"Renko, is it really such a big deal if miss Satori knew about this whole plan?"
"Of course it's a big deal!" she groaned. Her hand kept drifting up to fiddle with the brim of her hat, only to have to drop down again a moment later for balance as we descended the rocky, snow-covered path. I had been trying for a good 45 minutes now, ever since we had set out from the Moriya shrine, to get her to explain to me what she was thinking about, but anything I asked got a brief reply, followed by more muttering as she turned the issue over in her head. Try though I might to understand her, I could only hope to be a good little Watson and keep walking along behind her as she grumbled.
Satori had given permission for Kanako to feed the eye of Yatagarasu to Okuu. Despite that, she hadn't known that Orin had been sending up earth spirits to the surface as a sort of SOS, which suggested she might not know about Okuu's plans to turn the surface into a new Blazing Hell, but somehow something still didn't add up. "Are you trying to figure out why Orin was so worried about Okuu if Satori already knew about the eye and she had no real chance of getting to the surface?"
"No, that much is simple, Orin was worried that Okuu would get hurt in the process or Satori would be mad at her for attempting to set the surface world on fire, even if she failed."
"Well then, what is it, Renko? Is it that Orin seemed overly scared? Or do you think maybe she had reason to be? Is Satori really so fickle she would kick her pets out or give them over to the oni over something like that?"
"What? No, that's not it at all. Now let me think, Merry."
I sighed and hushed up, good little detective's assistant that I am. I was quite sure that I couldn't begin to imagine the scope of the grand delusion Renko was likely cooking up and so I instead turned my attention to the path we were walking and Kanako's figure several meters ahead of us, the large shimenawa loop on her back swaying with her every step.
After our conversation back in the village, Kanako had flown the both of us to the Moriya shrine, then lead us down a long and meandering mountain path toward the hole that she had had Suwako bore straight down into the mountain. I suspected that the roundabout trail she had lead us along had been intended to disguise the path to the shaft, but it might be equally possible that given the conditions on the mountains, taking such an indirect route had been necessary to allow us, two regular humans without the capacity for flight or serious mountaineering, to follow along behind. Kanako had promised that at the end of the trail we would be able to meet Okuu herself, and see that she posed no great threat to Gensokyo.
Despite the care Kanako had taken in picking out a path, however, the trail was still difficult and occasionally treacherous with all of the snow covering it. Renko was soldiering on bravely, but our shoes weren't fit for the steep slopes or slippery terrain. Panting from exertion, we followed Kanako down the last hundred meters of the descent and around a corner, past several boulders to a small clearing that was completely free of snow. Directly in the middle of it, on a patch of bare earth there was a simple, unadorned and perfectly circular hole in the ground, the top of a shaft that disappeared downwards. All around the mouth of the shaft, warm air was blowing constantly upward, carrying the faintest whiff of brimstone.
As the path evened out, Renko trotted ahead excitedly. "There's no snow here! Is that the heat of the Hell of Blazing Fires being transmitted all this way? Or is there a hot spring here too, maybe?"
By the time I caught up with her, she was once again leaning forward, peering into a precipitous pit in the earth. This one was far smaller than the one we had fallen into, perhaps three meters across. A sizeable borehole, but clearly artificial, with smoothly circular sides. Despite the artificial appearance though, I didn't see any sign of debris or machinery as might be expected surrounding a typical attempt to drill into a mountain. The walls of the borehole didn't seem to be reinforced in any way either. I supposed that if you were using gods rather than mining equipment to dig a hole you didn't have to worry about such things.
"Well then," Kanako said, standing by the edge of the shaft with her hands on her hips, "Shall we head down?"
"Into the Hell of Blazing Fires? No thank you!" I said in a panic, flinching away. It's always been a policy of mine that, if possible, I should avoid burning to death.
"Well not all the way, of course," Kanako said. "You two would never survive the heat. I'll take you down as far as it's safe for you to go, then call the raven up so you can meet her. I think once you see her, your worries will largely be allayed."
Renko and I both spoke at the same time -"Absolutely," she said. "I'd rather not," was my response. Kanako seemed to have only heard, or only listened at least, to Renko. She nodded to herself then stepped forward and grabbed us each with one arm, holding us up off of the ground and squeezing us to her sides.
"Wait!" I cried as she turned toward the hole.
"For what?" she asked as she jumped into the void.
For the second time in less than a week I was in freefall, plummeting out of control into the depths of the earth, surrounded on all sides by darkness. In this case, however, aside from the rapidly diminishing circle of light above us, there was also a faint and steadily intensifying ruddy glow from below, which grew brighter and more orange as we descended. There wasn't enough light to make out how far or how fast we were falling, however and I suppose for that I am grateful. Had there been, I'm sure it would have looked exactly like what it was: a rapid and uncontrollable descent into Hell.
The air around us grew steadily warmer, from pleasant to uncomfortable, to a sauna-like oppressiveness to the point where the heat of it stung my skin. "I think this ought to be close enough," Kanako said, slowing our plummet to a gradual slide and then a hover. Her voice echoed off of the walls of the shaft in near darkness. As far as I could make out in the dull orange light, the shaft continued, seemingly infinitely, both above and below.
"Now don't move," she said. Before I could think to ask why there was a whistling sound and the sense of something massive moving past us then several heavy thuds that threw up fragments of stone and dust from the wall. There had been a blur of motion that had been hard to trace in the dimness, but as my eyes grew accustomed to it, I saw that there were now a half-dozen thick wooden logs jutting out from the wall like a raft, partially embedded in the stone. Each was ringed at the end with a shimenawa. They looked like Onbashira. Small ones, any way. Kanako floated over towards these, slowly descending onto them to test if they would hold our weight. They didn't budge a bit. "You should be fine to stay here while I go get her," she said, releasing us onto the makeshift platform. "Just watch your footing."
I looked down. The wooden pillars driven into the side of the shaft were placed close together, but not so close that there wasn't a precipitous drop between each one, each perhaps half as wide as my hand and endlessly deep. Renko found her footing next to me and let go of Kanako with a grin. "Right, we'll wait here," she said, offering me her hand. I looked up at Kanako, still clinging to her, then over at my partner, and took her hand with a sigh, releasing the goddess and putting my weight onto the wooden logs. Switching which hand was holding Renko's, I turned around to watch as Kanako floated further down. Watching her descend in the precipitous depths, I found myself taking a step closer to Renko and wrapping both of my arms around hers despite the heat.
"I don't mind you clinging on to me, Merry, but be careful. If we lose our balance here, we can't expect to be caught in Yamame's net this time."
"This is twice now you've dragged me to Hell with you, Renko. If I fall, I'm taking you with me."
"Well, if this sort of place gets you going then go ahead and snuggle right on up, I don't mind one bit."
"How can you say something like that in a circumstance like this? Are you missing the part of your brain capable of feeling fear or something? How did you manage to survive for two decades in the Outside world before you met me?"
"Maybe I'm a youkai, Merry. Or a superhero or something."
"More like an alien."
"Ooo, like a xenomorph? I like that idea. Then I could be a queen." The effect of the reddish light illuminating her grin from below was macabre, but somehow, it being Renko, she still managed to just look like a dork as she smiled at me.
I was about to quip back at her when there was a soft roar and a strong blast of heat from below. A flare of red light illuminated the shaft for a moment before dying down. In its pulse I watched a few tiny grains of rock tumble from where Kanako had driven the Onbashira into the wall and drop into the pit below. Right now my fate seemed every bit as fragile and ephemeral as those pebbles, likely to twist away into a precipitous void at any moment. I said nothing and clung to Renko even tighter as I squeezed my eyes shut.
After a moment, a voice spoke. "Merry? Are you alright?" I opened my eyes to see Kanako hovering in front of me, looking me over with concern.
"Not now, Merry. I know you can't keep your hands off of me, but there's people watching!" Renko said, covering her face and adopting a mockingly modest and scandalized tone.
Forgetting the precariousness of my footing I let go of her arm with one hand to reach up and pinch at her cheek. Renko laughed and did her best to dodge while I clung onto her arm. "Oh, feeling bolder now, Merry? That's good, just don't knock me off of my footing here!" She said as she leaned away from my hand.
"Leave the comedy routine for later, you two." Kanako said, turning in the air to look back down the shaft. "Here she comes."
Remembering myself, I looked down and watched with interest as a figure ascended towards us, her black wings flapping.
The girl who appeared was a breathtaking sight. She was tall and broad shouldered, larger than Renko or I in every dimension, but with a young looking face and an innocent expression that made her seem somehow childlike nonetheless. The image was accentuated by three unusual additions to her silhouette, each of them rather large, giving her an overall impression similar to that of a child playing in an adult's clothing. She had lustrous black hair that matched the sheen of her wings and was tied back with a simple green ribbon. If not for the wings and the unusual accessories, she might have passed for an unusually tall and pretty human girl, but looking at her as she was, she seemed just the opposite -not human, and largely not even natural. There were elements of her that seemed entirely man-made, standing out chaotically all over her body. The first was a large jewel-like oval on her chest, which glowed faintly with ruby light. It had a vertical, slit-like dark streak running through it, giving the disturbing impression that it was an enormous, blood-red eye that reached from her collarbone to the bottom of her ribs. Next, there was the enormous, sharply hexagonal metal rod inset into or perhaps over top of her right arm. It reached to just before her elbow and extended past her knee, looking like what must have been a bulky and difficult to manage prosthesis. Was that the 'control rod' that Kanako had mentioned? Finally, her right leg was encased in something dense and irregularly shaped, looking vaguely like a stone or iron boot. She rose into the air before us without saying anything, twisting her head to look up at Kanako before turning to curiously regard the two of us.
Renko was the first to break the silence. "It's a pleasure to meet you miss," she said, extending her hand to shake, then looking at the rod on Okuu's arm and thinking better of it. "I take it you must be Okuu the hell raven?"
In response, the girl tilted her head curiously, and responded with a voice and tone I wouldn't have expected given her weighty and imposing appearance.
"Unyu?"