bluefall

"Why is he gray?"

this image? we have every reason to think it is a cucumber, like it was made in clay models in burials period, it's painted green, it's on the small side of things (9.6 cm or 3 3/4 inch)

oh right and it was placed on a model offering table with small model bread and drinking cup

I mean like Knight’s Tale “chanting Queen at the jousting tournament ‘foxy lady’” levels of anachronism. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters with Hansel injecting himself with insulin and Gretel wielding a multiple-shot crossbow levels of anachronism. Go for Blazing Saddles, Blackadder, Jack of All Trades, Connecticut Yankee levels of anachronism

Currently: Minji and Miyeong made out, Rumi freaked out, and everyone has run out of time to deal with the aftershocks—they’ve got wraiths to kill!

Celine has distributed protective bujeok, to all of them, meant to make it harder for wraiths to read or influence them, and give them something to amplify an exorcism through if needed. It won't keep them out, not by itself, she'd said, once again visibly annoyed that she isn't able to singlehandedly no-sell the most powerful shards of Gwi-Ma himself that Mira has ever seen, but it will give you an edge.

Mira rolls the little talisman around in her hand, and wonders.

"Minji, you want to do a little science?"

Minji turns to look at her from the passenger seat. "That's a very Zoey question."

"Zoey asks smart questions."

That earns a small smile. "True enough. What kind of science?"

"Wraiths can't read minds, exactly. But they can tell if you're afraid, or jealous, or angry or whatever. I'm wondering how different the listening ear is."

"You want to see if Celine's bujeok will block it? I'm game."

"Yeah, cool. Might be nice for you guys to not have to worry if I'm digging around in your heads, too, right."

"That would be nice," agrees Miyeong, but it's friendly, lighthearted. Probably more than it should be, about a Kang using sketchy occult magic, but… if Celine trusts Mira with this shit, and Miyeong trusts her, and Minji trusts her, and Rumi—

Fuck Rumi, anyway, but they can't all be wrong, right?

"Passive defense, then active defense?" suggests Minji.

Mira nods, and focuses, starting the slow, arcane murmur of it, wrapping the words of the spell around herself until it sinks into her, something almost like an audible click and the strangest feeling of weight settling just inside her right ear.

She looks up at Minji and it feels like the weight looks with her, as little sense as it makes, and she doesn't exactly hear but it's like hearing, a mild pervading sense of curiosity and—

"Are you listing medication interactions in your head right now?" asks Mira, baffled.

Minji shrugs. "It's an easy thing to think about on demand. Wanna try active defense now?"

"Sure?"

Miyeong laughs and Minji pulls the bujeok out from under her various layers of borrowed outerwear to wrap a hand around it, spinning up a quick, quiet defensive melody.

Mira points her attention back at her, again bringing the ear with her, and she almost thinks she can pick up something, a vague impression of numbers, maybe, but it's like there's a wall of white noise in the way.

"That worked. Or the ear didn't? Like, maybe if I were stronger, it wouldn't, I can tell there's something to hear, but I can't get to it."

"Nice," says Miyeong, and Mira's attention drifts over to her, unthinking, the ear comes with it, and she catches—

A starving deer may think a rhubarb patch a feast, but the leaves are no less deadly for her hunger.

Mira releases the spell, "Shit, sorry, I clipped you, Miyeong. Need to work on my aim, I guess."

Miyeong doesn't respond for a moment, but apparently it's long enough for her to decide to be gracious, because she just says, "Thank you for telling me," easy and kind.

"… you think that's your line in the prophecy, then?"

"Yeonggi used to call me that, sometimes," says Miyeong, and her voice is still kind but it's definitely not easy, anymore. "His little deer. I don't know what the rhubarb would be, though." Her voice twists, goes bright, laughing, "I'm a little spoiled for choice, really," and Mira doesn't need the listening ear to know the casual cheer is a lie.

Minji reaches a hand over the center console to give Miyeong's thigh a reassuring squeeze, but if she had any insight to offer, she doesn't get a chance; Celine's car is pulling to a halt in front of them.

Mira peers out the window, through the rain, at the four-story apartment complex, a dark shape in the storm. The lights of occupied apartments slipping out through curtained windows should feel warm, but somehow, looking at them, Mira can only see them as trapped, crushed things, fading signs of life being slowly swallowed up by the shadow around them.

"So this is it," says Miyeong, and from the way she says it, Mira thinks she must be seeing the same thing.

…Now is not the time to think of such a thing. Clearly, the summoner hadn’t yet begun their work.

She can feel it charging the air, though. The cords are being drawn, readied to rip open the fabric of the world.

“Shall I carry the chest, mudang-nim?” Rumi asks. She has not said anything of Celine’s shift into a perfectly neutral register for her—appropriate for someone she does not know, not yet—but Celine wonders if she is truly imagining the extra hint of melancholy.

“That would be very kind of you, Rumi-ssi,” Celine replies, and offers the umbrella back between the seats to Zoey. “I’m sure you saw how slippery it can get when wet.”

“Oh—right!” Zoey startles from her own head, breaking off the nervous tapping of her bujeok against her thigh. It’d be easier to keep her from getting too anxious about the upcoming conflict if she had a way to keep her hands busy, she’d said, and Celine hopes giving her this little task will help.

As Zoey circles the car with the umbrella, and Rumi starts getting the chest with most of the gear into place, Celine considers what’s left in the front seat with her, and then the pouring rain outside.

Oh, well. Her hair was already ruined.

She turns the car off, tucks the mess of amulets under her jacket, and makes for the front door as fast as dignity will allow.

Funny, but it’s almost easier, once they’re all dripping in the lobby.

She’s been in a million lobbies before, readying herself to go pull the thorn from a tiger spirit’s paw or convince a ghost to move on before it drove its living family mad from a doubled grief. She knows her role here, now. She’s more prepared than she has been… ever.

Rumi-nim is fighting beside her.

Celine slips off her jacket, and gestures for Rumi to open the chest, that she can retrieve at least part of her proper garb. Usually, she doesn’t bother to wear anything other than her own suits, but tonight, she wants all the weight of its symbols and ceremonies.

“Pretty colors,” Zoey says. Mira snorts. Rumi makes a face, like she isn’t certain if they’re being disrespectful or ignorant or just silly, and isn’t certain if she ought to correct them besides.

Celine…

Zoey follows Celine up the stairs, stopping at every floor to set wards and warnings and mystical tripwires. It's strange, how strange Celine doesn't look, decked out in her traditional garb with its vibrant reds and stark whites and shimmering golds, a million miles from the monochrome Western business casual she always wears but somehow still perfectly in-character. It's so… normal to her, like there's no line, no contradiction between the modern world of cell phones and car insurance and this ancient mythology of spirits and demons.

And prophecy. Can't forget prophecy.

"So, when you get told about the future," Zoey asks, as they finish locking a spell down around a fire door. "Is that, uh. Generally reliable?"

"Do you mean what I told you when we met?" Celine's expression is keen and knowing. "Or Kkachi-ssi's prophecies?"

"Um. Either? Both? Like, it sure seems like what you told me came true, keeping a bunch of demon shards from summoning an uber-demon into the world feels, you know, kind of important. Is it… is the future, like, set? Determinism was real all along?"

Celine makes a thoughtful hum. "Things act according to their nature. A tree will grow to a given height. If a rocky overhang bars its way, it will grow to the side instead. You can look at it now and know the path it will follow for twenty years to come. You can't guess the number of leaves it will have, or which bird will land on which branch."

"So… what Suspicion-ssi told us...."

"Moments, or choices, that our natures will inevitably lead us to, but how we respond is ours to decide. If we can understand and heed her message it will lead us to the better choice, with the better outcome. Which I recognize may sound unlikely, given the consequences of her intervention last night," and oh wow she's trying to lock it down but she's real annoyed, "but spirits have their own rules, and advice she offers in her capacity as Wisdom is reliable, regardless of what she does in her personal time."

Zoey smushes her (honestly not really sustainable) impulse to defend Suspicion-ssi, and focuses on the task at hand instead. "How do we take advice if we don't know what any of them mean? Except Mira's, I guess, but we don't even know which ones everyone else's are! Even if you and Rumi are right about yours, that still leaves me with healer, deer, or mugwort—"

"Mugwort," says Celine, as she tucks scribed paper up under a doorjamb.

"… you know what it means?"

"No. But it feels right that it's you." She opens a little satchel, holds it out to Zoey. There's a powdery herb inside, one she's been spending little pinches of as they go. The very plant in question, Zoey realizes, remembers from Celine's first few exorcism lessons at Miyeong's place.

Mugwort is as sacred as it chooses to be, Suspicion-ssi had said.

"Isn't mugwort always sacred?"

"Arguably yes, but one could distinguish between the way mudang use it, for purification— such as right now, weakening the negative influence the wraiths have left by wandering in and out of this place for weeks— and its mundane medicinal use, which requires no particular invocation of spiritual strength."

"Oh, right, uh, menstrual relief, sleep aid, and anxiolytic effects, right? Clinically ambiguous but popularly attested when used in tea or otherwise consumed orally."

Celine shoots her a glance, eyebrow lifting. "Impressive."

Zoey shrugs uncomfortably. "Random useless fact repository, at your service."

The corner of Celine's mouth tilts up. "Would the repository be so kind as to cleanse this stretch of stairwell?"

Zoey dips into the pouch and takes a little mugwort between her fingers, breathes in, focuses, and copies the short little couplet Celine's been singing as she does this. That little tingle of power tickles through her skin, there's a tiny spark of heat against the pad of her thumb as the powder burns itself up, like snuffing a candle wick, and the air smells cleaner, lighter in its wake.

"Much better," Celine says, tucking the little bag back in with the rest of her gear. And then, just like that, they're at the fourth floor, where their target is supposed to be. When they push the stairwell door open, Zoey smells ash and copper and rot, sudden and unnatural.

Neither of us would accept a plan of attack that we did not believe you would all walk away from.

She freezes, looking back down the steps.

The wraith is wearing a set of plain blue-gray coveralls, the kind that would get anyone in anywhere, combined with a clipboard and a confident manner. Minji doesn’t know its face.

She’s glad.

It says something in Jejuan, and Minji would swear that Rumi’s eyes glow before she snarls and swings, clipping the wraith as it leaps over the rail and takes the quick way down.

She doesn’t give chase, surprisingly, but looks up at them from the landing, panting slightly from the sudden exertion. “You both are well?”

“We’re fine,” Mira says.

“What did it say?” Minji asks.

Rumi shrugs as she sheathes her sword, shoulders tight despite her blank expression. “A taunt. Meant to make me give chase. It is likely they were planning an ambush.”

“…Didn’t the spirit say the summoner was on the fourth floor?” Mira asks, frowning as she looks up to the fourth floor landing.

The spirit did. Which makes it very odd, from what Minji knows, for the attempted ambush to come from fully below them rather than having met them as they passed.

“We should reunite with Miyeong-nim, Zoey, and the honored shaman before we attempt to investigate,” Rumi declares firmly, tucking the umbrella back under her arm. “It would not do for us to walk into their trap, even without taking the bait.”

“Fair enough,” Minji agrees, and they take the last flight together.

There’s one door open on the fourth floor, and an odd chill in the air seems to emanate from it—a contrast to the cheerful, floral-patterned welcome mat.

“They’re not here,” Rumi says, grimacing.

“I don’t think you can call it breaking and entering if you’ve got a key,” Miyeong argues from inside, and Minji feels muscles she hadn’t even realized were tight relax at the sound of her voice.

“The summoner isn’t here, but that doesn’t mean we can be careless, they may have left something important,” Celine says as they join her in the little hall.

Rumi sweeps her eyes around the apartment, the place may have been homely once, before its owner gave themself over to Gwi-Ma. Trinkets and what looks to be a collection of rocks are piled high on a shelf against the wall. The windowsill is full of plants in cheerful, colored pots, but they are dried out and dying, if not dead already. Dirty dishes clutter the small sink and pieces of ceramic lay scattered across the kitchen counter. Rumi crosses to investigate, circling into the tiny, tiled area that must function as a kitchen. She can just make out part of an inscription on the largest piece. “World’s best—”

She feels more than sees Zoey flinch, over on the carpet by the table. 

Rumi’s hand drops to her sword as she moves to Zoey’s side in an instant. She bites back the nausea that always accompanies sanctified Mugwort. It’s comforting, in a way. Easier to focus on that than the guilt that pours through her as Zoey takes a startled step away from where Rumi’s just appeared. “It’s wet? But I don’t think it's blood? I hope it’s not blood,” Zoey says, gesturing to the carpet. Rumi buries her emotions and looks at the odd carpet; it does not smell like blood but it is certainly soaked through. Celine joins them and bends down. Gravely, gaze locked on the dark stain, she says, “Melted hoarfrost.” A botched summoning, we have even less time than we thought. Rumi’s hand tightens on the hilt of her saingeom. I need to cut the rot out fast. “Zoey!” Rumi whips around at the sound of Mira’s voice. She’s holding a small framed portrait. The painting within appears to have been torn in half, but the part that is still there is unmistakable.  The man who’d summoned the ambulance for them.

“Laundry or gym,” Miyeong says, immediately. Guess she didn’t spend all that time staring at floor plans for nothing. “Probably gym.”

It makes Mira exchange a glance with Minji—she tries to look at Rumi, too, but she’s too busy vibrating with rage.

So.

“I guess it wasn’t just a trap after all,” Mira drawls, hand settling on the skin-kal at her waist.

“Indeed,” Rumi growls, and then she’s charging the hallway.

“One second,” Celine says, which somehow actually works. “I need to move the barriers into better positions.”

Rumi spins in the doorway and, with surprising clarity given how pissed she looks, says, “We’ll have to split up. We are short on time, but—Zoey or Minji-nim?”

The person with the most shared knowledge or the person with next best combat skill.

“Minji, if you would—“

“Of course,” Minji agrees.

“Ten minutes, and we’ll be there,” Celine says. “It won’t be perfect, but we don’t have time to waste on that.”

Mira nods her acknowledgment.

“Come,” Rumi says to the rest of them, a plain command, and she doesn’t wait for anyone to agree before she’s jogging off. Though, given how fast she can move when she wants, maybe that is a kind of waiting.

Four floors worth of stairs aren’t that many, but Mira’s still winded by the time they’re at the bottom, readying themselves to step out of the stairwell and into whatever might be waiting. Though a bat is not truly blind, it is still smart enough to use its ears to see.

Oh. Well that’s dumb.

“Hold up,” she says.

And that works too, somehow. Wild. They actually look concerned about her.

“You okay?” Zoey asks.

“Fine, just—“ She breathes. “Thinking I can do a little surveillance before we go out there.”

Rumi catches her eye and her gaze softens for a moment, but there’s something underneath it that makes Zoey want to up the tempo of her impromptu shin-kal drumming. 

There’s a tap on her shoulder. Zoey whirls around and Miyeong, impossibly calm, winks at her. 

“Like a heist,” she whispers as she rests her hand on Zoey’s arm. She feels some of the tension in her gut evaporate.

Zoey flicks her gaze over to Mira; her eyes are closed in concentration and she has this adorable little wrinkle in her brow when sh—Focus! Couplets! Mira’s eyes snap open and the colour drains from her face. “The hallway is clear, but there’s something odd coming from the gym. It’s like someone cast a muffling spell and then got confused halfway through, the voices are fractured.” “How many? Did you hear Bobby-nim?” Rumi asks. Her tone is polite, but Zoey hears the strained undercurrent. “Hard to say, maybe four?” Mira pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’m not sure about Bobby, but someone in there is not having a good time.” “Stay behind me, I will draw the wraiths’ attention. Our priority is getting the sacrifice out of harm's way. Focus on destabilization.” Rumi’s tone brooks no argument. 

The trip down the hall passes in a blur of jumbled rhymes and ragged breathing. The wraiths start coming/and my mind starts buzzing/gotta keep on running!Rumi is a solid few steps ahead of them all and Zoey’s having to work double time to keep up with the others’ long strides. 

Rumi decides against informing her comrades of this fact at the moment. It will not do anything but demoralize them.

She takes them in, one last time—Zoey, shin-kal held loose and ready to throw; Mira with her grim determination; Miyeong, bells in hand. They will come out of this alive. Bobby will come out of this alive. Rumi will make sure of it.

She kicks open the double doors, the central pole between them giving with a crack, and rushes in, taking the room in with a brief, sweeping gaze. Madly, the walls are covered in mirrored glass, though most of the walls are covered by large, unfamiliar devices.

The wraiths have not chosen a defensible position amongst them.

Rumi moves towards the summoning circle, drawing her sword with a wordless snarl as she engages the first wraith—unfortunately, it manages to catch her swing, cackling.

“Huh—Rumi?”

Rumi retreats and attacks again, and this time the wraith is left to dodge.

Behind it, in the center of the summoning circle, stands Bobby, a small, wriggling creature in his hand.

Rumi stops.

Hot rage slams through her, such as she has never known before. What sort of fool am I, that my dearest friend and my poorest sustainer both are such monsters?

Something is thrown into her head and the force of it snaps her sideways, bloody pain radiating out from the side of her skull and down her neck. She hears someone scream.

But Rumi is not called The Unkillable for naught.

She straightens, feeling the bone of her skull push back into place and begin to knit together, and hurriedly makes certain that her comrades are not fallen—no, intelligently, they are using a stair-like machine as cover, Zoey throwing and Miyeong ringing her bells to keep the enemy at bay.

She turns in the direction of the projectile.

The wraith took its projectile from a rack of similarly shaped objects, different only by size. It has another already in hand.

In a heartbeat, Rumi has closed the gap and snapped its wrist.

In another, she turns it to dust.

Which is rude and unnecessary, it's not like she doesn't have plenty of authentic fear to worry about already.

Miyeong's bells clear some of the pressure, every time they ring, and there's a wraith, a tall, thin man with a swoop in his hair, maybe a couple years older than Zoey, circling around toward them, and it flinches a little with every shake as well. Zoey can hear Mira muttering something behind her, and can feel an odd… heat? from that direction, but she keeps her focus on the circling wraith, and inhales, the breath guides the blade, Rumi had said.

The wraith comes around a bench, the bells ring, it flinches out in the open, and Zoey exhales and lets fly, a shinkal soaring smooth through the open air and sinking deep into the wraith's shoulder. It screeches, and Zoey sees— hears? — none of her senses are quite right to describe how she becomes aware of something… unraveling, from where the knife is seated, a trail of noxious, twisting black and pink smoking away from the wound.

They don't feel fear, they don't slow down when they're injured, they don't care about pain, they only care about death in as much as it interferes with the objective, Mira had explained, and Minji had said, oh, so basically a Counterstrike match, which no one but Zoey had understood. It makes the strategy so clear, though: kill the weakest mob first, focus fire, an enemy isn't dealt with until it drops. Which means Zoey hasn't taken her eyes off the wraith, despite what would have been a crippling blow to a human, and the minute it starts charging forward in a rage, still screeching, trailing smoke and reaching out with lengthening, rot-stench claws, she's whipping another shinkal off her belt and straight into center mass, burying it in the wraith's chest.

The blow knocks the creature back, spiritual velocity apparently not much concerned with physical mass, and another plume of smoke bursts out, another unraveling twist. Zoey can feel the magic of shinkal still, a little, like she's still touching them, two gleaming notes of purity lodged in a knot of seething hate, and she reaches for them—

"Send you back to Gwi-Ma cuz you're nothing but ill-bred Cut apart your magic you're just rotting knotted thread—"

Something flashes between the two shinkal, a searing white line of fire ripping across the wraith's chest and splitting it open, and then it implodes, collapsing in on itself in a snarling black and magenta burst, the shinkal tinking musically to the floor next to the pile of sticky ash.

"Holy shit," gasps Zoey, who genuinely did not expect any part of that sequence of events to work while it was happening.

"Nice," says Miyeong, a little breathless behind her, and Zoey remembers the rest of the room and whips her head around. Mira is chanting, hand fisted in front of her and every muscle in her body clenched up, and there's a wraith snarling at them, held perfectly still, not quite three meters away, and Zoey can see a rippling distortion in the pattern of it, smell it slowly burning. Miyeong's hand is on Mira's back, the other white-knuckled on the bells, and she's straining a little, too, and Zoey can just about feel the way Mira's spell pulls on her, borrowing power.

Across the room, Rumi swings her sword wide, dances around a Bowflex machine keeping two wraiths at bay, every sweep and parry accompanied by circling movement as they try constantly to lock her up engaging one of them so the other can get behind her. She snarls, jumps backward onto a deadlift bench, and leaps toward Bobby, who has stood, frozen, since the four of them slammed into the room.

When she says as much, it earns her an awkward, shining half-smile that serves to power her entire next (and last) replanting, on the ground floor of the stairwell.

Possibly even overpower it. Even the awful fluorescent lights don’t seem as bothersome.

“You have your tools?” she asks, just to be certain.

Minji nods, raising a string of bells wrapped so tightly that they’re practically brass knuckles. Celine trusts her not to damage her own bones, if nothing else. She does, however, still hand over what’s left of her mugwort.

Just in case.

And then they hear footsteps echoing at the bottom of the stairs, and an almost animalistic growl, and the bubble pops, forestalling any protest Minji might have made.

The door clangs again as they hit the landing, and Celine catches barely a glimpse—perhaps Rumi’s purple hair?—of the altercation. She jumps the last few steps and nearly falls.

“Damn,” Minji hisses, eyes immediately on the ruined double doors at the end of the hall.

Celine, still wary of her garb—and her knees—notices… a red-eyed rabbit, panicking in a corner. The tension in her chest eases momentarily as she hikes up her skirts and rushes past the more intact doors at Minji’s side. The sacrifice has gotten away. No more wraiths.

Inside the gym, Miyeong and Mira are back to back as four wraiths circle them. There’s no sign left of Rumi, Zoey, or the summoner—except a mass of blood spattered around a summoning circle.

No, three wraiths circle. The last is trapped under Mira’s spell—Pak’s Unraveling, Celine thinks, from the feel of it.

“Sing with me, though the night is long,” she starts, striding in with a confidence she doesn’t fully feel, focusing on the sound of bells and the feeling of regalia and the fact that she must be enough. She must. Her voice comes out loud and steady from the first note, calling the wraiths’ attention.

It works—none of them leave their easier prey, of course, but one is foolish enough to make eye contact.

Celine reaches out, and grasps it. “Few are we, but our hearts are strong.”

The spellweave disintegrates, and the wraith turns to ash.

Unfortunately, she gets Miyeong’s attention too.

Her hand falls from Mira’s back—just for a moment. Just for a fragment of a second—and Mira falters, and the wraith, freed from her attack, lunges.

When the wraith leaps at Mira, Minji moves.

She tackles it just as its claws connect. To Mira's credit, she blocks well, hands up before it gets to her, heel back to steady her weight. It doesn't matter. The wraith is too strong, slashing deep into her forearms to knock them away with one vicious talon and closing the other around her neck, and when Minji slams into its back it brings all three of them tumbling down.

The momentum knocks the wraith's hand loose, a spray of blood following the movement of its dagger-sharp thumb, tearing an agonized noise out of Mira, and Minji loops her elbows under its arms and wrenches; maybe it's strong, maybe it doesn't care how much she hurts it, but it can't fight leverage, and she pulls so hard one shoulder pops and she hears the socket tear under the force.

A meter away, Mieyong screams, and Minji's head snaps up, but she barely catches a flash of color, red and white and spring green, Celine, and then the wraith's skull cracks backward into her forehead and knocks her dizzy. She twists, rolling them both sideways and off of Mira, trying to get her legs around its knees and pin it properly. There's movement in her periphery, a flash of light and color, and she twists again—

Celine, shapes moving around her, but Minji can't tell where, a reflection of a reflection off the mirrored walls, and the wraith under her cracks its head back again, sandy blonde hair lashing up at her and she dodges, catching it on the chin, clacking her teeth up hard on her tongue and spitting blood—

Do you think Seiun fought like this?

It's not— it's not her thought, it sounds like her but it— it's not—

You smell ash? Burning? It's the last thing Gyeonghui ever smelled, too. Do you think you're better than her? Do you think you deserve to live more than she did?

There's— she's holding something, is she— she can't let go, can she? It's important— is it? She's— is anything she does—

Did your parents taste blood, like you are now? When they coughed themselves raw with the virus you brought to them, the virus you walked away from and they didn't? You're always walking away, Minji. Always keep moving when no one else does, and why? For what? So you can keep snapping and biting through a world that kinder people were taken from, taken in your place—

A roaring wind slams though Minji's mind, stripping it bare, ripping away the oily-slick weight, clear air like warm spring and wind chimes replacing it, and the world snaps back into place: Miyeong, one hand clinging to the stairmaster, temple split open and dripping, the other hand gripping a bloodied bujeok and still singing the last few notes of an exorcism; Mira, red seeping between her fingers against the side of her throat, arms all but shredded, shuffling slowly forward; the wraith, thrashing beneath Minji, and she wrenches its arms back again and unwraps the bells from her wrist to lash them around its neck.

The wraith hisses, snarls, and the heavy pressure of fear fades, and she hears Miyeong say, "What did he offer you, Jeremy? What the hell did you think was worth your soul?"

The wraith giggles, eerie and pitched. "Would you believe spite? It was so long before we met, nuna. I was an angry boy with a dozen bullies and I wanted them punished. He did it! Oh, he did it. Gwi-Ma is good at punishment." Its voice dips, gleeful, sinister, so, so sure. "You'll see."

"No."

Mira coughs the word through bloody lips and a ripped larynx, but it still hits as hard as the wraith's skull cracking against Minji's had. She staggers the last meter, on her knees, lets go of her neck— the wound, god her throat, her fucking jugular— she won't— Mira— and digs her bloody hands into the wraith's chest.

"My turn."

She starts chanting, low, scraped through her torn voicebox, thumping like a drumbeat, old and unfamiliar — Mandarin? — every syllable heavier, more resonant than the last. The wraith squirms against Minji's hold, and Minji's skin crawls, something dark and hideous and electric sparking in the atmosphere around them, and Mira keeps chanting, and her eyes go black. And Minji watches, holds down the wraith, holds back her horror as inky lines stain slowly up Mira's arms, magenta-tinged tendrils crawling to her elbows, knitting Mira's lacerated wrists back together; watches the skin of Mira's throat close up; locks her arms against the increasingly violent thrashing of the wraith—

"You're a fool, warlock," it manages to gasp, pitchy and giggling still despite its struggle. "Draining the dead will only kill you too."

"Then I'd better make it worth it," says Mira, and pushes, light and power and violence roaring down her arms and slamming into the wraith, ripping through it like wildfire through dry brush and leaving Minji coughing into armfuls of empty dust.

"Mira," she manages, as she pulls herself to her knees. Mira's eyes are back to normal, but her arms are still shot through with pink-edged black, and she holds them over her knees with the same claw-fingered tremble of a woman with shattered wrists. "Mira, are you—"

"Not really," she answers, wild and teetering on the edge of hysteria, and a choked nearby laugh reminds Minji that Miyeong is here, too, Miyeong is hurt, too—

She scrambles over, and the contusion on Miyeong's temple is as bloody as any head wound but superficial, pending concussion check, and the abrasions on her arms look painful but not immediately dangerous, and her knee should not be bent like that, and Minji looks up, searching for Celine—

Blood roars in her ears as she gives chase, passing Zoey in this miserable concrete corridor, seeing Bobby disappear through the stairwell door.

She crashes through before it is fully shut, snarling as she grabs him by the arms and forces him to turn around, back the way they came. He wriggles in her grip like a rabbit in a snare—before shedding the jacket he’s wearing and running again.

Rumi follows, knowing Zoey is there to catch him.

Bobby catches on a moment too late, frozen in the middle of the hallway, spinning desperately from Zoey’s ash-streaked knives to Rumi’s bloody form.

He bolts left, and Rumi follows. Something in the back of her mind points out that she has no need to race after him. The rabbit is still in the trap. There is no exit there.

But she wants him dead.

Zoey calls her name, and Rumi does not bother with hesitation—she knows what must be done, the way to end this monstrosity.

It is dark inside, but she can see easily. She laughs. “Did you think the darkness would be to your advantage?”

Bobby trembles. He does not answer.

Rumi closes the distance between them, her hand at his throat, lifting him until his eyes are forced to meet hers. “What do you have to hide?”

“I—I’m not—“ His fingers are useless as they scrabble at her wrist. She will not give.

“You are a good man, are you not?” She tightens her grip, very slightly, only so far that he might feel it. “You are kind to strangers.” And again. “You are generous with your time and your wealth.”

“Rumi!” Light spills over them as Zoey bursts through the door. Bobby makes a choked sound, daring to call out to her.

Rumi tightens her grip again. “And still, you make deals with demons.”

Bobby wheezes, red-faced, squirming, and she drops him to the floor and draws her sword.

And then she hears a bright, ringing chime, and the wraith's face folds over into a look of baffled resentment as sick magenta cracks split through its whole body and it crumbles into ash, the momentum of its interrupted charge splaying the pile across the floor to stop just short of Miyeong's twisted leg.

Celine stands in its place, towering and radiant, power still snapping around her, ceremonial knife flashing in her hand in its backward grip, the brightly-colored pleats of her hanbok swaying with the echo of her movement. Like she's just stepped out of some goddamned tapestry, a gorgeous hero of legend sprung to life in front of them just in time to save their own, and for just a second, in the face of that righteous vision, nothing hurts. It's over, they made it, and their shaman is here, and everything is going to be okay.

And then Miyeong's knee throbs with such violence that she has to hiss and grab at the Stairmaster again or collapse. Celine's steely gaze softens, her shoulders loosen just a hair or two, and she tucks her knife and talismans back under her outer layers. Her eyes flick between Miyeong and Mira, assessing, a deep furrow of concern in her brow, and then land over Miyeong's head, settling into another one of those silent conversations with Minji.

"Two potential concussions," the nurse reports, in response, "and I don't know how Miyeong isn't sobbing right now from that knee, but we'll make it to the hospital."

There's something… ginger, flinchy, about the way she shapes her words, like half the syllables are somehow painful, there's blood on her lips, and a thought bubbles up, irrelevant, deranged, how am I supposed to kiss her if she keeps fucking up her mouth?

Minji's head turns sideways, and Miyeong tracks her gaze over to the blood drenching Mira's shirt, coating her throat, drying flaky on her arms and doing nothing to obscure the inky streaks. Minji's voice is flat, clinical. "Mira should be dead."

Mira laughs, nervy and full of edges. "The book just called it lifestealer. Heals just about anything if you're willing to kill enough people over it." The shape of her mouth is a smile the way a wraith is a person. "Guess now we know how Oesamchon beat liver failure."

"Mira," says Celine, quiet and soft and sad, as she sinks down to her knees with a wince to get a closer look at those crawling, clinging patterns.

(She doesn’t remember it well—not between the drugs and the trauma—but that night. In that cave. Rumi had killed them. She remembers, at least, the sickening sounds of bodies impacting each other and knowing that she had to get to the pink-haired woman who’d tried to help her. That she had to try for her too.

Because that woman hadn’t let her die without a fight.)

She wraps her hands around Rumi’s arm and feels how little it matters, just for a moment. The way she’s yanked along effortlessly.

And then… Rumi stops.

Looks at her—eyes glowing bright and gold in the dark, breath almost as loud as the wheezing from the floor. “Why do you stop me?”

“Because I—it—he’s—he’s just a guy, Rumi,” Zoey tries, desperately, dragging at the hilt, which seems to work not at all. “Because it’s wrong.”

Rumi stares at her, uncomprehending and full of rage and Zoey doesn’t know where it came from but she knows, she knows that—

“Weren’t you the one who said we had to hesitate?” And she flings up her hands to emphasize which might be a really stupid move but might, maybe, not be.

There’s a long, breathless moment, and just when Zoey is about to say something, anything, to keep Rumi from killing this guy who called an ambulance and waited all night to make sure they were okay and bought them clothes and food and was so, so kind.

But Rumi drops her gaze, instead, those glowing eyes on her sword as she muses, almost to herself, “Perhaps I am only a beast.”

“Well, he’s not dead yet!” Zoey blurts, and then cringes in immediate horror.

On the ground, Bobby makes a new wheezing sound that she interprets as “And I’d like to stay that way, please.”

“But I do not see why he should live,” Rumi argues.

“Just give me a chance,” Zoey says, and because her brain under pressure is a wonderful thing, every exorcism Celine’s taught her disappears in favor of that Mary J. Blige song: You know that I know that you love me/So if you just give me a chance…

Yeah. Great one right now. And Rumi still looks murderous, but she also looks still, letting Zoey do… something. Something to save her and Bobby both.

She kneels down next to Bobby, pulling out a handful of mugwort. “Hey, uh, I don’t know if you remember me? I’m Zoey, you called an ambulance for me once.”

“Yeah,” he croaks, hoarse, and she drops the herbs onto his torso. He spasms at the touch, and the smell of steam fills the air, clearing away the some of the scent of decay that she almost wasn’t noticing anymore.

“Ouch,” Zoey says, “sorry about that, it, uh, looks like there’s something in your head.”

Rumi breaths in behind her, sharp, but Bobby only looks confused.

“Hey, do you like Hwasa?” she asks, and then jumps in before he can reply, straight to the chorus, fishing for the talismans tucked in her jeans, “Maria, Maria, I'm saying this for you. It's a starry night.”

She presses against the tendrils in Bobby’s mind—they’re different than Rumi, rotten-feeling but weak. “Don’t torture yourself. Oh Maria, I'm saying this for you.”

Whatever in Bobby's head is sticky. Tendrils of tar, that yield and crumble and leave a residue behind and by the time she comes back to it, it's like the whole mess is right back in place, and it's not… forceful, it's not pushing him the way Rumi pushed Zoey but she can feel, as she probes at it, the way it sinks in and distorts everywhere, a dragging, lingering pall of cynical despair that poisons every possible thought.

"No frame, no fake," she sings, and the thing is, maybe she is. She's been learning this for all of two weeks, she's faking every second of it, she's a med student, she reads numbers off monitors and irrigates burns, and Bobby has been infected by some kind of ancient eldritch horror that even Rumi is afraid of. But if it can't be purged, Bobby's life is forfeit. And Zoey can't let that happen, not to Rumi, not to Bobby, and she is not stopping until that tar is gone.

Tools make an exorcism stronger, she lays out three bujeok on his chest, she sprinkles the mugwort—

Mugwort is as sacred as it chooses to be.

Is she—

Is Zoey the mugwort?

"Why are you trying so hard? You're already beautiful," Zoey sings, and he is, he's kind and thoughtful and warm and whatever the wraiths promised him, he doesn't need it, and god, maybe Zoey is too. Maybe it really is that easy. Maybe Zoey doesn't need to twist herself into knots trying to make medicine work, because her silly rhymes and her love of weird bullshit nobody else cares about or believes in saved Rumi and it's about to save Bobby and she can do this.

She can be as sacred as she chooses.

"You're already beautiful."

Zoey watches the tacky, clinging muck in Bobby's soul burn cleanly away, and he blinks up, squinting, like he's very confused and has the grandmother of all headaches on top of it, and there's still a warm hand on Zoey's shoulder, and when she looks up, she almost has to look away again at the awe on Rumi's face.

And then Celine sticks her head around the door, and takes them all in, with a cautious, "Everything alright in here?"

People that don't have a residence to send a mail in ballot to need to be able to go in person if they can. People in situations with abusive spouses or partners or families need to be able to go in person and be allowed to vote without influence, if they can. People who would feel pressured to vote one way or another, or feel pressured to show their ballot to someone else if doing it at home. People that can't read or write and don't have anyone they know or trust enough to help them with the ballot can get help at the in person places. They can ask questions of the volunteers there to assist. People that are nervous to do it alone can go in person together and make a little event of it. Sometimes the mail gets misplaced or stolen.