"Well if it's urgent, then please hold on." Sakuya said, holding out both of her hands daintily.
The moment we had both grabbed them, we found ourselves standing in front of the Scarlet Devil Mansion's gate. There was no sense of motion, nor any visual indication whatsoever. We were simply somewhere else in less than the space of a heartbeat. If having Sanae fly us from place to place was convenient, the travelling with Sakuya would be a whole order of magnitude moreso. Only for us through. If she had had to fly all the way here in stopped time dragging us along with her, I imagine that had been the opposite of convenient for Sakuya.
Meiling was leaning with her back up against the pillar beside the gate as usual, snoring softly. Sakuya lazily tossed a knife at her with an underhanded flick of the wrist and she jumped as it clattered off of the brick beside her head.
"Gah! Miss Sakuya! Welcome back! I see you brought guests!" She said, scrambling to try and both stand rigidly at attention and swing the gate open at the same time. She ended up throwing the heavy iron lattice wide with one hand then immediately snapping that same hand into a stiff salute. Sakuya sighed and walked through the open gate ahead of us, ignoring Meiling completely and guiding us straight to the doors of the library.
"The mistress and her sister are still asleep, so this is my opportunity to clean. If you require anything just let lady Patchouli know," she said with a bow, then turned and vanished, leaving the two of us alone before the doors of the great library. When we went inside, Koakuma came to greet us as usual then showed us to the same crescent moon shaped table we had found Patchouli at once before.
The magician greeted us without bothering to look up from the book she was reading. "Remi and her sister are still sleeping, so I take it you two are here looking for a book. Just let me know before you take anything, of if you'd like to read it here, I'll have Koa make you some tea."
"Actually," my partner said, pulling up a chair opposite Patchouli at the table, "there are a few things I wanted to talk to you about, miss Patchouli. If you can spare the time."
"If it's something related to the library, I'm sure Koa can help you. If you're wondering if I'd hire you to get my books back from Marisa, I'll pay you in gold for each one you return, but I'm not paying your expenses or a commission up front."
"Oh, that's a tempting business proposition, but let's save that discussion for another time. I actually wanted to ask you about the Underworld."
"The Underworld?" Patchouli asked, looking up from her book. Seeing the gleam in my partner's eyes, she inserted a bookmark into the heavy tome she was reading and closed it, then gestured vaguely over her shoulder. The book promptly flew away from her and settled itself neatly on top of a stack of similar volumes piled behind her.
"What would humans know about the Underworld?"
Renko began to explain about the recently erupted geyser near the Hakurei shrine and how so-called earth spirits were now gushing out of it. Patchouli listened intently, and half way through Renko's retelling, Sakuya appeared to deliver three cups of steaming black tea and a porcelain dish of fancily-decorated cookies. "I can corroborate their story," she said. "I saw a number of suspicious looking phantoms hovering in the area around the shrine just now."
Patchouli quirked an eyebrow in interest, shifting in her chair with a rustle of her layered silk robes. "That shouldn't be happening. It's a violation of the mutual non-aggression pact between the surface and the city of Former Hell. As far as I was aware it was also supposed to be impossible." She took a sip of her tea, clearly savoring it for a moment before exhaling. "A few disembodied earth spirits are no cause for concern in and of themselves, but if something bigger like one of the reviled youkai or a party of oni were to come up through a gap like that, it could present a real problem."
My partner snorted derisively. "That sounds like a line from the youkai sage, miss Patchouli."
"Nothing wrong with that. Yukari Yakumo has proven herself to be a very knowledgeable, if somewhat capricious Administrator. The current state of affairs here in Gensokyo suits us here at the Scarlet Devil Mansion just fine."
"I'm just a bit surprised to hear you so concerned about something that, for now at least, only affects the Hakurei shrine. In general, I didn't think you were the sort to concern yourself with events that affect the rest of Gensokyo."
"I wouldn't think this would be surprising to you of all people," she said, "but I'm very invested in the continuity of Gensokyo as a space set permanently apart from the Outside world. No one except perhaps Yukari works harder than me to ensure that the Great Hakurei Barrier remains intact." Given Patchouli's disposition, that statement might seem surprising to you. If you think so though, I'd refer you to the first of our agency's casefiles. If there was any grain of truth to Renko's theories, then Patchouli had good reason to want to keep everything in Gensokyo permanently sealed off. "I won't be able to say whether this news is concerning or not until I have a look at this geyser myself. I suppose that means it's time for another wretched excursion." She said bitterly, nibbling a bite of cookie. "If it looks dangerous then I'll have to think about countermeasures as well." she grumbled, looking down again.
She stopped suddenly then raised her head and looked me directly in the eye. "I don't suppose I could ask you to contact Yukari Yakumo for me?"
"The youkai sage? N-no," I stammered, thinking back to that moonlit night when I had seen her last. "I don't think I can call her directly."
"Well, her shikigami would be fine then. Anything that will get the message to her. I'd like to hear her opinion of this rule-breaking."
Renko looked over at me for a moment then turned back to Patchouli, her usual cat-like grin blooming on her face. "The youkai sage is not an easy person to get a hold of. Believe me, I'd know. We can do what we can to try to get a message to Ran for you, but if you're going to hire us for a job like that, I think we should discuss payment first. For a small, off-the-books assignment like this one, I don't think payment in gold would really be appropriate. Instead, there's a bit of information I'd like to get from you in exchange."
Patchouli's eyes narrowed suspiciously as she regarded my partner. "And what would that be?" She asked, with a hint of a wheeze.
"Just one question." Renko replied. "How can I get down into Former Hell?
-.-.-.-.-
And so, as usual, Renko had decided on a path and forged ahead without any input from me. After this many recurrences, I suppose it would be foolish of me not to blame myself. Despite all my complaining both on these pages and in person, I always ended up following along behind Renko. It was years ago now that I spoke with the Yama and she had warned me of the necessity of acting of acting as a brake for my partner. I still wasn't any closer to figuring out exactly how I was supposed to achieve that though. A little less sanctimoniousness and a little more practical advice would go a long way, if I may be permitted to pass a judgement of my own on a divine judge. Without having found any better options, I continued to raise my easily-ignored worries and keep my complaints largely in my head, which is exactly what lead to situations like the one I found myself in now.
"Whoa. That's... really deep." Renko said, staring into the yawning abyss before us.
"Renko, you can't really be serious about this right? We've done some reckless things before, but descending into Hell? On purpose?"
Directly before us was a vast, gaping pit, which formed the entrance of a straight, wide borehole that stretched endlessly down, well beyond the limits of what the sunlight angling into the shaft could illuminate. Where the light couldn't reach, the darkness was absolute. Looking into it even while standing well back from the rim gave you the distinct sensation that you were slowly being sucked inside.
"It's Former Hell, Merry. Everyone we've talked to has agreed that's a different place than the actual hells, or it least, it is now. Besides, this shaft may not go all the way there, right miss Patchouli?"
The magician had guided us here and accompanied us herself, though as we had travelled by means of another of her instant transference spells rather than flying, I couldn't be sure exactly where we were. As it was, I discovered the exact location of this entrance later on, but in the interests of preserving the treaty between the worlds above and below, I won't include any directions to find it here. I wouldn't recommend trying to find it anyway. The shaft is so deep that anyone without the ability to fly would find it an utterly impassable obstacle.
"Well, I haven't dived down myself, so I can't be certain. It might just be a deep hole. Do you intend to go in?"
"Well, intention is one thing, but as things currently stand there's no way Merry or I could survive the descent, much less whatever might be at the bottom." Renko said, leaning ever closer to the edge. The spectacle of the chasm was so dizzying that I tried not to look at it. Renko drawing ever closer to the lip didn't make that easy. She paused for a moment before lowering herself onto her stomach and sticking her head over the edge into empty space. "Heeey, c'mon out!" she called, echoing the words from the famous Shinichi Hoshi story. She waited a moment, but there was no echo to be heard. "You try Merry, I can't get loud enough to reach the bottom."
"Why do you think that I could? What would I even scream that loud? 'Renko is an idiot?' The world already knows that, I think."
Renko looked up from the hole to grin maniacally at me for a moment, then turned her gaze back to the depths, entranced by the vast unknown yawning before her.