CHAPTER FIVE
*****
"Now he comes forth! Witness his unveiling! The Emperor of Dreams comes before you all to free you from the chains of your Goddess. He comes!"
Upon the stage, facing the packed theatre, the lead actor pronounced the closing lines of Sung Li-Ling's new play. Above him, two other actors portraying spirit assistants of the Emperor writhed and pranced on the upper balcony, looking down upon the crowded theatre. By this point the theatre was filled with convulsing, jerking figures seated and standing around long tables running the length of the room.
Banners and lanterns hung from the crossbeams, swaying in the rising heat from the crowd. Even the waiters had paused, frozen in their steps by the unnatural waves of psychic energy flowing from the stage.
Slowly, at the center of the stage, directly behind the lead actor, a bizarre sort of hole began to emerge. A hole not in a wall or a panel, but simply floating in the air itself. A hole that tore at the minds and the sanity of all who looked upon it.
Even the minds of Li Fa, Zheng Ming-Wa, Muen Wei-Yong and Tong Shan, who sat, just as frozen as everyone else, staring in unthinking rapture at the obscene violation of reality taking place before them.
"He comes!"
The hole tore itself open further and a seething, scintillating wave of grotesque energy spilled out across the room. The four women at the back jerked as one, but only Ming-Wa shook herself and managed to look away from the horror unravelling reality itself before her.
The slender young woman looked around. She saw Mau Li, Wei-Yong's wolf, tugging on her mistress' hand in a desperate attempt to awaken the woman from the spell that descended upon them all. Human voices began to rise all around them, edging into the same sort of gutteral territory as the things they had fought in Mien-tsa-wing and Hu-shih-tsai. The entire audience was beginning to transform.
She turned to Fa, sitting beside her, and put forth her terrified mind into her friend's, seeking something, anything, she could use to retrieve the older woman from this terrible fate.
Fa shook, sputtered, and suddenly looked around in wild panic.
"What?"
Ming-Wa pointed at the stage. Fa shot out of her chair, black tendrils already licking up around her as she called upon sorcery's dark power.
The hole was no longer tearing itself open; it was being pulled apart by the limbs of some horrific, bloated thing that spilled forth, flailing tentacles and spraying slime in all directions. Screaming erupted on all sides as some folks sought to flee while others leapt upon their neighbors, savaging them with teeth and talons newly grown. The stink of blood and death and terror filled the cramped space.
Fa gestured and a thin needle sprang from her hand to impale the fearsome beast emerging from the hole, pinning it where it lay, half in and half out of the world. Ming-Wa sought a handle or a weakness in the thing's mind, but the patterns she encountered were wildly alien, brutal and incomprehensible, and again and again she found her mental grip slipping as the spirit's mind resisted her efforts.
"Goddess preserve us."
She saw Mau Li still snarling and tugging on Wei-Yong's hand, and with a flash of inspiration, she reached out with her mind to grab hold, not of another mind, but of the hook from which one of the lanterns depended, and flung the blazing box at Tong Shan's head.
The wooden lantern struck the big woman's helmet and shattered, spraying burning oil in all directions, but having no effect on Shan's continuing fasination with the actor on stage.
Ming-Wa nearly swore in frustration.
Fa groaned as the spirit beast tried to free itself from her transfixing needle, to pull itself fully into the Living World. She pressed her will against it, standing like a pillar amidst the chaos in the theatre as she focused her thought and her will on keeping the sorcerous needle exactly where it pinned the creature to reality.
Mau Li tasted her mistress' blood and the wolf, loyal beyond all else to her beloved mistress, gritted her teeth and bit down harder, her limited understanding sufficient to know that overcoming this terror was more important than her mistress' temporary comfort. Wei-Yong shook and cried out, yanking her hand free and staring down at Mau Li, who, overcome with remorse, lay sadly down at the woman's feet.
Wei-Yong looked around and blinked at the obscenity flapping and hissing up at the stage. Her bow was in her hand and arrows were flying down the length of the theatre before she even recognized where she was.
"The needle! Hit the needle!"
Even as Fa tried to tell Wei-Yong what to do, Ming-Wa, reasoning that the first lantern hadn't been enough, used her mind's strange powers to once again reach out and take hold of another lantern, sending it flying into her friend's head.
This time, the impact knocked Shan sideways, and she scrambled to her feet, looking around wildly.
"Her Big Holy Boobies. What's that?"
Fa cried out from where she stood.
"Shan, time to kill things!"
"Right."
Shan noticed the half-empty glass on the table.
"Beer. Good."
She drained the glass and drew her sword.
"Here we go."
Shan charged.
As her friend began building momentum, Wei-Yong saw the shimmering needle Fa was shouting about. It was only a couple of inches long, hanging in space just before the spirit creature, surrounded by flailing tentacles and hissing orifices. Wei-Yong drew, leapt up onto a table for a clearer view, whispered one quick prayer to the Goddess and let fly.
Shan jumped up onto one of the long tables that ran the length of the theatre, seeking a clear highway towards the stage. Wei-Yong's arrow buzzed past her head as she did so, and Shan watched as the blurring shaft flew straight and true, missing every one of the thing's limbs and striking the tiny silvery needle hanging right before it. Despite the sudden blast of white energy released by the impact, Shan made no attempt to alter her course or slow down.
Things needed killing, and the only strategy Shan ever used was to go where the things were and start killing.
At the impact of Wei-Yong's arrow with her needle, Fa grinned. The spirit creature was now completely within the Living World, and subject to all its laws. More darkness swirled up around her and the theatre floor at her feet erupted with a sudden roar. Heedless of the shrieking, frenzied mass of people between her and the stage, Fa gestured and the explosion roared down towards the stage, throwing bodies and furniture in all directions as it shot forwards.
Just before the stage, Shan heard the noise of Fa's earthbolt and saw that another figure had joined the two at the balcony overhead. This one wore a terrible, featureless mask that one clawlike hand rose to strip away.
"No you don't."
Shan had always wondered how much vertical she could get if she timed a jump to exactly coincide with Fa's spell.
Quite a bit, it turned out.
Wei-Yong gaped as her heavily-built friend, caught in the path of Fa's fearsome spell, suddenly seemed to bounce towards the ceiling. There was a tremendous explosion as the earthbolt reached the stage and sent timbers, curtain and flaming lanterns in all directions. The creature there blew apart in a reeking fountain of slime and gore, and riding the whole blasting wave was Shan, laughing savagely as she sailed up in front of the masked (and suddenly astonished) figure, and delivered a crippling blow with one swipe of her sword, only to plunge earthward immediately.
Even amidst the crashing and collapsing in the wake of Fa's spell, the heavy crunch of Shan hitting the floor was distinct.
"Ow. That was fun."
Dark whispering coils erupted around the figure in the mask. Fa tried to focus, to send her will into the other sorcerer's spell, but the frenzy of the theatre made it impossible to concentrate. She cried out a warning to her friend, but it was too late.
Shan looked up just as a mammoth pillar of searing flame rushed down on top of her.
"Shan!"
Wei-Yong, horrified at the sudden immolation of her friend, saw the two actors to either side of the figure in the mask leap out onto the heavy beams that ran the length of the theatre. One jumped down to the floor right where Shan stood, reeling, while the other raced towards where Fa tried to find a clear space in the midst of shrieking chaos. Wei-Yong spun, her bow horizontal, and dropped to one knee to give herself the angle she needed to pick off the running actor. He clutched at the feathered shaft projecting from his side and crashed to the floor. She kept spinning until she faced the stage again, and saw Shan straighten up, in the midst of charred furniture. The big woman swore.
"I think that burned my eyebrows right off."
Wei-Yong chuckled in relief at her friend's annoyed tone.
"Maybe it got rid of that little moustache, too."
Shan swore again and swung at the actor who'd dropped to the floor before her. He leaned back far enough to avoid the blade, but too far to avoid Shan's booted foot, which kicked out at his knees and knocked him to the floor. Shan raised her sword over her head and brought it down.
And missed. Her blade buried itself in the floorboards, and even Shan's tremendous strength could not pull the weapon free. She heaved once, then frowned as the actor leapt to his feet with a fierce yell.
A yell that cut off in a startled fashion when Shan head-butted him so viciously he flew backwards, spraying blood and stumbling right into the hole. THAT hole. He got out one quick shriek before some sort of horrible suction tore him backwards fast enough to rip him to pieces.
Ming-Wa had kept an eye on the upper stage and the second she saw the masked figure re-emerge, she reached out with both one hand and her mind.
The thing was no longer human, but it remembered being human. And it remembered pain. Ming-Wa reminded it.
Shan started as the body crashed into the burned floorboards beside her. The mask popped off and rattled off under the tables.
Although the theatre was still a swirling mass of humanity and ex-humanity struggling in fearsome throes of bloodletting, the four women relaxed, knowing their foe had at last been defeated.
Wei-Yong frowned.
"Should we maybe do something about that hole? It looks like it's getting bigger."
Fa and Ming-Wa both frowned. Ming-Wa narrowed her eyes.
"The Goddess will not permit such an abomination to exist."
She planted her feet and stretched out one hand, the other rising to her temple as her eyes closed and she opened her psychic senses.
The wild freakishness of that hole, that portal to the Dream Worlds, thrashed and battered at her like waves of howling brilliance. Ming-Wa swayed and gasped as the portal's growing power flung her will back and forth in its savage tide. Desperately she tried to gain a hold, to force the terrible all-consuming hunger backwards, but it defeated her. There was nothing to hold on to within its chaotic heart, and just the act of trying tore at Ming-Wa's sanity and identity. She felt herself fraying, coming apart in the hot, sick wind of the Dream Worlds, and threw herself back from it, dropping from her psychic trance and collapsing to the floor.
Fa and Wei-Yong and Shan rushed to their friend. Ming-Wa raised her spinning head and looked down at the stage. The hole had grown, and spread its multi-hued lips wide, tearing apart reality even as they looked upon it.
"Goddess... preserve us..."
Ming-Wa sagged, throwing herself into desperate prayer. She prayed to her beloved Goddess, the ruler of all the world, She who lived in splendour in the great celestial city of Zuyang, who watched over all her daughters with a stern but merciful eye, and she begged.
"Goddess. We need you. You must help us. This thing is beyond us and it will threaten all the world. Goddess. Your daughter of the Bended Knee begs you. Help us. Help all these people, Goddess. Stretch forth your infinite power and stop this obscenity. Please."
The women all fell back from Ming-Wa as a pale, extraordinarily beautiful face shimmered into being above her prostrate form.
"My daughter..."
"Goddess! Help us!"
The face turned from side to side slowly, smiling. Shan burst into tears at its perfection and began begging forgiveness for her many oaths and blasphemies.
"No, my beloved daughters. You must end this yourselves. I dare not. The mask. The mask is its connection to the Living World. Send back the mask. Hurry, my beloved daughters."
Fa leapt up and spotted the mask where it lay between an overturned chair and a ravaged, bloodstained corpse. She hurled it into the hole.
There was no sudden explosion or fireworks or thunderclap. The hole was simply gone, and that strange pressure in all their minds gone with it.
The beautiful face, dark eyes and red lips and white white white skin, faded away, still smiling. All four of the women wept, while around them people continued to die at the hands of horrid, twisted grotesqueries.
"Goddess... preserve us..."
*****
Fa picked at the bandage on her arm. She looked over at Shan, sprawled in a chair on the other side of the heavy table they sat at. The city square around them echoed with voices and excitement as the city watch finished cleaning up after Sung Li-Ling's final premiere. Stars glittered high overhead.
"So they sought Her hara. The Jade Razors. And She didn't show them. She showed us how to stop them, and we did it. They did not provoke Her. They failed."
Shan nodded and drank down her glass of beer before replying.
"Or else we are Her hara. And now they know. So they'll kill us."
She grinned. Wei-Yong grabbed her friend's broad shoulder and tugged.
"Come on, Shan, enough talk about killing. When's the last time we were in a city this big? Let's get drunk and you can beat up some boys."
"City boys."
Shan's eyes lit up and she rose to join her friend.
Fa looked over at Ming-Wa who was watching Shan and Wei-Yong with her usual disapproval. The older woman stood.
"I'll come with you two."
All three of the other women stared, then Shan laughed and slapped Fa's shoulder with enough force to knock the stern woman sideways.
"Time you loosened up, Fa. We'll find you a good time in this city no matter what."
Ming-Wa glared and she and Fa locked eyes briefly. Fa shrugged.
"We are Her hara, Ming-Wa. Her centre. A little party can't change that."
Ming-Wa folded her arms over her chest. With angry eyes she watched her friends walk off into the crowd.