Ru Meng watched in terror as the mysterious man slowly approached. His father desperately tried to recite an incantation, but it was constantly being interrupted by involuntary gasps of pain. His efforts at getting up on his feet were painfully futile, as he kept falling to his knees. Ru Meng tried to sling his father’s arm over his own shoulder, but it didn’t help. His father’s legs just wouldn’t budge. Two heavy steps and a long shadow crept up behind him. Ru Meng's heart thumped in his chest.
A firm hand grabbed Ru Meng by his neck and pulled him and his father apart. The mysterious man then kicked his father to the ground and pressed his heel into his father’s throat. His father writhed and struggled with all he had, but he was beat. The man leaned over his father and methodically sliced the tendons in his hands and feet. Finally, he brought his dagger close to the throat.
Ru Meng watched the patterned steel slowly dig into his father’s skin. The world spun around him. He felt like a weightless stone, a pebble perpetually spinning in midair, void of all sense of direction or self. He couldn’t feel his feet. He didn’t even realize his left hand was clenched so tightly into a fist that the bandages were slowly being stained red. All he felt was his heavy head spinning in place. Nothing made sense.
He looked at his father lying helplessly on the ground and saw his uncle’s fish-white eyes. Remembered the way a body contracts violently before it dies, as if its very blood was violently trying to leave the failing vessel at all costs and tearing apart everything in the way. Recalled how all the struggle, all the pain, all the violence and anguish vanished all at once, as if something had evaporated and left behind something that was nothing. The same way sand and dirt and mud were nothing.
Why was he witnessing the same thing again? Had nothing changed? What was the point of all that pain, all that effort when he was once again no more than an onlooker? A voiceless, limbless rock stuck in place. Ru Meng closed his eyes and tried to imagine a world without his father. He tried to conjure in his mind something palatable, something bearable; he tried to imagine the nights where his father was nice to him, when he hugged him, or when he held his hand tenderly while he treated his injury and all he could see was darkness. Pitch-black darkness. Ru Meng opened his eyes.
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“Your son is the only reason I’m not killing you right here and now, Chia Song Yu, but you will come with me—”
A boyish yell cut him short.
“Mo.Yi.Chü.Ke, Zak.Tin.Yün.Mo!”
Two round, copper flashes shot out of the dark. The battlecry alerted him and Nazirudin hastily covered his vitals with his hands. The projectiles hit his arms, one leaving a dull bruise where it landed, the other burying itself deep into his flesh. He grunted, but reacted immediately to the next incoming threat. A dull dagger glinted from the shadows and swiped at his waist. He deftly parried it with his keris.
“The boy!” he thought to himself.
Suddenly, Nazirudin heard a faint rattling sound behind him. He turned to look, but it was too late. A loud snap and crunch could be heard as tremendous pain overwhelmed his right leg. He let out an ungodly shriek, which was joined by Chia Song Yu’s own howl of agony. An old, cast-iron bear trap had snapped its jaws around his calf. The trap wasn’t anchored, but he could feel the serrated teeth of the trap scrape against his bone when he moved his feet. He could still move, but the gnawing pain was too much.
Nazirudin endured the sensation and tried to force the trap open with one hand, to no avail. He wasn’t familiar with the mechanisms of a bear trap at all, but he quickly understood that brute force wouldn’t be enough. He needed time to free himself by way of magic, time an opponent wouldn’t afford him. He couldn’t sit still either; it would make him a sitting duck.
Nazirudin held the keris close to his chest and looked warily around him, prepared to defend himself against any more metal projectiles. And if the enemy got close enough…
But the boy had no intention of finishing the job. He swiped his father’s backpack from the ground and ran over to his father, who he secured on his back with a makeshift harness he hastily fashioned out of rope. The young boy loaded the grown man on his back with a heave. Blood was seeping out of his bandaged left hand. His tiny shoulders were drowned underneath his father’s torso. His knees seemed so frail that looked like they might snap at any moment under all that weight.
Nazirudin watched as all this happened. The boy worked fast, but it still took him over a minute to do all that. More than enough time for Nazirudin to cast a spell. He didn’t. The only spells he knew cursed, maimed or killed. He could not use it on a kid. He was embarrassed that he had even considered the option. What was he going to do even if he subdued the kid? The injury to his leg alone would make his trip back to the Undercity a perilous, if not lethal journey. He might not make it back in one piece, much less with two prisoners in tow. Moreover, he saw a desperation in the boy’s eyes; a desperation that bordered on insanity. Nazirudin wasn’t quite sure what might happen to the boy if he lost his father right here and now.
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He weighed his options and decided to let the boy go. The safety of the Undercity came first. Chia Song Teng was dead. It wasn’t worth risking his life for petty vengeance. What he did to Chia Song Yu was payment enough already. The boy was the only thing that concerned him. He was far too young to fend for both himself and his father in the dark underworld of the Nameless Town. With the Darktide coming so soon, their odds of survival were slim. Song Teng had been a brother to him. Nazirudin wanted to honor his last wishes and bring his nephew back to the Undercity, but there was nothing more he could do. He would come back for him, one day, hopefully.
With a heavy sigh, Nazirudin watched as the boy slipped into the shadows of the tunnels with his father. He sheathed his keris and dispelled all the curses he had laid on himself and Chia Song Yu. He then started drawing a circle on the ground, preparing a ritual to free himself of the trap.
The road home was going to be a long one.
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Ru Meng tried to navigate the tunnels and caves in complete darkness, but it was impossible with his lack of experience. He kept tripping over uneven ground and bumping into obstacles and eventually, he decided that the benefit of vision outweighed the risk of being seen. His father’s wound had to be treated as soon as possible, lest he bled out the way they bled all those beasts they hunted. He had taken a small break after a few minutes of running, when he was sure that the mysterious man wasn’t following them, to apply simple tourniquets to each of his father’s limbs and around his neck. Fortunately, it seemed like he wasn’t bleeding from his arteries. The wound to his neck was deep, but it wasn’t bleeding profusely. Still, it had to be treated properly. Ru Meng had a place in mind for a shelter.
Ru Meng gingerly took out a light talisman and quickly stuffed it under his clothes to dim the light. He identified where he was and took a left turn. He tried his best to lift his father up so that his legs wouldn’t be dragging on the ground, but there was only so much a young boy could do. Ru Meng looked back at the obvious marks they were leaving on the ground and made a mental note to erase them later. Trails were the easiest way to track prey.
Twenty minutes later, the sound of running water informed Ru Meng that they had arrived at their destination. Ru Meng looked to his left and saw a small creek. He looked up to his right and saw what he was looking for. A small crevice, just large enough to fit a person or two, obscured by its height and a few inconveniently located boulders. Ru Meng climbed up as high as he could while carrying his father, before finally letting him down and scaling the rest of the distance. It wasn’t an easy task; the limestone rocks were wet and slippery and there were hardly any proper holds. These rocks were not meant to be scaled by humans. Ru Meng lost his footing more than once and almost slipped off the wall. Eventually, he made his way into the crevice.
Ru Meng then secured the rope on his waist to a rock and began pulling his father up the wall. He dug his feet into the ground and leaned back, using his entire body’s weight as he pulled with his right hand. When that wasn’t enough, he gripped the rope with his already bloodied left hand and tugged with all he had. Pain seared his flesh and muscles, but he wrenched the rope anyway, even looping it around his hands for more grip. He could feel the already damaged flesh of his left hand becoming even more bruised. He could feel his father lift off the ground, but after a few seconds of holding on, Ru Meng realized it was impossible to get him any higher.
Ru Meng let go of the rope and fell to his butt. Was this it? Was it over already? Despite the unexpected surge of competence that the young boy had demonstrated in the past hour, all Ru Meng felt was a deep sense of failure and resignation when he hit his first obstacle. Though his situation was much less dire and desperate than just several moments ago, Ru Meng couldn’t help but feel like the world was coming to an end. It was almost as if all those things he just did had been an illusion and now he had come crashing back to reality. The reality that he was a weak, incompetent and worthless boy. Ru Meng believed that that was who he truly was. Everything that he had done contrary to that character, the burn he inflicted on himself, the hunting and the rescue of his father, was just a show he had put on to deceive himself.
He stared at his blood-soaked left hand and felt tears come to his eyes. He hated how much it hurt. He wished it wouldn’t hurt anymore. He didn’t understand why he had to endure all this.
But he did.
“I deserve this”, he told himself and all of a sudden, the pain felt like a good thing. It tasted like redemption, as if the pain he was forced to suffer absolved him of his sins.
Ru Meng took a deep breath and remembered his father was still bleeding out on the damp rocks below. He blinked the tears out of his eyes and got back to work. He reached into his father’s backpack and took out a handful of iron marbles in a pouch.
He tied the pouch shut firmly and wrapped the rope around the pouch several times. Then, he closed his eyes and recited the incantation he was now so familiar with: “Mo.Yi.Chü.Ke, Zak.Tin.Yün.Mo.”
The pouch slowly levitated from the ground and thrust backward, tugging on the rope. He had never lifted anything as heavy as this with the Spell of Metalworking. He opened his eyes and wrapped his hand around the rope, struggling to maintain concentration over the spell. This was the first time he tried to do something else while keeping the spell active. Focusing his attention on his breath, Ru Meng calmed himself down. Then, he pulled with all the mental and physical prowess he had at his disposal. For a moment, he felt at one with his own body and mind, in perfect control of himself. Slowly, his father was hoisted up the wall. When at last his father was dragged over the edge and onto the crevice, Ru Meng collapsed into a pool of sweat, muddled with a few drops of blood that had dripped from his left hand. The pouch of iron marbles dropped to the ground with a loud clattering sound.
He did it.