What A Woman's Got To Do: 15
A great dark tower rose over the ruins of Zuyang, a whirling column of blackness miles across and reaching up into the sky, far out of sight. The city lay spread around the blackened remains of what must have once been a pleasant river valley. Trees grew on the hillside where Elena, Arrafin, Nevid, Isaac and Etienne stood, but they were withered, stunted things twisted and gnarled with sickness.
What grass grew here was yellow and thin, and cobwebs hung from every branch, as though no animals ever passed beneath. The whole place stank of decay and disuse. Down below, along the cracked and smoking ravine that had once been the bed of a great river, stones lay jumbled upon each other, only occasionally arranged in any sort of order that might suggest actual construction.
"I saw this..."
"What? Nevid? You saw this? Where?"
The slight Saijadani youth turned to Elena.
"In my dreams. Tsin Kwan's memories. I saw... her. The Demon Goddess. She did this."
He staggered to his feet and peered back at where a vast, smoking crater told of the enormity of the explosion they'd just witnessed. Vast sprays of earth disappeared beyond the hills, launched upwards hundreds if not thousands of feet into the air. Faintly he heard the impacts as boulders the size of houses plunged into the city.
At first he thought the wave of twisting smoke radiating out from the crater's edge was flame. He realised, without knowing how he realised it, that he was watching the souls of the people of Zuyang, torn from their bodies by the pure rage of unchecked Shadow. A great dark cloud began to form overhead.
"You haven't destroyed her."
Thousands died as he spoke. The wave of death expanded outwards. Behind it, buildings exploded into dust, paving stones blasted up hundreds of feet into the air, walls blew apart, and behind it all, the terrible terrible screaming of a young girl's tantrum.
"You've just made her angry."
Nevid looked up at that freakish tower of darkness.
"Those are... souls. Souls torn from their bodies by the Demon Goddess, and never able to pass on to the Shadow Realm. They're stuck here forever."
The group stood silently, staring down at the scene of long-ago horror and death. Over the groaning wind, another fainter, more unsettling sound became audible, as of millions of distant voices moaning and crying out, indistinct, but agonizing in need.
"And they're hungry."
"Oh, good," muttered Isaac, "That's exactly what I was hoping you'd say."
*****
Within the ruins it was much, much worse. The whirling vortex of dead souls howled in a continuous painful screech that dragged at their eardrums, making it almost impossible to communicate. The group staggered down ruined streets, clambering over ripped-up paving stones and collapsed walls, trying to ignore the terror and anxiety that built up as they pressed further into the devastated city.
"What was that? What was that?"
"What, Elena? What did you see?"
"No. Nothing. Never mind."
Isaac chewed ferociously at his cigar as he followed his friends. The undead voices moaning all around them set his nerves on edge, and he himself was seeing odd shapes in the shadows, menacing apparitions that disappeared when he looked at them, movement just out of the corner of his eye.
They moved on, finding themselves on a long boulevard that stretched straight into the heart of the ruins, deeper into the darkness beneath the great towering whirlwind of horror above them. Further in, the devastation was not as complete, and here and there walls still stood, mute witnesses to a century of suffering.
Etienne kept his focus on the next unsteady paving stone, refusing to look anywhere around him, no matter how many bizarre shadows tugged at his attention. Arrafin staggered on with her eyes closed, clinging to Isaac's belt and fighting to maintain her feet in the raging gale.
Voices muttered and groaned. Shapes danced and threatened.
Elena tried to keep her wits in order, but distractions bore down on her. Every time she turned to see what was hovering off to one side, cackling or shivering, it vanished. Only to reappear on the other side of her vision. She was sweating heavily, despite the shrieking wind.
Nevid recited recently-learned formulae in his head, clinging to sanity through the cold rationality of mathematics.
"Let's make for that building! The big one on the right!"
Isaac grabbed Elena's shoulder and pointed towards a low complex of buildings that seemed less damaged than others and might provide some shelter from the ever-increasing winds. They staggered in that direction, passing through a crumbling gateway and on into a high hall that still had most of its ceiling intact. The sudden decrease in noise from the wind and the voices startled them all so much that for a second they didn't realise what surrounded them.
"I guess this is your girlfriend's old place."
Skulls. Thousands upon thousands of skulls lay arranged in tidy piles, their empty grinning faces speaking of slaughter. Slaughter on a scale so vast as to be unimaginable. The pyramids of skulls stretched across the immense hall, seeming to shrink as they receded into the distance.
But they didn't recede that far. The smaller skulls were... smaller.
"Oh,
me. Those are children's skulls. Little babies. Oh, you're kidding me. This... this..."
Elena broke off as her attention was drawn upwards, up the far wall, to where the group of them realised a massive fresco was just visible beneath decades of dust and decay.
Looking down on them all was an immense portrait of Madame Yuek, a seductive smile touching her perfect lips.
Elena pointed, turning to Arrafin.
"Is that what you like? Huh? LOOK at this place! This is her palace, or whatever. LOOK at what she is!"
Arrafin glowered, but made no response. Elena rushed over and grabbed her.
"What's wrong with you, Arrafin? What the hell are you thinking?"
"Whoa, whoa, Elena, calm down. Not now."
Isaac took a smack across the jaw for his efforts. Elena glared at him, and then swayed, putting a hand to her head.
"Guys. I'm not... I don't feel so good. I think we need to... hurry up."
"Yeah, okay. Come on."
Isaac kept a close eye on Elena as they went back outside, once again braving the voices and wind as they made their way deeper in towards where their maps told them the Sanctuary would be.
All of them struggled as they made their way up the ruined boulevard. Isaac found his hand straying again and again to his swordhilt, and only by shaking himself mentally could he restrain the desire to draw it and attack the endless shapes around him.
"There it is!"
Etienne saw it first; a cluster of collapsed buildings just beyond a stretch of rubble and deep yawning pits. They had to work their way around the worst of the destruction before they could approach the ancient compound.
"Careful, Etienne, don't-- oh, there he goes."
The normally nimble half-Kishak had been making his way over an unsteady block the size of a house when it tilted and he slid from sight. Isaac sighed.
"Here we go again."
The others scrambled over to where their friend had disappeared, to find a inclined block leading down into darkness, where Etienne could just be seen, waving at them.
"Guys, come down here! I found something weird!"
"That's tempting."
They struggled down the slope and into the space beyond. It turned out to be a dank chamber, lined with strange machines hissing and bubbling. Wires and tubes ran in confused patterns all over, fluids pumping and dripping as unseen vents hissed and sighed. The noise from outside faded away.
"There's no dust here. This hasn't. This is new."
Arrafin studied one of the great banks of dials, coils and switches.
"Shang. This is Matai Shang's work. It's all bound up in sorcery."
Etienne called from around a corner.
"Uh, guys? It gets worse over here."
The others joined him, and drew back in horror at the sight: a young pre-pubescent girl lay on a steel slab, unmoving and rigid, with dozens of tubes and hoses emerging from her body. Her forehead, arms, thighs and sex all dripped blood and other fluids where these mechanical insertions had been made. Unidentifiable fluids pumped in and out of the girl's body.
"She's alive. What the hell is he doing?"
Arrafin pointed at a nearby rack, where a number of identically-shaped crystals sat. The first was dark, but the others were clear, like massive diamonds. Arrafin approached them more closely, but jumped back in alarm.
"It moved. It's..."
Both she and Nevid peered at the darker crystal.
"There's something inside..."
"A soul. A human soul."
Isaac nodded, chewing on his cigar.
"Alright. Let's get out of here. We've still got to get to that Sanctuary, no matter what Shang is up to in here. Somebody help Elena."
The Saijadani woman had started weeping uncontrollably. At Etienne's urging she roused herself and followed the others unsteadily back out into Zuyang's hideous streets.
"I can't. I can't."
"Come on, Elena, we're almost there. Just a little further. You can do it."
"Please. I."
Etienne put an arm around his friend and helped her over the last pile of rubble. They caught up with others on the edge of the courtyard that had once been a Blood Council Sanctuary. Not much was left, but there was enough to indicate the typical outline of buildings in a Sanctuary.
"Okay, so. Tea."
Isaac looked around expectantly. Etienne shook his head.
"I don't think we need tea, actually."
"The Blood Sister said tea."
"Any liquid will do."
"No, we need tea."
"Look, just give me the cup and I'll show you."
"No!"
"Give it here!"
BANG
The argument between Isaac and Etienne ended at the gunshot. They turned in shock to see Arrafin and Nevid turning likewise, all of them facing Elena.
Who collapsed to the ground, pistol falling from her hand.
And half her head blown off.
