A Journey Beyond [P]

His mind entirely gloss over the strangeness in his friend’s behavior entirely, Koutaku continued on, the environment still familiar as they walked out. The rest of the details he found himself deliberately shelving, they had more important concerns. It didn’t matter that it was daytime, when before it had been night or that he could no longer smell the salt of the ocean wind.

There was nothing unsettling about such sudden and unexplained changes, that was totally normal--he tried to assure himself as he unconscious sped up his pace. It never occurred to him that he knew precisely where the hotel was, despite the fact that he’d never been there, or that the paper he’d picked up hadn’t said anything, but instead merely contained blurry scrawls of nonsense.

“You’re right, they very well may have been. I’m not sure why anyone would do that unless it were for some kind of technique that required...” he trailed off, stopping in place, his body going dead still as he listened. Slowly, Koutaku slipped his hand around the hilt of his wakizashi, his knuckles going white as due to the pressure of his grip.

Signaling with his left hand still at waist height, Koutaku could only hope that Takashi was paying close enough attention to notice. He wanted her to stop in place, and pay attention to their surroundings. Something had changed and the hairs at the back of his neck were standing on end for some reason.

Narrowing his eyes, Koutaku focused his senses, pushing them out to their max range. In that instant he felt a brief, but rapid movement of an unknown chakra signature 6 meters away, within a building, and at his right. He didn’t hesitate, whipping the blade out of its sheath in a sinuous flash, his blade cracking the air due to the violence of the motion.



A blade of pure force detonated forwards, careening through space in the form of a violent arc of warped air that drove through the wall of the building unhindered. There was a sharp, bestial yelp as if from some massive animal, and then a gut rumbling growl.

His wakizashi fully drawn, Koutaku shifted his stance and exhaled slowly before speaking quickly. “I don’t know what the hell is stalking us, but I can tell it’s just about to be out for blood. We both need to get to that hotel--and I have a feeling that this thing is going to do everything in its power to stop us.”

He glanced over his shoulder at his closest friend and confidant and found only the slightest shred of hesitation at letting her fight this thing with him. It wasn’t so much that she’d be in danger, but rather that they’d be facing against an unknown threat that could be capable of just about anything.

“I’m faster than you are,” he stated matter of factly, “...and as capable as you are, I’m better equipped and prepared. Back me up, while you make your way towards the hotel. I’ll stay close enough to intercept the thing. If we need to adjust...we will. Go!”

He didn’t move, however, knowing he could easily catch up to her.

The growling in the building grew louder and a series of loud crashes emanated, signaling that the unknown threat was not only large but rapidly approaching.

Spoiler:

“I saw this strange symbol on the moon, an upside down triangle. Do you have any idea what it could mean, or maybe it was just my imagination?” Takashi replied, her tone fairly casual and conversational all of a sudden despite the eeriness of the surroundings and the total absurdity of what’d happened thus far. She was about to continue when she noticed Koutaku’s sudden motion and stopped, more nonplussed than alert. She felt the hairs on the nape of her neck stiffen, and she turned her head to look in the same direction that Koutaku had, hands quickly unravelling the tangled scarf around her neck to mount it in the correct position over her arms.

She flinched as he struck with his weapon in some unknown direction, quickly looking towards it and extending her own senses out--only to be interrupted by some feral shrieking that cut through the air and a familiar barking crack. The sounds clashed violently before some subsonic rumbling in the air made itself known in her body, the vibrations settling into her bones and rattling them ever so slightly. Her eyes went wide and she briefly prepared herself to run in whatever direction was necessary to get away from whatever it was that had made the noise, but then a small voice made itself known in her mind, as if its whisper had been a warm, pleasant liquid that had seeped into her mind through her ears. ‘Blood calls to blood. It will not be sated until it sinks its fangs into you. You must sink your fangs--my fangs--into it first.’

“We have to kill it. It won’t stop. Blood calls to it… Ours, and the blood of the villagers. Look,” she started, motioning with her head to the various tenements dotting the landscape around them. They were in different states of disrepair, though each was clearly still inhabited in at least some capacity--though unlike in Kirigakure, where the atmosphere was calm and welcoming, something about the unseen gazes she could feel from the windows radiated suspicion and malice. It was like an oppressive shroud hung over the entire village they’d entered, and the only place that felt remotely right to her in that moment was the hotel in the distance.

“If I move first it should go for me, and you can intercept it. I’ll see if I can tether it to the ground enough for you to get a few good hits in.” she said, that strange intensity from before back in her voice, undercutting it like a steely edge. Perhaps it could’ve been attributed to the adrenaline, or the fact that she clearly believed it was to kill or be killed in this situation… but perhaps it was something else, like so many other things in this strange dream world. She took off directly in the direction of the hotel after waiting for just a few seconds to ensure Koutaku had heard and understood, moving at 80 speed in a lightly zigzagging line.

Spoiler:

Nodding in reply to Takashi, his eyes briefly darting to note the buildings she’d indicated, even as his 6th sense notified him of the people hidden nearby, Koutaku’s gaze hardened further. His teammate took off, her words echoing in his mind in a two-toned melody, one familiar, the other alien and strange. He didn’t have time to parse those voices though, he needed to move. Dashing into motion, Koutaku scaled a nearby building at max speed, rising to its zenith at which point he began running along the edge of the rooftops, following Takashi at 80 speed. He kept her in his periphery as they moved, and soon the beast came into the light, revealing itself in all its monstrous glory.

It was ten feet tall and hulking, its muscles bulging, its eyes fiery with fury, nostrils flaring on its snout, as foam and spittle dripped from its savage teeth. It was wolven in appearance, covered in gnarled, matted gray and black fur, yet moving half as an animal half as a man. There was a shallow gash--swiftly healing--on its shoulder where Koutaku’s attack had struck it.

The young Iouchiryo grit his teeth, focus narrowing onto the monster behind them. It saw him, then Takashi, and burst into motion, its loping strides eating up the meters with hungry abandon. Each of its four limbs ended in clawed digits that dug gouges into the stone road as it rumbled towards Koutaku’s teammate.

He wouldn’t have it overtake her.

Stabbing a wirebound shuriken into the edge of the roof, Koutaku leaped down and forwards at speed, his body hurtling through the air to cut off the monstrous demon. Blade brandished, Koutaku performed a swift series of handseals, activating one of his clan’s techniques.

As he finished his handseals, he felt chakra surge forth from his body and circulate in a thin shroud around him. Holding it in place, Koutaku readied his blade, and then the fight began. Catching sight of approaching prey, the monster swatted with one massive arm, its claws raking through the air at Koutaku. They seemed sure to strike, but Koutaku did nothing. The claws slid off of him harmlessly, and he retaliated, driving his blade into the beast’s shoulder, wrapping wire around the hilt, before pushing off the monster and towards Takashi.

The beast stumbled briefly and howled in pain as the katana sunk deep into its flesh, but this only seemed to anger it further. Catching up with Takashi, running just behind her, Koutaku spoke, “It’s unbelievably tough, and it seems to have some kind of healing factor. If I wasn’t using Fuon those claws probably would have killed me. Our advantage seems to be that it doesn’t use techniques and it isn’t particularly intelligent. We should assume that it’s leagues stronger than us, and far faster than it appears.”

As if on cue, the monster dug its claws into the ground and shot a spray of stone shards in their direction as it drastically accelerated, seemingly enraged by their defiance.

“I’m going to create an opening for you, be ready.” Koutaku finished, performing handseals as he spoke.

The monster lunged, Koutaku dodged, to Takashi’s right, and the beast used one claw to alter its trajectory midair in some kind of nightmarish manner, its form blurring as it did so. Koutaku didn’t hesitate however, for he’d planned for the possibility. Rather than the beast successfully engaging him, five spears of earth shot forth from the ground before him, and the beast collided with them.

“Now!” He yelled, signaling Takashi.

Spoiler:

As the monster accelerated towards them, Takashi performed a quick sequence of handseals to prepare herself: Boar, Bird, Hare; then Dragon, Dog, Tiger, Ox, Dragon--and as she finished the last one she ran her hands through the folds of the silken scarf she wielded, cords of white chakra emanating from her wrists and sewing themselves into the weave of the material. Simultaneously, the scarf’s length seemed to double and its edge gained a slightly more luminescent glint as she activated Sokumen Henkō and then Yokoito Sōsa in sequence. She then withdrew a Kunai, just as she had when they’d trained in that last session, and performed more handseals to activate Temple Style: Discovery of an Incomplete Truth to imbue it with a lustrous coating of scintillating dew. The beast lunged at Koutaku, and her heart skipped a beat for a fair moment as the beast’s claws seemed to impact him directly--but then she saw them harmlessly slide across his chest and down, causing it to lurch forwards with uneasy momentum that carried it into Koutaku’s retaliatory strike.

Her breath hitched in her chest for a second at the sudden increase in speed, but she quickly regained her composure and sped up to 100 speed as Koutaku detailed his thoughts to her. There wasn’t enough time for her to be able to reply in earnest so she simply nodded, her preparations sufficient to ensure that she’d be able to execute her manoeuvre at the given opening. It all happened very quickly from then, and some strangely shuddering shiver through her body reached into her mind. Her eyes went wide and she felt as if some burning venom had been injected into her veins, opening her awareness to the entirety of her being in a singular moment as the adrenaline in her surged. As it lunged, Takashi used the motion from her zagging to go a little bit further, landing hard on her right foot and whipping herself around with a swing of the kunai to further the sudden shift in momentum with a clever use of Adjustment. Her right foot then slid backwards as she manoeuvred herself into a crouch, using Feint to arrest her momentum and leaning down on her left leg.

While she moved, her scarf whipped its now 6m long tendrils directly into the wolf-thing’s path, the right end headed directly for where its face would be (above its jawline, toward its eyes) and the left followed Takashi down, snaking its way towards the beast’s right hind leg on Takashi’s left side. As Koutaku performed the Earth Flow Spears and shouted for Takashi to start her manoeuvre she sprung up like a coiled snake--the wolf creature slammed directly into one of the earthen spears, piercing its shoulder lightly before the sheer toughness of the thing’s body stopped it in its tracks and began to crumble from the strain of its immense momentum. It howled in pain and surprise and then Takashi’s scarf wrapped tightly around its ankle and around its face, covering its eyes and whipping backwards to constrict its vision while the scarf yanked its hind leg up from underneath it just as it was about to hit the ground mid-stride.

As it lurched forward, now falling face-first into the ground, Takashi leapt upwards and onto the beast’s back--and she brought the Kunai down directly into the back of the beast’s neck with a sudden lunge. Just as it was about to meet its mark a whiplike Bark! emanated from the blade, empowered by the surging chakra within the blade; a sudden blast of extreme force made its way into the beast’s neck and Takashi’s scarf, firmly wrapped around the beast’s head, wrenched backwards in the opposite direction. The force of the beast’s movement and subsequent momentum in addition to the force provided by the empowered Bark were enough to break its neck clean open, and the scarf ripped the creature’s head partially from its neck with a sickening crunch of shattering bone and tearing sinew.

“Finish it!” she shouted, her voice raspy and intense.

Spoiler:

Knowing Takashi would follow up with expert precision, and sensing the shifts in position and orientation of enemy and ally both, Koutaku prepared for the final blow. Whistling in a series of tones, Koutaku swung the demon wind shuriken from its sheath on his back and spun it into motion even as his technique activated, mirroring one of Takashi’s own.

The Demon Wind Shuriken suddenly shone with a faint silver-blue light as he swung it in a diagonal arc, cleaving straight through his earth spears before carrying its momentum forwards directly into the massive creature’s muzzle. The spinning blades tore through the monstrosity, splitting its snout and skull in half height-wise. The beast hardly had the time to howl and struggle against its bonds, its body slumping as Koutaku’s strike swiftly severed not just its skull, but also shattered its vertebrae. Gore splattered to out from its mouth and neck, covering the ground to either side of the wolven-thing’s body with blood and innards.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, his hand empty as he’d released the massive shuriken into the beast, Koutaku met Takashi’s gaze, and then let out a shaky laugh.

“Well, I wasn’t really...expecting that tonight!” Still laughing, Koutaku shook his head and then whipped his arm back, pulling the demon wind shuriken out of the creature’s body with a sickening squelch. As it traveled towards him, he released a harmless burst of wind chakra, freeing all the blood and gore from the weapon’s surface. He took a mental note to properly clean, polish, and maintenance the weapon later. Shaking his head as he regarded the monster for another brief moment, Koutaku then walked past it and gestured for Takashi to follow as he continued towards the hotel. Gradually, people began to filter out of the buildings that surrounded, in order to see the fallen beast. He paid them little mind, simply folding his fuma shuriken up and then placing it once more on his back, its weight a satisfying relief.

Blood still hammering through his veins, Koutaku controlled his breathing, willing his body to match the state of his mind. Glancing back to Takashi, Koutaku decided to try something. “It seems we’re just about there,” he said, and immediately he felt a strange pull. Turning back to face the direction he’d been moving, he found that they had indeed traveled the entirety of the remaining distance to the building. Shrugging, Koutaku approached and opened the door, holding it for Takashi in kind.

Hopefully, they wouldn’t get attacked by another rabid monster.

Spoiler:

As the shuriken had sailed towards the beast Takashi had flipped herself back off of the beast, scarf sailing with her while still attached to the beast owing to its currently enormous length. They sailed through the air, Takashi landing on a nearby building and pulling the shattered remnants of the wolf’s skull up with it. As it streaked in the air it burst with a spurt of sticky viscera, spraying the lifeblood of the monstrous creature across several houses in the vicinity, marking them scarlet red in gruesome splotches. Takashi saw some of the residents gasp in horror while others looked on in quiet shock (and perhaps something approaching awe) at her and Koutaku, but she scarcely registered their obeisance. The pull of the hotel was far more important to her in that moment as her blood still pounded through her body and her mind was still aflame from the experience. There was something of a feral quality about her for just a second before she shook it off, jumping down from the building in a graceful pirouette as the scarves spread themselves wide about her person to act like small parachutes, allowing her to almost glide down to meet Koutaku.

She took a few moments after she’d landed to suck in some deep breaths, habitually falling into a series of breathing exercises that allowed her to slowly come down from the excitement of what’d just happened--and she did feel excitement, she realised. The fact that it was dangerous had not really entered her mind in the moment, it just felt like she’d been drawn in by some strange and seductive bloodlust--pre-emptive retribution against something that had meant to harm her and her friend… but the more she thought about it, the less it became about protection and the more it became about enjoying the thrill of utterly dominating another creature in the most primal way possible. The thought scared and excited her in equal parts, and she again vacillated steadily between a meditative calm and a shameful pleasure.

“I… we ripped its head off… It… No, it had to be done. It had to be a blow that it couldn’t regenerate from, it…” she mumbled to herself in between those fitful agitations, and by the time she’d returned to having any form of executive control over her thoughts and feelings they’d arrived in the reception of a cozy little hotel. The walls were decorated with painted silk, petals of cherry blossoms suspended in an invisible wind and bare trees reaching out into the white of the negative space. Behind a small desk was an elderly woman with a polite and friendly smile on her face, holding out a small rectangular tray made of bamboo. Takashi could spot two little balls of pounded mochi sitting on shiso leaves awaiting her and Koutaku, and she suddenly remembered the existence of her friend, turning around to find him and noticing him just approaching her side with a giddy smile plastered on his face over their triumph.

“Good afternoon, madam… We’re looking for a… do you have the paper, Koutaku?” she asked, turning around to grab the piece of paper from her friend’s outstretched hand and handing it over to the woman behind the counter. She took a look at it and something subtly shifted in her smile as she offered the tray out to Takashi with surprising alacrity.

“Take one, you and your friend both… Yes, I know the room you seek. It’s just down the hall… but you’ll need a key to get in. Here, just make sure to bring it back…” the woman laughed, her once soft and gentle voice now taking on a slight edge that Takashi found herself liking for some reason she couldn’t quite explain. She popped the mochi into her mouth happily and chewed on it, the sticky treat practically gluing her teeth together for a few seconds before dissolving. She offered the other one to Koutaku without thinking about it, and he gave her a suspicious glance that indicated his unease at the fact she’d eaten it. She shrugged her shoulders and placed the tray back in the receptionist’s hands, who shot a kind smile towards Koutaku and handed the key to room #3 to Takashi. She beckoned Koutaku down a nearby hallway to the left, and the cherry petals on the wall seemed to follow her along various slats and panels of painted silk on the walls as she walked down.

Spoiler:

Only briefly noticing her distress, Koutaku frowned slightly, but let her work through it, knowing he just wouldn’t be much help in that regard. Though he was becoming rather good at social interaction and reading people, it was still a decided fact that he simply didn’t understand how to connect in the way that she’d likely need in order to get through whatever it was exactly that she was reacting to. So it was that when they arrived he was happy that she’d recovered and calmed down significantly, and gave her a somewhat giddy smile--the adrenaline running through him from their brief encounter--as they walked up to the desk.

Following his friend, after she’d received the key for the dead man’s room, Koutaku paid close attention to their surroundings. As they walked the giddy feeling in his chest faded to a gentle hearthfire of warmth. The decor was rather snazzy, he had to admit, signaling to him that this was a relatively well-maintained establishment. Of course...the receptionist had given him the heebie-jeebies if he was being entirely honest. Unsure of exactly why he just kept the thought in the back of his mind for later assessment. Soon they found the room in question. It was on the thirteenth floor and had required them to circumnavigate the stairwell--which he’d assisted with via his wires and some expert vertical movement.

Now, standing before the door, Koutaku noticed something slightly odd. All the other doors had fairly normal marks of wear and tear, but this one...this one looked as if it’d been recently replaced. Almost as if no one ever used this particular room, as if the hotel just never assigned it to anyone.

Weird.

As Takashi opened the door, Koutaku entered behind her, revealing a fairly standard suite. Two beds, a bathroom, a small TV, two end tables, and one larger one for dining he presumed. It was tidy and well maintained, the sheets cleaned and pressed, the bed properly made. As he peered into the bathroom he noted that there were plenty of towels and complimentary soaps--anything a guest might want.

Speaking up, Koutaku proposed a plan. “I think we should stay in this room tonight. We can sleep in shifts, that way we won’t be caught off guard. Whatever, or whoever killed that man was likely after something other than his death, if I had to guess. So they ought to show up here at his room and since we’ll be staying here, we can catch them red-handed and take them in.” Glancing at Takashi, and remembering her earlier distress, Koutaku decided he’d take the first shift, and told her as much.

That said, he sat on his bed and closed his eyes--extending his senses out to 10 meters as he did so and waiting. If anything made noise, or moved into range, he’d know. Especially given that he’d slipped into a combat trance as well, sharpening all of his senses just that extra bit. His preparations made, Koutaku idly summoned his katana back to himself and sheathed it, having initially forgotten it in the corpse of the beast they’d dealt with earlier.

Taking the sheath from his hip, Koutaku laid it over his lap and took to focusing. He figured that he may as well work on a technique while they waited.

Spoiler:

Takashi’s inspection of the room was similar to Koutaku’s--though she noticed that the painted silk of the hallways seemed to continue into this room as well, as though this room were an extension of that space rather than a separate and private space. Something about it set her slightly on edge, especially as she looked at the patterns that had been painted on it--the cherry blossoms had given way to a more densely painted and menacing forest, the shades of green taking on a slightly sickly and malevolent tone that made Takashi’s head spin. She took a few breaths to steady herself, but some heady woody fragrance filled the room just as if they were surrounded by towering pine trees and she stumbled back onto the bed as if reeling from a daze of some sort.

She immediately sat up and shook her head, rubbing her eyes with balled fists and running her hands through her hair to reorient herself in her body. She gave a quick tired smile to Koutaku, agreeing with his assessment that they should fall asleep as a leaden fatigue had worked its way into her bones and muscles. They’d not been particularly active outside of the battle, so she wasn’t sure what was making her quite so stiff--but she felt like she could scarcely move. In mere moments she’d fallen asleep completely, a soft rumbling snore escaping from her rhythmically--she’d fallen asleep fully dressed and on top of the sheets, as if overwhelmed by the urge to slip deep into slumber.

Several hours into her slumber it seemed to be nightfall once again, the pale moon’s coruscating rays piercing directly into the room from the large window that led out into a little patch of dense woodland. The rays filtered down through the trees into the ground floor window, its branches casting eerie shadows about the room and reflecting from the slightly iridescent silk on the panels in the walls. It seemed to thread the outlines of the trees with a low pulse of silver light, and the same tenebrous shadows played across the backdrop of light with a particularly menacing vigor. Koutaku would feel it first extend into his sensory range, a creeping sensation like a clawed branch reaching out towards him. Glints of red light occasionally played themselves across the wall in a pattern faintly recognisable as the movement of cherry blossoms, but the eerie red splotches seemed to stay for far longer than was welcome in the peculiarly effulgent light.

If he looked behind him, he’d notice that the shadows from the moonlight had pooled on the floor in strangely rigid lines, but in a way that was slightly out of focus to his current position and senses. If he moved a little towards the entrance of the room he’d be able to view them at the right angle to make out the strangely precise shape they were making. Just at that moment a series of knocks came at the door, slow and with even greater pauses between. Then a voice called out:

“It’s time for breakfast, Koutaku…”

And a terrible squelching noise could be heard coming under the door, from something sliding in beneath the gap under the doorway. A noxious haze began to visibly emit from the walls, and the painted silk seemed to animate as if the room had been plunged directly outside into the middle of the forest. Koutaku’s breath began to frost the air in front of him, a strong chill descending over him as an unnaturally cold air seemed to tear the warmth from him even though he was fully clothed.

“We need you in the kitchen, Koutaku, or it won’t be ready in time… ehehehe...” the voice of the elderly woman came again, a dry chuckle at the end only intensifying as her painted visage crept into the room from the door and made its way across the walls towards him. Some glint in her eyes was murderous in intent, her path following the red splotches and inexorably towards him, grasping and reaching out with spectral hands.

Spoiler:

In the quiet of that fell night, Koutaku kept his focus sharp and his will sharper. With each breath he honed the chakra of his technique, channeling it through the sheath and blade of his sword with deliberate motions. He wove the tendrils of his will through the energy, folding it, and twisting it subtly into more and more complex changes. As the minutes dragged on into hours he increased and modulated the energy densities in his constructs, making sure that they would maintain cohesion and stability even at their most potent. Once he was satisfied with that, he shifted tacts, working at new principles as he began to take apart other techniques to better understand their inner workings. Then something tenebrous, like oil and parchment grasped at his senses and he opened his eyes, immediately fully alert and ready to respond. Yet, there was nothing ‘cept the moonlight from the window and its strange off-kilter shadows. Koutaku shot to his feet, stabilizing himself on the bed even as it rocked slightly, the material of the mattress depressing beneath his feet.

Then came the sounds, the sound of knocks drawn out too far with pregnant pauses, too late in the dead of night to be normal. Moving silently, Koutaku slipped off the bed and jostled Takashi roughly to wake her, even as he drew his wakizashi and a kunai to account for the close quarters. However, what came next unnerved even him as despite his many years of training, and the rigorous mental excercises of his clan, nothing could quite prepare one for something truly unexplainable.

The gritty, wet grinding of meat through a too-tight aperture rang out, and Koutaku bit his cheek and channeled chakra through his weapons, in hope he could hurt a thing of which he knew little. It rose, its voice that of the old clerk’s, its visage a twisted mockery of hers, yet somehow more inhuman. The figure was barely solid, as it crept towards them, the very walls of the room becoming claustrophobic and dark, woodland colors and crimson light writhing on their surfaces.

A cold overtook him, and the ghastly entity stretched out its gnarled aged hands to grasp at him. Yet, he couldn’t move, the cold grip of fear had set in, and he’d felt it too late. Frozen, he felt his mind go into overdrive and knew that he had broken out in a cold sweat. All thoughts fled, replaced only by maddened ramblings and screeching fear that addled his senses and slacked his grip upon his weapons.

They clattered to the floor, the sound of cold metal ringing through the room, like a dinner bell...and they were on the menu.

Spoiler:

Tendrils of ethereal force gripped a hold of Koutaku and dragged him into the wall, for despite their lack of substance their grip was stronger than any mortal force could hope to overcome. The paint from the silk on the walls began to drip down the fabric in thick globules of colour, twisting together in obscene knots and contortions that suggested angles not entirely possible in the normal world. They hit the ring of palpable moonlight as they moved and the sheen seemed to empower them further, painting them into the bedsheets that Takashi was sleeping on and manifesting as writhing, sinewy roots that painted themselves across her yukata and her scarf. Soon the knotted tangles had completely overcome her and her eyes flickered open briefly before she was dragged down through the bedsheets and into the walls. Her now-painted form flailed and pleaded wildly, looking directly at Koutaku all the while, as the gnarled hands of the receptionist gripped his face and forced him to watch his friend disappear along the walls and out of the room.

A root from the woman’s hands extended outwards from her iron grip and slid into his ear, wiggling and vibrating along his ear canal in horrifying gyrations that produced a cacophonous sound in his ears, one that wormed its way deep into his mind and tugged at whatever core of consciousness within him existed and wrapping around it. His vision began to dim as the strange sound suffocated and constricted around his mind’s link to consciousness, and the eerie shadowy lines on the ground aligned in a circle of moonlight with him at its centre to form that same symbol Takashi had described as being on the moon before. Within seconds Koutaku’s senses were completely overloaded by the fear gripping his mind, and he too was rendered totally unconscious.

Takashi woke first in what looked to be a basement cellar, dank with years of musty neglect. Cracks in the waterlogged floor allowed noxious vapours to rise from the shattered concrete and the colour the air with their nauseously refractive effulgence. As her eyes opened she sprang up from the floor in a cold sweat, only to find her hands manacled and the chain threaded through some nearby pipe on the wall. She tried to scramble forwards to the prone form of Koutaku laying some few metres, but was met with a rusted clang of metal scraping against metal as the chain halted her momentum. She shouted his name several times to no avail, but when she extended her senses outward she could sense his vital signs still hale and whole and she slumped back with equal parts relief and terror. She waited for him to wake, gazing into a pool of moonlight filtering through a tiny window at the top of one of the bleak concrete walls with nervous consternation blossoming in her bosom.

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