Cross via the kitsune path
Moving toward the ravine, you approach the kitsune statue and reach for the empty air above its hands. You feel resistance, as though there were something solid, yet invisible supported above the statue. Carefully, you climb up onto the invisible bridge and slowly crawl across, never daring to trust standing upright. But despite your fears, the bridge holds.
Once safely down on the far side, you find yourself confronting the chest. The air around it is filled with a strange green smoke that moves in odd patterns, causing you to half glimpse things in the swirls and eddies; places, words or sometimes faces. The sightings are always fleeting, and only from the corner of the eye. The air is thick with a coppery tang, a mix of burnt wire and blood.
As you study the moving smoke you begin to discern a pattern of sorts. There are gaps between the clouds, little windows of opportunity where it might be possible to reach the chest without touching the smoke. You choose your moment and dart in, throwing the chest lid open and peering at the contents. It is a dark chunk of volcanic rock a little larger than a clenched fist. The surface appears cracked and scarred, and in the deeper cracks there is a faint red glow.
You pocket it quickly and dash back out of the smoke. A sharp burning sensation along your tail makes you cry out and stumble, nearly sending yourself flying off the edge and into the abyss. As you pull yourself back upright you examine your injuries. It does not look too serious, but the end of your tail throbs angrily as though dipped in scalding hot water.
Safely out of danger, you examine your prize in more detail. The rock has clearly been carved and its rough shape is similar to that of a heart. The deeper cuts mark the divisions of the chambers, and the longer you stare the more certain you are that the stone is pulsing, ever so faintly, to the rhythm of a slow beating heart.
You think back to the words of the Goddess. Find his eye, so he can see what he has become. Find his heart, so he can feel again. Find his body, and mend the wounds the curse has made upon it. There were others before you, but you have managed what they did not. The eye and heart are yours, and only the body remains. You crawl back along the invisible path supported by the kitsune statue and turn your attention now to the marble palace, and whatever might lie within.
The strange sounds have stopped when you reach it once more, but your thoughts soon return to the wolf spirit. Could it have been him? Can he will himself to any part of this great temple, or is he bound by rules you still have yet to discern? A brief glance back toward the labyrinth offers no answers, and with no sign of immediate peril you rush across to the temple.
Written by Jasan Quinn on 16 May 2015
