Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 2 (4 page)

“Show me these pleasures of which you speak.”

The actions of the women that followed seemed to be responding less to the challenge than to the instructions they were being given.

Arms reached out from all sides. Not to Mephisto, but to the gunwales of the boat. They began rocking the boat, not with great gusto, but rather with a solemn sort of ritual devotion. Lurching starboard and port, aft and stern, the boat bucked atop the outflowing but unmoving ripples in the water.

As to the effect on Doctor Mephisto—there was none.

After several minutes, the women released their hold on the boat. The pitch of his voice unchanged in the slightest, Mephisto observed, “Rocking the boat right and left generates an excessively stimulating series of sexual impulses. Orgasm would be achieved in less than five seconds. The back and forth motion causes the spent sexual organs to replenish themselves. The pleasures thus produced would literally be endless.”

“It has no effect?” one woman asked in despair. “No one has passed through our watery pleasures. What manner of man are you?”

“No man denies himself pleasure.” Mephisto spoke like a professor lecturing a student. “However, a woman's pleasures alone will never truly satisfy. Even in four thousand years of Chinese history, error has on occasion been mistaken for truth.”

“We do not understand. Why—”

“I do not know how long you have lived here. But a little ignorance now and then will hardly hurt.” A bright sound rang out from his right hand. The women watched as a wire ring dangled from his fingers. “At the very least, spending eternity talking about Doctor Mephisto's handiwork will do you no harm.”

He looked past the women to the fortress of ships and dead men, and noted that they were fading away. The perpetual sky at the far end of the river was gone as well. Groves of bamboo sprouting from the black earth lined the water's edge. The roof of a large manor was visible further in.

“
Ohh—
” the women exclaimed together.

Mephisto's boat again moved forward on the steadfast surface of the water with all the jauntiness of a pleasure cruise. The eyes of the women seeing him off were filled with hatred. However, as the white figure drew further away—not once looking back—and became little more than a dot on the horizon, from their mouths issued a long sigh.

Like bidding goodbye to a lover departing on a long voyage, it was a sigh filled with painful might-have-beens.

Beyond the prow of the boat, a wooden wharf jutting out from the shore came into view. The two figures standing there gazed back at him. Mephisto recognized both of them.

Kikiou was wearing silver priest's robes. Next to him, Shuuran's hair fluttered in the breeze. As the water pushed the boat precisely to the dock, the two of them bowed respectfully.

“As soon as Shuuran gave me word, I came here to wait for you. Such was to be expected of Doctor Mephisto. Ah, I see you've arrived here without so much as a scratch.”

Gone was the battle-strength
qi
Mephisto had experienced outside the Toyama housing project. In its place was a humble, even courteous, air. But Mephisto regarded the old man with the same look as always.

“This is an unexpected welcome. I would have thought a hungry wolf or famished tiger awaited me.”

“Such stereotypical expectations,” the old man scoffed. He quickly corrected his expression. “We welcome you from the bottom of our hearts. To speak with total candor, making the best doctor in Demon City into an enemy was the last thing on our minds. I hope you will reciprocate our warm regards.”

“But of course,” Doctor Mephisto answered.

“Please, this way.” Shuuran smiled and turned towards a narrow path winding through the bamboo grove.

The thick scent of bamboo floated on the breeze. At the back of the grove, a stone staircase was cut into the cliff wall. It had well over a hundred steps.

Shuuran, in the lead, stopped before the staircase. Mephisto asked, “You're not going up?”

“These were originally the steps used by the castle guards. My mistress would rebuke me severely if guests were made to use them.”

Kikiou raised his hand. In a flash, another silhouette swallowed up the three shadows cast on the ground. Unquestionably the result of good training, a large bird swooped down and seized Mephisto by the shoulders without a single flapping sound.

Just as it seemed that the bird's upwards trajectory would continue into the heavens, Mephisto found himself standing on the top of the cliff along with the other two. He looked up, but saw no sign of the bird. All he could conclude was that it had at least three legs and three sets of claws.

The wind bore an indescribable fragrance towards him, accompanied by a clear, transparent tone. Stretching out below him was a large courtyard and stately manor. A small red boat and gazebo floated on a brimming lake. A waterfall tumbled solemnly from the summit of an ornamental mountain made of oddly shaped rocks.

The manor house was a showpiece of exquisite craftsmanship, sporting the lavish use of the finest materials. In the heart of an unexplored mountain range, wizards had created this world apart, this ultimate expression of four thousand years of refined tastes.

Beyond the manor was a green expanse, so deep and dark it was almost black, reaching out as far as the eye could see.

This was the dwelling place of these night visitors.

The woman easily broke through the heralded defensive perimeters of Doctor Mephisto's hospital and continued on her way. The force fields resisted her as they might a gentle breeze. The paralyzers and airlocks filled with anesthetic gas were equally ineffective.

She walked—
flew
might be the better word—right through them.

The computers pointed to the existence of something unconstrained by the basic laws of physics and nature. But thanks to the fleeing woman's horrible beauty, at least one member of the security detail had come away convinced of it.

Getting word that she was moving quickly toward the roof, the surveillance room supervisor figured they had her cornered and tasted victory, though that feeling was tinged with apprehension.

The hospital had seven floors above ground. After that the roof and the infinite sky.

For no logical reason, the supervisor got the feeling that the woman—invisible to his monitors—would deliberately choose the most difficult escape route.

Halfway up the staircase to the roof, the door came into view. The woman stopped. She'd definitely just passed the halfway point. But the distance to the door and its perceived size hadn't changed. She could climb a thousand more steps and wouldn't rise a foot higher. She could climb forever and all that awaited her was pointless effort.

“So they bent space back on itself. How very clever.” The woman smiled, showing her teeth. “But I battled such an obstacle four thousand years ago. With every passing year, humans devolve more than they evolve.”

At that time the legendary Yellow Emperor – the ancestor of the Han Chinese – possessed great spiritual powers. He studied the laws of the earthly and incorporeal realms, and freely ordered about the demon gods that resided there. He conquered foreign lands and peoples, and subjugated the Hmong.

Chi You, King of the Hmong, was an expert in magic and the dark arts. He summoned a demon cat beast a hundred feet tall and sent it to devour the Yellow Emperor's armies.

Drawing on the powers of the gods, the Yellow Emperor transformed two talismans into a phoenix and a divine tortoise. These two brought the demon beast under control while the Yellow Emperor employed
Dun Jia
techniques—the most benign school of which would later become known as Feng Shui—to warp space and cut off the enemy's path of retreat.

He constructed three gates around the battlefield. Those thrust into the “Rest” gate were bound hand and foot. Those who plunged through the “Pain” gate were drawn and quartered. And then through the remaining “Life” gate, the demon gods summoned by the Yellow Emperor attacked the distant Chi You.

This warping and bridging of space suggested similar
Dun Jia
techniques. Modern science had only
now
figured out how to bend space-time? Hence the woman's contemptuous attitude.

“I understand what you can do. But do you understand what
I
can do?”

She bit down hard on the tip of her right index finger. Before the thread of falling blood touched the ground, she flicked her hand. The thread leapt up, its end landing unbroken on the top step. She pulled back with her hand.

Guided by the thread of blood, it seemed that the steel door itself would descend the entire staircase. But that wasn't possible. Rather, a duplicate set of stone steps appeared. The one ran over the other, and when they were perfectly lined up, the door was right before her eyes.

“Over those next thousand years, Taoist monks spent their entire lives figuring out ways to break through the
Dun Jia
. I imagine your scientists will need that much time as well.”

She put her hand on the real doorknob of the real door. It opened without further resistance. She stepped onto the roof of Mephisto Hospital, into the dark night air. The breeze caressed her cheeks. The stars shone overhead. She looked up at the sky with an expression that suggested a familiarity with the constellations.

For a moment, lost in her thoughts, a peaceful look eclipsed her ravaged face, as she remembered someone or something from long ago.

“Surrender!” ordered a cold, metallic voice in the darkness. “Or else, according to Safety Preservation Regulation 48 governing this institution, we will have no choice but to launch a decisive assault.”

The woman didn't move. She didn't turn around. There were no human shadows on the roof. It was lit only in the glow of the moon and stars, and yet she could sense a countless number of
things
crawling about.

“Well, well. I would love to stick around and keep you company, but I have overstayed my welcome. So this is goodbye. More people than myself are presently in dire need of this hospital's services.”

The cheerful tone in the voice wavered just a bit. The white shadow leapt over the railing and was engulfed by a cloud of writhing masses.

Impervious to all known armaments, these synthetic wraiths possessed, weakened and killed any living organism. Only members of the hospital board were authorized by Doctor Mephisto to deploy them.

With a wave of her hands, the wraiths shattered into a thousand pieces.

By the time the flabbergasted security personnel poured onto the roof, the woman was floating through the air. She was then as high above the ground as the fence surrounding the hospital, so they thought she was about to hit the ground.

But then her body moved.

The armored exoskeletons had enough shock-absorbing ability and retro-rocket thrust to take a dive off a fifty-story building. But nobody took off after her. This flesh and blood woman wasn't a ghost, and yet she skipped through the air as if strolling across level ground.

This was something they'd never seen before. Even in Demon City.

The wind fluttered through the gossamer material on the back of her dress. It reminded them of ephemeral butterfly wings. But they couldn't begin to imagine what it actually was or what it actually did.

Assured that nobody was following her, in a great display of self-confidence, the woman calmly continued on for another ten yards before she picked up the pace and was swallowed up by the Demon City night.

Shuuran indicated the suspension bridge ahead of them. “This way.”

The bridge sloped down to the second floor of the manor house. There wasn't any wind. After crossing the bridge with the occasional unsteady step, Mephisto passed through a brightly-colored corridor and was led to what looked like a luxurious living room.

Shuuran handed Kikiou a golden decanter. Kikiou asked casually, as he filled Mephisto's glass, “I assume you drink?”