It was impossible to tell how long that passage went on, but eventually we came to a place where the walls pulled away to reveal a wide underground chasm. This cleft in the rock extended up a long ways, much farther than I could see, but not as far as the surface as there was no light here. Nearby the tunnel we had emerged from a stream tumbled out of the mouth of another cave in a noisy cascade to plunge into what sounded like it must be a vast underground river. The light of Kisume's lantern didn't reach far in this space, but somewhere up ahead I could see a wooden bridge arching over the river and strung with paper lanterns.

"Former Hell is just ahead." Yamame said, over the sounds of the rushing water. I still couldn't see any signs of a city from here though. I wondered how big it must be, and how many people (would they think of themselves as people?) lived in it now that it was supposedly abandoned.

"It's called 'Former Hell' because it used to be part of the capital H Hell, but it isn't any more, is that right?" Renko asked, craning her body around to try to catch a glimpse of where we were heading.

"Sort of. Those bits were in several places even deeper down. This city used to be a home to all of the guards and administration staff responsible for running things. The city was much more populous back then. What's down here now is everything that got left behind, including a few administrative sections for watching over the leftover facilities and dangerous waste. What's here now is huge and mostly empty. It's a perfect paradise for us hated youkai, we can all just take whatever we want and there's no one to stop us.

"So what kind of hell was it? Like a mountain of needles? Or a lake of blood? What should I expect?"

"All of those and a bunch more too. They're still down there, underneath the city, but they're not maintained or guarded any more so they're even more dangerous than they used to be. Pretty much no one goes there. The Hell of Blazing Fires is down there too, and there's a few people managing that to keep the city heated and lit, but mostly it's all forgotten down below. Oh! There she is. Heeey, Parsee!" Yamame let go of me and raised her arm over her head to wave at someone, jostling me back and forth as I bounced on her shoulder and we drew closer to the bridge. Her hand clamped back onto me before the silk of my cocoon could slide off of her though.

As we approached the pool of light surrounding the bridge I was able to crane my neck to try to get a look. At the sound of Yamame's voice, a figure who had been leaning up against the railing close to the middle of the span turned lazily and slowly began walking toward us. She was a human-sized girl with fluffy blonde hair, long, pointed ears and clothes that looked distinctly middle-eastern to me, though I'm afraid I'm not knowledgeable enough in traditional styles of dress to have guessed where the outfit might have come from. More than anything the feature that stood out most was her lamp-like green eyes, which shone ominously in the dim light beneath the earth. In the brief moment that those eyes met my own, I felt the need to immediately avert my gaze. Having her look at me was deeply unpleasant, as if something sour was rising up in the back of my throat. I was somewhat relieved when Yamame turned toward the bridge, twisting so that both Renko and I were facing away from this 'Parsee.'

"Yamame. Rare to see you coming back so soon. What is that you've found there, a human?" Said a slightly accented voice from just ahead of us.

"Two of 'em!" Yamame said proudly, hoisting us up. "They just fell into the pit. I was completely surprised."

"What would humans from the surface be doing near the entrance to the pit? This is where the surface youkai threw everything they didn't want."

"Get this! They said they just came here out of curiosity! How do you like that?"

"How ridiculous. Why didn't you just eat them? Why are you bringing them into town to show them off to everyone? Are you just trying to make everyone jealous of your meal? How awful. I should curse you for being so cruel to me."

"Parsee. I'm not here to show them off to you. I'm here to show them off to Yuugi! They claim to know Suika, so I thought she might want to meet 'em."

"Of course. I should have known you wouldn't even consider how I might feel. Who's Suika?"

"Yuugi's friend. You remember her. She was one of the Heavenly Kings back on the mountain."

"I never lived on the mountain. I guess it's hard for someone like me to keep track of all Yuugi's friends, seeing as I don't have any of my own. Not that anyone cares."

"Parsee, I can't even keep track of what you're jealous of anymore. Do you know where I can find Yuugi?"

"How would I know? It's not like she would care enough to tell me anything."

"Parsee, she comes to see you here all the time. She's one of your friends."

"She's not my friend, she just comes here to make me jealous. She knows how much I envy her carefree lifestyle. Even her idiotic way of coming and going as she pleases makes me jealous."

"Ah, I see, you're grumpy because she hasn't stopped by today. She must be partying down in the city then. I'll go find her. Sorry that I'm not Yuugi."

"I'm not grumpy! I'm just jealous that all of you get to go and look for her wherever and whenever you like! Just pass on by and go find her already!"

"Alright, bye Parsee!" Yamame called as we started moving again. From my position on her back back I could see as Parsee resumed her earlier pose, leaning against the railing of the bridge and staring into the distance with a forlorn expression. We crossed the bridge and turned into another tunnel, Kisume bowing to Parsee then following along behind us with the lantern. As soon as Parsee was out of sight, I let out a relieved breath I hadn't realized I was holding as the unpleasant feeling of tightness in my chest was released.

I heard Renko sigh too, then wriggle as she tried to get a look at Yamame. "Who was that?" she asked with naked curiosity.

"Parsee Mizuhashi. She's a hashihime who can manipulate jealousy. She guards the bridge. Her eyes are especially dangerous to humans. Did she getcha? You feeling a little jealous?"

"Mainly just curious. She's a hashihime? That's a very Japanese monster for someone with such a foreign appearance. Hashihime are women who turned into youkai while still alive after visiting a bridge in the middle of the night, right? Isn't that how the story went? I only know the one tale where the hashihime gets her arm cut off by Watanabe Tsuna though. He was one of the four Heavenly Kings. Err, the four human Heavenly Kings, I should say, the one they called the Witchslayer."

I nodded. "That's the first story that a hashihime appears in, but there were a bunch of tales about them. Confusingly, there are also some old books from about that same time with the same story saying the woman on the bridge who got her arm cut off wasn't a hashihime. Supposedly in those versions it was Ibaraki Doji, One of Shuten Doji's subordinates."

Shuten Doji was a name we hadn't heard spoken in a while. At one point though it had been the center of one of our cases, or at least the center of one of Renko's theories. Again, there's no point in me rehashing that here though, so I refer you again to our third casefile for the details.

The one oni we knew, Suika Ibuki, seemed to have taken her name from Mount Ibuki, famed as Shuten Doji's birthplace. Her choice of name seemed intended to at least suggest that she had some connection to the legendary oni, and in the old legends Shuten Doji was supposed to have had not only four Heavenly Kings of his own as subordinates, but also an apprentice or second in command of all the oni. That was who Ibaraki Doji was supposed to have been. I dredged the details of the old legends out of my mind as I bounced along on Yamame's shoulder. If this 'Yuugi' we were going to meet was supposed to be Hoshiguma Doji, another of the Heavenly Kings of the oni, then could that girl we just passed on the bridge have been Ibaraki Doji? She hadn't looked like an oni to me, but who could be sure?

"Miss Yamame, are you and Parsee friends with the Oni? You both seem to be familiar with Yuugi." Renko asked, squirming around in her cocoon again.

"Hmm, I wouldn't say we're friends with the oni in general. Most oni are kind of jerks, and they make fun of us youkai for being weaker than them. Yuugi's friendly though and she keeps the rest of the oni in line. She even comes and visits Parsee sometimes, and Parsee's not the easiest to get along with. Most oni really hate jealous people too. They see jealousy as an emotion that only weak people have."

"But not Yuugi."

"Not Yuugi. She takes care of everyone down here. I don't think it bothers her much if Parsee is jealous of her. Most anyone down here has reason to be. She's the strongest oni ever. What was that you two were just saying about about hashihime though?"

"I was just comparing her to some old human legends," Renko replied. "She's not missing an arm though, so I doubt she could be either the hashihime from that old story or Ibaraki Doji. Just a literal green eyed monster of jealousy."

"That's a line from Shakespeare's Othello, isn't it? 'Beware the Green-Eyed Monster that doth mock the meat it feeds upon.'"

"Oh, very good Merry. Do all westerners come standard with the ability to recognize Shakespeare?"

"What an outdated belief. I learned that in high school, same as you."

"Hey, quit that, both of you. I don't know what you two are talking about, but it's impolite to leave me out of the conversation. What's a Shakespeare? Maybe I should give you a shake." Yamame said, bouncing us both hard on her shoulders.

"Ah, ow! No need to get violent." Renko said. "If you don't want me talking to Merry about that then give me something else to talk about. Tell me about this miss Hoshiguma you're taking us to see. I want to learn all about her so I don't say something rude."

"She's the boss of all the oni down here. What more do you want to know?"

"Hmmm... 'the he boss of all the oni,' you said. How many is that?"

"I don't know an exact number, but a bunch. Several dozen at least, but less than 200, I'd guess."

"Oh, for oni that's quite a lot to all live together in one place. Did they all come down from Youkai Mountain together?"

"I don't know for sure, but I think so. From what I've heard there used to be way more oni here back when this was the Capital, but all of those guys moved with their work when the new Hell opened. If not all of the oni here are from the Mountain, at least most of them must be."

"And you said she's their boss, does that make her the leader of all the oni still on earth?"

"Being boss of the oni doesn't mean you're a leader, it just means you're the strongest and can beat up anyone who doesn't want to listen to you. I can't say if she's the strongest anywhere, but she's definitely the strongest person in all of Former Hell."

"I suppose that's to be expected of one of the Heavenly Kings of the oni. Speaking of which, since Suika came up to the surface, did that make Yuugi the only one of the Heavenly Kings down here?"

"Probably? I've heard her use that term, but I don't know who all they were supposed to be. They never mentioned another one that I know of."

"I see, I see. So then what's miss Hoshiguma like, in terms of personality?

"Hmmm, she's bold, straightforward and open-minded, I'd say. She's so strong she never has to worry about anyone else's needs or opinions and can just take what she wants from the world, so she's not tricky or complicated. She hates lies and cowardice, but if you two don't start crying in front of her or try to tell her lies, she'll probably drink with you and have a good time. She loves to party."

"Sounds a lot like Suika. Good thing I'm used to drinking with oni, I guess."

"If you're not lying about that then you're a very unusual human. Even most youkai would rather run away than drink with an oni. Haven't you heard that curiosity kills cats?"

"Well, where I come from, the cats of the Scientific Century are known to be both alive and dead at once until a question gets answered, so that's just the risk you have to take I guess."

Yamame shook her head in exasperation. "I don't understand you at all, but you're definitely an unusual human. Yuugi will appreciate your novelty if nothing else."

It seemed our meeting with the boss of the oni of Former Hell was inevitable. I knew Renko was brave, and she could manage to drink well enough to at least keep the oni company, but I wasn't sure if she could manage not to come off as a liar. For that matter, I wasn't sure if I could. In my case I should probably have worried more over whether I would be seen as a coward though.

"And here we are!" Yamame said as we reached the exit of the tunnel we had been moving through. "Here, let me turn you around so you can get a look." With that she grabbed us each by our wrappings again and, flipping us roughly over, positioned us on her shoulders so we could see the scene stretched out before us.

The sight was breathtaking. A city was spread out on a broad plane of rough stone. Lights twinkled in the windows of hundreds of buildings. There must have been a ceiling somewhere far above us, but it was so distant as to be invisible in the darkness, giving the impression that the whole massive city must just be sitting under a starless night sky. I could see the city stretching out a great distance in the bowl ahead of us, but much of it was unlit. The sections that were illuminated bustled with a degree of activity that would have rivaled the main street in the human village at midday. All sorts of youkai, some humanoid and others most decidedly not passed eachother by in the streets, their voices mixed in a raucous cacophony of trade and conversation. A wealth of light spilled from colored lanterns strung at random between stalls, along buildings, on raised posts and even simply laying on the ground in places, burning steadily with smokeless, yellow-orange flames that never seemed to flicker or dim. More than anything else, the bustle and light amidst the traditional Japanese architecture reminded me of Asakusa, the old entertainment district of the magical city of Tokyo, where I had once gone sightseeing with Renko.

"Alright, may as well get you down so you can take it in."

Without another word Yamame plucked us off of her shoulders and placed our feet on the ground. Grasping the silk of our cocoons with one hand, she inserted a blade-like fingernail first into my wrappings, then into Renko's ,expertly severing only the cords sticking the bindings to our clothes. The silken sheathes that had wrapped us moments before slipped to the ground with a rustle and I breathed a sigh of relief, finally able to bend my limbs. Beside me, Renko was twisting back and forth, rotating her shoulders and stretching her arms. I looked at the silken wrappings on the ground. They were each as long as our bodies, but comprised of sheets only slightly thicker than a hair. Their strength had been immeasurable, and I thought about the complex work that must have gone into making two tubes from simple string and tying it all together in such a way that only a few sticky strands were needed to bind it to us. Supposedly spiders used a specific one of their many legs with a specially hooked tip to reach into their abdomens and extract silk then weave it into threads even as they excreted it. The thought of exactly how that worked for Yamame or where any of these threads had come from was enough to make me shut down that train of thought immediately.

I looked up from the wrappings to see that our captor was currently conversing with Kisume who was whispering in her ear again. This whole time I had never once heard her voice, and though she had been following us this whole time, she had never once spoken to Renko or I. I had nearly forgotten she existed.

"Well, if you really are friends of Suika's it wouldn't do to have you tied up, so you can just go ahead and march. I don't think I need to point out to you how bad an idea trying to run away would be. If you stay with me, everyone will know you're under my protection, but if you try to run, any one of these youkai would gobble you up in an instant." Apparently, Kisume had been questioning Yamame's decision to let us walk on our own.

Yamame reached up and took Kisume's tub in her hands, the rope it was dangling from falling limp then vanishing as she did so. Then she turned and smiled at us, a smile that was open, charming, and utterly without any hint of mercy. "Welcome to Former Hell," she said brightly. "Enjoy your stay."