Chapter Five

Marisa’s light spell didn’t show much as we slid down: just a smooth shaft of rock all around us. The tube showed darkness as far ahead as I could see. Kisume’s home was already out of sight above and behind us.

“This’d be fun if not for... you knows!” Marisa yelled against the rushing air.

I nodded. Having a slide like this on the surface would make for a great attraction; all the village kids could spend whole days climbing and sliding on it.

Down we went. While the tube’s surface was slick enough to let gravity carry us, it was still rock grinding against us. My butt and legs were getting sore. Our dress skirts would get worn.

“How far do you think this g-GAH!”

As I tried to speak, a new sight rushed up and smacked me in the face. Marisa’s light revealed a mesh of white threads the end of the slide. We slammed into it at full speed. If it had been a solid wall, it might have broken my legs on impact. Marisa wouldn’t have fared much better, even using my body as a cushion.

The threads caught us and yielded like a soft mattress. Our bodies tried to bounce back, but the threads were sticky. The whole front of my body was glued in place; one adhesive band stuck to my forehead, others grabbed my shoulders and chest, still others cuffed my legs. Marisa’s limbs got stuck under me, so she was wrapped around me from behind like a child on a piggyback ride.

“Agh!” I grunted, struggling against the threads sticking to us. “What is this?”

“Reimus, move please? Hands stuck under yous.”

“I know! I can’t!”

I rocked back and forth, trying to get unstuck, but it was hopeless. The material holding us was elastic, vibrating from our motion. Marisa moved around too, trying and failing to pull her arms away from me. She fell still all at once.

“R-Reimus,” Marisa said, her voice soft and shaky in my ear. “This’s spider webs.”

“It sure is!” I said. “Or like the sticky parts of the floor when Suika doesn’t clean up her—”

“No,” Marisa cut me off. “Actual spider webs.”

“Nyyeesss, that’s right.”

---

I looked up, as well as I could with my forehead adhered to the webbing, trying to see the source of this new voice. A pair of dull-orange lights hung in the space ahead of me. This had to be a pair of youkai eyes, barely shining in the darkness.

“Who are you?” I said to the glowing eyes. “Are you Kisume’s boss?”

The youkai didn’t answer, instead let out a noise halfway between a cat’s purr and a bird’s chirp, Mmmrrp. The eyes moved closer, accompanied by soft clicking noises against the nearby rock ceiling.

The creature came close enough for Marisa’s light to reveal. The orange eyes were part of a young girl’s face. Her hair was blonde and might have been long, but was tied up into a bun with a tattered brown ribbon. She wore a frock-style dress, brown and black with yellow highlights. Her skirt was weirdly bulbous, as if concealing much more of a lower body than just a pair of legs – but that wasn’t the strangest thing about her.

There were eight things sprouted from her lower back. Each one was the size of a spider’s leg if scaled up to match the size of a human child, but they didn’t look like... much of anything. The legs were immaterial, barely visible one moment and gone the next. It reminded me of the tengu woman we had seen get sucked into the hole on the surface, who had dark shades behind her shoulders that looked like crow’s wings.

She crawled closer to us, upside-down like any spider walking on a ceiling. The tips of her almost-real legs tapped and clicked on the rock.

“You knooowwww.” Her voice was high pitched, tinny. “Live hyuuuumans aren’t supposed to be here, unless they’re draaaagged by the oni.”

“Believe you-mees, spider-girls,” said Marisa. “Wouldn’t be heres on good days.”

The youkai was close now. I could have slapped her head if my arms were free. Her legs went to work on the webbing around us. With gentle touches here and there, some threads came loose and others wrapped around us.

“I suppooooose you’re chasing the six prisoners, yes? Hoping to get a piece of the power for yourselllllvvveess, hm?”

“Yes and no,” I said. “Those six prisoners are our friends. Why were they pulled down here?”

“Oh, ho-ho. You don’t have to woooorrryyy about that. The coooowwww doesn’t need to know how the farmer coookssss his steaks.”

Marisa and I were now completely wrapped up. Our faces were still exposed, but only slivers of our hair and clothes poked through the webbing otherwise. With delicate flicks from the spider legs, we turned around like a hog roasting on a spit.

“Wooaauughh,” I groaned as the empty darkness did flips around me. “Could you please untie us? We have places to be.”

“You’ll only come ooouuutttt one small piece at a time.”

The youkai began lowering us. My guts shifted a bit from gravity. I couldn’t look back, but I guessed she had us and herself suspended from ropes of her silk. I could see only darkness in most directions, but we kept twisting around. Marisa’s light spell bled through the webbing to cast bright motes on a sloped stone wall nearby. Tendrils of some kind of plant or fungus snaked up the wall as far as I could see.

“Kisume must have told you about mmmeeee,” said the youkai. “Yamame Kurodani. I’m the tsuchigumo who guards this passsssaaaggeeee from unescorted live humans.”

“You mean uncaptured,” I said. “Humans who aren’t being dragged down by the oni kicking and screaming.”

She made that purring chirp again, which I realized was the noise she made instead of chuckling.

“You two are juuussstttt unlucky little flies, caught in my web.”

After what felt like twenty feet, Yamame lowered us to ground. With Marisa hugged around me in our web-cocoon, we were set on a patch of dirt made soft with ribbons of the same growth that covered the walls. My right cheek pressed into the earth.

“Now, now.” Yamame landed herself, snapped free of her thread with a shake of her bottom. “You two relaaaxx and I’ll be back with some... sssseassoonning.”

Her human feet never touched the ground. I could almost see her spider-legs as they tapped and clicked against the ground, carrying her into the darkness beyond Marisa’s light.

“Reimus,” Marisa whispered into my ear. “This is bads. Can you moves? Can’t reach hakkeros.”

Her hand wiggled against my chest, but failed to get free. I shifted my shoulders, tried to reposition my arms, but no luck. We were both trapped.

“I can’t move at all,” I whispered back. “But there’s something I can try. If you notice something moving, pretend you don’t feel it. Don’t react at all.”

“Okays.”

We both fell silent. I closed my eyes, took deep breaths, and tried to focus.

Unlike Marisa, I’m not a magician. I’ve never spent an afternoon writing spellcards, or worked for months designing a personalized foci, or crafted magical trinkets to sell so I could pay my living expenses.

Even so, I live in Gensokyo, so I’m not a complete stranger to magic. Wild energies are the lifeblood of my homeland. I know dozens of people who do magic in one way or another. I wielded the Saigyouji mantle, even if only for one night. The most powerful magician in the country has an unhealthy interest in my personal life.

That magician had given me a trinket of self-defense just yesterday. I hadn’t tried using it yet, because I dreaded hurting myself or someone I cared about – but when the alternative was getting eaten alive by a spider youkai, experimenting with a new weapon was worth the risk.

I tried to think at the orb. I focused my attention on the glass ball in my dress pocket, on its light-but-rigid form pressing into my thigh.

Come out. I need your help.

The orb came to life, with so much power that both Marisa and I started at the feel of it. She gasped, and I let out a hissed sshhh to quiet us both. The orb radiated what felt like heat, but it didn’t burn. It shuddered as if eager to move, but it didn’t actually vibrate. It didn’t speak, didn’t communicate any language back to my mind, but I could feel it tethered to my awareness. I had gained a new limb, the orb ready to do my will like an arm or a leg.

Wow. Maybe Yukari did a good job after all.

Just as if I were pulling my hand out of my pocket, I tried to move the orb. It obeyed. It rolled up from my dress and fell into the cocoon of webbing, but it didn’t get stuck. The web’s adhesive didn’t affect the orb. I could move it around freely. I could push it out of a gap in the webbing if I wanted to.

So... now what? I didn’t know the orb’s limits. Could it fire a laser like one of Marisa’s spells? Maybe it could shoot youkai-sealing runes, or trap Yamame with magically-constructed bolas that would wrap all around her. That would be sweet justice, a wrap for a wrap.

Tap-click tap-click, the sound of Yamame’s approaching footsteps took my attention. I looked up and saw her reenter the range of Marisa’s light. Yamame held a handful of what looked like sand. Tiny grains leaked from between her fingers and sparkled in the light of Marisa’s spell.

“This’ll dooooo nicely.” Yamame shook her hand over us, dusting the web-cocoon and us within it. This felt like being covered in salt, irritating my eyes and my skin.

“This will be the beeesssst meal I’ve had in a very long tiiimmeee,” said Yamame. “May even have some llleefftooovveerrss for later.”

It was now or never. I had to make a move, or risk being digested one Reimu-chunk at a time. That, and I was angry from being covered in spider spices.

But still – how was I supposed to use the orb?

Something clicked in my head. I was overthinking this. If the orb required some kind of instruction or training to use, Yukari would have mentioned it. Instead, she said it worked just like the Saigyouji mantle – a magical weapon designed for a non-magician.

I could keep it simple. I had to keep it simple.

If I had learned anything over the last few years’ worth of adventures, there’s no simpler solution to any problem than direct violence. The more aggressive, the more preemptive, the simpler.

I willed the orb to wiggle its way out of the cocoon, emerging from a gap next to Marisa’s hip. The orb rose in the air, floating above us. It began shining red and white light, brighter than Marisa’s light spell.

“What? Wh-uch!” Yamame’s voice choked in surprise. She stepped back, putting one arm over her eyes to keep out the light. “What is that?”

“Oh this?” I said. “That’s my yin-yang orb. Here, have a closer look.”

I willed the orb to fly at Yamame, expecting it to move as fast as a thrown rock. It went far above and beyond that call of duty. The orb darted so fast that it broke air, letting out a ww-CRRK noise like the crack of a whip. The sound echoed around the cave and left a ringing in my ears.

While the orb itself moved too fast to see, my eyes still caught the blur of red-white light that smashed into Yamame’s gut. She flew backward as if Yukari herself had connected with a haymaker, then slammed into the cave wall some twenty feet away.

“Hunckg!” Yamame’s wind was knocked out when her back impacted the wall. She collapsed hunched over, struggling for breath, arms flailing to steady herself on the rock behind her.

“Oh, whoops!” I called over. “I’m so sorry! That hit way harder than I intended. Here, let me help you up.”

I lifted the orb up into the airspace of the cave, then threw it down with all the force I could will. This time I couldn’t see where it hit Yamame’s body, but I could tell that it went through her. An explosion of rock chips and dust flew outward, turned into a red-and-white cloud that quickly sank to the cave floor. My ears went numb from the noise. I tried to turn my face away to keep from getting cut by flying debris.

The dust settled. I blinked a few times to get grains out of my eyes. There wasn’t much time to see Yamame’s remains; she was already dematerializing. As a youkai upon death, she dissolved into muddy-colored sparks. Her body and mind decomposed into the magical energies that had formed her, now too damaged to stay coherent.

When a youkai dies on the surface, their sparks fall to the ground and fade from sight. That didn’t happen here. Yamame’s remains swirled around like leaves carried by wind in an alleyway, then flowed deeper into the cave, off to my right. They illuminated the ground as they went, came to a raised section of the floor, and climbed up it like a ramp. The sparks reversed direction but kept ascending on a rising path.

Yamame’s flow of sparks went up, reversed direction again and again, and finally flew out a circular doorway at the top of the path. Their light was gone.

---

The web-cocoon disintegrated around us. Each thread lost its stickiness and loosened, like a corset with the strings untied. Now we were just in a pile of spider-silk cords.

“Oh,” said Marisa. “Makes senses. Magical webbings from magical spider-girls.”

“I guess so,” I said. “Do you realize we’re not stuck anymore and you can let go of me?”

Marisa hadn’t moved. Her arms and legs were still hugged around me, and her weight kept me in place half as well as the webbing had.

“Maybe want to be heres. Feels nices.”

“There there.” I patted the back of her head with one hand as if I were comforting a frightened pet. “That was a very scary thing we just lived through, there there. Now get off of me.”

“By the ways!” Marisa’s head snapped up. She did let go and lifted herself onto her hands and knees, but she stayed perched over me. “Yukari’s orbs packs punches. Let’s get its before it gets los—”

Her voice faded as she saw the yin-yang orb roll over the moss patches on the cave floor. I hadn’t willed it to return, but it came over as if I had. The orb’s glow had dimmed but not gone out. The orb nudged my shoulder and stopped there.

“-mu!”

A voice came from it, sounding like someone shouting to us down a long tunnel.

“-eimu! -risa!”

Marisa and I shared surprised looks.

“Is thats...?” she said.

“That sounds like Yukari!” I said.