Chapter 9

Hoku's throat bobbed as he swallowed. His fingers trembled upon clutching the white fabric over his pounding heart.

I… need to…move.

He was enmeshed in a trance of shock.

The trees swayed further in Hoku's direction, and a strange cloud of white ash, resembling snow, suddenly formed the shape of a mushroom above the trees. Hoku snapped out of it at the sight, and his mouth parted into a thin oval.

Like a switch had been flipped, the entire atmosphere fell into an unabridged rest.

The white substance from the cloud was the only thing in motion as it drew closer to the ground, sheathing the branches and dirt with 'snow.'

Hoku stepped back with one boot and faintly raised his arms over his sides, spreading his fingers as though he were anticipating something to disrupt the unusual lack of disturbance.

"Did she solve the issue already?" He whispered to himself in the forest.

'Shit-I should be searching for the…'

Immediately after Hoku put his weight on his other leg to turn around, a thin array of iridescent dust snaked past his eyes with thrilling haste.

Though what followed in the wake of its end, stole the air from Hoku's lungs. The whole impact is verbatim.

His vision captured a blurry blend of white and crimson while being thrown from where he stood.

He clenched his teeth, and his back collided with a tree, and his skull retracted smacking the bark as well.

His head felt like it had been his with a sledgehammer, and the ache in his spine began in the center, spreading up and down like pulsing waves with swift gradualness.

Hoku's senses slowly sharpened from his daze when he felt a warm substance drip onto his top lip.

His head tottered as he sleepily lifted it off the tree. Hoku used his hands to hold himself up, only when his eyes focused on the scenery before him did the ringing in his ears subside.

Another cloud of white dust threshed around an enormous shadow. This shadow revealed a stark white complex structure.

With a ridged median that expanded into the fog left by the strange debris, adjoined by curved columns that appeared thinner and less enduring the further they were from the largest side column.

Hoku groaned as he picked himself up from the ground. His legs trembled, but the sensation of his newly acquired injuries had dulled his fright.

"Hahh…" He heaved, grasping his hair as he numbly approached the still giant.

He squinted, limping along the rows of white columns separated by a thick wedge in the center.

"It almost looks like a giant… rib cage," Hoku quietly croaked.

Once he had drawn close enough to touch it, he cautiously extended his arm.

"Don't! Don't touch it!" Juno's voice echoed from the distance, and Hoku flinched, quickly retracting his arm just as the mass expanded toward the sky.

Hoku's premise about the semblance of its structure was mostly correct.

Unfortunately, he hadn't surmised until witnessing the creature's movement—that it was breathing, and therefore alive.

His fear returned, though differently, his body was able to register flight after experiencing the prior consequences of letting his mind take control.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

The sound of branches snapping, and bones cracking rung through Hoku's ears as he sprinted straight with his back turned toward the monstrous being.

Without warning, Juno lands in front of him, her stance close to the ground like she had jumped from a high place.

She reached for the hem of Hoku's shirt, briskly pulling herself into the frame of his vision.

"Where did y–" Hoku's breathing is heavy as he tries to ask Juno where she had returned from.

She interrupts him, pulling him away from the border of darkness that nearly encompassed them.

"So now you want to run!? I gave you a whole five minutes to do that!" She paused for a moment, reaching inside her mantle with an irritated expression.

"Then you tried approaching it? A blind person makes better use of their eyes than you do your own!" She huffed, roughly pulling Hoku's wrist so that he ran in front of her.

A vast portion of the forest appeared to darken.

Hoku realized this when he looked forward and discerned that beyond them it was much brighter.

It was like an eclipse had begun directly above them. Juno had caught on before Hoku and initiated defense.

Hoku proceeded ahead of her until she suddenly caught the back of his hair, jerking a chunk in her direction and provoking his legs to stumble from the unexpected potency of her grip.

Juno secured her palm below the loose strands of hair that lay precisely above his shoulders.

Her support prevented him from tripping entirely backward, but he quickly concluded that it wasn't her intention, because after Hoku managed to lean forward again, she vigorously levered him to a lower position.

Hoku's pupils shrunk at the sight of what she held in her other hand.

"Don't run and stay low. If you continue to run it will only keep chasing you, I must handle it first and I can't have you rivetting it away from me," Juno squeezed the red luminous fan in her palm.

For a moment, Hoku wasn't sure whether to assert his gaze on her or the blood-red fan, with silver designs that would be inclined to seize anyone's perusal with its moon-like radiance.

Plaintively, he locked his eyes toward her after she finished speaking, partially because what she had spoken left his thoughts disquieted.

"Why me? What would happen if I stayed behind and you led them away from me?"

Juno grasped his shoulder, her veil gently brushed his ear and in the ensuing act, her drained voice directly addressed him.

"You've already seen what happened. I suppose it is a good thing you stayed close by because the Return had already gotten here by the time I tried diverting its attention. I wouldn't have caught up in time if you were far ahead."

Once again the low reverberations from the creature shook the forest. Hoku was less bothered than before, despite how the sound had flourished in both pitch and influence.

"That—thing is the Return?" Hoku looked up to acknowledge the massive rib cage that initially had somehow been hurled on its side.

However, his breathing hitched the instant of inspection.

It wasn't merely a rib cage, nor was it solely living.

The Return was half-skeleton and half of an indistinguishable aquatic species. The entire front half of the creature was stripped bare of flesh and organs.

The structure of its head didn't resemble a regular fish skull, it had two structures. The focal aspect of its skull looked similar to a centipede, with tremendously integral pinchers.

Pinchers were molded into a larger bone that was flat underneath and perhaps rounder on top.

From that bone two additional thinner bones extended beneath its pinchers and framed the focal structure.

Those aren't a second skull… they are teeth!

What gave away that the Return was an aquatic species, at least in his universe; was not exclusively the thin carpals that dangled from the relic section—evidently fins, but also the tail residing on the side that had flesh tinged a dark gray.

The monster lifted its fins, thrashing them against its ribcage. The action seemed to lift it higher into the airspace, turning the dust that encompassed the leaves and dirt into a frolic.

Juno didn't say anything, she expected Hoku would be petrified beyond words. The impetuous shift deflected Hoku's regretful curiosity from the sky.

She clutched the crescent-shaped handle that mounted two outer guards of the fan. The 'leaf' between the guards progressively flushed with more intensity as she withdrew across her chest, luring it over her shoulder.

"Do not move from this spot unless it comes crashing down on you," Juno's dour tone baffled Hoku above her instructions.

Even if he sought to appeal to them, the haste of movements as she cast the fan to the side and leaped in the direction of the nearest tree—would have only allowed him to administer an inhale.

Hoku's fingers carved holes in the dirt. His reality has befallen completely.

All that occurred normal to him was that he was human. However, given the current nature of how nothing seems to stay the same, he begins to question that notion as he watches this noble woman climb up the branches that grew out of the tree every time she fully revealed the fan.

Hoku promptly discerned as well that the white 'ashes to dust' were the disintegrated remains of the moonflowers that fell from the branches when she grew a new one.

It appears this withered forest was incapable of sustaining life without creation.

What makes humans the exception?

"You are the only exception." Hoku winces, the ringing in his head suddenly reawakens with a bitter twinge.

Rule 10

Corruption is the sequel's concept of punishment. The rules of the memoir must be followed to avoid it. The tenth rule is to abstain from feigning life and age. Any life form responsible for dissolving alternate life will be imparted with unpredictable deformities. The Return was once an extinct aquatic species that interfered by inheriting the 'spell' of an aerial species.

Corruption has changed it into what it is now.

-The Memoir Chapter 5 end-