Chapter Nine

Marisa and I traded looks. We had one of those wordless conversations. Raised eyebrow, nod, shrug, upturned hand.

Should we follow her?

Didn’t comes this fars to stop nows.

And she did mention a hot meal....

Could eat a few horses right now, no foolins.

“All right,” I said as Marisa and I got to our feet. “If you can promise that nothing in your house will kill us.”

“No more nightmares eithers,” said Marisa.

“Of course.” Satori looked down, humbling herself to us. “I deeply regret our meeting only after my ward abused you both. As of now, it’s done more harm than good. I should deconstruct it when time permits. Please, come with me.”

She turned and walked back into the Palace. Marisa and I traded one more look, then followed her.

“Should we close the door?” I said as we went in.

“No need.”

As Satori said that, I heard stone grinding on stone behind us. The door slid on its own, closing with a thump. This cut off any light that reached us from Jigoku. My eyes adjusted to the sparklamp-style torches within the Palace, dimmer but warmer in color than the underground lights we had seen so far. The air in here was warm – not uncomfortable, but close to it. I was already dirty, but an hour in here would have Marisa and me stinking like kitchen garbage.

We walked into the Palace’s foyer, and I saw similarities in architecture with the Scarlet Mansion. Across from us stood a big staircase that led to upper floors. Doors on all levels led to other corridors, and there were Gothic decorations. Gargoyle faces were carved into the ends of stairway banisters. Statuettes of angels and demonic imps stood out from the walls. Some tiles of the floor were colorful mosaics, depicting people and creatures in the style of stained-glass windows.

“Wowies,” said Marisa. “Prettiest places we’ve seen undergrounds.”

“It is,” I said. “I’d like it a lot better if I didn’t need to hallucinate horrible things to get in.”

“Yes.” Satori led us to the main staircase. “I built that ward to prevent living creatures from approaching, mainly meant for oni but applicable to anything that wanders here. Only the dead should come to Chireiden without invitation.”

“And you keep people out by... making them see things?”

“By forcing them to relive painful memories. I thought it kinder to shoo intruders away with mental trauma instead of damaging their bodies. Sadly your arrival is the only time my ward ever fired. The oni are loud and brutish, but they do keep their word. They’ve never approached my home without invitation. Nor have any other mortal creatures, from the surface or elsewhere.”

“Great,” I said. “We got to be your test subjects. Lucky us.”

Satori had led us up the main staircase, then turned and headed down another corridor.

“Regrettably,” she said. “I see now that my ward is both unnecessary and inhumane. Harm to the mind is still harm, no different than a cut or a bruise.”

“All the magics we’ve—” Marisa started to say.

Satori’s third eye twisted around, opened wide at Marisa. She spoke quickly to drown Marisa out.

“Yes, Marisa, the magic you’ve seen underground has been immaterial, in contrast to the elemental magic common in Gensokyo. We specialize in the spells of mind and heart. The oni weapon, Mugen Shubin, can send people on spectral journeys. Parsee’s spell forced extreme jealousy upon you. My ward revisited your painful moments.” Satori took a breath. “I appreciate your tireless love of magical knowledge, as fits your profession, Marisa. Let’s waste no further time on it.”

“Then you can explain how you know our names and our pasts,” I said. “Are you some kind of seer or divinator?”

“That, on the other hand, is something we should discuss. Food is in here.”

Satori turned left. We followed her into a kitchen, similar to the one at Remilia’s house, except for one big dining table in the middle. Satori set Orin on the table, and waved us over to take seats.

“The best I can do on short notice is reheated leftovers,” she said. “We can’t send you up to meet Okuu hungry.”

Okuu. We had heard that name a while back – from Parsee, I think. Marisa and I sat at the table. I picked a chair far from the cat, checked my table spot for any animal hairs. Marisa sat right beside Orin and pet her.

“Pretty kittys,” she said. Orin didn’t mind the attention. She pushed her head and back into Marisa’s hand.

Another way that this kitchen differed from the Scarlets’: there was no maid to prepare the food. Satori opened what must have been an ice box, judging by the fog that leaked out to disappear on the floor. She pulled out a lidded cooking pot, kicked the ice box closed with one foot, then placed the pot on a wood stove. With a snap of her fingers, a fire lit in the belly of the stove.

Satori turned to face us, hands folded before her waist.

“To business. My sister and I are satori – the species of my namesake. We are youkai for whom your....” She paused, as if trying to find the right word. “Your... internal being is visible to us, by virtue of our third eyes. Your thoughts, your feelings, your memories, all as plain to me as your hands or your face.”

Silence fell, and I processed what she said. Only once before had I met a being who knew my whole self and my past, just by loo—

“Yes Reimu, just like Phoenix, though I am not a god.”

I scowled. Could she hear my thoughts right now? Eleven!

“Yes,” said Satori. “You’re thinking of the number eleven.”

Marisa looked back and forth between Satori and me, her face worried. Orin meowed to demand more petting, so Marisa obliged.

I leaned back, let out a sigh. “Okay, we have no secrets from you. So you know why we came down here.”

“Yes. Okuu kidnapped your friends.”

I held up my hands, exasperated. “Who’s Okuu? Please, I can’t see into your head.”

“Y- yes, sorry. I sometimes lose track of who knows what.”

Satori grabbed a wooden spoon off the side of the stove, took the lid off the pot and stirred its contents. A spicy, savory smell wafted through the kitchen.

“You saw my family on Chireiden’s façade,” she said. “Myself and my younger sister, and our two pets. You’ll notice that only two of us greeted you into our home. The other two are up above.”

“Above?” I said. “Like, on the surface? In Gensokyo?”

“No, deeper in the earth. Your perception of direction is incorrect. When Ran lowered you into the pit at the surface, you passed by a reversal of gravity. Her rope could not withstand that change, so it snapped, dropping you in. That’s why you saw no hole in the ceiling, in the chamber where Kisume found you. The entrance was below you, down through the pool.”

My mouth hung open. “What? We’re standing on our heads down here? So all the time we were walking uphill—”

“You’ve been going deeper underground, yes. Your friends are captive deeper still, above us from our perspective. The other half of my family is with them: Okuu, the raven you saw on the door, and Koishi, my younger sister.”

“You’re saying a bird dragged six youkai down from Gensokyo, including the most powerful woman in the country?”

Satori put the wooden spoon to her lips, checking the food’s temperature. It must not have been ready; she kept it on the stove.

“No. Okuu is not just a bird. In the same way that Mokou Fujiwara merged with Phoenix, so too has Okuu taken a god into herself. You nearly heard Yukari speak its name: Yatagarasu, the three-legged crow of the sun.”

I put a hand over my mouth. Marisa was too stunned to keep petting Orin, despite a meow! of protest.

“She knew it was a bad idea,” Satori went on. “Both Orin and I warned her against it, but she ignored us. It was a desperate move to get power, so she could save the one she loved the most... the one we all love the most.”

“Waits, waits,” said Marisa. “So bird-girls eats sunny crow god, that means she can drag downs Yukaris and others?”

“Certainly. Recall that your battle with Mokou ended because your allies crowded her and beat her until Phoenix emerged. Mokou stood there and took the punishment, but if she had chosen to flee, Yukari couldn’t have stopped her. When Phoenix appeared wholly, you were instantly disabled. All of you combined were nothing to a god’s might, fully present in its own form.”

The pot’s contents had warmed to Satori’s liking. She snapped her fingers again, which killed the flame inside the stove. She grabbed four bowls out of a cupboard, then scooped something that looked like stew into them with a fresh spatula.

“Yatagarasu is Phoenix’s peer,” she said. “They are the pyroavian deities; the former of the East, the latter of the West.”

“But why?” I said. “Why did Okuu do all of this?”

Satori set one dish before each of us. Orin started on hers immediately, eating like any cat out of the family’s pet bowl. Satori found three spoons for the rest of us, then sat at the table.

“That’s the crux of my sad tale,” she said. “My sister Koishi has a third eye, like mine. She too could see the hearts and minds of any she met. This is necessary for we satori to serve our role in the death path below Gensokyo. When the remains of perished youkai, and sometimes even mundane animals, come down our way, we need a way to understand them that doesn’t involve speech. Many of the creatures from your homeland have no command of language.”

“So that means you’re the Yuyuko of the underworld,” I said. “Providing a place of respite for the recently deceased of Gensokyo.”

“You could say so.” Satori blew on a spoonful of her stew, took a bite. “It can be difficult work. When Koishi or I meet a slain cow, or a chicken, or a lesser youkai, we see all the pain they knew in life. Just like humans, they suffer trauma. They have hurtful memories. We satori feel this ourselves when we see it.”

I picked up my spoon and poked at the dish in front of me. It smelled good, but I couldn’t identify the ingredients. One mouthful had my body aching to pound down the whole bowl. I forced myself to eat at a normal pace.

“So far, I’ve endured,” said Satori. “So long as I have time to rest between visits, I can cope with the mental strain. My sister... didn’t. She failed to take care of herself, and took visitor after visitor. I wanted to alternate duty with her, so we would both have the time we needed to recuperate, but she pulled more than her weight. She insisted it was the right thing to do.”

Satori paused. Even without mind-reading powers, I could tell this was a tough topic. She took a moment to collect herself.

“It broke her. In a fit of despair, she ordered Okuu to seal her third eye shut. Okuu used the power of Yatagarasu to do as she asked, and it worked. Koishi lost her ability to see into others... and she lost much more besides. She lost herself. None of us knew how critical the third eye was to satori. Closing it also shuts one’s own heart and mind. She didn’t die, but she wasn’t her old self. She spent days wandering the halls of Chireiden, saying nothing, staring into nothing. She wouldn’t sleep unless we put her to bed. She wouldn’t eat unless we put food to her mouth.”

“That’s horrifying,” I said.

Satori sat back in her chair, crossed her arms. “With my third eye, I could see that my sister was no longer in that body. Looking at her felt no different than staring at a wall. Okuu and I researched how we might restore her, perhaps using Yatagarasu’s power again. It was slow work – not only because I had to handle all the dead coming down from Gensokyo myself, but also because we were cautious. We had to find a solution that would do no worse harm to Koishi.”

“Sounds like didn’t finds fixes,” said Marisa, in between bites of stew.

“We might have, if we had more time. I should’ve kept her locked in her room. A few days ago, she disappeared, nowhere to be found in Chireiden. The front door was never opened, so there was only one place she could have gone.” Satori pointed a finger to the ceiling. “To the Grand Uphill’s terminus: the Blazing Sky.”

My eyebrows went up. “And what could that possibly mean while underground?”

“Finish eating, and you can see for yourself.”

---

I did finish eating, pushed myself back from the table.

“That was delicious,” I said. “I appreciate the meal and I don’t want to seem rude, but what did I just eat?”

Satori stood up, gathered the bowls. “Nothing posh. Just tofu and vegetables.”

“Wh- really? There was no meat in that?”

“No. We don’t eat meat in Chireiden.”

“What about kittys?” said Marisa, giving Orin a final pet. “Cats gotta have meats.”

“Orin isn’t a cat.” Satori dumped the dishes into a sink. “Now, we should go. Okuu and your friends await us.”

Marisa and I got up, Orin hopped off the table, and we followed Satori out of the kitchen. Orin walked along with us this time, instead of asking to be carried.

Satori let Marisa and I take a quick stop in a washroom. The river from outside must get routed through different rooms in the Palace, plumbing carved from stone. There was a grated tub where hot water constantly flowed in and out, and a separate pot that served toilet needs. I felt gross, nasty and covered with grime, so I wanted to take a bath. I couldn’t afford to spend the time.

Satori and Orin rejoined us, then took us down a long hall. There were no branches with other hallways, no doors to rooms. This was a tunnel with the same architecture and decorations, but it felt like we were leaving the main body of the Palace behind.

“We soon found Koishi after she went missing,” said Satori. “She was where we expected, at the Blazing Sky. I don’t know what drew her there, but I have a suspicion. The Sky is the final stage of the Grand Uphill, where life energies of nonhumans rejoin the essence of our world. Koishi must have been so hopeless that....”

Her voice trailed off. I swallowed the last of the water in my flask, and I finished her thought.

“She went there to die,” I said.

Satori was silent, but nodded.

“But didn’t dies,” said Marisa. “Still alives, otherwise bird-girls wouldn’t be down theres.”

“Yes. I thank whatever gods that Koishi still lives. If we can rescue her, there’s hope that we can re-open her third eye. Okuu is trying to save her now, though not in a way I approved of.”

Orin meowed. She kept trotting along beside us, her paws silent on the stone floor.

“How did Koishi survive?” I said. “I’m imagining that a sky full of fire would roast anything that got too close.”

“We thought the same, but something else was in the Sky. It wasn’t human, wasn’t dead, but it’s trapped in the flames by a ward exceeding anything I can design. It seems to have been stuck there for many human lifetimes. My third eye caught a glimpse of it just once.” Satori shivered, took a breath. “No words I can muster do it justice.”

“Was it another god?” I said.

“I... I don’t know. If it is a god, then it’s wholly different to Yatagarasu or Phoenix: lesser in power, but far exceeding either in malice. Never before have I seen into a heart so sadistic, so focused on destruction and suffering. Mokou Fujiwara was mad from immortality; even she had known love and empathy early in her life. The same can’t be said for this thing that I witnessed. Therein was never a speck of goodness, nor the potential for it.”

“That evil thing caught your sister, didn’t it?” I said.

“Yes.” Satori’s answer was barely more than a breath. “It holds her now. After laying my third eye upon it, I wanted to flee in terror. For my sister’s sake I tried to hear its intentions. Its mind shouted demands at me: ‘Free me! Loose me upon Gensokyo like locusts on the fields, and I will release your sister alive.’”

“That must be why Okuu is down there,” I said. “She’s trying to break the ward to free Koishi, but you didn’t want her to?”

“Of course not.” Satori’s third eye gave me a narrowed gaze. “Losing my sister would break my heart forever, but my conscience couldn’t trade her life for all of Gensokyo. Before meeting you, I didn’t know how strong Yukari is. She might prevail against this foul creature, but many lives would end prematurely even so. Your own homes, at the Shrine and in the Forest, would certainly burn.”

“So, magician’s gotta asks,” said Marisa. “Gots the names of gods like Phoenix and Yata-waga-whatevers. What’s names of bad thing keeping sister trappeds?”

Satori’s third eye turned to Marisa. “After hearing its ransom demand, I yelled back at it: Who or what are you? It thought a word that has haunted me in the nights since: Nue.”

---

Satori’s voice fell to silence, but left an echo in my ears. She pronounced that name the way a speaker of the modern language would, but it was an old language word. It might have been the name of some ancient creature or place. I wasn’t sure.

We neared the end of the hallway-tunnel. The walls narrowed ahead of us, leading to a passage only as wide as a door. I could see into a cylindrical chamber, which would have been large enough for six people if not for the wooden wheelbarrow sitting to one side. Satori led us in, single file.

“Orin likes to call this the hellevator,” said Satori, once we were all inside.

A stone panel slid shut over the entrance, closing us all in. The chamber was lit with a single low spark-torch on the ceiling, and the air was too warm for my liking. I waved a hand at my face, fanning myself.

“Your cat nicknames things?” I said.

As if in response to that, a new light appeared beside us. Orin jumped up and disappeared into a flaming blue swirl, like ghostly fire. This shape suddenly grew, causing a snap! to echo around the chamber. Stretching as if waking from a good night’s sleep, a new form grew from the fire and set foot on the floor.

“She told ya,” said this new person, “I ain’t a cat!”

“Uhh,” I said, sounding as dumb as I felt. “So you can take human form... Orin?”

Marisa’s face was bright red, and not from the heat of the chamber. Back in the kitchen, she had been petting someone who could appear as a woman.

In this form, Orin stands at my height. She’s taller if you count the black feline ears sticking up from the top of her head. Her hair is bright red, tied into pigtails with black ribbons, and her eyes share the color. She wore a simple black dress embroidered with a flowery pattern, and the dress must have had a hole in the back. Her two tails were still here, now longer to match her human size.

“The full name’s Rin Kaenbyou,” she said, “but don’t call me that. Much prefer Orin.”

“It’s nice to meet the real you, Orin,” I said.

“Nope! This ain’t the real me.” She stepped to Satori’s side and took hold of the wheelbarrow’s handles. “Cat form is the real me, but I can’t do my job on four paws.”

Satori snapped her fingers, which started the hellevator moving. I felt heavier, telling me that were going up. We soon saw that the cylindrical wall wasn’t uniform stone all the way around. Blurry red lights showed through parts of the wall then disappeared, appeared again and disappeared, as if giving milestones to our ascent.

“So this gonna take us into fire-skies?” said Marisa.

“Not into it,” said Satori. “This lift deposits at the interior surface of the world. The heat there is intense, far greater than anything you know. Try to imagine twentyfold the temperature of a summer afternoon. We can survive there only by use of a thermoward spell, which I’ll apply now. Hold still, please.”

Satori held out a hand and put her thumb to my forehead. There she rubbed out a shape, which reminded me of a Western priest giving religious benediction to a churchgoer. It felt like she had traced a 火shape onto my brow.

As she pulled back her hand, I looked down at myself. My body and clothing was covered in a dim pink light. It was invisible unless I moved one part in relation to the rest; if I raised an arm, the light around my arm, shoulder and part of my chest showed clearly. It faded again when I held still.

More importantly, I felt better with Satori’s spell on me. The stuffy-warm air of the hellevator no longer made me sweat. It felt more like I was outdoors on a chill spring morning, which I relished.

“Thank you,” I said. “That’s a lot better.”

Satori did the same thumb-to-forehead cast for Marisa, giving her a barely-there pink barrier of her own.

“Phews!” said Marisa. “What Reimus saids.”

Satori cast the same spell on herself and Orin, and spoke to us as she did.

“You both still want to know, why did Okuu kidnap your youkai friends?”

“I was hoping we’d get to that,” I said.

“This is our last chance.” Satori faced us again, hands folded before her waist. “Okuu hopes that each of them will increase her chance of success in some way. Yukari, youkai of the Boundary, has unparalleled magical control out of anyone Okuu could capture. That helps her wield the tremendous natural energies needed to break the ward on Koishi and her captor.”

“What about Alices?” said Marisa. “She’s just a doll-girls.”

“Alice is a practiced automancer,” said Satori. “She excels at using magic to control physical matter, both with conscious control and via pre-built instructions. This improves Okuu’s ability to operate the machines needed to keep the others captive.”

“Machines?” I said. “Is that where Suika comes in? Giving Okuu strength to move big hunks of metal or something?”

Satori shook her head. “Okuu is strong enough to put a fist clean through any of us. Suika, being an oni, gives Okuu’s ritual immaterial color. It lets her watch for extraphysical activity from either Koishi or her captor.”

“Patchey and others?” said Marisa.

“Patchouli is an elementalist, skilled in all of the ancient-Eastern elements, water and fire most importantly. Okuu needs her to keep the ritual’s workspace from disintegrating. The kappa whom you had not met before today, Nitori Kawashiro, is a potent aquamancer. Okuu forces her and Patchouli together to keep the machinery cool, both against the environment and the equipment’s own operating temperature.”

“Then there was that flying lady,” I said. “I’m guessing she contributes wind power?”

“Yes. Aya Shameimaru is her name, a crow tengu. Her control of air improves the cooling further. With all six of these youkai, Okuu believes she has everything needed to crack the ward, given enough time. It’s been a work of trial and error, attempting different rituals, iterative variations on the same rituals. She will succeed, though we can’t know when.”

“And if that happens,” said Orin, “it’s all over. Okuu can get herself and Koishi out of there alive, but she won’t care about your friends. They’ll be more than toast.”

“Would Yukari survive?” I said. “She’s immortal as long as the Boundary exists.”

“No one shy of godhood knows,” said Satori. “In fact, even a god might make an educated guess. What we do know is that, if the rupturing ward ends Yukari’s life, the consequences would be far worse than you could guess.”

I shook my head at her. “Like what? Yukari dies, the Boundary disappears, Gensokyo blows up?”

“Worse. The Boundary is Gensokyo’s defining feature as a sealed land. It separates your home country from the rest of the world. Imagine that the Boundary falls, and a landmass of Gensokyo’s size instantly reappears outside.”

Marisa and I were silent. I didn’t want to hear more.

“Calling the damage catastrophic would be a fractional understatement,” said Satori. “Everything in Gensokyo would die. Everything in the outworlder island nation would die. Nearby lands would be ravaged by tsunami and earthquakes, the likes of which have not happened for eons. Billions would perish. Simply put: if Yukari dies, a quarter of the world goes with her.”