Amidst the chaotic hustle and bustle of Former Hell, the image of the pale girl flickered in and out of sight. Renko and I chased after it, sprinting to close the distance when I could see it, frantically searching to pick her out of the crowds when I lost her. She was appearing frequently enough to keep us almost constantly moving forward, but her path was meandering, taking us around in an unpredictable zigzag. As we chased after her we endured numerous confused, shocked or hungry stares from all manner of youkai who populated the city, often openly commenting on our presence or sometimes licking their lips eagerly. Somewhere not too far behind us Yamame was following along, only occasionally visible through the press of bodies in the streets but frequently heard as she yelled behind us.
"Don't touch those humans! They're Yuugi's favorites! Out of my way!" was a frequent refrain. Usually, at the mention of Yuugi's name, the sea of bodies parted to allow her through, but the time it took for that to happen kept us consistently a few steps ahead of her.
"Where'd she go, Merry? Which way?"
"I'm looking, Renko... Oh, there she is!"
I had spotted her running across the roof of a restaurant of all places, and pointed Renko toward the closest path I could find, a narrow alleyway that squeezed between buildings. Rushing forward, we plunged into the dimness of the narrow passage. It was only after we had proceeded around a corner and through an almost lightless corridor, which narrowed so much we had to turn sideways to fit through it, that the alleyway opened up again. Beyond it was a broad plaza with an enormous, Western-style building that looked something like a cross between a mansion and a cathedral. It loomed ominously over its surroundings, huge and foreboding, replete with vaulted, ornamental arches along its outer walls and colorful stained glass windows set high in the façade from which colored light was streaming into the dim caverns. All of the other buildings surrounding it seemed to shun it, arranging themselves in a broad circle around the palatial structure, almost all with their backs facing it rather than opening toward the plaza it sat in the center of. It didn't appear to be quite as large or as garishly ostentatious as the Scarlet Devil Mansion but it still was quite clearly set apart, an outlier among the various Edo-era building plans of much of the rest of the city.
"Is that the Palace of the Earth Spirits?" Renko asked from just behind me.
"...Yes," Yamame panted as she drew up behind us. "That's Chireiden. The light is from the Hell of Blazing Fires underneath it." It seemed the mysterious vanishing girl really had lead us here. I hadn't noticed at first but the air was slightly warmer here, with a faint whiff of smoke in the air.
"This is just like Iggy leading everyone to DIO's mansion! I wonder if we'll have to challenge a butler to get inside? Come to think of it, one of the D'arby brothers had a Stand that could read minds and a pet too, maybe we'll find him in there. I remember him being a tough fight in the manga. Hang in there, Sanae, you can do it!"
"Sanae isn't even here, Renko. And you're not a Joestar."
"What in the world are you two talking about?" Yamame asked, looking between the two of us with an exasperated expression. "Are you really going to go in there? By choice?"
Renko turned to her and grinned maddeningly. "Well, if you're concerned that you might miss out on your meal you could always come in with us to keep us safe."
"No way. I'll pass on that and wait out here. Did you want to go in with them Kisume?" The girl in the bucket shook her head animatedly from side to side. I imagine that, given the choice, most humans would want to avoid having their mind read, but to the youkai of the Underworld it seemed like it must be an almost intolerable violation. Being creatures defined by fear and perception, I wondered if such a thing could actually be harmful to them.
"Alright then, Merry. Looks like it's just you and me again." Renko said, starting off across the plaza. I followed along beside her. "I've been thinking though, if mind reading is possible doesn't it disrupt the core tenants of Relative Psychology? An individual's perception isn't inviolable if a satori can just peer into it, right?"
"Well that depends on how it works, I suppose. D'Arby in Stardust Crusaders can only learn the answers to yes or no questions from reading someone and Murota in Yu Yu Hakusho can only hear nearby thoughts spoken in that person's voice. Both of those wouldn't violate individual subjectivity, it's essentially just a new kind of sense that those people have access to. At most that would just provide a definitive solution to the philosophical zombie experiment."
"Merry, how have you developed this unique talent of yours to make absolutely anything sound boring? We're talking about an actual mind reader here and you sound like a Wikipedia article. I guess we'll just have to do a field test to see how it works and figure out the implications later."
"What are we even doing here, Renko? Do you really think going in without Yamame to protect us is a good idea? If you confront this Satori about the earth sprits, wouldn't it just be easiest for her to eat you and and cover the whole affair up? No one down here seemed to know the spirits were leaking."
"They didn't know to begin with, but they do now. If Satori the satori tries anything, we can just tell her that we're under Yuugi's protection. Or that her spirits are angering the Hakurei miko. Or that Suika will get mad if we die. Having a lot of friends means having a lot of options. Besides, that invisible girl lead us here, so they must want us to come."
"All of those are just the fox borrowing the tiger's glory again."
"That's fine. You like foxes, Merry. If we get out of this alive I'll let you snuggle me to your heart's content."
"There's absolutely nothing worth snuggling about you. You don't even have one tail."
"Are you actually pouting, Merry? That's adorable. We're here though, better get all those unclean thoughts of Renko out of your head." She grinned at me then jogged off, running the last few meters to the door of the palace.
-.-.-.-.-
The ringing of the heavy iron knocker against the door resounded through the plaza. Other than its reverberating boom, there was no sound, either from within or without.
"This is creepy, Merry. It's like the corpse of a building," Renko said, looking up at the shafts of colored light streaming silently outward from the windows.
"If we can't get in there, we're going to end up as corpses. Yamame's planning on eating us once we're done here, remember?"
Renko grimaced then cupped her hands to her mouth. "Excuse me, is anyone home?" she bellowed at the door.
Still there was no reply. It was a distant cry from the Scarlet Devil Mansion with it's friendly gatekeeper and ever-ready maid who would appear at a moment's notice to greet you. For the first time I found myself wishing Sakuya would pop up without warning in front of us.
Renko wrapped her hand around the handle of the door and thumbed the lever. It opened with a click, the door slowly swinging outward without the faintest sigh. "Oh, it's not locked," she said with surprise.
"I know this is kind of a lawless city, but I think breaking into someone else's house is probably still a bad idea, Renko."
"There's nothing to break, the door was like that when we got here, right?" Renko asked, throwing it wide. "Besides, I don't see you making an effort to stop me, you just like to complain," she said as she stepped inside.
"I don't make an effort to stop you because past experience tells me its useless. You'd just go in a window or something. I've managed to survive this long by sticking to you though, so I guess I'm coming along for the ride now." I said, following her inside.
"Oh, is that your survival strategy? Well that's fine, just leave everything to captain Renko. I'll steer you clear of any dangers and we can sail straight for adventure on the good ship Hifuu."
"The last ship we saw had been buried under the earth for a thousand years, Renko. My goal is for that not to be our fate." I wondered, idly, if my partner's penchant for wordplay and inserting almost nonsensical non-sequiturs into her speech would have any impact on a mind-reader's ability to understand her.
At any rate we proceeded deeper into the house. The air inside was dim and just a little warmer than was pleasant. I might have expected to see a foyer and staircase inside the entryway, much like there was just past the vestibule of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, but instead the stone building seemed to mostly laid out something like a gothic church. There was a surprisingly broad hallway that proceeded straight down the center of it, lined with doors that branched off to rooms on either side. Low wooden benches lined the walls. The lighting, oddly enough, came mostly from the floor, which had enormous stained-glass panels, mostly in reds and purples inset at regular intervals. The glass in these panels was opaque and thick enough to stand on safely, but I still preferred to walk around them, if only for the unsettling effect that being bathed in a column of searing red light produced when Renko tried it, sending eerily tall shadows playing across the walls.
"The floor is really warm here," Renko said, bending over to lay a hand on the surface of the glass. "I can even feel it through my shoes. Come try it, Merry." I could only imagine that that heat was a sign that the glass Renko was standing on must actually be a window set into the floor and overlooking the Hell of Blazing Fires directly. Try though I might, I couldn't help but imagine the glass cracking beneath my feet and sending the both of us tumbling into an inferno. I politely declined.
Having heated floors like this was probably a nicety in the winter, but I wondered what they did for cooling in the summer. Could the temperature of a literal Hell be turned down for comfort? It seemed somehow unlikely. For that matter though, so did the concept of seasons existing here in the Underworld.
As I walked around the glass panel I looked around. There was easily enough space for me to walk down the corridor with my arms outstretched and never pass over one of those illuminated squares. This palace must have originally been built for some other function than to act as a residence. Every aspect of its construction suggested it was designed to accommodate large numbers of people passing through it at once. I wondered if it had once been some sort of bureaucratic facility or maybe a public worship hall. Both the Scarlet Devil Mansion and Hakugyokuro had been spacious but both of them were designed for the luxury of a small number of inhabitants, or perhaps to impress. Here the space felt functional but disused, like the empty corridors of a train station after the end of the daily rush of commuters. As a residence, even the ruined house of the Prismrivers would have been better suited. It at least looked like it had once been an inviting home.
"It's big, isn't it?" Renko commented. Somehow, between the echo of our footfalls and the vast emptiness of the place she naturally fell to whispering. "How'd you like to live in a place like this?"
"Well, it would be an upgrade from living in a storage shed, but I think it'd be a hassle to clean something this big."
"Really? I thought you were posh, Merry. Wouldn't you want to live like a celebrity? What if we lined all the walls with books?"
"That's just a library, Renko, not a home. I'd need a sensible kitchen and a bedroom too. If there were cleaning staff that came with all those books though, I'd never leave."
Somehow our banter fell flat against the vastness of the great stone hall and soon we were walking in silence, simply looking around at the sights. I hadn't seen the disappearing girl once since we had reached the plaza. If she really had intended to lead us here, it would be nice if she could have showed us around. Perhaps the idea that she had lead us here was just a misinterpretation on our part, and the girl was simply returning home or running away from us. As it was we definitely hadn't been invited in and as such were nothing more than trespassers. I doubted very much that if we were discovered we would be treated like the protagonist of any of the RPGs Sanae had leant us, in which the hero could walk into a stranger's house and smash all of their pots right in front of them with impunity.
"Excuse me, is anyone here?" Renko asked, raising her voice once again. Her shout echoed off of the walls. There was no reply as such, but we heard the sound of something rustling above us and then a black shadow flew over our heads. Renko ducked instinctively as it passed overhead. "Is that a raven?"
A single black feather drifted down in front of us, as if to answer her question. I wondered if ravens made good pets. I had heard that they were unusually intelligent for birds, but they weren't the kind of creature I would think of as 'lovable.' The bird settled on the sill of one of the windows overlooking the hallway and regarded us for a moment, its eyes shining red in the dim. After tilting its head curiously back and forth, it opened its beak and let out a ragged caw.
Immediately countless black shadows began to stir in the depths of the hallway where they had lain unseen. Renko and I both hunched our shoulders in reflex at the sudden noise after so much silence, but the raven only called once. The shadows that had begun to move near our feet squirmed and untwined themselves in absolute silence. It was only once one opened its pink mouth in the midst of a stretch that I realized we were looking at more than a dozen ink-black cats, each of them silently stalking a circular path around us. Although I could barely make them out in the shadows, they looked to be about the size of typical housecats or maybe just slightly larger, but they moved with a grace and coordination that suggested intelligence or at least careful training. Within the space of a few seconds, they had completely ringed us in.
A low growl sounded from one of the cats' throats, and was then joined by another and another, until a chorus of growls and yowls rose up as the ring surrounding us slowly closed in. They were only cats, but with the number of them gathered here, they would present a serious threat. I remembered stories I had read of hoarders who had died alone, leaving behind a household full of hungry cats. Eventually someone would happen upon the scene and find only bones licked clean. I found myself backing away from the cats and ending up pressed back to back with Renko. "What do we do?" I whispered, reaching out for her hand.
Renko cleared her throat and spoke. "Excuse me," she said politely, "I don't mean to intrude, but I've come to speak to the master of this house. Is she in?"
I'm not sure what sort of response she might have expected from a cat, but all she got was yowls and a hiss as the ring continued to close. I had no idea if the sort of cats one might find in a place like this would be youkai and capable of understanding us or not, but it was beyond clear that we were not welcome.
"I wish I had some silvervine on me, or at least some catnip."
"If you did, I don't think it would help, they'd just eat you to get at it." I said, backing up tighter against her. After everything we had survived today and all the situations Renko had evaded, would we finally meet our end at the hands of a bunch of dumb animals that Renko couldn't talk her way past?
The next moment there was a clapping sound. Instantly the growling stopped, and the cats as one turned their head to look to one side.
"Everyone calm down. They appear to be completely harmless guests." The voice that had spoken was low and weary. Feminine, but ragged and lethargic, like someone who was utterly bored with what they were saying or perhaps badly sleep deprived. Possibly both. We turned toward the sound where a figure was looming in a doorway, shuffling toward us with light, quiet steps.
A fair-skinned, worryingly pale and pointed face loomed out of the darkness. It belonged to a young, but weary-looking girl in a light blue smock-like dress. Her outfit, all in pastel colors, seemed designed to highlight her youth, but was rumpled and wrinkled. She wore a black headband over short, messy, purple hair, but what struck me the most were her eyes.
For one thing, she had three of them. The two in her face were more or less as you might expect, though both were lined with deep bags beneath them. The third was much larger than either of the others and sat within in a red orb suspended over her heart and connected to her body by floating, cord-like attachments. I might have thought that it was just an extremely odd accessory if not for the way the pupil gleamed as it tracked our every movement, hidden only by the occasional blinking of the red-lidded orb. The cords floating around her were reminiscent of those I had seen surrounding the vanishing girl earlier, but I was fairly certain that that girl, when I had been able to glimpse her, hadn't had three eyes. Might I have just failed to notice?
The strange eyes tracked my movement, following me as I instinctively shrunk behind Renko.
"It's rare that I have the occasion to welcome guests to the Palace of the Earth Spirits. And a pair of live humans at that. What brings you to..." she trailed off, then suddenly opened her eyes wide as if hearing an abrupt and alarming sound. "You were chasing Koishi here? Koishi's come back?"