~~~

‘Harder…’

‘Quiet…’

‘More teeth, come on.’

‘You’ll alert the guards.’

‘Bite…it’s only iron…’

The fox stopped digging into the cell bars and whipped back to Akira, growling at him. Then shifted to Daiki, who was still slumped against the wall to the left, and told him to stop with the gentle chiding and just gag the ashigaru.

‘Gag me? I’m trying to support you here, demon…’

‘By talking nonsense right in my ear.’

‘…which is more than your best friend is doing.’ Akira pulled himself up from the crouching position he’d been in and rotated his shoulders, wincing at the cracking noises of his own bones. ‘And the guards can’t hear me, they’re asleep. Obviously. Otherwise we wouldn’t be trying to escape…’

‘They’re standing up, actually,’ muttered Daiki, throwing a bit of dungeon grit at what remained of the rat corpse nearby. ‘And they never sleep on duty. It’s what Suwa guards are known for…besides the manic superstition.’

Akira jabbed a finger at the two distant figures propped up against the far-away wall, completely immobile. ‘Yeah, apparently that was all bullshit.’

‘They’re probably just pretending. Toying with you.’

‘Sure. Faking it.’

‘No one ever escapes from here. Or castles in general, to be honest. Better just to get some rest, conserve energy.’

‘…until my execution in the morning. Thanks, what wonderful advice.’

‘Ignore him,’ said the fox, rubbing one of its teeth. ‘He’s sulking.’

‘Actually, I feel quite tranquil.’

‘Yeah, cos you’re not the one getting executed.’

Daiki shrugged, rolling a bit of grit around his palm. ‘Executions aren’t that bad. They drug you beforehand, so you won’t feel anything. I’ve heard some people say it’s even quite euphoric…’

‘Euphoric?’ cut in Miho, taking a break from his own attempt at escape, sanding down the bottom of a cell bar with his fingernail, hoping he could loosen it from the wooden base.

‘Apparently.’

‘Because of the drugs?’

‘I’m half-tempted to request it myself. Beats being in this shithole. Or out in that shithole. Yeah, the drugs. Mellows you out. See, they don’t want you frenzied when you present yourself to the gods in the next life. Very superstitious area, Suwa.’

Akira stretched his eyes out, making a very poor attempt at awe. ‘Wah, I didn’t realise it was such a transcendental experience. Maybe I could ask for my katana to be scented, or some Sakura petals laid out for my head to land on.’

‘Don’t think they’ll use your katana,’ replied Miho, confused.

‘Their katana for me, kasu. The one they’re gonna use to euphorically lop our heads off. In about another seven hours.’

‘Ah, I get it now…’

‘Which is definitely gonna happen if magical fox here doesn’t get his teeth going and munch through these fucking bars.’

‘Fox teeth aren’t that sharp,’ said Daiki, throwing another bit of grit, this time at his own foot.

‘Gods on a geisha’s tit…’

‘His are no different, despite the magic factor.’

‘Okay, I’m warning you…curb the negativity or I’ll have to smash your brains out on that wall…’

‘And the bars are made of Shimane iron.’

‘…make you look like your rat friend down there.’

‘He’s right,’ interrupted the fox, running a paw over the almost imperceptible teeth marks on the cell bar. ‘It’s not gonna work.’

‘Wah, you too…’

‘And even if we did cut through, we’d still have the guard problem to deal with.’

‘Just…continue biting. I’ll handle the fighting parts.’

The fox stared at Akira’s weapon-free hands, making a hmm sound as one of the standing guards stirred in the background. Stretching out his arms, yawning silently, he remembered where he was and checked the cells at the end of the corridor slope, nodding to himself when he saw that all the prisoners were slouched against the walls, either sleeping or in a deep trance. Then sat down on the raised tatami platform and closed his eyes again.

Akira waited a minute, minute and a half before pulling up one eyelid and aggressively whispering at the fox to get back to work on the bar.

‘I told you, it won’t work. My teeth are not built for this kind of activity.’

‘Then use your claws…’

‘What, to itch the iron?’

‘Scratch it, slice it, I don’t know…do something.’

A staggered laugh sounded out from the cell next door, Misora sliding out of the shadows and over to her own bars, flicking a nonchalant fingernail against the iron.

‘Don’t know what you’re giggling about,’ mumbled Akira, a fleck of spit sailing out of his mouth and landing on the stone floor.

Misora seemed to notice it, raising an eyebrow. ‘That’ll be your head in a few hours.’

‘Swiftly followed by yours.’

She smiled, flicking the bar again, switching attention to the fox, and the grey cloud that was Daiki behind him. ‘An impressive duo. One melancholic wretch, and one idiot demon trying to eat his way through Shimane iron…’

‘I’m not melancholic.’

‘Ah, you can see me now.’

‘…cheered on by an ashigaru dumb enough to cling to the old Shingen, even after his retirement.’

‘Says a fool who pretty much walked into her own cell.’

The fox stretched out the line and got a grunted laugh from Akira for his efforts. A snigger from Daiki too, though he quickly culled it when he saw the fox looking at him.

‘You know…’ continued Misora, moving her fingernail onto another bar, ‘I thought I saw you earlier. But then, it couldn’t have been you because…why would you still be in the cell?’

‘The moody atmosphere.’

‘Unless you’re one of those impotent demons, who can’t really do anything. Yes, that must be it. Impotence. Quite sad, really.’

‘She’s got you there, fox,’ said Akira, smirking.

‘Sad for you too, ashigaru. Stuck with an ineffectual demon, about to be executed. If only fate had landed you with Atta Noe instead. She would’ve ripped this place to shreds hours ago.’

‘Atta who?’

Akira coughed, disguising a curt kuso. ‘Shingen concubine. Misty purple psychopath.’

‘Ah, an Atashhka.’

‘You mean the woman thing who tried to kill us?’ tagged in Miho, rubbing his neck in some kind of sense-memory move, even though he hadn’t been attacked there. ‘That’s her name?’

‘Atta Noe or box bitch. Personally, I’m leaning towards the latter.’

‘You insult her when she’s not around,’ said Misora, flicking the iron bar, ‘but a quick swish of lilac on this bar…a few slices across the necks of the guards…your necks…your guts. Finished.’

‘Sure, as long as some human dupe’s lugging her box along,’ shot back the fox, who was now trying to pick bits of iron dust out his teeth.

Misora flinched, her nail skidding off the bar. And she wasn’t the only one. Behind the fox, Daiki dug the tips of his own fingers into the grit on the floor, glaring at his supposed comrade’s eight tails, mumbling back the word dupe.

Akira coughed, breaking the brief silence. ‘Where is old box bitch anyway? Nearby?’

‘Brainless ashigaru thug…’

‘Wah, she’s not the one who sent you after us…is she?’

‘Truly no idea about anything…’

‘Or was it Shingen?’

Digging into a lower part of the cell bar, Misora returned to the fox, forcing him to put a halt to his teeth picking. They exchanged bitter stares for a few seconds before the ninja held out her finger and traced a very transparent outline of the demon’s form, counting out one to eight as she did so.

‘What happened to number nine?’ she asked, miming a swishy tail sketch.

Each one of the fox’s eight tails tightened in response, tucking in behind the demon’s rear.

‘I asked him the same thing earlier,’ said Akira, tilting his head to study the fox’s ass. ‘My guess is an ex-lover. With an axe.’

‘… … … … … …’ replied the fox, presumably in its native tongue.

‘What was that?’

‘… … …’

‘Okay, fine. Be mysterious. Long as you get back to biting that iron.’

A cough came from the left, the noise so abrupt that Akira almost fell the other way onto the rat’s blood. It was Miho, for some reason, with his hand raised.

‘Wah, do you have to do that so loud…’

‘I just wanted to ask,’ he said, putting his forehead against the bars and facing Misora in the other cell, ‘is the purple lady still angry with us?’

‘No, of course not. She’s completely forgotten about you.’

‘Really? She seemed pretty upset at the time…’

‘Gods…’

‘…all the swirling…the death threat she gave me.’ He paused, reading Misora’s face. ‘Ah, you’re joking. Aren’t you?’

‘I’m going back to sleep.’

‘Me too,’ said Akira, throwing an imaginary katana at Miho’s mouth, then shifting himself into a more comfortable position.

‘Wait…we’re not escaping?’ asked Miho, gesturing towards the bars.

‘Later.’

‘But-…’

‘Doom monger mage over there is right. Bars are too dense, fox is useless, might as well try to jump the guards when they come in the morning. Or just lie back and try that happy death he’s on about. Either way, I’m exhausted.’

‘Wake me up when you’re about to be executed, ashigaru,’ came from the shadows of the adjacent cell, the tone as barbed as ever.

Akira grunted, muttering the worst insult he could think of, then closed his eyes.

Welcomed in the void, soaked in it, refashioned it.

Played out a dungeon scuffle with the ninja, snapping her neck, cutting her legs off, screaming at her, ripping her yukata open and kissing her breasts, spitting in her eye, licking between her thighs, fucking her, slapping her, smoking a rolled-up version of Atta Noe, setting fire to her box, apologising, fucking her too, riding out her yells, cursing as the walls caved in.

He opened one eye, waiting for more noise.

The cell was still there, as were the other two inmates. No sign of the fox. Shadow only in the ninja’s cell. Two standing guards at the higher end of the corridor. Asleep? Probably. Didn’t matter, still no way out. Execution pending. Drugged and then gone. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad…being out of all this…

His eyelid slid down again, bringing the void.

Not the ninja, not the ninja, not the ninja, not the

He pictured an onsen.

Added a random girl, naked. Got in the water and let her splash some shōchū on his chest.

Then Miho appeared, wearing a yukata with the god of death on it.

Told him the onsen was big enough for a hundred Kumamoto chickens.

The annoying ninja agreed, her head rising up from behind the naked girl, who ripped off her face to reveal the glowing purple eyes of Atta Noe.

She’s got purple pubic hair too, said the eight-tailed fox, sitting on top of an unlit okiandon nearby.

And a lovely decorative box, added Daiki, draping his arms over Akira’s chest, running his fingers down beneath the water, touching him…

Wait, not in front of-

The void rushed in, then the cell, Akira lashing out with his left arm and clipping one of those ludicrous wooden struts on the wall.

‘Kuso…’ he said to himself, rubbing his hand, taking stock of his surroundings.

It was quiet, a ghost dungeon.

Everyone else still asleep.

Shifting his body to the left, he checked on the guards up the corridor slope.

What…

It wasn’t perfect light, but the only okiandon that was lit showed him a bizarre scene. One guard laid out on the tatami platform…possibly asleep…and the other flailing around like a lunatic, trying to swat at something in the air.

Then that stopped and he was on the floor too.

Just like at the ryokan…the Jewel of Kai…dropped like a bored hawk out of the sky.

Was this real?

Slapping himself hard in the cheek, twice, three times, Akira pushed forward onto his hands, then forced his tired limbs up into a standing position. Miho was about half a foot away, which was easy kicking distance, so he kicked him, told him to wake up, and then quickly moved over to the cell bars.

Miho made some murmuring sounds, said, ‘not there, Yuki, that’s River Bitch’s chair,’ and went right back to sleep.

‘Useless,’ whispered Akira, keeping both eyes open and fixed on the guards who had just been knocked down to the floor.

Whoever had done it had to be close.

In the corridor somewhere.

Yet as a minute passed…two minutes…ten…twenty…no one stepped into the okiandon light, and Akira rubbed his eyes, starting to wonder if he’d just imagined the whole thing, and what he was really seeing was the guards sleeping in an unorthodox place, possibly from exhaustion.

No, just them being asleep didn’t help anything.

He needed them closer, within arm’s reach, so he could grab the keys.

Maybe the fox could do it, he thought, sliding his hands down the bars. Bite properly through the iron just enough to squeeze through, and then scoot over.

Somehow break past that ten metre spiritual barrier thing he was on about.

And then they could go to the lake and…wade into the soothing water…with the annoying ninja as their hostage…and Aya in a revealing kosode, telling us to hurry cos there wasn’t much time, the guards would-

His eyes shot open again, an instinctive wah half a second behind.

‘Not so loud,’ said Aya, standing next to a now very open cell door, dressed not in a revealing kosode but a servant’s yukata, with the Suwa mermaid emblem stitched onto the right breast.

He blinked furiously, grinding knuckles into his eye sockets.

‘It’s okay, it’s really me.’

‘Can’t be…’

‘Not a dream.’

‘How…’

‘I’ll tell you later, when we’ve escaped. Quickly, wake up the others…’

Akira caught the words, understood what had been said, but still didn’t move an inch. Luckily, Miho had heard their exchange and was now going through the same routine he had just slumbered through, while Daiki and the eight-tailed fox were already on their feet, apparently not surprised at all.

‘I brought some servant yukatas for you to wear,’ Aya continued, pointing at the two robes on the floor.

‘There’s three of us,’ said Miho, confused.

‘It’s all I could find. Besides, Akira’s too fierce to be a servant. And now that I see his current mood, Daiki too.’ She stepped aside, letting an ecstatic Akira out of the cell, then told him to get off when he pulled her into a bear hug and declared her a ludicrous dungeon goddess. ‘Both of you can put on the guard uniforms. If they fit…’

‘Ah, great idea. And my first act as dungeon security…will be to take care of the trash.’

On the last word, he turned to face Misora, who was watching from her own bars with a blank expression as the whole cell of her adversaries emptied out into the corridor, then a slightly less blank expression as Akira rushed up to one of the guards and came back twenty seconds later with a green katana gripped in his hand.

‘Coward…’ she said, spitting on the floor by his feet.

‘Tactician,’ he corrected, taking the keys from a puzzled-looking Aya and opening the cell door.

‘We’re taking her with us?’ asked Miho, equally confused.

‘Go down there, get the yukatas on,’ Akira ordered, pointing with the katana to the end of the corridor.

‘Who is she?’ asked Aya, eyes on both the blade and the serene female face just beyond it.

‘I’ll be there in a second.’

The ashigaru glanced at the fox, hoping for some back-up, a comrade in that which had to be done, the abject, bloody stuff, but the silly creature was too busy scanning Aya’s legs. No, not scanning, sniffing them.

Aya half-noticed and stepped away, her attention quickly shifting back to the ashigaru she’d just rescued advancing into the cell, with the green katana aimed diagonally at the poor, unarmed woman crawling desperately back towards the far wall.

‘Wait, what are you doing?’ said Miho, seemingly figuring out what was about to happen and following Akira into the cell.

‘Removing a threat.’

‘You can’t do that, she’s…’

‘…a ruthless assassin.’

‘…unarmed. Akira, please…I saved your life, you owe me…don’t hurt her.’

‘Got to be done. Back off, tadpole.’

The order was clear enough, delivered with no compassion whatsoever, yet it wasn’t enough as Miho darted round the side of the ashigaru and placed himself directly between Misora and the tip of the katana.

It was a bold move, and a brief one, as Akira lowered the weapon and elbowed Miho in the side of the head. Then grabbed him by the arm and threw him on the stone floor.

‘Doing us both a favour here,’ he growled more than spoke, turning back to the target and growling for real as now there were two obstacles in the way, Aya and Daiki the mercurial mage.

‘You can’t kill someone who just saved your life,’ said the ludicrous dungeon goddess, pinching the sleeve of Daiki’s yukata and shifting him slightly in front of her…just in case Akira could in fact do that.

‘It’s not at all necessary,’ added the mage, accepting Aya’s nudge.

Akira groaned, almost growled, and jabbed his green katana at the air to the side. ‘Idiots. Naïve fucking-…she’ll kill us if she escapes.’

‘We’ll all be long gone by then.’

‘Better to be sure of it.’

‘No, it isn’t.’ Daiki took a breath, drifted into a series of rhythmic head dips that the temple had taught him long ago, then reached his hand slowly out towards the tip of the katana. ‘Let it go, Akira…’

Prone against the wall, Misora watched the scene play out, vetoing her plan to win over the boy, slowly loosening her fist and letting the dust from the floor spill back out, smiling internally as the ashigaru acquiesced to the mage’s ridiculous zen ploy, pulled back his oddly-green katana into a resting position, shouted and cursed at the walls, and, finally, stormed out of the cell in irritated defeat.

‘Sorry about that,’ said Aya, doing the tiniest of nods at the woman she didn’t even know, then saying sorry again as Akira locked the cell door behind them.

‘Good luck,’ added Miho, slipping into the servant’s yukata, smiling like a loon when Misora started chuckling and shaking her head at him.

‘You’re all a bunch of fucking rabbits,’ said Akira through the most gritted of all teeth, grabbing both Aya and Miho by the sleeves and dragging them off down the corridor.

‘Not a dungeon goddess anymore…’ mumbled Aya.

‘And I’m gonna remind all of you of this moment…when that psychopath escapes and corners us somewhere. Well done, you let her live. Good job. Thanks for getting us killed so pointlessly.’

Letting go of their arms, Akira took the uniform that the fox had already removed from the guard’s body and began roughly putting it on.

‘Don’t suppose there’s a quiet way out of this place,’ muttered Daiki, pulling on the other guard’s outfit, the sleeves a little short on the arms.

‘Actually…as the two of you are dressed as castle security,’ started the fox, putting its claw against a row of shadowy white teeth.

‘Wah, there’s no way you can possibly know this castle.’

‘I may have visited a few times before.’

‘Huh? When?’

The fox ignored Daiki’s questions, as well as his mildly alarmed expression, and focused on the door panel ahead. ‘There’s a secret passage behind one of the banners in the ni-no-maru, leads down and out to the supply gate. If we move quickly…’

‘Lead the way, comrade,’ finished Akira, taking a last look down at the cells, shaking his head at Misora’s face between the iron bars, then re-focusing on Miho and Aya who, for some reason, were peeking into the village boy’s travel bag. ‘You two, bleeding heart ninja lovers…stop whispering, move it.’

‘Just checking that my rock’s still here,’ answered Miho, pulling out said rock and holding it up like it was Queen Himiko’s crown.

‘Great, beautiful, now put it back and get over here. Might still be some guards in the next corridor.’

Nodding at the ashigaru, the fox slid open the wooden door and peeked out into the next corridor. Then came back and gave the signal that everyone assumed was demon code for let’s go.

‘No guards?’ asked Akira, surprised.

‘Only the invisible ones.’

‘You’re sure they’re not hiding behind something?’

‘Come on, follow me. And try to keep up, I scurry fast.’

The five of them shuffled out…got about three metres down the beautifully wooden corridor…then shuffled quickly back into the dingy dungeon as Misora’s piercing scream of Guards bounced off the walls.

‘Kuso…’ shouted Akira, taking out the green katana…pausing…handing it to Aya with another kuso…taking the cell keys, then marching down the corridor slope and socking Misora in the temple just as she was letting out her fifth yell.

The ninja fell back, eyes switched off, deathly silent.

‘Really gonna regret this,’ Akira muttered, closing the cell door again and turning the key in the lock.

‘Don’t think anyone heard her,’ said Miho, as Akira re-joined them on the tatami platform.

‘Ah, they heard…and probably thought it was torture noise.’

‘Or aggressive sex,’ countered Daiki, mouthing a quick sorry to Miho and Aya, who just stared back him, puzzled.

‘Yeah, now about this secret passage…’

The fox nodded at Akira and slid the door panel open again. Checked for invisible guards. Then gave the one paw signal to move out.