Chapter Text
“So you’re telling me,” he swallows, “I just became the sworn brother,” pauses to take a breath, “-of Black Water and Crimson Rain? The Devastations? ”
“What do you think?” Red - Crimson Rain - gestures around them. “City Lord’s Manor, City Lord’s sword” -the saber in the corner gives a little rattle- “City Lord,” he concludes, pointing at himself.
“Fuck you,” Yu Qingchi snaps vehemently.
“He’s taken,” says Black Water. “Been in love with mmmph-””Eww! Not like that!”
The two Devastations crash onto the floor in a blur of red and black, as Crimson Rain attempts to smother Black Water. Yu Qingchi stares, then, not giving enough of a fuck about what appears to be Devastation on Devastation violence, stands up.
“I’m not sober enough for this,” he declares. “Wine.”
The two Devastations do not notice, having already devolved into a fistfight. They’re being remarkably lighthanded, given that no furniture had yet gotten destroyed as one might expect from a fight between ghost kings, but show no sign of stopping anytime soon.
Fuck this, Yu Qingchi thinks. I’ll go find it myself.
He steps out the door, and immediately almost crashes into a young man in dark robes. He’s wearing some sort of ghost mask - for whatever reason. Really, it was rebundant. They were all ghosts here.
“Sorry,” he says, and steps past the man. He makes it a few steps down the hall before he abruptly swivels around and says, to the still frozen young man: “Actually, do you know where the wine is?”
He does.
-
The young man - remarkably reticent on the matter of his name, just like his master - is a servant. Despite plying him with questions, Yu Qingchi does not manage to learn anything else about the servant, possibly proving once and for all that the universe was out for Yu Qingchi and his questions. Was he doomed to suffer the lack of information until the end of all, when the That Which Resides Between the Stars, the Silent One, Light-Eater, World-Ender, Bringer of Final Sleep would close its mouth upon the cosmos? That seemed like a marvellously unfair deal to him.
Yu Qingchi mentions this to the young man, who looks at him for a long moment before indicating that they had arrived at the wine storage.
Looking down at the long stairway that descended unto the darkness, Yu Qingchi tilts his head. “You aren’t planning to chain me to the ground and build up a wall around me, so that I might be trapped forever - or at least for a very long itme, are you? Oh, I’m being silly again - I’m sure you wouldn’t.” He pauses, then says: “In any case I’m sure someone would notice and rescue me within a few decades. And the silence might be good for some contemplation.”[1]
-
He’s already well on his way to being completely wasted when his newly-sworn brothers find him.
He poses to them the same question as he did the servant: Was he, Yu Qingchi, doomed to not have his extremely important questions answered until That Which Resides Between the Stars, The Silent One, Light-Eater, World-Ender, Bringer of Final Sleep closes its mouth around the cosmos?
“Haven’t heard that version of Cosmological Theory yet,” says Black Water, peering at him with a curious look on his face.
“Neither,” says Crimson Rain,”Have I.”
“What?” Yu Qingchi gapes at the two. “But it’s the only one? At least, the only one that’s true?”
“Why don’t you tell us, then?” Black Water plops himself down by the wall, cracking open another jar of wine, clearly settling in for the long haul.
“Hey,” complains Crimson Rain, though he was doing the same thing, “At least consult me before drinking me out of house and home.”
Yu Qingchi tries to put a hand over Crimson Rain’s mouth, but fails, hitting his cheek instead. “Shhhh,” he says, “Story time now.”
-
out there is something like a Whale in the space between the stars, dark as the void, vast like the cosmos. galaxies are as motes of dust in Its eye, and Its mouth swallows stars by the thousands.
the Whale is incomprehensibly large. larger than stars, larger than galaxies, but not larger than the universe, because even It must exist within. It swims through the fabric of the empty void, and Its mouth opens here and now. does It fall towards the cosmos, or do the stars, pulled by Its inexorable gravity, fall inside?
the Whale is the color of space, which is not black, but a shade of darkness that is not defined by the absence of light. It is the color of places that never knew light, or the touch and toil of being. places that never will. It was the color of empty, but It was not transparent for the stars It had swallowed could not shine out of It. the Whale breathes out,
and exhales the countless little deaths of the worlds and the nameless beings with too many teeth and too many eyes.
It makes no sound but silence, so thick and tangible it muffles the humming of stars and the crackling of asteroids it passes. the silence is Its song, and it echoes far and wide in the space between the cosmos, in empty places where life has never touched. where existence never quite got to.
the Whale is death. It is the quiet gentleness that claims the dissipating stars and the drifting shroud that covers everything in the end.
and one day, the Whale will close Its mouth over this world. the bristles of Its mouth will brush gently over the earth, severing the gravitational ties of the worlds and plunging the planets into drifting darkness. as the world enters Its maw the stars will blink out of sight, one by one. finally, there will only be darkness.
the belly of the Whale.
-
Yu Qingchi finishes his tale, and gulps down another swig of wine.
“I think,” Black Water says, “I like your kind of scholar more than mine. I think I may convert to natural scholarship. Tell me more of this” -he pauses for a drink- “Whale.”
“I saw it once,” he sighs dreamily, “It was... beautiful. Its eyes” - were lightless white voids, deeper than oceans. It looked through space and time, and for one brief, searing moment it had looked straight at him, not through. Yu Qingchi has tried to pretend he regretted it, tried to be angry remembering the single look that doomed him to an eternity of unrest. He doesn’t really. He thinks he could die a thousand deathless deaths and he still wouldn’t.
Yu Qingchi falls silent. Black Water clinks his jar against his in sympathy.
“I’m in love with a god,” says Crimson Rain. “He doesn’t know I exist.”
Yu Qingchi tries to pat him in consolation, but only succeeds in gently slapping his forehead in the dark. He can still see Crimson Rain growing the beginnings of a smile.
“Thanks,” he says.
“Drink away your sorrows,” advises Black Water. “It’s not like we can get much more dead at this point.”
“That is true,” says Yu Qingchi. “Also you still haven’t told me your names. Actual names.”
“Huh,” says Black Water. “Well, it’s He Xuan.”
“Hua Cheng,” comes a voice from somewhere in the darkness. He must have moved.
“I guess this is the part where I tell you Yu Qingchi isn’t actually my name. I mean, who on earth names their child ‘clear pool’?”
“Like a fox demon,” comments He Xuan, “Calling itself ‘Hu’.”[2]
“Anyway,” Not-Yu Qingchi’s mouth lifts into a smile, “I’m going to leave you in suspense for a while. It’s revenge, you see.”
“Reasonable.” Hua Cheng has almost fully recovered from his brief depression.
“I am glad we are in agreement.” Says the man who was not really named Yu Qingchi. “I have thought long and laboriously over this scheme, and its seamless deployment has really made my day. Incidentally, what do you two know about-”
-
“-and that’s why I think shrimp can see more colors than we do.”
“Wow,” says He Xuan, who has many shrimp two miles due east of his island in the middle of the sea. Well, had. There might still be a few out there, but the shrimp population was rather depleted due to events that will remain unstated.
“Good to know that,” says Hua Cheng, who once had two tons of shrimp dumped on him by He Xuan, due to reasons that will remain unspecified. They were imported from two miles due east of He Xuan’s island.