With the ship no longer having any need for a pilot, there was no need for us all to stay in the cramped and broken wheelhouse. Thus, we spread out along the deck, mostly moving toward the fore of the ship, leaning over the railings to watch where we were going. The nose of the ship had fallen and we were steadily descending, which had worried me at first, but the captain had assured me that this was not a sign of any malfunction or misdirection, but simply our intended course. With that in mind, our destination became clear: the ship was descending toward the yawning mouth of a natural cleft in the side of a large hill just northeast of the Hakurei shrine. With the sun at its current angle, we could just make out that the inside of the cleft descended downward, into a system of caves below the level of the surrounding forest.
"Are we going in there?" Sanae asked, peering over the rails. "Will the whole ship fit?"
"That's the way to Makai, so it would make sense. This is kinda nostalgic, ain't it, Reimu?" Marisa asked, smiling broadly.
"I forgot about all of that a long time ago. I intended to keep forgetting," she replied, crossing her arms and glowering.
"You've both been to the world of demons before?" Renko asked in surprise.
"A long time ago. Before you ever came to Gensokyo. We were both just kids back then," Marisa said, scratching at her head.
In other words it was the story of an Incident that predated the Crimson Mist Incident. That would indeed have been quite a while ago, and it would have meant that Reimu and Marisa were quite young at the time. Had they both been flying around and exterminating youkai since before they were even teenagers?
"Hey, last time you were here you came with your instructor, didn't you? That lady who hated me. I haven't seen her in a while. What's she up to?"
"I told you before, I haven't seen master Mima in years. She just up and left one night. No note or nothin'. I've never heard a word from her."
"You had an instructor, Marisa? I always figured you were self-taught. What was she like?"
"Oh that's right, you never saw Marisa back then. She was totally different. You wouldn't even have recognized her."
"Hey! That's enough of that! No more old stories."
"You were the one who brought it up."
"Not that part, I didn't. Shut up though, we're nearly there."
Sure enough, the ship had already reached the cleft. Rocky cliffs rose on either side of us, close to the ship's hull as we descended. As we dipped below the level of the ground a ceiling passed overhead. While there was some room to spare with the ship in its current state, there was no way it would have been able to fit if it's mast had been intact.
"Look at that, captain," Renko said with a grin. "Maybe we should be thanking Nue. If the mast had been in one piece we'd be stuck here."
"I could do without the trouble. If we had made it this far in the condition we launched in, we could have sawed the mast down intentionally and stored it away properly. As it is, I'm probably going to have to spend another 50 years repairing this ship once our voyage is over."
"I just hope there's enough room ahead that we don't have to saw anything else off," Ichirin remarked.
"Good point, let's have a look," Shou said. She walked to the very front of the ship, then produced Renko's pagoda from her sleeve. When she lifted it above her head it flared into brilliance, shining a perfect cone of bright, harsh light directly ahead of the ship like an enormous headlight. Evidently, in the hands of a skilled operator, the pagoda could do more than act as a lantern.
Looking at the illuminated path ahead, the passage narrowed slightly, but the ship seemed to know where to go, turning and twisting expertly through the passages as we floated downward, then slowly levelling out. It would be impossible for us to turn around at this point, but there was only one obstacle in front of us. It was quite the obstacle though! Roughly a hundred meters ahead of our current position, the cave came to an abrupt end. Where it did, there stood an enormous and elaborately ornamented pair of metal doors. Looking at them as they threw back the harsh, greenish light from the pagoda, they instantly called to mind Rodin's famous statue of the gates of Hell, which I had seen once in the National Museum of Western Art in Ueno Park back in the Tokyo of the Scientific Century.
"Oh, neat!" Sanae cooed appreciatively. "They even look like the doors to a demon world! 'Any who pass through here will disappoint everyone,'" she intoned solemnly.
"It's 'Abandon hope all ye who enter,'" I corrected, quoting Dante's Inferno. "I don't see how we could possibly enter them though. Those doors are big, but not nearly big enough for a ship like this. How are we going to fit through?"
"Who said you could go through them at all?" cried a voice from below. "And what's with this big ship?"
I, along with most of the others, scrambled to the front of the ship to see where the voice had come from. Standing in front of the six meter tall doors were two figures, shielding their eyes from the glare of the light shining from Shou's pagoda. The one who had just spoken was a girl in a red dress whose purple hair was pulled into a side ponytail. The other one was floating up towards us, wearing all white with a wide-brimmed hat decorated with a purple bow over short golden hair. She rose up high enough as to be out of the direct line of the light and looked us over. "Oh! This passage is usually deserted, but today it's really busy! I can't remember the last time a whole ship full of tourists came this way." As she spoke, the ship lurched to a stop, hovering in place, unable to proceed any further.
"How many are there?" Said the first girl, floating up to hover beside her companion. Once she too was out of the beam of the light her eyes glanced over all of us who were assembled on the deck -then froze when they landed on Reimu and Marisa, standing together near the side rail. "Ah!" she exclaimed, pointing animatedly, "It's you two again! A shrine maiden and a witch, just like before!"
"Oh!" her friend exclaimed. "You're right. I remember them. It's been a long time, hasn't it?"
"Reimu, Marisa, you know these two?" Renko asked, turning toward them.
Both Reimu and Marisa were looking up at the newcomers in confusion. "...No idea" they both said in unison.
"You don't even remember!?" the girl in the red dress cried. "You both came through here and sneak-attacked me more than ten years ago! I was recovering for a month! I'm not letting any of you through the gate this time!"
"Sara, calm down. Don't pick a fight against this many people, that's crazy." The blond girl admonished.
"I'm the official gatekeeper! It's my duty to pick fights with invaders. Stand back, Louise, I'll protect you!"
The blonde girl blinked at the one called Sara for a moment then shrugged. "All right, if you say so. Don't get killed," she said, before turning and floating back down towards the doors.
"Alright then!" Sara declared looking down at Reimu and Marisa. "Time for a rematch!"
Reimu turned to Marisa, looking bored. "I'm not really looking for another fight. Do you remember what her deal was?"
"I don't even remember fightin' her. She musta been a small fry back then." Marisa looked up at the floating girl and sighed. "I'm savin' my magic for Makai. Sanae, you do it."
"Me?" Sanae asked, pointing at her nose. "Well, she looks like a youkai, so I guess I can exterminate her. Is that okay?"
"I'll stop all of you!" Sara shouted belligerently. "Turn back now, if you know what's good for you!"
"Okay," Sanae said. "Here goes." Pulling out her wand she drew a glowing pentacle in the air. Sara glared at her, light shining from either fist. There was a single tense moment of silence then a crack as a stream of simple, spherical white bullets leapt from her hand towards Sanae. Sanae turned to the side, watching as the stream sailed wide of her. At that same moment, her pentacle burst, exploding into several waves of projectiles which fired out to the sides before curving back toward their target from different angles. Sara was hit from five different directions at once then thrown back by a surge of wind that had accompanied the burst. She tumbled out of the sky and disappeared beneath the hull of the Holy Palanquin.
"Oh, was that it? Did I win?" Sanae muttered, turning toward Reimu and Marisa. They merely shrugged in response.
"Hey, that's too much, why are you bullying Sara like that?" came a voice from below as Louise floated back up to the deck of the ship and alighted just in front of Sanae.
"Oh, did you want to go too? You look like you might be a bit more of a challenge." Sanae said with a fierce smile.
"Hold on!" Murasa called, walking over towards them and waving her arms. "Before you get to that, we should talk. I take it that you're a resident of Makai? My name is Minamitsu Murasa. I'm the captain of this ship, and we've come to release a friend of ours who's been sealed in your world. The Buddhist nun Byakuren Hijiri. We have no quarrel with anyone else nor any intent to cause you any trouble. May we pass through the gate?" Murasa spoke with an unusual formal certainty, then bowed politely.
"Oh, that's a fair bit more polite. Sara, did you hear any of that?" the blonde girl shouted over the railing.
"Um, I heard most of it. And that's a dirty trick attacking from the sides like that. A real battle should be head-on!" Sara declared as she made her way back up to the deck, showing no sign that she had just been shot multiple times and then fallen a dozen meters onto hard stone. "If you're not here to burn down the city again though, I guess I can let you through. Who was it you said you wanted to free?" she asked as she landed next to Louise.
"Holy mother Byakuren. She's a magician, and formerly a human." Shou said, stepping forward.
"Byakuren Hijiri... hmm. It doesn't ring a bell..." the girl called Louise said. "Hey Sara, do you have any idea?" she asked, turning to her counterpart.
"Umm, not really, but isn't that the name of one of your mother's friends? That person who lives in the Realm of Truth who she goes to visit sometimes?"
"Oh, that lady? Yeah, I guess that's probably her."
Shou laid a hand on Murasa's shoulder at that. The captain turned to her and Ichirin joined them a moment later. "Captain, you did it! Hijiri is here! We've almost made it!"
The three of them hugged eachother and quietly rejoiced, shoulders shaking with emotion.
"Don't make a fool of yourself, master, we haven't even reached Hijiri yet," Nazrin said, walking toward the group and handing Shou a handkerchief. She thankfully accepted it, blotting at her eyes and apologizing.
After blowing her nose loudly into the handkerchief, Shou turned back to the newcomers. "Please, can you guide us to the holy mother?"
"The ship can guide itself, Shou. We just need through that door."
"That may be true, but we don't know anything about Makai. Wouldn't it be better to have someone native show us the way and warn us of any dangers?"
"Ah, you may be right."
"Well, I don't mind showing you the way," Louise said, "but it's not my decision. What do you think Sara?"
"There aren't any rules about whole ships coming in, but I think if they want to go release your mother's friend from the Realm of Truth, they should probably talk to your mother first, don't you think?"
"That's true, mother would want to know what brings so many visitors to Makai at once. That's a rare occurrence." She turned back towards Shou. "Would you mind accompanying us to meet the Administrator of this place before I show you to the Realm of Truth? It will be up to her whether or not this friend of yours can be allowed to go free."
Shou, Murasa and Ichirin glanced at one another, then nodded in unison.
"Good then. Sara, could you get the gate?"
Sara flew down off of the ship and toward the heavy bronze doors. With a sound more akin to the deep tolling of a heavy bell than the creaking of a door, the portal split and began to open. As the doors slowly swung wide, the whole archway began to grow, expanding smoothly across the terminal wall of the cave, broadening until the top of its arch scraped against the ceiling. Even then, it looked like the ship would just barely fit. As the doors stood open, there was nothing but blank white light beyond them.
"Is that all it takes to enter the world of demons?" Sanae asked as she stared into the light. "Sakyo and Sensui had to go through way more for this. We didn't even have to use a Dimension Blade," she muttered, but no one was listening.
"I'm Louise by the way, nice to meet you" the blonde girl declared, bowing quickly. "My mother is the Administrator of Makai."
"The Administrator?" Marisa asked, suddenly shoving her way in front of the others. "You don't mean..." she stopped, turning toward Reimu rather than completing her question.
Reimu sighed. "Yeah, it would pretty much have to be her. That's why I didn't want to come here."
The two of them seemed more than a little worried. Before I could ask them why, however, Renko walked past me, making her own way over to Louise.
"Excuse me, miss Louise. Sorry to interrupt. My name is Renko Usami, I'm just a regular human from the village here in Gensokyo. That's my partner, Merry, over there. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?"
"Yes, what is it?"
"You mentioned that your mother is the Administrator of Makai. I assume that would make her Lady Shinki, correct?"
"Oh, do you know her?" Louise asked, tilting her head curiously.
"Only by reputation. But unless I miss my guess that would mean that you have a sister named Alice, correct?"
Louise's eyes widened in surprise and she looked over all of us who were gathered in front of her with an expression of absolute shock. "Are you guys all friends of Alice's?"