The Dreams

Chapter Forty Five

A city sprawled out before Rina. The door she had entered this place through had disappeared. Now behind her a wall stretched to the right and the left as far as she could see. In front of her a city stretched out into the distance. Several pagodas stretched up toward the sky quite a distance away. They loomed far above any of the other buildings. She knew she needed to head in that direction. Nothing else within sight looked half as important as those buildings and she was looking for the king.

As soon as she stepped away from the wall, she felt the unsettling sensation that she was being watched very carefully. She did not see anyone around, but that did not mean that someone was not there. This was a place for the souls of the dead. Unless she developed the ability to see ghosts recently she had to assume that she might be surrounded even at this very moment by souls of the undead.

She felt vaguely uncomfortable at that thought. Since she had provided it for herself she tried to push it to the side. It was not something she could do something about anyway so the best thing she could do for herself was try to remain calm and keep moving forward.

The pagoda was huge so she did not have to worry about losing sight of the landmark she was heading toward. Having a destination in mind did help keep her focused and being focused helped keep her worries at bay. She did not have time to get the creeps from the notion of being watched and possibly walking through a spirit or two just because she could not see or feel their presence.

She did not pay much attention to the city around her for a while for the sake of her sanity. She could not handle the idea of taking in the sights and mentally preparing for what she was going to do once she reached the pagoda right now. After the events of the day so far she knew she was on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion. Mentally she was beyond her limits and after the walking she did in the hallway she was feeling physically fatigued as well. She needed to stay focused and motivated to avoid getting caught up in her body's flagging energy levels.

Unfortunately, the city was absolutely huge. She ran out of willpower for avoiding her own problems before she made much visible progress toward her destination. She did not like how empty the city seemed to be. It was unnerving. Someone had to be here. She saw the oni that came for Hibiki. They were from Diyu. She thought she would see some oni here.

Then she started to worry that she might be int he wrong place after all. Nothing was turning out the way she imagined it would. She did not have the energy to do anything about it. She wanted to cry but she felt too tired and too overwhelmed to even do that.

She lost count of the number of intersections she crossed. At first, she had half-consciously kept a tally, but now that was all out the window. She knew she had crossed more than five intersections, but beyond that, she could not say for sure how far she had traveled from the wall.

Even more than five block in toward the center of the city, she did not see any signs of life. This was starting to seem like an impossible situation. She could not find a way to know for sure this was the right place. She had no one to ask. There were no signs. She was just operating on her gut feelings, and the more time that passed away the less she felt as though she could trust her own instincts.

Everything seemed to be going wrong. She was so tired now that her optimism faded away. Her footsteps started to become less steady and she stumbled once. Then she stumbled over her own feet again and she knew that she needed to sit down.

One more look around confirmed that the immediate area appeared to be just as deserted as ever. She saw no reason she could not sit down and rest for a while without fear of consequences. There would not be an opportunity for her to do much more than sit and try to recover her strength even though she was sure that she really needed to get a good night's sleep, but she would have to take what she could get at this point.