Chapter Text
“Don't leave me alone
A cry in the night
of anguish heart striking
of soul killing fright
Live for my living or else I must die
Don't leave me alone
a world heard that cry”
-Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffery
It began as emergencies often did with the summons to the newly rebuilt Grand Martial Hall. As always it was Ling Wen who sent out the summons but this time the god on whose behalf she was calling everyone together was a member of the middle court and he was in no shape to do the for calling himself.
Something had happened to him but no one was sure what. He'd been on patrol and he had encountered a powerful demon but everything beyond that was a mystery. When found the junior official had been shaking and crying out but even as the gods assembled in the Grand Martial Hall the medical gods who had been appointed to watch over him reported that the official had slipped into a coma. This was both highly irregular and distressing and what was more, the junior official was a martial official meaning that whatever had overcome him must have been powerful indeed. Xie Lian could well understand why Ling Wen had been so insistent that he attend.
Ling Wen might have been the one to call the meeting but the person who made the report was actually Feng Xin. It was his subordinate who had been attacked and once he finished explaining the situation he declared his intentions of going after the demon himself immediately.
“I don't think you should do that.” It was Xie Lian who spoke up and the whole hall turned to look at him in surprise.
“Your Highness?” Feng Xin frowned slightly confusion.
“What I mean to say is I do not think you should go alone.” Xie Lian clarified then explained, “While it is true that you are more powerful than your subordinates, your subordinate is surely not lacking in power and so to have overcome him so completely this demon must be quite strong indeed. If it was a matter of strength I would still leave it in your hands but this time it seems to be a matter of some sort of curse. If it is a curse then we cannot know for sure that you will not be susceptible to it as well and if you are alone then there will be no one to assist you should it be laid on you as well.”
Xie Lian’s words were frank and some of the younger martial gods winced slightly as though imagining how they would feel if such words were addressed to them, but Feng Xin only nodded slightly in acknowledgment of Xie Lian’s logic.
“Your Highness has a point but by that same logic I do not wish to put any other gods in danger.”
“Ah perhaps I was unclear.” Xie Lian gave him a small smile. “I was saying that I would like to accompany you.”
After Feng Xin accepted the meeting broke up quickly but when Xie Lian and Feng Xin made their way toward the descending gates Mu Qing fell in beside them without a word.
“What are you doing here?” Feng Xin demanded.
Mu Qing, predictably, rolled his eyes. “You heard his highness. The more people there are the less likely it will be that all of us get hit by the curse.”
“So what? You’re volunteering to be helpful?” Feng Xin snapped back. “We don't need your help!”
“Maybe you just can't admit that you need help for once!”
Mu Qing glared at Feng Xin and inwardly Xie Lian sighed. Truthfully he was glad and even a little touched that Mu Qing had volunteered to come along with them but from the way the two were already fighting he couldn't help thinking that this was going to be a very long mission.
The bickering lasted until the screaming started.
They found the demon in a twisting set of tunnels near where the injured heavenly official had been discovered. It seemed to be a shape shifter of some sort, sometimes it was a dark lizard with two tails, sometimes a shadow in the shape of a young child, sometimes a swirling ball of black mist. The three martial gods had backed it into a corner easily enough but that was when the trouble began.
When Feng Xin tried to strike at it a wave a dark aura poured from the demon and Feng Xin stumbled backward with a gasp. Mu Qing lunged at the demon but it darted away past Feng Xin and dove behind a boulder.
“What are you doing? Pay attention!” Mu Qing shouted.
Feng Xin ignored him, his eyes fixed and staring at something at the center of the tunnel where the demon had been not long before. Concerned. Xie Lian raced to his side. He was about to check his old friend for injuries when Mu Qing let out a startled exclamation behind him. He turned to see what both of his old retainers were looking at and froze.
“Jian L-lan...” The name left Feng Xin’s mouth in a shaky breath and he sank to his knees from the tunnel floor, eyes wide shoulders trembling.
Indeed before all of them had appeared that female ghost Jian Lan, but she was not a ghost, not back then. Before them in the tunnel had appeared a bed and on that bed sat Jian Lan, young and alive and bruised. Her lip was split and one shoulder of her robe had slipped down far enough to show the dark shadows of finger marks against her bare skin. Before her on a stool sat Feng Xin. This Feng Xin was not the proud martial god who they were used to but a plainly dressed youth. He was thin from hunger, there were dark circles under his eyes, and his shoulders sagged, the picture of exhaustion.
“Please, Jian Lan, don’t…” It was the Feng Xin on the chair who spoke, begging, Xie Lian realized that there were tears coursing down his cheeks.
“No!” Jian Lan snapped back. Her face was pale but her eyes were burning. “This is enough! Stop wasting my time!”
“Please, just a little longer. I swear! I’ll find the money! I’ll…”
“Liar! All your pretty promises and for what? Do you think I actually believe any of them? Do you think I believe anything you say anymore?”
Xie Lian winced. He knew that Jian Lan didn't mean a word of it, that she'd just been trying to drive Feng Xin away in order to help him. Somehow that knowledge just made the whole scene even more painful to watch.
“What the fuck is happening?” Mu Qing asked. His eyes were wide and even he appeared a bit shaken by the scene before them. Beside them on the floor of the tunnel the Feng Xin of the present knelt, shaking, one hand reaching out toward the translucent figures before him as though if he could only reach them he could stop things before he again made the choice that left Jian Lan alone to be murdered.
“It's the demons power. It must have something to do with memory or regret.”
Xie Lian took a step forward, not toward either Fung Xin but toward the rock where the demon hid. He had some idea now what its power must be. The middle court official who had first been attacked screamed and cried hysterically at first before falling into a coma, and now they saw this illusion before them. The demon must be one who prayed on certain sorts of pain or similar emotions, draining its target dry until they fell into coma, and then presumably into death. The scene that had appeared before them, horrible as it was to watch, also gave Xie Lian some idea of what sort of memory the demon called forth from its prey.
Feng Xin had loved Jian Lan. That was obvious. She was not an enemy or terrifying to him and so the demon was unlikely to call forth a person's enemies to torment them. That was a relief for Xie Lian had no wish to meet White No Face again. From what he could see before him Xie Lian guessed that what the demon summoned from a person's memory was either their greatest regret or a dead loved one or a loved one they had failed. For Xie Lian all three might be the same thing so he knew what to expect when he stepped forward.
He could not let this go on. This scene was personal. No one else should ever have seen it and forcing Feng Xin to relive it was a cruelty he could not permit. On the other hand both of his former retainers had been there for many of the most unpleasant scenes with his parents anyway. It was nothing they had not seen before and while it might be painful Xie Lian knew that he could bare it.
Xie Lian drew his sword, not Fang Xin, no this was a new sword, one that Hua Cheng had given him. He leaped forward, over the boulder that the demon had hidden behind and landed before it. Either he would be able to strike down or it would curse him and release Feng Xin. Since it had only targeted one member of the party and not all three he doubted that it could hold them both within its dark web.
As soon as he raised his sword the demon jumped away in its lizard form and from its mouth shot a wave of dark aura just like the one that had struck Feng Xin. Just then Xie Lian heard a cry and rushing feet behind him and in the moment before the wave of dark aura struck him, arms wrapped around Xie Lian from behind, jerking him to the side as someone else threw his body between Xie Lian and that oncoming wave of aura.
Xie Lian turned in those arms and his eyes widened.
“San Lang!? What are you doing here!?”
It wasn't that he hadn't noticed the silver butterfly following him into the tunnel but for his lover to appear suddenly like this was something else entirely.
Hua Cheng’s eye was wide, his face, always so pale, had lost what little color it usually had.
“Your Highness, you need to leave now.”
Even his voice sounded strange, strained in a way that sent alarm coursing through Xie Lian’s skin.
“San Lang what-?”
Hua Cheng pushed Xie Lian away from him in the direction of the tunnel mouth with the force that made Xie Lian stagger, more from surprise than anything else.
“Please, Your Highness."
Hua Cheng dropped to one knee but this time it didn't look like a gesture of respect. This time it looked like he was having trouble staying on his feet. Suddenly Xie Lian understood. Feng Xin had also dropped to his knees. Xie Lian thought at the time that it was out of pain and grief but that was not the case, rather it was a symptom of the demons power as it sucked its victim dry. For it to be powerful enough to actually affect Hua Cheng was troubling indeed but he didn't have time to think about that.
Xie Lian was looking at Hua Cheng but Hua Cheng’s eye was fixed on some point just to the side, his gaze filled with a horror so raw it sent ice down Xie Lian’s spine.
“Go!” There was genuine fear and desperation in Hua Cheng’s usually controlled voice and so, despite his words, Xie Lian took a half step closer to his lover only to pause as he saw something out of the corner of his eye.
He turned toward it.
He froze.
His limbs were stone.
His blood was ice.
His mind was empty
And his body… His body began to burn with the memory of pain.
“What the fuck is this!?” The question came from Mu Qing. “Does this thing show someone’s nightmares or?”
“Not nightmares.” Feng Xin’s voice was soft and raspy from his recent tears and he raised his head slowly to blink at whatever the other three were staring at. “Memories. It shows us our…”
His voice trailed away as a tortured scream ripped through the tunnel.
Xie Lian’s scream.
But not the Xie Lian standing frozen beside Hua Cheng. No, this cry came from the translucent Xie Lian in the middle of the tunnel. The Xie Lian who lay bound and struggling on his own alter, a familiar black sword thrust through him.
“Our worst memories.” Hua Cheng finished where Feng Xin left off. His shoulders were shaking, the breaths he didn't need coming short and ragged, and the hand he braced against the tunnel floor was clenched so tightly that his knuckles were the color of bone.
“It shows us our worst memories.”