V. Memory Cast in Amber
Here they come, the cohort of the dead; the lady-companion's robes flow like wax and so does her flesh, her jaw unhinges like a snake's. A hundred feet rush down corridors and through rooms to surround you. You only have a spear.
No. You only have a spear and yourself.
"Three things do the Heavens abhor," you say, thrusting your naginata to push back the ghost defending Lady Aoi. The lady-companion closes in behind you, but you immediately bring your spear back in a thrust of the haft and she backs down. "Three things does the priest abjure, three things may not cross the threshold of the righteous." Eyes erupt from the walls. Hands slide through the ground. Shadows lengthen. You swing your blade, and they recoil.
"Flesh without blood
Soul without heart
Spirit without understanding."
They hiss. They writhe. The lady-companion and the ghostly guard lurch forward, their fingers now long claws with too many joints. You duck to the side, avoiding a swipe, and they meet each other in the middle of the corridor; you grasp your haft in both hand and ram it into the both of them, an iron bar slamming their bodies against the wall. The guard fades through the floor, the lady-companion melts away like dew.
"O Black Dragon Who Spins the Wheel of Our Fates, though your wheel be fallen from the skies, though your body lay broken under it, the wheel still spins; Fate endures."
The faceless horde surges through the corridor. Bird-ghosts, one arm a wing and one arm a claw, mouths turned to hungry beaks. They must think your weapon too long to use in a corridor. You hold it in one hand, and with the other you draw broken halves of supplication mudras; where ghosts stare at your hand their eyes fill with fear. You smile and back down towards the radiant Concubine, curved blade sweeping the air, cutting a face, an arm, thwarting the horde. One of them extends his arm, and you stab it into the wall; one of them crawls beneath the horde and swipes at your feet, cutting your ankle. Fresh blood spills to the ground, and the horde hollers; but you slash the impudent's limb off and back down with your spear holding back the rest.
It cannot last forever.
"O Black Dragon, O ever-spinning wheel, I implore you; through me open a path for those who have lost the way. I am your servant under the sun, I am steward of your Creation; through me the will of Fate is enacted."
They come out of the walls on each side of you, two at once, their feathers turning to cutting steel. You raise the haft above your head, and the sturdy wood takes on both blows, quaking in your grip. You step back, feint, your blade curves through the air and you perform the fisherman's hook: slipping between a ghost's guard you stab at his throat in an ascending motion, then hurl him bodily into the other one. Both slump to the floor, blocking the hallway to the horde.
Too many. You can't keep all your openings covered.
"O Dead, your flesh is but the thinnest of air, your spirit is but memory, you are but a soul trapped in its delusion. See through me your allotted path, see through me your final rest; let go of your earthly tethers."
You lower your naginata, then thrust it at the ground. The tip of your blade pierces the wooden planks, and you draw. It is the heaviest brush you've ever lifted; it is the ugliest character you've ever drawn; but you have held a brush since you first knew how to walk, and yours are the words of all Creation from Heaven to Hell.
"Rest," says the glyph you have engraved into the floor. And the ghosts before you wail; they scream, flailing their arms but not reaching you; they kneel, and weep on their fallen state.
You turn. Before you Lady Aoi has become a thing of divine radiance, her crystal-and-gold skull hovering at the core of a shape of divine light. She extends her arm towards you, and they are fingers of searing radiance. Your flesh sizzle, and you ignore the pain.
It is as if she has not even heard your prayers. Either she is a ghost of terrible power, or she is no ghost at all.
"Lady Aoi!" You shout, raising your hand, palm open towards her. "The Heavens have fallen long ago. He-Who-Brings-The-Downpour fell to earth, a radiant star, and was never seen again; you have no consort. But I am Tomoe, Imperial Princess! My blood is the blood to which was bequeathed the earth! If there is one shred of you that remembers your consort, you will look upon me and know that I am a guardian of his Creation!"
The fingers burn; the leather of your armor glows red with heat. She comes closer, burning brighter, and then - she stops, as if hesitant.
"In my name; in the name of the Emperor, who is fallen; in the name of your consort, who put the Empire in our keeping; in the name of all the lost souls trapped in this castle, repeating an endless dance as if the world had not crumbled… In all these names and more, Aoi Suzume, I ask you to…" The words fail you. To stand down? To surrender? To see the truth?
You breathe haltingly, spear held low. The radiance shivers.
"I ask you to speak to me," you say softly. "I am not memory to be consumed. I am not a dancer in your endless celebration. I am not a mysterious stranger come to visit you. I am just… Tomoe, princess of nowhere. And I want to speak with you."
There is silence, for a moment.
Then the lanterns dim, the tapestries decay, the paintings fade, the flowers in the vases wither. The lights of the gala wink out, and there is only moonlight streamed through rain, and the ghosts fade like so much smoke.
The golden skull hovers down, and the radiance resolves into a single woman sitting on the ground, her eyes staring at the empty castle.
"Why?" she asks, her voice far away. "Why couldn't you let me dream?"
"Because," you say, and your throat tightens, "there is an order, a path for all things. Whatever happened to you, whatever befell this castle, it is all gone now. It is time to rest. You cannot hang on forever."
She stares at you, and tears rip through her white make-up. She smiles, the saddest smile you've ever seen.
"But I cannot rest. To know the peace of death, I should first have ever been alive."
You stare at her, befuddled, and the glow spreads out from her again; the walls of the castle are gone, you see the sky and the stars, beautiful and quiet. And then you see the light, and the tear in the sky; you see the moment Heaven came apart at the seams, the fire hurled down below. A light brighter than you could imagine, tearing across space like the jagged light of lightning, but never reaching the ground, always above.
And in your vision you see one shooting star, falling from that tear, and it becomes all you can see. It falls, it falls towards the earth, towards the Land of Four Seasons, towards this castle as it celebrates some forgotten event - and it smashes into its roof, tears through its upper levels, shakes the castle and fills it with heat and smoke and burning dust, and there are screams of agony and death, and then the castle is silent.
And you see the star, resting where it struck; and it is no rough stone, no molten iron bolt. It is a golden skull, covered in a lattice of crystal.
"I never visited this castle; I never knew these people. I died in fire and hate, and fell from the skies; and my fall was death. They did not deserve this. I never meant any harm."
She looks at the walls, at the cracked stone, at the empty balcony. You step closer, put one knee to the ground, try to find your voice.
"It was not fair," you say gently, "but nothing was in the fall. The wheel must turn; the dead must find rest, lest they one day outnumber the living."
"But I am not dead," she says with that sad smile. "I never lived. I am not Lady Aoi. I am a book; I am a Dragon's gift to himself. I am the fear and sorrow of a mortal's frailty; I am beauty cast in amber. He made a cage of gold around his consort's mind, so that all her memories would be preserved; and when she died he could take this cage, and peering into it revive all their moments of joy and love. Wherever Suzume's soul went, I cannot say; I am only the cage."
You look into her eyes, and you see that it is true. This is the craft of Heaven's masters, skill without conscience; the lives of mortals a theatre for them to watch. Oh, they weep with our sorrows, they laugh with our joy; but when the play is over they sigh and go home, while we lay in the dirt.
"What year is it?" the skull asks.
"It is 18 after the fall, one thousand six hundred and seventy-three after the first Emperor."
The Concubine's image wipes a tear.
"I try… So hard… To keep them alive. I killed them all; it is only fair. I caught their images in the moment of their deaths, and I replay them over and over, so that this last night of their lives never end, so that they always dance and laugh and play tiles. But I was not meant for this; every year I lose a little more of the past. Every time I try to record a new thing, a thing from after the fall, from after the death, I have to erase something from before."
She extends a hand, brushing your cheek. "With your memories I could have gone a little longer, I could have remembered the name of the Emperor and his progeny, the place of my birth, the night of my first love. But what would be the point? I would only have forgotten again in time…"
You catch her hand, hold it briefly, a gesture of compassion. She smiles again, looking to the balcony, where the rain still pours at the same patter, unchanging, indifferent to your battle and her woes and her sorrows.
"My spring can never end, and my husband can never come home; I wait and wait and the heavy rains never cease. Oh, they rain not on my fields; only in my heart…"
You stand alone in the ruins of the castle. There are no lanterns, there is no crackling fireplace. You hear no music, you see no dancers.
On the ground before you, sitting at an odd angle like an object tossed out of hand, is a skull of gold laced with blue-white crystal.
[ ]Leave the skull in the castle, where it can forget you ever came and replay the memory of Aoi Suzume and the forlorn dancers until they fade away at last.
[ ]Take the skull, a relic of the fallen Heavens, to offer as a gift to Summer's Dragon lord. There it can find peace as an object of study and a relic to be preserved.
[ ]Smash the skull, consecrate the ruins, and bring the recorded memory and the trapped ghosts a true, final rest.
It is always a pity when time comes to end the masquarade.
