick. "There can't be… It has to have an entrance somewhere!" I mused aloud, and sat down on the ground, flattening my ears and trying to calm down. There had to be a solution, something I wasn't seeing yet. 'I have to just stop and think about this. It's not like the answer's going to fall from the sky.'

"You just need to stop and take a step back." Hiraku said, mirroring my thoughts. "We can come up with a different plan if we need to." He added with a shrug. I looked up, green light flooded through the cavern, giving everything a strange tint. Almost all the logs were in place, save one. One near the top required me take an extra big leap, because it had fallen prey to one of the giant webs, and was now dangling from two long strings high above the floor. I had a strange idea, and got to my feet. I looked from the log, to a wall near where it was pointing, and I tilted my head. That wall looked slightly different than the others…

I leaped up the first ledge, and ran up a couple of the log-bridges so I could get closer. When I was almost even with it, I stopped. "What're you doing?" Hiraku said, coming up after me. "Testing the integrity…" I said, pressing my paws against the log to aim it where I wanted, then withdrawing to the ledge to draw a straight line across one of the strands. It cut, and the log swung forward right by us and into the wall below. The wall smashed apart, crumbling and revealing open space on the other side. "Of this fake wall!" I said, smiling.

"Ha! I told you to just take a step back and we'd figure something out!" He said, hopping through the demolished stone wall. I rolled my eyes at him, and followed, stepping over chunks of rock. We followed the now unblocked passage, until we came to a large, circular room. Somewhat similar to the one we'd just left, except larger, and this one was built differently. In the center, was a large, bare patch of ground, and to the right were some giant mushrooms, leading up to a high ledge, which itself lead to nowhere, but across from it was a matching ledge that went off down a tunnel. There were still webs in this room, sadly, and I sighed. I couldn't see anything that could be of use in this room, at least, not yet.

I went up to the large patch of dirt, expecting to revive it, but the dirt seemed perfectly healthy, even in place. "Maybe something's supposed to go here." Hiraku said, and I nodded. "Let's go back and check the tunnels again, maybe there are more hidden passages." I barked, and he sighed at the prospect of going through -again-, but he hopped up on my back. Before, we didn't know there were rooms behind the walls, maybe now we could see clues that we couldn't before.

We walked back to the beginning, and to the long walkway beyond it. I looked at the walls closely, looking to find anything out of place; but, the results were the same as before: nothing. Only watching shadows, that a few times I could have sworn were moving, even following us.

"Wait a second!" Hiraku said suddenly, drawing his sword. "Look over there!" I looked around, and suddenly saw something trapped in the webs near the ceiling, I was sure there was nothing there when we were in that hall before. "Is that...?" I said, drifting off. "A treasure chest!" He shouted, drawing his sword and leaping off my head, climbing the small strands up towards the chest. I was suddenly wary, certain that it wasn't there before. "Hiraku, maybe you shou-" I said, but it was too late, he was already up next to the chest, slashing away at the webs. "Oh, come on Akime, it's a treasure chest! Treasure! What's the worst that could-" He said, and cut off as the treasure chest plummeted to the floor. It landed on the stone floor with a heavy slam, and sent the other side of the stone panel up into the air, which broke off and flew forwards. It hit the opposite wall, and sliced clean through it.

"Well, it looks like your greed for treasure has at least one good consequence." I said, padding up to the wall and peering through. As I looked around, I could see he wasn't paying attention to me, just trying to hack his way into the chest. I slashed a clean mark straight over the chest, and it popped open. "Sweet, let's check out the goods!" He said, focused completely on the treasure. Inside was an old vase, and a carved tablet. "We'll split, 50-50." Hiraku said, and I nodded absentmindedly, focused on the slab of stone; the tablet looked more important than your average piece of treasure. With the chest emptied, I blew up the rest of the wall and saw that beyond it was a room with a large glass container near the back that seemed to be filled with several large, round objects. There was a large panel of stone with several strange buttons and levers on the it, but they all were in severe disrepair, currently useless. The glass bubble in the back of the room had some writing on it that I couldn't decipher. Looking at the wall, I could see the same thing. Most of the writing had faded away anyway, but there were a couple pictures that were distinguishable. One of them was a tree. I got back to thinking about the large, bare patch of ground in the other room, and started to get what was going on- and what needed to be done.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Hiraku said, who was standing in front of the glass, looking in at the objects inside. There was a small slot in the giant panel, and I took out the tablet we'd found in the chest. It slid in perfectly, and small sections of the stone began to glow with a green light. Beside the giant container was a giant lever that stuck up out of the ground. It was terribly rusted, plus the top half was completely gone. I was sure that in this state- all my strength wouldn't be able to move it. So I quickly blotted in the missing part, and the rest of the lever appeared. I rammed against it, using my shoulder to push as hard as I could, and it shifted. I could hear the groan of old gears being put into motion after centuries of rest, and although the machine complained, I saw one of the round things I was now positive was a seed roll into a glass pipe that lined the ceiling of the room. Hiraku bounced back to my side, and I ran back down the tunnel, keeping my eyes on the seed as it rolled through the glass. Then in front of us there was a sudden commotion, and I heard a loud hissing sound. I came to a jarring halt, and looked around as I saw a many-legged figure crawl back into a large crevice in the ceiling.

"What was that?!" Hiraku said, staring after the shadow in shock. "A conformation." I said, staring at the place where the dark form had disappeared. I was now certain of what we were up against. "They know we're here." I said in a low tone. "And they were either trying to hide the tablet, or help us get into that room." Hiraku looked at me scornfully. "What, the monsters? They're never that bright, if anything they were going to hide it away from us. If they have a lick of sense, they'll go run and hide from us!" He said. "Yes, from you." I said, I rolled my eyes. "Yeah! What did I tell you before? I'm a defender of Yoshpet, and of righteous businessmen everywhere!"

"Oh?" I said. "Yes! Remember that guy I told you had tried to cheat me?"

"Oh yes, I'm sure the papercuts from that battle must have stung for weeks." I said, with a snarky smile. "Har-har." He said unenthusiastically. "He's lucky that I spared him."

The glass tube disappeared into the ceiling, but I was pretty sure I knew where it lead to. I ran back to the room with the mushrooms and the patch of dirt, and sure enough, I saw a tube on the roof of the chamber. As I watched, the seed rolled along it, and towards the end. The seed stopped, as it ran into a pile of webs. I sliced through them, and the seed fell down into the bare patch of ground. It glowed green for an instant, then I saw it root itself. I took a step back, and drew a circle around it. Immediately a giant tree started to erupt from the center of the seed, growing taller and taller, branching out into thick green platforms of leaves. It rose to almost the roof of the cavern, before it finally slowed to a stop. "Someone had a lot of time on their hands to plan this out." Hiraku commented, as he looked up at the wide-spreading branches. In front of the tree appeared a small object, glowing into existence. I walked forward to pick it up, it was maybe the size of my head, it was small, and white and purple. It had markings of exorcism on it, for dispelling evil. I packed it away, and with the path now clear, I decided to go check out where the ledge led too. I padded towards the mushrooms, and Hiraku spoke.

"Hey Akime, I have a question for you." He said, seeing the apprehension on my face, and bouncing ahead of me several mushrooms, as I hopped up on the first one. "Yeah?" I said, looking to the next one and judging distance. "Do you have any phobias? I mean, what do gods really have to worry about?" He said, finishing bouncing up all the fungi to the top.

"Oh, more than you'd think," I said, crouching down, readying my muscles. "My mother worries about many things. She has the whole of Nippon to protect, plus the plains, and me and my brother. The gods worry about themselves, and those that rely on them. They fear the people losing faith, fear for the people's lives. I don't fear much, but that's part of who I am."

"So, you're never scared?" He asked, curious. "Hardly ever." I replied, jumping onto the next mushroom. I shuddered as I thought of one time when I had truly been petrified, but I shook it off. "Only once in my life, a long time ago, was I ever truly scared. Terrified, frozen still. But it happened so many years ago, it doesn't really matter anymore. The only thing that can be done about it is to learn from my mistake."
"Which was…?" Hiraku said, looking down from the ledge, and I smiled. "My mother often says: my greatest strength is my greatest weakness. I'm hardly scared of anything, and when I was young- there wasn't anything that could faze me." I jumped again, just barely landing it- with my back paws dangling off the edge of the giant fungus. 'I must have the worst depth perception of any wolf that's ever lived.' I thought to myself as I pulled myself up with my front paws. "I learned the hard way that there is a fine line between bravery and stupidity, and I learned what fear was that day… I think that experience helped me, but still, to this day I never give up when faced with a challenge, no matter how unbeatable it seems." I flicked my tail, and double-jumped to the next mushroom, a tiny one. "Stubborn genes, I guess. I feel fear the same as everyone- I can just push past it. Fear has its place, but most of the time it's just a hinderance."

"Must be nice. Being always unafraid." Hiraku said, and I grinned. "Greatest weakness remember? It's not all a perfect gift."

"But how do you feel about spiders?" He said, looking at the giant webs above us. "I hardly think there's a being alive that isn't at least somewhat creeped out by spiders." I snorted. "Including the gods." He laughed, and I made the final jump to join him. "How'd you get so good at climbing, anyway?" I asked, and he grinned. "I'm a poncle, it's one of our special skills. Like you have the brush, and agility- but can't climb a tree worth two yen, I can." He smiled. "Now let's get going." He said, and bounced off into the branches.

I had been planning on another section of hard-to-stick jumps ahead, but surprisingly, the branches had aligned themselves almost perfectly into wood bridges, from our side of the room, to the other- where there was the other ledge, and the tunnel. I hopped down, and ran across the branches, feeling the strong wood underneath of a healthy tree, and then flipped up onto the opposite ledge. This tunnel seemed even darker than the ones we'd entered previously, but it seemed to slope upwards, and I had hope this might take us to where we needed to go. I started forward, anxious to keep moving. Hiraku led the way deeper into the mossy tunnel, and I padded along behind him. In speaking of bravery, Hiraku was by far one of the bravest people I've ever met. He had a spirit like mine, and he may be even more courageous than me in some ways. We were similar in many ways, both artists, both had a decent sense of humor, both warriors; but we also differed, in perhaps the best ways. It was then I knew with certainty, that I'd chosen a good partner.

(AN: Forgive me for not revealing what it is she's truly afraid of, that would be a spoiler- a really big one that's key to the core plot of the story. ;) To the next chapter!)