Wei Zin stares up at the largest woman he has ever seen. The ground still trembles from her arrival, a collapsed crater deeper than he is tall twice over marking her passage. The echo of her footsteps was so loud he is fairly certain there is blood coming out of his ears.
She is also incredibly nude, and armed with perhaps the most unsettling smile he has ever seen.
She looks a perfect blend between joyful and hungry, and he notices that her eyes briefly look upon him with a light he cannot properly fathom.
“Well?” she asks, her smile broad and fanged.
Wei Zin flinches as one of the faceless monsters behind him gathers its wits first, speaking up. He is too tired- he should be faster, but… he’s been running. And running. And running.
“Honorable one, we are humbled by your presence. We lowly cultivators seek only to settle a debt accrued between our master and a lowly thief. If you permit us, we would be happy to gift you with honors worthy of-”
“Shush.”
To Zin’s surprise, the killers behind him pay attention to wisdom and shut up.
The woman lifts her right arm, the left missing past the elbow, and Wei Zin watches as a spur of bone grows out of it as naturally as a reed grows from water. Seemingly without input, without so much as a flicker of Qi that Zin can detect, it transforms further, spiraling and thickening on one end as it cleanly falls off and into her hand. A moment later, the strange woman rolls a packet of what look like leaves or grasses out of her throat, chewing them for a few seconds before an unnaturally dexterous tongue packs them into the bowl of the pipe in her hand.
A moment later, something that is not fire and burns with every color imaginable, but foremost among them gold, flickers against the tightly-packed plant matter, and the impossible creature before him takes a long, slow pull of smoke into her lungs.
It is only when she exhales again, as calm as can be, that Zin remembers he is still alive. It is only as she takes her time, seeming to savor the moment, that he realizes just how hot and oppressive the air has become, as if the Qi around this unknown being has come alive. As if he’s already been swallowed, or swaddling within a writhing flame.
Through a cloud of blue-grey smoke, the massive stranger looks back down at them, and even Zin feels that he can smell his own adrenaline oozing from his pores.
“You,” she says, her eyes focused on Zin. “What happened?”
Before his pursuers have a chance to react, Zin has thrown himself onto the ground, cutting his cheeks open on wooden shrapnel, pressing his forehead into the dirt.
“The name given to this self Zin, the name given to his family Wei,” he says, and it takes everything in his being to keep his throat from choking, his voice from sobbing. He has so little left to lose, but before the eyes of this thing, in the grip of absolute fear, he can only feel his desperation to live coiling inside him.
“Please, blessed one, holy in the eyes of the world. I am of the Shorassa tribe, beholden to the Many and All, and I am the last of my people. Those behind me have taken from me my home. They have taken from me my love. They have taken from me every safety and kindness I have ever felt and burned it in their wake, and now I am alone, and all I ask, all I beg, is that you let me pass, that I might survive as long as I can against the dark.”
“This individual is under our authority, honored one,” the Imperial soldier interrupts. “They do not possess the right of passage, and were found interfering-”
“I told you to be Silent,” she says, and everything goes quiet.
Even in her arrival, in the crackling thunder and explosive reformation of all she touched, there was sound. The overgrowth, especially in the vines, especially among the greatest of the trees, it is never silent. In the darkness of the leaves, there is scuttling. In the brightness of the light dancing beneath the canopy, there is the crying of beasts, of forever-hunts, of birdcall and mating songs. In a place so full of wild, chaotic life, Zin can think of three times in his life where his home has gone quiet.
At her word, with a pulse of All-Tongue so loud he can taste it and a voice strangely musical and animalistic in some way he can’t define, there is silence.
She takes another pull of her pipe, and Zin can hear the sound of the smoke hazing through the air as she breathes.
She kneels down, bringing herself closer to his level. He can hear his heart, the blood in his veins, louder than the world around them, he can’t help but feel every sound she makes as this impossible predator gets close.
“Want me to kill them for you?” she asks.
For a moment, he can’t breathe. For a moment, Zin’s world stands still.
There is only one answer he can give.
“Please.”
He hears her exhale, and feels his skin tingle under the effects of her smoke. It smells of blood and dark, cold places, herbal and alien at once.
He hears her turn away from him, and his blood begins to thunder in his head as she speaks.
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“Why should I let you live?” she asks, behind and to his left. Facing the killers that hunt him.
He keeps his face pressed to the dirt, his own blood warming the ground as wooden shrapnel continues to cut him. Even still, he hears the sound of their armor, which has been silent as cloth in their pursuit of him, clank uncertainly as at least one of them takes a half-step back.
“Honorable one, we do not seek your wrath. We understand that our misguided pursuit has disturbed you, and are more than happy to provide reparations.”
“Like what?”
A new voice, a different killer. “It is within our grasp to offer the honored one a payment equal to the weights of our unworthy beings in spirit stones of high-grade. If this does not please the honored one, we would be grateful to pay for our lives in rare reagents, that you might enjoy an easier step in your journey to ascension.”
“Hmm.” Zin hears her breathe in smoke, smells the strange flame and the dark, cold place it burns into her lungs. “No, I don’t think that will do. But I’ll make you a deal- how about you tell me why there are three Imperial soldiers, dressed in particularly fancy armor, chasing a cultivator of half your strength through the woods?”
“I-”
There is a pause. Confusion. Hesitation.
“This lowly one was not aware of your wisdom, honored master,” one of the killers behind him says. “We are in fact lowly vessels of the Emperor’s will, beyond the Wall. While our lives are but small measures, this one would loathe to cause any difficulties for the honored master by the burden of his role in so grand an enterprise.”
“Oh, it’s no difficulty at all. Just tell me why you were hunting such a well-dressed young man through the woods, and I might not kill you. Easy. Much less expensive than spirit stones, I’m sure. Not surprised they don’t take Imperial mint out this far, hmm?”
“...Our business is to hunt down enemies of the Empire and serve the will of the high lords. It is our privilege and duty to ensure that no threats to the Empire are born from the territories that rightfully belong to it.”
Zin hears a snort. “I see. And so you killed this young man’s tribe and have been hunting him since?”
“I- with respect to the honored one, this lowly soldier would be most pleased to invite you to speak to our commander, that we might better reach an understanding. My wisdom and knowledge of the intricacies of the dangers we face may be found lacking against the honored one’s thoughts.”
“Mmmh. Of course. Just following orders, as it were. But you didn’t answer my question, soldier.”
“...honored one?”
“Did you or did you not participate in the murder of a tribe? Tribe, of course, implying a lot more than just enemy combatants.”
Zin hears the slightest exhale, feels through his Qi-sense the feeling of three different killers drawing out a drop of power-
He flinches as he hears a splattering sound.
In truth, only the end of it sounds like a splatter, wet and heavy against the ground, like a spilled soup. The initial part of the noise, he can’t quite identify- a strange crunching noise, but also a sort of squeal, like a high-pitched whine or reshaping of heavy materials.
Two of the Qi signatures in his perspective vanish, bursting like soap bubbles and dissipating.
He hears quiet, ragged breathing, the sound of fear, and the slow, calm steps of the impossible monster towards it.
“That wasn’t very smart,” says the monster. The smell of blood is magnified now, rising not just from the tang of the smoke still burning in the air like a haze.
“H-honored one-”
“You should answer the question.”
“...I am a soldier of the empire, honored one. I serve the highest power possible. I serve a home which has peace, prosperity and progress by doing my duty. My duty is to obey the orders of those greater than I, that those with greater wisdom and power might shepherd the world to a greater destination.”
“Should I take that as ‘yes, I helped murder young and old, women, men and all in between, sick and healthy, because I was told to?”
“...The fourth ring is a dark place, honored one. Barbaric and strange, and dangerous in the extreme. It is the duty of the Division of War to respond to any threat that might someday challenge the Empire or its order.”
“Mmh. I was hoping you’d at least have the balls to admit it, but I suppose that was too much to expect. Normally, this is the part where I’d eat you alive. Frankly, I think I wouldn’t enjoy the taste.”
“I- many thanks, honored one. My lifedebt to you-”
This time the sound is louder, and now, expecting it, Zin recognizes the noise that metal makes when it is struck so hard that it warps. This time, he can differentiate the fact that it is two sounds, not one- the impact, metal warping and something messy beneath crunching, followed by the ‘splat’ of many somethings wet hitting the ground and walls.
Followed by a third noise, that of something heavy and wrapped in metal hitting the floor.
Zin keeps his head to the ground, pressing firmly against the pain in his forehead and face.
He hears the sound of the monster walk closer, the sound of her breathing, the smell of her, bloodier now, headier. Between the deaths and the smoke, it smells less like she is smoking a pipe and more like there is incense burning, a temple to a horror he does not understand and which has gifted his prayers with an answer.
She crouches down close to him, and he hears a sound like the claws of a spirit beast digging into the blessed vine they walk upon. Hears her take a breath, deep and husky and slow, like something between meditation, a prayer, and a rumbling purr
“Raise your head,” she whispers, and he can do nothing but obey.
She is still nude, long dreadlocks of crimson and fiery orange-red touching the ground with their length. Her flesh is covered only by the thick mist that curls from her pipe and between her lips, pale blue dancing across midnight skin and crimson stains which coat her arm nearly to the elbow.
“Do you have somewhere you can go?” she asks.
Zin feels like he can’t breathe. He tries, and one gets halfway through, but something in his throat is clenched so tight that it cannot get through. His face is wet, and his eyes sting, and only some of what paints his face is blood.
“I… I-”
“Shhhh.”
Zin falls to the floor, his body both as tightly wound and as exhausted as it has ever been. He stares up at her, his dress, already half-ruined from weeks of running, is scrunched beneath him in the debris and the mess, moss and wood shrapnel both tainting its colors further.
The pipe disappears somewhere, and he flinches as she reaches for him with a bloodied hand…
The blood is gone. Vanished like it was never there, like her skin drank it in. She lowers the hand instead of reaching, placing it palm up next to his as she takes a seat on the ground.
“It’s ok,” the monster tells him. “It’s ok.”
The last thing Zin hears is the sound of humming, like something his mother might have once whispered to him. He feels a wave of all-tongue whisper into the air, and it speaks only a single word.
Safe.
With a brush of Intent and the sound of quiet music, he starts to fade. For the first time since he can remember, he feels the call of sleep, and does not feel fear.
Dread, perhaps. The distant feeling of certainty that this time, this time, he won’t wake up.
But he is so, so tired. And he has been so afraid for so long.
He does not remember when, but he realizes he has shifted to hold her hand, and hold it tight, and he chokes on his breath again. This time, he does not hesitate to cry out loud, every breath a wracking, choking thing of grief and exhaustion.
He does not notice when he falls asleep.