The amount of time we spent riding that torrent of hot steam and shaking madly was probably only a few minutes at most, but living through it, it definitely felt endless. The geyser beneath us was far from stable and the rushing force of its blast wave had the ship constantly listing from side to side. It didn't take long at all for me to start feeling seasick.

"Ugh Merry, let me put my head on your lap, I feel queasy." Renko moaned beside me.

"You feel queasy? How do you think I feel? Can you even be seasick when we're not on a sea?"

"I don't think either of you'll have to worry about being seasick much longer. You may never be seasick again." Murasa said, peering out over the deck through the opening at the front of the wheelhouse.

A terrible groan echoed through the ship as a deep vibration thrummed through the deck.

"What was that?" Renko asked. "And how can you cure seasickness?"

"By telling you we just lost the bowsprit. It hit the wall of the shaft and snapped off."

"Is that bad? That's the pointy bit at the front of the ship, isn't it? Isn't it just decorative?" I asked.

"It helps hold the mast upright!" Murasa said, as another terrible shock ran through the ship. There was a sharp crack from somewhere ahead and I caught a glimpse of something flying through the air out on the deck. "We're scraping the walls! It'll grind the ship apart!" she cried.

"I suppose the force of the geyser might not push exactly straight up, even with the tunnel focusing it," Renko mused. "Or maybe I missed my estimate on the tensile strength of the hull. I'm not really sure what sort of values to use for divinely reinforced wood. Maybe I shouldn't have tried to do all the calculations by hand."

"You're worrying about that now!?" I shouted incredulously. Out on the deck there was another series of booms as chunks of rock protruding from the walls of the shaft smashed against the hull and battered the deck.

"You two hold tight onto Unzan!" Ichirin called out.

At this point I had rolled over and grabbed onto the front of Renko's shirt to shake her, but Unzan's strong arms soon pulled us apart, pressing each of us into the soft warmth of his vapors. Was their plan to have Unzan protect us even if the ship broke up? Buried in the cloud-stuff of his body, I couldn't see much of anything but from the sound of the terrible wrenching booms echoing from every direction, it sounded like that might actually happen. A horrible, chattering grinding sound joined the cacophony as the main mast pitched forward and began to bounce against the walls of the shaft, creaking and booming as the force of each collision forced it down then bounced it back up. The shaking intensified and somewhere deep below us, in the lower decks of the ship, there was a sound that I could only describe as the hull of the vessel crying out in pain.

I wondered how much tunnel there was left to ascend through. I wondered if there would be anything more than toothpicks left of the ship by the time we got there. I wondered why I kept following Renko into situations like this when nearly every moment of our time in the Underworld had included at least one narrowly-avoided threat to our survival.

"Ichirin, look! I see sunlight!" Murasa called out, leaning out of the window and craning her neck upward.

"And I see a giant overhang between it and us. If we hit that we're done for!" Ichirin called out from beside her. I couldn't see any of it from my position, but even if I could have there was nothing I could have done. In my head I was busy reciting a rapid-fire litany of prayers to every deity I could think of. I prayed to God and Allah, to the Buddha and even mother Byakuren. I prayed to the Bodhisattva who's face I had never seen to shield her followers and their foolhardy passengers on their quest to free her.

"Maybe I can steer around it..." Murasa said, dashing shakily back to the tiller.

"There's no time! Watch over Renko and Merry, Murasa. Unzan, let's go!" I barely had time to notice her running for the door before the support of Unzan's muscular arms withdrew from around me and I found myself laying beside Renko on the groaning, vibrating deck. Murasa rushed over to us, bending down to help us to our feet.

"Nevermind us, take the helm, Captain! If we hit the wall we're all dead!" Renko said, waving her off.

"Oh, we'll be fine. This is nothing compared to when the ship was burned. Of course, I'm already a ghost, so it might be a little harder for you."

"Renko, if I end up having to haunt this ship I will never let you live it down, even if we end up trapped in the Underworld for a thousand years."

"This ship is protected by the holy power of mother Byakuren." Murasa interjected as she staggered back to the tiller, "I'm sure nothing too bad will happen to it."

I could only pray that her faith wasn't misplaced. While this was happening, Ichirin was somewhere above us with Unzan. From our position on the floor of the wheelhouse Renko and I couldn't see a thing, only hear the repeated thud of numerous rocks hammering into the deck. From what I heard later, it seems that Unzan was able to reduce the rocky outcropping we had been racing toward to rubble using only his fists. If Sanae had been present to witness it, I'm sure she would have had some appropriate quote memorized to compare Unzan to Star Platinum. Given the way in which Ichirin and Unzan worked together, almost like two bodies under the control of one mind, the comparison might not even have been too far from the truth. Star Platinum is a little less disconcerting to look at than Unzan though. If you have no idea what I'm talking about then just go ask at either the Moriya shrine or the Scarlet Devil Mansion's library.

At any rate, because of their efforts the damage wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. Murasa did her best to wheel the ship around, but with the mast grinding against the walls of the shaft, there was nothing she could do to get us completely out of the way. We hit what was left of the stone outcropping with a fearsome impact on the port side of the deck that nearly capsized the entire ship as the geyser forced us relentlessly upward. For a moment the ship snagged and foundered in the spray of hot blood, but seconds later we heard something shatter with a final resounding crash and we were carried sharply upward, spinning crazily as the ship rocked back upright, lifted by the force of the column of rising blood.

-.-.-.-.-

"It's... the surface! We made it to the surface!" Murasa cried as the vibrations died away and sunlight, shockingly bright and all-encompassing, suddenly washed over the ship, illuminating every inch of the deck.

Clouds and an achingly blue sky were visible outside the window. Slowly I climbed to my feet and looked about. We had emerged from the shaft and been tossed into the air, and were now slowly rotating, our balance stable, perhaps two dozen meters above the ground and slowly rising. The scene below us might once have been a tranquil and secluded mountain valley, but the geyser that had carried us here was now tumbling down in a sizzling rain of boiling blood, making the natural landscape look hellish beneath us. It was a less than auspicious sight to commemorate the Holy Palanquin's first moments above ground in a thousand years. A few seconds after we emerged, the geyser abruptly cut out. That must have been a result of Lady Suwako sealing the shaft from below as she had promised.

"Did... did we make it?" I asked with a quavering voice.

"Well, we're alive and airborne, so that's a good start. I'm worried about some of those noises we heard though," Renko said, climbing to her feet and rubbing her chin contemplatively. "From the sound of it, the torsion on the hull might have split some of the seams. We should probably give the ship a thorough examination before we try to float it in anything again."

"Don't talk about it like it's not your problem! Remind me to never again put myself in a situation where my survival depends on your ability to do math."

"The math was fine, it's the physical materials that didn't hold up. Reality always gets in the way of theory, that's why I was a physics major, not an engineering student. Forget that though, this ship is connected to you, right captain? Can you tell if it's okay?"

"It's mostly intact, but it definitely took a bad hit. Something feels wrong. I need to go have a look around the deck." She headed for the doorway.

Before she could leave though, Ichirin came back through the door, with Unzan hovering close behind her. "Murasa! The mast snapped! Pieces of it got blown all over the place when you came out of the hole!"

"What? I spent an entire century fixing that!" Murasa ran outside with both hands clutching the sides of her head. Ichirin turned and left with her. I looked worriedly at Renko then the two of us shakily followed.

On the main deck of the ship the damage was immediately apparent. Where the mast had stood there was only a jagged, splintered stalk. The mast itself, with it's broad sail and all of its rigging was nowhere to be seen. Elsewhere on the deck, boulders and debris were strewn about, along with splinters of wood and bits of smashed planks where falling rocks had punched clean through the upper deck. Murasa had fallen to her knees, staring in slack-jawed distress at the broken mast while Ichirin and Unzan stood on either side of her, Ichirin gently patting her shoulder. I didn't doubt that if I could have seen the ship from the side or below, there would have been more clearly visible damage to the hull as well.

Despite it all, we were still flying though, drifting slowly and aimlessly through the sky, slowly rotating as the breezes swirled around us.

"This is terrible, Ichirin. How did this happen?" Renko asked as she walked toward them.

"The mast snagged on something just before you emerged. It got pinned when the ship listed after that hit, then the base of it just.. shattered" she said, flinging her fingers apart expressively. "Pieces of it went everywhere when the geyser spouted.

"Uaaagh! That mast contains most of mother Byakuren's power! It was our only way of finding her, and the only way we could sail to Makai!" Murasa screamed, still holding her head with both hands. "Without it, even if we find her we wouldn't be able to unseal her. Ichirin! Did you see where any of the pieces went? I'm changing our course, we have to retrieve as much of that mast as we possibly can!"

"A big section of it shattered, Murasa. Unless we can find Nazrin we'll never find all of the pieces."

"Then we find Nazrin," Murasa declared, climbing to her feet. "It's the only way. We can worry about repairs later. Nothing else matters if we lose Byakuren's holy power."

Exhaling slowly she nodded to Ichirin then turned to face us. Renko put her hands together and bowed deeply as the two turned around.

"I'm sorry for all of this trouble," she declared.

"Ah, I wouldn't think of blaming you, Renko. Things might not have gone as planned, but we never would have made it even this far without you. There's still hope!"

"Well, thank you for bringing me with you." Renko said, half raising up. "Maybe I can think of some way to help you find the missing pieces..."

"Renko, captain Murasa and Ichirin are both very nice people, and far too gracious to blame you at all. I, however, am not." I said, walking up beside her and holding her head down. "I hold you fully responsible for all of this. Both that terrible experience and all the time you and I are going to spend cleaning up this mess."

"You don't have to help," Ichirin said. "That'd be far too much to ask. There must have been dozens of pieces, we couldn't keep you that long."

"Well, let's get an idea what we're dealing with. Maybe we can see where some of the bigger pieces landed and get an idea of just how far the debris field spread," Renko said, walking over to the railing and looking over.

"That's a good idea," Ichirin said, moving to join her. "If I remember correctly, most of the mast and sail fell right over... aaaah!" She stopped mid-sentence, arm extended and pointing over the side of the ship. Following her finger, I saw several fairies, already distant, and flying directly away from us, a bundle of sailcloth carried between them. Scanning around there were several other groups of fairies ringed all around us, all of them flying away, each in their own distinct direction. Most of them seemed to be carrying something.

"Fairies!" Murasa said, following Ichirin's pointing finger as well. "Hey, stop! That's ours!" she hollered over the side. If the fairies heard her, they gave no sign, continuing to recede into the distance before disappearing into the trees.

Ichirin slowly lowered her arm as Murasa continued to stare where the fairies had been. "...we're going to have to search the entire surface world, aren't we..." she mumbled, numbly.

"Yeah," Ichirin replied, equally stunned. "Probably."

Murasa fell to her knees again, turning her head to stare at the shattered stump of the mast. "How could this happen? The mast contained almost all of mother Byakuren's holy power. It should have been the last thing to break. I would have expected the whole ship to come apart around it before it would shatter."

I thought back to how the mast had looked when it was intact. It was a single, solid piece of wood that reached down to the bottom of the whole ship. It must at one time have been a tree of prodigious height, still mostly intact. To think that it would break in such a way did seem rather odd. If anything, I would have just expected the top to snap off until it was small enough to fit through the hole. For it to have shattered into pieces near the base didn't make logical sense.

"Could Yamame have screwed something up when she was helping you rebuild?" Renko asked.

"Impossible. I built the mast long before I met her. It was the first thing I pieced back together, almost a thousand years ago. It was only because it was so full of mother Byakuren's power that I realized the ship even could be repaired. No normal shipwright could un-burn a wreck."

"Then what could have gone wrong? You don't suppose that Yamame could have inadvertently damaged it somehow while doing other work..." Ichirin suddenly fell silent, then looked at Murasa with an expression of alarm. Murasa returned the look, seeming to have hit upon the same idea at the same time.

"Merry, Renko, have either of you seen anyone else on board this ship other than us and Unzan?" Murasa asked, sounding almost panicked.

"Someone other than you two? Well, I haven't, but Merry weren't you just saying something like that?"

"Ah well, I wasn't sure, but I think I might have seen someone else's shadow running past the wheelhouse door just after we set out..."

Murasa's expression became even more distraught. Her hands found their way back to either side of her head again. "Guaaahh! It's her! It has to be! I can't believe she's doing this to us! I was wondering why she hadn't tried to mess with any of the preparations so far!"

"She who?" Renko asked.

Ichirin ignored her and stepped away from the railing, drawing a ring-shaped blade from under her shawl. Unzan snapped to her side, looking stern, his eyes scanning about the deck. "I know you're here! Come out! You'll answer for this!" she shouted.

There was no response to the call, only a cheerful yamabiko's echo from the direction of the mountain a moment later, shouting "Come out!" back at us, in a playful tone.