Welcome to the Gallery

See, now I'm imagining a story where out of spite, Gwi-ma, before his spirit is torn into pieces and spread across his realm, drags both Celine and Third into the demon realm.

So Celine and Third are stuck in the demon realm and have to find their way out while also killing demons trying to kill (and eat) them and also trying to thwart demons who are plotting to find the pieces of Gwi-ma and absorb his power.

Meanwhile, in the human world, Huntrix are panicking because Celine up and disappeared and, they would soon hear from the news, Third had disappeared that same night.

Fearing the worst, they perform a ritual to call upon the spirits of Celine and Third. Who answered was Miyeong.

Miyeong, drawn into the body of Rumi, tells Mira and Zoey that no, she doesn't know what happened to Celine and Third. They didn't appear in the hunter's afterlife, she would have known, she's been waiting for them for such a long time.

And Mira and Zoey are like, "please, is there anything you can do? They disappeared on the same night we defeated Gwi-ma. He must have had something to do with it"

So that's how Miyeong ends up traveling to Gwi-ma's realm and finds that Celine and Third have basically been nonstop arguing/flirting since they've arrived.

Close ups:

Close ups:

Today I have to wake up at 3:00 in the morning for early morning shift I have not gone to bed since I am asleep deprived man and I just wrote a damn chapter do something I don't even remember anymore.

And that's how fried my brain is right now I know it's something Carmen sandiego related.

And no I don't know what it is got to repeat the same shift tonight fun maybe I'll get out another chapter remember to post them.

Anyways hope everyone has a good night day whatever whenever they read this I have to go get ready for work now.

Zoey and Mira would not be able to fight her since she looks exactly like Rumi

Rumi's twin attacks Celine but Celine doesn't fight back. Not at all and is gravely injured, slowly dying.

Rumi's like: "WHY!? Why wouldn't you fight back!?"

Twin is like: "SAME! What the fuck Celine?!"

And now they're both trying to keep her alive but mad as shit at both her and each other.

Mira and Zoey are so fucking torn bro. That's Rumi and her mom! Their mentor! But that's also Rumi's sister! And she looks just like her!

And she's clearly distressed by what she did!

Because she expected the fight with the famous Demon Hunter that held the Honmoon together for years by herself. The one Demons used to tell horror stories about how she'd sweep through their ranks while belting out notes with tears in her eyes.

Good luck with the Thing. You can do the Thing. You will do the Thing. You just have to do the Thing.

Best wishes,

Currently: most of the way to Seoul, the gang stopped in a hotel for the night… only to have to battle off wraiths who came looking for Minji. With Celine injured, and some questionable piles of ash on their hands, their plan has not survived first contact with the enemy.

After the reveal that Minji was actively targeted - going back to her apartment was very much not an option. At least until Celine got cleared for going back to risking her life, "let the wraiths follow us back from a known place" was not an option. And Rumi and Mira had been going everywhere in the apartment complex laying, tucking defenses and other things to ward off wraiths everywhere that they could slip something out of sight - with even more without the out of sight portion in Miyeong's apartment. Also the apartment of her neighbors, an old retired couple. When Mira and Rumi had almost been caught putting the defenses up the two had played the superstitious old people to the hilt - and that is how there was a second apartment in the complex that Mira had given a begrudging approval of. The two had decided that the pack of people that were tucked into Miyeong's apartment were apparently "lovely". Given that Miyeong knew that Yeonngi had been in the upper register of their opinion by the pair being politer in their comments about him when he wasn't around Miyeong felt perfectly reasonable in asking Rumi if her neighbors had been replaced by something supernatural. Because the pair had never in all her years of being in the complex had a positive thing to say about a guest of hers that had stayed more than one night in a row. Up to rescuing everyone from Miyeong's terrible cooking when Minji finally slept. And also that the two had been completely not asking any questions what so ever when the police had finally gotten around to contacting Miyeong. Which it was something to put on the white board for discussion of whether that was due to corruption from the Kang's being filthy rich, general lack of noticing the supernatural, something targeted or whether there was cult apparatus embedded. Because somehow it had taken two days for the Seoul police, who had been trying to find Minji to actually make contact. Who was merely the only staff member who had worked the night shift of the ER on one of the two days immediately prior to the fire who was still alive. (The demons had hit during the shift change. When Minji finally got that information while Celine and Zoey was out, Mira and Rumi had gone to see the neighbors. Miyeong had pretended to not notice that Minji was crying. Despite feeling Minji's body shudder as Miyeong uselessly curled around her friend) Okay - that Miyeong was sure was due to supernatural shenanigans. Because the police hadn't called Minji, or even Minji's family. Somehow every single attempt at finding the numbers and records kept coming back without bearing fruit. Hospital records - everything on site destroyed, with the offsite backup managing to hit with corruption that ate Minji's contact information. Family members of the coworkers - memory problems or phones ending up taking swims... into rivers. One by being hit by a pigeon apparently spontaneously forgetting how to fly.

The police officers—who looked like the photos of themselves in dress uniform that Miyeong had looked up just in case, thank God—were waiting where they said they would be, settled on a bench and facing in opposite directions.

She watched as Park Yeongjin spotted them, nudging Kim Seongho to turn. The men stood, offering a quick and professional greeting that Minji and Miyeong returned.

Park Yeongjin eyed the bench criticially. “That seems a little small for four. Shall we walk and talk, Minji-ssi?”

“That sounds fine to me, Inspector,” she agreed. That was the end of the pleasantries.

“We might as well get down to it,” Kim Seongho said, his voice surprisingly low and rough—maybe a smoking habit? “What can you tell us about the events of the last few days from your perspective? We’ll ask you to clarify anything or come back to any important-sounding details, so don’t worry about them, just give us what you think of.”

So Minji told them.

What they got back was little, at first—casually noting that it didn’t appear anything had been stolen from Minji’s apartment, and how difficult it had been for the firefighters to manage the blaze, but at least it hadn’t spread to any nearby buildings.

A request that they not speak to any other officers about this, at least not without a direct introduction by the both of them, which indicated that there very much were ongoing concerns about corruption in the department, even if Miyeong hadn’t been willing to risk saying the name Kang and watching this whole mess crumple up and blow away just yet.

It was the casualty count Kim Seongho gave stuck in the back of Miyeong’s head, though: all of the staff, thirty-five patients so far, and one civilian.

Only one.

She warns it will still take a while, and Celine's spirits and Mira's half-remembered auguries are also still days from bearing fruit, but it's a lead, and it's enough momentum that Celine wants them all on the same page about wraiths. So she spends dinner holding forth on demonic metaphysics, like Miyeong's tiny dining room is a lecture hall and they're all halfway through some supernatural PhD.

"Spirits are a natural part of the world," she's telling them, between annoyingly elegant spoonfuls of soup. "Even demons are, by most definitions." She doesn't look at Rumi, there, but Zoey and Mira both do. Rumi looks at the table.

"Wraiths are neither. They're not truly alive, or independent; they're shards of Gwi-Ma himself, connected to him, with all his abilities and malice. Like him, they grow in strength as they corrupt and consume, and as they grow stronger, so does he.

"The wraiths we face have fed to a degree I've never heard of, and we should not underestimate the danger. But I have met stronger spirits in my time. Now that I have their measure, I can prepare us better for the rest of them."

She sounds more than a little put out. Which is pretty funny from where Mira's sitting. Four hours of sleep, no implements, and two wraiths packing as much power as a higher-order gwishin each? Mira's abeoji wouldn't have made it out the door. Jageunabeoji might have made it as far as getting his shoulder ripped open before his defenses dropped, but physical pain is a great antidote to spiritual composure, in Mira's experience, and he'd still have been dead before Rumi woke up. But Celine froze the thing with a half-remembered spell on a piece of paper and a quarter of her blood volume in the carpet, and somehow her pride is still bothering her more than her arm.

"So do we have to use magic?" Zoey wants to know, tragically oblivious to how ridiculous the shaman is being. "We can't just, I dunno, shoot them?"

Mira answers before Celine can. "Think zombie rules. Injuries don't matter but if you destroy the whole body that'll work."

From the look on her face, it would have pained Celine less if Mira had actually physically slapped her, but she admits, grudging, "That is… a functional comparison."

"And they have to have made a deal with Gwi-Ma," says Miyeong, slow and resigned, not really a question.

"Yes," Rumi confirms, with deep sympathy. "Not all who die in his service become wraiths, but all those who are wraiths died in his service."

There's something a little haunted, or maybe hunted, in her eyes, when she says it. Mira wonders who she's thinking about, if it's a face she's afraid to see or one that she had to strike down and can't let go of. Both are the sort of petty torment Gwi-Ma loves.

The next question is Minji's, quiet and uneasy. "You said they're… fragments of him. What about the person they used to be? Is there anything left, anything to… reach? Save?"

Mira looks at Rumi for guidance, Rumi looks at Celine with an expression that Mira cannot bear to see, and Celine looks at Minji, her face grim, her tone sad. "No one knows. They remember what they knew in life, they go to the same places, follow the same routines, when they're not advancing the whims of their summoners or their lord. It could be a sign that they are the souls of the dead in truth, and not merely stolen images."

Celine hold's Minji's eyes for a moment, intent, then Miyeong's, then Rumi's, and her voice goes iron.

"It is not a sign worth betting your life on."

Rumi closes her eyes, and breathes out, long and slow.

"No," she agrees, sad but steady. "It is not."

She’s taught Rumi just about every way she knows to fold a paper airplane, and gone down an internet rabbit hole about them besides, and is (to her horror) starting to get used to being woken up first thing in the morning to go practice a basic self-defense regimen in the courtyard. Which is good, because Rumi doesn’t sleep much, but she will zone out into a napping meditation once Zoey gets to the target practice part.

Beyond that, though, not exactly useful yet.

She’s picked up enough to sort of follow some of what Celine and Mira do without asking too many annoying questions—though absolutely any of those were too many for Miyeong, who flashed her a very tight, polite smile and… Zoey was bad at a lot of things, but she knew that smile pretty well. She skedaddled.

(The smile was at least better than Minji finding out that she hadn’t called her mom—that was scary.)

So: Zoey hangs out with Rumi and hangs out with Mira and hates herself for being bored when she’s doing something this important and terrifying and wishes she could be better and wishes her brain would just shut up and—

A magpie appears at the window.

Zoey does not, at first, really think anything of it. It’s a bird. It’s pecking at the glass, which isn’t the most normal bird behavior, but she’s sure that some of them have to try to investigate those invisible forcefields sometimes.

It squawks. At her. And then hops up onto the sash and pecks right across from the one of the locks.

“Um,” says Zoey.

The magpie gives her a look that indicates she’s being a fucking idiot.

“Are you going to kill me if I let you in?” she asks, leaving behind her bowl of cereal to come squint right back at it. “No—don’t give me that look, I know you wouldn’t admit it if you were going to kill me!”

The magpie blinks, and opens three eyes to keep giving her its magnificent side eye.

Zoey squeaks and jumps backwards. It remains unperturbed, pecking again at the sash. Which, well…

She can only die once?

“Fine,” Zoey says, and the magpie hops back down onto the sill, allowing her to flick the locks and slide up the window.

It doesn’t move.

“Well?” she asks, bracing her hands on the ledge as she leans forward it look at it. “All that and you—“

This is when the magpie bites her.

Admittedly, it has a minimum of six eyes and is behaving with an uncanny level of intelligence, so if there was a bird worth having a conversation with, Miyeong figures this is probably the one. But despite all the insanity that she's seen since the day she got that call from Minji, an overgrown corvid sitting coolly and imperiously on the top of her kitchen chair while the most elegant and dignified woman she has ever met bows to it and gravely offers up a small hardboiled egg still somehow feels like a bridge too far.

"Thank you for answering my call, Kkachi-ssi," Celine is saying. Zoey, a napkin wrapped around one finger and a great deal of nervous energy vibrating through her body, gives Miyeong a look like it's not her fault nobody told her to expect magical avian visitors and maybe if Miyeong were a little more forthcoming she wouldn't have gotten bit and had to come drag them in here.

Miyeong tries her best to silently convey don't yell at me I don't have any idea what the fuck is going on either without offending the bird, which can see both of them, or Celine, who has only the normal number of eyes as far as Miyeong is aware but still seems to know what's happening behind her with a frightening level of accuracy.

And indeed, almost immediately, Celine says, without looking away from the bird, "Stop fidgeting back there, and go assemble the others in the sitting room."

It's said with a certain level of affection, but Miyeong and Zoey both walk out like scolded teenagers. They split without discussion, Miyeong going after Minji and Zoey collecting Rumi and Mira, and by the time they all make their way back together, Celine is standing by the picture window waiting for them. The magpie is on her shoulder. It only has two eyes, now. Miyeong decides to stop looking at it.

Rumi also bows to the bird, when she sees it, which isn't that surprising. Mira politely nods her head, which sort of is. Minji looks baffled, but less concerned than Zoey or Miyeong were, which is unfair. Of course, she hasn't seen the extra eyes yet.

"Kkachi-ssi has agreed to help us," says Celine, like this is perfectly reasonable. "She reports malign spiritual energy in a district northwest of here, and is willing to explore more closely and tell us what she finds. She also knows of a healing spirit who may be able to assist Mira and myself in returning more quickly to a more combat-ready state, if I am able to contact him."

Miyeong is impressed with Celine's ability to say that last bit like it's just a normal piece of news, and not something that might free her from Minji's reign of healthcare tyranny and thereby save her last drop of sanity. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see that Minji is somewhat less impressed. Though possibly just as amused.

Celine continues blithely along, as though she can't read all of that on their faces. "I thought it might be beneficial for us to gather and consider if there would be anything in particular she might look out for. I know, of course, what spiritual considerations to look out for, but I'm not well versed in tactics or the mundane details of investigation. If Rumi-nim or Miyeong-ssi, in particular, have any suggestions for what they'd like to know about our enemy's lair, we would like to hear."

"Of course, honored shaman. Kkachi-nim," agrees Rumi, with another elegant bow, and then furrows her forehead, clearly already trying to compile a list of options.

Celine raises a brow at Miyeong, a flicker of warm humor behind her eyes, and Miyeong realizes, quite suddenly, that the shaman knows exactly how unsettled she is by this and is delighting in it.

Mira’s heart skips a beat.

The magpie spirit croaks haughtily.

“Oh, well, if you want a more personal name—“ Zoey starts, again interrupted by a croak.

She recoils in surprise, and her eyes light up. “That’s so cool—uh, I mean… Thank you for honoring me with your name, Suspicion-ssi?”

Mira’s heart is no longer skipping beats. It’s doing a goddamn tap dance—what the fuck does she mean, the spirit just gave her a name?

And, like, Rumi and Celine look just as absolutely fucking poleaxed about it, so Mira can assume this isn’t just a “evil cult that thinks you have to steal everything has taught her you have to steal a spirit’s name when really they’re chill about it with normal people” situation.

The magpie spirit blinks her extra eyes open and then shuts them again, looking distinctly satisfied.

“The rest of the room cannot understand her quite so well,” Celine says, faintly strangled.

Which, yeah. If Mira had spent several decades honing her ability to connect with various spirits, only for one to show up and bite some random into alignment, she’d probably feel a little wild too. As it is, she’s just glad the spirit had the good sense to pick Zoey.

A lot of other people wouldn’t be smart enough or kind enough about it.

“Oh,” says Zoey. She looks down at her bandaged finger with wide eyes.

“It is a great honor,” Rumi tells her earnestly. “Were we able, we would have a feast thrown for Kkachi-nim—and yourself, of course—in recognition of this connection, and the sight that she has blessed you with. I am certain we shall do so once the danger is passed.”

“Promises,” Mira says dryly, unable to help herself. Thankfully, the magpie spirit doesn’t take offense, only tilting her head in what might be amusement.

Neither of these statements do anything but make Zoey look really nervous again. So Mira feels great about it overall, really.

“…Right,” Miyeong says, sounding a little like she’s going to fall over. “We can probably start with what kind of building it is—an apartment? How big? Whether or not there are multiple occupants?”

“How many showers there are?” Minji mutters, probably just to make Miyeong elbow her and insist that she said she was sorry.

Suspicion-ssi croaked primly, drawing herself up haughtily. Yes. You were. There are reasons Gwi-Ma's forces avoided this building, and they have everything to do with amenities; there are some torments they are not willing to face.

Zoey probably should have expected an attitude like that, considering the way Suspicion-ssi was looking at everyone, but…well. It's one thing getting a stinkeye from a bird (she's gotten plenty from the pigeons and gulls back in California); it's another thing hearing their critique of humanity.

"And that was…?" Miyeong asked suspiciously (oh…wait…now that name's making sense), eyeing the bird like it was a coiled snake.

Zoey saws her teeth across her lower lip, trying to think how to honestly but accurately answer. It reminds her too much of standing in the kitchen of her childhood house, the one her parents sold after the divorce, trying to placate two warring people and only further angering both. Only now one's a bird. Or, well, spirit-bird.

This must be what people mean when they say 'great power comes with great responsibility.'

Fortunately, Celine steps in.

"Just her thoughts on the building, namely that it is safe from incursions by Gwi-Ma's wraiths," she says, outwardly cool and professional but her lips quivering at the edges like she's fighting a grin.

Suspicion-ssi smirks (birds could do that?), and Miyeong 'hmph's in response, able to listen between the lines; Zoey wasn't sure what Miyeong's opinion on birds was before, but something tells her it is tanking fast.

Rumi steps forward, bows to Suspicion-ssi, who fluffs her feathers and preens under the display of deference. "Honorable Kkachi-nim, can you enlighten us as to the type and location of the building the wraiths have made their stronghold so that we may better locate it?"

Suspicion-ssi makes a series of low croaking-clucking sounds that scrape through the air like a spoon against the sides of a pot. She directs her eyes to Zoey as she answers, so Zoey reasons that she's meant to translate.

"She says it's an apartment building, nicer than this one-" Miyeong is clearly never bringing breadcrusts to the park again "-a few blocks from the hospital. Like, you could walk it which would be good for the wraiths, I guess?" She looked around the others. "Do wraiths remember how to use the public transit system?"

"I mean," Mira shrugged. "They can be fast learners if they have to be. My dad once taught one to drive a little."

Zoey tucked that tidbit away to properly become paranoid about later and focuses back on Suspicion-ssi. Her eyes narrow, not with the judgment she's been raining down on everyone or that smirking satisfaction, but something...heavier.

Winging off Celine's shoulder, she settles herself on Zoey's, claws pricking little indents of pain through her shirt. Beak close to Zoey's ear, she croaks again, low, creaking, portentous, and Zoey gulps. Celine's expression hardens, and the rest of the room looks at Zoey, collectively on edge and holding their breath, waiting for her to speak.