“Um, Iris, what are you doing?” Lilian asked. Iris didn’t say anything. She merely winked, as if to tell Lilian not to worry, and that she had it all under control.
Several large veins appeared on Katrina’s forehead. “Your insults are getting tiresome, fox. I believe it’s time to end this.”
“You’re right. It’s better to end this farce now,” Iris agreed. “The stud is waiting for us, and I’d rather not remain in the presence of two grotesque creatures like yourselves.”
“Oh, that does it.” Katrina’s pale face turned steaming red. “You’re dead.”
“What’s this about a stud?” Hilda asked, seemingly more interested in the idea of a man than the insult.
Katrina ignored her sister as she stood tall on all eight legs and tried to pierce Iris with her spinneret. When Iris burst into black flames, even Lilian blinked in surprise.
“What the—?”
“GYAA!”
Katrina shrieked as she stumbled back, the flames traveling up her spinneret and enveloping the rest of her body. Hilda’s eyes actually bulged when she realized that her sister was being consumed by flames.
“Katrina!”
While the pair were trying to put out the fire, which couldn’t be snuffed by anything short of overpowering it with superior youki, Lilian’s bonds were suddenly cut away by a long black nail.
She landed on her feet and turned around to see Iris standing there, grinning proudly at her accomplishment. In that moment, she realized what had happened.
The Iris who’d been trapped within the web was an illusion this whole time. But when did she have time to create an illusion?
Since an illusion was created by injecting youki into someone’s brain to mess with their five senses, it wasn’t something that could be affected by a jorogumo’s web if it had already been cast. That meant Iris had known about these two and pretended to be surprised. She must have put everyone in an illusion before the pair even revealed themselves.
“Come on, Lily. Now’s our chance to run.”
Iris grabbed Lilian’s hand and took off. They turned a corner quickly, then ran down that hallway before turning another corner. Katrina’s enraged shrieks echoed to them from a distance.
“Iris, when did you…?”
“While we were talking, I accidentally touched one of the webs stuck to the wall,” Iris explained. “I couldn’t say anything because I didn’t want them to know that I was onto them, so I replaced myself with a basic illusion and hid myself in the shadows.”
It was a cunning plan. Lilian couldn’t help but admire her sister’s ability to think that up on the spot. “Hid in the shadows? Does that mean you know Shadow Walking ?”
Shadow Walking was a void technique. It was basically walking between shadows. A skilled shadow walker could travel across vast distance within the blink of an eye simply by traveling through the shadows. It was an excellent assassination technique, which was why Lilian hadn’t thought her sister would know it.
“You’re not the only one who trains, ya know?” Iris said. “I’m not as gung-ho about the whole ‘Training from Hell’ thing like you and the stud, but I understand that I need to be stronger for moments like this.” She grimaced. “It’s hard to train without someone who can teach me, though.”
Void techniques were the most dangerous to use. The likelihood of the user killing themselves instead of their enemy was high. It was a double-edged sword—no, it was more like a beam saber. No matter which side someone used, they could easily slice their own body apart by swinging it incorrectly. For Iris to have even progressed this much was impressive.
“That’s really cool,” Lilian admitted. “By the way, sorry I wasn’t much help back there.”
“Uhuhuhu, you might be a better fighter than me, but you can’t be on the ball all the time. Besides, those webs were well hidden. If I hadn’t accidentally touched one of them, I would have never known we were walking into a trap.”
“Get back here!” Katrina’s shout pierced the air.
“Sounds like they’re coming after us,” Iris commented. “I’m not sure what we should do now. I only thought up to our escape.”
“Don’t worry.” Lilian grinned. “I’ve got a plan to take care of those two.”
Hilda walked beside her sister. The hallway was large enough to accommodate them both. She glanced at Katrina out of the corner of her eye, a smirk tugging at her lips.
“I can’t believe you fell for an illusion. What kind of jorogumo are you?”
“You fell for it, too!”
It always amused Hilda to see her sister get so riled up. Katrina was such a high-strung girl, though Hilda supposed she couldn’t blame her. Their current circumstances were not desirable.
“Where did those two run off to?” Katrina complained, scowling.
“Who knows? It’s not like they have anywhere to go.”
It was true. This base was on an island in the middle of Lake Michigan. There was nowhere for them to run, unless they could leave the base, find a boat, and travel back to the mainland. While they likely had a boat, escaping from this base, which was like a maze, would be no easy task. She and her sister weren’t the only yōkai guarding this place, after all.
“There!” Katrina pointed. “I see one of them!”
Hilda looked at where her sister was pointing in time to see raven-colored hair fluttering as it disappeared around a corner.
“Are you sure that’s not another illusion?” she asked.
“Of course, I’m sure!” Katrina looked upset, as if the very notion of her not being able to see through an illusion pissed her off. “I would never allow myself to be fooled twice!”
Hilda wasn’t so sure about that, but she didn’t say anything.
They rushed around the corner to see that the vixen had already made it to the other end. The kitsune gave them a grin as she disappeared behind the next corner, as if she was antagonizing them into following her. Katrina didn’t hesitate to take the bait.
Sighing, Hilda caught up with her sister and they both rounded the corner together. “You know this is probably a trap, don’t you?” she asked as the void kitsune disappeared into a door on their left.
“Of course, this is a trap,” Katrina said. “I am not so naive as to believe that this vixen did not lead us here for no reason. This is obviously a trap.”
She really is high strung, Hilda thought with a sigh. She wished her sister would learn to relax a little. All that stress couldn’t be good for her.
“So, how are we going to do this?” Hilda asked.
“Simple,” Katrina began, “they’re clearly expecting us to enter through this door, so we shall do the opposite and enter through the wall.”
“Right…” Hilda didn’t know if that would work, but she decided to stand back and let her sister operate. She’d stick herself in reserve, just in case Katrina ran into trouble.
Katrina shot several silk strands from her spinneret, which she then manipulated into a sword. Her arm blurred. Several flashes protruded the wall before crumbling into evenly cut segments. With nothing blocking her path, Katrina rushed into the room.
“You have given me quite the runaround, but now it’s time for you to—kya!”
Several noises came from within the room—bangs and crashes, followed by maniacal laughter and vicious swearing. Hilda stood outside, wondering if she should go in now, or wait until after Katrina was trussed up a little.
“W-what is this?!”
“Ufufufu! How do you like my trap? I call it the spider trap.”
“That’s a terribly unoriginal name, Lily-pad.”
“Hush, you! Stop ruining my moment of triumph!”
“How did you know I would come through the wall?! Are you psychic?!”
“I knew that you would suspect a trap and therefore come through the wall instead of the door. It’s a logical conclusion. Whenever people suspect a trap, they always come through in a way that’s supposed to be unexpected. I’ve
read that in manga, most people come through walls, so I knew that you would, too.”
“What does a manga have to do with anything?”
“Everything! Manga is the answer to all of mankind’s problems! Any question that you need answered, manga will answer it! You lost to me because you haven’t read enough manga!”
“Uhuhuhu, you’re so cute when you get excited like this.”
As she listened to the absurd conversation, Hilda figured it was time to make her entrance. Manipulating her own threads, she waltzed into the room and saw about what she expected to see. Her sister was hanging from the ceiling, tied up in, of all things, chains. She dangled there, her eight legs constricted together. She reminded Hilda of a male spider that had been killed by a black widow—except she was still struggling.
“You really should learn to be more careful, sister dear.”
“Shut up!”
“And where did those chains come from?”
“Those are mine,” Iris said. “I always keep them on hand in case the stud and Lily-pad decide to let me do some BDSM with them.”
“Hmm...” Lilian stroked her chin in thought. “That might not be a bad idea.”
“Right?” Iris wore a broad grin.
“I… see…” What an odd duo these two foxes were. “In either event, I suppose I should cut my sister down from there.”
“Ha!” Iris laughed. “I’d like to see you—”
Hilda twitched her fingers and, quite suddenly, the chains binding Katrina fell apart.
“—try?”
Iris and Lilian stared at the chains, which appeared to have been cut into thousands of tiny pieces. Hilda smiled at them, taking amusement in the way their eyes threatened to pop from their sockets.
“Well,” Lilian started, “that’s not good.”
Realizing that her plan had failed, Lilian reacted before anyone else had a chance to attack.
“Celestial Art: Flare!”
She struck the ground with her tails. Light burst from the tips, exploding with the brilliance of two solar flares. Everything was engulfed in white light.
“What the—?!”
“The light! It’s blinding me!”
Lilian kept her eyes closed as she grabbed Iris’s hand and pulled her out of the room. She sped past the two arachnid girls and rushed into the hallway.
“Get back here, you dirty foxes!”
Hilda and Katrina burst out of the room, hot on their tails. Lilian didn’t need more than a second to respond.
“Celestial Art: Divine Chains!”
Holes appeared in the air—or so it seemed at first. They were not holes, but rather, massive distortions of celestial energy. Shaped like swirling eddies, they were reminiscent of the Milky Way Galaxy. From within these youki-conceived swirls, several chains shot out and bound the pair.
“What is this?!”
“Oh, my. This is kinda kinky.”
“I don’t want to hear another word from you!”
Lilian heard the pair screaming behind her as they ran around a corner.
“That’s only going to slow them down, you know,” Iris said, panting. “It’s not going to stop them for—”
The sound akin to shattering glass echoed through the hall.
“—long.”
“I know that,” Lilian muttered. They turned around another corner. “That was just to give us some time.”
“It’s not a lot of time,” Iris muttered.
“If you’re going to complain, then I’ll let you come up with a plan to deal with them.”
“I’m good.”
“Then be quiet.”
Lilian knew they couldn’t fight those two half-baked. Well, they could, but it probably wouldn’t end well. Against a yōkai that could use illusions and manipulate threads to take any shape, become harder than steel, and absorb youki, they required a plan that would defeat them from a distance.
“Iris, I need you to head up one level.”
“Uh, okay…”
“Take this.” Lilian tossed her a headset. “We’ll use these to communicate. Let me know where you are.”
Iris clearly didn’t know where she was going with this, but at least appeared willing to let her take the lead. Lilian was grateful for her sister’s trust. As Iris took off, splitting up by going down a tunnel that branched out, she promised not to let that trust be in vain.
“There she is!” Katrina shouted as she and her sister rounded the corner.
“Oh, her sister is missing,” Hilda commented.
“Who cares about that twat?! I want revenge on the brat who blinded me!”
Katrina bull rushed at Lilian. Her spinneret came up and spat several needle-like threads. Using short, precisely timed bursts of the enhancement technique, Lilian avoided being turned into a pincushion, but she still felt the projectiles as they whizzed past her head. Knowing that simply dodging wouldn’t be enough to avoid getting hurt, she channeled minute amounts of youki into her tails.
“Celestial Art: Sequential Movement.”
Sequential Movement , despite its complex name, was just a minor illusion. It simply made her “appear” a few inches away from where she was really standing. It was such an easy illusion that few people could see through it unless they were masters at sensing foreign youki.
“What the hell?!”
And, apparently, Katrina was not very good at sensing foreign youki. The needles she shot went wide, striking an imaginary Lilian.
“It’s an illusion,” Hilda said.
“I already figured that out, thank you!”
Lilian felt her illusion disperse and stopped feeding youki into it. She then cast another minor technique.
“Celestial Art: Light Clone.”
It was a simple trick. All Lilian did was bend the light around her to create an exact duplicate of herself. It was an ethereal copy, so it wouldn’t be much good in a fight, but it was great for fooling people.
“Now there’s two of them!”
“Calm down, sister dear. One of them is merely an illusion.”
“Then why can’t I dispel it?”
“It must be a celestial-based illusion.”
“Then how do we tell them apart?”
“Who said we need to?”
Hilda manipulated her fingers and several silk fibers, their force glimmering silver, whipped forward like a series of waves.
Lilian and her copy moved in synch. She ducked low, the threads rustling her hair, then used an enhanced heel stomp to split the floor. The crack she made was long. It traveled all the way to her two adversaries. One of Hilda’s legs fell into the ground and caused her to trip and, because of her large arachnid body, crash into her sister as they both fell to the floor in a tangled heap of spider limbs.
“Lily-pad, I’m on the second floor.”
Placing a hand against her ear, Lilian turned a corner and spoke into her headset. “Good. Can you follow my signature?”
“Yes.”
“Then follow me from the second floor.”
After receiving an affirmative from her sister, Lilian took off. She rushed down corridors, banked along turns, and moved down hallway after hallway. It wasn’t until she’d found herself trapped by a dead end that she stopped running.
“Are you still with me?”
“Yes.”
“Where are the two spiders?”
“They’re closing in on you.”
“Time?”
“I’d say they’ll be there in about sixteen seconds.”
“Good. On my signal, I want you to collapse the ceiling on top of them.”
“I can do that. Be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
“Uh-huh. Right.”
Lilian pouted as the line went dead. She disliked it when her sister teased her like that. She was always careful when fighting. She was!
“There she is!” Katrina shouted as she and Hilda rounded a corner.
As they rushed tow
ard her, Lilian calmed her racing heart. While she was frightened, now was not the time to show it.
“I see you’ve run into a dead end, dear,” Hilda said, smiling. “My, that was careless of you, though you’ve led us on quite the merry trip.” Lilian remained silent. “Nothing to say?”
“There’s not much to say.” Lilian shrugged. “Other than I’ve got you right where I want you.”
“Cute.” Hilda snorted. “It’s amusing to see that you actually think you’ve beaten us.”
“You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to,” Lilian said, playing along. “In fact, it would be easier for me if you didn’t believe me.”
Hilda stopped walking. Lilian could see the uncertainty entering the jorogumo’s eyes. While she seemed confident enough, it appeared that her foe was also intelligent enough to be wary. Of course, being wary would play into Lilian’s hands. If she acted impatiently and rushed her, Iris wouldn’t have enough time to act.
“Would you two stop with the banter? Let’s just get this over with.” Katrina grinned, revealing rows of sharp teeth. “I’m gonna enjoy killing you.”
Lilian waited for another two seconds.
And then she smiled.
“And I’m gonna enjoy watching you fail.” She placed a hand to her ear. “Iris.”
“On it!”
There was a moment of silence, but then, without warning, the ceiling above Hilda and Katrina suddenly collapsed. Several large chunks of debris fell upon them, covered in black flames. The two screamed as they were buried underneath the debris. Knowing better than to assume they were dead, Lilian knelt down and brought her tails to bear.
“Celestial Art: Double Helix Divine Cannon!”
The large beam of golden energy shaped like a helix blasted from her tails and slammed into the ground in front of the debris. Cement fragments exploded everywhere as the floor collapsed, causing the debris, along with Hilda and Katrina, to fall further.
Lilian ran up to the hole and looked down. The edges were burnt, blackened by Iris’s void fire. There was nothing down below. Lilian was actually surprised to see how far the hole went down, as she’d expected there to be a floor below this one, but all she saw was indefinite darkness.
This is the first floor, so maybe there’s nothing past this but the tunnels. I wonder how far down they go…
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