Idony stood atop a hill of slowly shifting ash, above was an endless black sky and yet she could still see perfectly well without any light at all. She did not know how she got there and trying to remember anything earlier made her head hurt. An itching sensation brought her attention down to her wrist where a beautiful flower bracelet was tightly wrapped, its white petals holding their own soft glow. She tried adjusting it to lessen the itch but after discovering it was rooted to its spot she settled for simply In the distance she could see towers that extended upwards into the void. It felt familiar to her but something was very strange about it all that she could not put her finger on. She began to carefully inch her way down the hill, bit by bit, seeing small clouds of ash be dashed up by her feet and floating a little bit before settling back into the greyness.

As she went down the hill she could see that the ground at the bottom was much more solid than the tall hill. There were shallow uneven pits scattered around and as she descended further she spotted shapes dispersed around, beyond, and sometimes even inside of the pits. By the time her slow slide down the hill finished it appeared that the towers had somehow retreated further into the distance, or had perhaps moved upwards. Idony frowned, puzzled, and her confusion increased more as she heard the distant sounds of... the ocean. The ocean groaned softly and salt filled the air, mingling with odd metallic scents and burnt meat.

The field of holes extended far, but a single figure was standing among them with its head tilted downwards. Furrowing her brow, Idony tried to match the blurry pale figure to anyone she knew but all she could gather was a sense of apprehension and longing.

Her foot hit something hard and she stopped mid-step to look down at it. It was a piece of dark metal, painted green on some parts, with a very small pipe attached to it that ended in a hole she could only barely put her index finger in. A blackish substance was left on her finger tip that she wiped off on her sleeve, leaving a small dark smear. As she looked up the pitiful pained moans of a man began. Her eyes fell again to the blood smeared face of a man with dark hair who wore strange clothes and clutched his stomach, blood pouring from around his fingers. Oceanwater lapped at his body, washing away the blood that pooled around him.

"It hurts," he whimpered. "It hurts, please.. it hurts..." His face was turned to the pale figure who loomed over him, a solitary white flame framed against the black sky. "Please, help me! I don't want... I don't want to die... it hurts..."

The figure stared down at the man, still as stone, as he squirmed pitifully in the water and cried, gurgling as the tide raced over his face.

"... So annoying."

Idony did not want to look up at the speaker. She did not want to look at the man who seemed perpetually caught between death and the grey ocean that now lapped at her feet. She did not want to look at anything anymore.

"Please, make it stop..."

"Help, someone help..."

These voices did not come from the man before her or the figure beside her. She turned to look behind herself at the shapes scattered around the pits and realized they were the forms of human beings. Some of them were just vaguely human shaped smears on the ground, others were missing limbs or clutching bleeding stomachs, faces, their hands reaching upwards to the sky.

"Help!" They called out in a chorus of agony.

White hair tickled the top of her head. The pale figure leaned over her, a gentle smile on its cold beautiful face. Black void like eyes stared down at her, as though merely holes in the being's head to allow the abyssal sky below to seep through. "Should I help them, Idony?"

She stayed silent, shaking her head and biting her lip as her heart quaked in her chest.

"I think I will," he said.

The screams rose in pitch and terror, the dirt was stirred by a tepid wind that tugged at her hair and clothes. The squirming bleeding pleading bodies began writhing with renewed vigor as they screeched. Bright white lines formed on their flesh, before erupting like geysers. Still the screaming continued but she realized now it was her own. The pallid light that came from each body jutted upwards into the darkness, arcing slowly until they each met one another and became a small white sun that provided no heat. It hung there in the abyss, shining malignantly.

"Don't be scared," he spoke softly, resting his hand on her shoulder. "This happened long ago."

She looked back up at him, her face felt cold and sweaty. Her chest felt full with twisting vines as she tried to breathe and soothe her heart.

"Yet it happens again and again," he sighed. "Humanity plunges itself into horror and agony and then pleads for salvation. So many voices and they're all so annoying."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Idony looked back up at the white sun and then at the empty pockmarked ground before her. She remembered now. She had been with Bo and Rui Yifu in the marsh and Bo's eye had just vanished forever. Liu Xie had also disappeared. Ji Ying had hit her and then told her to run away and she did not know where Li Baobao had gone to. Baichan was standing beside her, and she could not even speak to cry out for help she knew would not come.

"Idony, it's time you come back with me and your mother," Baichan said softly. "You're tired and hurt, I know, and-"

"No."

Baichan did not seem surprised, "why do you want to persist out there?"

"Because," she mumbled, trying to summon her conviction and clear the cotton in her mouth. Her chest felt like a red hot knife was being jabbed into the curling vines around her heart. "Because I have stuff to do, and-and I have friends, and I don't want to."

"Friends?" Baichan tipped his head slightly, "friends? Is that why you don't want to come see your mother and I?"

She nodded stiffly, wincing as the pain grew.

"What if I kill them?"

"NO!" She grabbed at his robe, holding tightly and yanking, "no! Don't do that!" Rather than cry, she bared her teeth like a fierce stray, meeting Baichan's void eyes with her own. Baichan smiled, gently taking her hands and easily pulling them away from his outer robe as though they were made of twigs. She yanked, but they were firmly in his grip.

"You don't want me to hurt them?" He spoke, "I won't then. I will not hurt your friends. But you need to come with me, Idony. You need to come with me and stay with your mother and I."

She swallowed a dry lump, but her mouth refused to lose its cotton-like quality and her chest felt full to bursting with knives and vines. She wanted to cry but did not want to give Baichan any more of herself than she already had. Even if he would take her directly to her mother and her mother was alive she would not open her heart to him. He took away Liu Xie, and had been hurting people. Idony did not have much a concept of things like morality or right and wrong but she felt that the being in front of her had not a shred of mercy in him. He called people suffering 'annoying' and had been turning others into monsters.

"Idony," his voice was close and all around, and she could see nothing but white. "Idony, do you really want to go back? If it is just you, your mother, and I would that not be better? Think of how many times you've been hurt. Even the man who forced himself onto Eona to make you had wanted you dead because of something as tiny as being born a girl rather than the heir he desired so badly. I know, I've seen this in Eona's memories. There was not a hint of happiness in your life, was there? Eona tried so hard to protect you, but her mortal body failed her." Snow crunched under her feet, she was standing in a cold forest of black trees and a pitiless cold sky above. "You've been abandoned, mauled, and died. There's nothing that this world can give you to atone for what it's done."

She tasted bark in her mouth and spat, coughing up chunks of chewed on wood and thick flower petals that splattered on the ground with bloodied saliva. Exhaustion filled her pained body, her stomach shriveled, and she fell to her knees as the pain finally became unbearable.

Baichan's arms gently wrapped around her, holding her against his chest and stroking her hair as she sobbed and sputtered. The bracelet on her wrist had grown, covering her entire arm in flowers and vines that continued to creep over her chest and neck. "You don't need to suffer anymore, Idony. In the ash, we'll find the happiness this world has denied us."

The flowers wrapped themselves into her hair, and a soothing numbness spread over her chest, followed by a comforting warmth. Her eyelids grew heavy as Baichan stroked her hair.

Her ribs popped, erupting open and she could not feel it.

The flesh was torn and fabric frayed but none of it bothered her. She was withdrawing into a small space, smaller than her own body.

A white flash filled her senses, and Baichan shrieked suddenly.

She was laying... was she laying? She could not tell. She was bigger again, but not as big as she usually was. She blinked, some snow caught in her eyelashes and looked around. There was a much larger lump of bones and vines with wilting flowers nearby that seemed like it had been sliced apart, and Baichan was on his feet again, bizarre white liquid pouring upwards from his chest. Idony finally realized the reason she felt so strange was because she was simply a head.

"Why!?" Baichan yelled. "Every time, we were so close but again something has come to stop us," he hissed. "Where have you been hiding yourself, Xie?"

"A divine weapon will always maintain some of it's original wielder in it," a woman's cold voice replied. "This form escapes most notice as well."

"An echo of a dream, haha, hahahaa..." Baichan's body was trembling, "no wonder you were so willing to harm Idony if you're such a degraded copy."

"Harm her? How dare you. If you were not spreading your infection in her, this wouldn't have been necessary," the woman growled. Idony could not see her though, but her voice sounded close. "You were going to steal her soul away."

Baichan stopped trembling, straightening up, "steal? No, is it theft if you're returning your child back to her home? Come now, you want Eona too don't you? You want her happiness, so why deny the reunion of mother and child?"

A hand lifted her up, and Idony had the strange impression she was being cradled against something soft but she was still facing Baichan and could not see the woman holding her. "If you believe that turning the world to ash again just so it's you three, then you truly don't understand Eona. You can't make someone happy by erasing existence. Do you truly think she hates this world as much as you do?"

Baichan smiled, and the smile looked too big for his face.. too sharp... "that's fine." He said softly as the smile grew into a strange warped sneer. "I'll make them happy."

There was a crack like lightning and suddenly Baichan was no longer there. Idony had the brief impression of a bizarre scaled triangular wolf-like head, with too many eyes and teeth that made no sense. Her brain immediately blotted out all sight rather than continue looking at the thing.

She was falling.

Falling

Falling...