Chapter Two

Chapter Two

“Well, this is a bit of a pickle,” Setsura said, stroking his jaw. “If ordinary weapons won’t work, we’re pretty much screwed. Unless we can use them against each other like before.”

That would be well-nigh impossible in this case.

The bull stamped on the ground and charged Setsura. Just as Setsura realized the soldier had vanished from his line of sight. The bull’s body suddenly crouched down on its forelegs. From its hindquarters came the glimmer of armor and the light reflecting off it, soaring past its head.

Timing his run with the bull’s sudden stop and attacking from above as his opponent fanned at empty air. Going high and going low simultaneously, leaving him at a loss as to how to respond, splitting his head down to his waist.

Except that, beneath the sweep of the sword—powerful enough to cleave a large boulder in two—Setsura was also gone.

He’d leapt ten feet back. The collar of his slicker, though, showed a fresh scar. More than a split-second decision, he had readied himself to retreat from the charging bull from the very start. Even so, he’d made it only by the skin of his teeth. These were formidable opponents.

The joints of the armor sang out as the soldier stepped forward with his left foot, the sword raised high over his right shoulder. His entire frame was wrapped in glittering strands of light as thousands of the thread-like wires cocooned him.

The swordsman stirred.

“This gonna work?” Setsura muttered to himself.

The stirring turned to a tremor. The swordsman stretched out his arms. The shimmering twine shattered into grains of silver and scattered in all directions.

Setsura sighed. “Would you look at that.” He hadn’t harbored high hopes for the strategy. This business of appearing to take things less seriously than they deserved was an affectation more associated with young irresponsible scions of large fortunes.

Without a sign of being stalled in the least, the swordsman marched forward. The steps were a bit clunky, but he had the control of a maestro down to the tips of his fingers. This was a fearsome martial talent on display.

The bull sidled up to him, a mass of killer instinct.

“Hey,” Setsura called over his shoulder to Pretend Takako. “That was sure a troublesome bit of graffiti.”

“Yes, it was,” Pretend Takako answered in a frightened voice.

Setsura could only count his blessings that they had what little room they had to maneuver in. Pretend Takako added urgently, “Setsura-san, the hallway is coming to an end!”

“Eh?” Setsura glanced around. Another ten feet behind Pretend Takako was a soaring wall. “So the infinite just became the finite. How stingy.”

Pretend Takako didn’t answer this time. The situation was too pressing.

“Get on my back.”

“What?”

“Hurry.”

Pretend Takako climbed onto his back. He turned to face his attackers. The swordsman stopped a dozen feet from them.

As comical as it might appear, this was no laughing matter. These beings—born out of mere scribbles—existed only to kill anyone who visited this hallway.

“You scared?” Setsura asked.

“Um—no.”

“Well, I’m ready to piss my pants. This chap is quite the handful.”

“It’ll be okay,” said Pretend Takako, her voice constricted to almost a squeak.

“You sure?”

“As long as I’m with you, I won’t be afraid.”

“I appreciate it,” said Setsura, and charged.

His chances weren’t good by himself, to say nothing of having another along for the ride. The long sword whistled through the air, as if to separate the one from the other. But then the soldier’s onrushing target suddenly disappeared from before his eyes.

They had soared upwards before the information could travel from his eyes to his brain.

Setsura looped the devil wire around a beam in the ceiling. The big bull was the one who caught on first and reacted to the Tarzan and Jane act. With a watery snort, it whirled around and stomped against the floor, intending to run them through as soon as they landed.

But the bull hesitated, pivoted and stopped. The ferocious face peered up at two people suspended in the air above it and tossed its steel-clad horns. They were just out of reach.

Setsura looked down at the enraged bull and said airily, “This is all fine and good, but I’m not sure how we’re getting down.”

Heavy footsteps followed one after the other. The swordsman rushed down the hallway. The bull folded its forelegs. The armored soldier planted a foot between its horns. The bull reared up.

“Whoa!” Setsura burst out, as the intrepid figure sailed through the air. He quickly backpedaled.

The sword swung down. The devil wire broke. The murderous bull waited below them. A surprised expression slowly filled the soldier’s features.

Setsura stood in the air another yard off to the right. He’d flung out another strand of devil wire. It was hard to say whether the results were any less humorous than they were impressive. The best description might be that he’d faked the swordsman out of his shorts.

Except that the big bull had moved directly beneath the swordsman and once again reared its head. The leaping swordsman’s face, mad with bloodlust, was suddenly spotted by something white and fluffy, like a pillow had exploded in front of him.

He lost his balance and fell without a sound.

Up to then, the equally mad bull had no idea what was going on. His partner would, as always, bounce off his head. But the soldier couldn’t get his feet under him and fell onto the bull’s horns.

Pretend Takako averted her eyes.

“That’s all he wrote,” Setsura said breezily. He jumped down to the ground, landing just as the sword of the gored soldier fell to the floor.

A fierce light glowed in the mad bull’s eyes. It had apparently drawn the connection between Setsura’s actions and the death of its partner. Not bothering the shake off the corpse pinned to its horns, it charged at Setsura and Pretend Takako.

Setsura reached out his right hand. The sword spun around and flashed through the air and into the hand—of the soldier.

In the next moment, to the surprise of both the mad bull and Pretend Takako, the soldier seemed to reanimate, flipping over and driving the sword through the base of the animal’s skull.

The bull roared once and fell over.

“It disappeared,” said Pretend Takako.

Though it was more the bull’s last gasp that reminded Setsura of the familiar face of a certain fat informant.

“What in the world happened?” asked Pretend Takako, not grasping how Setsura had used his devil wires to turn the swordsman’s corpse into a human marionette. She goggled at the spot where the soldier and the bull had disappeared after drawing their last breaths.

Setsura turned around. Pretend Takako said “Eh?” and followed his gaze.

A person was standing at the other end of the hallway. The kid, looking as if he was playing hooky from school. If he was one of Kikiou’s creations, that suggested a deep knowledge of the manners and customs of this world. The kid gazed back at them, and then pointed at the wall. Pretend Takako couldn’t see, but Setsura could make out a drawing of a bull and several people. They had returned to their former abode.

“Is this your world?” Setsura asked.

The kid didn’t answer.

“Sorry to have to say this, but we need to get out of here. How about drawing us an exit?”

Pretend Takako tensed up on his back. If there was another monster coming, she didn’t want to see it. The hallway fell silent for a while. The kid made the first move. He turned around and ran. Setsura followed in hot pursuit.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Pretend Takako said frantically. “Put me down.”

“That’s okay. I owe you one.”

“For what?”

“I hit the swordsman in the face with those flowers you picked.”

The swordsman would be more than a little pissed to know that he’d been temporarily blinded by a bunch of pretty flowers. Or perhaps he would only smile at the irony as he gave up the ghost.

A wall rose up in front of the small retreating figure. On the wall was a door. The kid pushed it open. Setsura and Pretend Takako followed him through it.

And found themselves in another hall like the one before. With one big difference. The walls on either side were covered with graffiti. People, bulls, horses, dogs, cats, ships, fishes, flowers from all four seasons.

The kid stepped to the side. There was another door. Setsura stepped forward and put his hand on the knob. It turned easily.

“Um—” said Pretend Takako, shifting on his back.

Setsura looked at the kid. He leaned against the wall and stared back at them. Without the magical black chalk in his hand, he could have been any normal kid. The pouting might even qualify as endearing.

“He’s here all alone?” Pretend Takako wondered.

“Probably.”

“With nothing but the world of these corridors and his drawings to keep him company?”

The previous battle may have only been an expression of his delight at having visitors. A practical joke, something to throw a little thrill into them. An expression of melancholy—utterly out of character at such a young age—rose to his face.

“Want to come with?” Setsura asked.

The kid practically bounced off the wall and ran away, back the way he came. Back to a world he didn’t have to share with anybody, where he could draw on the walls his whole life long.

“He left,” Pretend Takako said sadly.

“Somebody will come again.”

Setsura pushed the door open. The corridor continued. It was different from what had gone on before. Dusty and moldy, but definitely inside the manor house. A glance behind, and the door had already disappeared. They stood in the middle of the hallway as if they’d been there all along.

“Um—I’m getting down,” said Pretend Takako, blushing slightly.

Setsura squatted down and let her off. “Do you know where this is?” he asked.

“The fourth floor, I think. It’s hardly ever used.”

“Would Kikiou know we escaped?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’d better take our leave. And destroy the place on the way out.”

“How do you plan to do that?”

“The place is already half-burned down. We’ll be sure we get the job done this time.”

“Are you an arsonist?”

“That’s not a nice way to put it. We’re just going to have a little bonfire. Now, where’s the exit?”

“This way.”

Pretend Takako started off down the hall. After a minute, a door appeared. They passed through it and onto a sun-drenched veranda. Descending an elegant staircase brought them to the middle of a verdant forest.

“The mansion wouldn’t have an armory, would it?”

Takako shook her head. “I don’t know. There’s nothing in my memory about dangerous things like that.”

Kikiou would certainly have taken precautions in that department.

“In that case, we’ll have to ask the man himself. Where’s Kikiou’s room?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“That puts us in a bit of a bind.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” came a slightly hoarse male voice above their heads.

“Well, well, well,” Setsura Aki said, as if greeting a customer he hadn’t seen in a long time. He raised his head and looked at the sky.

The large bat wings slowly beat against the air as Yakou hovered a dozen feet off the ground, coolly taking in the two below him.