Chapter 110 - The Promise
The rain drizzled down lightly on Yuzu, who stared at the figure who had appeared at the end of the street. He held a long staff in his hand which he leaned on heavily, taking plodding steps down the cobblestone road toward her.
His head was lowered as if he were looking at the ground in front of him. His movements were uneven and stiff, and with each step forward the staff struck the ground with a clack that echoed through the night.
His silhouette darkened as he stepped out of the furthest pool of light cast by a street lamp, then slowly lit up again as he stepped under another. He didn’t seem to have noticed Yuzu as he continued forward at a painstakingly slow pace.
Something was not right.
Yuzu couldn’t take her eyes off the traveler, as if she were frozen in place. Her entire body trembled as she inexplicably felt that something about him was terribly wrong.
Clack. Clack. The sound of staff grew sharper as he approached.
He was now six lamp posts away, close enough for her to see the ragged state of the bulky cloak over his body. The previously light coloured cloth was now dark and mottled with stains and looked as though it had been corroded by acid. Beneath the cloak he wore thick dark robes that were half shredded and full of holes. His left hand had a death grip on the walking staff, which was no more than a thick, bent branch that had been picked up off the ground. His knuckles were white and crooked as raindrops rolled down his pale, weathered fingers. His right hand clutched the rope belt around his waist at a sharp angle. His whole body trembled with strain and tension. He was hunched over, as if in great pain or inner turmoil, but he didn’t utter a sound.
The lamp light glimmered off the conical hat which obscured his entire head. As the traveler came closer Yuzu realized that it wasn’t the same straw hat from before. The wide, shallow hat was pitch black and woven from thick strands that resembled vines. The surface of the hat was whole but uneven and there were long, soggy strands that hung off of the rim like seaweed.
Clack. Clack.
The soft rain was like a veil of mist that hung in the air and blanketed the street in silence and darkness, isolating the pair from the rest of the world.
When the traveler was two lamp posts away, Yuzu became aware of his thread of fate. It materialized out of the darkness, a smoky, distorted string that was full of twists and coils. It didn’t float lazily like every other thread she had seen, but instead jerked about unpredictably. The thread was white, but mottled and impure and constantly shifting. An intense feeling of corruption emanated from the string.
She reached out to the string with her spirit, wanting to pull the string away from the street, but immediately recoiled and withdrew her arm as her spiritual intuition went into alarm.
Too late! The unstable string twitched suddenly, sensing her presence and quickly lunged forward towards her. It wrapped around her as the traveler suddenly stopped in place and faced her squarely with his head bowed.
Yuzu tried to grab onto the mottled string, but when she made contact with it she felt an intensely sharp pain as if she had grabbed onto barbed wire. She withdrew her spiritual body and faced the traveler directly.
He seemed to notice this change in her stance as he started speaking in a low, strained voice, “I’ve come back for the chest.”
As he spoke he jerked irregularly, as if he was having trouble maintaining his composure.
“W..We’re closed right now.” Yuzu said, surprised at the shakiness in her voice, “You’ll have to come back-”
“I have the money.” The monk interrupted her excuse as he let go of his belt with his right hand. His fingers still maintained their gnarled shape as he reached into his inner pocket and pulled out a cloth pouch. “I’ve come to fulfill… my promise… to return for the chest.”
The man held the pouch out with a trembling hand, slouching forward on his staff as if it was the only thing keeping him standing.
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Realizing that the man was waiting for her, Yuzu stepped forward. Her steps were filled with hesitation as she left the light of her lamp post and approached the traveler. She stopped directly under the next lamp post. Only one line of shadow separated the two pools of light which Yuzu and the traveler stood at the center of.
“Are you… alright?” She asked.
The traveler didn’t respond directly, but he seemed to tense up as the quivering in his arms and torso increased in severity. There was a dull clink as the cloth pouch fell from his grip, spilling out silver marks and other coins onto the path.
Yuzu instinctively stepped forward to help him pick it up, but suddenly stopped as he shouted, “Stay back!”
The traveler’s right hand that had dropped the pouch dropped back to his rope belt. It seemed to stray towards the hilt of his sword but then gripped tightly onto the belt and didn’t let go. His head bowed down until he was nearly bent double as he let out a long, agonized groan.
As he groaned, a thick miasma of corrupted energy emanated from his body into the air. This illusory miasma was black and carried a familiar ‘scent’.
It was the same as the black residue that formed from infection of the devileyes, but now this residue had been absorbed into the traveler’s white thread. It wasn’t that the traveler was infected by the parasite, but rather, the very essence of his being had been altered in some terrible course of events.
Yuzu was reminded of Argus’ words in the Ancient Library: “The spirit body is like a crystal. A strong vessel, but under the right circumstances, extremely fragile... If your spirit is not strong enough, it will warp and shatter.”
So, this man is on the brink of shattering. Though she didn’t know the circumstances under which he had suffered the corruption, Yuzu couldn’t help but feel compassion for the traveler as the black miasma gradually stopped leaking from his body. His groans slowly subsided, giving way to hoarse breaths interspersed with coughs.
“The chest.” He coughed finally, “I’ve come for the chest.”
Seeing his suffering, Yuzu didn’t have the heart to turn him away or lie to him.
“I don’t have it. The chest is lost at the bottom of the aetheric plane.”
Yuzu was about to say these words, but a warning premonition surfaced in her mind just as she was about speak.
In the vision she saw herself explaining to him that the chest had been lost. Upon hearing this, the traveler began to violently tremble as he doubled over in pain with a wretched inhuman cry. A dozen thick, black tentacles sprouted bloodily from his back as the skin of his fingers coarsened into gnarly, bark-covered claws.
Yuzu could only watch in horror as the man finally lifted his head for the first time, revealing a stiff face that looked like it had been carved out of wood. His face was stiff but still recognizable as the traveler who had pawned the chest. His bark-like skin was peeling and his eye sockets were deep black holes that glowed from within with an unnatural yellow light.
The tentacles on his back curved up into the sky, splaying out behind him in a grotesque fan. They glistened in the lamp light as rain drizzled down around them, hovering in the air menacingly as the traveler drew his sword.
The long, single edged blade glowed with a shimmering aura as he brandished it towards her. In the vision Yuzu had already started to run, but she suddenly froze in place mid-stride as time stopped for her. The traveler rushed at her from behind, slashing down at her at towards her shoulder.
In third person Yuzu saw the blade cleanly pass through her frozen body. She hung in the air for a half second before her two halves collapsed lifelessly onto the floor. At this point the traveler lost all semblance of composure. He began shaking violently, dropping the blade as he clutched at his head with his thorny hands. His body was lifted into the air as the tentacles on his back fell forward and supported him up like the legs of a spider. He hung from his back, his lower body limp as his wooden face screamed with fury.
The vision cut off abruptly as the city street began erupting with a surge of vines and miasma.
“No-” Yuzu whispered. She couldn’t stop trembling as she looked at the still-human looking traveler whose head was bowed and hidden by the conical black vine hat. She intuitively understood that the promise of retrieving the chest was the only thing keeping this man from completely losing himself and falling apart. This singular purpose was a lifeline that his consciousness relied on to remain sane.
Under no circumstances could she tell him that the chest had been lost, or was irretrievable in the white world.
Yet she also had no way to return the chest to him. Furthermore, even if she could present the chest to him, would that solve anything? With his duty completed, he would lose the tether of his promise, the only thing that was keeping him from plunging into the abyss. As soon as he lost control he would turn into a monster and rampage through the streets.
As another downside, were that to happen Yuzu would be his first victim. Yuzu had no choice but to find a way out.
As subtly as she could Yuzu reached out with her spirit and gripped onto the traveler’s fate thread which had wrapped around her. A searing pain shot through her hand and arm as she made contact with the corrupted thread, but she held on with determination. Taking her own thread in her other hand she tried to pull the strings apart. However despite her care, with every manipulation the traveler’s thread only became more twisted and stiff.
Yuzu’s eyes hardened, jaws clenching in frustration as the threads suddenly jumbled together into a tightly bound knot.
The traveler suddenly took a heavy, stiff step towards her. Coins scattered along the ground as he shook violently, commanding Yuzu in a hoarse voice,
“Give me back the chest!”