Lin’s eyes flicked up and she spoke with a smile, “I’m here to save you.”
Daiyu raised her eyebrows, “Are you? Do you not think you’re a little late for that?”
“I can’t save this town, but I can help you, Daiyu,” Lin replied, offering her hand. “Is there anyone else left alive? We can leave for one of the cities along the eastern coast. One of Jiang’s cousins went to work in Nanfeng, remember? It should only be a week or two from here.”
“Jiang was strung up in the street because of you. I would never ask for your help, Lin, and even if I did, Nanfeng is at least a month’s travel from here. How do you suppose we would survive for that long by ourselves?”
Lin retracted her hand, gesturing at the door, “However we can. If we can’t forage, then I can hunt. Come with me, Daiyu. I can’t leave you to that creature.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“I followed it here. Everyone was already gone by the time I’d arrived.”
“They were still here when the creature made its approach,” said Daiyu, her eyes fixed upon Lin’s, “My grandmother and I, and everyone else. That monster came barrelling down the street past them all as if it hadn’t noticed them, but it had. Every person that it got close to was left with an injury, no matter how small. A scratch here, a gash there. It bit into my grandmother’s shoulder and skinned it like a mandarin.”
“It didn’t kill them?”
Daiyu shook her head.
“What about you? How did you manage to escape?”
“I ran, and I hid. It never came for me.”
“Were you injured during your escape? All of this blood across the floor...”
“My grandmother’s. It never got close to me. That’s probably why I haven’t been taken.”
“Taken? Where?”
Daiyu shrugged, “To wherever all of those blood trails are headed. Everyone injured by the monster walked off in that same direction. Didn’t matter what I said to them. They didn’t seem to understand.”
“Your grandmother, then? Did she…?”
“That same direction,” Daiyu repeated, “Same as the rest. She ran up those stairs, then wandered back out a few minutes later as if she’d forgotten to take a pot off the boil. I shouted for her not to go and she just turned with a confused look on her face, then went without a word.”
“You didn’t follow?”
The edges of Daiyu’s mouth stretched apart. Her eyes were tired. “Is it my responsibility to follow the damned to their death?”
Lin inched back. “Fine. I won’t save you so long as you save yourself. Go in the direction opposite to where the blood trails are converging. I’m going to the centre. If I make it back and find you still here, I’ll definitely drag you all the way to Nanfeng. You better get moving.”
“Why would you want to follow that monster? Are you that desperate to die?”
“No,” Lin answered. “The creature has already done enough damage. I can’t just let it continue.”
“But why you?” asked Daiyu.
“This is my responsibility,” Lin replied, starting toward the doorway. “Now run away. Live for another day.”
“That thing shrugged off blades and bullets. Do you really think you can defeat it?”
Lin paused at the entrance and looked backed at the child. “No. I really don’t think I could.”
She found the first body lying on the corner of a gated alleyway. He had been an old man once, bald and olive-skinned, but that was before a thoughtless teen released something out of a nightmare to sate her own selfish curiosity. His teeth were well maintained for his age, now scattered across the chiselled brick floor along with the rest of his severed face. His head had been bitten into like a melon, and his ribcage cracked open like the red shell of a boiled crab. Lin didn’t stoop down for a closer look, but it was clear that something had messily scooped out the visceral contents. The alleyway cut a path between two houses and opened into a small plaza. A wall of buildings surrounded a four-storey pagoda that sat upon a base of stone stairs. She found the second body in that plaza. She also found the hundredth. The floor could not be seen beneath the flood of bodily fluids. Corpses were submerged, indistinguishable from one another within a red sea that moved like a living thing. Lin waded further inwards. Her bare feet were painted to the ankles.
What is all of this? Are these really the remains of people? People I knew? No, no. It all seems silly if you think about it. A monster hiding in a shed for years? Trails of moving blood? No. I need to stop dreaming. I need to escape this insanity. I need to-
Taking another step toward the pagoda, something slipped between her toes. She lifted her foot above the human slurry and tentatively picked it out, allowing it to slide into her palm. It was a tongue. Her eyes glazing over, she dropped it back into the bloody soup below.
The trails grew faster and faster the closer Lin came to the point of convergence, flowing like a rapid stream up the stone steps of the pagoda. She climbed them without caution, gazing vacantly ahead. The pagoda’s doors were ajar when Lin reached the top. She ambled along, and after pressing her hands flat against the heavy wood, pushed her way inside.
The daylight illuminated a sight that didn’t belong in a world of sanity. Arteries were tangled around conjoined capillaries and veins within an intertwined network of nervous and circulatory systems. There must have been at least fifty or sixty bodies littering the floor of the pagoda in a living mass. Most seemed delirious, many were comatose, some were sober enough to wet their cheeks with tears. Try as they might to cry out and plead for a saviour, their voices were garbled or gone, and Lin heard no such thing.
At the precipice sat the nightmare that had escaped the valley of Solace. Its gnarled arms were outstretched at either side, the off-coloured skin peeled away to allow the network of nerves and blood vessels to feed into the flesh beneath. Lin took a step closer. The creature lifted its misshapen head. Its disfigured face appeared slightly rejuvenated, becoming one that was almost human, and one that Lin recognised.
“Who-” she had started to say, interrupted by a fast-moving shape shot out from the heap of bodies. The monster lurched forward from its perch, snapping at Lin with its protruding jaw, but she was already well out of its reach. Shrugging off a cloak of thorny vines, her mother flashed her a half-hearted grin and shoved the girl through the pagoda’s double doors. Lin lost balance, falling hard upon her rear. Her mother was beside her in an instant, lifting her from the floor and dragging her across the blood-soaked plaza.
“What are you doing?” Lin yelled. She looked back to the pagoda in search of the creature and found it still sitting upon its throne of brutalised victims. It met her gaze, watching carefully with rosewood eyes.
“My duty as a mother, so that you might one day carry out yours,” she replied. Releasing her grip on Lin’s hand for a moment, she turned back and splayed her fingers toward the pagoda. Roots bearing jagged spines cast tiles and broken stone into the air as they rose from the ground and curled tightly around the building’s openings, sealing the creature from Solace within.
Lin gritted her teeth, “That was my duty. I released it from that shed in Solace. I… just what was it?”
“A demon. I built a cage to contain it, and without a thought for the future, you broke him free,” her mother replied breathlessly. “You served your own interests and sated your curiosity, can you really expect anything but the same from him?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lin asked, grabbing her mother’s wrist. There were grey pits under her eyes when she turned.
“It means that you should never impose humanity on a beast. Our morals are meaningless to anyone other than ourselves, Lin Ko. This is not your responsibility.”
“How can you say that? That monster turned this place into a ghost town and flooded it… with their...” Lin stuttered, and then she remembered. Of course it isn’t my responsibility. This is all someone else’s lie.
“I don’t know, really. I suppose all I’m saying is… please don’t blame him for what he does.”
Lin scoffed, “Blame it for what? It’s just playing a part in this sick fantasy, isn’t it? Just as you are.”
Her mother leaned toward her with a furrowed brow. “The suffering of these people is very much a reality. Hiding behind a veil of scepticism isn’t going to change the world around you. This is the truth that lies beyond Solace. That’s what I wanted you to see, it’s why I created that demon, and why I put it in its cage.”
Lin stepped backwards. “You expected this to happen? You wanted it? For me to see what? A mass of people hooked up to a nightmarish freak? This is your truth?” she asked, throwing her arms wide.
“I never expected you to release him, but yes,” her mother replied. “I wanted you to know what it is that we must fight. I wanted you to grow, and to understand why you must grow. Let these unfortunate deaths be a lesson. The depths of the Xia’an Abyss are not limited to the fiends that tormented you in Solace. There are hellish beings greater than even the demon that lay waste to this town. This is why you must be strong, Lin Ko. For the sake of all of us.”
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“If I’ve learned anything from living under you, it’s that I’m nothing special at all,” Lin muttered. “Do you really expect me to fight against something like that? Last time I tried, it fastened its jaws around my throat before I could even graze it. The only reason I’m standing here is because it chose not to bite- something I’m sure you had a hand in. Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
“I don’t expect you to understand or to forgive me for what I’ve put you through. Only that you trust in the future for which we fight.”
“I don’t want anything to do with it. I feel sick because of the things I’ve seen today, what I’ve done… This is all your fault. It always has been. To be born as someone else’s child would have been a blessing.”
She looked into her mother’s emerald eyes after that, expecting anger or sadness, and found both, though not as she had expected it. Confusion dominated her expression, as if there was an obvious point that Lin was missing.
“Lin Ko, do you really still believe that you’re my daughter?”
Night had fallen upon Hema by the time Lin emerged from her room. Sio had been sleeping soundly beside her, snug and defenceless, but the stream of sickening memories wasn’t enough reason to attack her during her rest. She wandered sluggishly through hallways and over polished floors until she could wander no more.
It was hellishly hot inside that building. Each cycle of shallow breaths barely reached her lungs. Her skin was damp beneath the miko dress that clung to her and seemed to amplify the heat tenfold. Her stomach churned, her mouth was too dry to even swallow. She needed to get outside.
Unfortunately, the night air was not the miracle cure Lin had hoped for. The mountain that rose above the marsh fields had become a veritable hive of biting insects that buzzed around her, ravaging any patch of bare skin with infuriating persistence. No word other than humiliated could describe how she felt as she frantically slapped herself time and time again in vain against the relentless horde of mosquitoes and whatever other vile bloodsuckers hovered in the combined light of Zetian and the Moon’s Thousand Faces. Lin cursed at the insects, she cursed at her burning wounds, at her stirring stomach and at the night sky above. It was as she yelled at the victimless stars that she caught the scent of smoke. Following the fumes led her into the courtyard and toward a flickering light that she discovered to be a makeshift fire pit of leaves, bamboo and gravel. What had been a brightly lustrous koi carp earlier that day was now roasting on a bamboo skewer over the low flames, its beautiful scales littering the floor around the gravel pit. A shadow moved further ahead from the edge of the shrine’s pond.
“Flip that fish for me, will you? I don’t want the thing overcooking after trying so hard to catch it with my bare hands.”
Lin recognised the voice instantly. Her hand went to her chest to retrieve her dagger, but neither her linen clothes nor Sio’s weapon were in her possession any longer. Of course he’d pick now to appear. So much for this place being safe, that makes another lie from my dear mother. It’s almost impressive that I can still fall for them.
The shadow rose from the water’s edge and spoke again, “It would be really kind of you if you would just flip that fish. I think I’m carrying half of that disgusting forest in my hair and clothes, so as you can imagine, it’s taking a while to wash off.”
She didn’t grace the boy’s explanation with a reply, yet still afforded him the effort of granting his request. Even without a clear view of his face, the change in his expression was obvious enough as she approached the fire and dropped to one knee, gently turning the bamboo skewer.
“It’s you,” Kana observed.
“It’s me,” Lin concurred. “You’re quite brave, wandering onto sacred ground and using that pond as your own private bath.”
“I’m sure the Ten Heavens would be happy to see me clean. How did you get here before me?”
“My mother knew the way.”
“So you followed her after all.”
Lin tilted her head. “Yes. I was Sio-wn the way.”
“I was going to say that I’m glad to see you made it here safely, but now I’m not so sure.”
“How heartless of you,” she said dryly, then placed her backside upon the smooth stone paving. It was soothingly cool. “Why are you here, Kana?”
“Didn’t I tell you once already? There are several political notables converging on this area.”
“Is that right? I suppose you’d fit right in with them.”
Kana stepped away from the pond’s edge and threw his drenched yukata around his shoulders.
“Do you think so? Maybe I should take another dip in that pond.”
“Maybe,” Lin chuckled. “It wouldn’t hurt to trim your hair, either.”
“My hair was never part of the question.”
Thoroughly soaked in the sacred waters of Hema, Kana emerged from the darkness and joined Lin at the side of his improvised fire pit. She eyed him warily.
“That forest seems to have drawn the life out of you. Your face looks old and ailing. If you aren’t careful, you’ll soon be joining this carp in the Early Dark.”
Lin shot him a weak glare, “Thank you very much, Kana.”
“Welcome, as always, Miss…”
“What’s wrong, can’t remember my name?”
“No, I was never given it.”
“Right. It’s Lin Ko.”
“A beautiful name, too. Shame about the face though, it was adorable yesterday. Looking closer to a corpse, now.”
“Keep talking and there’ll be three corpses on that fire.”
“Three? I’m honoured that you’d join me in death,” Kana said, placing his hand over his heart.
“How could I live with myself after being savaged by your comments? You should take responsibility for the things you say,” Lin announced in a theatrical voice, “A maiden should never be subject to such wicked and cruel-hearted insults lest her fragile heart be twisted and broken.”
Kana burst into laughter, “A maiden? You’re as soft as a hunk of crude iron.”
Lin was far from amused. She stared with a burning focus at the boy as he struggled to regain his breath.
“Are you done?” she asked.
“Only if you are,” he replied, wiping a stray tear from his eye.
“I am. Completely. Though I’m glad to see you’re having so much fun at my expense.”
“You’re right, I’m sorry,” he smiled and bowed his head. “But forgetting the exaggeration, are you sure you’re going to be fine? You really do look unwell.”
“I’ve walked a longer distance this week than I have in my entire life, I’ve been beaten and bitten and trudged through a forest of nightmares dead and dying. The only thing I’ve eaten in nearly two days is a bowl of rice porridge. My body and mind are tired and starved of basic necessities. So yes, I’m unwell, but that just follows the way of things.”
“Then come a little closer and have something to eat,” Kana said, lifting the roasted carp from his fire by the end of its skewer.
“Come closer so you can try for my life again, right?”
“Come closer so you don’t starve. I’d rather not watch you die from hunger.”
“You seemed quite eager to gut me with that kitchen knife.”
“And you were the first to draw a weapon,” Kana pointed out. “Still, it was fun, wasn’t it? Life seems so dull until you’re at risk of losing it. A dance of death between you and I with our very souls on the line, it’s one of the few times I can ever feel truly alive.”
Embers spat from the low flame, the bamboo beneath burnt and blackened. Those fiery wisps were so deeply alluring against the black veil of the surrounding night. The girl gazed into the shifting lights, bright and ever-changing, but also burning with a single desire- to consume and persevere. She looked to the starlit sky above, to the brilliantly gleaming moon that shared in the Sun’s radiance. Neither had an answer to offer her.
“Living with your life on the line?” she mused, “Sounds counterintuitive. You can’t expect every risk you take to play out nicely. A life like that would be painfully short.”
“Spent doing the things you love, every second of that short life would be worth living. Besides, the whole concept of risk is based on the principle of uncertainty. There’s no point in assuming the worst when the outcome hasn’t even been determined.”
“If all of that’s true, then why did you tell me to stay away from Sio? You seemed quite sure of the danger she’d bring if I followed her.”
Kana shrugged, “I was giving you a chance to reconsider. People like to live their lives in their own way, or at least feel as though they are. I’ve seen so many that cling to their mortality, thinking if they can somehow hold it tightly enough, it will never leave them. They stray from risk in search of comfort and still believe that they’ll find fulfilment in their cradle of safety.”
“Come on Kana, don’t you think your speech is getting a little conceited?”
“A little?” Kana asked. “Maybe. Maybe I am. I’m making it all up as I go along, what do I know about how people should live their lives? My thoughts are my own, the only judgement that should matter to them is their own.”
Lin shuffled closer to Kana, “Well, you seem to be doing fine enough.”
“Are you after my koi?” he challenged, withdrawing the long skewer defensively.
“I thought you offered to feed me.”
“What, with my perfectly roasted carp? Do you have any idea how long it took to catch this thing?”
“It doesn’t matter. Enjoy your fish,” Lin said dismissively, not bothering to hide the annoyance in her tone. She hoisted herself from the ground and turned back to the accommodation halls. Kana snatched her wrist. Lin spun and pulled her free arm back in preparation for a strike. She was met with a calm smile.
“It was just a joke. Of course you can have some.”
Lin pulled her wrist from his grip. He’s awful. No matter what he says, I can’t seem to get a solid grasp of his character. How can I begin to understand him when each and every word sounds like a lie? Taking her place beside the dying flames once more, she noticed that the air was empty of the swarms of biting insects that had left her skin itchy and crawling mere minutes ago. Not a single mosquito hovered in the fire’s fluttering glow.
“Did you put something in the fire to keep the insects away? This place was buzzing with them when I first stepped outside,” she recalled.
“Not quite. It’s my secret bug-bite repellent. Everything has its fear, even insects.”
“Secret bug-bite repellent? You sound like some kind of shady alchemist.”
“An alchemist you could’ve used sooner, judging by the language I heard from the other side of the courtyard.”
Lin felt the heat rising in her reddened face, “Just pass me the fish.” Kana obeyed with a chuckle. Holding the well-roasted meat skewer in her hands, the crisp smell wafted into her airways and stirred her empty stomach. Yet it was not with hunger. Sickness joined with the surging sensations of feverish hotness, she could barely bring herself to raise her tired arms for a single bite. Kana leaned toward her, taking her hands gently in his own.
“Eat, Lin, even if it’s just a nibble. Dawn won’t be for hours. This’ll help you keep your strength.”
“You sound awfully concerned,” she replied, but took a bite regardless. The meat was chewy and tasteless in her mouth, minutes passed before she could swallow. It nearly caught in her throat.
“You’re an accomplice now. Desecrating a deity’s creation on sacred ground is sure to bring a bolt of divine judgement upon both of our heads.”
“Of all things, I didn’t expect to hear piety coming from your lips. You don’t come across as the spiritual type,” Lin remarked, then forced down another mouthful of carp.
“Only a fool or contrarian could deny the existence of the Ten and the countless splinters born of the Abyss. Each and every Heaven came into our world with an arrival so pivotal that they were burned into the records of history. That being said, I’m not so arrogant that I’d believe the Ten Above would smite us for roasting up one of their fish. I expect we’ll get to live a while longer without facing the wrath of the Heavens.”
After forcing down her third and final bite of roasted carp, Lin handed back the skewer and drew her legs against her chest. Focusing her mind for long enough to find the words she needed was difficult in more ways than one, the hot sensations had only worsened since leaving the accommodation hall and had spread deeper. It’s as though my very bones have been set alight with a slow-burning flame. The skin is thin and rubbery; could I split it deeply with a single fingernail? No, that’ll never happen. Even a light prod aches sorely like a bruise. Nearly in a daze, Lin cast her eyes sideward to the peculiar boy named Kana, the first and only liar that had offered her the truth. He was the first enemy she had made, yet when she indulged in the comfy warmth of his reassuring gaze, she realised that he was also her only friend.