I looked around, trying not to look like prey. Rikka was right- the tray for incense was empty, and the little sand holder for the incense sticks was empty. Something clicked.
“Ah! Mrs. Hungry, you don’t have any incense to offer. What are you going to offer Lord Welcome?”
“Mmm? Oh. Yes. He needs an offering. I’m sure he’s hungry too. Mmm. Maybe you could be an offering.”
I waved my hands quickly. “He gave up cannibalism, remember? He’s off correcting the demons in Hell. But there is a cannibal monster outside that you could beat up. That could be an offering to Lord Welcome.”
I got the impression that Mrs. Hungry was giving me a look through her curtain of hair. “That sounds convenient.”
“It’s about teamwork. It’s what humans do. We help each other.” I lied.
“Oh?”
There was a lot of weight on that “Oh.” I quickly amended.
“It’s what we should do.”
She nodded at that. I could feel the statue of Lord Welcome pressing down on us. The robe that seemed to absorb all light, the skeletal hands. The sounds from outside were pressing down as well. The monster had one of Miyuki’s yard-long arrows buried inside of her and while she sure didn’t sound happy about that fact, she was still plenty lively. I had people out there. People who could die depending on what happened in here.
For that matter, I could die too. Which wasn’t something I could ignore. There were still two pieces I was missing- Yoko, and those little netsuke hanging off of Rika and Miyuki’s belts. They weren’t coincidental. They even gave Rikka a turn undead power that worked for a few seconds. That wasn’t nothing, even if it was limited to this Relic Site.
No, there were missing pieces. I needed a high-speed explanation. Or at least an explanation. Maybe I could buy high speed.
“Could you please explain to me, quite quickly, what’s the story about the little figurine hanging from Rikka’s waist?”
I tossed her some Runed Bones. There was a Hell of a fight going on outside. My Awakened were buying time with their blood.
“There isn’t much of a story. It’s Saint Emi. He is the saint that enlightened Lord Welcome.”
“Why is Lord Welcome venerated here and not Saint Emi?”
“Saint Emi is a fighter’s saint. Battling demons and rebuking devils, correcting the wicked, that is what he does. Lord Hungry wants to save people. He even wants to save the demons and the devils. He’s just not stupid about it. Sometimes, even a ghost needs a punch in the mouth before it will listen. This is a mountain full of demons and devils. They prefer enshrining one of their own. And so does the Lord.”
Her voice was utterly calm. As though ghost punching was routine. I thought back hard. Hadn’t… yes!
“So why does Yoko wear one of the little figurines?”
“She doesn’t want to save the ghosts and demons here, she wants to destroy them.”
But she makes temple incense for Lord Welcome because you never know when you might need a hand. And because it gives people a reason not to attack her.
“Got it. Well then, I think you know what your daughter would want you to do. There is a monster out there. A spirit to be rebuked and destroyed. She would tell you it’s the right thing to do. Hell, she may be out there already, hiding and waiting for her chance.”
“Oh.”
There was a long pause. Mrs. Hungry didn’t move a muscle. The noise from outside was… ugly. I was hearing Rakim’s carbine now, which meant she was engaging rather than keeping hidden and making her way to the Temple. Which means she couldn’t stay hidden for one reason or another. And any of those reasons would be bad news for us.
“Mrs. Hungry, please! Please go out there and help them. It’s what a human should do. It’s what your daughter would want. It’s what the mountain needs.”
“So?”
No question- she was one of the Empty People. A predatory bird mimicking human noises to get closer to its prey. And the hungry people…
“I can make you feel fulfilled! I can fill up that emptiness inside of you!”
She looked up at that. I don’t think she realized that she was tapping her cold iron hook against her leg. “How?”
“When people come to work for me, they are remade by the Gods! Their body transforms, their minds transform, they find joy and purpose in their employment. We also have luxury dorms with their own lounge area, and if you or your daughter are rated Six Stars, you can have your own highly luxurious private rooms. We have a garden your daughter could tend to, and lots and lots of prey throw themselves at our Tower every night. So many, just picking up the bodies is a major chore. All this is true- I’ll swear it in front of Lord Welcome.”
The hook went still. “Good enough. If you lie, I will eat you.”
“Fair. Completely fair. We need to conquer this mountain before you can come work for me, and for that, we need to kill the monster outside.”
Mrs. Hungry nodded her head. “I can’t kill her. But I’ll hurt her. Maybe someone else will finish the job.”
She was gone in the space of a blink. There was the most incredible scream. I whipped back to face Lord Welcome. I had one other play, one other gamble to try. No incense? Have to offer something else. Some other sacrifice carried up by the smoke.
I knelt in front of the statue. “Lord Welcome…” I reached into my pouch and pulled out five of my remaining Cutthroat Clothier Receipts. “These are debts owed to me. I can exchange them for goods to make my servants more powerful. I can exchange them for information that can expand my domain. I can do a lot with this. It is, in a word, power. And I offer it to you. Please. The monster outside. The Dyn Hunllef outside is a thing that delights in suffering for the sake of making others suffer. It exists to make others scared and hurt. If anything needs suppression, it does. Please. Suppress it. Protect my people. And we will send it down to Hell for you to educate them.”
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
I offered up the little paper tickets with both hands and put them down next to the incense burner. There was a candle nearby. I’d just burn the receipts and-
And I would do no such thing, apparently. The receipts were floating upward. There was an unspeakable sound, like waterfalls of bone rosaries, like the rubbing of the hinges on the gates of Hell. The skeletal hand reached out and caught the receipts that had expanded to the size of bedsheets and landed softly in his palm.
Accepted
Something dreadful descended on the temple. I don’t… I can’t describe it. Something that should not be. Something beyond human. Lord Welcome wasn’t a hungry ghost. The myths were wrong. He was something vast. Something that didn’t exist on any sort of human scale. The myths were wrong! They were wrong! There was a ringing in my ears. A shaking sound like the hidden bells of the world were screaming a final alarm.
The temple faded away. It just… faded out of existence. The battle outside rested on a knife’s edge. Versai’s clothes were torn up- her steel armor in tatters. Her shield was still held high, and her sword was strong in her hand, but she couldn’t last much longer. Mrs. Hungry was on the monster’s back, covered in unspeakable fluids. Iron hooks had been sunk into the Dyn Hunllef, and she was hanging on to them. Ripping chunks out. Dodging the rolls and stabbing claws and acid the monster spat.
Rakim was shooting from the woods, and I could see Rikka popping in and out of shadows to slash at the monster’s legs. They could hurt it, but only barely. We would lose this fight. And then Lord Welcome intervened.
Lord Welcome was not a god. A god should have some feeling of the divine. This was alien, purely alien. He pulled an iron token from within his black robe. Carved upon it was a sigil, a morass of twisting lines and jagged edges. There was a profound truth hidden within, but to comprehend it one must go mad.
I could feel the edges of my mind peeling back, like dead skin, like a banana peel. I could feel the edges of my mind peeling back and I knew that madness wasn’t the only way. Death was another door to understanding, and far from the most terrifying. The iron token was immeasurable- what line, what mortal counting could quantify those infinitely inverting and recursive forms? What human words could trap the shapes within the sigil?
“HAIL LORD WELCOME. HAIL LORD WELCOME!” I was chanting. When did I start chanting? I was kowtowing, groveling. I didn’t want to. I don’t think Lord Welcome even noticed. It was some remnant shred of human, hidden inside this doll’s body. Get low. Be small. Be funny, or useful, or anything but an eyesore. Best of all, be invisible.
The token stretched out over the battlefield and… something… pressed down on the Dyn Hunllef. Some force, some shimmering in the air. Something pressed down on the drider-horror and suppressed it. The monster screamed, first in outrage then in horror. It didn’t have words for this either, I think.
“HAIL LORD WELCOME. HAIL LORD WELCOME!” I was chanting, rocking back and forth. My awakened weren’t overwhelmed. They saw the Dyn Hunllef being pressed into the ground and got stuck in. Versai wasn’t using her speed hack. Some tiny remnant of my mind noticed that- she was attacking with all furious speed, but not nearly as fast as she could. Rikka, Rache, Rakim, they were all piling in. Miyuki was sinking her yard-long arrows into the monster, pinning its legs to the ground. The whistles of the arrows were lost in the clanging, in the storm of warning chimes Lord Welcome provoked in the world.
The air was shaking, twisting, distorting. “HAIL LORD WELCOME. HAIL LORD WELCOME!”
No, I was wrong. It was the world itself. This tiny shard of existence called a Relic Site couldn’t bear the weight of this existence. The fabric of this place was stretching and distorting around the intruding presence. If we didn’t win quickly, we would suffer an indefinable death. The exact form of that death couldn’t possibly be described. Not by something that used eyes to see and a mouth to speak.
“HAIL LORD WELCOME. HAIL LORD WELCOME!”
I couldn’t help chanting. Stopping was inconceivable. It was all I could do- kneel there and glorify the great one descending on this little mountain. But there was still one more person to join the scene.
I smelled the incense before I saw her. It snaked over and through the night air like a snake made of balsam and roses. Temple incense or something else- I didn’t recognize the smell.
“Hail Lord Welcome. Thank you for visiting this mountain and suppressing the monsters here. You have done a very nice job. Mother and the disposable people here can finish up the rest. Why don’t you go have a seat over there and return to Hell? I’m sure you have lots to do down there.”
Yoko walked out of the darkness holding three long sticks of burning incense. Her wooden geta sank silently into the grass as her snow white tabi were unstained by the muck of the world. She was, to my wonder, pouting.
She looks like Fern. That is a Fern pout. Oh my heart! But it was only a very small part of my heart that thought that. The rest of me was filled with “HAIL LORD WELCOME. HAIL LORD WELCOME!”
The Dyn Hunllef bucked and struggled wildly, but too much had changed in the last few minutes. She was pinned by arrows. There were long rents in her back, ripped open and widened by iron hooks. Versai managed to hack off one human arm, and was coming for the head at speed. Rakim was taking full advantage of the no-friendly-fire feature and shooting directly into the melee. She was coming for the head too.
Yoko raised her hands, long sleeves trailing and bowed as she offered the incense. “Please return. You are needed in Hell. Thank you for visiting. No need to linger. One way or another, we can sort out the rest.”
The world was starting to get thin in places. I could see the membrane of existence pulling. At any moment it would tear. I couldn’t muster any fear about that fact. Lord Welcome’s presence weighed too heavily on my mind. It was an indifference.
“Return, great one. Return.” Yoko took two steps closer, bowed and offered the incense again.
There was a sensation of a sigh filling the world. The iron tablet was retracted. The temple returned to existence and I could suddenly breathe. I could suddenly think. I tipped over onto my side and curled up into the fetal position and just… held on.
“DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU! THAT’S NOT HOW YOU PLAY! DAMN YOU!”
Oh, it seems that the Dyn Hunllef felt things were unfair. What a pity. I couldn’t be curled up on the floor, could I? This was just like the incident in middle school. You just need to repress. You just need to choke it down and never talk about it, even though everyone saw and everyone knew. You just choke it down and keep on like nothing happened, because otherwise you never get up off the floor.
And for all the terrible things people have said about me, and that I have said about myself, I can pride myself on this. I get up off the God Damned Floor. I don’t live in the gray room of depression and fear. I get up off the floor, open the door and make a world I like. So. I’d choke this down too. I couldn’t help my summons more than this, but I’d watch them finish the fight.
I crawled over to the door and out onto the Temple’s porch. Mrs. Hungry was excavating the innards of the Dyn Hunllef. Like some kind of wasp eating a paralyzed spider. The surviving human arm of the monster was covered in a dull silver sheen, clashing with Versai’s blade in a shower of sparks. I had wondered how she was holding out. She could turn parts of herself into metal.
Shape shifter, her husband could do magic ranged attacks with an ax, She could do ranged attacks with a mouth-launched harpoon, she could turn parts of her into metal, she had crowd control, poison abilities AND she was fast enough to keep up with speed hacking Versai…
How in the actual expletive were you supposed to beat this thing without calling in a reality destroying thing from beyond the veil?!
“You don’t get to talk about cheating. You busted freak. You unbalanced, unpatched offense to game design and aesthetics. EVERYONE! JUMP THIS THING AND KILL HER FOR ME!”
My awakened swarmed in like hungry beasts. Rikka was shanking the monster like she just caught her snitching. Rakim walked out of the treeline, carbine up, punching round after round in. Even Rache was getting in on the action with driving slashes along the monster's legs. It wasn’t a battle any more. It was a slaughter.
“This isn’t right! You damned things, this isn’t right! This isn’t how it’s supposed to go! They aren’t supposed to be in this world. They aren’t supposed to be in any world!”
I didn’t respond. Firstly, because I didn’t want to agree with a monster that was really eager to torture me for an eternity, and secondly, because I was a lot closer to the epicenter of everything than she was. The being didn’t descend. I could tell. What landed here was just its attention, not even a projection of its true self. If it had… we wouldn’t have the luxury of obliteration.
I sat on the edge of the porch and kept my eyes firmly on the monster. Watching her being torn to pieces. Some part of me, some shred of self that still had a Metro card as well as OMNY installed on his phone, knew that I should be revolted. That I should be terrified. This was a fully sentient being. She could feel. She could think and reason better than the things killing her. Certainly better than Rache and Miyuki.
I should feel horrified. After eight days of slaughter, I just felt impatient. The longer she took to die, the more risk there was to my Awakened. I forced myself to be patient. It would happen soon enough.
Versai dropped her shield and put two hands on her long sword. With an explosive step she lifted the blade in an upward slash, cutting through the shoulder joint and sending the last human arm flying. Another step, and she buried an iron boot in the creature’s gut, stepped on the flesh like a ledge, then swung the blade down again. A monstrous head flew up and landed in the grass in front of me.
Job done. I looked up at the sky. No announcement. We had to resolve things at the clearing first. No surprise there. No wonder the critter was so mad. We really had gone out of order. She was meant to be the final boss.
I looked over at Yoko. She had placed the incense neatly in the sand holder, and was looking at the statue of Lord Welcome. A touch reproachfully, I thought.
I coughed.
“Well done! Very well done everyone. Excellent team effort. Good job ensuring we didn’t get tortured for eternity.” I coughed again, as the bowel liquifying terror of the chase through the woods slowly intruded back into my memory. Choke it down, lalala! Choke it all the way down. Nothing bad ever came from repressing things. All the way down, lalala la la.
“And speaking of team efforts, I’m pretty done with this whole damn mountain. Let’s finish strong, everyone!”
“And then you will pay me.” Mrs. Hungry said, her bloody hooks hanging from her hands.
I coughed a third time and nodded. Fast.