You think about the past few days. Everything you've seen and said and done. You think of Yanxiu and Qiangong the most. You let out a long, resigned sigh because you know what your answer is. What it
has to be. You incline your head toward the mountain path and the monks turn, falling in line so perfectly it's like they drilled for exactly this moment. You wish you could ignore this feeling, this thinnest sliver of doubt you're granting the Abbess, settle for the quiet comfort of knowing she needs to die and get to work. But you can't.
You told Daji you didn't want to be that kind of animal any more.
The trek is long, hard, and silent. The monks don't say a word to you the entire time, don't so much as look at you. The path is thin and treacherous, the many perfectly even steps cut into the rock face and the pure white torii spaced out at regular intervals the only proof that this path is intended to be traversed by men rather than particularly determined goats. You don't really care, if you fall you can just flip gravity, but you're almost impressed by how calm and sure-footed the monks seem even in these rain-slick conditions. Fresh thunder claps, brilliant bolts of lightning fall. You look over the edge and your heart skips a beat because you can see it. See the fight Qiangong picked to help you. Not well enough to discern the details, but there's no mistaking the flashes of colour and light as the gods flex their powers to the fullest. If you can find comfort in one point of practicality, this'll probably get you where you need to go quicker than having to fight your way through all the monks. Maybe it won't take more time than he can buy you.
Onward and upward you march, wondering idly if the temple is so high you'll even be above the storm. Wouldn't that just be lovely? A nice sunny day up here while the city goes to shit down below. But no, irony doesn't win the day, and the pitch-black stormclouds seething with fury are still well above your head as the incline begins to flatten out and the Temple of One Thousand Steps comes into view proper. You don't know what you were expecting but it looks like a goddamn palace, a huge walled complex fit to repel an invading army (assuming one could even get up those fucking stairs), the central building rising from the peak of the mountain like a castle's central keep and outbuildings jutting out from the walls like turrets. There's more monks waiting patiently at the gates, pushing the massive doors of white-lacquered wood open before you and falling in behind you as you pass. The entryway is a manmade lake, the dark water rippling with the pitter-patter of rain, dug out and flooded seemingly just so there was an excuse to put a bridge in there. There's so many torii packed in here end-to-end they might as well have just given up and built a covered walkway, and you notice as you pass that quite a few of them say 'Sho Tamura' on the donor plate - guess that's how he stayed alive as long as he did. Regular islands of soil house ancient cherry blossom trees, growing tall and strong enough to loom artfully over the bridge even in the violent storm. No blossoms, obviously. Between the to-and-fro with Hell and the regular overland travel you missed it and then some.
You look down at your gloved hand, uncurling the tightly clenched fist. The petal you caught is gone, but you know you didn't imagine it.
The inner gates open, revealing the path to the main building. The immaculately(hah)-kept gardens stretch out all around you, spilling up and over in places where the walls simply become observation platforms. White sand paths snake out, carefully dodging the greenery on almost circuitous paths to the outbuildings. There's probably a barracks or dormitory somewhere in the jumble but you don't have to worry about that because it seems like every fucking monk in the temple is out and about. They're all lined up right from the inner gates to the 'keep's front door, one rank on each side, ready to receive you. Yeah, it would've been a real pain to chop through all these guys, but why are they following you? Just worried about you trying anything funny with Ayano, or are they gonna try to lock you in a washroom and beat you with sticks? You shoot them a couple surly looks as you pass, but not one of them reacts.
<Easy, kid.>
"(I know,)" you mutter.
The two monks at the end of the rows step away and open the doors for you, finally giving your growing entourage some shelter from the storm. You stomp up the steps and head inside, water rolling down your armour and pooling underfoot with every step. Inside it doesn't look too different from the prison-fort you attacked back when you first returned to Creation - the Immaculate Order don't worship gods or idols after all, what have they got to hang up around the place? - and the choice of paths either forward or upward briefly stymie you. The monks pick up the slack, hurrying ahead to push open yet another grand set of doors to allow you into what you have to assume is the main training or exercise hall.
It's a vast, open space, broken up only by four sturdy pillars thicker around than any man could stretch his arms, the floor a vast square of bamboo matting surrounded by a strip of harder floorboards. There are no windows, the walls and ceiling thick enough that you can barely even hear the divine storm raging outside.
And there she is. The woman you saw only once, from a distance and so long ago, but you could never, ever forget. She wears the same shapeless grey robes you saw on that day, concealing anything about her frame you might use to judge her - not that the Exalted have to care about that too much. Unlike the sea of smooth-shaven scalps congregating behind you she kept at least a little of her family's trademark snow-white hair, a single strip going from her brow to the back of her head and ending in a long ponytail. She's kneeling at first, maybe in meditation, something balanced across her legs. A long, sturdy pole with a wide, flat end, carved from fine pale wood and banded with blue jade - Qiangong's oar. It has to be. She slips it comfortably into her hand as she rises to her full height and turns to look at you. Even her eyes are grey, grey as a bared sword and about as coldly threatening to witness.
Your hand balls into a fist instinctively. Your right hand. The hand, the arm, that her father took from you. That she thought was too lenient a punishment. The silence is cold and brittle and impenetrable but she endures it, waiting for you to make the first move. You grit your teeth and suck air through them sharply, silencing the greeting you
want to give her. If she's going to pretend to be civil, you have to as well.
"So," you say icily. "What d'you want?"
"To give you one more chance," the Abbess replies candidly. "An opportunity to sacrifice yourself for the good of the city, and secure a more virtuous life after this."
You hear the doors slam shut behind you. You whirl around and you honestly can't even begin to be surprised by what you see - the mob of monks all moving to block the door, assuming battle stances, and advancing on you.
"Oh you
piece of shit," you snarl. You draw your sword in a flash, taking a step forward to meet the oncoming tide and scatter them like chaff to the wind. But split attention is just what your gracious host wants. The moment you're distracted you're hit in the back by a jet of water that feels like getting between a wall and a battering ram. You lurch forward, balance spoiled, back aching, and reflexively turn to block a follow-up attack before the monks surround you.
And they swarm you like flies. Not so much attacking you as
descending on you. Weighing you down with their bodies, restraining your arms, forcing your legs to bend, forcing you to kneel. You writhe and struggle, stinging pain blossoming wherever one of them punches or kicks a particularly key muscle group of cluster of nerves to make you more pliant, to undermine your efforts to throw them off. And you try, and you even do well, hurling them away one by one with broken bones and torn muscles and ruined ligaments until you've ejected at least half a dozen from the pile. But it's not enough. It's not any one monk. It's their collective weight. And the one time you think you can rise and escape, torrent of water like a blacksmith's hammer falls on the anvil of your spine and sends you lurching to the ground.
"It will be easier if you do not struggle," Ayano says as she strides toward you. She raises her free hand, lightning arching and sparking across her fingers and knuckles. "After all, is this not what you wanted from the beginning? The cause of your rebellion, mercy denied?"
"Go blow yourself!" you bark.
"Defiant to the end, but do not worry," she says, and she almost manages to sound sincere. "Perhaps you will be better with another chance. Perhaps you will even return here, and learn true virtue from me willingly?"
She stops dead just before you, her shadow falling across your kneeling body. Blue-white light dances across her face, revealing her cold glare in fits and starts.
"The Order is patient. Generous. And
eternal."
You don't need to get up. You just need to free one arm. It's the brass one you manage to wrench free of the many grasping hands and restraining bodies, the squirming weight bearing you down into the mats. You swing it wide overhead, Ayano just barely out of reach, and slap your palm down on the floor. There's no delay, no time for her to react but to leap back and shield herself with the oar. Nothing they can do but watch as the ring of green flame erupts from beneath your hand and spreads outward, rising and rising as it goes until it becomes a genuine wall. Ayano swings the oar as if to disperse the emerald inferno as it rushes toward her, a gale-force gust of wind washing over you, but it passes her by harmlessly. Even she seems shocked, her free hand flying to her chest to check herself for wounds.
It's the monks who take it. The monks who get swept off your body by the flames, scooped up as if by a great hand and flung bodily to the far edges of the hall. Some of the more zealous ones try to resist the pressure, setting their palms against the screen of intangible force that follows the flames and digging in their heels, but there's nothing to be done. The ring just keeps expanding, stoking the flames higher as you rise with them, an ember burning on your brow. When it finally stops the ring of verdant, toxic flame encompasses almost the entire training hall, pillars and all. A new arena for you and your long-awaited revenge. You almost imagine you can hear the crowd - not the monks grunting and straining and beating the wall with their staves, but a cavalcade of bloodthirsty demons, whooping and cheering for their Green Sun Prince.
"What did you just do,
demon?" Ayano demands, shifting back a step and taking a combat stance with the oar. "How have you sullied this place?"
"Keep your robes on you insufferable shit-stirrer," you shoot back, taking your time to draw your sword. "It'll go away once I'm done with you. But you better tell your boys and girls out there to stop trying to jump the fence, or they won't like what happens next."
Ayano shifts her stance slightly, and her grey eyes gleam with a sense of amused superiority. "Allow me to be the judge of that."
What the hell is she talking about? How can she still be feeling smug when you just ruined her little ambush in one move? At first you choose to ignore it, watching Ayano carefully across the edge of your sword for any sign of threatening movement. But then you hear it. And then you
smell it. And then you can't help but whip your head around, lips parted silently in the first syllable of the obvious question.
The monks are forcing their way in. The once-harmless flames are turning
very much real as they determinedly force their limbs across the threshold, flesh blackening and peeling before your very eyes as they thrust their hands into the proverbial firepit. Not just alone but aided by their fellows, squeezing through what few gaps and cracks they can make in the barrier. You see the first one to manage to get his head through. You see the skin bubble and blister, the last hair he has left burning off his eyebrows, the scent of his flesh
cooking like game over a firepit flooding the hall and yet he doesn't even cry out.
<Don't forget about her!> Sidir shouts, jolting you from your stunned reverie.
Your head jerks to the side, and the wind caresses your ear. The broad tip of the oar passes only an inch from your face. Your eyes flick right, travelling up the jade-banded pole and the arms gripping it to lock eyes with Ayano. She's untroubled, you'd even call her serene if she didn't look so pleased with herself. The green firelight dances in her cold eyes, and you know that it'll take more than that to survive today.
You refuse to let her keep controlling the fight uncontested. You lash out in kind, sword scything up to take her arm from her shoulder just as her father did yours. She hooks the butt end of the oar around like lightning, hissing over your head as you frantically duck. A descending blow strikes your raised sword, a solid block at last, and you retaliate in a forehand cut aimed at her other shoulder. Again she repels you. Back and forth you go, wielding your Malfean greatsword as swiftly and deftly as she her stolen oar, but you aren't pressuring her. You're not wearing her down. If anything it's like she's coasting, just drawing things out.
A well-aimed fist collides with the weakest point at the base of your spine like a white-hot spike and a wave of pain washes over you. You bite back a strangled curse, twisting your wrists to control the lock with the oar and shove Ayano back long enough to glance over your shoulder.
The monks aren't stopping. Neither are the flames. They brought it with them when they pushed through, and all along the borderline you see more shambling shapes wreathed in emerald fire. They must be suffocating, blind and deaf with agony, flesh sloughing from their bones with every passing moment and yet these motherfuckers will not
stop.
Neither will Ayano. Another narrow miss, thin edge of the oar brushing across your brow like a knife blade. You jerk awkwardly aside but Ayano's quicker. She cuts you off, keeps you from turning things around so the monks are at
her back. You think you hear the guy who punched you in the spine slowly crumple, life finally spent, but there's more where he came from. A blistering foot of half-rendered fats drives into the back of your knee and you drop with a grunt of pain, muscles seizing. Ayano capitalises, too fast to react.
CRACK, the oar strikes your temple and you see stars. Her knee rises so fast the air hisses like a snake and you barely bring your hand up in time, taking the impact on your emerald palm, but the respite is short-lived. A brisk twist of the oar and a jet of water curves under her raised foot, catching you full on the chest. You go flying, rolling head-over-heels until your talons catch in the bamboo strands and you claw your way to a standstill. The man who kicked you lies dead and burning where you once were but there's more to replace him, always more, and Ayano's already pursuing.
New plan. More space. You scramble to your feet and run at an angle, away from Ayano and toward one of the great pillars. Gravity lurches, the world flips, and you whirl to face your foe from so high up she has to crane her neck to follow. Her eyes narrow slightly, her face an expressionless mask. The oar spins like a baton and another gout of fresh water erupts from nowhere at all, curling up the side of the pillar and striking you head-on. This time you're ready for it, sword up in a guard position, and though it feels like getting whacked with a warhammer you dig your heels in and refuse to be dislodged.
The water clears and Ayano's moved. A monk lies before you, keeping himself up on his hands and knees with the last of his strength. Another stands beside him, back bent by the weight of the agony his burning body is enduring, but he does not fall. Two stepping-stones for Ayano to rise like a leaping cat, soaring gracefully up and over you. Twisting her body in mid-air so that she can send her foot flying into the small of your back like a ballista bolt. It drives the breath out of you with a sickened retch, hurling you into the floor below like a sudden and unwanted reminder of the way gravity
should go. The mats buckle. You think you feel some vertebrae pop. The stink of sizzling flesh and the crackle of flame fill your senses and you move, you force yourself to move because if you don't she'll
really break something on the way down. You claw for purchase and all but fling yourself out of the crater you left, only narrowly dodging the grasping half-skeletal fingers of the monks as they lunge for you.
CRASH. Ayano lands right where you once lay, the butt of the oar embedded six inches into the crater like the tip of a spear. Her disappointment, if she feels any, is short-lived. She rises anew, stepping over the burning bodies of her once-disciples.
"Disappointing," she says. "Where is your famous arrogance, Anathema? Your crude, blasphemous remarks? You seemed convinced you could take on all of Creation the day you killed my brother."
"Oh I got plenty I wanna say to you, asshole," you pant, sparing only a half-second glance at the burning barrier - still more, fuck why are there
still more? "But I thought your baby brother
wasn't dead. Didn't Daddy say something about him making a full recovery? Last I heard he ran off with Big Bro to go play soldiers in the interior."
And there's a hairline crack. A beat too long before Ayano replies. "The wretched beast that replaced him is no different from you. I will see it dead before the year is out, and you along with it."
She takes off, practically blurring between standstill and dead sprint with nothing in between. You stand your ground, sword raised, and focus on the phantom muscles lining your aching back as your sanguine cloak ripples and roils. The tentacles take root, feeling rushing 'back' into your extra limbs, and in a truly desperate display of multi-tasking you try to lash them at the burning monks while simultaneously holding off Ayano.
It doesn't work too well. A brisk figure-eight twist of the oar sees a pair of waster spouts colliding with your back, sending you lurching toward her. She steps in to catch you, a hook-blow to the forehead with the butt of the oar sending you reeling
back, and straight into the candlewax-arms of her devotees. The tentacles flail wildly, bludgeoning every inch of burning flesh they can reach as you struggle to right yourself, and in the half-second of breathing room they buy you manage to dart away from the continuing trickle of disposable distractions. You grimace, shaking your head in a vain attempt to clear the pulsing ache in your skull.
"Some pillar of moral guidance
you are, talking big about purging the abominations while you get your own people to dive into a fire and die helping you," you spit from your refuge, half-crouched half-kneeling in a patch of buckled bamboo.
"You think they would resent me?" Ayano chuckles. "They are
eager to give their lives in service to the Order. They are freeing themselves from their current incarnations so virtuously that they are certain to rise higher in the Coils - perhaps even return as the Dragons' chosen?"
"No wonder there's so many of you pricks if it's that easy to get in."
You see it again. The crack in the facade, the shadow of anger flitting across her face. Is she serious? It's a fight to the death and shittalking her religion is what makes her crack? Either she's an even bigger believer than you thought or short tempers run in the family.
"You speak in blatant defiance of the faith you betrayed in the hopes that it will somehow save you," Ayano says coldly, her composure returned. "Or perhaps you are simply that petty, to go to your appointed end with
nothing but hatred and bile in your heart. There is no saving the likes of you. You were borned damned and you shall be
reborn so, again and again and again until you are the lowest of all creatures."
And in a flash, you remember how well her uncle responded to taunts.
"That right? How about you, Ayano?"
"Do not take that familiar tone with me, demon," she says coldly.
"I mean this... all of this... it's pretty much
your fault, isn't it?" you forge on ahead as if she hadn't spoken, forcing yourself to straighten up. "I still remember, y'know. Back in my cell, when you sent one of your cronies to talk to me. She told me it was you.
You kept me alive. It was your idea to break my sword and set me loose rather than execute me."
A vein pulses at her temple.
"Do you wanna know how it happened?" you ask.
<Kid, y'sure?>
You can't answer, but you are. If you have one natural talent, it's pissing people off. "A demon came and found me, a week in. Had to wait until I was alone and give me a pitch.
Ask me nicely if I wanted to become Anathema."
You chuckle. You meant for it to be mocking but it comes out more genuine than you expected as the full weight of what you're saying finally occurs to you. You lift your gloved hand to your brow, claws raking through the sweat-slick spikes of hair plastered to the pale skin, and let your shoulders shake freely as you laugh.
"Kill me or keep me locked up, you could've stopped
all of this before it ever started. This is all. Your. Fault." You drop your hand. "So c'mon Miss Abbess, enlighten a poor sinner - where's that put
you on the Coils?"
She doesn't let you say another word, and she sure as shit doesn't bother responding. A fresh wave of burning, dying monks come shambling toward you from the flank, arms outstretched, and she leaps like a striking snake to time her next assault with theirs. You stow your sword on your back, coil and
spring as high as you can. The world turns madly, gravity flipping and looping, and when you right yourself you're hovering at the apex of your impossible jump high, high above them all. And then you drop like a falling star, so fast and so hard that even Ayano is forced to jerk back. You drive your fist into the floor and for just a moment you'd swear the mountain itself trembled, let alone the temple. You leave a crater like a catapult-stone, the floor buckled and cracked in a wide berth all around you, and the monks that by some miracle weren't felled by the impact are quicky dispatched by your tentacles. You straighten up and turn to face Ayano, casting your mind back for some other hint, some fresh angle of attack. Remembering how Sho forgot even his own fear and cowardice once you brought up the wrong man.
"It's okay, I get it," you say. "My dad thought I was a liability too. But man, how must that feel? Knowing that he had
every chance to step in and help you, and still left you to clean up your own mess."
In that moment you can even hear her breathing, laboured and ragged. You can practically hear the wood creak where she's gripping the oar white-knuckle tight.
"Maybe he's hoping I'll kill you."
The dam bursts and a raging, seething torrent of anger erupts from the Abbess like a pot boiling over. She lets out a roar of abject fury that makes the temple itself tremble, her body
ablaze with light and power. Thunderbolts leap and arc along her limbs, up and down her torso, dancing in her burning eyes and flickering between her teeth as she clenches her jaw. The wind rises around her, swirling and spiralling, plucking at the hems of her robes and her ponytail. The gale flows down her arms, coiling around the oar as she draws it back, and with an almighty swing releases a wave greater than any that came before it. Its foaming peak stretches high enough to scrape the ceiling, wide enough to bridge both walls, and fast enough that you haven't a hope in hell to dodge it. A crude, thoughtless outpouring of anger and energy. Yeah, join the club sister.
You duck your head and run facefirst into it. The wave roars like a pouncing tiger but you plunge into the cold blue depths and don't even lose your footing. For a moment you're just a shape, a dark shadow in the water with a green star burning on its brow, and then you break through to the other side. You crash into Ayano like a runaway wagon, wrapping both hands tight around the oar before she has a moment to think straight. She moves automatically to use your momentum against you, twisting her hips and hauling against you with a cry of effort. She means to swing you over her head and dash you against the floor like an overripe fruit.
The air ripples and warps. The mark on your forehead glows brighter. You stop dead before you've even fully left the ground, her arms straining against the impossible, as you whip around and throw
her. She hits the ground hard enough to break every bone in an ordinary woman's body, and all it does to her is loosen her grip enough to wrench the oar from her hands. You skip back just as quick as you came, narrowly avoiding her scything legs as she twists herself into a spiral and all but flings herself upright again.
She's breathing hard. You have the oar. You have no idea how to
use the oar so you let it fly off into your soulscape somewhere and draw your sword instead. The Abbess straightens up, but doesn't come charging right at you. Your breath hitches, pain and anticipation snatching at your throat, but you stand firm.
Ayano starts... jittering. Lightning flickering across her body as she rolls her shoulders and shrugs her rumpled, frayed robe off her body. She wears a sleeveless tunic and trousers underneath, her feet bound in grey cloth, and though this layer is significantly more flattering to her painstakingly well-developed musculature it's not like you needed an extra reminder about how hard she can kick your ass. That's not the point. The point is when she starts moving. Back and forth, just a little at a time. More and more with each pass, jerking left and right. blinking between two places without so much as a sidestep until something in the empty air between the two afterimages seems to catch light and lightning strikes sideways with an earsplitting thunderclap. Two identical Ayanos take their fighting stances, their blurred outlines hissing and spitting with lightning.
"Oh fuck me I don't know this one Sidir any ideas-?" you blurt out.
There's no time for Sidir to react, let alone you. The twin Ayanos rush you, and it sure as shit isn't an illusion. She doesn't even need to wait for the zealots to corner you, she's all the backup she needs. Four furious, well-trained fists rain blow after blow down on you and it seems like no matter which way you dodge or where you move your sword there's always a way for two or three of them to slip by. They're pummelling the breath out of you, beating you so bad you don't even have time to spit out all the blood they're bringing up, and though Malfeas' power hardens your skin into something like a steel wall her knuckles crash into it again and again without a moment's hesitation. They aren't even bruised. You try to hit back at least once, more out of desperation than seeing any real opening. They duck the wide swing, twin Ayanos fanning out, and the near-simultaneous roundhouse kicks they throw out in reply feel like getting your skull slammed into a vise. Stars burst behind your eyes and you sway dangerously, the world swimming in front of you.
It's all you can do to call up your power again, flip gravity and go flying out of their reach up to the ceiling. The instant you hit the 'ground' you collapse on one knee, spitting out blood and shaking your head as if to stop your brain from spinning out of control. It feels like trying to lift your whole kitbag with your head alone as you crane your neck up to keep an eye on the Ayanos. They pause only a moment to think about how best to pursue you. And then you hear something you definitely didn't expect.
<I can read her moves!>
"D-Daji? The fuck're you doing here!?" you blurt out, staring bug-eyed at the empty air.
<Shut up and let me talk! I said I can read her moves!>
"Which one!? There's
two of these motherfuckers!" And as if on cue the identical Dragonbloods on a mission go tearing off toward the pillars, racing up the sheer vertical surfaces almost as easily as you would.
<No there aren't! It's still just her! It's a speed-clone!>
"A sp- what the
fuck is a speed-clone!?"
<Now is not the time to get us killed being difficult!>
The Ayanos kick off the pillars, hurtling towards you like arrows in flight, and you flip gravity again. You look up as you plummet, hoping faintly that the two of them will just slam into each other. Instead they just neatly somersault in mid-air, kicking off the ceiling to pursue as swift as lightning. You barely have time to get your feet under you and lift your sword before their heels come crashing down on the flat, unleashed lightning spilling over the edges like white-hot thorns as the stink of a storm fills your nose.
"
Just tell me how to beat them!" You shout at the empty air, and you'd swear the Ayanos even pause to smirk at your madness before they kick off your sword and land right back where you all started.
<I can't just coach you! I think there's something I can do but it's->
"It's
what!?" You lift your sword into a guard position for all the good it'll do you.
<You'll just have to trust me!>
Everything seems to slow down. You'd swear you can count the beats of your heart as they happen. Feel the long, pained rattle of your breath through bruised lungs. See every minute shift in the Ayano twins, identical in every way, as they shift their weight forward and go on the attack again.
<Please.>
[ ] Trust Daji.
[ ] Finish this yourself.
