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FUG's slayer candidate belongs at the bottom of the sea, devoured by the shinheuh that took everyone. They should just arrive sooner and spare the good people the pain and blood they'll muddy the water with.
These are the words a Yeon is told every year or so, as every now and again, FUG destroys something they've been taught to hold dear. All of FUG were nothing more than fish food, and poisonous feed at that. Give them to the shinheuh who deserve no mercy, to those who were suffering and nothing more.
The evil of the tower fills up the seedy corners, where light doesn't touch and fire scours.
Ehwa knows this. Fire that burns underwater is what makes up a Yeon's spirit, that they are the best because they burn despite being drowned.
And she is the best because she burns knowing she will drown.
Yet Jue Viole Grace doesn't seem to understand to fear fire.
He looks at her with expectations, new bandages bone white on his neck, tatters on his wrists, all kindling, all meant to heal the land.
He flicks his hand and she goes out with barely a sputter.
The gold eyes burn hot and he says nothing.
Say something, she wants to shout.
But like the dead, she knows he can't.
The slayer candidate speaks through a pocket and lighthouse, a jury-rigged amalgamation that proves his monster status. Despite the scars everywhere (and they are everywhere, the boys had seen it in the bath) and the piercing stare like a bird of prey.
Sometimes, when the apartment on floor twenty-one is quiet, Ehwa will catch ragged noises of pain through the door to the room. It could be pain. It could be bullshit.
Sometimes, it sounded like the song of a shinheuh.
(When she was younger, Ehwa saw lights floating over her ceiling. They'd laughed and wiped her tears and seared her skin, so she learned what burns feel like.
They'd wrapped around her father like firecrackers in palms. He hadn't noticed. Or if he had, he hadn't said a word. It was something he often did.
She was too young to realize that was how he survived. The family had not wanted a defective prodigy. He had not wanted to be and somehow that was worse.)
She tells herself that he deserves it.
Viole says nothing, not that he really does. Even during the fights -
"Can … can anyone be happy?"
He hardly makes noise at all. Pain even goes ignored when standing too long, or holding things that were too heavy for birdlike hands. Sometimes, he'll make small sounds, like a bird or a wolf. a monstrous, two headed thing with a trail.
It would be much easier if he just drowned.
"Screaming."
It's his first word in days.
To Ehwa at least. Viole prefers to message the pocket anyway or make the lighthouse float obnoxiously close until the heat of it sears your cheek (it never burns her, fire can only eat more fire).
They're at one of the air markets. It's one with no rumors. The shopkeepers take to him and his creepy agonizing quiet with aplomb, especially when he inspects food items. When he makes gestures or noises to certain cuts of meat and vegetables, they coo like he is an odd looking little boy, a commoner in the wrong place.
Right now, he's at a Yeon-manned stall. They have sense and are looking at him like he's actually devilspawn. but he ignores it. He's looking at one of the delicate bracelets. It's suspendium reinforced elastic string around small buds of the gems their family loves.
It's just them, right now. The others are in other areas. She stayed near to keep an eye on him, of course.
So she and the merchant are the only to see him hold up the bracelet in scarred but gentle fingers and say in a voice like broken glass. Viole looks at her through the curtain that's his bangs, stupidly long, needing a cut instead of the lines on his throat she won't look at. Then he says,
"It's screaming so loudly. Can't you hear it?"
You're insane, she wants to tell him. What would a FUG know? Ehwa wants to demand. Do you torture? Do you know what torture feels like? Do you do it?
"You're ridiculous," she says instead, nose rising into the air, as if bidden. "They're ethically harvested and they're jewels. They're not alive, F-Viole."
Viole mouths something, looking away from her.
He's so strange.
FUG are, Ehwa insists to herself. You'll kill him soon, wait a bit longer.
But soon will become when eventually.
Zygaena is a massive, beautifully ugly thing that moos.
She's never seen them before. Read about them sure, knew they went from small to grand over thousands of years that passed in a blink, knew that they subsided on small fish and lots of water along with short periods of sunlight. They were the family's beloved animal.
It's odd. It's odd.
To go inside of it feels a bit like sacrilege, but she's not going to be Wangnan and complain about it. The stupid monkey that he is.
And - it's her fault.
She knows what happened after is her fault. But she can't erase it, can't erase the way he hobbled to get away from her, can't forget the way those golden eyes looked at her with something like fear.
That's how a FUG should feel, she knows, but the way he skittered away from her did not bring the comfort it deserves. The way her flames went out in such a hurry dampens the enthusiasm.
You need Viole, Arkraptor says knowingly. Don't we all?
No, no she doesn't. How could she?
Around them, zygaena groans with joy. Around them, little golden creatures fish with many things like fingers, children with angelic laughter, dance. She edges away, but as they dance around Viole, the hunch of his shoulders settles. A musical sound leaves his throat to match them and they laugh again.
Then, the cavernous insides rumble. Something shakes the land like it threatens to cleave the poor creature in two.
Viole fears her, but not it. He rushes towards it on hobbling legs, picks up from that flying skill of his and disappears.
She hates him. She hates him with all of her being.
As she hates, her flames smoke the innards.
Don't look at me like I'm the monster, here.
Ehwa whispers the words as she runs.
Viole watches her.
He doesn't move. He never tries to stand while she's there. Even as she fiddles with medical equipment she never learned how to use. Even while her fingers since and ignite in her upset, she never sees him move until she burns something.
"People aren't kindling, my dear," daddy reminds her. "But we all know what happens to things that burn. that's why we love heat, but fear fire."
He wasn't afraid of being burned, but for the things she burned.
"When you said the jewel was screaming," she says, almost to herself. "Did you mean the zygaena?"
The light house whirrs a respectful distance away. Large letter she can easily reach but far enough she can't easily aim for it.
"Everything can scream, Ehwa-ssi. The lightfish hear it. Don't you?"
Every night when she stays awake and hears him gurgle like there's still blood in his throat, every night Miseng has a nightmare, every night since they took daddy away to make more of her -
"Sometimes," she says. "Let me see your back."
The blood red witch laughs at the way Viole shakes his head no.
"Fine," she spits without malice or anger, more with defeat. "I hope it gets infected."
The witch laughs again and Viole-
Viole's lighthouse crackles again and again and again like he may be doing the same.
It sounds like a record of their night sky with no moon.
Her heart burns. Ehwa survives it.
The next day there's a little pink zygaena sleeping on her knees.
She screams loud enough to wake the dead.