10

For most people nowadays, who were born and lived their entire lives within the walls of a single city, Imihama was considered the northernmost point of human civilization, and many had little regard for what happened beyond that. To them, the northern prefectures like Iwate were largely uncharted territory beside famous spots like Manreiji Temple. In addition to the ordeals of crossing the Shellsand Sea, the Kusahime swamp, and the Orochi Forest trail, the prefecture of Shimobuki itself presented a significant obstacle.

It was formed over what was once called Fukushima, where a facility was established to conduct catalytic ice experiments with the aim of counteracting the Rust Wind. Only three days after starting up, the facility suffered a critical failure that blanketed the entire southern half of the land in unmelting ice and snow.

The surrounding prefectures left it well alone and didn’t even bother to set up checkpoints on its borders. In fact, there wasn’t even any sort of ruling government there in the first place. However, the place saw frequent blizzards even in the summer, and in a strange sort of irony, that seemed to keep the Rust Wind at bay. Thus, there were inhabitants there who sought to eke out a living amid the frozen land.

“Noo. Tiktok impoz. Sols, Nadoo.”

“Sols, nadoora?”

“Nadoo.”

A cart was stopped in the blizzard. At its front, a furry two-headed cow blithely licked the snow off its face with one of its dark-red tongues, while making a sort of brrr sound. In front of the cart, Milo was speaking with a trader in the Shimobuki language. At last he turned to Bisco, who was holding a stack of sols in his hand, and shrugged.

“He says he doesn’t take sols. He wants wine and canned food from before the Tokyo Disaster—and blankets and stuff.”

“Who does he think we are, junk traders? We ain’t got nothin’ like that.”

Then Bisco turned away, so Milo couldn’t see the respect in his eyes, and continued.

“But I didn’t know you could speak Shimobuki. Just sounds like bear growls to me.”

“Some Shimobuki people showed up at the clinic from time to time. I learned quite a bit just from listening to them speak.”

“Huh… That’s pretty cool.”

“Also, we learned some at school.”

“You just had to go and say that, didn’t you?!”

The merchant Milo was talking to was dressed head to toe in a chubby, rounded suit, and even his face was covered in a bowl, over which he wore a thick, furry cowskin hood. He resembled some kind of astronaut, and to the outside observer, there was something strangely cute about his appearance. What was not cute, however, was the tightfisted manner with which he conducted business.

“Crab, tik. Crab, meetik. Kat, yootok.”

“What? No!”

“Hey, what’s he saying?”

“He’s saying he wants…Actagawa. And he’ll give us his cart in return.”

“What a dick,” muttered Bisco. Frustrated by the lack of progress, he started to rummage around in Actagawa’s saddlebags. Then he took out several large loads of his precious giant eel jerky and dumped them on the floor at the merchant’s feet.

“Here’s all the meat we’ve hunted on our journey so far. All of it! If you won’t take this, then we ain’t got no more business with you.”

The merchant was completely unperturbed by Bisco’s bluster, but he set about examining the wares nonetheless. After a short while, he stood up and nodded.

“Yadoo,” he said, before turning to his cart and sifting through his wares.

“Really? Thank you!” exclaimed Milo.

“Save your thanks,” Bisco cautioned. “That was our last food. We’re gonna have to hunt more.”

After changing into their new bearskin cloaks, the group headed north. Bisco had never much cared for the cold and wasn’t planning on staying there too long. While he let Actagawa handle the walking, he peered at Kousuke’s map suspiciously.

“There should be a station here somewhere. It’s the Tobu–Shirakaba line, right? …Dammit, there’s nothin’ but snow everywhere…” Bisco narrowed his eyes, prodding the map with his finger. “We’ll save a couple days if we can get it workin’. Aren’t there any landmarks around?”

Bisco looked to his side to see Milo aiming a bow far out over the snowfield. He struck quite the gallant image, and his form wasn’t half bad. Far out in the distance, a single small rabbit hopped across the snow. As it stopped to examine the ground, there was a whistle of air as Milo released his arrow. It arced gently through the air…and hit the snow slightly off target.

“Heh-heh-heh! Close, Dr. Panda, but no cigar!” Bisco seemed amused and prodded Milo’s rib. “You’re focusin’ too much on the wind. Listen here, in a snowstorm like this, you gotta…”

Just as Bisco was about to launch into a lecture on the finer points of bowmanship, there was a soft burst as Milo’s arrow launched some sort of white cotton into the air. The material descended on the rabbit as it tried to make its escape, tangling it up until it fell to the ground, immobile.

“I used the mixing device to add some steelspider silk to the boomshrooms,” said Milo as Bisco looked on, dumbfounded. Then he burst into a smile. “You see, Bisco? I don’t have to hit my target for things to work out!”

“That doesn’t count!”

“Whaaat? Why not?!”

Milo had been a greenhorn when he first left Imihama, but the exceptional growth he had shown in the time since then surprised even Bisco. His skill with drugs and potions was to be expected, but he had also shown great ingenuity when the pair was attacked by steelspiders in the Orochi Forest. Milo successfully fought them off by using his medicine device to send an electric current through the spiderwebs. When they ran into a herd of killer dragonflies as big as a human, he stood side by side with Bisco without even flinching and shot the insects out of the sky.

The courage that Bisco was fostering in the young doctor, along with the genius and quick wit he already possessed, meant that Milo was very rapidly showing signs of becoming a top Mushroom Keeper.

…Hmm, well, it is an impressive mixture…, thought Bisco as he descended from his crab and walked over to where the rabbit, wrapped up in steelspider silk, wriggled helplessly on the ground. He grabbed it by the ears and hoisted it up. It was unexpectedly heavy, and looking down, Bisco saw something else hanging from his arm, half sticking out of the snow.

“Gnyaaagh!”

A familiar head of pink hair. It was the jellyfish from the Driftweed Plains. The small-statured merchant girl.

“Aaah! It’s her!”

A pair of amber eyes glared bitterly back at the two shocked boys. Her hair was frozen on end, and as she shivered, snow fell from it in clumps. One landed directly on the girl’s small nose, and she let out a great big sneeze.

“Oh no, she’s frozen solid! H-how did she end up buried under all this snow?!”

“Let me guess, she was running from a snow leopard and decided to hide under the snow. Their noses ain’t so great, ya see. Then the leopard happened to stick around for a while, and she never had the chance to leave.”

“B-Bisco! How long are you going to hold her upside down? Put her down— No, don’t shake her!”

As much as he wanted to be getting on his way, Bisco couldn’t just leave the girl to freeze to death in the snow. Reluctantly tucking the ice sculpture under his arm, he got back on Actagawa and set about looking for a cave or something where they could escape the blizzard and thaw her out.

“Grr… What the hell are we even doing? I swear, this girl must be cursed,” said Bisco.

“It must be fate,” said Milo. “Another ten minutes out there, and she’d have been in real trouble.”

In a shallow cave, Milo broke a few bonecoal heating pads and stuffed them into the girl’s clothing. The orange glow gently warmed her body back up until she was aware of her surroundings once more. Seeing Bisco standing in front of her, eyeing her closely, she gave a small “Hmph!” and turned away from him.

“…You two again? Your lives must be very boring if… Ah-choo! …If you have to keep meddling in mine.”

“You’re welcome, sunshine,” said Bisco. “It’d hardly kill ya to show some gratitude. We did just save your life, y’know.”

“How are you feeling?” Milo asked. “Here, this is firemead. Drink it slowly… There we go; that’ll warm you up… Hey, how did you manage to get here before us? We were going as fast as we could.”

Faced with Milo’s earnest gaze, the girl dropped her usual games and simply nodded far out over the fields. There, at the base of a pillar of black smoke, lay the burned-out wreckage of a military helicopter.

“I fixed up one of the choppers stuck to that hermit crab temple. Then I decided to head to Miyagi, but— Achoo!” The girl sneezed and sniffled again before continuing. “I ran into the antiaircraft guns at Shimobuki Garrison, and well, you can imagine what happened next. All my things went up in the blaze, too. Dang it; this is so lame.”

“Serves you right for rippin’ people off your whole life,” said Bisco. “What goes around comes around.”

“Well, what else was I supposed to do?” Her usually sly expression was nowhere to be found. Now her amber eyes glared right at Bisco with a fierce intensity. “I did what I could to survive. Yeah, I tricked people. I did things I’m not proud of, things you two boys couldn’t even imagine! I didn’t do all of that because I wanted to! I did it because I had no other choice…!”

Her voice shook. She was nothing like the coy troublemaker they had met before. Bisco lowered the comebacks he had at the ready and just watched the top of her pink head. Milo approached and silently awaited the girl’s next words.

“…But I’m fed up with all that. I don’t want to keep doing this. I just get tangled up in this web of lies that drags me down… It’s so lame! And I’ve had enough. You shouldn’t have bothered saving me. It would have been a fitting end.”

The small girl trembled in the cold of the cave. As Milo offered her his cloak, Bisco slowly approached…and touched the scalding tip of his bonecoal heater to the nape of her neck!

“Owwwww!” The girl leaped into the air, sending her braids flying. As Milo stood there in shock, Bisco hid behind him, and the jellyfish girl chased him around and around, yelling at him in anger.

“Are you trying to kill me, you idiot?! Is that any way to treat a lady?!”

“Heh, looks like you still got some life in ya.” Bisco laughed. “I thought you musta been possessed by somethin’ again, ’cause I remember how you clung to me screamin’ you didn’t wanna die not too long ago.”

Bisco’s words stunned the jellyfish girl, and she turned bright red remembering her pitiable state. Snatching the heater from Bisco’s palm, the short girl glared up at him with disgust.

“Hmph! I just wanted Panda Boy to look after me! You can get lost!”

This wounded Bisco, who reeled in surprise. Then Milo spoke up. “In that case,” he said, and he smiled at Bisco before walking over to Actagawa, unfastening one of his saddlebags, and bringing it before the girl.

“We don’t have a lot, either, but there’s food and cold-weather gear in here. If you take it south, there’s a trading post not far from here. You’ll be able to trade it for what you need there.”

The girl’s eyes went wide, and as she hurriedly searched for her purse, Milo smiled.

“We don’t need money, just simple human kindness! You told us that, remember?”

With all affairs thus settled, Milo turned to Bisco, who nodded, and walked out into the snow toward Actagawa. As he did, a scrap of old paper fell out of his pocket and onto the soft white snow.

“…Hold up, Akaboshi, ya dropped something!”

Bisco turned to see the jellyfish girl steadily making her way through the snow, and she stopped and picked up the snow-covered paper. She took one glance at it before stuffing it back in Bisco’s hand.

“That’s…a Shirakaba railroad map, ain’t it? You tryna take the trains north?”

“We were, yeah. But we ain’t got time to look for the station no more. I think we’re just gonna go by foot—”

“I know where it is.”

“…Huh?”

“You got snow in yer ears? I’m sayin’ I know where the station is!” The girl shyly averted her gaze as the two boys stared in shock. “And let me just tell ya, you won’t last five minutes out in this blizzard on a crab! …I got no choice, huh? I’d hate to see y’all die out here…” She twirled a braid in her finger. “I-if ya want, I can show ya the way… If y’all still trust me, that is…”

The girl led them about a kilometer away to a snow-covered road that, at first glance, was completely empty. Using Actagawa to break the thick ice that covered the ground, they came across a stone staircase stretching far down into the darkness below.

“This is Kitsunezaka,” she said. “Apparently, this used to be a popular location for traveling merchants, and they came here all the time.”

“So you ain’t never been yourself?” asked Bisco. “Didn’t your friends make loads of money here?”

“Who knows? I didn’t ask. Maybe we’ll find their skeletons down there.”

The two looked at her before heading into the darkness. Though the space underground was safe from the raging blizzard, the air still had a cold bite that chilled them to the bone. It was damp and humid down there and had a sort of grassy, mossy smell.

“It’s too dark for Actagawa. He’ll get scared,” said Milo.

“Hmm, we shouldn’t make too much light, but…”

From his pocket, Bisco took a bag containing a fine, yellow powder and put a little in his mouth, before tilting his head up toward the ceiling and exhaling. Soon, a bunch of small mushrooms appeared all along the roof of the cavern, emitting a soft, orange glow.

“Wow, it’s so pretty!” said Milo.

The light illuminated the station platform. The ground was smashed up in places, and yellowing timetables hung from crooked pillars, but on the whole, the place was in surprisingly good shape.

“These are glowshrooms. They won’t give off much light, though.”

Bisco repeated his actions a couple more times before spitting out the dust left in his mouth in disgust.

“Those spores stick to the walls,” Milo said. “Is it safe to put them in your mouth?”

“Don’t worry; there’s a trick to it. Remember who you’re dealing with; he—erk.”

Bisco suddenly started coughing violently, and several of the glowing mushrooms fell out of his mouth and onto the ground with a wet splat.

“They grew,” Milo observed.

“Let’s keep moving.”

“You didn’t do the trick, did you, Bisco?”

“Shaddap already! Are you comin’ or not?!”

As Milo smiled, he beckoned Actagawa down the stairs and onto the station platform. The jellyfish girl followed, carefully sticking by the crab’s side before jogging over to rejoin the other two.

“Whoa, they’re glowing…! You guys’s mushrooms can do anything!”

“Nah, not everything. This here’s the best I can do,” said Bisco, lowering his goggles. “All Mushroom Keepers have their own specialties. Like Jabi, for example. The Jizou mushroom is one of his masterpieces; that’s for sure.”

“Jizou mushroom? What kind of mushroom is that?”

“Well, it’s in the name. It grows into a huge Jizou statue. The stonework is just…incredible. And the facial expression is slightly different every time. It’s amazing; everyone loves it…”

“W-wow… But what do you use it for?”

“Huh?” Bisco was taken aback by the unexpected question. He thought it over before responding, as he listened for anyone else who might have been hiding down there in the subway.

“Well…you can pray to it at Obon and stuff… You can have your own portable statue; it’s pretty handy.”

Then Bisco stood up as if to stop any further questions and set off farther on, leaving Milo and the jellyfish girl behind.

“I can’t tell if these Mushroom Keepers are supposed to be smarter than us or stupider…,” she said.

“Ha-ha-ha! You’re right. I think going by Jabi and Bisco, it’s a little of both.”

“…Panda Boy, I’ve been thinking…,” said the jellyfish girl, looking down at the ground. “Akaboshi’s old man don’t got much time left, right? And your sister’s bound to die if the Rust catches up to her… So why d’ya do it? Why do you put yer life on the line for somebody else?”

“Why?” repeated Milo. He wasn’t quite prepared for that question and pondered it a little before answering.

“…Because I love her. And I think Bisco loves Jabi, too. That’s the first reason. And the second is…” He hesitated over the words, blushing slightly. “…because we’re idiots, I think! Both of us!”

Laughing, Milo took the girl’s hand and followed after Bisco, who was busy lighting the path ahead with his glowshrooms.

“You got that right,” said the girl. “Dumbest idiots I ever met…”

“…Wow! Bisco, look at all the trains!”

Following a vast railroad perhaps seven or eight rails wide, the group came at last to a veritable graveyard of trains. Some huge earthquake or other disaster had left the train cars lying in broken heaps or crashed into one another, like the giant toys of a petulant baby.

“Xinghao, Juntong, Zhenfeng… These are all Huabei Ironworks trains,” Milo muttered to himself as he read the markings on the sides. “They should be able to run on their own, if we can find one that still works…”

“Hey, Milo!” Bisco’s voice echoed through the vast tunnel. “This is the right track according to Kousuke’s map. You think this train could work?”

Milo ran over in the direction of the voice and found a drab freight train with relatively little damage sitting neatly on the tracks.

“Wow, this one might work! Let’s give it a try! Hmm… Let’s see… First, move the control stick into the following position… Like this? Then change the sign to read IN SERVICE. Insert three hundred yen into the slot and press the red button…”

“It ain’t cheap, is it? Oh well, guess I gotta…” Bisco fished into his pockets, then shot back, “Wait, yen? I ain’t got any yen! Who’s carryin’ old coins around?”

“Argh! Get out the way, you two! I can’t watch this anymore!”

The jellyfish girl hopped aboard the train, her bright-pink hair her most conspicuous feature in the gloom. Pushing the boys aside, she took a crowbar out of her pocket and bashed the lid of the fare box in with all her might. After removing the dented cover, she took a look inside.

“Oh dear. Pretty simple design. ‘If it works, it works’ kinda deal. Welp, that just makes things easier for me.”

“Wait, you know how old machines like this work? Are you really just a merchant?” asked Milo.

“I’m a merchant, yeah. Before that, though, I was a mechanic.”

The girl swiftly cut the wires inside the box, unrolled a length of black insulation tape with her teeth, and wrapped it around the new wiring. All the boys could do was stare at each other in amazement at her skillful and beautiful handiwork.

“You’re a real pro…!” marveled Bisco. “Did you work for a company or something?”

“…They worked me to the bone. But meh, the pay wasn’t bad. Then one day they dig up Tetsujin and ask me to work on it…”

“Tetsujin? You mean…the same Tetsujin that blew up Tokyo? That Tetsujin?”

The jellyfish girl simply nodded without turning away from her work.

“I guess so. Dunno if it was the real one or not, but they asked if I could get it workin’ again. Wonder if the supreme Matoba Ironworks had some prefecture or somethin’ they didn’t like the look of? It all seemed pretty sketchy to me, but they were dead set on it. Then, one by one, the Rust killed off all the workers, and I went from bein’ the lowest grease monkey to runnin’ the whole shebang. That was when I hightailed it outta there in one of them Escargot Planes… That’s a long time ago now, though.”

The girl finished her work and stretched, her face covered in soot. Then she tried once more to put the control stick into position, while giving the fare box a good kick.

Brrrrrrr!

The entire carriage shook and emitted a deep rumble as its stores of bonecoal fuel ignited.

“I-it worked! Hooray! Bisco!”

“Actagawa! Get over here! We’re gonna ride this thing all the way to Akita!”

Actagawa, who had been curiously poking at the strange, unfamiliar trains, jumped at his master’s voice and scuttled over. As the carriage steadily picked up speed, Actagawa leaped aboard, landing snugly in a large luggage rack. Milo slipped past Bisco, who looked very pleased, and grabbed on to the slender arm of the girl who was about to step off the train.

“…Hey. I want to thank you, but…I still don’t know your name,” he said as the girl looked back at him with wide eyes. “I’m Milo. Milo Nekoyanagi. The scary guy over there is Bisco Akaboshi. I think we’d both be done for if you hadn’t saved us. Would you tell us your name?”

“J-just call me Jellyfish. I don’t wanna tell ya my name; you’ll laugh at me…”

“No, we won’t! We have weird names, too, it’s okay!”

Powerless against Milo’s twinkling eyes, the jellyfish girl dipped her head in silence before looking up at him and replying, “It’s T… Tirol… Tirol Ochagama. N-nobody’s said my name in such a long time, b-but since ya wanted to know, Panda Boy… I mean, Milo…”

“Thanks, Tirol. You really saved our hides.” At Bisco’s words, Tirol gave a small start and turned toward him. “Seems like we’re bound by fate, so it’s best we know your name. That way, we know what to write on your tombstone when you kick the bucket.”

“As if! You guys’re gonna die way before me. And when I find yer bodies, I’m gonna bury them upside down!”

As Tirol jumped off onto the platform, Milo called out, “Tirol, we’ll meet again, I’m sure of it! We’ll be talking about you, wondering what our friend is getting up to! So stay safe, and we’ll catch up! Thank you, Tirol, for everything!”

“…Friend…?”

As she watched Milo and Bisco disappear into the distance, she took a single step forward, like a woman possessed, and shouted with a volume that surprised even herself.

“Akaboshiii! Milooo! Th…thank…!

“…Thank you…”

The two were already so far away that Tirol muttered her thanks only to herself, as if locking it deep away inside her memories. Then, at last, her amber eyes brimmed with brilliance once more, and she hoisted up her pack, gave one last look down the railroad, and hopped off the way she came like an eager young rabbit.

“Scorched shrike… I don’t think this is quite right. Dryworm, giant woodpecker… These are a little off, too.”

“Whatcha readin’? Is that what you bought off the Shimobuki trader?”

Milo was turning the pages of an old, beat-up tome. For light, he had a rather large glowshroom growing out of the carcass of the rabbit he caught earlier with his spiderweb arrows.

“It’s supposed to be a field guide to the ecology of the Weeping Valley,” he said. “But take a look—all the pictures are drawn by hand, and the things written here are really vague… See, right here, next to Height, it just says big.”

It was the merchant from earlier who had given Milo the book, to save himself the trouble of throwing it away. Milo had seemed interested in it, so the arrangement benefitted both parties. For Milo, he could hope for nothing better than a detailed guide to all the creatures they would encounter on the hunt for the Rust-Eater, but the contents of the book failed to inspire much confidence in him. It looked like the result of a child’s school project.

“…Nah, I think we can trust it,” said Bisco. “It was written by a Mushroom Keeper, after all.”

“Oh gosh! Well, in that case…! But how do you know?”

“Jabi used to draw like this, too. The style looks the same. Very artistic, more than descriptive. That’s how we like to draw.”

The strange practices of Bisco’s people continued to befuddle, but Milo kept flipping through the pages of the book, admiring the playful images.

“Perhaps it was written by a Mushroom Keeper from the northeast. Do you see any names of mushrooms? They always wrote them down on drawings like this to indicate what kind of components the animal has. Like clamshell or wood ear.”

“Oh, there is, yes! In the bottom right, there’s a little stamp! Okay, then…erm…”

Milo hurriedly flipped through to one of the animals he saw earlier. There, in the corner of the page, was a name, alongside a cute little drawing of a mushroom man.

“Rust-Eater…in hiragana?”

“Well, the kanji is too complicated… What’re you looking at me like that for? Most Mushroom Keepers have trouble with this kinda stuff.”

“Then it’s got to be this one! The Pipe Snake, commonly known as the tube worm. A colossal snake with two heads. Capable of flight. Only reacts to large prey and commonly feeds on helicopters and planes…”

“Yeah, that’s a real help. All Jabi told me was it was the biggest animal around these parts. It’s way better to have a picture drawn by a local.”

Milo nodded. As the train trundled along the rails, Milo scoured the page for whatever information he could pick out of the vague description. Just then, something fell from above and impacted the open page with a splat.

“Wah!” Milo cried. It was some sort of black sludge that stained the paper, and it appeared to be alive. It wiggled its feelers and immediately sprang toward Bisco’s face as he moved to protect his partner.

“Graargh!”

“Bisco!”

Black droplets splattered all around. Bisco quickly pulled out his knife and scraped the slime off his face, tossing it onto the floor of the carriage where it landed with a splat and stuck to the ground, shaking its tentacles. Several yellow eyes shone in the darkness all over its body, blinking out of sync with one another.

“Blegh, it’s an oilsquid,” Bisco groaned. “We must have passed through their nest. They’re coming along the walls.”

As the tunnel narrowed, the walls came into view, and it was soon clear that their black color was not due to the darkness at all, but instead, the wall was coated in a swarm of the small oily creatures that made Milo shiver in disgust. The train was hurtling along quite fast, but still the oilsquids were able to keep up, chasing after their prey with alarming speed.

“Just aim for the ones that’re jumping,” said Bisco. “Ignore the others.”

“But, Bisco, I can’t hit—”

“Yes, you can!” Bisco wiped the black residue off his face and locked eyes with Milo. “You can hit them. I know you can. Watch my back!”

“Bisco…”

“Well?”

“Yes, sir!” Milo replied. As if recognizing that a fight was about to start, the oilsquids all leaped from the ceiling in unison, hurtling toward the train.

The two stood back-to-back, brandishing their bows. One after the other, they shot the oilsquids out of the air. As one group leaped toward them, Milo netted them in one of his spiderweb arrows, and they fell onto the tracks. The ones he missed managed to stick to the carriage, whereupon Milo took one of the highly explosive flameshroom arrows at his waist and fired it. The hot fumes from the explosion caused the oilsquids to retract their feelers and topple off the carriage to the rails below.

“Nice one!” Bisco said as he smiled and pulled his bow with all his might. His thick arrow whistled through the air with frightening force flying close to the walls and scraping off dozens of the encroaching creatures.

Meanwhile, at the head of the train, Actagawa flailed wildly, brushing aside the oilsquids with his huge claws and chomping on them heartily. Letting loose a spray of foam from his mouth, he coated the rest of the sludge balls in a slippery substance that caused them to slide off the side of the train.

However, as fiercely as the group fought, the oilsquid swarm showed no signs of abating and, in fact, only seemed to come in greater and greater numbers. Soon there were more than could fit on the walls, and all they could see was an ocean of squid, crawling all over one another.

“There’s no end to them!” shouted Milo.

“Fine. Means we won’t be able to take this way back, but…!” Bisco gritted his teeth and snatched up a silver arrow that dangled from his quiver by a thread. He fired it from his bow, and it stuck into the roof of the tunnel, producing small mushrooms that quickly spread across the rock face. This silver mushroom was covered in a sticky mucus and multiplied at an incredible rate, filling the surface of the tunnel in the blink of an eye. A strong, acrid smell, like vinegar, filled the cavern.

“Wow! What…is that?!”

“It’s a silveracid nameko!” Bisco shouted back, coughing. “Don’t breathe it in! Get down!”

The strong acid dissolved the pursuing oilsquids, halting them in their tracks. They turned into plain oil, and their eyeballs dropped from the ceiling and piled up on the rails. The entire colony of attacking squid was blocked off by the wall of mushrooms, and gradually the train left them well behind.

“W-we did it! They’re not following us!”

“Ugh. Dammit, that smell gets me every time,” Bisco swore. He heaved a sigh of relief as he watched the cave disappear behind him. Then he noticed something. Several long and narrow things crept along the cave walls. Then they suddenly reared up and became much thicker. Like lashing whips, they wrapped around Milo’s body just as he let down his guard.

“Waaahhh!”

“Milo!”

Bisco immediately fired his bow at the tentacles, but though his arrow was able to pierce them, the thick black membrane prevented the mushrooms from taking root. Milo held on to the rim of the luggage rack for dear life as they tried to drag him away and cried out in pain as they wrapped tightly around his waist.

“Grr! Argh! Gah!”

His sapphire eyes widened in pain. Bisco knew what he had to do. He rushed toward Milo, slicing apart the tentacles that came for him with his blade. He leaped onto the one that held his partner, driving his knife into the thick black skin and then, dangling from it, opened his mouth and bit into the tentacle. With all his strength, he pulled at it, hand and jaw, trying to tear the thing apart. The tentacle began to tear with a strange popping sound, before finally splitting in two and releasing Milo from its grip.

“Milo, go with Actagawa. Search the Weeping Valley. You know what we’re looking for.”

“Ahhh! Biscooo!”

But already the other tentacles had seized him and pulled him back off the train. His body skimmed against the ground like a stone, before disappearing into the darkness of the tunnel.

His countless collisions with the floor and walls left Bisco dazed. He shook his head, and when he regained his senses, he was surrounded on all sides by darkness. At the center of the thick black tentacles that grew like the roots of some enormous tree, a crucible of saw-shaped teeth dripped sticky mucus, expanding and contracting before Bisco’s very eyes. Through it, he could see the dark red of the oilsquid’s internal organs.

This is the leader, huh…?!

Its size was nothing like the small creatures he had fought on the train, which were no larger than a human head. It was so large that all Bisco could see was its mouth, and its body was clearly big enough to fill the entire tunnel. Bisco was held dangling by his left leg before those hellish rows of sharp teeth as the giant octopus, presuming the unconscious Bisco for dead, brought it closer to its mouth with the intention of swallowing him whole.

…Maybe it’ll work on his insides!

Bisco’s eyes glimmered, and he whipped out the bow on his back and fired a shot. His crimson tengu arrow flew into the creature’s mouth and embedded itself in the walls of its throat. At last finding suitable ground, the mushrooms happily swelled and ravaged the octopus’s gullet.

Its walls of flesh rippled as it let out a deep, bellowing cry and reared up with such force that it smashed into the walls of the tunnel. Bisco laughed, still gripped upside down by the creature’s tentacle.

“Heh, that’s why you pick your food more carefully! I’m poisonous!”

But the dull-witted kraken was slow to die, and in its death throes, it used its ridiculous strength to swing Bisco up into the roof of the cave. Before he even had time to cough up blood, he was swung down again into the ground, then the sides, then the ceiling again. The maddened tentacle threw him all about the tunnel until cracks began to appear in the walls, and the entire track shook like it was caught in an earthquake.

Bisco’s flesh tore, and his bones splintered as the rampaging octopus delivered a series of blows that ought to have killed him immediately. But Bisco’s eyes still flared brightly through the bloodstains on his face, and he still had his bow. He mustered up the last of his strength, turning it into a powerful yell. Just as he was about to loose what may well have been his final arrow, an incredible force from elsewhere struck the octopus, and it reeled, tossing Bisco to the ground. An enormous mass of iron, glowing red-hot like a blast furnace, flew down the rails, its wheels screeching, and collided with the beast. Tripping over his own feet, Milo ran over, picked up Bisco’s blood-soaked body in his arms, and fled.

“Oh, Bisco. What did he do to you…?”

“Guh… Mi… Milo… It’s still…”

Persistent to the end, the tentacles of the giant octopus crawled along the walls of the cave after the pair. Realizing he couldn’t outrun them, Milo turned and readied the bow on his back. With trembling hands, he pointed it toward the creature. What he had struck it with earlier was none other than the coal furnace of the train they had been riding, detached from the rest of the vehicle by Actagawa. The furnace was overloading, and even now steam poured out of it in thick jets, but the pressure valves were managing to keep the imminent explosion in check.

If I can just hit that…!

Beads of sweat rolled down Milo’s face, panic gripped his heart, and his breath grew heavy. The creature’s tentacles bore down on the two of them, threatening to wrap them up and whisk them away.

Just then, Milo’s trembling hand was covered with another. At Bisco’s touch, his bow steadied, and Milo focused intently on the power in his right hand.

“Archery is two things. First, watch closely.”

Bisco’s quiet words permeated Milo like drops of water on the desert sand.

“Then…believe.”

As the tentacles closed in, wrapping around his body, Milo held firm. His blue eyes burned silently, ignoring everything but the bonecoal furnace at the far end of his arrow.

Believe.

This’ll hit, he thought.

The warm blood dripping down Bisco’s hand and onto his own seemed to flow into him, setting his heart ablaze.

“Can you hit it?”

“…Yeah.”

Milo gave a silent nod and let go with his right hand. The blue arrow became a single beam of light that struck the steam valve and tore it clean off. The orange glow faded slightly before swelling in intensity, and a blast of hot air tore the tentacles apart and rippled the pair’s cloaks. Then everything was engulfed in a blinding flash of white light and a deafening explosion.

Bisco and Milo were knocked clean out of the tunnel like baseballs and rolled along the ground beneath the clear blue sky. Just as they were about to topple over the edge of a deep chasm where the railroad suddenly ended, Actagawa barely managed to catch them safely in his claws.

The valley was blooming with lush green foliage. The beautiful sounds of songbirds filled the clear air beneath a cloudless sky.

The two were covered in soot, oil, blood, sweat, tears, and who knows what else. For a while, they just lay there in Actagawa’s embrace. Suddenly, Milo clutched his mouth, before vomiting forth a jet-black sludge on the ground at Actagawa’s feet.

“…Bweeghhh…”

“…Keh-heh-heh!”

“What’s so funny?”

“What is that, morning sickness? Ha-ha-ha! Hmm? Bleeegh…” Just as Bisco made fun of poor Milo, he, too, threw up black tar that stained the ground. Among it was a single oilsquid, holding a fragment of Bisco’s tooth like a trophy, that attempted to spring away, only to topple over the cliff edge.

“Congratulations, Bisco. It’s a boy,” Milo said in wonder.

“…It’s the immaculate conception,” Bisco said, turning serious, as drops of oil spilled from his mouth. “Before you say anything, I didn’t get up to anything freaky with that squid while you were gone… Besides, does it even work like that…?”

Milo was unable to hold back his giggles any longer and burst into laughter, clapping Bisco on the back. Actagawa looked on in confusion, unable to determine precisely what his companions were laughing about. Nonetheless, he hoisted them both up with his claws, and they landed neatly in their saddles. There, they were struck speechless by the beauty of the valley below.

“We’re here, Bisco!”

“Yep… The Weeping Child Ravine. It’s just as Jabi described. This has to be the place.”

The ringing grass in the fields below grew taller than a human, and it swayed to and fro in the breeze like waves crashing against the shore. As it did so, it caught the sun with striking regularity, making the whole valley twinkle like the facets of a diamond in the light.

After simply watching it for a while in silence, Bisco spoke.

“Let’s go, Milo. We’re nearly there now.”

Milo nodded, and as Bisco took the reins, Milo stared at his face in profile. Then he placed his hands on the cuts that covered Bisco’s neck.

“Bisco, could you slow Actagawa down a little?”

“Sure. Like this?”

“Yeah, thanks. Now, hold still…”

Milo readied his needle and got to work patching Bisco up, by now well-accustomed to working atop a crab.