Idony's hands tightened their grip on Bo's arm. His clothes were covered in mud and water, and blood was pouring from his face still. She felt queasy and unstable as she forced herself to look into his face. The blood was still flowing freely, dripping down his chin and onto his thighs as he breathed unsteadily. The left side of his face was smeared with so much red that Idony could not even see where his eyebrow began or where his eye ended while his right eye stared at her with a pitiful gaze. She held out her hands anxiously, trying to pat away some of the warm blood that inevitably stained her already ruined sleeve. Bo shivered at her touch and she withdrew quickly, apprehension growing as the blood continued to leak from his face. She looked up at Rui Yifu, who seemed to suddenly tower over her in his status as an adult.

More than ever, Idony felt like a small child.

"Zhu'er," Rui Yifu said, coaxing her over with his hand. "Can you hold this for me?" He pulled something long and straight that had fallen into the muck. For a moment she saw the white gleam of metal, but then it was covered by a dingy sheath. He held it out to her and she took it carefully from his hands. It was heavy and she had to clutch it to herself with both arms so it did not unbalance her in the cold marsh. She did not want to fall into the reddening stagnant waters. The monstrous corpse nearby seemed to be gradually sinking downwards. Or perhaps deflating, flesh sagging on wood-eaten bones as unquenchable white flames ate it from within.

Rui Yifu had moved down onto one knee, carefully placing his hands on Bo's head to make him look up. Unsure of what else she could do, she moved one hand down to hold Bo's. He squeezed weakly. The pale long fingers of Rui Yifu quickly became soaked in blood as he too dabbed his sleeve around Bo's face. He hissed quietly, shaking his head.

Drip, drip, drip

"Zhu'er," Rui Yifu said again, softly. "Turn around."

"Why?" She asked although it came out as a mumble.

"Because it'll be scary to watch," Rui Yifu said, this time sternly and with no room for debate or questions.

Idony took a deep breath and turned around slowly, water sloshing around her stick-thin legs. She looked down at her weary reflection in the water and tried to think of anything else she could do besides hold the sword desperately in her arms. It was remarkably heavy, yet there was a strangely soothing sensation to holding it. It smelled medicinal despite the blood and grime on it. The abrupt smell of burnt flesh and the sound of sizzling blood was followed by a pained shriek and splashing. She turned around as fast as she could to find Bo was limp, leaning backwards as Rui Yifu held him by the shoulder with one hand while the other clutched a small stony thing that glowed red hot beneath burnt blood. "What? What did you do?" Idony asked, dismayed by the sight.

Rui Yifu looked up at her with a patient smile, "the best I could at this point. This is a terrible place for medical treatment, and I'm not very good at it in the first place."

"What about his eye?" She protested, pointing at Bo.

"It's gone."

"We can find it!"

"We can't."

She began shifting through the water with one hand, desperately trying to somehow stir up the sediment below to find Bo's eye. She nearly dropped the heavy sword in her current standing position so instead she sank down to her knees, water soaking further into her clothes and the strange cold humidity sinking back into her skin as she searched. Plumes of black and grey muck rolled under her hand, and she felt small sharp rocks and smooth ones, her fingers briefly tangling with roots as she searched. Rui Yifu's hand latched around her wrist and pulled it from the water.

"Idony, it's gone."

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The little girl looked up at him, blinking slowly while her brain struggled to process the sound of her actual name. She knew it was her name, but somehow she had become so used to being called 'Zhu'er' that hearing it again made her mind topple over itself and then go still as the words echoed in the resulting hollow of her mind.

The eye was gone.

She nodded silently as Rui Yifu pulled Bo's unconscious body onto his back, bending down from the weight and started walking towards the platforms again. "Zhu'er, we're going to go to that one statue we saw up ahead. I can't carry you right now though, I'm sorry."

"Okay," she said, while following his wake.

While they had spent a long time running around to look for Bo, it felt like the walk to the statue was quite short. The statue they had found earlier had been different from the various titanic creatures that remained submerged in the marsh around them. It was still quiet large, enough so that they could comfortably camp under its cupped palms that were held out either to accept or offer something, and unlike the other statues it still stood upright if a bit sunken in. But what was truly noticeable about it was that it did not seem to depict any human ruler. Rather it seemed to be some strange combination of a dragon, an upside down tree, and a man. Its arms were human like, with equally human-like hands. But the torso they connected to was bizarrely skinny, the stone ribs clearly defined as the human like traces vanished. The head looked, for all intents and purposes, like a mass of flailing roots, while the body beneath the torso disappeared into a serpentine form that joined into the statue's plinth.

Beside the statue was a solid stone path that led further into the mists.

"...What is it?" Idony finally asked, looking up at the statue's hands.

"Bo, Bo? Are you still awake?" Rui Yifu's voice floated over.

"Nngh, my head hurts," Bo's response sounded like he was speaking with a mouthful of cotton. Idony quickly ran over to sit beside him, setting the sword back in his lap as he looked over at her. "Ah, hey," he reached over to stroke her hair. "How are you holding up?"

She said nothing, instead staring at the burnt socket, the blackish pit still looked raw and bloody to her.

Bo looked upwards and his remaining eye widened, "fuck! What's that!? Rui Yifu! Look!" He wildly gestured upwards.

Rui Yifu did not spare the statue a glance as he managed to wipe the dried blood from Bo's face using a somewhat clean looking rag he had produced. "Don't be rude, that's your teacher."

Idony looked back up at the statue. The hands which seemed to be waiting for something covered them from the glare of the sky above. "That's Liu Xie?" She asked.

"Yes, that's what he actually looks like," Rui Yifu nodded. "The Headless God."

Idony was not sure why he had such a name, it seemed to her like he did have a head. Although it was a head made exclusively of strange tendrils. She sat down beside Bo and started pulling on a loose thread in her clothes, once again unable to help or do anything but sit and stay quiet although she suddenly felt a little better she realized. The itchiness in her chest was gone and the cold chill of her flesh had receded.

And Liu Xie was there.

Or just a statue of him, at least.

"What did that creature do to you, Bo?" Rui Yifu questioned as he sopped up blood from other wounds on Bo's body. "You should feel lucky I have some form of medical training."

"I don't want to talk about it right now," Bo muttered, "how did you and Zhu'er get so far ahead?"

"We didn't, we turned back to go look for you. Zhu'er was the one who found you first."

Idony felt Bo's hand on her head again.

Rui Yifu finished fussing after a moment, and was now completely bereft of his outer robe which had been reduced into scraps of bandaging. Idony watched as he struggled to get Bo to eat some of the 'medicine bark' they had earlier stripped from a tree, and after a moment involving bitten fingers Rui Yifu successfully shoved a piece of it into Bo's mouth. She looked around, feeling something was missing and found the sword a few feet away, having been kicked aside by Bo's flailing. She grabbed it and pulled it into her lap for safekeeping. Rui Yifu sighed heavily, wearily, and sat down to lean against the statue plinth. Silence hung in the air with the mist. "If I could, I would follow you through every life," he said while shaking his head.

"Why?" Bo asked, his face reddish despite the bloodloss and full of disgust as he chewed the bark in his mouth slowly. Idony wondered if he was developing a fever.

"Because I think you'll die before 30 unless I'm here to help you out. My back is turned away from you for only a moment and you end up in such a sorry state, I really need to keep a better watch on you," Rui Yifu snorted, then he looked over at her. "Zhu'er, you look tired. Do you want to nap for a little while?"

"Mmm," Idony shook her head, even though she did feel quite exhausted. She leaned against Bo, listening to the sound of his heartbeat and the rise and fall of his lungs. He slung his arm over her, squeezing her against his side slightly. The drift of sleep was catching her, and with nothing else to do she allowed herself to succumb.