Once, there was a child, who lived in the roots of the great world tree. In the wondrous city of dreams, ruled by the lord of heavenly lies, they lived in base reality, in dirt and muck and blood. They lived in the dark, in chains of coin and paper. Owned they were, used they were. In the lowest roots there was only cruelty and the laughter of petty little gods. Once, there was a child, but unlike the countless others, they heard the dark, and the dark heard them.
They welcomed it, they loved it, and in the dark there was no more pain. They fed it blood, they fed it memory, they fed it their face, and in return they were given power. The first pleasure in their life was the feeling of a brightly colored man's throat breaking under their fingers. O how the man's fists had once hurt, O how useless they were flailing against the child now. They took the color, they took the light, and both the faceless child and the dark hungered for more. This thought the child, was justice.
There was no time in the dark, no light in the roots to track the days. In the beginning they were drawn to little flesh peddlers, like the colorful man before. They learned to stalk, to skulk, wrapped in the dark, fed from fear and paranoia. They studied, they searched, and picked off the men one by one, drop by drop. The colorful men hid, they babbled, they cried, and they died. The child's fingers found their throats every time. There was no mercy for the children, the men, or the women, why should there be mercy for monsters? This was justice.
The dark grew in them, and its hunger grew too. The child grew tall, the child grew strong. They began to take more than the colorful men, the flesh peddlers. They sought their masters, the paper lords, whose inkbrushes wove the chains. They sought the alchemists whose hunger for reagents exceeded even the lusts of the peddlers. They sought the lord's enforcers who made new laws in their minds for each victim of their violence.
They hunted and they grew. The cruel ones in the rootways began to know fear. People began to leave offerings and signs of thanks. Their whispers told them of those who deserved justice. Their offerings, given by hungry bellies and parched throats, carried dreams of justice. From this too, the child grew, for what is the Dark but Want?
Then the day had come that they had drawn the attention of the high ones. Then the child faced a lord of lies, descended from heaven to discover what the commotion among his servants was. It was the end. Caged, chained, bound once more. The child wished to scream with a voice they no longer had. They had not been strong, they had only been an amusement for the lord, now kept in bondage.
But on one day, a day of terrible sound and fury, their captor had not returned. The cruel ones were in chaos, and with none maintaining their cage they slipped free. They were hungry, they were weak, and so they had slipped out to hunt and feed once more
But it was not to be. A star descended into the dark.
The star had many hands, silver metal and plumed in white. The flesh peddlers burned. The alchemists boiled. The paper lords bound in their own chains or cast down among their victims. The enforcer's skulls lined the streets. Nightmares of the liar lords boiled from the blackest darkness in the lowest roots and melted under the star's light.
This was justice.
They had gone to the star, and knelt. She had thanked them for their hard work, praised them for their devotion to justice. She had chided them for focusing too much on destruction. She had rewarded them with a new face and a new name, woven from moonlight and hope, and made them her disciple.
Shu Yue idly traced the contours of their face with their fingers. Even after two hundred years it felt strange. They did not know who they had been before they had embraced the dark, and in truth it did not matter. They had been a child, one of many or perhaps many, made one.
What mattered was their justice, and their Lady's justice.
Which was why they crouched now on the sheer cliff overlooking a snowy plane, observing the advance of her Grace's daughter and companions. They disliked this. To be so far from the people, so far from the cities which needed them, rankled on a deep level. Yet this was what was needed. To ensure no sabotage. To ensure that Lady Renxiang came home.
They were not like Lin Hai, who loved the young miss, but they did love Lin Hai. It would hurt him if she was lost, so they had not objected to the assignment too much.
So Yue Shu watched from within the mountains shadows as they met with the foreigners and advanced toward the mountain of iron. Embraced by the dark, they could feel the mountain's gaze, feel his attention and protective instinct. It was not so dissimilar to them. They were the shadow in the night, punishing the wicked already inside. The mountain was the wall which kept the predators from the den.
They were seen, they were acknowledged. In the world beyond the physical spindly, too long fingers met an iron palm, and understanding passed. Their purpose was the same, to guard. Guard the children. Guard the future. Acceptance, awareness, acknowledgement of conflict should their children come to blows.
Yue Shu nodded in satisfaction as the contact ended, peering back down at the children again. Their gaze fell on the tall girl who followed in the Young Miss' step, who had entered her mind and drawn her out of the snow hags lies. There were parallels there they thought. The little shadow used the dark, but did not love it. Their purpose was not so honed, their origin not so dark.
This was good, in their mind. They were born from abomination. If there had been a second, their fingers would need to seek many throats. No, in truth their similarities were few, just as the Young Miss did not truly resemble her Grace.
They were born of the world which had come after, and so they were less hard, less violent. Softer. Many called this weakness, that the youth, unknowing of hardship would bring ruin.
The child born in the dark knew better. That was the secret they had been given at the feet of the star. It was not enough to destroy the wicked. For they too were wicked in their way.
Their replacements would be better.
