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CC: Chapter 40
🕑 Added 2024-04-26 11:22:32 +0000 UTCOri’un dove down the well and felt the encroaching darkness of its thin innards consume him, like he was already traveling down the parched throat of the very Aoyin he hunted.
The sensation of his feet hitting the ground was accompanied by not the splash of water but the crunching of bone, and he looked beneath him to see the pale remnants of a skeleton under him.
“Feng…” he whispered, his eyes adjusting to the darkness.
A firm hand gripped his arm and the boy came into view, both Cultivators attuning their Qi to their eyes and letting them trace the outline of the others’ form.
“Good,” the Planeswalker said. “I won’t have you running off to your death.”
Feng released a small trickle of candlelight from his fingertips to provide some basic illumination for both men, and show them the cavernous space they’d tumbled down into. Ragged stalactites loomed above, and below their feet stretched an expanse of ice that seemed to stretch on towards an infinite black horizon.
The cave system had been hewed by a horde – there was no doubt, now.
Especially as young Feng considered the pile of bones he and the Planeswalker were standing on, and the thick trails of crimson baked into the ice floes beyond their landing zone.
“Signs of a struggle,” the boy said warily, beginning to follow the trail with slow, deliberate steps. “I do not need Qi tracking to follow the paths of these beasts.”
“No,” Ori’un agreed. “You do not.”
A wave of tension cut through the air, as both men crept forward towards the unknowable void of the cave, each one checking the walls and glittering bloodstains that spoke of the resistance the townsfolk had put up as they were dragged down here by their captors.
Then, finally, the young Disciple stopped in his tracks at the lip of an opening – an oval cut into the side of the cave wall that opened up into a small chamber of ice.
Ori’un stopped short behind him. He saw what the boy was looking at within.
A thin, skeletal figure, its spiked spine heaving with raspy, guttural breaths, was feasting on something in that room. Two lithe arms scythed down to rake at the innards of the creature’s meal with a ferocious kind of patience – like that exhibited by a butcher who had just found a prime slice of meat after months of starvation.
The crunching of sinew and bone filled the room. The beast was savoring its meal, bent low on its two spindle-like legs that were embedded deep into the ice like a pair of carving knives. In its pleasure, it had noticed neither of the men that approached.
Ori’un took one look at Feng-Lung as the boy, for the first time in his life, came to realize that the monsters that stalked his dreams were not simply apparitions summoned into life by the fairy tales his mother spun. They were real. And one of them was right here, chewing on the bloody intestines of a villager from above.
The boy saw the decapitated head of the victim roll out of the creature’s claw. He saw two pairs of crimson-soaked eyes stare up at him, lifeless.
And that was the signal that finally compelled him to act.
He dove at the Aoyin as the being spun round, hearing the quick footsteps of a human intruder. Its long, spiked mouth opened in a snarl that would have become a bellow if Feng-Lung’s fist did not punch a hole of flame right through its chest.
The beast swayed, about to let out a guttural death rattle from its intestine-ridden mouth. But the boy was quicker. Using a stalactite above the chamber as a springboard he dove headfirst into the creature’s gnashing teeth and split them apart with a single Flaming Dervish roundhouse. As his ankle impacted the beast’s neck, Ori’un heard the distinct snapping of its brittle bones. The head of the creature went flying off and landed square at the Planeswalker’s idle feet.
The beast’s neck gushed with the black ooze that served as its blood, and when the Planeswalker looked up, he saw young Feng covered in the creature’s life fluids, stamping on its corpse with hatred.
“Feng,” he said.
The boy ignored his Administrator’s call, and kept beating the beast’s flailing corpse under his heel until every bone in the Aoyin’s body had snapped or burned away. He did not look at the human’s corpse that had rolled away to the side. He avoided the gaze of the head entirely.
“Feng!”
The boy snapped back to look Ori’un in the eye, wiping the Flesh-Eater’s ichor from his face.
“Dirty…” he said, still avoiding eye contact with the lifeless head rolling under him. “Filthy…”
He walked out of the room without turning back.
“I can feel more of them further in,” he said. “Do not worry, Ori’un. I know how to suppress my Qi enough to deceive these creatures. I will kill them before they even see me coming. I will kill them all.”
He stormed off down into the darkness of the tunnel while Ori’un spared at look at the dead villager. Probably, it was someone Feng knew. Or, it could be that his body was so mangled that the boy simply didn’t even recognize him. And he was so focused on securing a sight of those still living that he didn’t want to try.
Those still living… Ori’un thought.
XJ-V felt the doubt gnawing at the Planeswalker’s bones as he followed the Disciple back into the dark.
…
Feng slew a dozen more Aoyin as he did the first.
Each one was found in its own little chamber chewing away on a villager that had succumbed to frostbite. As they moved from one grisly chamber to the next, both men silently built up a picture of what had happened here without the need to voice their theories. Each Aoyin had chosen a prisoner of its own – one to sequester in its own little hovel in the earth and carve up after its life had expired. They had bound them to the jagged rocks of their cave-homes and waited, probably licking their rows of pincer-teeth in anticipation of the feast the corpse-flesh would bring. Ori’un, however, was more concerned about the fact that these villagers did not represent the main dish – those Aoyin Feng was killing were Eaters who were patient enough to wait. The vicious ones – the real pack-hunters and leaders of the horde – they would have taken the supply caravan of maggot-infested corpses for their meal. The more desiccated and debased a body was, the more it seemed to satiate the appetite of the Aoyin.
The only question was: where were they hiding? The Planeswalker knew that if he expanded his Qi vision, he could ascertain the answer without breaking a sweat. But, of course, this meant that he would have to willfully keep such information from young Feng. Ori’un was many things, but he was not one who was willing to lie to a child. Ignorance was better than deception.
I wonder… Ori’un of the present suddenly interrupted. I wonder if I still believe that, even now.
XJ-V felt the imminent tragedy coming from just the tone of his morose reflections, reflections that came as his past-self looked upon Feng-Lung’s bloodied tunic and saw the boy’s form become more and more haggard with each new foe slain. The Planeswalker could see the burden grow on his shoulder every time he beheaded one of the corpse-devourers, even as his face flushed red with fury in the moment of his kill.
Still, it would not be impossible for the boy to pass the test, still. Though he burned with a fire that could easily consume him, he was proving himself more than capable of dealing death to the enemies of mankind.
Until, that is, they came to the heart of the cave.
With a trail of Aoyin corpses in his wake, young Feng crouched low to creep up to a wide opening that had appeared before them – an opening that afforded both men a view of a wide cavern that exuded the pungent smell of mass death.
They both knew it as they looked over the lip of the opening into the cavernous expanse of ice and jagged rock below – they had found the feasting ground.
The leanest Aoyin of the pack nested here, tucking into the veritable mound of flesh they had collected and piled in the center of their dominion. Ori’un counted at least thirty – no – forty of the beasts feasting together, each one crawling around the flesh pile to detach a limb or organ of their liking, some filling each one of their long-taloned fingernails with a collection of eyeballs and body cavities oozing with puss and grime before they sucked on them like babes on teats.
It was the bulk of the horde. And from the looks of it, this was all of them.
“Feng,” Ori’un whispered. “It is not too late to turn back. You have already proven yourself more than capable of achieving Rank 4. This job can be left to a team of experienced Cultivators if you so choose.”
The boy considered the offer, this time. His teeth ground together and chewed into his lips, like an innocent reflection of the horror of the blood feast that was entering its final phases before his eyes. The creatures were unawhere he was there. Both he and his mentor could slip away, entirely undetected. He could still choose the path of glory.
Then the boy’s eyes lighted on a particular corpse that rolled away from the horde. It was the chewed body of a small creature, its intestines spilling out from its tiny open gut, both its animal eyes opened in a cry for help that was never heard.
It was the pearl-white corpse of a kitten.
And the next thing Ori’un knew, the boy threw himself into the fray, bellowing a battle cry that brought the eyes of every beast upon him.
“Feng!” the Planeswalker shouted.
But the boy was already charging towards the horde. One by one, they ceased their chewing and rose to meet him.
