Waters Under Earth

A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum - harnums@hotmail.com

All Ranma characters are the property of Rumiko Takahashi, first
published by Shogakukan in Japan and brought over to North
America by Viz Communications.

Commentary, public or private, is welcomed.

Homepage at:  http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/9758

Chapter 33 : Songs of Life and Death [2 of 3]

     Tarou gave a broad shrug.  "What isn't?"
     
     To his surprise, she laughed softly.  A survivor, then, he
noted.  Despite the ragged appearance, she was still rather
pretty.  Cleaned up, she'd be even better.

     "Cave."
     
     In unison, they looked at Happosai.  His eyes were open, his
complexion pallid.  "Cave," he repeated.  "On the beach.  I saw
it when you called me, and now again.  Konatsu is in the caves
under this place."

     Ukyou frowned.  "Konatsu never said anything about..."
     
     "There are caves," Happosai said with surety.  "You and
Tarou go there."

     Tarou crossed his arms.  "And you?"
     
     Happosai wiped a hand across his receding hairline.  His
limp dark hair was damp and glistening with sweat.  "I'm staying
here.  There is a line of power like a pillar running from the
centre of this compound to deep below the earth.  The controller
of that power is at the top of it, and the focus is at the
bottom."

     "Hako," Ukyou murmured, "and Konatsu.  This is why she
needed him."

     "Doubtlessly so," Happosai said.  "I am going to disrupt the 
ceremony, and you two are going to rescue Konatsu.  Do you know 
how to get down to the beach?"

     Ukyou nodded.  "There's a natural walkway outside.  Come on,
Tarou."  She walked off without waiting to see if she was 
followed.

     "Pushy," Tarou said with a scowl, as he watched her turn the
corner.     
     
     "Yup," Happosai agreed.  "Cute, though."  His voice lost all
humour and became very quiet then.  "If anything happens to her,
I'm holding you responsible."
     
     "You would," Tarou said.  "Don't worry, old man.  I'll make
sure she's safe."  A pause.  "I want that new name, after all."

     "Wards broken," Happosai said, only half-speaking to Tarou.
"No guards.  I think there is something else at work here against
Kenzan."

     "We've got an ally, then?"
     
     "The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend,"
Happosai said.  "Be careful."

     Tarou nodded and left without further speech.  He caught up
with Ukyou at the door that passed between inside and outside.
"Wait up."

     "Don't stay behind when I tell you we're going, then," she
snapped back.  Tarou opened his mouth to retort something, but a
shake of her head cut him off.  "I'm sorry," she said, her voice
softening.  "It's been a hard last few days.  I'm glad to have
your help, Tarou."
        
     Tarou nodded in silent acquiescence.  The night sky was full 
of winking stars as they stepped out onto the carefully-manicured 
grass of the compound.  Murky shadows swarmed all about them at 
the bare edges of the light from the lamps atop the walls.

     In silence they walked off towards the sheer drop-off of the
cliffs that ended the confines of the compound.  As Ukyou had 
said, there was a long, stepped walkway seemingly worn naturally 
out of the jutting face.  Below, beach-sand glimmered with a 
faint pearly luminescence in the moonlight.  

     "How'd you get involved with Happosai, anyway?" Ukyou asked
as they began to pick their way carefully down the walkway
towards the beach.

     "He ruined my life," Tarou said.  He tried to make it 
flippant and uncaring, but it came out bitter and cold.

     They put their feet on the sands and began to walk around in
search of the cave Happosai had told them would be there.  Sand
shifted under Tarou's slippered feet with each step.  The grains
were white and exceptionally fine.  They were also, he noted,
covered in footprints.

     He pointed them out to Ukyou, and they followed them to the
gaping cave in the base of one hundred-foot high cliff.  An 
ill-sorted collection of stalactites hanging from the lip of the
mouth gave the impression of a fanged maw.  Beyond the first few
steps, the inside was pitch black.

     "We need light," Ukyou murmured.
     
     Silently, Tarou pointed to the electric lantern that rested
by a lava formation just beyond the range of the lapping 
white-capped waves.  

     Ukyou frowned.  "I don't like this."
     
     "The old man said he thinks there's some other force at work
here," Tarou said as he picked the lantern up by the thin metal
handle and found the switch that sent its small bulb flaring
brightly to life.  "Against Kenzan, but not necessarily on our
side."

     She nodded and peered warily at the cave.  "That's what I've
been thinking.  I wish I knew what was going on."

     Tarou shrugged pragmatically.  "I used to.  Now, I don't
think I could ever figure out the whole big picture of this.  I'm
not a god."

     A rueful grin, tinged with sadness, came onto Ukyou's face 
as they entered the cave.  The sandy floor changed after the 
first dozen feet into a mix of earth and sand, then changed as 
they went deeper into the darkness into rough stone. "What we 
don't know, though, can certainly hurt us."  

     They reached a forked junction.  "So why don't you tell me 
how you ended up here?"
     
     "Long story," Ukyou said with a sigh.  "Long story."
     
     Tarou chuckled softly.  "I've heard that one before." But he  
did not press, and rather looked from one passageway to another.  
"Which one?"

     Ukyou cocked her head to one side, as if listening to
something.  "Left," she said at last, and Tarou saw then the
footprints in the dust upon the cave floor.  The lantern bobbed 
in his hand as they took the left-hand path.  A few rough 
crystals of quartz glistened in the scabrous dark stone of the
tunnels, and an oppressive weight of darkness and age seemed to
press about their thin circle of light.  
     
     "Happosai says the focus of power is underneath the central
building of the compound," Ukyou said.  "So this should be the
right way."  Now the cramped tunnels had changed from a natural
appearance to rough-carven, the stone floor from rock-strewn to
simply uneven and dusty.  A low sound like the wind began to make 
itself heard, and the occasional linger of something like a voice 
drifted by them as they walked, following the footprints in the 
dust.

**********

     Heart thudding in his chest, Happosai ascended the narrow
flight of stairs to the third floor of the central building.
The raw power that was steadily rising was oppressive as desert 
heat.  It made him feel as if he walked through a thickness in
the air, though his pace was as quick as usual.

     Two double doors stood at the top of the stairs.  Wooden and
thickly-banded with iron, they seemed to swim and blur before his
eyes.  Power clung thick to them, but beyond them would be even
worse.  There would be wards, of course.  Automatically, he 
reached out and searched for them with his own ki, and almost
scoffed.  They were strong, but poorly-constructed, as if done in
haste.  He searched, found the necessary thread, and plucked it
once.  The wards unravelled in seconds.

     When he pushed on one door to open it, he found it barred.
A tight grin came onto his face as he raised his hand.  The 
aura-burst smashed both doors into flinders, and he strode
through as the cloud of dust from the destruction settled to the
floor.  An impressive entrance, he thought with satisfaction.

     The third story, it appeared, was simply a huge training
hall.  The floor was made of long and evenly-cut boards of wood,
and wooden barriers and pillars of various heights were
scattered haphazardly around - he presumed they were for training
in climbing and stealth, essentials of the ninja arts.  Overhead, 
the inner section of the peaked roof had not been divided from 
the third floor by a ceiling, and a maze of beams gradually faded 
into shadow as the light from the track lighting on the walls 
became too diffuse to reach that high.

     There was a naked woman seated in the lotus position in the
middle of the training hall.  On either side of her, coals glowed
and smoked in iron braziers.

     Happosai blinked, fighting a century of ingrained lust.  The
power in the air was stifling - he felt as if he could not 
breathe.  The woman smoothly unfolded her legs and rose to her
feet, and he saw that beneath the sheen of sweat her body was
livid with crossroads of scar tissue.  

     She was beautiful, and so terrible, and he ached with
longing for her.  Eyes met his - dark, so dark.  Her hair
glistened, bone-white and highlighted with the glow from the
braziers.  The flow of the power in the room changed - without
the woman concentrating any longer, it maintained itself steadily
but did not grow.

     "Come to me," she whispered, and beckoned with a slim hand.
Without a conscious effort on his part, his legs shuffled 
forward.  The shape and proportions of her body were physically 
perfect, almost unnaturally so, and the maps of all her wounds 
were made for his fingers to trace.

     Had he been what he was only weeks earlier, he would have 
died then and there.  But youth had changed him, if only a 
little.  Yet it was enough - enough to see the glint of metal in
her hands as she came to him with her arms wide.  Enough to let
him shake off the trance and strike out, though the part of him
that longed to press his lips against those pale white lines 
wept, with a blow that would have destroyed her.  It did not 
land - the woman leapt sideways at the last moment, bounced off 
the top of a tall block of wood with a climbing ladder attached, 
and disappeared into the rafters overhead.

     Happosai shook his head.  The daze slowly left him, and he
was astonished at his own stupidity.  Enemy first, woman second,
he told himself.

     "Oldyoung man," a voice hissed from above.  He could not
pinpoint the location, for it seemed to come from everywhere.  
"You come here alone and challenge I, fool?"

     "I've come to stop this," he replied, drawing on his ki but
holding it within.  He could form his aura constructs in the 
blink of an eye if he was prepared.

     The voice overhead laughed.  "Oldyoung man, you are a 
greater fool than I thought.  There is no stopping I.  It is
finished already."  There came a sound like cloth shifting, as if
someone were pulling on a new set of clothes, and now he could 
hear that the voice came from directly overhead.  "I am Hako of 
Kenzan.  I do not know how you have gotten this far, but you will 
die here."  

     There was something wrong here, but Happosai could not think
of that for more than a moment; because now there was a blur of
crimson exploding from the rafters, and he could only ready 
himself for the coming battle.

**********

     "What is this place?"

     Tarou slowly turned in a circle, casting the light of the
lamp around the narrow chamber.  Perhaps twenty wide niches 
lined the walls of the long, smooth-floored passage.  He guessed
half of those held small rectangular boxes of iron, wrapped in 
chains and padlocked.  All but one of them were rusted to some 
degree, the ones closest to where they'd entered so badly that 
little of the original metal of chains or box could be seen.  "I 
don't know."  He frowned; there was a bad feeling to the place.  
"A burial chamber of some sort, I think."

     Ukyou shuddered.  A gust of cold wind came down from the 
passage ahead of them, and toyed with the tattered remains of the
kimono for a moment before disappearing.  "Figures they'd have
something like this under here."
     
     Shuffle.  Clump.
     
     Tarou's head jerked up to peer into the blackness that lay
beyond the radius of the light.  Shuffle, clump, again.  

     Ukyou pushed a leg back through the footprint-strewn dust
and brought her spatula up in a guard position.  Shuffle, clump.
Keeping his eyes on the passage from which the sounds came, Tarou
put the lantern in an empty niche and let himself flow into a
loose and easy stance.

     Shuffle.  Clump.
     
     "The boy is correct," someone called from just within the
darkness.  "Here is where what remains of the dead who were the 
heart of Kenzan lie."  The voice was soft and whispery, like 
fingers running through dry leaves, but it carried.

     Ukyou's eyes narrowed.  "Nenreiko," she said in a low voice.
     
     A plump woman in pale grey robes limped into the penumbra 
between the murky shadows and the edge of the light.  Her face
was bloody, yet serene and still.  "Ukyou."
     
     Tarou did not wait for anything more.  Ukyou might delay, 
but the way she had said the woman's name indicated an enemy, and
you did not wait in the face of an enemy.

     It took him an eyeblink to cross the distance between them,
his fists raised and ready to block or deliver a blow strong
enough to disable the woman in grey.  As he came within range,
close enough to meet her eyes with his, all the strength flowed 
from his body in an instant.  His legs tottered, his arms 
dropped limply to his sides.  Barely, he heard Ukyou cry out a 
warning that had been too late the moment he had taken his first 
step.

     Nenreiko smiled almost benevolently, like a mother at a
beloved but trying child, and slapped him across the face.  The
blow looked gentle, but it lifted him off his feet and laid him 
out a dozen feet away from her.  

     Ukyou looked down at him.  Through the ringing in his head, 
he heard her voice.  "I said, she's a lot more dangerous than she
looks."

     Nenreiko laughed softly as Tarou staggered to his feet.  His
strength had come back nearly as fast as it had left him, but the
lingering sting of the blow made him feel as if she'd broken his 
jaw.  "Idiot children," she said.  "Fuhaiko may have betrayed 
Hako and I, but if she thought that you could stop us, she was 
mistaken."

     "Whose blood is that on your face, Nenreiko?" Ukyou asked
softly.

     Almost unconsciously, Nenreiko wiped at the sticky mess on
her face; the dark bangs of her hair were wet with it as well.  
"Both of ours, I think.  She turned her vermin on me and fled 
somewhere into these caverns.  I was hunting for her when I came
upon you."

     Ukyou's grip tightened on her weapon.  "Where's Konatsu?"
     
     Nenreiko took a limping step closer.  Tarou watched her
warily, not stupid enough to try another frontal assault.  "It is
already almost too late for your friend.  You will not save him. 
I will see to that."

     Visible tension showed on Ukyou's face.  Not the sign of
someone with much experience in these things, Tarou noted.  "If I
have to go through you--"

     "Then you won't," Nenreiko interrupted.  "That one is ten 
times the warrior you are, and he cannot even come close to me."  
A hand raised, she took another shuffling step towards them.  
"Without the box, you will never succeed anyway.  Only it will
free your friend."  Ukyou and Tarou unconsciously took a step 
back as she trudged closer.  "And I have that.  Fuhaiko took the
others, but the box is mine."  Closer now, and again they 
retreated away.  

     For Tarou, it was impossible not to notice the supreme aura
of confidence and power that surrounded the woman.  It was not
the power of the Art - something else.  The might of the
otherworldly, the same as what had been upon Galm or Helubor.  Or
the dragon, for that matter.  He did not know how to fight
something like this.  Even if he had cold water, the caverns were
too cramped to fight in his cursed form.

     "How appropriate that you will die in a sepulchre," Nenreiko
said.  Tarou's thought raced.  He had gone weak perhaps a foot
before her.  The weakening had to be a conscious effort; he
remembered her eyes locking with his.

     "Get ready to back me up if you can," he murmured under his
breath to Ukyou.  Without waiting for a response, he darted
forward again.  At the last second, he spun to the right and
around Nenreiko's side.  A faint tingle coursed through his body, 
but that was all.  Pivoting on the ball of one foot with balletic
grace before she could turn, he side-kicked her below the short
ribs with the point of his foot.  Done right, it was a killing
blow, but he must not have done it right somehow, because 
Nenreiko simply let out a high-pitched shriek of pain and turned
with remarkable speed to look at him.

     Immediately, he felt his limbs grow heavy as stone.  It took
effort not to collapse on the spot.  With the last physical
strength that remained in the face of that terrible, humiliating
weakness, he threw himself backwards.  The return of vitality was
shockingly quick, and he nearly stumbled and fell.

     Weapon raised high, Ukyou loomed behind Nenreiko.  The flat
of the spatula rang like a bell as it crashed down on the back of
Nenreiko's head.  To Tarou's astonishment, the woman did not 
fall.  She reeled, stunned for a moment.  Ukyou pulled back for
another blow.  Nenreiko grabbed her wrist in a grip that looked
gentle, and Ukyou screamed and convulsed as if burned by fire.

     Tarou growled, deep and low and almost inaudible, and 
sprang.  Nenreiko flung Ukyou aside as he hit her in the kidneys.
Ukyou hit the wall with a cry.  Nenreiko dug her fingers into her
shoulders and needles beyond counting sunk deep into every inch
of his flesh.  He raged against the weakness he knew would come, 
denied it by sheer force of will, and smashed both his cupped 
palms into her jaw.  Teeth clicked together and he heard Nenreiko 
scream again.  A trickle of blood ran from her mouth.  Grey silk
was smooth and slippery under his fingers as he grabbed her by 
the collar of her robe and slammed her back against the wall.
Once, twice, again.

     "You're going to kill her!"
     
     Nenreiko slipped from his hands and to the floor.  He looked
back at Ukyou.  "So?"

     "You aren't any better than her if you do," Ukyou said
fiercely.  "She's unconscious.  That's enough."

     She was Ranma's fiancee once, Tarou remembered.  What would 
she think if he told her now what had become of her fiancee, what 
he had done?  That thought, of what the stupid arrogant 
womanizing femboy had become, gave him something that he might 
have called sadness.  No.  It was sadness.  He admitted that, and 
a little more of the great hate inside him died.

     "You're right," he said softly.  "It is enough.  Let's find
your friend."

     "Oh, gross," Ukyou said.  
     
     Tarou looked down and blinked.  "So that's why she limped."
     
     Nenreiko's left leg, revealed now by the disarray of the 
long skirts of her robe, appeared to be made out of solid black 
stone.  Tarou reached down and rapped it with his knuckles.  Hard 
and solid, it had a strange oily feeling to it.  

     Ukyou grimaced.  "Leave it alone.  I have to check her
pockets for the box."

     "Box?"
     
     Disgust still showing on her face, Ukyou knelt and began to 
search through the unconscious woman's pockets.  After a few
seconds, she smiled triumphantly and pulled forth a tiny box of
wood, the lid traced with patterns in ivory and jade and clasped 
with silver.  "And the third object is recovered."

     "And now the heroine can complete her journey and rescue her
captured prince," a pleasant and cultured voice said from one of
the niches.  Tarou and Ukyou turned.  A large rat regarded them
with unnaturally yellow eyes from a perch on the lip of one 
niche.  Its mouth did not move, but the voice spoke quite clearly 
inside their heads.  "You have served my purposes adequately, 
little girl.  Go and reclaim your friend.  I will deal with 
Nenreiko once you are gone."

     "Kill her, you mean," Ukyou said softly.  "That is what you
mean, isn't it Fuhaiko?"     
     
     "Perhaps," replied the voice.  "You could stay here and
defend the life of a woman who would gladly kill you slowly and
painfully, or you can go and rescue your innocent friend before
Hako completes her ceremony and he cannot be saved."  As much as 
a rat could, this one grinned.
     
     Tarou saw to his relief that Ukyou didn't look at all torn.
She simply picked up her ridiculous weapon from where it had
fallen to the ground and began to walk away.  With a sigh, Tarou
grabbed the lamp from the niche, keeping his eyes on the rat at
all times.

     "Little worm says hello."
     
     He glared at the rat.  "Piss off, rodent."
     
     It leapt from the niche and skittered away into the 
darkness.  Perplexed and trying to figure out what it could have
meant, he followed Ukyou out of the sepulchre and deeper into the
tunnels.

**********

     Ratcrowsnakewormmaggot ran through the tunnels.  It could 
see in the dark as easily as if it were brightest day.  Mistress
had made it that way.  It loved Mistress and would serve her
until it died.  

     Mistress was waiting on the beach.  She stood away from the
water.  Mistress didn't like the water.  Mistress thought it was
too clean.

     Little Worm stood nearby.  It didn't like Little Worm.  It
was jealous of Little Worm.  Little Worm pretended to serve 
Mistress, but didn't love her like Ratcrowsnakewormmaggot did.
It would have killed Little Worm, but Mistress didn't want it to.

     Mistress reached out her hand and Ratcrowsnakewormmaggot
leapslithercrawled up her arm and perchclung to her thin
shoulder.     

     "Kuronuma, what an obedient servant you are," Mistress said.
Kuronuma was the name Mistress called it, but it always thought 
of itself as Ratcrowsnakewormmaggot.  "If only you were this 
loyal, Little Worm."  Mistress laughed.

     "I am much smarter, Carrion-Mistress," said Little Worm.  He
stirred his wings in the agitated way he had.  "Stupid things are
always the most loyal."  Ratcrowsnakewormmaggot wished it could 
kill Little Worm more than ever then.

     After the waves had lapped against the beach nearly one
hundred times, Dust Mother came out of the cave.  Dust Mother
was Ratcrowsnakewormmaggot's friend and Mistress's friend too.

     Mistress said, "You underestimated the boy."  Little Worm 
looked as if he wanted to say something, but didn't.  Mistress 
continued.  "You should have listened to Little Worm.  He was 
right."

     Dust Mother scowled.  "Right or wrong, it is done.  She has
the box again."

     Mistress laughed.  Ratcrowsnakewormmaggot tried to laugh
with her, but the little part of it that was human didn't know
how to laugh anymore.

**********

     Hako landed on the toes of one foot before him.  Slashed, 
spun away.  A returning blow rent the floorboards where she had 
been.  In a vaguely-human shape three times the height of a man, 
lucent red fires writhed and flickered around Happosai as he let 
the power of his ki come forth as solidified battle-aura.

     A dozen, two dozen flickers of steel filled the air between
them.  Happosai's arms blurred as he knocked the knives aside 
with the shroud of his ki.  They clattered and bounced across the
floor between them.

     In a series of bounding leaps almost too quick to follow, 
Hako ricocheted off the walls and floor of the dojo.  Blades 
screamed through the air.  They studded the wood of the training 
hall with hard sounds of impact as Happosai dodged.

     A serpentine bolt of power flew from his hand.  The long
tube-shaped bulbs of the lights on the walls exploded as Hako
twisted in the midst of one leap and bypassed it by a hair's
breadth.  Sparks flew like snowflakes, and shadows deepened
subtly.

     Oh, but she was fast.  As fast as he was at the very least,
no longer naked but clad in scarlet from head to toe.  And the
knives rained from her hands in glinting waves.  How she could
carry so many he did not know.

     In front of him again.  The weapon she wielded in her left
hand was a short ninja blade, honed to razor-fine sharpness.
She feinted, thrust for his stomach, stepped back as he launched
into a hail of counter blows that came close to touching her but
never did.  

     The sword became an edged blur in her hand, spinning in
deadly circles.  So intent was he on avoiding it that he almost
missed the glint of the knife she tried to slip into him with her
free hand.  It grazed his side, and left a long but shallow 
wound.  His hand thrust down and closed around her wrist like a 
vice; her fingers opened unconsciously and her shorter blade 
dropped to the floor.  Pulled off-balance, Hako's decapitating 
sword blow whipped over his ducked head.  

     She twisted in his grip.  His aura tried to close about her
like a fist about an insect, but she slid free and nearly took 
his left leg off at the knee with her sword.  A return side chop 
came close to breaking her elbow, but missed as she sidestepped.

     The stunningly fast snap-kick meant to break his neck drove
him to the defensive for a moment, and Hako dived away in a roll
from the close quarters and came up on one knee.  Knives flew
once, as distraction more than anything else, and then she was up
into the rafters again.

     Aura burned as it came back full force.  Beams cracked and
fell in the shadowy tangle above the dojo floor, as Happosai
launched a half-dozen bolts of raw ki that ripped through wood as
if through paper.  The floor shook with the impact as hundreds of
pounds of square-cut timber fell from above and crashed down upon
it.  Out of the corner of his eye, Happosai saw the braziers 
topple and fall, spraying red-hot coals across the floor.

     "Fool," Hako called from above.  "This is my home!  Do you
really think you can challenge me here?"  She laughed, cold and
cruel.  "Don't you understand?  It's already over!"  Her voice 
had shifted subtly, and again become unlocatable.  "The 
transition is ready.  Identity grows weaker.  Soon it will be
time for I to go."

     But now Happosai had moved, and could see the dim figure
crouched on her knees on a beam a hundred feet above his head.
Hako trembled as she talked, and the almost spasmodic movements
of her mouth did not seem to match up to the words she spoke.  As
he watched, she clutched at her stomach and looked as if she were
trying to cough up some obstruction in her throat.

     "Oldyoung man," the voice said.  "Do you see now?  Do you
understand?"     
     
     Happosai said nothing.  He simply raised an arm sheathed in
a gauntlet of shimmering power.  As the blast cracked the beam in 
half where Hako knelt, he heard that the screams came both from 
her and from somewhere else.

**********

     The lantern somehow seemed to have grown dimmer as they 
walked.  Tarou judged that they were almost directly under the
central building of the compound now, advancing now a high and
narrow passage.  Next to him, Ukyou looked as if she wanted to
collapse.  The box was clutched to her chest with one hand as
tightly as if she held a child, and her weapon left a trail in
the dust and occasionally grated irritatingly on the stone as it
dragged from her listless grip; once in a while, her lips moved
as if she were speaking, but no words that he could hear came 
forth.  A lot of the life had seemed to go out of her since the 
fight with Nenreiko.  Tarou himself didn't feel very well, and 
had started to wonder if there was some sort of lingering 
after-effect from the seeming temporary weakness that Nenreiko 
had inflicted on them.

     Thus, when the first of the smell began to hit him, it took
effort not to vomit.  Blood.  Sounds of gagging came from Ukyou
as she hunched over.

     "What is that?" she gasped as she straightened.  
     
     Tarou wished he knew.  "I have no idea."
     
     Ukyou's eyes widened and a deep fear crept onto her face.
"Konatsu."  She began to run, no weakness in her any more.  
Tarou kept up, the lantern swinging in his hand and making the
shadows spin wildly all about them.  The charnel odour grew only 
worse as they went, and once the passageway widened up and opened 
into the large square chamber, they saw why.

     The construction of the chamber was that of a perfect cube.  
Walls met floor and ceiling at precise ninety-degree angles.  The 
rock was black and oily and smooth, but was marred somewhat by 
the blood.  There was a lot of blood.  Tarou guessed at perhaps 
thirty bodies.  All women.  They wore red robes, and their 
throats had been cut.  From the knives still clutched in the 
hands of some, the wounds appeared to have been self-inflicted.

     They had died around the four tall iron pillars in the 
centre of the room.  The torch-light that lit the chamber turned 
the needle points of the pillars into glistening stars.  The 
blood had stopped unnaturally at the edge of the boundary formed 
by the pillars, leaving a diamond-shaped patch of smooth black 
clear amidst the red-soaked floor.
     
     A pretty dark-haired girl in the crimson uniform of a 
kunoichi lay on the floor in the centre of the pillars.  Arms 
held close to her sides, her chest slowly rose and fell as she
breathed the breath of sleep.  Flames of the torches tinted her
pale face in warm shades of gold.  

-Continued in section 3

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