ULTRA · VIOLENCE

scavenging cadavers is not particularly a past time of hers in the after strokes of the script, but scientists have this call about them she has never quite found it in herself to ignore. perhaps it was how her life could be claimed back to her by a single one of them. perhaps the way such brilliant minds could come to the self justified rationale that sacrificing a few would always be greater for the many. 

perhaps today was just a thinly veiled excuse to spread her wings for a little longer. it’d be a lie to say she took pleasure in the lives lost between rubble and ash, but it would be an even larger one to claim falling back into routine for the first time since penacony had not relieved something within her. against all odds, it’s dull reflection of the cinders around them caught her eye.

all things considered, it was a terribly straight forward mission. a planet torn asunder by a stellaron, and the great, twisted minds that were conducting research of dubious morality had to be left as scorch marks on crumbling bricks.

alas, fate did enjoy running it’s rings around her, as a nearby life form registered in her sensors and regret soon seeped in at the selfish wish to prolong her trip. 

the woman is beautiful and dangerous in equal measures, with her pale cascades of silken hair and a poise to her that had every nerve of firefly’s stood on edge. sam could still slip from her fingers if she threw caution to the wind. those days after she woke from the sweet dream and her suit remained beyond her grasp, one she never thought would be so desperate, still a fresh haunt in her mind.

“ your death was not written in the script. leave now and there will be no need to add a footnote. “

This was, for a long time, a difficult truth for Jingliu to accept. In the distant past, amidst a life so far removed from her present that it was hard to recognize as her own, Jingliu had wanted to transcend the game board of Xianzhou politics. Of fate. Struggling against the deliberate machinations of those who despised or coveted her strength, she ultimately remained no more than a pawn in the grand scheme of things. Less than a pawn, really, to the real players of the game: the Aeons. And utterly unaware. But she had seen reality for the farcical game it was, and so she almost embraced it. Better to be a piece still on the board than not. On the board, a piece could still influence the game’s outcome — could trick the players, its own and its opponents’, into believing they had full control.

Quietly, Jingliu thought it felt rather strange — to be able to reflect on her past, however briefly, without the skin-crawling familiarity of madness looming at the edges of her consciousness. This was, she supposed, the miracle of the Wisdomwalker. Then, she wondered if, perhaps, the madness was still there. If it was only her awareness of it that had been dulled by the first phase of an experimental treatment, much to the interest of her Xianzhou keepers, offered by a certain Dr. Loren — in exchange for something suspiciously trivial and vague. As she wove through the still-smoldering debris of what was once a laboratory of some sort, Jingliu recalled the exact tenor of the doctor’s voice, trying to appeal to her pride, “This task should be simple enough for you.” Retrieve something of interest, a drive that had been “lost” after incidentally exchanging too many hands, from a remote planet.

At the time, Jingliu did not care to know what Dr. Loren was hiding. Those who negotiated the deal seemed uninterested in digging deeper, too. Or, perhaps, the prospect of Jingliu falling into a trap far away from the Xianzhou fleets was not entirely a negative — despite the promising future she had given them a glimpse of.

The presence of a Stellaron on this remote planet was an omen ignored. Her footsteps, almost silent, brushed against rubble. Through the dim veil of her blindfold, Jingliu suddenly saw the silhouette of —

The mechanized armor’s voice, threat-laden yet controlled, sliced through the silent absence of the living. Despite herself, Jingliu felt an itch beneath her skin, radiating from the palms of her hands into the tips of her fingers. Ultimately merciful, she restrained herself, her head tilting ever so subtly as she scrutinized the stranger. The drive in the armor’s gauntlet. That casual mention of a script.

“I often say such things, myself. But I have no intention of leaving.” A resolute refusal. Delicate things, like negotiations, were never Jingliu’s strong suit. Even now, her hand ached for weightless moonlight. For the cold hilt of a perfect blade.

The intercom crackled to life. Attention, travelers … The androgynous voice began, utterly emotionless, floating above the soft cacophony of footsteps, the clatter of suitcases, and varied chatter. Attention, travelers, this is an urgent message. Please proceed to the nearest safe room in your terminal. Directions are posted on the overhead signs. Leave all luggage behind. Attention, travelers …

At first, an uneasy silence settled throughout the airport. Then came the soft murmurs of nascent panic and hurried footsteps. Suitcases rolled off in incongruous directions. Distantly, a baby wailed louder than its parents’ strained coaxing.

Still leaning against the glass of a wall-length window, Jingliu quietly observed the once-filled seats at the gate, now empty. Then, she glanced toward the organized rush of people moving through the terminal. Her unit had been briefed about the possibility of something like this occuring during their time on this planet. They had been told — in no uncertain terms — to not get involved. Their presence was for one purpose only: finding and dealing with the Abomination of Yaoshi that had escaped to Izumo.

This is an urgent message. Please proceed to the … Pushing herself off of the glass, Jingliu swallowed her exasperation and decided to join the crowd. She had spent significant effort tracking her quarry to this airport and this hour, and was anticipating a relatively easy catch. Now, it seemed that things would be slightly more complicated.

Up ahead, the flow of the crowd was, for a yet-indiscernible reason, becoming congested. As she moved closer, Jingliu saw the panicked young couple hovering at the safe room’s entrance. One was frantically looking around, craning their neck to see over the sea of heads. The other was begging the passersby, asking if anyone had seen a little girl about this tall, their daughter. People shook their heads with pity, but pushed onward, averting their eyes, to save their own lives. The authorities near by refused to let them back out into the terminal, sympathetic but stern. As Jingliu watched with an expressionless face, the begging one met her gaze. In theirs, despair and hope warred viciously. They stared at her for a moment, then saw from over her shoulder the unmistakable hilt of a sword. “Please, valiant warrior … ” They began in a hoarse, almost-timid voice. “Please, help us find our daughter!” Jingliu said nothing. Desperate, they turned to the authorities still holding them back, as if convincing them would somehow convince the white-haired swordswoman to be their savior, “Surely, a warrior is authorized to … ”

“What does she look like?” Jingliu interrupted, uninterested in softening her voice with kindness or consolation. Startled, the couple nevertheless realized she was agreeing to help them, and began to thank her. Irritated, she interrupted again, “Time is of the essence. Gratitude can come later. What does she look like? What is her name? When did you last see her?”

As soon as they answered, she turned, weaving her way through the oncoming crowd.

・・・

“Kasumi!” Jingliu called out once more. How many times had it been? The crowd had thinned out for some time already, comprised only of worried stragglers half-jogging to catch up with the rest. But there was no sight of the girl. Pink and yellow attire, hair tied up in such-and-such way, this tall, with a beauty mark on her left cheek. One could only hope that this was because some good samaritan had found her and taken her to a different safe room. But Jingliu had no reason to believe this. More likely, the child — no doubt terrified after losing sight of her parents — found somewhere to stubbornly hide.

Gritting her teeth, Jingliu made the decision to backtrack. Maybe, she had missed something. “Kasumi, your parents are looking for you!” At first, nothing. Then, the sound of little footsteps echoed from behind her. Jingliu turned, right as Kasumi ran up to her to hug her legs, and she barely resisted the urge to sidestep the child.

Suddenly, a chill ran down her spine. Out of pure instinct, her hands found the hilt of her sword. In the instant that followed, the glass of the wall-length windows shattered into countless pieces and fell like rain across the floor of the terminal hallway.

Shimmering, the colorless shards struck the surface of Jingliu’s blade, which almost chimed like a death bell. The blade remained strapped to her back; she had turned around to shield Kasumi. As the glass settled, Jingliu slowly looked over her shoulder; bits of glass shifted in the grooves of her armor and fell to the floor. Outside, where the field of pavement for the airport once was, writhed a monstrosity Jingliu could barely describe.

Jingliu did not hear Kasumi cry out Daddy! behind her, nor did she hear the girl’s father, foolish to have forced his way out of the safe room, fall to his knees in terror.

All Jingliu heard was the roar of a stampede, fast approaching. A mass of shapeless shadow, both multitudinous and unified. Or was it merely an effect of the monstrosity's furious shrieking, a hallucination?

Above the white landscape silenced by snow, the night sky's indifference was the coldest thing of all. Wind, howling, rattled the skeletal frames of the disaster-torn ruins outside the city walls of Hyperborea. The former dignity of these structures lived only in memory. That is to say, it lived nowhere at all.

Suddenly, a piercing light flashed across the sky. But it was gone as quickly as it appeared. Ephemeral, like a hallucination or a miracle. An omen. Was anyone watching?

An unbearable ache pounded crudely in someone's head. Like a dull knife ... sawing repeatedly into a hardened loaf of bread. Someone grimaced. The phrase echoed in someone's head: like a dull knife, like a dull knife, like a dull ...

Someone realized her eyes were not open. What were eyes? She thought for a short time. Opening her eyes, what they saw — was not any different than before. No, there are less colors, now, but more shapes. Some things high above me, appearing and disappearing. Someone stared for a little longer, squinting. Her eyes began to adjust, and she became aware of the horrible cold against her back.

I'm outside. I'm lying down? I'm outside, and lying down. Each thought, each word of each thought felt — like a dull knife.

Quickly, she sat up. Or she tried to. The pain in her head worsened. Made itself known. She gasped, and the cold air was a shock to her lungs. Seconds passed — or minutes, or hours. She tried to sit up again, slower this time, with tentative hands searching for support. She sat up. The dark was still dark, wanting to veil everything. She shifted to her knees. Her limbs felt strange and foreign to her, as if they weren't hers. She glanced down at her arms and hands, which were half-shrouded in the empty night. Then, unafraid, but not unfazed, she tried to stand. Her boots sank subtly into the white earth beneath them. Snow. Where have I seen it before?

She failed to come up with an answer. As she looked around herself and saw, at first, nothing but the snow — she sensed the need for urgency and heard the call for panic, but felt neither. Then, on the horizon, silhouettes that promised a village, a fortress, civilization. Still on unsteady feet, she began walking toward it without any sense of how far those silhouettes really were, unaware of her own shivering.

As she walked, like someone mindlessly touring a souvenir shop, she perused her own thoughts as if they were curios. Artifacts of a fascinating, but inconsequential nature. Slowly, the silhouettes became more and more distinct, identifiable, nameable. They were all half-destroyed, but she could see their pasts clearly. Houses. A useless watchtower. Fencing in need of repair. A large barn.

Out of everything, the barn was the most intact — with its mostly caved-in roof and swinging, half-broken doors. She approached it. There was a tightness in her chest, a feeling she could not name. Her hand pushed against the aged wood of the shabby door. It creaked, loudly, but the wind swallowed the sound. Inside, snow had already gathered. There was, on the far wall, a number of holes, gaping like maws, that allowed the cold to settle in. But in the near corner, there were — tools, perhaps. Things that made her feel less lonely.

A wave of exhaustion crashed through her. She staggered, and her hand reached out for the wall, finding purchase there. She sank down to the ground, back resting against the old wood. Then a drifting thought came into focus: Who am I? What is my name? And ■■■■■■■ failed to come up with an answer.

As she puzzled over this, something else escaped her notice entirely, save for a quiet unease that her headache had superseded. Something dire and urgent.

Throughout her dogged march toward the abandoned village, the city walls had a clear view of her. A ghost moving through the white landscape. A living thing cutting through the mire of death — perhaps, only to join it.

“Shut up, Yu.” Up ahead, someone else — sterner-looking and more dignified, especially for a fellow bandit — snapped. The remark incited an unwelcome series of jeers and snickers from the rest of the group. “Yeah! Shut the fuck up!” “No one wants to hear that shit, Yu!” Yu's indignant protests were drowned out by malicious, raucous laughter — though that, too, was cut short. Sweeping the light of his lantern across the other bandit's faces, the stern, dignified bandit hissed, “Keep your voices down. We're in the Chasm.” At the reminder, the once-lively chatter petered out. “Yes, Zheng.” “Sorry, Zheng.” The bandits continued their trek back up in an uneasy silence, broken only by the irregular shuffle of their footsteps and the sounds of their hauls clinking.

The journey down into the depths of the Chasm hadn't been so bad. Thanks to Zheng's strategies, they kept to abandoned mining tunnels with still-intact infrastructure — and largely avoided anything especially harrowing. If any of them caught sight of something strange — like dark mud on the ground or the walls, they backtracked and found another path. More than just few of them had felt this was too cautious to find anything good, so a smaller group had broken off. Some of the newer recruits who had stayed not out of loyalty, but out of fear, now felt an unearned sense of resilience and triumph — having braved the worst of Liyue's environments and prevailed.

Suddenly, Zheng stopped. Behind him, a few of the bandits didn't notice and collided into one another. Just as they were about to break into arguments about it, the bandits noticed why the boss had stopped. Ahead of them, the narrow tunnel had opened up slightly. In the widened space were bizarre statues of ice — in the shape of frightened, fleeing men. Then, the realization: those weren't statues, but fellow bandits they recognized — now frozen, now ... dead?

“Don't look. Don't think.” Zheng barked. “We're more than halfway there. Go.” Stepping aside, he pushed the other bandits forward, waiting for each one to go ahead of him. A chill ran through him. “Where's Yu?”

Someone shivered. The bandits glanced at each other, trying their hardest not to look at their frozen comrades. “He probably ran off with the goods!” “That bastard!” “That fuckin' bastard!”

Zheng shook his head. He took a few steps down the path in the direction they came in, and called out, “Yu? Are you there?”

No response. Just his voice, echoing.

Then, a thud.

Zheng's head fell to the ground, glistening, encased in ice.

The rest of the bandits screamed, scrambling. Chests of junk clattered to the ground as they pushed past each other. Moon-like slivers of shimmering ice cut through the air behind them, and their numbers dwindled one by one.

As he ran, one bandit felt compelled to look over his shoulder, to see what was behind all this. He turned his head and briefly met its eyes — her eyes, glowing blood-red. Her white hair blurred as she closed in on each of his comrades — her prey. Somehow, he managed to crush down his own scream, and kept running.

・・・

A pair of bandits groveled on their knees, utterly undignified, sobbing, their faces a mess of tears and snot as they pleaded to the exasperated Millelith guards trying to get rid of them. “You have to help us, please! Our c-comrades—” “There's a demon down there! You can't just let that ... please, oh, please, venerable sirs!”

“Okay, okay, okay. Okay. We Millelith guards aren't adepti, alright? We can't handle demons, either. But,” one guard answered, clearly uninterested in actually helping out these bandits, “you can always try putting in a commission with the Adventurer's Guild. Hey, we'll even let you go make the request before arresting you.” Hearing this, another guard sputtered. The same Adventurer's Guild that puts out daily commissions to clear out bandit camps? Talk about kicking a man while he's down. The two bandits understood this clearly, too, but—

“Please! I'll even stop being a bandit! I'll give all my money away to charity! I swear, I swear!” One bandit, with his head suddenly and aggressively pressed to the dirt, practically shouted. The other bandit, a little startled, quickly imitated his companion and kowtowed, too. “Uh, m-me too! Please help us, sirs! I mean, what if the demon, what if it comes out?!”

The guards looked at each other, then burst out laughing. “Will the bandits we rescue also stop being bandits? Listen to yourselves.”

Then, from behind them came a gruff voice. “That's enough.” An older guard approached, and the two younger ones stiffened up, clearing their throats to greet him as sir. “Bandits or not, the Millelith do not abandon people in danger. Find someone who can help these poor fellows.” “Yes, sir.”

The old guard glanced down at the groveling bandits, who quivered before him. “Look at me.” He squatted down slowly, meeting their eyes with a certain coldness. “Tell me everything about this demon.”

・・・

Plastered on commission boards throughout Liyue and even along the cliff-walls surrounding the Chasm, succinct posters advertised, “Seeking skilled adventurers, exorcists, and warriors to clear out Chasm demon. Contact Zheng Hao at the Chasm base for more information.”

The man lay forgotten. He could not fault the world for that. He was beginning to forget himself as well. Soon enough, it would end, wouldn't it? Heat courses through his veins yet he has not the mind to move. He attempted to recall himself, recall anything, but there is nothing.

A chill at his back and a voice that was far yet near. Clear yet muddled. Comforting yet horrifically hostile.

You, she said. Who? He wanted to call back, ask in a joking tone, Have you forgotten my name too?

He should open his eyes but they feel as though they refuse the command.

In an instant, he finds that the hostility of before was not unfounded nor a bluff nor jest. That sword - one of his making for he knows the feeling of it's edge - pierces his skin, through muscle and bone and sinew.

Where blood is meant to pour, to spill forward or shoot up from the force with which she's stabbed him, there is nothing.

In fact, the pain from the blow at all dissipates the moment the skin is broken. No, did the skin ever break in the first place. He opens his eyes, it's the first time in a while but seeing the world makes none of it any clearer. He is greeted with blood red eyes he's certain he should recognition. Whether through the pain behind him or the fact that his heart hurts at the thought of that sword being in the hands of another - he calls out to her. Except his voice doesn't quite come out.

The man only looks up at her confused, hurt, frustrated. Why? His hand grabs hold of the sword. Did she kill him? That strike should have, he knows it, so why... why is he still here?

He attempts to plea, just a moment. Is it right of them to be this hasty with one another?

The faint sound Yi■gx■ng made as he opened his mouth drew her attention. She met his bewildered gaze, his expression of hurt. This was a mistake. In that moment of horror, she could neither explain to herself why she was doing what she was doing — nor could she understand why she suddenly wanted to stop. This was her friend. This was an abomination. This was —

Suddenly, his voice made sounds, weak and pleading and pathetic. Then, the sounds cohered into words, into sense and meaning. Would ■■■ want this? And Jingliu felt it, as that unbearable clarity of conscience shattered into a million pieces. Her grip tightened around the sword's handle.

Only vengeance remained.

“What right — ” Snarling, she twisted the blade. “ — do you have to ask that?!” She knew there would be no blood, no wound, and there was no blood, no wound. “When you and he conspired to desecrate her death, did you think if she would want this?!” But she wanted there to be blood, wanted to see a wound — so she twisted the blade again.

Then, Jingliu heard it. Or, perhaps, she imagined it. The mind-numbing song of the Plagues Author's miracles, like wind chimes in nascent spring: the soft sounds of reborn flesh, muscle, sinew, bone — reconnecting in an instant.

With the utmost cruelty that her overripe heart could muster, she pulled the sword out of Y■n■■ng's healed body. Slicing upwards as it exited his flesh, it left only a memory of a wound.

What was the difference between cruelty and mercy? Pointing the broken tip of the Shard Sword at Y■■gxi■■, Jingliu made a promise to him, “I'll kill you.” It was, also, a promise to herself. Someone was laughing; it sounded like crying. “I'll kill you!”

It was the clarity of conscience — one burdened by unforgivable sin. But there were graver sins only she could punish, and so — it, too, was the clarity of justice. No, not justice, but vengeance.

Everything in the world around her seemed to vibrate with vividness and detail. The wind dancing against her skin. The dust shivering beneath her boots. The dead grasses crumbling against the edge of the fractured Shard Sword, held low beside her. Everything in the world seemed to call to her, to tell her — your quarry lies ahead; your prey awaits you. Her silent footsteps somehow grew even more silent, like memories being forgotten.

The song her conscience sang was a phrase. Of five people, three must pay a price. The song her vengeance sang was —

“You!” Jingliu's frigid, crystalline voice cascaded out from the darkest depths of her heart. Seeing @neverendingdeath's body curled up on the ground, corpse-like, she had become a wraith again, even with her newfound clarity. In the blink of an eye, the distance between them disappeared. A trail of ice carved into the dust behind her.

With her arms raised above her head, Jingliu held the crumbling Shard Sword above the man's — the monstrosity's seemingly limp form. In her mind, the anguished roar of the half-draconic abomination echoed as if it were still alive, pleading for its death.

Kill me. Kill me, please.