Drowning and Dreaming.

Sinking and Sleeping.

All of the leeches, get to feasting

A girl lay asleep atop a crimson pool. Her raven black hair splayed around her head, a halo of inky darkness. Her skin was that sallow ice-white of corpses, but the gentle lifting and falling of her chest belied the life still within her. With each breath, a ripple spread across the red.

As she came to, a foggy-red mist coiled around her. The hands of the crimson winds caressed her with gentle nibbles of frigid chill.

Screams of the crying

Hearts of the lying

All of the sinners, get to dying

She stared up at the sky, an empty black dome. In the dark void hung a blazing red moon that seemed to drip with blood, like a circular wound carved into flesh.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Thick coagulated blood droplets showered from above. And with them came the pitter-patter of constant rainfall. In each head-sized drop was a twisted face. In pain, agony, fear and shame. They cried and screamed and bemoaned their fate. And when they landed, their screams cut short with chilling suddenness.

They landed and died and their screams cut short suddenly.

-This world is but torment and every man is crucified-

Every voice of the rain became the choir of the sea below. The humdrum of waves and tides. The whispers danced at the corner of her eyes and brushed against her corpse-white skin. They sang songs of merry horror that filled her nostrils with the scentless smell of pneuma.

Blood is the essence of yang, and Specter is the essence of yin

From all the ancestors of man, came congenital sin

Singing, screaming, shouting, sighing

Dancing, dreaming, drowning, dying

She stood and blinked. Her eyes were covered in a foggy-red that clung to her like a mist. Her bare feet stepped across a field of red waters, and with each one, a ripple came.

'Where am I?' she thought.

Her mind was foggy-red with sweet blood, and she could not remember just what she had been doing before coming here. A red tendril, covered with grasping toothy suckers, rose from the water. The girl nimbly sidestepped it as she walked forward.

A red crown hangs in the sky

Four Truths Made One Lie

A single word so bittersweet

Seek the kings, to be complete

Where she was walking, she did not know, just that she must.

There was a tingling from the back of her neck, like something was behind her.

Soon, the red-pale ocean of blood and rain gaze way to a frigid ice of vermillion rouge. Trees grew from the ice, lotus petals swaying down from their towering tips to flutter and fly with the coming of the wind. In the center of each petal was a red fruit in the shape of a human fetus.

The girl took a fruit, helpfully offered to her by a branch from the kindly tree. With a delighted smile, she took a bite. She chewed through the arm first, her teeth crunching on through velvet flesh and white bony stem. Ripe red richness spurted from the fruit with each bite and dribbled wastefully down her white chin and neck.

Her grasping fingers peeled the face-off, which she slurped up and swallowed whole. She bit down on the bone and admired its chalky bitterness. Next was the soft and juicy brain, which she munched on idly as she sallied forth through the foggy-red.

The world is but a single dream

Doth this fact make you beam?

Is it sweet like purest cream?'

Or bring forth a horrific scream?

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She passed from the lake of ruby ice to a fjord of fluffy garnet snow that piled down endlessly from the black dome above. She looked up and saw a cloud in the shape of a black raven with a sanguine eye. Snow poured from its empty eye with each blink like flakes of shed rust, they deposited down down down-through the foggy-red.

And as she walked, she left two pairs of footprints.

The bird reared its head back and cried.

Haaaw! Ha- haaaw!

And with each cry came a flash of crimson thunder that seemed to blanket everything. Purple spirits hazily frolicked in the shadow between flashes of rose lightning.

In the pit, where demons die

Came a king, who embraced the lie

All his words, could none deny

I am fake, that is I

Then, the girl came to find herself standing at the peak of a snowy mountain, looking down upon a valley. She saw a red opulent palace in the shape of a lotus flower, whose petals spread out in full bloom. It was made from icy-red crystal bricks that shimmered and sparkled alongside the snow. Within it were fairy maidens of ethereal beauty, clad in flowing red dresses they danced and sung and spun. Each held a tall crystal goblet filled with a rich red wine that smelled of blood and fruit. They wore red crowns, dancing atop red carpets in their red hall.

Clamouring outside the wall of their fortress manor was a mob-legion of ferocious horse-men, or were they man-horses? Their upper half was that of a headless black armour-clad knight wielding two-handed lances cast from red ice. Meanwhile, their lower body was that of a huge mahogany-furred stallion. The stallions roared and neighed, biting off chunks of red wall from the fort and slicing it into with their laces.

But as fast as they cut, the red grew, as maidens within poured out their wine upon the wall, which froze into red icy-brick. The knights screamed deathly howls of hatred and malice, while the maidens within yelped in fear, or tittered in amusement.

Only the mad have eyes clear enough to admire the moon

It is because their eyes are shrouded, they receive this boon

The blood-mad stark raving lord who swallowed whole

His kingdom, every queen and sword and soul

The walker took another step-off of the peak of the snow-capped mountain and then began to fall. Not downwards and soaring to the ground, but rather upwards instead.

She fell up through the foggy-red air and plunged skyward helplessly. She watched as the massive towering mountain, and the fortress of red ice brick, and the fields of frozen ice and mountainous trees, and the ocean of crimson red, all shrunk, until they appeared a dot. And then, her feet finally ended, upon the surface of a bright red moon.

He knew this truth, and he knew it well

Keep it close but never tell

From blood and bone,

To flesh and stone

The lunar surface was a hard crimson crystal, covered in knee-high red slime that wafted and steamed with foggy-red haze. It bubbled and churned, writhed and wriggled and danced. The girl stood each steeped slowly, as the sticky ooze clung to her legs like a babe begging its mother not to leave.

The Truth is done

The Lie has won

Whether the Holy of Holies Or the Foulest Pit

Everyone is a hypocrite

She waded and jumped over the bloody gel surface of the red moon, aimlessly travelling. Looking down, she saw purple ghosts, faces twisted in tortured agony. Bubbles lifted from their mouths which were twisted in expression of tortured agony. They screamed silent screams silenced by the sea, thick blood muffling any noise that might have come.

'Hello!' the girl thought, waving down at one of the ghosts, which seemed to be the size of a young child. Bubbles spewed from its mouth as it screamed back, perhaps in greeting.

She continued walking through the thick vermillion slime until she came to stand upon a rocky hill that rose some twenty feet into the air. At the flat surface of the hill, was a stone table, and around it, twenty stone men crackling with purple lightning.

"The king has gone mad! He aims to slaughter us all-" one announced.

"Watch your words, you treasonous viper!" another slammed its fist down on the table.

Specter is the shadow of yin, the haze imprint of the inner being

Specter is the core of the spirit, the soul stuff that animates life

Specter is the eternal ghost fire, the spark of samsara

Specter is the flame from an ancient candle passed forth through a million wicks

With a sudden rumble, the rock golem exploded. After a moment, they reformed again, in their original positions.

"The king has gone mad! He aims to slaughter us all-"

"Watch your words, you treasonous viper!"

"The king has gone mad! He aims to slaughter us all-"

"Watch your words, you treasonous viper!"

"The king has gone mad! He aims to slaughter us all-"

"Watch your words, you treasonous viper!"

Again. And again, and again. The girl sat and watched, as the play replayed. How many times had they done this? Fragments of ancient souls trapped in an endless haze-replaying the last moments of their lives.

'Is this what happens to the people I devoured?'

The thought ripped through the foggy-red haze of her mind. Wind cleared the skies, as Xia Xuefeng blinked. And then she looked around her.

"Just here the hell am I?" Bing Meilu's disciple gasped.

You already know

You already know

You already know

Twenty golems spoke in unison, freezing in place and turning to face her as one.

"Is this-the afterlife?" she asked. "Is this some strange hell where I must account for my sins?"

He is waiting for you

He is waiting for you

He is waiting for you

Xia Xuefeng narrowed her eyes.

"Take me to him then," she decided.