Chapter Eleven

The flying person darted to the side and disappeared behind the peak. It surprised me that she didn’t come straight down to fry Marisa and me where we stood.

“Well, she knows we’re here now,” I said.

“Gonna do first plans?” said Marisa. “Walk ups, say hellos?”

“Unless you got another idea.”

On we went, hiking up the trail. More of that sooty, sulfury air blew by, stirring up small dust devils. The thermoward protected us from heat but not other discomforts. The wind didn’t burn us, but it still stank. The dust didn’t light our hair and clothes on fire, but it still got in our eyes. The Blazing Sky boiled overhead.

The trail went around the hill’s perimeter, taking us to the far side. As we went up and around, I began hearing a low buzzing. It had the tempo of a hummingbird's wings, but was deeper.

We neared the hilltop. As we came to the last stretch of the trail, the spot that Orin had called Okuu’s base came into view.

A huge chunk of the hill had been blasted out, not far down from the peak. The surfaces left from that excavation formed a roughly-flat wall and floor cut out of the rock. This platform was half the size of my house, and the wall of the hilltop guarded it from most of the wind and dust.

The woman I assumed to be Okuu saw us approach. She stood at the center of the platform, waiting for us. She was taller than me, had long black hair topped with a green ribbon, and wore a simple dress with white blouse and green skirt. Her wingspan matched her height. A weak breeze ruffled the coal-black feathers and lifted her cape briefly. While the back of her cape was solid white, the cape’s underside looked like a window into the heavens of nighttime. Stars sparkled, faded milky bands between them.

Like the satori, she had a third eye, but it wasn’t supported outside her body. Hers was a huge eye in the middle of her chest. The front of her blouse was frayed, torn open to let the eye see out. The eye was taller than it was wide, had a red sclera and a black vertical pupil. It never blinked, but it did look around, its gaze darting.

This close, I could see why her right arm appeared too long. She wore a strange octagonal bracer that covered up to her elbow and extended far past her hand. She couldn’t articulate any of her right fingers while wearing that, but I guessed it had another purpose; it looked like a miniature version of the cannon from a siege machine. If that guess was right, I didn’t want to see her fire it.

I looked around the platform. She was surrounded by contraptions that I struggled to make sense of. At her side stood a raised section of rock, half her height and a couple feet long. Magical lights danced above this dais, mostly green sparks with other colors appearing rarely.

Around the platform’s perimeter stood six big metallic cylinders, each one as thick as a tree trunk and about twice my height. Their surfaces were rough black iron all the way around – except for one glassy panel that faced inward to the platform. Pale blue light shone out from these windows. I could see humanoid forms, one suspended inside each cylinder, seeming to float in water.

My heart jumped. I wanted to run to the platform, stick my face against the windows and see if any of them contained a girl with horns. One last thing took my attention, hovering above the center of the platform, as high up as the wall that had been blasted out of the hillside.

Another woman was suspended there, her legs together and her arms outstretched, as if she had been crucified against the air. Her eyes were closed, including the third eye of a satori, which gave away her identity. Her hair and clothes confirmed it, somewhat matching her stained-glass appearance on the Earth Spirit Palace. That was Koishi.

We were close enough that our host could speak to us without yelling. Her voice was deep, reminding me of a no-nonsense matron who wouldn’t hesitate to smack a sassy child. That low buzzing came from here, the machines in the hillside, and it underlined her words.

“I expected Satori to send someone after me, but not two humans.”

Marisa and I stopped at the edge of the platform, since we saw another spell surrounding it. This was also a thin wall of shimmering green light, but the pattern was different than the detector below.

“She didn’t send us,” I said. “You have our friends trapped here. Satori just pointed us in this direction. Are you Okuu?”

“Don’t call me that. You’re not my family. If you address me at all, you will say: Hell Raven, Utsuho Reiuji. Now, come in and see your friends. It’s comfortable in here.”

She flicked her left hand at us. A sudden force pushed Marisa and me forward, as if a bull had shoved us from behind. We tripped over each other and fell prone inside the platform’s perimeter. The spell’s threadbare light passed over us with no feeling, like the one before it.

Marisa and I scrambled to our feet, both with our weapons in hand.

“Oh, and where are my manners,” said Okuu. “Please, let me take your coats.”

All three of her eyes flashed dull red. Nothing physically pushed us – but then I looked down at myself. The pink thermoward spell around me flickered once and vanished. Warmer air hit me, but not much warmer. I looked back at Marisa, and her thermoward was gone too. The spell around the platform must be a thermoward of Okuu’s making. I looked up and saw the green dome was high enough to go over Koishi’s head.

“Did Satori tell you how hot it is down here?” said Okuu.

“Said abouts summer day times twentys,” said Marisa.

“That’s right. Can you imagine how painful it would be if I pushed you back a few steps, now that her spell is off you?”

“You mean burning us to death?” I said. “Yeah, I imagine that’s a pretty agonizing way to go.”

“Actually, no.” Okuu took a step forward, lifted and lowered her arm-cannon with a clunk. “At this temperature, all the water in your body would turn to steam instantly. You wouldn’t burn; you would just explode. You would die too fast to feel any pain.”

“I’m grateful for the little things.” My voice was flat.

“My offer to see your friends was genuine.” Okuu gestured her left hand around to the windowed cylinders. “Before I get back to work, do you want to look? I’ll wait.”

---

I did want to look. If she delayed murdering us so I could check inside her machines, I wouldn’t refuse the offer.

Marisa had the same thought. We split up, each walked over to the two capsules closest to the end of the hiking trial. My eyes narrowed against the blue light coming through the glass, but there was no mistaking the person inside.

She was short. She had horns. She had the wrist and ankle chains. She wore the same dress as when we left home to go shopping this morning.

“Suika!” I tapped on the glass with my orb, tunk-tunk. “Suika! Can you hear me?”

No response. She hovered upright, her arms and legs floating as if she were suspended in water, though the interior of her chamber was dry. Her eyes were closed, but I could see a gentle rise and fall to her chest. She was breathing.

“Gappy-girls!” said Marisa from behind me. “Yukari’s in the ones over heres.”

“Let’s check the others.”

Going to the next two capsules meant we had to walk closer to Okuu. She stood still and let us take wide paths around her, but kept her eyes on either Marisa or me the whole time.

The second container held a tall woman with short black hair, a white blouse and fall-patterned skirt. A single wooden sandal hung off the toes of her left foot. The other geta must have gotten lost on the way down here.

“This one’s the tengu!” I called over to Marisa.

“Patchy!” Marisa yelled back. “Remi’s librarian heres!”

We passed Okuu to the far end of the platform, and checked the two other capsules.

“Kappa-girls with the blue dress.” Marisa spun around and ran over to last one, where I stood. “That means—”

We looked in together, and we saw her. Short blonde hair, nightgown loose around her.

“Alices!” Marisa called into her. “Wake ups!”

“I don’t think she can hear you,” I said.

“They can hear,” said Okuu behind us. “They’re all aware, but they have no control of their bodies or magic powers.”

Marisa and I turned, held up our weapons.

“This is sick!” I yelled at Okuu. “Do you realize how many lives you’ve put in danger here?”

“Probably a lot,” she said. “Especially if Nue gets free.”

“Sets our friends frees!” said Marisa. “Don’t cares how scary-strongs, can blast straight to the burny-skys!”

“I’d like to see you try, and that’s not a couched threat. Genuinely, I’m interested to know what spells you have baked into those toys of yours.”

“Have a looks!” Marisa pulled in a breath and yelled: “Love Sign: Master Spark!”

White energy pooled at the face of the hakkero, then shot at Okuu with a ring-shaped wake. The beam hit Okuu and went right through her – but not in the way I hoped. The spell’s energy passed by her, no more harmful than the light from a sparklamp. Even her hair and clothes didn’t move under the power of Marisa’s favorite attack.

“That’s disappointing,” said Okuu, once the beam had faded away. “I shouldn’t expect more from a young human magician.”

“This wasn’t made by a human!” I chucked the yin-yang orb at her with an overarm pitch, and I willed it to fly as fast it could, with all my anger and fear. The air let out a cr-RACK! from the throw.

Okuu held up her left hand and caught the orb, with little more trouble than a parent playing catch with a child. The orb’s momentum pushed her a bit; she had to put one foot back to steady herself.

“Now this thing’s more impressive.” She held up the orb up and looked into it. “Shame it has to be wasted, but this isn’t the time or place.”

Okuu crushed the orb with the raw strength of her hand. The glass cracked, splintered, shattered, spraying shards across the ground. Red and white sparks spat out from between her fingers, showing magical instructions disrupted as their host matter was destroyed. She opened her hand, dropping more shards to the ground, then patted the glass dust off on her skirt.

“In the interest of fairness, we’ll do the same with yours. Think of it as an incentive to innovate a better tool.”

Okuu flicked her finger at Marisa. The hakkero was ripped out of Marisa’s hands, then flew up and behind us in an arc. The instant it crossed out of the flickering-green bubble around us, the metal-studded wood of Marisa’s foci burst into a ball of fire. White and yellow sparks sprayed out of it in dazzling rings. It landed on the hillside beyond the platform, then rolled down the slope away from us, smoking and flaming.

Our weapons were gone.

Okuu stepped forward. As she walked on the orb’s shards, I noticed she wore an ordinary shoe only on her left foot. Her right was covered in a boot of what looked like knobby metal or rough stone. Pieces of the orb crunched and snapped under both.

Off to Okuu’s side, I noticed something odd. One piece of the orb, a red shard of glass, wobbled back and forth as if it had just been dropped on the ground. Every other piece had come to rest. Okuu hadn’t noticed it, so I pretended not to notice it either.

“I know it must’ve been hell to get here from Gensokyo,” said Okuu, “but your quest has failed. At this point, the best you’ll get is to watch me complete my quest. It’s going to be quite the show, I guarantee.”

The red orb piece began scooting back across the ground, as if being pulled with an invisible piece of string.

“If that’s all we can do,” I said, trying to keep Okuu’s attention, “then that’s what we’ll do. Orin said you were probably close to hitting the right ritual.”

Marisa caught on. “That’s rights. At least show hows gonna kill everyones, bird-girls.”

Okuu laughed once, Hya! “Bird-girl? But yes, after your tough trip, you deserve an explanation.”

She put a hand over the raised stone dais, worked her fingers in the air above it. The mostly-green magical sparks stopped being random, coalesced into patterns that she manipulated. Behind her, that shard of glass kept scooting toward Yukari’s container.

“Satori must have told you what I’m doing down here,” said Okuu. “Koishi came here to end the hollow misery that her life had become, after I closed her third eye. Nue caught Koishi and is holding her hostage, promising to release her if I can break Nue’s ward.”

“What and where is Nue, exactly?” I said.

“What is Nue? We don’t know. As for where,” Okuu pointed a finger up, “up there, somewhere. Sealed in the Blazing Sky.”

“How is that possible? It’s just fire up there. Nothing could survive that.”

“You couldn’t. For me, it would be uncomfortable but I could survive. Also, it’s not correct to say that it’s fire.”

The yin-yang piece had reached the foot of Yukari’s capsule. It tried to climb up toward the window, but fell back to the ground a few times.

“Not fires?” said Marisa. “Sure looks pretty hots.”

“It is. What hangs above us is an ocean of molten rock, the world’s backbone, at such a fantastic temperature that it flows as a goo. Lord Yatagarasu taught me about the deepest reaches of our world. Can you guess: how can the ground contain a source of heat so powerful as to melt stone?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “There’s a second sun up there somewhere?”

Okuu glanced at me, smiled as she kept working a spell over the stone dais.

“That’s not a bad guess!” she said. “Deep down, far deeper than we are now, at the very heart of the world, there resides a metallic core imbued with the same power as the Sun itself. This core is a primordial relic from the birth of the world, eons ago. It’s astonishingly hot, so hot that the world’s interior is molten. That sounds terrible enough, but there’s more. The essence of the Sun is beyond mere heat.”

The orb shard had stuck itself to the metal casing of Yukari’s container, and was slithering its way up to the window. Okuu kept talking, kept working at her spell.

“It’s not like any magic you know in Gensokyo, not like the energies that can be tamed with spells. The Sun’s true power is so vile and deadly that it can’t be used constructively. The Sun shines that energy at you every day, but your sky filters the harmful part of its rays, so that only sweet sunlight graces your skin.”

“That’s a pretty tall tale,” I said.

“It is, but it’s also true. If Gensokyo weren’t covered with sky, this poisonous energy would perforate your body like a million arrows too tiny to see. It wouldn’t hurt at first, but soon your flesh would disintegrate. Lord Yatagarasu gave me a strange name for the Sun’s hidden power, a name which I find to have a pleasing lilt: Ionizing Radiation.”

“And that’s the powers that’ll break Nues looses?” said Marisa. “Eye-on-eye Raidy-somethings?”

“That’s the idea.”

“But you said the Sun’s power couldn’t be tamed,” I said. “So how could you control it?”

“I don’t plan to control it. I’m going to unleash it. Like burning a bug under a lens on a sunny day, a large area’s worth of radiation focused here will rupture Nue’s prison. After that, I’ll have no control of the invocation. I’ll just be able to flee with Koishi. You and your youkai friends will perish here, burned to vapor by the power of the Sun manifested like a subterranean animism.”

---

During the last minute of this conversation, the red orb shard had climbed up to the window on Yukari’s container. The shard embedded itself in the glass as if tapped in with a hammer. Cracks spread across the window, slowly, silently.

Yukari’s eyes snapped open.

The container window exploded outward, spraying a hail of broken glass across the hilltop platform. Yukari flew out at equal speed.

“Shinu, kuso tori!”

Shouting an old-language curse at the top of her lungs, Yukari rushed at Okuu faster than a shooting star, faster than anyone could react. She slammed into Okuu with all the fury of the Boundary, landing a punch square in her back. A splash of yellow and purple light burst out from the impact. Okuu toppled, smashed face-first into the ground, then spun foot-over-head past Marisa and me. Her wings and cape tangled on each other as she soared between the capsules holding Alice and Nitori. She passed out of the thermoward and tumbled down the hillside.

“Get behind me!” Yukari yelled at us. She stood next to the stone dais where Okuu had been working. She wore only her nightgown, her hair was a long blonde mess, and she was standing on glass shards barefoot. Even so, we couldn’t expect any better ally.

Marisa and I ran over and took cover behind Yukari. She looked down at the stone dais, saw the mostly-green sparks flickering over its top. She leaned to one side, lifted a leg and kicked it. With an ear-ringing CRRK! the dais broke near its base and fell to the ground. A small explosion of dust and rock chips peppered Aya’s container.

“I have no idea how you two got down here alive,” said Yukari, “but you’re the toughest, most resourceful humans I’ve ever met. Getting me access to a piece of the yin-yang orb was a stroke of genius.”

“That wasn’t genius!” I said. “That was an accident! Shouldn’t we break the others free too?”

“Suika and Alice yes, but not the other three. Their power is keeping the heat shield up. I can maintain the shield if I have to, but we have to do it caref....”

Her voice trailed off when we saw Okuu rise from below. Her wings carried her up, and her cape flew in the breeze like a flag. The extreme temperature outside the thermoward didn’t hinder her at all. She flew toward us at a lazy pace.

“Stay back,” Yukari told us. “I’ll do my best, but I’m not sure what she’s capable of.”

As Okuu approached, Yukari held up an arm and readied a spell. A swirl of yellow and purple light amassed at her hand, ready to fire.

Okuu landed, then walked the last few steps back to the platform. She passed into the thermoward.

“That was rude,” she said. “A tap on the shoulder would have gotten my attention.”

“Run away right now,” said Yukari, “or I will rip you apart and burn the pieces.”

“Calm down, obaasan.” Okuu brushed some dust off her arm-cannon. “You’ve lost. Be at peace with that.”

“Without me contained, you can’t do your ritual.”

“It’s too late to worry about that. Look.” Okuu pointed up. “It’s already underway.”

We looked up and saw what she meant. An enormous bulb of harsh yellow light was emerging from the Blazing Sky. It looked as if a child of the Sun was being born from the molten rock. It was soon too bright to look at directly. The alarm system sounded off again. That blaring came from the five non-broken capsules, WAAANH, WAAANH, WAAANH. Marisa and I clapped our hands over our ears.

“I finally got it right,” said Okuu, once the alarm had faded. “Nue has come, so I bid you farewell.”

She flapped her wings down and lifted off. Yukari fired her readied spell, shooting a lance of yellow and purple at Okuu as she ascended. The spell hit, but didn’t hurt her; she rolled in air once to shrug the spell off, then flew up toward the sunny orb growing from the Sky. The bigger the sun grew, the brighter and louder it became.

“Change of plans!” Yukari spun around to Marisa and me. “You two, take these orb pieces and touch them to the glass of the containers. That’ll free the others. I’ll hold up the thermal shield while you do.”

With a wave of her hands, Yukari levitated five pieces of the orb to hover in front of us. Marisa grabbed two, and I grabbed three.

“What about Okuu?” I said.

“Can’t worry about that now! Do what I said!”

Marisa and I traded looks, and wordlessly agreed. Marisa ran over to Patchouli’s capsule, and I ran back to Suika’s. I was nervous and hurrying, so the glass shards drew blood from my hand, but I didn’t care. I pressed one shard into the blue window of her one-oni prison. The whole window cracked and fell apart at once, spilling some window pieces into the capsule and others onto my shoes.

Breaking the window also broke the spell keeping the captive inert. Suika’s eyes opened and she took a sharp breath.

“Reimu!” She kicked off the back of the capsule, tackling me with a hug.

I spun her around and let her down on her feet. “I’m happy to see you too! But joyful reunions have to wait. Take this and go free Alice!”

I gave her one of the remaining orb pieces. She took it and ran to the far end of the platform. I followed her halfway to reach Aya’s capsule, put my last shard to the window and shattered it. The tengu revived.

“Your aid is none too soon, human!” She flew out of the capsule, pushed past me and landed nearby. “How can we return to Gensokyo?”

“One thing at a time!” said Yukari, who stood at the platform’s center. “All of you, get as close to me as possible! The less area I have to cover, the easier I can keep the thermal shield up.”

Marisa had finished freeing Patchouli and Nitori. Suika broke Alice’s window, then reached in, grabbed her by the wrist, and yanked Alice out into a carry over Suika’s shoulder.

“Marisa!” Alice yelled while Suika toted her toward Yukari. “What happened to Shanghai? Is she all right?”

“Lot safer than us, Alices!” Marisa pushed the librarian and the kappa over to us. “Left hers with Yukari’s fox-girls up tops. She’s goods!”

While this was happening, Yukari had both hands held up to the apex of the thermoward. She dug her magical might into it. The whole bubble changed color, from flickering green to swirls of transparent yellow and purple. The rest of us crowded around her, making a huddle of eight.

“Stay right here!” she said. “It’s about to get cramped!”

The thermoward contracted. The top of the bubble fell down, exposing Koishi above us from head to foot, but she didn’t burn. The six cylinders lost the ward’s protection as it pulled closer around us. Their iron hulls began smoking and sagged, but they didn’t melt completely. Soon they all glowed dull red under the heat. Jets of steam spat out from the backs and tops of each cylinder. The pieces of glass on the ground melted, bubbling and smoking.

The ritual sun overhead was so bright that I couldn’t keep my eyes open, no matter which direction I looked. We could hear each other over its roar only by yelling.

“Yukari!” I said. “I can’t see! Can you put some shade into your shield?”

“Sure thing!” she said.

The thermoward gained a heavy tint, casting a circle of shadow just big enough for the eight of us. Now we could look up and see what Okuu had been doing while we scrambled to survive.

Okuu flew up to the ritual sun, but the sun’s shape had changed. It was no longer a sphere lowering from the Sky’s surface, but had distended into a gargantuan teardrop. It reminded me of trying to pour a drop of honey on a cold day, so thick that gravity could pull it down only slowly.

“What is that?” Alice pointed up to the ritual sun.

“A globule of plasma, I believe!” said Patchouli.

“A what?”

“Superheated matter! If it falls, this hill and everything around it will be as molten as the Sky above!”

“I can’t protect us from that!” said Yukari.

Okuu hovered near the bottom surface of the ritual sun, then pulled back her right arm and stabbed her cannon into it. There was a splash of bright yellow from the impact.

“Come forth, Nue!” she yelled. “Fulfill your promise!”

With a backward heave of her shoulder, she pulled her arm cannon out of the sun. Something else came with it: a ball of white light with blue tint, as big as Okuu herself. This ball of light dropped from the sun’s surface, detached from Okuu’s arm, and fell toward us like a dropped stone.

I braced myself against Yukari, expecting it to hit us – but it fell only far enough to swirl around Koishi once. Then the ball of light curved around and shot off into the distance, disappearing behind the hilltop. It was gone from sight.

Koishi’s arms and legs drifted up, and she began to fall. Okuu was already flying down, her wings folded tight against her back. She gathered Koishi in her arms, spread her wings all at once, then flapped down hard to push herself and Koishi back into flight.

Okuu banked around and flew away. The Hell Raven’s wings carried her and the unconscious satori far from the drop of sun that would soon liquefy the underside of the world’s skin.

---

Okuu and Koishi were gone. The plasma blob hung lower and lower from the Blazing Sky. Its bottom had come close enough to fill my vision if I looked straight up. Its roar was so loud that the ground vibrated.

“We have to get out of here!” Yukari yelled.

“Can you open a gap to Jigoku?” I yelled back.

“I can’t – I don’t know where that is in relation to here! I can only gap to the surface!”

“Through the King’s ward?”

“Maybe he didn’t secure it from below, so we can pass up one-way!” Then Yukari shouted at everyone else: “Mages, I need your help! Hold up the shield so I can open a gap! The instructions are there – just put your power into it!”

Patchouli held up a hand, and the thermoward gained streaks of blue and purple. Nitori held up her arm, which added blue and green. Alice joined, adding blue and yellow. Marisa threw in, adding stripes of yellow and white. Aya backed them up, adding orange and brown. Lastly, Suika materialized the Shubin and held its opening to the thermoward’s peak, adding brown and purple.

The sun drop inched closer. The tremendous heat blasting off its surface caused colorful ripples to wash over the thermoward from top to bottom. It was too much for our magicians to maintain the spell’s shape, so it flattened under the pressure.

“Get down!” Yukari screamed.

We all fell to our knees. The thermoward compressed down to a third of the height that Yukari had been holding. It was just big enough to cover all eight of us curled into balls, our faces to the ground. The sun drop approached. I could feel painful heat at the back of my head.

Our mages’ faces were scrunched in exertion. They yelled old-language incantations to help focus their magical control. I couldn’t hear it all over the roar of the blaze above us, but shouts like, “Reichi no taiyou shinkou! Hi kara mamoru, hi kara mamoru!” reached my ears.

Yukari’s hands dug into the stone below us. Yellow and purple sparks flew up and hit her face, but she didn’t look away. Little by little, the seam of a gap appeared in the ground and grew. Its corners showed her signature magically-constructed ribbons, but the opening of the gap was solid black. This portal hadn’t reached another side.

Teeth grit, Yukari leveraged all her strength to rip a hole through reality. The black void flickered, showing flashes of color and light. For half a second, I could see a golden afternoon sky, dotted with white puffs of cloud.

RAN! HEAR YOUR MISTRESS! COME TO THE GAP! WE’RE ALMOST THERE!

Yukari didn’t say this out loud. She evoked the shikigami Rite with such force, and with so much magical power flying around us already, that we all heard it as if she had shouted directly into our skulls.

The surface’s sky flickered into view again, and again, staying longer each time. Our magicians did their best, but the sun drop would be on us in a few seconds. Yukari’s gap wasn’t opening fast enough. We were going to burn and die here.

Then something strange happened. A woman’s hand appeared from the side of the gap, parallel to the gap’s border. A yellow sleeve with black hem hung loosely off her arm. This hand grabbed the edge of the gap and yanked down. The gap’s other edge opened at the same time, tripling the gap’s size. Gensokyo’s sky came into view, no longer flickering. The portal was open.

We fell through.