Part 5: Chapter 1

PART 5: SWORD OF FLAME

    The cave sloped down gently, seemingly continuing on forever. Stiffening his limbs, Nakajima slowly held his balance, climbing backwards. As the sounds of his labored breathing echoed off the smooth walls of the shaft, the entrance far above him started to vanish in the distance. The reverberations made it almost sound as if Yumiko, strapped to Nakajima's back, was breathing, and several times Nakajima stopped and strained his ears.
    But the shoulders of the corpse were as slumped over as usual, and stopping, Nakajima only detected the stench of death.
    His sense of the passage of time was long gone. The tunnel was so long that he almost thought that it continued all the way to the center of the earth. Nakajima's arms and legs felt strained with the effort of supporting the weight of two bodies, and if he let his concentration slip for even a moment he felt that he would lose his grip and slide all the way down. Twisting his body, Nakajima pulled off his shoes and socks and continued downwards in bare feet. This way he could be more sure of his footholds. Had he been here by himself, he might have been able to slide all the way down the shaft. But if Yumiko's body was damaged, all his effort would have been for nothing.
    All of a sudden, Nakajima found his feet in thin air.
    "Agh!"
    Desperately extending his arms foward and clawing at the air, a sense of loss, terror, and despair shot through Nakajima's body. An instant later. Nakajima was painfully slammed against a hard stone surface. He had fallen straight down about two or three meters. Unconsciously moving to protect Yumiko's body, Nakajima's shoulders and back took more of the shock than they should have, and unable to stand, he lost consciousness.

    There was a faint light and a calm breeze. The cold caressing his cheek, Nakajima opened his heavy eyelids. A little ways away, Yumiko's body lay next to him silently. He felt light, and it didn't seem like he had any broken bones. In fact, while he hurt, it wasn't enough to worry about. Getting his energy together and standing up, Nakajima took a deep breath. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, his surroundings became clearer.
    And what mysterious surroundings they were! Nakajima found himself standing in a plaza carved out in a niche between towering cliffs. The face of the walls around him were deep crimson. About three meters up in one wall was a dark opening; most likely, it was the shaft that Nakajima had just crawled down. Being underground, there should have been a visible ceiling, but looking up, the walls simply climbed up until the red stones were shrouded in the darkness above. At the end of the plaza, a narrow path stretched out into the bottomless darkness. Was this the pathway to Izanami's burial chamber? Unlike the earlier shaft, this appeared to be a natural underground ravine. The phosphorescent light illuminating it, and the entire underground chamber, appeared to be given off from mossy plants growing on the rock face. Nakajima recalled the scene from the visions he had of being chased by the rotting woman.
    A viscous drop of water fell onto Nakajima's cheek. Listening closely, he could hear the steady sound of a trickle of water coming from high above. Over the aeons, the lime deposits in this trickle had accumulated here and there along the path, forming giant stalagmites. Nakajima touched the rising cliff face to feel it. The surface of the cold stone was wet with condensation. When he scratched it, the rock crumbled away easily, revealing a new layer of red stone below. When recalling that the ancient red paint used in ancient Japanese tombs was mercuric-sulfide based, Nakajima suddenly remembered Craft's words.
    When explorers discovered material that was apparently part of a demon's body in a Mayan temple, it evaporated when coming into contact with their mercuric-sulfide based paint. In other words, this tomb was designed specifically to keep demons out. Getting up his courage with this realization, Nakajima picked up Yumiko's body and walked toward the depths of the red valley. However, Nakajima never had that much in the way of stamina in the first place. In less than ten minutes, his legs were exhausted. He would have liked to have Kerberos' help, but he didn't want to put any more stress on the already terribly-injured demon. Besides, one could hardly say this path would be the most appropriate place for him, with the walls literally painted with demon repellent.
    Breathing heavily with exhaustion, Nakajima proceeded along the path to the burial chamber, the stone walls towering up into the air alongside him. The sweat dripping off of his forehead into his eyes blurred his vision, and each step took every ounce of effort he had. Nakajima shook his head back and forth to get rid of the built-up perspiration, and when his vision cleared, he noticed a white silhouette in his peripheral vision.
    "Who's there!?"
    Looking closer, he could tell that there was more than just one silhouette--in fact there were quite a few of them. But none of them displayed any indication of movement, and simply stood or squatted there. Gingerly approaching one, Nakajima could see that it was a bleached mummy, its head tilted to the side and its black eye sockets staring up into space. Whether it was the power of the mercuric sulfide or the cold of the underground chamber, the corpse had been preserved from natural decay. Its chest area had what looked like a deliberately drilled large hole in it. Looking around, it appeared that the dozen or so mummies here were scattered about without any order to them. Judging by their clothing, they appeared to be the bones of people from many different time periods. One wore primitive robes, another appeared to be wearing the eboshi hat of a Kamakura-era samurai, and yet another looked like an Edo-period peasant. Many of them had signs of their bones being crushed by large jaws or having their throats torn out. Few people would come into a place like this by accident; these were most likely grave robbers here to plunder the Kofun tomb. Who was it that did this to them?
    All of a sudden, the sound of a bizarre cry assaulted Nakajima's ears.
    "YAAH! GLULULU!"
    It sounded like the voice was coming from far away, but the unusual reverberations produced from the walls of the burial pathway made it difficult to judge the distance of sounds. Nakajima cast a sidelong glance at the butchered corpses of the mummies. If the grave guardian that mercilessly slaughtered these would-be grave robbers was still patrolling this path to the burial chamber now...
    As Nakajima shuddered, that very same guardian lept out in front of his eyes from the shadow of a great rock.
    "Yomotsu-Shikome!" Nakajima cried.
    The fierce image of the monster woman from his vision was burned into Nakajima's memory. But the Yomotsu-Shikome standing before him was far more grotesque in real life than he had imagined. She was almost exactly twice his height. Her purple-flecked squat legs glistened white with slime, and bloated lower stomach of the torso held up by them stuck out like that of a pregnant woman. The robe she wore seemed almost comical it was so small, and it did not even extend down far enough to cover her breasts, which drooped all the way down to her navel. Her webbed hands shuddered, thick with blubber. Her face was almost exactly that of a green frog, and as she exhaled, two gill-like slits on the side of her throat expanded, exposing the pink fleshy walls within. Her long, shimmering black hair made her look only all the more disgusting.
    Yomotsu-Shikome took a step forward. As Nakajima met her gaze, he carefully laid Yumiko down, wiped the cold sweat off his hands onto his slacks, and picked up his handheld computer.
    "Kerberos, please come here."
    Before the white haze that came out of the liquid crystal display could even take on the shape of a rough outline, it vanished with a weak bark. Apparently the crimson paint of this pathway really did seal off the power of the demon beast.
    Yomotsu-Shikome thrust her webbed hands down at the petrified Nakajima's shoulders. Leaping to the side at the last minute, Nakajima slipped and fell on the ground. He desperately tried to get up, but the large hands had already grabbed onto him. Yomotsu-Shikome's long tongue licked the area around her huge mouth, and her rancid breath assaulted Nakajima's senses.
    "Izanami, are you going to abandon me after I've come all this way!?" Nakajima instinctively cried out.
    For some reason, the instant that the monster woman heard Nakajima's cry, she started acting strangely. Her mouth agape, she looked at Nakajima with a blank expression, all hostility gone completely. Her eyes looked around the area, then fixated on the body of Yumiko, laying on the side of the path. An expression of awe came over her face.
    "Izanami..."
    Her throat jiggling, Yomotsu-Shikome spoke the name reverently. Putting Nakajima back on the ground, the monster woman clumsily waddled over to Yumiko, and carefully picked her up as if handling a fragile broken object.
    "Hey, wait, what are you going to do with Yumiko!?"
    Taking a disapproving glance at Nakajima, Yomotsu-Shikome cocked her head as if to signal him to follow her, and proceeded down the burial pathway, holding Yumiko.