One of the shambling creatures lunged. Snow Blossom cut its legs out from under it with a slash of her hand, the centipede extending like a whip to knock it to the ground. Another let out a gurgling howl and flung itself forward – there was no time to draw his weapon, so Booker intercepted with his bare hands, grabbing it by the shoulders and flinging it into a tree. The undead puppet slammed into the trunk, but there was no pause or flinch as there would have been with a human opponent. It simply shot forward again, a knife raised in its hand.
Booker kicked it in the leg, hard enough to buckle the limb and drop it to one knee. His own knee hammered up into its face, crushing a rotten and swollen nose to paste and flipping the puppet onto its back.
Behind him, Snow Blossom was breaking through their lines. Her dagger was a weapon they feared, something that could harm them, and she quickly slashed through the neck of the first undead puppet as it tried to rise, then whipped out her left hand to seize another with the centipede, pulling it forward by the shoulders and stabbing down into its back with three flash-quick motions of her right hand.
A corpse lunged at her from the trees.
Booker ran after and threw himself forward, grabbing the corpse by the right leg and pulling backwards to rip it off its feet onto the ground. As it struggled, he grabbed hold of its head and smashed down into the dirt, again and again, trying to pulverize the skull.
But as he did another one emerged from the trees, holding a broad saber akin to a machete.
Snow Blossom had recovered now, and she slashed her hand left and right, the centipede flicking through the air to open distance. Beneath her feet, Booker’s death grip on the struggling corpse had the pads of his fingers bent against its skull, his knee pushed to its back. He let go with one hand to draw the stolen sword he’d taken from Moy Dongbin, but as he did so the corpse pushed off the ground and rolled over, sending him tumbling.
He stopped himself on the knuckles of the hand gripping the sword and one foot, kicking the corpse in the midsection as it tried to rise.
As he did so the one with the saber lunged, and he kicked up with his hand, barely dodging the overhead sword-slash that hammered into the ground in a straight descending cut. Snow Blossom had grabbed the corpse on the ground with her centipede, wrapping its legs in the beast’s coils and descending to stab it over and over.
That left Booker against the one with the saber… and in the trees, somewhere, the one with the knife.
The saber-wielder rushed at him, blade raised. He barely knew how to use his own sword, but Rain’s muscle memory took over, and steel clashed against steel as he parried to the side – pushing the blade so it passed by his right shoulder. His own instincts told him to target the legs, and he kicked twice into the back of its left knee, hooking his foot around on the second blow and using it to pull the creature’s legs out from under the body – at the same time, his free hand extended to grab it by the hair, ready to hack the entire head off.
The knife-wielding puppet let out a gurgling warcry and burst from the black limbs of the pines, weapon held high.
Booker spun around and cut three times across its chest in a zig-zagging pattern, but none of the black blood he spilled meant anything to the dead. It slammed its knife down for his throat, and although he twisted aside, the blade still punched into the meat of his shoulder and broke, driving him to his knees with a gasp of pain.
Without hesitation, he hacked into its right leg until his sword met bone.
Behind him, he could hear the saber-wielder gurgle as it drew back its blade to slash for his own leg – a far more fatal blow on a living creature.
Booker threw himself backwards, smashing into the beast with his back and preventing it from striking the blow. The blade cut against him, but it was only a scrape, and he hammered his elbow back into the undead thing’s face at the same time as he kicked the knife-wielding puppet to the ground. Before he could be grabbed and held down, he rolled off the saber-wielding corpse and onto his feet.
Snow Blossom’s centipede shot across the ground and wrapped around head of the one with the saber, dragging it over the leaves and pine needles. With a single flick of her dagger she cut its throat open deep as it arrived.
“Come on!”
Together, they stumbled through the trees, needle-laden pine branches whipping at their faces and bodies.
Booker’s shoulder was in agony. The blade had broken off and was scraping back and forth against the bone.
And then it all got worse.
With a shriek, a red-furred ape dropped from the trees above, slamming into Booker’s back with its feet. He barely managed to harness the momentum and catch himself against a tree, but the creature’s arms clamped down, simian fingers digging into his wound and making him scream as it clung to his back. The sword dropped from his fingertips.
He whipped about, slamming it against the tree – the ape’s fingers tore out of his wound, but it still hung on by its other hand. Snow Blossom turned and threw out her centipede, wrapping it around the unattached arm and yanking the creature back. It tried to kick off his back and lunge at her instead, but Booker reversed and grabbed hold of its arm. At the same time, Snow Blossom whipped her hand in a quick circle and the centipede threw itself into a second loop, lassoing around the other leg and cinching them both tight.
Between the two of them, they had it immobilized save for one arm and suspended above the ground. The ape kicked and thrashed desperately, and its free hand flew up and clawed brutally at the side of Snow Blossom’s face – but that didn’t stop her from stabbing it again and again until it no longer drew breath.
They dropped the corpse as it began to dissolve into maggots, and Snow Blossom scowled. “If any of those get into your wounds, we must purge them right away, or the infection will take you over.”
But Booker was more worried about what he saw behind her. Just for a moment, he had seen the gleam of reflective eyes in the dark. He reached for the sword.
At that moment, a purple-white light flew from the branches and flared above their head. It was Snips, and by his glow, they saw the situation plainly.
They were surrounded. Corpses were shambling towards them from behind, and in front, three possessed wolves and another cohort of the undead had crept around and cut off their escape.
It’s okay… Fen will be here soon. If I really need to bring out my powers, Dialyze is especially strong against the undead… and Snips is the bane of anything living.
“Snips, poison the wolves. Snow Blossom, you only need to hold on for long enough and poison will kill them. Then you should be able to break through the remaining undead…”
As she nodded, they broke off in opposite directions. Three of the dead rushed to meet him in a chain, a sword followed by a spear followed by an axe.
He deflected the blade to the side, and caught the spear under his right arm. Although he couldn’t quite lift the limb without searing pain, he had enough control to clinch the spear’s haft under his shoulder.
As the sword-wielded stumbled past, Booker whipped his own sword up through its arm and back into the back of the neck – chipping bone on the first and biting into it on the second – and stepped past the corpse-puppet. At the same time, he kicked his heel back into its knee, driving it to the ground. The puppet caught itself on the point of the sword, and both the blade and the maimed arm holding it snapped with a brutal crunch.
They’re clumsier now! They can barely contain their own momentum… maybe it control is split, so the more it controls at once the weaker they are?
The third zombie ran forward and lashed out with its axe. Booker caught the axe below the head, on the haft, cutting the creature’s thumb free and knocking the blow aside. Then he dropped down onto his ass, wrenching the spear-wielder with him, and kicked the axe-zombie’s legs out from under it.
His grip on the sword reversed, and he pierced into the spear-wielder’s knee, twisting hard to pop the kneecap free with a spray of gore. The limb buckled and the creature collapsed onto its other knee beside him. As the sword came free he stabbed quickly into the creature’s face, piercing up through the top of the mouth and into the skull.
Even that didn’t ‘kill’ it. It gargled, air working through the lungs as the muscles flopped and shivered. This was no clean undeath, moving about with no passion. They shambled and jerked about with a hideous organic motion, a sinister command being translated by the dumb meat of their dead bodies.
He kicked again onto the top of the axe-zombie’s skull and pushed himself with the motion into a quick roll that landed him crouched on his feet, but as he did – the corpse-puppet he’d half-decapitated grabbed him behind and bit down into his injury. For the second time, pain burst as white sparks in front of his eyes as the cut into the meat of his shoulder tore open wider, blood flowing down his right hand in red trails until his fingers were slick with it.
With an angered shout, he spun around and hacked into the front of its neck. Where before the spine had stopped him from cutting through, now it was weakened by the first blow to the other side. One perfect strike and the puppet’s head rolled from its shoulders.
And even then it wasn’t dead. It simply had no more eyes to see him with, but the arms still reached and the throat still pulsed with the echo of breath.
Booker hooked the blade around the creature’s back and flung it behind him, into the spear-wielder who was pushing up from the ground with its one good leg to lunge at him. The two bodies entangled and fell to the ground as Booker turned fully and met the axe-zombie’s assault.
The axe cleaved through the air, and Booker stumbled back as it swept side-to-side, controlling the space between them. Driving him towards the wolves as pine limbs were torn into splinters by the relentless strikes.
Then three steel needles whistled past his face and pierced into its axe-zombie’s head. Alone, the needles would have done nothing against the painless creature, but in the next instant they detonated in explosions of qi – pulverizing the skull and leaving its body to topple over.
The spear-wielder tried a final time to strike forward with its weapon, but Booker kicked it aside and reversed the kick to hook his heel on the side of its skull, smashing its head down into the forest floor. Before it could rise, two sharp blows had its head severed as well.
Fen arrived beside him with a flutter of robes, flinging needles into the woods wherever he saw movement. Behind him, Snow Blossom had survived long enough for the last of the wolves to fall, their bodies twitching as Snips’ poison took effect.
“It’s time to go. Can you run?” Fen asked, eyeing his wound.
“That’s about all I can do.” Booker gasped out. Sweat dripped down his face. He’d fought this hard precisely once before in his life, and this time, the lack of a roaring crowd screaming approval really took the fun out of it.
“Then we run.” Snow Blossom agreed.
Altogether they fled through the woods once more, but this time they had Fen, and Fen had his needles. Each time a beast or undead puppet tried to stop them, there was a flick and a whirring cry of steel slicing through air – followed by an explosive end to the threat.
Soon they could see the shrine ahead, and firelights flashing in the dark. Booker felt a cold certainty in his gut long before he heard the sounds of battle.
The shrine was under attack.
Even from a distance, Booker could clearly see Xan’s titanic figure laying waste with a long-handled woodchopping axe, cutting the dead down like so much firewood. Around him the shrine maidens had organized a wall of spears, pushing back and weighing down the dead by the weight and reach of their attacks. Enormous centipedes snapped their jaws at the dead, wrapping them in crushing constriction once their legs collapsed.
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Fen flung several needles into a corpse puppet as they charged forward into the light, Snow Blossom shouting to her followers, “Get inside! Bar the doors and seal the windows!”
“Where WERE you?” Xan howled. “There are undead everywhere!”
“Believe me, there were just as many in the woods!” Booker answered, clutching his wound. “I had to see a patient!”
“R–” Even in the heat of the moment, Xan remembered himself and gritted his teeth. “Northsparrow, this is the exact kind of thing I meant!”
Altogether they stumbled through the door, and Xan helped lift the heavy crossbar into place and push furniture against the windows.
“Come with me.” Snow Blossom demanded, leading them back towards the tea room. As they sat down, she waved away the girl trying to bring them tea. “Go get the sweet-water cure instead!” She snapped.
Now,” she said, looking directly at Booker. Her beautiful face was marred by three vicious claw-marks that left red flaps of skin hanging. “I don’t think it’s coincidence that the curse attempted to stage its largest attack in years, on the very same day you arrived. Not to mention, those corpse puppets seem very focused on you. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but at this point, I also think I’ve earned some trust with my own honesty…”
Booker sighed, but reached up to remove his mask. “Well, let me say this. I need to conceal my identity and location from the Sect. As you seem unlikely to betray us to them, and as we share a goal and an enemy…”
He set the mask down. “I am Valley Rain, named for my grandfather who defended this land. I think that explains why the curse would risk its forces to slaughter me.”
“Ah.” She sat back, lifting a knuckle to her mouth to consider for a moment. Her eyes fixed on his tattoo, marking him as a cripple. “I had heard you were no cultivator, and that Valley Tiger rejected all attempts to call you back or even contact you. But I don’t understand, having seen you fight, why you should be learning from the curse from me? Did your family keep you in the dark.”
Because before I beat Zheng Bai, Valley Tiger wouldn’t have trusted me to carry water.
“The truth is embarrassing.” He clasped his hands. “I only recently managed to turn my life around. I found the will to fight, and to cultivate. Now, I’m seeking my roots.”
“Well, you’ve certainly found them.” She said, an anger in her eyes. “And if you can overcome that mark on your face, perhaps you’re not too late. The valley has suffered since the Cloudforest inheritance was lost. If you are truly Valley Rain, your namesake gives you some right to compete.”
“Hey now.” Xan put up a hand. “Maybe it’s not my place to say, but everyone has their own struggles, and Rain has had plenty without this. He’s not even a cultivator…”
Fen glared at Xan, who added, “Not yet, I mean.”
“I…” Snow Blossom said, “was trained from birth for my position. Don’t speak to me about as if his family duty is some unheard-of burden.”
“The most important thing,” Fen said, calmly refocusing the discussion, “is that he has to become a cultivator. I’m sure Rain is willing to help you, but you must also be willing to help him."
“We seek the Lao-Hain for the assistance with the last herbal medicine I need to clear my meridians.” Booker said. “I’m sure there’s someone you have to tell about my identity. Please ask that person to also provide me aid, and I’ll deliver the letter myself.”
“Yes, that I can do.” Snow Blossom said coldly.
“And the shrine is said to teach outsiders some of its techniques?” Fen pressed. “I think we’ve given you a great deal of aid tonight…”
“I will have one of the others teach you.” She rose, moving to depart.
When she was gone, Xan rolled his eyes, “Well gee. Don’t sound too grateful.”
— — —
They were led behind paper screens and their wounds were washed with the sweet-water cure, the fragrant balm stinging brutally as it forced the corruption up and out of the cuts. Booker was horrified and fascinated to see how the black bile tried to form tiny maggots as it struck the ground, before failing and dissolving into foul-smelling smoke. They also offered him a healing pill, which he took gratefully.
But when the shrine’s keepers were sure that not a single cut or scratch had yet to be treated, they were taken to the innermost area of the shrine. There, the maidens moved aside wooden slats concealing a well.
Booker winced as he looked inside. Not just because of what he saw, but because of what he realized was going to happen next.
The entire well was full of centipedes, their yellow legs and black segmented body crawling over each other in undifferentiated knots of chitinous flesh. The smell was sour, a strange vinegary scent of venom.
“They’re harmless.” The woman assigned to them assured. “They eat only toxified qi, leaving those they eat unharmed. Thus, their bites actually render a great benefit. In a similar fashion, their poison might sting, but only as it expunges the toxins from your body and strengthens your flesh.”
“You…” Xan was staring down with a slack-jawed expression. “Expect us to climb down there?”
“Yes.” She said firmly. “You’ll understand once you do. Especially as disciples of the Sect, you’ve likely eaten many medicines, right? Those medicines were likely mass-manufactured by hurried alchemists, without much care as to their toxicity. In short, your bodies have slowly been building a mass of poison qi without you even realizing. While much of that toxicity will wash right out over time, other portions will remain, curdling within your meridians…”
“She’s right.” Booker said, although the reluctance in his words was bitter on his tongue. “You’re likely to be nursing quite a bit of toxicity. It’s in everything. Not just the medicine, but the food, even the soil. That’s why the Sect only eats white rice. By scraping away the outer layer, you also remove much of the toxicity. It’s safer for cultivators to eat without slowing their growth.”
“Well… Hold on, we have an alchemist right here. Northsparrow, you can just whip up a pill that removes toxins, right?” Xan blustered.
“No.” He answered sadly. “Only a few precious medicines can do that, and most of them cannot be processed into pills. They’re a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As is this.”
Fen was looking like he might be sick, but Booker put one foot up on the well’s edge, stripping away his robes and everything but his mask. With a final moment of hesitation on the lip of the writhing well, he did the easiest thing he could. He allowed himself to fall.
Instant regret followed.
It was like–
It was–
It wasn’t like anything, and it wasn’t anything but what it was. Thousand of tiny legs flowing across his body, prickling and invasive, making his skin want to shed itself from his body in a thousand ugly shivers. Smooth, slick carapace sliding over him, and long bodies enveloping his limbs. Tiny feelers prickling with countless little hairs investigating every portion of him as he sank deeper, and deeper, and deeper, until all he could see were faint gaps among the endless bodies, little portions of light among the black-yellow abyss.
Every sensation was unwelcome. Every second, there was a new and horrible stimuli making his body flinch and shake as a spasming tremor overtook him, curling him up into a ball. He wanted to scream, but he closed his eyes instead and focused on keeping his mouth shut. No matter what, he refused to eat one of the little fuckers.
And from above, there was a call, “Drink!”
At once the biting started. And while the mere feeling of being submerged within the well of centipedes had been unbearable – the pain was somehow worse. It felt as if molten lead was being poured into his veins. The pain traveled within his body with every pulse, hurting hotter and more sharply when he breathed, hurting colder and more grindingly when he didn’t – there was no option that didn’t lead to pain. The agony made his entire back tense and lock solid, his hands clenching, his whole world narrowed to the single point of his breathing, controlled inhalation and exhalation.
“Release!” It was impossible to know how much time passed before the second call. It felt like eternity, but Booker knew it had probably been a minute or less.
At the command, the insects instantly stopped biting. But Booker was still in pain. Black, foul ooze was coming up from his skin in penny-sized droplets, swelling out of his pores and dripping down his naked flesh. The centipedes devoured it without hesitation, drinking up the toxic waste. As it dripped heavily over Booker’s closed eyes, he felt tiny jaws and mouths on the other side of his eyelids, lapping it up.
That almost broke him and made him scream.
But if I’ve endured this far… What’s a little longer?! He demanded of himself, a frantic and unsettled edge even in his thoughts.
“Northsparrow! We’re throwing down a rope, grab hold!”
The words brought him hope, even though he heard them with the same ears that heard the scuffing and shuffling of slimy bodies investigating the edges of his aural canals, their presence magnified by their proximity to his eardrums until every footfall echoed like a lone explorer in a cave.
He began to feel blindly through the sea of crawling bodies, searching for a rope – but everything was long and slithering and rope-like here, and Booker could only find the edges of the well, then begin to drag his fingers along the stones until he found it. Somehow, having to be awake and present instead of mentally closed off from the sensations made the entire experience more agonizing, but he comforted himself with the thought that it was over, that it had to be over, that any second now he would escape…
Until his hands found the rope. He gripped on with his whole might, like that rope was salvation incarnate. Xan and Fen heaved the rope taut, and the weight of crawling bodies briefly heaved up with him, trying to follow him, before falling off of his sweat-slick skin and tumbling back into the abyss. Hand over hand, they brought him up and out of the well…
He tumbled over the edge letting out a frantic cry that was from deep within his heart, and his hands ripped and pulled and swatted, striking away every centipede he could and throwing them back down the wall.
Fen stepped in front of him and blocked the maiden’s vision while he yanked off his mask, centipedes spilling out onto the floor and finally allowing him to reluctantly, carefully, open his eyes.
As he brushed the last of them out of his mask and replaced it, he felt… unready to speak.
So when Fen asked, “Was that as bad as it looked…?” He could only nod. Vigorously.
Fen looked back down and paled. “I… am willing… but I want to go down with the rope.”
“No.” The shrine maiden said, without mercy. “We find that if we let them take the rope, nobody even manages to go all the way in, much less remain there. The only way is to leap down without the option of escape.”
“I’m not.” Xan said. “I’m not doing it. Fuck no, I’m not doing that. It looked like hell.”
“It was.” Booker said weakly. But it was undeniable… he felt strangely powerful now. The faint edge of exhaustion that lingered from the Sect force-feeding him bottom-tier medicines had evaporated. An even more imperceptible, and even more insidious, sort of weakness had gone with it. He felt like he had after eating only spiritual food for a week, but moreso. Whole and purified, as if his skin should have been glowing.
“I’m going.” Fen decided, with a sigh. “But I’m keeping my clothes on.”
“Do as you wish.” The shrine maiden shrugged. “It will only make getting them off you harder.”
Fen closed his eyes, stepped onto the edge, and swayed there for a second…
Before letting gravity take him.
As he hit the bottom, they both flinched. As soon as he sank into that sea of crawling bodies, Fen began to scream, a long howl of horror that started with the word ‘no’ and dragged it out until it terminated in a horrid splutter – a centipede having crawled into his mouth.
“There!” The shrine maiden said with satisfaction. “That’s what I do this job for. You’re no fun, daoist Northsparrow, being so silent and robbing me of my amusement.”
Xan and Booker glared at her.
— — —
When they departed the next day, they all looked haggard. None of them had managed to close their eyes without immediately suffering from dreams of countless crawling legs. Cultivators could go days without sleep, but Booker certainly couldn’t – and Fen had looked hollow-eyed and pale ever since leaving the pit.
Snow Blossom presented Booker with three scrolls.
“This one.” She started, “is for Lady Snow Palace. It will explain who you are and why I believe you may yet be suitable as an inheritor to the Cloudforest legacy, assuming they can help you overcome your crippled state.”
“This one,” She held up a small scroll edged in green with a zigzag pattern of golden lines,“is a technique from the shrine for raising insect spirit beasts. You have a poison-aligned spirit beast of your own, so it should be useful.”
“And this one…” There was a moment of reluctance, and then she offered him an old scroll, the edges chipped and flaking. “This one you’re not to open until you’re far away, and can no longer see the shrine.”
Booker looked skeptically at the final scroll, but accepted all three, and bowed his head. “I will do my best.”
“I hope that will be enough to spare the valley. Your blood here is one that carries a chain of duty, unbroken for centuries. Do not neglect it a second time.” She replied, already turning away. Booker didn’t truly know the depth of things, but he could tell she’d been furious with him since his identity had been explained.
And to make it all sting with unfairness… I’m not even Valley Rain. Not the real one, anyway.
As they turned away and headed onto the road, Fen was oddly quiet, twitching occasionally in a way that unsettled both Xan and Booker. He kept pace, but nothing more. Only when they were far away and the shrine was nothing but a memory, the sun shrinking low over the horizon, did he finally begin to show signs of life: Xan finally managed to coax him into an argument, and although his protests and rebuttals were weak, Booker chimed in on his side simply to encourage him.
Eventually, Fen asked, “So, are we going to look at the last scroll she gave you?”
Booker glanced back, but the shrine was long ago. “I guess now’s as good a time as any.”
But as he unrolled it, Fen’s jaw dropped. “No…” He gasped. “It can’t be…”
Xan took one look and burst out laughing, tilting his head back to howl like a wolf and stomp his foot and grab Booker by the shoulder, shaking him. “You lucky bastard!”
As for Booker, well, he could say he understood Snow Blossom’s anger at him now. It was a marriage contract, signed long ago by the first Valley Rain. A contract between his newborn grandson and the daughter of the Snow clan born on the same day.