Author's Notes: The latter half of this chapter is set in Hiroshima, which is not just a fluke. In the past I've read that Cye is descended from the Mori clan who built the castle and founded the city, and held considerable naval power. The geography pertaining to fictional Garasu Lake is obviously incorrect.

One section of this chapter might also be a tad TMI. I'm not trying to weird out any readers but I am aiming for a blunt rendition of Cye's ailment.

Chapter Fifteen

"No way," Cye folded his arms across his chest.

"You don't have any scuba gear. I do," Sayoko defended.

"I can get it by the time we go."

"You're not fit for it! You've been out of practice too long."

Cye began to reassert his original argument to make the journey relying only on his lungs.

Sayoko knew where he was going and stopped the words before they formed. She countered, "And you can't free dive into a submerged structure you know nothing about and expect to survive."

"I can use Torrent," the water Ronin turned his argument to Ryo.

"I dunno if that's a good idea," Ryo began. "We talked about this before."

"We did, and I didn't want to call it forth, but maybe it's necessary in this operation."

Rowen said, "I stand by what we've already decided: if the armor is consuming your energy, we need to limit its usage. Only to open the gate."

"Couldn't one of us use our armor to get the job done?" Kento posed the question. "Sage, you could do it. Use Halo's sword to light the way."

"I think it's a bad idea to bring any of the armors into this at all," Sage quirked his mouth in disagreement. He thought of the nightmare that waited to strangle him in his sleep even now. "With the way they're linked, what if even one armor acts like a drain on the others?"

Namely Torrent. It was a severe sting to his pride as a warrior. He huffed, too mad to speak for a moment. First Sayoko had overheard a conversation about this development in Garasu Lake, something about an underwater shrine. This had piqued her curiosity as a diver. The lake itself seemed significant, as it lay near their ancestral home. The Ronins collectively agreed to attempt a retrieval of the banishing tablet, all of which she heard when she eavesdropped on the conversation between him and Mia. Eventually she had convinced him to let her meet with Mia under the pretense of helping form a strategy. Now that she was here she was trying to insinuate herself into the plans while he was effectively being benched.

His sister wheedled, "C'mon, Cye, it's the single thing I can do to help. I can't just sit around helplessly, it will drive me crazy!"

"I can understand that," Yuli said from the kitchen where he and Mia were busy making coffee for the visitors.

"I don't want you getting mixed up in this. You don't know how dangerous any of it may be. Hell, we as Ronin Warriors don't know how dangerous this is! Nobody knows what to expect with this temple."

"Well, what are your other options?" Sayoko asked with a smug grin.

To Mia he said, "You sure there's no way to drain the lake like Anubis did for the Jewel of Life temple?"

Mia shook her head grimly. "Not that I've found so far."

"Didn't think so," Cye flapped a hand at the idea. Nobody had a suggestion. He sighed irritably as he yielded to the idea. "Fine."

"Fine," Sayoko said in an upbeat tone that suggested she'd mastered the art of arguing with her brother long ago. Now that the issue was settled she switched into planning mode. "It can't happen until we get a layout of the place. I want to know about entrances, rooms, known hazards, any detail you can think of that may or may not kill us. Mia, do you have any maps on file?"

"Let's go check," Mia set aside the coffee grounds and led them upstairs. Sayoko followed closely, taking in the home and hostess she'd met only an hour ago. The woman was tall, slender, crowned with straight, coppery auburn hair, graced with green eyes that always seemed to be watching everything around her in keen interest. She was a few years older than Sayoko, nearly thirty, and she seemed very well-established for a woman still so young. During the drive here, Cye had explained that Mia had been studying history and mythology under her grandfather's tutelage at the university when the Dynasty attacked. She had survived the human roundup and witnessed the Dynasty assault firsthand, losing her grandfather to them. Standing so close to evil was like being in the eye of a storm, for she did not suffer the absence of memory collectively felt by the rest of the world. It was she who knew the legends, the one who knew they must coordinate and where to go when they were scattered apart in suspended animation among their elements. She carried herself with a subtle intellectual air, yet she was friendly and quite used to playing the part of big sister, thus Sayoko found a kindred energy she instantly liked in the redhead.

There was also Yuli. He had been mentioned as a bystander in the wars, caught up exactly like Mia was. But it was surprising to see someone so young, someone who by all other appearances was very normal. He was of average body build, somewhat short, with dark brown hair contrasted by large, sky-blue eyes. The boy was perhaps fourteen or fifteen, as old as the Ronin Warriors were when they first marched off to war. He bubbled enthusiasm from the moment he first arrived as he ran around the house to greet everyone, though there was a visibly wary edge to his personality. He was always looking around as though he expected the décor to start moving, or for some unexpected enemy to crash through the windows even while he showed off the newest kendo stick he'd brought over specifically for sparring against Sage.

As for the Koji mansion, Sayoko was overwhelmed. Its rooms were large, modestly plain in the color scheme, topped with high ceilings. They moved through the open-concept kitchen and dining room with a staircase running alongside that ascended to a second floor overlooking the single space. Looking closer, she noticed magnificent detailing in the dark woodwork of the railings. At the top of the stairs there was a choice of two wings. One, she could only guess, contained multiple bedrooms if the guys all managed to stay here. The other wing contained the master bath and two rooms with their doors open to reveal a collection of formidable antique armor and the largest personal library she had ever seen.

Mia moved among the armor and the books as though they weren't there at all. Instead she sat at her desk and fired up the new computer she had purchased only last year. She opened the search file program and began typing in queries. There it was, the catalogue number for the small cartography section. She sifted through the littoral maps until she found the match.

"This is all. There's no other information, at least not that I can find right now." She quirked her mouth regretfully. "A lot was lost during the Dynasty raids."

Torrent looked over the map. Something in its shape was familiar enough to spark certainty in his heart. "This is it."

…

Cye lay awake in the dark. Ryo and Kento slept in the next hotel bed, both roaring with deep snores that had kept him awake much of the night. White Blaze didn't help, as he snored nearly as loud as both the fire and earth Ronins, while his musk was twice as strong. By now Cye was deliriously tired, and the sun wasn't even up yet.

Despite all this, he was uncomfortably aroused in the early morning hour. Normally he thought little of either sex, though both managed to draw his attention from time to time. Right now, however, he found himself unable to look away from Kento's bare chest. He could certainly appreciate his best friend's physique, and while he'd had a few guilty thoughts about him once or twice before, currently he was beyond transfixed. It was a strange lust, a craving more akin to hunger. He rolled away to face the wall. He breathed, powerless to shut out the urge that began as a desire to kiss that broad, bare body and twisted into an impulsive drive to sink his teeth into that flesh and tear out a bite, to taste the iron in the blood.

Cye sat up, adjusted himself in his boxers, and headed into the bathroom where a cold shower did little to calm his discomfort. He leaned against the tile wall and whispered to himself, "You're becoming a monster."

…

In the room across the hall, Sage showered for the day, trying to keep the noise down at such an early hour. Afterward he crept through the room and was surprised when Rowen breathed deeply and opened his eyes.

"Morning," the archer grumbled.

"Morning," Sage echoed. "Sorry if I woke you."

"Nah, you didn't. I was awake when you got up."

"I'm surprised," Sage laughed.

"I haven't been sleeping well since that night we were at the whirlpools." Rowen's tone was humorless if not a little worried. When Sage said nothing he concluded drearily, "Sometimes I have that same nightmare."

Sage remained silent. Rowen knew he was too shocked to admit that he was suffering the dream as well.

…

Sayoko rose with the morning light. She moved silently past Mia's sleeping form in the next bed and stood at the window, looking out at the green world and feeling tired already. She'd slept little with anxiety over simply being in Hiroshima. Background radioactivity levels had been acceptable for years and people lived here, so two days here wouldn't kill her or the others, but she could not shake the urge to just conduct the diving business and get the hell out of here.

That was not the case, though. There were several reasons for this trip. They were here in reverence for what had happened in very nearly fifty years ago, to see the few atom-blasted structural skeletons left standing as a reminder of war's atrocities. It was not a journey one usually sought out, but rather participated in as an act of remembrance when one was close enough to pay their respects. Yesterday they went around town looking up at blackened metal and reversed silhouettes burned onto the pavement. All five of the Ronin Warriors seemed especially stoked and equally horrified to see these things, which Sayoko attributed to their personal experiences on the battlefield. She'd seen her maternal grandfather with the same tightly-reined morbid enthusiasm around military monuments.

The siblings were also distant descendents of the same Mouri clan who owned the ancient destroyed Hiroshima castle. The palace was lost in the bombing, rebuilt as a replica for modern day. There had been scheduled time for a tour and pictures of the nicknamed Carp Castle, which left the siblings awed and slightly humbled by their ancestor's once-mighty home.

Sayoko sorted through her camera bag to ensure everything was in place with enough film and the ticket for the boat reservation. She wished everyone would wake soon so that they could get the day started. The tiny tick of her wristwatch bothered her as she thought of molecules bombarding her body with unfelt ionizing energy, assaulting her cells, corrupting and rotting her. Only so much time.

Only then did she begin to fully comprehend the sense of dread hanging over Cye.

…

She was still tired as she slowly kicked along through the water, busy with the tasks of the preliminary dive. She made a pass around the sunken building, noting the rectangular layout and single entrance faced away from the sun, debris around the walls, and depth. According to the dive computer is was nearly 40 feet below, a level that did not require decompression time. Here and there she stopped to line up the underwater camera's viewfinder for a picture. She stopped a while to take careful documentation of the unrecognizable foreign language running in patterns around the door, all of it striking her intuition as something like a warning or a protective curse. All at once her excitement to explore the shrine was replaced with an intuitive dread. At the surface she set an anchor for the dive marker and took a guideline down to the door, stopping every so often to set little plastic orange arrows on the line that pointed up.

Once the site was prepared she hoisted herself onto the small rental pontoon boat to change out the tanks and check her equipment again. Mia and the Ronins were having a merry old time on the lake, with a spread of food across the shore's small square table. Sayoko joined them for the meal before stretching out beneath the umbrella for some rest. It seemed she just shut her eyes… and dozed off for an hour.

Cye had to wake her. "C'mon sis, we've gotta dive while we've got the best light."

With that he jumped into the lake and started swimming around to warm up his lungs and muscles.

Sayoko noticed the dark clouds forming far out over the horizon as she woke to the midday sun. One more long look at the map before she compulsively checked her gear one more time. She began her breathing exercises as she suited up. Finally she said, "Listen to me. If I find enough reason to think this operation is unsafe, I'm going to call it. Even if we've come this far, if there are conditions that will kill either of us we're not going to push it. It's foolish enough for me to go in without a partner."

Kento looked as though he was about to say something. Sayoko kept on as she waded down the ladder, "The armors might help you elsewhere, but they won't do any good if someone drowns."

A chorus of agreement all around.

"Right." To Cye she asked, "Ready?"

While he nodded and took a breath, she slipped the mask into place and fell backwards into the lake before they kicked away from the sun. The water wasn't terribly murky here, though its greenish quality swallowed much of the illumination from above. They swam out to the marker and down to find the building's entrance. Once there, Cye went up for a breath then came back down again to watch over the entrance while Sayoko made the hesitant journey alone into the temple. A school of lake minnow burst forth from the shadows, startling her a little. The light receded until there was only the beam of her flashlight. She moved slowly, high near the ceiling to avoid kicking up sediment. The walls echoed the oxygen mask's bubbly gasps, seemingly too close for comfort and yet so distant her light could not touch them. From what she saw, the chamber was mostly bare save for a few water-worn pedestals jutting up. With the reel of guideline towing from her belt, Sayoko eventually found the room to the left. She swam through to the next chamber. So far she hadn't encountered any doors. Not even as she turned to the right into another room, then right again into the chamber that was said to hold the relic. How odd, no doors on a temple devoted to a lock. What if other divers had found it long ago?

She swept the light across the room, back and forth, until she found a recession in the rear wall was a large box. Strangely, like the lack of doors, there was no lock on the lid which was nearly too heavy to lift. Sayoko wedged her dive knife into the crevice and levered the thing open. There inside was a slimy, pitted slab of silver metal that looked too revolting to touch even with gloves. Worse, it seemed too big for one person to remove. She clipped the flashlight next to her headlamp and worked at picking it up. Her movement disturbed the mud, slightly limited the visibility, and when the heavy lock tumbled with its box into the muck the visibility dropped even further. Sayoko mentally cursed and grunted as she finally got the relic waterborne, now with its grime on her dry suit. She turned with it toward the exit, struggling continuously when she nearly froze at the sight of a red glitter in the darkness. Something told her to get moving. Now.

A metal gloved hand swiped at her just then, visible only for a moment in the reach of the headlamp. It managed to rip the respirator from her mouth and knock the flashlight loose from the band. Sayoko screamed and flailed, even more sediment around her now, obscuring her vision as the light tumbled through the cloudy water and came to an eerie stop as it struck the bottom. Sayko reached out and grabbed the mouthpiece, shoved it back into her mouth and threw her entire body into swimming as fast as she could away from the mass moving through the clouds that surrounded the motionless flashlight beam, casting dreadful blurred shadows all around. This propelled her into a wall where she spent desperate seconds seeking the entryway, praying she was going the right way in the dark. Alarm rocked through her as she shuffled the weight in her arms, clutched for the guide reel only to discover it had been ripped off. Her mind flashed to the knife on her belt and abandoned the idea instantly. She would be little more then trapped prey with one sharp and ultimately useless claw. Her chances of survival were greater if she just concentrated on escape.

A current changed around her ankles, suggesting movement. Reflexively she drew her feet up, overcome by the sense that the thing was within reach. Just then a clear white light burned around her neck, heatless but sharp. It strobed into life, lighting the temple in flashes as Sayoko kicked through the lit sediment clouds. The Jewel was more of a hindrance than anything right now as its flickers did nothing more than disorient her and contrast the dark form moving around in the bright plumes. She still didn't know what it was. She felt vulnerable in the light, and worse yet: this damned flashing wasn't doing anything to stop it. There was a band of muscular fire radiating from spine to shoulders to elbows to fingers as she willed herself to hold onto the lock. Her eyes darted behind the mask while she kept searching for the guideline, one thin nylon rope that could save her life in an impossibly large room.

And there it was! She hefted the lock with a strain in her shoulder, reached out for the line and felt the arrows with her fingers. She was going the right way, but there was that thing below her and it had submerged into the murk. It could be ahead of her, or there could be more in her path. All she could do was kick on with both hands on the lock and the guideline in the circle of her arms. She was in the corner room when she felt something graze at the water around her. It was a spear, leaving a distinct energetic trail as it closed in, straight at her… until it made a very distinct arc as it was miraculously reflected around her. The Jewel of Life! So it did protect her after all! Just then there was a flash of impossible fire light, different from the Jewel which now glowed steadily, a generation of heat and percussion that rattled her teeth. An explosion! Chunks of stone showered from the ceiling, some considerably heavy pieces but all too small for harm as they pelted down. Sayoko kicked on with the singular thought of the combustible oxygen tank on her back. One close shockwave, one puncture was all it would take.

This was too much like a nightmare. She felt exposed with the loud, drawn out breaths through the mask that muffled her voice and prevented her from screaming. The drag on her fins was maddeningly slow. Her brain's basic instincts were now geared on survival, while her conscious mind was torn between two certainties: any second she would drop the lock or it would be knocked from her hands when she died in a fiery blast. It was all she could do to keep a steady breath. Down here, panic meant death. Sayoko twisted and turned through the chambers, praying that she was still going the right way.

She had scarcely reached the temple antechamber when Cye was there. He heard the rumbling, recognized unchecked fear in her eyes and urgency within her movements as she flailed away from the building. He used his sole breath to call forth his battle gear, "Armor of Torrent! Dao Shin!"

Sayoko only took quick glances while the armor appeared as if by magic. There was a high silver tone layered over the furious roar of water enclosing him, he element amplifying the sound to a nearly intolerable level in her ears. Clashing currents gave the illusion of silk around him, collided, and broke away to reveal the magnificent blue samurai armor. Its rounded, close-fitted plating completely shrouded him. Even his face was hidden behind a visor mask. There was a soft radiance around him, and once again he looked like the very embodiment of Neptune.

The heretofore unseen thing moved out of the shadowy temple, followed by two others: three total suits of armor, each appearing as a collection of shadows striving to kill her.

Cye, quite some distance away from his sister, lowered the yari until it was pointed below her finned feet. He commanded to Sayoko in a voice as clear and strong as if he stood on dry land, "Get out of here! Now!"

He swept the weapon up in a shoveling motion, creating a draft that carried her to the surface. For her part, Sayoko rode up with a giddy stomach and was even launched through the surface several feet into the air. She splashed down with a bone-rattling thud against the hunk of metal. Fear forced her to ignore this and swim on toward the boat, fighting the current as the rebound wave swelled up and washed her toward the shore. Kento jumped into the water to take the tablet from her and picked it up with no trouble at all.

"What's wrong?" Rowen asked she scrambled out of the water.

Sayoko took out the respirator with the Jewel of Life still glowing around her neck. "There's some sort of Indiana Jones Temple of Doom type trap down there. Pretty sure there are some kind of monsters guarding that. Cye's out there with them!"

Without a word, Sage leapt at the wheel and motored toward the shore as fast as the pontoon would go, away from the strike zone.

Down in the lakebed, Cye steadied himself to strike. He could feel the footsteps, the fluid resistance to movement and the change in flow around him. The guardian creatures themselves had nearly indistinguishable features in the gloomy green water. Everything was a deep black that seemed to swallow what little light there was, and the discernable contours were anonymous in their lack of defining features.

"Listen to me! I am a Ronin Warrior, Cye of the Torrent, and I come in peace! I am using your lock against evil, and I ask you to stand down!"

The three hulking armors continued to march along the lake floor with slow, mindless steps, each as mute and thoughtless as a golem conscripted to life by the theft of the lock. One raised its arm to launch a spear at Cye, who effortlessly deflected the latent burst with a wave of the trident.

The spear tip struck the floor and detonated. Torrent was unharmed but still knocked off his feet. Rather than swim up he remained on his back in the mud to lure one in. Once it was overhead reaching down for him, he locked its arms between the yari's prongs and twisted with enough torque to send the disjointed limbs flying in all directions. The armless torso began to bleed inky liquid in fine clouds. Cye pierced the chest plate, swung, and smashed the armor apart in the mud.

With a push of his legs he rocketed up from where he lay to swim in a circle around the guardian that still held a spear. It was easy enough to taunt the stupid thing into throwing away its single shot, which he easily twisted around as it blasted against a large sunken stone. The energy destroyed the boulder in a hail of pebbles. Cye slid the forked bladed into the joint between the helmet and shoulder armor and decapitated the armor. It immediately collapsed and he was alternately relieved and aghast to see that it had never been living at all. He turned without hesitation and dispatched the last standing armor with a swipe across the body and a jab at the face, all before the creature could lift its arms in defense.

There was a sweet satisfaction in the act of destruction. The trident glided through the water as though it parted the fluid around it, and it sliced apart the opposing armors so smoothly he nearly wished there were more to fight. Instead he swam up to where his friends waited onshore.

Mia watched from the water's edge where the Ronins were huddled around the lock. The Mouri sister crawled away from her shed scuba gear to dry heave in the grass, quite sick after such a dizzying ride to the surface. The black forms moved about beneath the surface as everyone watched, the other four Ronins prepared to assist if Torrent showed signs of trouble. Twice the water rose up to release the crack of sound and light created in another explosion. The anchored boat pitched this way and that until the choppy water smoothed out in a circle to precede Cye's arrival at the surface.

He slogged through the last few shallow yards up to the beach where he stood with water dripping off the armor to form a puddle around him. Back here on solid ground he felt that familiar strain of gravity. Worse still was the fade within the wells of Torrent's power.

"Are you alright?" Ryo saw how Cye stopped and wavered.

"Fine," Torrent lied as he moved toward the shore. "There must have been armors placed around the lock with a curse."

He noticed a trail of wet footprints in his wake, common enough at the height of his power. However, as he stood here thick rivulets continued to run down the armor's surface into the dirt until it streamed downhill. As the others stood watching with equal concern, he said, "Guys, I think if we're gonna summon the gate we have to do it now."

There was no argument. The other four stepped back to give each other space with their hands held out in front of them.

"Armor of Wildire! Dao Jin!"

"Armor of Hardrock! Dao Gi!"

"Armor of Halo! Dao Chi!"

"Armor of Strata! Dao Inochi!"

As the four of them were consumed within a spectrum of color - red, orange, green, deep blue - the armors' appearance generated the same currents in the air, the light shrouded them like fabric and faded away into the Ronin armors.

Sayoko's eyes flitted from one to the other, not afforded enough time to take in many details from any of them.

Ryo was shielded in red armor, masked under a bladed helmet, two sword hilts visible over the winged pauldrons, all of it radiating heat.

White Blaze leaped over his master into a defensive position. The tiger was in magnificent battle armor of jointed white plates which mysteriously shadowed his fur until it looked ashy black.

The peaked helmet and balanced horns of Rowen's indigo Strata armor accentuated the warrior's height, along with the longbow strapped to his back.

Kento's blocky build was even more massive in the rusty orange armor plating of Hardrock, his helmet crowned by crescent moon horns, shoulders and wrists and knees girded with spikes, a long testubo in his grasp.

Sage's Halo armor was all sharp angles and polished silver details to reflect light into vision-cutting luminosity.

"Move, move, move!" Leader Ryo commanded.

Cye resumed his place in the water. Kento moved out onto the spit of land amid the lake. Rowen turned and ran in the opposite direction, up a hill until he stood against the sky. Ryo and Sage took place across the field, Wildfire in a patch of dirt with his back to the sun as Halo faced directly into it. All five held their arms splayed at their sides with their heads tilted back. The colored lights returned to them, first as coronas before tendrils arced out from their hands, all curving around clockwise with their respective hues until the five energies connected into a circle. It erupted into a frenzy of white iridescence broken by colorful static, short-circuiting and reconnecting, until more rays of light shot across the circle's distance back and forth from Ronin to Ronin.

Wildfire's heat surged until the nearby plants shriveled and smoked, threatening to combust. Halo was nearly blinding to look upon as electricity crackled out to contact overhead tree branches. Wind gusted around Strata on the hill. Out on the peninsula, stones shuddered and shifted in a quake around Hardrock's feet. The lake was tumultuous with waves surrounding Torrent.

Mia and Sayoko stood safe along the boundaries of the magic circle. The Ronin's lore keeper was agape as she always was when the mystical was happening, while the Mouri sister watched in breathless awe of the great pentagram coursing between the Ronin Warriors. Never before had she seen something so otherworldly, so beautiful.

The space between them moved and rippled like heat vapors, giving way to an ancient gate that materialized in the space.

Cye struggle to keep his arms up in the air where they continued to shed water in a rain upon his helmet. He watched in astonishment as he felt his energy bleed out from the springs within the armor.

Kento was the one to break the circle when he moved inward with his shoulder braced like a battering ram. When a running charge did nothing, he shouldered against it and put all his might against the inertia. The door groaned reverberations through their bones, mobile by mere inches until at last it swung open, away from Kento who fell forward into the dirt. Rowen raced down the slope and Cye slogged out of the lake. Ryo, White Blaze, and Sage closed the distance toward the gaping maw of the portal straight over some unseen boundary, at which point gravity shifted around them until they fell sideways through the entrance.

Kento was on his feet once more. From his perspective Wildfire and Halo flew toward him and vanished into the transparent darkness contained within the doorway parameters. "What the hell!"

Cye stumbled onto land. Separated from the host element, Torrent cast itself off into the ether with a cascade. The man remained, collapsed on the ground. He struggled up to see the door rebound close and immediately fade from existence.

"No!" Rowen screamed.

"Damn it!" Kento swung his fist at the dissipating gate.

"Come back!" Cye tried and failed to summon Torrent. Again and again he cried out to the sea, "Armor of Torrent! Dao Shin!"

++To be continued++