Chapter Three

Chapter Three

When Setsura regained consciousness, the first thing he saw was the black rocky ceiling. He tried to sit up but couldn’t move a muscle.

The reason why quickly became apparent. His body was covered with devil wires, strapping him to the earth like Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians.

“That little bitch. She’s the death of any party.”

He quit struggling and gazed into space. Though he couldn’t move his hands or legs, strangely, he didn’t feel any pain.

His eyelids dropped and he focused all his faculties on the invisible colors and the silent sounds around him. The sensations from his back and the scene before him said that he was still underground, in the culverts extending out from the underground water treatment facility.

This was a natural cavern not constructed by human hands, or a hole dug long ago and abandoned.

A small noise reached his eardrums, the sound of running water, an underground river or water still coursing through the ruins of the culverts and sewers. That life should go on in a place like this was hardly surprising in Demon City. It was always better not to jump to conclusions too quickly.

Without any presentiment, a pale face gazed down on him from above. “Can you move?” the Demon Princess cheerfully asked.

“What do you think?”

“Well, at least you didn’t drown.”

“That was the dragon’s flood?”

“Yes. Had I not intervened, you would have ended up another Dozaemon. Though that might have proved no less interesting an outcome.”

“Never a dull day for this busybody of a princess.”

Dozaemon was a famous sumo wrester who had drowned. The name had once been synonymous with all those who met their end in a similar fashion. Setsura couldn’t help being a little impressed that anybody in this day and age would use the metaphor.

“I really could have drowned to death like that?” He smiled like a flower. “If that’s what you want, then let’s do it and get it over with already. Why come to the rescue?”

“Because such a demise would hardly begin to assuage my feelings. You are the only man who ever severed me end to end.”

“What’s with this personal grudge business?” Setsura said with an air of disdain. “Man, I don’t get women. Always obsessed with the details, never seeing the big picture.”

“Why do you keep getting in Kikiou’s way? Is that your way of saving this city?”

“Speaking of which—” Setsura paused and thought for a moment. “That doctor—the one who went all in with General Ryuuki—made it my job. And then he went and got mixed up in all this mess and became one of you.”

“According to Kikiou, he did it all in a quest for knowledge. What do you think?”

“Doctors and long-lived women remain a mystery to me.”

Princess laughed. “You will continue to pursue me on account of a man like that?”

“You are not a friend of me and mine.”

“Hmph. You mean that witch?”

Princess frowned, the kind of frown that would make a masochist come. “Pursuing me to revenge such an insignificant speck of a life sounds an awful lot like a personal grudge to me.”

“I suppose so,” Setsura confessed.

“At any rate, you are a strange one. Such a pretty face on a head filled with such puzzles. It’s like you spend every day staring at the sky watching the clouds go by.”

“I could almost agree with you. But every new day is another day going to the mattresses with the uruchimai.”

Princess knit her brows. “What’s that?”

“Ah, your education is lacking. The non-glutinous rice used to make senbei.”

“Senbei?”

Princess looked all the more confused, as if she was playing hooky the day the subject was covered in school.

“A confection, a kind of rice cake seasoned with soy sauce and baked.”

“Sounds like something girls would play house with.”

“I suppose so.”

“What a way to earn your daily bread. You truly lead a pitiful life.”

“Give me a fucking break,” Setsura shot back. He had no use for pity from the person he was trying to kill, though he wasn’t all that put out. Princess really did seem to be sympathizing.

“Why not give that miserable life of yours a fucking break and come to my world? You could watch the clouds go by for ten thousand years. Bow down to me and ask nicely and I will make such wishes come true, just like that.” With a snap of her fingers.

“That’s one thing I would rather you not do. To tip one’s head to this personification of perverse pride is the last thing on earth anyone should do. Besides, I like making senbei. It’s fun. You should give it a try.”

“Maybe so.”

“So, now what? Boil me or bake me, whatever you want to do is up to you.”

Were he some over-the-hill made man, the line would be pitch perfect. But coming in the languid words of a half-asleep youngster, the effect was altogether odd.

“Fine. I’ll kill you then. But first, do you remember what I told you?”

“When, and about what?”

“About tormenting Takako and my promise that you would bend your knee to me.”

“Oh yeah, that.”

She might as well be talking to a brick wall, and it was getting her dander up. She drew herself to her full height. “Enough! If that’s how it’s going to be, then before getting down to business with you, I’ll bring Takako here. You will watch me drink her blood with your own two eyes. Then we’ll see what that smart mouth of yours has to say.”

“Do you know where Takako-san is? She’s got a literally split personality right now, remember?”

“I don’t know where she is here. I haven’t tasted her blood. But I do know where she is there. In my kingdom. What do you say? I’ll go fetch her right away.”

“And I’ll take the opportunity to escape while you do,” Setsura said in a threatening manner.

With a dismissive glance, Princess put her fingers to her mouth and whistled. In front and behind him, out of his line of sight, a pair of growls rose up from two creatures.

“We have our watchers. Especially the one whose legs you cut off. I’m sure it didn’t take it kindly and isn’t about to forget. Besides, can you move? The devil wires binding you are your own.”

“I’ll think of something.”

“Then you’d better think of it before I get back.”

The Demon Princess strolled away.

“Hey!” Setsura called after her. “You know, it’s still light outside!”

“Do you think me as vulnerable as my wretched servants?”

Her figure was swallowed up by the darkness. When the sense of her presence had vanished as well, Setsura’s thoughts returned to the nature of his predicament.

A fierce growling came nearer. The white tiger, Ko. Setsura could hear the loathing in its voice, the pain. Things were not looking up.

Princess had told the cat to kill him if he tried to escape. She hadn’t told it not to if he didn’t. In this condition, move a pinky and the animal was unlikely to resist the urge to sink its teeth into his flesh.

But in fact he didn’t move a pinky. Stuck here between a bunch of rocks and hard places, safe was as safe does. But he still resolutely set about freeing himself.

Even when unable to move without conscious intent, there were parts of the human body that, under the control of the autonomic nervous system, moved naturally of their own accord, such as the heart.

Setsura focused his mind, not toward his heart but his arteries. Within another second, something delicate began to float along inside the blood vessels.

Where had they stolen in, these sub-micron devil wires? Forgetting their steel-fracturing powers, they crept along the capillaries in sync with the beat of the heart.

Where to? To a place where they could be wielded at will. While observing them closely, Setsura sought out another place.

His whole body entombed within the devil wires, there was one “release point” that would, in an instant, undo all the rest.

Princess’s method of confinement was a variety of the rope binding methods of ancient China. When bound with a single strand, no matter how tightly confined, when severed at the exact right location the rest would easily unravel. However, according to this technique, that would only sever the rope in that area. The sections restrained by that same rope would not budge.

So even if the torso became free, the neck or hands would not.

The ancient executioners put it to practical use when dealing with the condemned. A prisoner was placed a dozen yards in front of a pack of ravenous dogs and given a dagger with which he could release himself. It should be possible to sever the single length of rope anywhere, but no. The only hope was to find the release point.

This wouldn’t have been something Setsura might have learned from the Elder or Yakou. The extent of the young man’s library was anybody’s guess. Perhaps the subject was covered in a book he once read, or on a television program he’d seen. Or the intuition that had allowed him to survive the daily carnage of Demon City.

But even Setsura couldn’t have foreseen one additional variable. As the devil wires drifted through his bloodstream, the eyes of the dragon watching him lit up. From the way he’d attacked Setsura with his raging waters, this legendary creature was a being who could control it.

It lurked in those mysterious rivers and lakes, and emptied into the world of the four elements, and so it ruled over the movements of the outpouring waters down to a single drop.

The movements of waters, the movement of blood.

Though the sub-micron thin threads might result in no adverse effects, the all-so-subtle disturbances left in their wakes were beyond his control. The dragon read its presence in a complete stranger and sensed danger in the wind.

Whether or not he knew what the dragon knew, a speck of light glistened on the tip of Setsura’s tongue.

From there, the devil wires traveled to his right ankle. The point furthest from his hands was the release point Setsura had detected.

It was not his bloodstream that sent forth the threads, but his tongue and his will. Pressing tongue against teeth, scraping teeth against tongue, he controlled the sub-micron wire with the small motions born from those interactions. Though not with the dexterity of his hands, he guided them easily to that point on his ankles.

Then a second, unexpected development.

The white tiger lumbered forward. Seeing the twitching muzzle enter his field of view, with a start Setsura realized why.

The wires released a spot of blood when they broke free of his capillaries, hardly enough to see with the naked eye, but as the dragon could detect the flow, the tiger sensed the smell.

Shit, Setsura wanted to exclaim, but kept his lip buttoned. Any movement of his tongue would be communicated down the wires. These two animals would grasp Setsura’s intentions in a flash and deliver a proper scolding.

The space between his lips and his feet was a river of death as wide as the River Styx. The wires swiftly reached out. Ko jerked its head lower, lured by the smell of the blood clinging to the wires.

The devil wires touched the release point.

The white tiger roared. Ko’s mind had made the connection. Blue-white fire kindled at the back of its gaping mouth. The devil wires would work their magic at the same time Ko breathed forth the flames. Perhaps a tenth of a second would make the difference.

In that instant, Setsura felt himself behind the eight ball. And that meant death. He hit the release point and rolled to the side just as Ko spat fire at the upper half of his body.

The incandescent inferno shot upwards, lighting up the darkness. The dragon had struck from below, ramming its long jaw into the big tiger’s neck. White steam billowed up where the jaw and neck met, the dragon pouring its magical waters into its torn throat.

For fire-breathing creatures, fire itself was the stuff of life.

Not pausing to figure out why Princess’s servants would mutually self-destruct in such a fashion, Setsura sprinted for the nearby cover of a big rock. Hot water and steam pelted his face. The firmament rumbled like an erupting geyser.

A white plume blanketed the two creatures, locked together in a deadly embrace, their writhing limbs barely distinguishable.

The dragon released its hold. The tiger resorted to its one remaining weapon and clawed at the dragon with its hind legs, attempting to gut it. Golden flecks scattered like flowers.

“That was close,” Setsura said under his breath. He crouched down and started to move, sending his devil wires out, checking out the passageway in front of him.

As if fleeing through the night, he ducked through a narrow opening and suddenly found himself in a large room. He was drenched from his previous encounters. The big creatures were two or three hundred yards behind him, but their earth-shaking howls went on unceasingly.

“Enjoy yourselves,” Setsura said, glancing around.

He was in one of the big water treatment culverts. From further away and deeper in was a murky glimmer, the route the Demon Princess must have taken to the surface.

“Hold on,” Setsura blurted out loud. On the verge of sprinting off in that direction, he came to a halt. “If I just leave them be, who says they won’t come after me again?”

He looked at the hole spouting steam like a smokestack, followed by the reverberations of a noticeably louder pair of overlapping screams. The hole spouted blue-white flame.

“Holy cow.”

Setsura ducked down and jumped back a good dozen feet. The blazing band seemed to chase after him, then quickly retreated, shrank down to a few wispy curls and was sucked back into the blackness.

The sounds extinguished with the flames. The two beasts must have fought each other to their mutual deaths.

The cloud that now passed across the comely face was one of confusion. Setsura tilted his head to the side and asked himself, “Why did that dragon turn traitor on my account?”

Somebody must have commanded the life-saving actions of the dragon, though the senbei shop owner could not imagine who.

The conversation commenced as soon as the young scion strode into the room, carrying an oriental air about him. And strangely enough, nothing he said seemed the slightest bit odd.

“Doctor Mephisto,” Yakou called out in a stern voice, stopping ten feet away from him. “No, that is your old name.”

The doctor in white didn’t react. His expressionless face was no less beautiful. No matter what the situation or predicament, this doctor was always clothed in beauty.

“This dim light, those red eyes, aren’t the tips of fangs jutting from the corners of your mouth? You should be called by the same name I go by.”

“A vampire.” Next to him, Tomoko stood there petrified.

“So you must have undone Princess’s spell. And I can imagine why you came here.”

“No.” Yakou shook his head. “I am not certain myself, whether you are an enemy or an ally.”

He looked at Mephisto as if asking to be rescued from his dilemma.