The plum blossom petals hid me from view, but still I felt the eye watching my hand as I reached for the polished grey stone exposed by the unwrapped handle. Heat bloomed in my fingertips as the stone flowed into my body and up into my brain to join the stone hidden inside my weaponized self.
###
Pain is a reminder that things are not as they should be, and for this reason, pain is not something that we get used to, even when it is constant for decades, such is the nature of suffering. Even the toughest mind, the staunchest soul, shall crumble given enough time, each twinge of pain licking like a wave against a cliff. Such is the looping thought of the man impaled on a twelve-foot spine on a dark branch of the Myriad Tree. He hangs, suspended by the wood thrust up through his abdomen, at an angle, legs dangling, arms swaying, long given up any efforts to pull himself free.
His blood flows eternal, trickling down the stained wood and dripping to the massive roots that wait below like patient tongues.
He focuses on his suffering, in the hopes that he can escape the moment by focusing on the eternal. Nothing changes, and he hopes that means nothing matters, but it is not the case. His dripping blood marks the time, and with every passing drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
He wishes it would end. Even death, he thinks to himself, he says aloud, he prays, would be better than this. It is this prayer that is answered by the appearance of a fluffy grey bird perched on the tip of the twelve-foot spine impaling his body. Too agonised to recoil, he simply stares with half-dead eyes at the creature that put him here.
“You wish for death,” says the Butcher Bird in its shockingly deep voice. “But your life holds so much potential. I know the pain that ails you, and I can take it away.”
“Yes. Please. Anything.”
“Your soul is pure, but your body aches for release. It is your body that feels pain. Let me take that pain away. Let me take your body.”
He is insane, he is numb, he is tortured half to death, and he agrees to the Butcher Birds’ proposal even though he knows it cannot be trusted. He fought the experiments of the last expeditions. He saw the travesty of ruined flesh.
But…
The pain is too much, and so his tears drip along with his blood as he agrees and grants the Butcher Bird his body.
“Thank you,” says the Butcher Bird with a bow. “When it comes to matters of the soul, consent is necessary. With your blessing, I bestow my own.”
Tiny talons grip his hair, and tiny wings blur. With a sensation like peeling dead skin, the Butcher Bird lifts his body from his soul, and, though he remains wriggling on the tree’s spine, there is no more pain, and the thought of eternity is not so filled with horror or dread…
###
I pulled my hand away from the unwrapped handle, and the eldest saber gasped.
“My former master experienced such tortures before he came to us. It is no wonder that he spun like a madman.”
“Will you do me next?” asked the youngest saber. “Or my other brother?”
“Which?” added the middle saber.
Pain echoed through my body. I already knew what it felt like to be impaled upon a tree by the Butcher Bird, but there was something far more heinous about the Myriad Tree’s spines. It was the difference between cutting yourself on broken glass and having a glass splinter wedged under your fingernail. Not a matter of scale, but of precision. Did my first impalement not hurt because I lacked a soul? I wasn’t so sure about that, especially since every strike from the Nascent Soul spirit beast resounded with agony, and why would that be if I didn’t have a soul?
That small bird was insane, and though it was committed to its experiments, I couldn’t trust anything it said about the nature of the world. All I could trust was that it had power, and that it wanted the power of my ritual. That slim bit of knowledge was all I possessed over the Butcher Bird, and hopefully it would buy me the time to figure out a way to defeat it for good.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The Matriarch of the Stone Forest Pavilion didn’t ask me to swear to kill it — she didn’t think it was possible — but I didn’t want to do it for her. I wanted to do it for me. That bird deserved to die, and I deserved to eat its flesh.
Despite picking the demonic spawn clean, my stomach rumbled with ambition and appetite.
It was with these thoughts that I unwrapped the middle saber’s handle and uncovered the next grey stone.
###
Chipped from the mother that fell, the stone passed between tweezers and bottles and shelves and ships, and all the time it ached for the soft touch of life. At last, it found itself sitting in a warren of stone deep underground, cradled in gloves, carved, polished, worshippped, but never touched.
Under the purple glow of a portal to another realm, the stone bathed in unnatural light, and it waited.
Watching a parade of masked cultivators and captured test subjects, it waited.
Catching sparks and smoke as an expert smith forged oversized sabers, it waited.
At last, it found a home, inside a weapon’s handle, and again, it waited, craving a wielder as the dry land craves rain. How long had it been since it fell? As long as it had been since it tasted blood…
Eternity.
A cold palm, slit down the middle, squeezed the wrappings, and blood flowed through the bindings until it touched the grey stone and the eye opened.
Without the direct touch of skin, there was only so much it could do, so much it could stretch itself, but still, it did the best that it could. Once awoken, the stone dreamt, and in its dreams, it returned home, and took the flesh with it…
The wielder spun the blade, but no matter how hard he tried to hurl it away, the saber never left his hand, and the grey stone’s dreams spilled into flesh and twisted until every spin, every revolution, came easier than the last.
###
Blood poured from my nostrils and eyes as I staggered away from the middle saber. That dream… that vision… I fell to my knees, my invisible body disturbing the quartz-strewn riverbank. My cheek pressed against the cold ground, and the tremors of flowing water filled my head. Every time I closed my eyes, the dreams of grey stone tried to fit, tried to form, tried to fly away…
I puked blood, my body rejecting what didn’t…
“It doesn’t make sense!” I hissed as the visions of a flayed world pressed themselves against my eyeballs. “It’s not true.”
“Wrong,” said the middle saber.
“You’re wrong,” I spat.
“I’m afraid he’s right,” said the eldest saber. “These stones are a terrible burden as well as a terrible thing.”
“What are they? Where do they come from?”
“Would that I could tell you, dear boy, but, alas, we are as in the dark as you. All we know is that they dream, and that their dreams shape the flesh of those who wield us.”
I shuddered and refused to look at the youngest saber. Something about these visions felt far more real than any vision I’d experienced before the blood ritual, where I’d met my weaponized self. What I witnessed now was like the difference between drinking water and drowning.
In truth, I’d hope to gain some abilities, perhaps something akin to the twisting, spinning flesh that the demonic spawn wielded in our fight, but these glimpses were more about pain than progress.
I lay on the ground, breathing, trying to center myself, when I caught movement in the water. There was somebody out there. In a moment of panic, I checked myself, but I was still hidden by the Plum Blossom qi. Nobody could see me, but two eyes flashed in the light, barely inches above the dark, flowing water.
“Who is that?” I whispered to the sabers.
“It’s the same bloody person who was here before,” said the youngest saber. “They’re from your party, aren’t they?”
I could barely make out the light in the eyes and only the tip of the head, but it didn’t resemble anyone I knew. It was a relief to know it wasn’t Chen Ai. Fortunately, her horned silhouette was truly unmistakable.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Well, I can barely see anything,” said the youngest. “Now, aren’t you going to touch my eye and learn my truth?”
The saber practically wriggled with anticipation. I was tempted, but I refused to let myself be incapacitated while someone watched. So, tucking my fingers in my robe, I reached out and plucked the grey stone from the exposed tang and placed it in my pocket.
When I glanced back out at the river, the watcher was gone.
That was reason enough for me to move. I’d spent more time here than I’d planned.
Had the watcher seen through my stealth? I couldn’t be sure, and so I sprinted into the tall grass as fast as my legs would carry me. Blood inflated my muscles, and I pulled on blood, flesh, and bone manipulation to perfect my stride and propel myself along.
There was much for me to unpack from these visions, and the purple portal, merely a flicker of an image, burned the brightest. It bulged like a slit in the flesh of reality, edges curdling with demonic qi, and that same qi washed over the grey stone, inundating it with power.
Was the grey stone demonic? Strangely, the stone itself held no qi, but every creature that housed a stone was demonic from blood to bone. Did that mean I was as well? Even though I, like the stone, lacked qi of my own? Surely, the stone’s origin held the answer, but my brain refused to conjure the images of the stone’s dreams…
I could no more force myself to witness those images than could that nameless swordsman have refused the Butcher Bird’s deal. Perhaps, with the ritual, I could conjure enough separation of mind to examine what I witnessed, but that would require preparation.
I couldn’t afford to be away from the camp for much longer, and while I hadn’t found the answers I’d sought, there remained the potential answer in my pocket. I dared not touch it before I was safely back in my tent. Until then, I had one more goal on this night venture.
A source of qi to replace what I’d spent using this stealth technique: Ran Cong’s dismembered body.
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