Lin couldn’t help but to laugh. “Are you really going to kill me with that knife, Kana?”
Brandishing that hard steel, the boy lowered his stance, “I’d rather not. Are you going to get in my way?”
“You just told me you’d send assassins after my mother, so what do you think?”
“Then I’ll have to cut through you.”
A breath of wind passed through the surrounding bamboo, waving and brushing against one another like blades of grass. Glancing back from where they had walked, Lin realised that Kana hadn’t led her as far into the woods as she had thought. The shrine was still within sight.
“Won’t you at least tell me why?” she asked. “Why are you so desperate to have her killed?”
“I’ve told you enough times already. Lady Sio is putting everyone’s lives in terrible danger to serve her own desires. You heard as much as I did eavesdropping on their meeting. That alliance- she’s going to bury and burn a continent to build a superstate under her control. All of those people, their histories and cultures, will be forced under the flag of Sanzan.”
Lin lowered her gaze. “I know.”
“And you’re just going to stand idly by?”
“What do you think, Kana? That I can just take on Sio and the Emperor by myself? Besides, she’s doing this to save people. Isn’t this better than those countries continuing their never-ending war?”
He scoffed, “You really don’t understand, do you? Her plan won’t be as simple as bringing peace to Sakao. Lady Sio is one of the few surviving hosts; she carries traces of a Heaven within her body. Her actions are the will of a parasite gifted to her by a selfish, warped god. She’s going to drive us all to ruin, Lin.”
“I know,” Lin repeated, “And she’ll expect me to help her.”
“Why would you ever stand for someone like her?”
A pause came before Lin’s answer. “For the same reason I’ve ever done anything. Sio raised me, she taught me almost everything I know, but the time we spent together lessened the older I grew. By following her teachings and trying to become who she wanted me to be, I guess I somehow hoped that she would look at me again. I wanted her to praise me, to stop leaving me behind. I wanted her time and attention all to myself. Even after making the decision to stop following her, I still can’t bring myself to break away from that feeling. Isn’t that pathetic? I’m sorry, Kana, but I’m not going to let you take her away from me.”
“You’re in my way,” Kana replied, and leapt toward her with a slash from his knife. Its blade bit through cloth and skin. Lin staggered backwards, holding a hand over the newly opened gash across her forearm.
“Kana!” she cried, her voice quivering.
“Quiet,” the boy demanded. He reached forward to seize the front of Lin’s dress, but she retreated from his grasp. Her shoulders pressed softly against the culm of a bamboo plant, and she knew she could fall back no further. “In the time I’ve known you, you’ve been nothing more than a mould of other people’s lies and ideals. You ignored the warning, but you won’t be able to ignore its consequences,” said Kana, pointing his wooden-handled knife once more.
“I don’t even have a weapon. Do you really want to do this?”
“Are you asking if I’d attack an unarmed woman?” he asked, raising his brows. “The answer is yes. Shall I demonstrate?”
Lin’s hand tightly wrapped around the stalk of bamboo behind her back as her attacker continued his approach. Energy buzzed at her fingertips.
“The reason that I asked...” she said carefully, “...Is because this isn’t going to play out the same as it did before.”
“You’re right. If I’m remembering correctly, you won our last fight. This time, I can’t let that happen.” Kana’s face softened slightly, “I’m sorry, Lin.”
Exhaling slowly, Kana took another step toward her, the keen edge of his blade closing the distance between them faster than she could see. The metal’s threat did not phase her, however. Kana could barely flinch as the ground erupted with a barrage of vines, stripping away the navy yukata and skin from his flesh beneath. It was far too late by the time he tried to evade. Lin pried the wooden handle from his fingers as he squirmed in the vines’ thorny grip and pressed the blade’s tip to his throat. It fell to the floor a moment later. Her hand trembled terribly.
“Just how in the hell can you so easily take a life?” she shouted, halting the spread of the vines. “I’m not going to kill you Kana, no matter how badly you want to do the same to me. Putting a knife between Mistress Mei’s ribs, running a sword through that soldier’s windpipe, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to escape the sickness those memories bring to my stomach.” Lin bore her teeth. Her vision blurred with tears. “I never want to feel like this again.”
“Then what will you do, Lin?” Kana wore a cruel grin, though it couldn’t hide the pain she had inflicted. “It looks like you’ve inherited your mother’s vines. What purpose do they have but to maim and kill? You follow her, led by your lead of loyalty, hoping to live up to her ideas of responsibility, but she doesn’t walk the same path as you. No matter how many you cut down in her name, those victories will belong to her alone.”
Clenching her jaw, Lin held out a hand and curled her fingers inward, ever so slightly pressing the thorns deeper into Kana’s torso. He stiffened, and for a moment, there was a trace of genuine fear in the boy’s eyes. Her hand relaxed. The vines loosened and collapsed around his feet.
“I don’t need to take your life to prevent you from taking mine,” Lin warned. “My mercy is selfish. If you try to strike me, I'll sever your tendons. If your tongue insults me, I'll embed it with thorns. And if then your glare offends me, I'll leave you among the blind that care for this place.” They were strong words delivered upon trembling legs. It took all Lin had to maintain her voice, but she knew that if her bluff failed there would be nothing more to be said, and she would lose an important part of herself.
Though lacking confidence, Kana took a step forward. “What I must do here isn’t something I can simply leave behind. This fight is for the sake of everyone, and for every individual that rallies or hides beneath their nation’s flag. It’s for the sake of our very identities. Sio believes she can smother us in the shadow of Sanzan, deciding who is worthy of life or death. Even if I’m alone in my struggle, I’ll find a way to stop her.”
“No, you won’t. You know I can’t let you do that.”
“Lin, how do you intend to stop me?” Kana asked. Presenting his hand, he allowed her to see the dark cracks running through the skin. They widened, revealing the black bones inside. Lin couldn’t believe what she could see before her.
“Spectral reach,” she breathed. “How?”
He didn’t reply. When his fist swung around and brought with it a great cloud of black smoke, Lin had little time to erect her living barrier of vines. It was too short and too thin, she knew, there was no possibility that it could defend against such a strike. With no other way of defending herself, she braced, closing her eyes tightly. Yet no impact came. The cloud rushed through the stalks of bamboo like a gentle breeze, menacing but otherwise harmless. And when she looked up to her opponent once more, she found that he was gone.
“An illusion?” she mumbled to herself. A quick survey of the sloping woods around her revealed nothing but a bewildered red panda that had evidently been caught in the rushing smoke. It plodded along lightly on dark paws, eyeing Lin warily with its curious face of orange and white.
Lin couldn’t drop her guard even after returning to her room in Hema’s accommodation halls. For days she trailed after her mother, her attention seldom leaving the woods surrounding them in all directions, the threat of Kana’s attack ever looming over her heart. As those days turned into weeks, however, she began to realise it was an attack that would ever come.
Autumn’s end was marked by a storm wicked enough to make up for the otherwise calm season of sparse monsoons. Violent gales battered Hema’s shrine near constantly, bringing with them a dreary overhead blanket of ashen clouds that scoured the landscape with prolonged torrents of rain. Mountain paths became riverbeds, and the shrine’s basin gradually filled until high water lapped against wooden supports and ponds became indistinguishable from the flood. The once quiet corridors became busy and bustling after monks and maidens alike were driven inside by the unruly weather, though for all of the close company now crowding Hema’s halls, none would offer much by the way of conversation. Fuu visited her on a few occasions and they both shared stories of their past. She was truly grateful when she learned of how Lin had helped to save her from the living meigui, but the two never managed to forge a meaningful friendship, and a month or so after they had begun, the visits came to a stop.
Eventually, even the soldiers of Sen occupying the foot of the mountain retreated westwards under the constant bombardment of nature’s downpour. The water had begun to seep into their tents, soaking supplies and bedding. Two of five drunkards that had wandered into the marshes collapsed and drowned. It seemed a strangely cruel fate for one to offer their life up for the sake of their homeland and willingly strike out into the battlefield only to succumb to a puddle’s shallow depths.
Lin lay stretched out upon her futon and stared into the flat ceiling, listening to the faint white noise of pattering raindrops on the roof above. She tried her best not to blink. Whenever she did, the mutilated face of the man she had murdered arose from the darkness of her eyelids, he screamed silently through a pierced throat. The bloody visage of Seki Shinohara was often joined by Mistress Mei’s beastly form, and at times so were the fearful residents of Yangwa, horrifically entwined in that vascular devil machine.
Her sword rested beside her door; she hadn’t been able to draw it since that violent night. Its blade was unclean, tainted by the blood of another. Her focused idleness was interrupted by the shifting of the sliding door. It was Sio. There she stood in her ridiculous dress with her gaudy makeup and that infuriating smile that almost never seemed to leave her lips.
“Still brooding over your friend? Smile, Lin Ko, the rain’s finally stopping out there.”
Lin turned to face the other way. “Please leave.”
“Don’t be like that, Lin Ko, I’ve come to see how you’re doing,” she replied in her usual whimsical manner.
“You’ve had several weeks for that, ever since you meddled with my body. Nothing’s gained in feigning concern now.”
“I’m sorry. Truly,” Sio said with as much sincerity as she could muster, taking a seat on the floor in front of her. “As much as I’d like to tell you that I’ve simply been too busy to talk to you, too caught up in drawing plans to spare time away, that would be a lie. I was afraid.”
“I’ve never once seen fear on your face.”
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“Hope that you never do,” she replied. “Won’t you talk with me, my dear?”
Lin pulled a face, but sat upright nonetheless. It wouldn’t do to lose her chance at the truth now that it had come so close.
“So tell me Sio, what are you so afraid of?”
“You,” she answered, “And what you’ll think of me when you come to understand who I am. I’m afraid of what you’ll say when you realise what exactly that means.”
Lin’s mind flickered back to her clash with Kana. “I know that you’re a host of Heaven. So tell me Sio, who are you?”
Lin stared hard into the woman’s emerald burning eyes. Sio broke her gaze.
“I don’t suppose it would be enough to simply say that I’m the mother that raised you, would it?” she laughed humourlessly. “I am Sio Ko, that much was never a lie, and I am one of the hosts as you say. There were once as many as a hundred of us, though that was in a different time, it’s been some time since I heard from any other. We each carry within our bodies a piece of one of the Heavens that allows us to carry out their will and aid their followers in times of need. There was a time when I tried to do the impossible in order to save many millions of lives. The consequences were catastrophic. Raising you as a daughter has been my atonement for that, the cost of suffering inflicted by my hands.”
“So you raised me out of guilt? Thanks for telling me,” Lin scoffed, “But why? What happened for things to turn out like this?”
“The end of Sengoku Naga’s heretical war. Zetian was somehow set upon a collision course for our planet, Taizo. The branching roots of the Earthen Cataclysm saved our world, but in order to fuel them, great vines tore through your homeland. It was a price dearly paid.”
It was difficult to know whether to trust the words of the woman that had lied to her time and time again. Lin dared not avert her eyes.
“That isn’t what I meant. Why you?”
“Such is the duty of the Heaven’s Hundred. It isn’t all bad, of course, the parasite mends wounds as if they were marks in sand. Even better, I age slower than most. I can even draw upon the energy of life itself to create the vines you saw before. Who else can claim the same?”
“Yours truly.” Lin stared onward, eyes narrowed. “You never told me how you healed my wounds.”
“I gave you my blood,” she replied without looking. “Enough of this, there’s something I’d like you to see. Won’t you walk the courtyard with me?”
“The midst of a typhoon doesn’t sound so therapeutic.”
“I don’t suppose it would be,” she concurred, but the rain’s patter upon the roof had lessened. “It’s about time, the storm’s eye is passing overhead. Come along, Lin Ko.”
Wordlessly, Lin agreed. The prospect of fresh air seemed a blessing.
The destructive gales had calmed to a breeze, though the damage they’d left behind was clear to see. Broken foliage from the mountainside littered the outer veranda and cracks lined the wood of the shrine’s walls where they had been struck. An unintelligible argument raged between the maiden twins in the courtyard; Lin tried to take no notice. They’d been at odds ever since that grim night at Hema’s peak.
“What do you mean you’ve given me your blood?”
“I meant exactly what I said. I wanted to give you a chance to prove your own strength by leaving you alone in Mogu Forest, but when the realisation finally hit that you’d contracted the rotfever and your condition was truly grievous, I feared that I might lose you. So, I gave you my blood. It’s hardly noticeable, infinitesimal, but a trace of Heaven flows through your veins,” Sio explained, watching carefully for Lin’s response.
“Am I in any danger?”
“That can’t be discounted, although what you were given was only a whisper of a host’s power. Things have turned out better than I hoped,” Sio smiled. She placed a hand atop Lin’s head and held her close. “Your scars are gone. You’re a beauty to behold.”
“It’s encouraging to know that you thought me ugly until now,” Lin replied dryly and pulled away, making for the veranda’s stairs.
“That isn’t-” Sio began, “I didn’t mean-”
“Leave it, Mother. I don’t really mind.”
Lin’s ankles were submerged in water as she descended the stairs to where the courtyard of gravel and stone had been drowned by the rain. A reflection of the evening sun burned as a red flare upon the surface.
“It’s watching,” Sio murmured, looking upward at the sunset sky. “The storm’s gaze.”
Water drifted slowly to the lowest point of the basin and spilled over, drawing a stream of fallen leaves and twigs. Tsuya rose from her knees, sending ripples outward that disturbed the draining current. The argument had subsided with Ashi realising her pleas were falling upon deaf ears. Tsuya chanted something loudly, throwing her arms toward the sky. Her voice sounded painfully hoarse.
“For a glimpse of Heaven I cast away the false vision of these deceitful eyes. I have listened with faithful intent to the divine guidance of your host. Was I wrong to bear the sacrifice?”
Lin called out to the twins as she waded closer. Ashi beckoned her with frantic hands.
“One cannot find light by chasing its shadows. The Heavens are not within us, I need only peer outward into their domain. And with this looking glass…” Tsuya raised her head and stared sightlessly above. Lin continued onward. Her mother spoke in a warning tone, though the words passed right through her, and the harder Sio tried to reach her, the deeper the water seemed to become.
“Strangers disturbed the sanctity of this shrine, but Hema was never home to the Heavens. Your true forms lie elsewhere amid the interwoven web of our reality.”
Words abandoned all as their attention fell upon the spectacle above the storm’s eye. It had been faint at first, like a lone patch of hazy cirrus cloud, but then the shape became unmistakably distinct as a living being.
Something had latched onto the surface of the brightly looming planet.
Lin knew she shouldn’t have looked upon the unnatural behemoth even before it shifted to meet her gaze. A wide wound, warped and black, slashed that hideously malformed orb that could hardly have been called an eye. Rifts led to cavernous pits across its grotesque sclera, leaking drab and colourless grit along great currents that dwarfed any river Lin had ever seen. Understanding the sight before her had taken a short while at first, but at the moment she did, she found she could no longer look away. There was an arcanely deep and dense wealth of emotion that flowed through her as she stared into its jagged pupil, carrying with it a stream of shared esoteric thoughts and memories. In that instant that seemed to stretch for aeons, Lin felt connected to a silent network beyond the disquieting reaches of the universe’s vast expanse. The space between Taizo and the being that laid upon Zetian's surface seemed miniscule then, and through them stretched a serene nexus composed of many, yet known by few.
By the time Sio had managed to catch up, the entire landscape had been plunged into shadow. The water that rose to her abdomen was now a murky darkness that concealed all beneath its surface. A soft hand covered Lin’s eyes as Sio pulled her into a warm embrace. Still the spectacle above burned through.
Tsuya continued, though Lin could hardly hear her voice. “Grace us, Tenth of Ten, Hateful One. Descend from Zetian’s throne.”
On the dark side of the planet, the lustrous being twitched. Only then did its true size become clear. Eight long, segmented limbs like columns of cobbled flesh spanned a continent, rounding into hooked talons that latched onto mountains and ocean trenches. Though much of the thing’s body was obscured, the small glimpse Lin had caught had seared itself into her mind, far clearer than she could ever have seen with her own eyes. Starlight gleamed in the thin plates of armour that guarded its raw, developing organs beneath.
The sound of raindrops began to patter once more in the courtyard. We need to get away from here, she knew. This place, the last scraps of sanity holding it all together, it's all going to collapse. Lin shook herself free of Sio’s grasp, and as she looked to the rain soaking her clothes, black droplets ran like ink over her skin. Or perhaps it already has. Her stomach sank like stone, and the breath caught in her throat. A sense of danger unlike anything she’d ever known surged within. Heavier, the blackened downpour grew, until everything beyond the shrine’s basin had disappeared behind a wall of mist.
And then, from the flood, they rose.
Spindly limbs like blood-sodden branches broke the water’s surface; bruised orbs decorated their bodies with thin pupils that seemed to peer into the furthest recesses of the mind. Lin fell away, scrambling desperately through waist-high water. The direction didn’t matter so long as it put distance between her and whatever had invaded the shrine, but a quick glance ahead of her revealed the courtyard was swarmed. Each and every escape had already been cut off. Tsuya called out to the creatures shakily, unable to see with the seared flesh where her eyes should have been. The tallest of the things stood at twice the maiden’s height and loomed closely over her head. They spoke then without mouths, their gravelly words seeming to overlap all at once.
“-Your thoughts. -Your feelings. -Your mind. -Your knowledge. -Your spirit. -Your being.”
They circled the spectators like silhouettes cast by a flame.
“-They bore witness. -Erasure. -A host. -Leave her. -No other.”
The voices chattered again, though this time they only continued to grow louder.
“-Ashi Ito. -Rin Yanami. -A curiosity? -Tear away. -Disappear. -Close your eyes. -For the last time.”
A dead silence fell. The tall creatures converged upon them.
There was no opportunity to flee. It took only a lazy swipe from a pointed spine to cleave through the top of Ashi’s head. Something sounded from what remained of her mouth, a mess of teeth and jaws, there was no semblance of a word the maiden could manage. She collapsed into the water with a heavy splash. Lin trembled as the creatures moved in, so badly that she couldn’t even think to defend herself. She was no more than wide-eyed prey, quivering in fear at the mercy of monsters. A curved, scythe-like arm swung towards her. She made no attempt to stop it. Just as the savage edge began to bite into her cheek, thorned tendrils wrapped themselves around the limb and wrenched it away. The wound’s sting snapped Lin back into reality. Her hand went to the sword at her side and fastened around the smooth, flat wood of the handle.
“What’s happening?” she called out to Sio. The look on her mother’s face bore no hopeful news.
“Did you see it?” Sio asked.
“There was something on Zetian’s surface,” Lin replied. She could see it even now, like the afterimage of a bright light burned into her retinas.
A swirling vortex raged overhead around the eye of the storm as the downpour of black droplets smeared the shrine with darkness. Lin peered upwards, she could almost feel the planet-encompassing horror above staring right back. Awe overwhelmed her. The grip loosened from her sword.
There was no doubt that any of what she saw was real. The submerged half of her body was enveloped by biting cold as if the dark waters had already frozen, and the shapes of the approaching devils were too detailed to be the product of a dream, with their weapons of shimmering curved blades, spines and tumorous hammer-like growths. Their limbs were decorated with the spreading of veiny ridges and skeletal protrusions that jutted outward at the joints, waving awkwardly as they shambled ever closer. Each of their organic structures were erratic yet purposeful, and their forms so intricately designed as if shaped by a master architect.
Confused murmurs from behind drew Lin’s attention to the verandas surrounding the two halls. There stood a dozen or so shrine attendants, blind monks and bewildered maidens emerging from the buildings in equal numbers. Sio stiffened at the sight. She waded hurriedly toward one of the monsters, and evading the bite of its menacing blade, she then gripped what might have been the creature’s head and splayed her free hand in the direction of the observers. You can’t save them, Lin knew, nothing can save us from this. It took but a moment for those otherworldly beings to vilify her fears; serrated scythes shredded flesh, and bones were shattered by heavy hammers. Broken bodies were left scattered over wood and water. Sio’s vines burst from gravel to blockade the several entrances to the two halls. It was some small relief that those still inside would perhaps survive the nightmare raging around them, though the feeling was short-lived. More and more vines continued to emerge from the ground nearby, seeking out the surviving monks and maidens that were fortunate enough to have escaped the ruthless hostility of the courtyard creatures. Those thorns were not meant to protect, as Lin soon realised, but to kill. They pierced the bodies of the surviving attendants through nostrils, mouths and eyes, entering any available orifice and tearing whatever they met on their way inside. Lin looked to the woman she called her mother who stood a mere metre away. Sio’s expression revealed nothing, and she found no answer to her questions.
“-They shall fall. -They shall feast. -Celestial twins. -Locked in peace.”
Words overlapped and intertwined, echoing within Lin’s head as if she had been the one to deliver them. So many spoke now that it was too difficult to pinpoint any individual voice.
“Listen to me, Lin Ko. You need to forget about this for now. Do you hear me? Close your eyes!” It seemed difficult to focus on the woman’s face. There were tears streaming down her cheeks, but Lin couldn’t understand why.
“I’m sorry, I truly am,” she sobbed, struggling with her words. “Forgive me, Lin Ko.”
Sio took her daughter’s face in her gentle hands, stroking a thumb over her temple, but then her grip changed and forced Lin’s eyes shut. The weight upon her eyelids felt strange and uncomfortable. The pain as Sio’s thumbs pressed ever harder into her skull was unbearable.
Everything seemed to disappear then, not into darkness, but its absence.