"What is that thing?"
Yue hears the question asked, though she can't see what her comrade is looking at.
Blood spills in her retinas, refracting her vision. The long cut which lay across her newly scarred face-- across both eyes-- was a lopsided wound, sending constant pangs of agony to her nerves alongside fresh waves of blood. She pressed the deeper side of the cut with her free hand, red spilling nontheless, dripping, between her clenched fingers, the vision of her remaining semi-functional eye blurry and crimson.
Vaguely, as she focused, she finally saw the shape of the thing her comrade was pointing at.
It was a writhing, black cocoon, twice the size of a man. Unlike the silk of an ordinary cocoon, its fibers seemed to be made of a corroded, oil-slicked iron.
And between the shifting mesh of barbed, rusting metal, large eyes of different species opened and closed, their pupils rotating wildly, before aiming, intensely, at Yue's group.
It had a look in its eyes, which could only be described as fanatic.
Serenity buzzes in a hive of ambience. Sunlight streams down, filtered by shadows of both structures and silver-enlaced flora, into the lotus garden which Yue and the other bandits traversed. White lanterns hang from red pagodas, reflected like cubic lotuses in the still ponds below— disturbed only by the falling of lilac petals.
The reddened oak and iron of shrines populate distant landmarks along the water. Directly above the group, bridges of carved wood interlace far above the pond, layered across each other-- covering all below in layered shadow.
Petals fall from the branches sprouting from the shadowed side of the ascendant bridges— suspended, inverse trees. The cocoon, too, hung from beneath one of these fixtures.
"Keep walking," another of the bandits said, dismissing the grandiose sight.
"But-" the first bandit started.
"If it wakes, we kill it, too. What's there to get? Now move."
Apprehensively, the first bandit drew his attention away from the iron cocoon, hastily trudging down the red oak of the low bridges that broke up the surface of this infinite pond.
The rest followed suit. Some bumped Yue's shoulder, shooting her looks incomprehensible to her through her damaged eyes.
The bonds of comradery are frail. In a situation like this-- she had changed, from an asset, a willing blade-- to a burden.
The knuckles of her left hand whitened, gripping the hilt of her blade so tight it shook-- the black blood on the blade's edge still sizzling, hissing, in smoke like incense.
It was foolish to come here. There was no war to be found here, only disharmony. The battles in this "garden" are waged without meaning-- the abhorrent, vicious cycle of nature, evergreen and unceasing.
It had been a long day. Of the many that came, only around a dozen of the bandits still remained.
Aberrations of cut, eviscerated flesh lay in the islands behind them. The strains of different species, forcibly stitched together down to their genetic code.
Their abominable blood still dripped from the trail left by Yue and the other bandit's weapons. As they hurriedly walked over the bridges, the blood hissed, burning the wood of the bridge in black scars.
-
-
-
Thoughts incubate, rattling inside the iron cocoon.
Eyes, of different shapes widen, dilate, spinning in circles.
Processing.
Flesh. Intrusive.
Killers, come for [redacted]. Kill them first.
Rage vibrates, inside the iron cocoon.
Frenzied blood, swirls, inside its anchored retinas.
For the all-harmony. Overseer, protocol 17-SH.
Enscribe Chimeric Doll. Sub-optimization- Fulfill testing requirements, 3rd Echelon creation, authorizer: Rammut.
Static fills serenity.
Psionic threads tremble, spreading nonexistent ripples across the pond.
Searching for appropriate attendant... Found-- prototype: SV-51-4. Embedding with frenzy.
Instruction: Follow the blood.
The static turns red. A red vibration, traveling along an invisible thread.
An invisible rage, fluctuating over a dispersed, intangible organ, animates what lies hollow.
In the islands where the bandits clashed with chimeric flesh, threads of DNA expand, forming ropes of silver silk. Like a surgeon, the wires weave between corpses, of human and 'abomination' alike.
In the dead bodies of both the intruding bandits and this garden's inhabitants, a new 'life' comes into being.
-
-
-
This garden is a lockbox.
The pond's once grand reach comes to a close, leading to an enclosure of refracted, glass trees... a forest of stained glass.
The other bandits held their hands above their eyelines, squinting from the brightness of the sunlight's prism, turning the ground aurora-like as their sandals and boots crunched over the bed of fallen glass 'leaves'.
Vaguely, in her perception that still remained, Yue notes that they are not sculptures. Even as she passed, some of the trees seemed to accelerate their growth, melting and rebirthing in square pools-- plots-- of mercury.
This garden is a lockbox.
That's what they were told, at least. A palace which held a treasure within its walls, fortified with many defenses. They had expected soldiers. Guards. Traps, maybe. The promise of glory brought them here, seeking fortune in the land of the mad.
But this was more than a hideaway vault-- this grand labyrinthe environment-- shifting cells, a false haven.
This is not a place for human beings.
...What have they done to this place?
As a girl, Yue saw them once.
A group of veiled, armored figures, in crimson, metal robes. Faceless, and shrouded. In her hometown that existed before being caught up in war, they came once, to cure a plague which had swept through the town.
Although through their strange substances and rites, they cured the young and old alike, saving their lives... Yue's parents, still, kept her at arm's length, only interacting with them long enough to administer the medicine.
She never understood that look in her parent's eyes. That fear, of something that should be considered a savior.
Even as she heard the stories, of what the alchemists had done. The kings they had killed, the dynasties they had pruned young.
The atrocities done in the name of their unknowable "faith", whispered only in abstract fragments and rumors, for even those who witnessed their acts firsthand hardly understood what they saw.
And today, by her own will... she entered a place those very same people had created.
Yue's eyes bled. She grit her teeth, as the refraction melted the world around her, bleeding agony.
War makes you both wise and foolish. Those stories... they had weight, that the cynical part of her brain had dismissed. The foreboding behind their acts... she should have remembered her parent's look. That feeling.
Her parent's faces...
...Why was she thinking about that, now?
The silhouettes of her comrades rushed through the aurora.
Again, they turned, giving her looks she couldn't quite make out.
They were like her. That was why she joined them. Deserters, refuse of the dynasties the alchemists destroyed so thoroughly, with nothing but faded glory to their name.
To steal from what had stolen from you-- that was the appeal of this 'job'.
As the red filled the remnants of her eyes, closing around her.
The last thing she saw was the faces of her comrades turn away from her.
Then, the last of her vision was consumed by blackness, blindness.
-
A paw made of multiple, intertwined hands scrapes the wood of the bridge.
Tattered fur, the pelts of multiple species, poke out from a mesh of human limbs, carved into the shape of a snout .
In its sockets, there are no eyes . Instead, in its upturned ears, it hears blood. Attuned, to the sound of heartbeats.
Life doesn't lie. Hide your form, hide your scent, yet still, your blood rushes in your veins .
The flesh of chimeras and humans, fused, rises its head, as it stalks the path of the prey. The bones of ribcages affixed to teeth, its form intertwines in veins and limbs, into the shape of a wolf.
From the dead rises predators, weapons, relics... for the dead is sacred .
The hallowed wolf wades through its cradle of blindness.
A mass of heartbeats pulses, in the next ward. The hallowed wolf listens, as one heartbeat strays from the mass, abandoned by its pack.
Without hesitation, the wolf closes in, attracted to the pulsing mass.
-
Blackness. Blindness.
"...Hello?"
Yue hears her voice say the words. In spite of herself knowing.
No one was there.
Blood drips from her face. Her grip on the hilt of her blade tightens.
It's dark, inside these punctured eyes.
The loss of a sense... It's new. Fear can become a foreign feeling, numbed by onslaughts of pain and battles, yet sometimes-- a new sensation, or an absence of such, can bring it back.
That feeling is intertwined with humans since birth. That residual feeling, of panic. Of fear.
But as Yue waded through the dark, she quells that feeling, again.
It's fine... the worst that can come is death.
In the black, she steps forward.
Glass crunches beneath her. Beneath her.
She stops. Listening.
In the silence, the ambience, she can hear the same sound, of glass breaking underfoot, in the distance.
Hesitation stills her, for a moment. They left her behind. They knew they did. But it's not personal.
It's not a job for a warrior to slow down, but to keep up.
Footsteps. Her own, fills the space. Forward. And forward, still.
Still, forward.
For a full minute... then...
The sounds in the distance stop, then pick up.
A cascade bursts. Glass shatters, with a force unlike any Yue could visualize.
It is as if an entire grove of the glass trees like those around her had shattered at once. In the distance, her comrade's shouts echo, voices bouncing around in undecipherable fragments.
Yue's own footsteps pick up. Over the uneven fragments, she stumbles, feeling in the dark, pushing past the glass trunks of the trees.
But as she made it to the clearing-- the only steps she heard, by then, were her own.
-
Yue waits.
Still, blackness was all that enveloped her.
Yue heard it. Faint... gurgling.
Low, shaking. The sound of death throes. The bodies of the bandits, her 'comrades' surrounding her.
Though... she couldn't see them.
...
...What now?
...
This garden...
...
...There's a noise. A faint noise, barely heard. Ahead.
A scraping. The texture of glass transitioning, to something else. A different substance. Something... metallic.
A survivor... maybe... who reached the next ward of the garden. Or else, it was...
Yue's blind eyes face the direction the sound was heard.
That noise, in the dark... should she follow? Leave this place?
The gurgling around her grows faint. Is it worth staying, for them?
No... Their state must be worse off than even hers when they left her to fall behind. This band of bandits, scorned soldiers...
They were bandits brought together by shared scorn, and the promise of stolen fortune.
They weren't ever true bonds, just fools linked by chains to the past.
Yue's footsteps transitioned, from glass to the clink of grated metal, as she left the dying to fall back into silence.
-
The scraping grew.
But it was quiet... and the steps were more frequent than the steps of two legs.
An animal.
The killer of her 'comrades', most likely.
Not that it mattered.
What was it, she just told herself?
They weren't ever true bonds, just chains.
A pulse quickens.
Yet.
A pulse rises.
Yet...
She felt rage anyway.
Deep inside her... her blood burned.
As though, despite it never existing, she felt as though something had been taken away.
As her blood pulsed with new, elated emotion, the distant footsteps ahead of her suddenly ceased.
Then began anew.
This time, coming closer.
There was no thinking.
Yue let her blade rise in front of her.
In the moment of steel, the pain cleared, the fog driven out.
And the darkness was the feeling of one's eyes closed, not gone.
Skrrgggh.
Something like nails, scrapes the ground in front of her.
Then the air shifts, a low whistle.
Shhhhhh.
The iron of her blade cuts the air, hitting nothing. A soft swelter rising, stinging, as flesh strips from her right shoulder, from a weight like talons, making her stumble.
But the sounds, the footsteps... from the other entity, do not cease-- unlike when a foe escapes your vision.
Sound betrays your location. She knew it was-
sHHHLKKK
She turns, a swift motion, swinging the blade upward.
It catches like a hook on fish. Caught on something. Bone. Through the movement, something like bone splits.
Something wet hits the ground, draining through the grated floor... a fresh torrent, the slight hiss, of chimeric blood, sizzling.
But if the entity was truly wounded... unlike the first beasts she and her comrades had fought upon entering this garden... it did not make a sound.
A shift, a change in weight, as the thing's claws left the floor, pouncing onto her.
Instinctively, she rose her wrist guard to her neck, her vital area-- and a sensation like teeth slammed into the weathered plate, shattering it as easy as candy.
Fresh heights of pain drilled their way into her system again, as the teeth bore into her wrist, splintering bone.
Changing the grip on her sword arm, she attempted to stab the thing into its head, from her prone position.
But the thing's claws, limbs were-- strange. Not fixed limbs, but undulating, as if spiraling outward into many smaller hands.
Such a paw grabbed, entwined-- her sword arm with its own spiraling limb... pinning her arm and her weapon to the ground.
Another renewed bite, of its jaw... began to turn her wrist loose. Unscrewing it. It would be gone in a few seconds.
Then...
Yue plunged, not backwards, but forwards. Letting the teeth like knives run along the length of her bitten arm, as she thrust that arm deeper, inside its maw.
No response. Pain shot up her arm. She had hoped it would gag, but the usual biology is beyond these creatures.
But, sacrificing her arm, gave her the room to maneuver, the momentum for her feet to press on the ground.
With a harsh breath, she brought herself off the ground, pushing the thing with her own weight. It stumbled. Perhaps, one step. If she had to guess... it was bigger than her body. Too big to cease its own vicious momentum.
And in that moment, she knew what it would do next. The creature's teeth cracked, sinking in deep, drilling wells into her shoulder.
Her blade arm become a blur, as the creature braced its jaw, settling itself to tear in an abrupt motion.
SHHHLrkkk
Metal slices one way in a shimmer, as the hallowed wolf tore Yue's arm clean from her body. The connectors of bone to the shoulder splinters, scattering over the metal floor.
Simultaneously, too, blood spills, from the wolf's throat.
The edge of Yue's blade shines in black, sizzling blood.
-
With the force generated from pulling her body one way, Yue had set her blade beneath where she guessed was its neck. As her left arm detached from her body, she had pulled the other way.
The force of the wolf pulling into the cut, and the force released by her body pulling away from the amputation, became a clean slice-- severing... something, within the hallowed wolf.
It stumbled, for a moment. The human's arm still within its throat cavity.
But, it could not swallow. Nor, could the bottom of its jaw move-- those parts of its nerves severed.
In spasms, the creature tries to intake air, but the broken limb blocks the air's path.
Blood spills from its head, and slowly...
The hallowed wolf suffocates.
Silently, for still-- it had no voice.
-
Yue heard its spasms, its aberrant movements twitching. She assumed it was a good thing.
She let her blade drop, clatter to the ground. She brought her right hand to the point where her left arm was severed. It was oozing. Pouring blood, probably.
But the word "blood" had crossed her mind so many times it didn't mean anything anymore. All that mattered, was that she did not have enough strength to press on the wound, let alone swing the blade again.
Without thinking, her legs carried her forward.
Until eventually her legs gave out, too.
And she felt her body slump, collapse against the metal floor. Sinking into that dark which chased her.
-
In calmness.
The eyes of the iron cocoon dilate, its retina shaking.
Becoming still.
Processing.
Test conclusion: mixed.
Subject sustained damage while facing initial targets, and was killed in action, destroying final 'nemesis' in the process.
0-1.Manner of execution: satisfactory. Subject displayed apt brutality when dealing with foreign elements. Rate of lethality-- average; 3.2 seconds.
Confirm hypothesis. Inquirer: Rammut.
Use as assassin element -- positively evaluated.
Protocols SW-14, 173-- re-evaluated.
1-2.Post-mortem note.
Manner of death: undignified. An errant flaw in biology resulting in suffocation. Revision: Update genetic code to correct such errors.
Areas of conflicts: Wards R-7, Cage N-17. Acquire attendants for cleanup.
Processing.
Stop.
In confusion.
The eyes of the iron cocoon widen, the form of something else reflected in its bloodshot gaze.
The form of a young girl, with metal limbs, protruding from her robes of white silk.
The iron cocoon watches.
As the girl's head turns, and her eyes bore into the iron cocoon's.
[redacted] detected.
Delay orders. Main directive received, acknowledged.
Allow [red]anhan[acted] free reign.
Entering standby.
And without hesitation, the iron cocoon closed its eyes.
Staring upwards, the girl with metal limbs walked across the shrine, the metal bird she was playing games with, perched precariously on her shoulder, its talons digging into the metal of her grafted prosthetic.
"Hana... what are you doing?" the bird asked, adjusting itself irritably.
The girl gave him a soft gaze, which the bird seemed to roll its own eye sockets at.
"Do you feel... bad, or something? You shouldn't feel any sympathy for bandits, y'know. It's the whole reason they're called bandits in the first place."
The girl doesn't respond.
It's not pity in her gaze. Not necessarily.
The place in this garden, the girl and bird traverse, is a metallic shrine.
In towering structures like that built for giants, is a series of pillars, engraved in tapestries of divine animals.
In each of them, an idol of a divine animal is enshrined.
A spider, a lion, a leech, an ox, a snake, a fungus, a shark, a crocodile, a jellyfish.
From the graying void of the sky above, rain begins to fall, slipping through the grated metal, into a black, bottomless abyss below.
As the girl traverses the metal plane, she comes across the form of the slain hallowed wolf.
Its body lies still, its black blood dripping through the grates.
The limbs of human corpses that curve into its snout rest still, multiple wounds and fragments of blades and arrows visible on its body.
The bird on the girl's shoulder cocked its head, its searchlight-like eyes shining on the dead creature.
"Dead, huh? I suppose it did take on all of them that were left... Helform won't be happy, though."
Turning her gaze to the dead creature's maw, the girl saw a foreign object, wedged in the wolf's mouth.
Despite the bird's look of disgust, the girl reached inside the animal's mouth, and extracted a torn, eviscerated arm with her own metal fingers.
"...That's an arm, yeah," the bird commentated.
He looked around, the orbs of light in his eye sockets shining.
"Probably that one's."
The bird nodded to a direction past the Hall of Divine Beasts, where a slumped form could be vaguely seen.
The girl walked slowly, step by step, to where the bandit woman had fallen.
The rain poured down on the plane of metal. From far above, grated bridges of iron were visible, intercrossing far above, over the metal floor. Overlaid over each other.
Like a cat's cradle.
Like a hive.
The girl carried the arm with her, until she stood over the body of its former owner.
The bandit's weathered, light armor was cracked and broken. Auburn hair poured from the head of the woman, young, but prematurely aged from trauma and scars.
Her eyeline festered, a venomous wound rendering her face undecipherable. Her arm, too, was torn from her socket like an angry child might treat a doll... blood loss paling her skin as the rain serenaded her.
Still on the girl's shoulder, the metal bird blinked his eyes.
"Hmm... she's not properly dead yet. The soul's still clinging to the body."
The bird nodded back to the direction of the other ward... the forest of stained glass, where the other massacre of the bandits took place.
"Not like those other husks back there at all. Maybe the wolf died before it could properly execute her? It's a shame. This kind of death is painful... drawn-out, y'know."
The girl crouched, the rain running down her grafted hands, as she placed the arm next to the torn shoulder, as if trying to put it back in place.
Then one of the girl's bladed fingers brought itself to her own cheek, and in a slow motion, created a cut, the point of the finger gouging her skin.
Her graft dripping in black blood, she lets the droplets fall onto the wound on the bandit's shoulder.
Instantly, the blood grew roots, as it mixed with the bandit woman's blood. Reaching, stretching, to connect to the joints of her amputated arm.
The girl's blood raced another direction, too, racing within the circuits of the woman's body-- closing wounds, healing scars. Even the lesions around the woman's eyes began to recede.
The bird sighed.
"Hana... why?"
Inside the girl's eyes, was something.
But, it wasn't exactly mercy. Nor pity. Nor sympathy.
She met the bird's eyes.
A buzz, a thrill of abstract static resonated around the space, words spoken from an unseen organ.
Her voice.
Isn't it impressive?
The thought, slithered, imprinted itself into the bird's mind, making it feel the meaning.
The last moments of the bandit and the wolf, captured by the overseer cocoon, replayed in his eyes.
And the feeling in the girl's gaze became clear.
Glory is earned. To wander blind, to move forward, against the tide of death.
And to escape its reach, for just a few more moments-- even kill its steward, to live, just a few more seconds.
Such a thing... it should be rewarded, shouldn't it?
Otherwise, what use is resolve?
The bird had no choice, but to acknowledge those feelings, though still, it shook its head disapprovingly.
"...Aren't you what these people were after in the first place? Most sensible people wouldn't try to revive their abductor..."
But still, it made no move to stop her.
"Well, whatever, Saanhana. Do what you want."
The girl-shaped figure, Saanhana, rose to her full, modest height again.
In her eyes, was a black slit, in a golden pool called an iris-- its design resembling a snake's.
The cut on her cheek trembled. Beneath the exposed skin, something like scaled worms moved, writhed and rotating.
Like a nesting doll of skin, hiding a mass of something-- else, inside.
A beat passed, and a new, unmarred layer of the girl's skin closed over the scales, healing like new.