After a few seconds, the sound was loud enough for even Shang to perceive. It was shrill and high note, not just one, but many in a discordant symphony. His stomach dropped. It was the sound of children screaming.
“Could it be an Exalted Beast mimicking the sound?” Nio asked.
Bataa and Koyo both looked uneasy. It would be better if this was a trick, but Shang’s intuition suggested otherwise. He started towards the entrance.
“Where are you going?” Koyo asked.
“To see what’s going on.”
“It’s best if we wait. The sounds are far away, at least a few caverns east of here. They probably haven’t sensed us yet,” Koyo advised.
Shang shook his head adamantly, his stomach roiling with emotion.
“She’s right, friend. We should wait here. From what I sense, there’s something big and dark in that direction. We must be cautious here given our circumstances,” Bataa advised.
“And the children?” Shang asked.
Bataa looked down. Shang waited for a response, but knew none was coming. It was the same. No one was willing to help. No one was willing to stand up to those stronger than them. Shang could still see the sea of faces as the villagers watched his mother’s head roll to the ground. They were all frozen, no one stepped in. No one except Mei and Xin even tried to help. Tears stung the corners of his eyes at the thought of his friends. He prayed for their happiness and good fortune wherever they were. In this world, he only had them left. Shang walked towards the exit of their shelter without saying a word.
Koyo blocked the entrance. Despite her smaller frame, her presence was immense. “Don’t be stupid. If you try to help them, you’ll only die.” Koyo gestured towards Bataa and Nio. “You want us to fight them? You want us to risk our lives so you can soothe your little ego?” She spat.
“I don’t want you to do anything. If you want to accept this, be my guest, but stand aside,” Shang responded evenly. Koyo did not budge. Her eyes were piercing and defiant. Her face was contorted in disgust. Or was that pain? Shang could not tell. “You don’t want me to go because you have other uses for me, right? You don’t want me to die before you can drain me dry in whatever plan you’ve devised.” Shang could not keep the anger and vitriol from his voice.
She was like the rest of them. Always seeking to use and use.
Koyo’s expression deadened at his words. “You don’t know anything." With a shove, Shang was on the ground. "You want to help? How exactly can you help as weak as you are? You think you know better? You think we are monsters for being prudent? It's about time you learn that you can't always get what you want, no matter how much you plead and beg.”
“How can you of all people give up.” Shang asked. “I never see you practice or cultivate like we do. And here you are, running away again. You ran away from your responsibilities. You ran away from your power because it was too hard. You were born into the most powerful family in the continent, and you ran away because you were selfish." Shang stood and moved close enough to Koyo that he could see the shifting colors in her eyes. "Was the training too hard? Were the masters too mean? You gave up something others would kill for. If I had your power, I would do anything I could to cultivate it, to protect the weak—" Shang’s words cut off as Koyo’s entire body began to shake. Shang could not tell if she was crying or shaking with anger. Her head was lowered as the gloom obstructed her face.
“That’s enough,” Bataa rested a mitten-sized hand on Shang’s shoulder.
“No, he’s right,” Koyo said. Her voice was weak and reedy. “I ran away because I was selfish and weak. I ran away from my family and my power. I abandoned those that I could have helped. I never wanted this Path. I never wanted this power. All I wanted was to live a normal life. If I had known what it would cost, I wouldn’t have accepted it.” Koyo’s face was still hidden, but her whole body trembled.
Shang reached out, holding her hand steady. “Then you and I are the same. Looks like neither of us can have our way.”
Koyo let Shang pull her out of the way. He stepped out into the cavern towards the distant screams.
After a few seconds, he could hear faint footsteps following behind him.
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The child awoke to the smell of blood. It was not the smell of animal blood. The scent was sweeter and more pungent and worst of all, familiar. It smelled like his own blood on the many occasions he was hurt. On instinct, he sought his secret hiding place. He created it to escape the tortures of his elder siblings.
Since he was born, he had learned to fend for himself. He knew he would get no help. It was not the way of their kind. He knew he was not strong and lacked the claws and horns that his many siblings flaunted. So instead, he learned to hide and hide well. As the youngest, he had taken to sleeping far away from his siblings. It was safest this way. He climbed down from the nest he had constructed from the flowers of the velvet fog bush and pushed aside the large jade stone that blocked the entrance to his hideout.
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The hole in the otherwise solid jade wall was barely large enough for him to crawl in and would be far too small for any of his siblings to fit. He closed the jade stone behind him, not before reaching into his waist pouch and sprinkling some pungent jasmine blossom flowers at the entrance to hide his passing. The ground in their home was littered with the fragrant flowers in the early morning so any disturbance in front of his hiding spot would be noticed.
He pulled his knees close to his chest and settled into his nook, resting his head on a soft groove in the stone. It was almost as comfortable as his bed. He hummed the sound of the wind in the trees as he waited, but the scent of blood only grew stronger. It seemed to come from the section of their home where his siblings slept. He hoped whatever prank his siblings were pulling on each other would not anger their parents. He had only seen his mother a few times since his birth, and each was a memory he’d rather forget.
His ears perked at an unfamiliar sound. It was not like any he’d ever heard, and he was great at remembering. He could mimic any sound he heard, though the sound of sand grinding against leaves had taken him a long time to master. This sound was not rhythmic. It was sudden and rough and filled with energy. It grated on his sensitive ears. He pulled his ears flat to his head to block out the noise.
His head lifted when the patter of steps caught his attention. He could recognize those steps from anywhere. It was his older brother. The youngest of the bunch and his worst tormentor. He wedged himself deeper into his hiding place and hoped he would not be found out.
Unfortunately, the door to his hiding place slid open. He glared defiantly up at his older brother, feigning strength now that he was discovered. His brother’s face was not what he expected. Instead of his usual teasing smile, his mouth was open and his eyes were wide and alert. He reached his hand in and the child edged away from him, unsure of what torments awaited him. Instead of grabbing for him, his brother merely touched the wall furthest from the opening. The wall transmuted under his touch. The deep green jade turned into a dark purple-black that seemed to move like a living shadow. With that, his brother retreated, looking back the way he’d come.
The sound of stomping feet was growing louder, but it wasn’t a sound he had ever heard before. He stuck his head out of the hiding spot to look at what was keeping his brother’s attention only to be shoved roughly back into the small opening.
His brother looked furious. Madder than he could ever remember. His brother’s hands gestured frantically at the shadowy wall. His meaning was clear. He wanted him to go through the opening. He resisted, sensing a trap and fearing what a terrible prank it would be this time. His brother moved to shove him through, but he pulled away. His brother could not reach all the way into the hiding place because his shoulders were too wide to fit. With a jolt, he retreated and slid the door shut behind him. The strange sounds from earlier had entered his sleeping space.
“There you are, tell the Patriarch we found the one that ran.” More stomps of foreign feet.
“We had an agreement. You are going against our pact.” The child started at the sound. He did not know his brother could make such sounds.
“Ha, an agreement. It’s useless to run. You’re at a dead end. The Patriarch will be here soon, and he will speak to your agreement.” A pause, a scuffle. “Wait, don’t move.” With a squelch and sigh, the pungent sweet smell of familiar blood flooded the space.
“Damn, the Patriarch will be mad. He wanted that one alive.”
“No matter, it’s a loss, but there are many. I’m sure some of them will be of use.” The foreign sounds gradually waned before disappearing. The child waited in his hiding spot for many more heartbeats before he dared to peek outside. In the clearing under his sleeping perch, his brother bled into the white jasmine blossoms coating the floor staining the petals pink. He moved closer to study him. His throat had been slit and his claws were coated with the sickly smell of his own blood.
The child moved closer to study his body. He knelt and frantically shook the prone form. His hands brushed through his brother’s soft silver hair, now stained red. He did not know why he would not wake. Was he hurt too badly?
The child’s chest hurt terribly, like when he’d been kicked and hit but somehow even worse. He rested his head on his brother’s chest and waited for the sound of his heart to start again, but it never did. When his brother’s body grew cold, he finally withdrew into his hiding spot.
He did not know what had happened, but he knew those strange creatures with the strange sounds had done something. Something terrible. The child gathered the small trinkets he’d hidden away in his hideout into his pouch and did as his brother bade. The shadows were like oil on his skin as he passed through—thick, coiling, and suffocating.
The darkness erupted with light. The world he’d entered was blinding. The light, which normally shone through the filter of the jasmine tree branches, was unfiltered and scalding. The sounds were worse. Foreign, agitating, without reason. The child lumbered towards the trees. He wasn’t sure these were trees. They were so much smaller than any he’d ever seen, and cowered in the shade. He was scared.
When darkness came, he looked around but realized he was lost. Nothing was the same. When his body finally succumbed to sleep, he dreamt of blood and wilting flowers and woke with a fist gripping his hair. He had not heard them coming over the deafening sounds of his surroundings. It was those strange creatures with the strange sounds again, though these ones were different from before.
“Looks like we missed this one.”
“Isn’t that one a bit too young?”
“The Sect Leader doesn’t care. He just needs beast-children. This one will do.”
The child was brought to the caves. He was now huddled in the very back of the cage. His small body allowed him to squeeze himself between the shivering and crying mass of children and hide from the terrible creatures that had captured him.
Some of his cellmates had horns and claws like his siblings, but they did not smell like them. When he had tried to speak to them, they only looked at him strangely, uncomprehending. The child pressed his head further into his bent knees with his hands over his ears. He wished his brothers and sisters were here. They would know what to do. They were strong and smart. Unlike him. The ache in his chest returned with a vengeance, and he let out a faint whimper.