A flood of footsteps fell hard upon the dirt pathway leading out of the castle grounds. Bows and rifles were carried in hand, swords and sickles the soldiers wore at their sides. Only frantic calls between sentries could be heard over the clinking of metal and thudding of heavy footfall that echoed against the road’s tall clay walls. Even as she ran in their direction, Lin wished that she wouldn’t have to find the reason for why they cried out. She shivered. Wind had moved in like an icy wave and frost now tipped the crooked branches in the castle gardens. If her black fur-lined coat and snowy undershirt couldn’t keep out the cold, what hope was there of it protecting her from the horror that had laid waste to Yangwa?
Something wild had pierced the hearts of the men and women that guarded the castle walls. Order atop the ramparts had splintered into chaos; each standing sentry appeared to be scattering back and forth like disturbed ants, firing erratically in random directions and slaying empty space in swathes. Those that did not stand drew more attention than their seemingly crazed comrades. Many kneeled or leaned against the battlements, their upper bodies peppered with wounds through which nerves and blood vessels crawled, trailing along the weathered stone walls like creeper vines. Others wandered aimlessly amid the confused fighting, their faces and necks riddled with capillaries as if infested with hairlike worms.
Things are just like they were before. It followed me here. All of this is happening because of me. Her chin up, eyes forward, and teeth gritted, Lin drew her sword.
An order cut through the ranks of the defenders to cease fire, the voice belonging to Daimyō Kanmaru Tome. He pushed to the fore with a rifle in hand and peered over the edge of the battlements.
“Impressive. Very impressive,” he remarked. “You’ve claimed an overwhelming victory from upon these walls and vanquished a field of inanimate objects, using no small measure of munitions while doing so. What exactly have you been shooting at?”
A number of soldiers spoke at once in their attempts to explain the mass slaughter of boulders that had taken place, the aftermath of which was clear to see in the light of the night’s full moon. Rough grooves and cracks marked the boulders that had met with gunfire, many of their surfaces black with scorch marks left by flaming arrowheads.
Tome clapped his hands together loudly. “Quiet, all of you! Shouting over one another will not save you from whatever inhuman scum has decided to run itself against our walls. Compose yourselves and you might just make it through the night. Now-” he seized the barrel of the nearest guardsman's rifle and lowered it to the floor. “When you fire, it should be done with a target in sight. Where is our enemy?”
The soldier, small-faced and slim, straightened his back to speak. “It’s- I don’t know, Lord Daimyō. It crawled up to the gate and vanished like a shadow among the stones. The gates are still shut. That thing is out there somewhere.”
“Smothering the field in smoke won’t help you find it. Drowning out the sound of its movements with gunfire and panic? Does that strike you as your best course of action?” Tome asked politely.
“No, Lord Daimyō.”
“Neither does it I,” Tome replied. “Take those who cannot fight and help them off of the walls, Guardsman Yoshikawa. Arai, Maeda, and Aoki, go with him. The rest of you, point your weapons over that edge and ready yourselves. The next fool to fire their weapon without my order will spend the next day collecting a field’s worth of spent ammunition.”
Yoshikawa nodded stiffly and fell in with the three other guardsmen. They carried those most severely afflicted, and asked those that could still walk to follow them back to the garrison. Nerves protruding from a guardsman’s ear brushed against Lin’s cheek as he hurried along. She lowered her head and bit her tongue so that she would not retch.
“It’s a demon,” she breathed when she had reached the Daimyō, her stomach barely settled. “A demon is attacking your castle.”
“The duty is mine to defend this castle, but its ownership belongs to Daimyō Araji,” Tome corrected without turning. “How is it that you know this enemy of ours?”
“It attacked a town northeast of the Hangu, a place called Yangwa. I found what was left behind. The demon could influence mind and body with a single scratch, and it turned its still-living victims into some sort of living… mesh that it was drawing from. The same thing has started to happen to a few of your guardsmen, but something about it is different this time.”
“Really now? How so?”
“It’s stronger. From what I know, the demon needed direct contact through a scratch or some other wound to inflict its influence. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. It didn’t make contact with me, and it doesn't seem like it attacked any of your soldiers either.”
“You?” he asked, finally turning to face her. His face softened when he noticed the blood that dripped from the remains of her left thumb and forefinger. Lin moved her hand behind her back. “You should go and wrap them in something clean. I can't have you bleeding all over my wall.”
“They'll close up soon enough. Hopefully.” Joining Tome at the edge of the ramparts, Lin sheathed her sword and pointed below. “The Solace Demon has a new look and it's more powerful than when we last met, but it knows me, and I know it.”
“What makes you so certain it's the same beast? Yangwa is a long way away from here,” Tome pointed out.
“My mother's blood recognises its presence.”
“Blood?” Tome mused, “Well, can that blood of yours locate the demon for us? We can't kill what isn't there.”
“I can try, though I might need a volunteer to help me. This magic is terribly draining, and I'm not sure I can manage by myself. It should be possible if I can draw energy from another living source,” Lin explained. Tome pressed his lips together. He looked away for a moment, passing over his guardsmen with a careful look in his eye.
“Fine enough. Take only what you need,” he said, and offered her his hand. Lin took it in her own. His palm was rough with callouses, but the back of his hand was as smooth as her cheek. Lin closed her eyes with that sensation in her mind, and when she opened them, she reached out to the boulder field with a newfound energy. Nests of spindly vines squeezed through the cavities and crevices in and between the great stones in search of an elusive phantom. A few cries of alarm were exchanged by the watchers on the walls but were quickly rebuffed by Lord Tome. Lin paid them no notice. Any distractions now would waste the precious little time they had left before the Solace Demon made its reappearance, and without a doubt, an assault on the castle gates. This isn’t an enemy that would simply disappear. It’s hellishly powerful and has no reason to hide. So why…? What is it trying to achieve?
Her web of feeler vines expanded outward, crawling across dirt and stone and grasping at the still air that hung above. Minute after minute passed in the cold light of the moon and stars without any sign of their enemy. Lin was fast growing tired.
“Would it be too hopeful to think the monster has already gone?” Tome murmured. “We don’t know for certain that it ever truly intended to attack.”
Lin shook her head, “The demon is still here.”
“Have your vines discovered its location?”
“Not yet,” she confessed, but that wasn’t the entire truth. They had found something, a deep, rhythmic rumble that resonated through the ground, but she couldn’t be sure what exactly she was hearing. The sound increased in volume ever so gradually, and with a careful ear, Lin thought for a moment that she could almost make out words in a human tongue.
“…sky so long tinted black… dampens our earth at dawn.
Fall in line, son of Araji, fall in line.
These lands are freed with song.
It’s time, son, hold your smile.
Be so kind, daughter Araji, always kind.
Through victory do we belong.
It’s time, dear, hold your smile.”
That isn’t possible. I misheard, I must have, Lin thought to herself. It was a convenient explanation, but she knew she couldn’t leave it there. She listened through the fibres of her branching vines for the source of the voice, then immediately stooped to one knee. With the beginnings of sweat glazing her brow, Lin placed her ear to the stone battlements. The words were spoken with a single distorted voice, though it seemed at times that others were singing in discordant tunes. Lin began to echo the sounds that spoke through the stone.
“The shadows of Xia’an are gone,
returned to the Dark by our brothers’ blood,
we prove our mortal strength in flesh and bone.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Tome asked. There was a strange force to his words, though Lin couldn’t tell whether it was irritation or bemusement.
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“Fall in line, son of Araji, fall in line.
These lands will bleed before long.
It’s time, son, flee the light.
Leave your vines, daughter Araji, are you blind?
Of the things they covet, you are none.
They lied, Sio, fear the-”
“I asked you a question,” Tome interrupted, turning Lin forcefully by her shoulder. “Is all of this some kind of joke to you, girl?”
“No, it isn’t. I-”
“Then would you care to explain why you’re chanting that bastardised version of The Cloudburst?”
“I’m just repeating what I hear,” Lin replied, placing her ear against the battlements once more. Her lips quivered when they parted again, “It’s inside your wall.”
The Daimyō’s expression dropped. “Are you certain?”
Lin opened her mouth to reply, but it was forced closed again in an instant. As if waiting for the moment it would be discovered, the Solace Demon lunged upward at an impossible speed through layered rock. The wall exploded beneath their feet, and the sky switched places with the ground. Lin felt herself being flung into the air amid a hail of bricks and splintered stone that battered and nicked her. She winced at the red lines they left across her skin, but none of them were nearly as painful as the sensation that overtook her body when she crashed down to the base of the ramparts. A grinding snap sounded that something had been broken.
Thick clouds of dust had settled the castle grounds like a deep, earthy fog by the time Lin could stand again. They masked the sight of the horrors unfolding ahead of her but offered no censor against the guttural shrieks of terror and torment. Walking stiffly to avoid provoking another agonising twinge from her ribs, she made her way through the sand-tinted murk across hidden mounds of debris and up the stairs that would lead her back onto the wall- a fortification that she found no longer stood. The only line of defence between the Solace Demon and Araji Castle had fallen, and those broken steps led only to a perilous drop into the obscure darkness. Squinting her eyes, Lin knelt close to the edge to examine more closely the movement at the edge of her visibility.
“Lord Tome?” she called, but received no reply. She had, however, attracted several strangers from the distant shadows. Lin didn’t need to wait until they had come fully into view to know they were no longer human.
Fiends. It seemed years since leaving the besieged cradle of Solace, yet not nearly long enough to forget their irregular, jittering movements and that horrific smell of musky, putrid meat. They came with a hungry eagerness in their droves, a grotesque collective of half-complete bodies and dismembered limbs. The fiends carried themselves on newly-grown appendages that looked to be built of exposed muscle and little else. The closest of the monsters Lin recognised as one of the men from the ramparts, he was more intact than most, sporting both legs and a half-eaten torso. A misshapen head lolled atop its barely concealed spine as it shuffled to the left and right, teetering on one leg before changing direction again. It zigzagged back and forth, edging closer with every step of its erratic dance. Nature’s beautiful, right? Lin thought to herself, and a stunted laugh escaped her. Fighting these enemies alone would be more dangerous than it was worth. They were too many and she was maimed; wherever the Solace Demon prowled, it surely wouldn’t help to injure herself further before facing it. She had begun to retreat back down the stairs when she heard the call of a guardsman. It was close- dangerously so, and came from the direction of the reanimated dead. A stealthy peek over the broken edge revealed that the man’s voice had garnered more attention than he might’ve bargained for, and he didn’t even know it.
“Lord Daimyō!” the guardsman called again, oblivious to the terrors that stalked the dust. Lin thought she recognised the voice. Isn't that the soldier that helped carry the others away? Yoshitaka, or… Yoshikawa? When the shambling fiends began to corral toward the call’s source, however, she knew he had already run out of time. Monsters would descend from the murk to feast upon his living flesh. She was in no condition to fight; Lin could scarcely take a breath without having to brace herself against the deep, sharp pains that accompanied the action, not to mention that her left hand was already missing two of its digits.
Why am I even here? Lin thought to herself, resting for a moment on the night-chilled stone. It’s because of my mother, isn’t it? Isn’t everything? My choice was never part of her plans, she just keeps pushing me along the path she has drawn. Now that path has been crossed by her demon- the very same horror she had cultivated in the valley of Solace. Everything I’ve done, everything that’s led me here, does it all lead back to her? My actions so clearly belong to Lady Sio, but my thoughts? My dreams? How much of myself was just some invention of hers?
Lin shivered. Sweat now dampened her face as if to spite the wintery air. Closing her eyes, she felt drawn to a vivid memory of many nights past, on the day that Yangwa was inhabited by a demon. She remembered the day she had tried to make Sio's lies a reality, and she remembered how little it had achieved.
I can’t beat it. I probably can’t even win against those fiends. Still, am I making the right choice?
Lin was no heroine, she knew that much, but choosing to slip away would certainly prove her a selfish coward. Was an easy escape worth living with that guilt? She didn’t know, but even if victory wasn’t possible, it didn’t mean that her efforts would be meaningless.
Then I'll lie, just as I did before. Maybe then, I can still be your heroine.
“I’m still alive,” Lin called out hesitantly, not as loudly as she had intended. She inhaled slowly, deeply. It’s done now. “Come on! My body’s soft and warm, and my heart’s beating fast with blood. Doesn’t it excite you?”
The sound of her voice turned several of the stragglers on their fibrous heels. More still wandered further into the dust. I need more volume. She climbed to the very peak of the broken stairs and filled her lungs. The air was like dry earth on her lips.
“I’m right here, you Xia’an freaks! A full course dinner waiting just for you, right h-”
Something shot up from the base of the stairs and struck at Lin’s waist. She flailed, and then she fell. A long drop made for a heavy landing. She felt her injured ribs collapse at the moment she collided with the floor. Air rushed from her lungs. Lin tried to cry out in pain, but nothing would come. Her attacker scrambled to its feet a mere metre away. It was long and its torso maimed. It zigzagged unbelievably fast. Sounds that almost mimicked words passed through its chattering teeth.
“Gu- gusa- ku. Gusa-”
Lin reeled. “Mutant freak,” she tried to say, though spoke only in silence. She drew her sword in a horizontal slash as she rose into a fighting stance. A coughing fit overcame her when her breath finally returned, along with a spattering of shiny dark droplets around her mouth and on her palm. Blood had begun to seep into her lungs.
“Gusaku! Gusa- kukukuku!” the fiend gargled violently from a head that could barely stay upright. Like before, it dashed from side to side while making its approach, its armless torso bending and swaying as if made of rubber. Like a striking viper, it lunged toward Lin in the same moment as her swing. Teeth clashed against the steel of her sword.
“Gukukuku- Guku!” came its guttural speech. Lin grabbed hold of the blade between its jaws and shoved it against a hefty chunk of debris. With all her weight, she forced the blade down, slicing through the freak’s head in one messy stroke.
“Goo goo fuck you.” She took several more swings at its muscular growths to ensure it wouldn’t rise again, then turned her attention to the rest of her company. There were eight, maybe nine of the fiends, and they had gotten so close that they were nearly biting at her ankles. After a moment’s wait, she seized the closest fiend with the remaining fingers of her left hand whilst channelling the monster’s energy with her right. A wave of savage vines tore through the ranks of the possessed dead. The path to the guardsman was made clear.
Yoshikawa was not alone when Lin found him. Monstrous apparitions of Xia’an had besieged him alongside another soldier in a small circle of frost-dusted debris. The men thrust with their bayonets at the fiends that had beset them, but never dared to leave their crumbling bulwark. Lin swept in from behind the mutant horde and laid into them with her weapons, both metal and magical, cleaving through muscle and bone without losing the momentum of her deadly sprint. She weaved between the cold bodies and lashed out with her spectral reach at a severed head that entangled her in its sinewy limbs. The flowing thorns that followed in her wake made short work of their stolen flesh. Maintaining her speed, she vaulted over the last of the fiends and spun into a landing atop the circle of debris, then delivered a final arcing slash. She tried to greet the guardsmen with a smile when she turned, but her chest felt as though it was packed with knives and stones. She began to cough, then to choke, and when she could finally speak again, she noticed that Yoshikawa had been decorated with a spattering of dark red beads.
“You’ve got blood on your face,” she pointed out.
“I do now, yes,” he answered in an unamused tone. “Thanks for the help. Are you… alright?”
“Perfectly fine,” Lin grinned weakly. She stepped into the defensive circle and sat herself upon an uncomfortable seat of debris. Her breath was terribly shallow.
“You shouldn’t be out here, young miss,” said Yoshikawa’s fellow guardsman.
“Neither should you. Could I ask your name?”
“I’m Maeda. Norisuke Maeda. That’s Yoshikawa,” he answered.
Yoshikawa gave a little wave, “Call me Ei-”
“You should run, Maeda,” Lin interrupted, “We all should. These fiends looked like they were giving you a pretty hard time, and they don’t even begin to compare to what else is out there. A demon has breached Castle Araji, and if it doesn’t kill us all, we’ll really wish it had.”
Maeda gave an aggravated shrug, “So what are we supposed to do? There are civilians in these walls, and the Lady Daimyō is just along that road. We can't just abandon the castle. We need to find Lord Tome.”
“Lord Tome was with me when the wall fell. The demon knocked it down like a child’s tower of wooden blocks. You’ve just seen what happened to the majority of your comrades. If the Daimyō was still alive then he’d have made himself known by now. Your friends were saved from a living death because I freed them. If you fall, I won’t be here to do the same for you.”
“Is that right? And where will you go?” Maeda asked.
Lin glanced behind, “That thing blew a hole in the wall and I'm going to walk straight through it. The dust is almost settled, but I can use it to slip past whatever's waiting there.”
Yoshikawa rested his rifle upon his shoulder. “Arai and Aoki were pushed that way when we were attacked. We'll come with you, until we find them at least.”
“You'll run along back to your garrison to muster every last guardsman, then you'll help whoever most needs it. If you die, who will they have to save them? As far as I can tell, you're all that's left.”
“What, you think you stand a better chance than us, girl?” Maeda challenged.
“It isn't that.”
“Then what is it? Do you really think you can stop us from going to find our brothers?”
Lin met the man's heated gaze. “You've got people waiting for you back there. They need you. There's nobody waiting for me.” Swinging her legs over the debris, she pushed herself carefully back onto her feet. “Look, I'll try to help your friends if I find them, but please, turn back. It isn't just your life you're trying to throw away.”
Maeda caught her arm. “You're in no condition to be going anywhere. If your lung is punctured, you could drown in your own blood.”
Lin placed a hand on the lean muscle of her bicep and huffed, “Don’t worry. I’m very strong.” Nimble as a mouse, she slipped free of his armoured grip and trod swiftly over the resting dead before either man could protest. The breach lay twenty metres or so ahead of the guardsmen she had lent her assistance to. The path through the settling fog seemed far longer.