In hindsight, sending his Oni bodyguards back down the mountain and staying by himself had been a mistake. Granted, they couldn’t stay, altitude sickness could kill if you didn’t deal with it soon enough, but the sensible thing to have done would be to go back with them and post a guard at the base of the cliff, preventing another sneak attack by the mystery abseiler.
Not that he could have foreseen that the mystery assailant was some sort of spider demon woman, nor that she could throw bolo-like webbing at him. He’d been trussed up and gagged before he could say a word.
Paul reflected that of all the possible ways he’d thought he might meet his demise, being sucked dry and not in a good way, by a BDSM latex bodysuit clad, spider demon hadn’t actually been one he’d thought of. But here he was, tied up in a set of spider-silk restraints that were half cocoon and half shibari, like a fly caught by a particularly kinky spider.
Still, he reflected, it wasn’t all bad. The restraints were actually quite comfortable.. In fact if he could just scratch his nose, he could’ve probably nodded off to sleep. Plus his captor was quite easy on the eyes at least, in a rather perverted way… well, if one looked past the extra eyes in her forehead and the lower half that resembled a giant spider, as well as the way her lower jaw had split apart revealing disguised mandibles.
Actually… she’d been quite terrifying really at first sight, but once he looked past all that, she’d been a young woman who’d seemed to be rather more scared of him than he was of her. Unfortunately, being reduced to indistinctly mumbling past his gag rather put him at a disadvantage when it came to reassuring her.
So, here he was, tied up and suspended between two trees at the edge of the glade, while the spider lady was off hunting down the oni, at least, that’s what he supposed she was doing. Unlike cartoon villains, she hadn’t stayed around to monologue and explain her nefarious plan. She’d quickly and efficiently bound him, and scuttled off back down the trail, presumably to ambush Yuri and Yuko or anyone else that came looking for him.
He’d whiled away the time afterwards speculating about her. She’d been a Jorōgumo, a type of yokai that according to legend, could shape-shift between several forms, appearing as either a beautiful woman, a giant spider or even a regular sized spider, and something that was half-way between.
From what he’d seen of her, in particular her spider half, she appeared to be of the hunting spider persuasion. Which tallied with her slung web-bolo and large forward facing eyes, which in a human face gave her a somewhat unsettling appearance. The main pair of eyes were still spider-like, but trick of their optical properties made them somewhat resemble human eyes, with a white cornea, green iris and black pupil. However upon closer inspection, and he’d had quite a good view as she’d leaned in close to his face peering into his eyes, one could see they looked almost pixelated due to their compound nature. He’d realised the human-like appearance was an optical illusion when she’d shifted slightly, and eyes had seemed to remain fixed on his. A product of the angle of viewing and the way the light refracted and reflected in their internal structure, somewhat like how the eyes in certain paintings seemed to follow one around.
Between that illusion, the lack of eyelids, and the fact the main pair were over-sized to almost anime proportions and topped by a ring of smaller, bead-like pairs of eyes, like a tiara on her forehead, she had a decidedly unsettling ‘uncanny valley’ appearance, even before one took into account her garb.
He wasn’t entirely sure what the kinky BDSM latex apparel was about, or what it implied about her, but it certainly wasn’t chosen for it’s practicability or it’s warmth in the cool spring air at this altitude. Although the black latex did match her chitinous lower half rather, Paul thought, making it had to work out where clothing stopped and chitin started, which might have been the point.
Still, he rather suspected her choice of clothing was instead somewhere between psychological armour intended to intimidate, and a rather hazy notion of the sort of ‘tactical’ clothing one would wear to infiltrate somewhere at night. It looked like what someone who had watched one too many cheesy spy movies, would choose to wear on a such ‘mission’.
Well, either that, or she just enjoyed wearing outré kinky clothing. That was always a possibility.
After twenty minutes of fruitless speculation, the Jorōgumo had returned, carrying two cocoons which Paul rather thought probably contained a pair of very pissed off Oni, judging by the size, the way she’d wrapped them up completely and the fact that they were still wriggling despite that.
She didn’t appear to be straining at all, regardless of the weight of her two furiously but pointlessly resisting burdens. Placing them at her feet, Paul decided to take a gamble, and bit though the last few strands of the gag he’d been chewing on for the past half an hour.
Spitting out the remnants he spoke.
“Wait please! For your sake we need to talk!”
The Jorōgumo paused, staring at him. Her voice when she spoke was actually quite pleasant, and rather surprised sounding.
“For my sake? Why should we talk?”
“My name is Paul Holmes, I serve as Inari Okami’s Herald. If any harm befalls me, she is going to be very pissed off.!”
The Jorōgumo shook her head.
“And why should I fear the retribution of a faded and dying relic?”
Paul blinked, tilting his head far as he could in surprise.
“Um… you haven’t noticed? The magic here has been revitalised, and it’s on the increase elsewhere. Inari is almost completely restored to her peak.”
The spider demon reared back, raising her arms and front pair of legs and standing on tip-toe on her rear and back legs. A threat/surprised display in spiders Paul recalled.
“No! It’s not so!”
Paul automatically tried to shrug, but unable to, jerked his head towards the spring the bubbled up near the center of the mossy glade.
“Check for yourself, the local mana field..er… the background level of raw magical power that is, is higher than it has been in centuries.”
The spider demon gave Paul an unmistakable look of exasperation, despite her fixed compound eyes.
“If I could feel that, do you not think I would have noticed it?!”
“Oh. Um, yes… I suppose so. Ok, can you do magic? As in cast spells?”
“No.”
“How about shape shifting? If my sources are right, that’s something your kind can do, and I’m sure that has to use magic, right?”
The spider-woman regarded Paul silently for a few second, before she shrugged.
“Yes, I can, or could. Transforming is exhausting and leaves me weakened. I’m not falling for that trick.”
Paul frowned in frustration.
“What trick?! Look, you’ve got us tied up well enough there’s no chance of escape. It was all I could do to free my mouth… and by the way, that stuff tastes foul and I’m not even thinking about where it came from! But it’s not like there’s anyone in earshot to call for help. I would guess that shape-shifting leaves you wiped out because of the relative lack of magical power available, in which case you can test how strong the local field is by how easy it is for you now. I mean, it’s not like we’re going anywhere anyway.”
Paul hoped she’d go for the idea. If the stiller of the two be-webbed Oni was Yuko then she was in a bad way by now thanks to the lack of oxygen in the thinner mountain air and her insanely powerful metabolisms ferocious demands. She needed to get back down nearer sea-level soon, or risk permanent brain damage or even death. Of course, he couldn’t show concern about that right now…
The Jorōgumo backed away from her captives, looking uncertain, then sighed.
“If this is a trick, I’ll eat you last, and make you watch me devour your friends.”
Paul sighed.
“Upon my honor as a Herald, it’s not a trick.”
She looked doubtfully at him, then went still as he presumed she concentrated on transforming
The shift, when it came, surprised him. It was as if the spider-like legs, thorax and abdomen that took the place of her lower body, simply faded away, revealing a quite ordinary human pair of legs and pelvis.
He missed the shift in her face, but the young woman blinked and shook herself as if to check everything was were it was supposed to be. Paul noticed that the extra eyes were now just jewel-like markings on her forehead, and the main pair were quite human, although now brown coloured. Briefly he wondered if this was just an illusion, or if she’d actually changed her physical shape.
He also belatedly noticed that quite a lot of what he’d taken as shiny black latex, had in fact been shiny black chitin, and that what she was actually wearing was more akin to an extremely abbreviated bikini top, a zip-crotch thong, and a harness with an excessive amount of straps, buckles and clips.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Paul swallowed and in an effort to get his subconscious back under control considered the implications. Her attire suggested access to some rather specialist shops, the sort usually found in major population centers, or access to on-line shopping at least. But her lack of awareness regarding how magic had revived, argued against that.
Either she was almost terminally mono-focused and didn’t watch the news, or she’d been out of touch somehow. Paul frowned, hadn’t he read once that some spiders hibernated over winter? Holing up in a crevice or somewhere else protected and dry, to spend months in a torpor, barely even alive much less awake. Perhaps Jorōgumo did the same?
He then swallowed as he remembered that generally the females of such species did one of two things upon waking, either feed voraciously, or mate furiously. Sometimes both at the same time if the male wasn’t wary enough.
“Hoki..” she said as she approached Paul. “It is easier as you say… more effortless than I have ever known. But that does not prove that you are Inari’s Herald. If you were, you would’ve known this is my family’s lands, and would not intrude with your stinking oni guards, who also would not be building a village upon my grounds.”
Paul blinked, Inari had said nothing of this…
“I can prove that I am her Herald but… I don’t know why Inari failed to mention your ownership of these lands. If you care to check in my coat pocket… the top one on the left above my heart, you’ll find her medallion however.”
Regarding him distrustfully, she strode over to where Paul hung encased in webbing. Paul swallowed nervously. He was taking a big risk in more ways than one. But aside from her finger-tips lingering just a tad longer than necessary over his chest muscles, built up by hammering hot iron over the winter months, she extracted the triangular golden medallion with Inari’s personal stamp embossed on it.
Her face paled as an all-too human expression widened her eyes and sent her eyebrows climbing upwards.
“You.. were telling the truth! You are her Herald!”
“Told you… now can you kindly unwrap us please.”
The Jorōgumo shook her head.
“No, I mean I shall free you. But you still have trespassed and at least one of your lives are forfeit in recompense for that transgression of our agreement. I’ll take this one, it’s half dead anyway.”
The Jorōgumo picked up the stiller of the two wrapped oni, which Paul guessed was Yuko. The other cocoon containing a now desperately enraged Yuri practically left the ground as she struggled to free herself, to no prevail.
“No!” Paul spoke without thought. “It was my ignorance of the agreement that was at fault. Spare those two, they were only doing their job protecting me after all. If you must have a life, take mine.”
The woman stopped, Yuko’s ominously still and silent form dangling casually form one slender hand.
“You, a human, would give your life for an Oni? Why? Humans hate their kind! Why would you value the life of a slave, and a sickly one at that, over your own?”
Paul again tried to shrug, and failing sighed.
“Look Lady, I don’t know where you’ve been to be so out of touch. But things have changed rather. I fixed the problem of magic fading away, so all the yokai could live. Inari and I had words with the emperor, who revealed he’s a Ryu. So, now the yokai can live freely, openly under the protection of Imperial law. Which means they are also have basic human rights...er, rights anyway, of equality, freedom and the right to life. Those oni are not my slaves, they are my friends … and yes, I would lay down my life for a friend if I had to. That said… I’d rather if no-one dies, and we come to some other solution, because I’m pretty sure this is all just a simple mistake. Inari did not mention anything about you, or an agreement, back when the village was being planned. I honestly think she forgot…”
The woman brindled rather, giving Paul an irritated look.
“She forgot ?! My family have held this part of the mountain as ours for centuries!”
“Be that as it may, have you personally been here anytime recently? I mean, when was the last time any of your family was here?”
The irate spider demon paused, and shook her head.
“That doesn’t matter…”
“But it does! As the magic was fading it affected Inari like growing old in humans, her memory started to fade too. Without a recent reminder to jog her recollection, she won’t have remembered you or your families ownership.”
“Why should I believe you? You could be saying that as an excuse..”
Paul frowned, glaring at her.
“Are you implying that I, Inari’s Herald, would lie ?!”
Her face stilled, even as her eyes widened slightly. Herald’s were supposed to be oath bound to tell the truth, acting as they did as the messengers between Kami and mortals. To suggest that he was lying was an affront to his integrity and an insult to Inari herself.
“I meant no offense Herald! I apologize.”
The woman bowed deeply, kneeling upon the mossy ground to press her forehead against a cushion-like tussock. Paul sighed, he understood why Japanese culture, and yokai in particular had developed such elaborate social customs. A culture where death could come swiftly and with little warning as the result of the slightest offense, tended to be very polite and given to highly stylised forms of apology.
“Very well. Shall we say that my transgression, born of genuine ignorance, is cancelled out by your offense, I presume born of desperation.”
“Thank you Sir Herald, I shall relinquish my claim on one of these unworthy ones lives… but wait.. how did you know..?”
“That you were desperate? I’m guessing until recently you lived elsewhere, a city I would say, and that circumstances compelled you to return to your ancestral territory. Given that, and your actions to defend that, you must have an overwhelming reason for this. From what little I know of your kind, and the way you’re dressed, I could hazard a guess that you need to be here in order to mate and bear offspring, yes?”
The woman stood, open mouthed and blinking, as she slowly nodded.
“I..ah.. yes. That’s true! How..?”
Paul smiled slightly.
“You’ve heard of my namesake, the detective? I grew up with that hanging over me. Suffice it to say, I rather adopted his methods out of self-defence, since everyone seemed to expect it of me.”
Paul could swear he heard muffled laughter coming from Yuri’s cocoon, despite everything.
“Now, if it’s not too much trouble, could you kindly unwrap my friends and I? Only I rather think Yuko has altitude sickness and the longer you delay their return to the lower slopes, the worse it’ll be for her. And trust me, if she dies, Inari and I will take that somewhat amiss.”
Wordlessly the Jorōgumo hurried to free Paul, and then the both of them set about unwrapping the Oni.
Yuri was half-way unwrapped when she furiously burst out of the reminder of her bondage, and in one swift movement had her belt knife pressed against the spider-demon’s throat, forcing her head back. Paul held up his hand
“Yuri, stop !”
The furious Oni froze, and glanced at Paul.
“Why should I spare this monsters life?!”
“Three reasons. She’s no more a monster than you are, she was defending her home from invasion. Something I think you can understand. We’ve reached an agreement, so killing her now would serve no purpose and would violate that. I didn’t explicitly give my word, but it would still break it and besmirch my honour as a Herald. And thirdly, because she might be the best chance of saving your sister’s life.”
Yuri slowly withdrew her knife, frowning at Paul.
“I understand all of that, apart from the bit about Yuko?”
Paul shrugged.
“It’ll take hours to walk back, and only minutes to lower her down the cliff face. The sooner we can get her back down to sea level, the better. I’m sure I can rig an oxygen tent in the workshop if we need it, but she needs to be in a hospital as soon as possible. Trust me Yuri, I have had some experience at this.”
Yuri winced, by now she’d heard the story of how Paul’s wife died climbing in the Himalayas.
“As you say, I trust you, with both our lives. And if you insist, I’ll trust this...demon, as well.”
She half turned to glare at the spider woman.
“But don’t think you can catch me off-guard twice! One wrong move…”
“Enough Yuri, you’ve made your point. But I think we can trust her now. We can trust you, can’t we?”
The Jorōgumo nodded, carefully.
“I swear upon my name as Arakune Tsuchigumo of the Katsuragi, upon my mother’s life and all her mother’s and mothers mothers lives before, I swear upon the Weave itself, I will do you and your friends no harm.”
Paul nodded.
“That’ll do. In return, I swear that I and those that answer to me, shall do you no harm. Unless you offer us harm first of course. I’ll also assume you meant a similar condition in your vow, otherwise it would be unfairly binding.”
Arakune blinked, and then nodded smiling.
“Thank you, I did word that poorly.”
“No problem. I’ve been acting as the local Magistrate for a few months now. You get used to thinking that way after a bit. Now, if you’ll be so kind as to carry Yuko and lead the way, we’d best be moving smartly.”
Vows aside, Yuri insisted upon waiting with Arakune as she lowered Yuko and Paul down the cliff-face. Arakune had explained that while she could manage their individual weights easily, Yuko or Yuri at the same time would be too much and even Yuko and Paul’s combined weight was pushing the limit.
Paul had a few misgivings about leaving Yuri and the young Jorōgumo alone together at the top. He was certain that Yuri still held a grudge about the threat to her sisters life, whether she’d try to kill Arakune as soon as they were down safe, was another matter however.
On the one other hand, he had sworn that no harm would befall Arakune at his or Yuri’s hand and Yuri would most likely honour that oath. But on the other hand, she could lie, claiming that she acted in self-defence as Arakune tried to harm her first, and no-one would any the wiser. However he rather thought Yuri’s sense of honour wouldn’t allow her to do that, at least, he hoped so.
Still, it was with a sense of some slight relief that he watched Yuri and Arakune descending, once he and Yuko had reached the ground safely. Even as the sight of her in her half-spider form caused a stir among the gather Oni tribe. Paul glanced back over his shoulder at the Oni, equally glad that Tatsuo was absent. In his stead Tatsuo’s Master Aio, the oldest Oni in the clan, was in charge.
Where Tatsuo was something of hot-head and inclined to act without thinking things through, Master Aio was the complete opposite. All things considered, Paul was glad he’d be dealing with him. Emotions were likely to be running high and level heads were needed.
Arakune shifted on her feet, beating a sort of 1-3-4-2 pattern of opposing pairs. Paul couldn’t help thinking it was the equivalent of nervous shuffling in a human, but it had the effect of making her sway slightly, while rotating on the spot by a few degrees of arc. With a sudden mental shift of gears he realised that with pairs of eyes almost encircling her head, that motion would give her a complete 360 degree field of view, making up for the blind spot since she didn’t quite have eyes in the back of her head.
Paul smiled slightly, she was nervous, uncertain and subconsciously compensating, it was a pattern of recognisable and familiar emotions… he could work with that.
Briefly the thought flittered through his head. If he ever encountered a yokai that was so alien that they had no point of commonality, no emotions that he could recognise, then he would be well and truly screwed.
However, today was not that day.