Chapter 17

  Bya Atsu

  Nidair looked up at a sky so black and wide that for a moment she thought she had awoken but forgotten to open her eyes. Upon turning her head to the side, she saw that she lay on her back in a field of red grass dotted with white flowers. Indeed, as far as she could see, there were no colours besides black, red, and white.

  This is a dream then, she understood, easing herself slowly up into a sitting position and searching the distant horizon for any sort of landmarks.

  The red grass stretched as far as she could see, undulating gently in shallow crests and troughs. There was no wind in this place, and so the white flowers just existed in place, more like artificial decorations than actual living vegetation. It was a stark and grim sight to behold, made all the more surreal where the red land met the black sky. Above her hung a white sun, which lit everything brightly except for the sky itself. The colouring of this world was so bizarre and at odds with anything that made sense that Nidair simply sat and looked at it for a long while.

  How odd … this place seems so real, and yet so terribly strange at the same time. What is this? Is this my own dream? Or has a dream been placed upon …

  She stopped then. An image of a sad smile surrounded by long, shimmering, hair the colour of a moonless night emerged in her mind – the last thing she had seen before waking up in this place.

  Mother. The Adulteress. I am under her charm!

  Nidair scrambled to her feet with that realisation, her heartbeat immediately elevated, her breath catching in her breath before she could prevent the dramatics. It took a moment for her to regain a modicum of control, but she at least had the presence of mind to make the attempt. Once again, she studied her surroundings.

  Everything looked the same. Already, she could not even tell which direction she had been facing when she woke up. The false sun hung at the zenith of the sky, giving no indication of direction, and the hills cloaked in red grass were all identical, as if a single sample of such a landscape had been copied infinitely. The horizon was simply red meeting black in a complete circle …

  No … there is something there. The only thing on the horizon. Ruins? There is nothing else here to make for …

  Nidair set out, resolved to make some sort of sense of her current situation. The grass swayed and hissed gently as she passed by, as if she herself was a gentle breeze sweeping across the hills. Even so, this was not an entirely alien experience for her. She could imagine that one of the pampered, sun-kissed, children of White Towers would be a quivering wreck, but she was a descendent of a warrior nation that dealt with far worse than charms on a daily basis.

  The ruins grew steadily larger in her vision. Indeed, almost too quickly, as if they had been on the horizon of an extraordinarily small world. As Nidair came closer, she saw that what she had thought to be the distant ruins of a temple or great house was in reality no more than the aged supports and crossbeam of a long-since deteriorated gate. There was nothing more to it than that. No mystical portal between the stone columns, and no other structures of note in sight.

  “What is this?” she wondered aloud, stepping closer.

  She examined the stonework, finding it to be much like the masonry of White Towers. The rock was black, like the sky, and the hefty length of timber that spanned the columns was red. In Nidair’s eyes, it seemed as if this curious dream was mixing the building blocks of her youth – the timber framing – with her chosen path – the stone columns. For even in her dream, Nidair could tell that the stone was of the sort mined in White Towers. It was pale and easily split into great slabs, unlike the unforgiving, twisted, and iron-like shikyo of her homeland.

  Without thinking, she stepped between the columns, her attention locked on the craftsmanship and her mind trying to determine what hidden meaning there could be in this mixture of disciplines. All of a sudden, with no warning and no shift in atmosphere, she was standing in the central corridor of the Temple Academy. The stone was still black, and the carpets under her feet were red. Red torches flickered with white flame in their black sconces. The limited palette was beginning to unnerve Nidair. As much as everything she was being shown seemed real and within the limits of reality, the stark and limited colours of this world hinted at grim and disturbing possibilities.

  Footsteps echoed ahead, but they sounded no different to anything she had ever heard when going about her everyday life, and so she thought nothing of it, instead trying to figure out what the significance of being brought to this place was.

  A pair of students rounded the corner ahead, their skin white and robed in red. They walked with the casual purpose characteristic of the proud temple initiates, and Nidair made way for them to pass her by without thinking twice about it. But as they passed her by with only the mocking smirks she had grown accustomed to, Nidair saw something else.

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  Sprouting from their shoulders, each of the initiates bore a sickly, corrupted creature that bore a distinct resemblance to the he irugo known to hide among the rocks in her homeland. They were crooked creatures that hunched over the shoulders of their hosts like dead and shrivelled branches, their diamond-shaped heads swaying gently with each step while their jaws hung slack in a ravenous grin. Some manner of black muck oozed from between their scales and ran slowly down the shoulders of their hosts, staining them with a corruption that they either could not see, or had become calloused to.

  What … what is this? What does this mean?

  The sight had nauseated her, and despite her staring, neither the initiates nor their malevolent passengers gave her any further attention. As she looked down at the red carpet, she could see black footprints pooling where the initiates had walked and as a new tension settled about her shoulders, Nidair looked up in the direction the initiates had walked in.

  They both stood motionless at the end of the corridor, facing her, heads bowed as if asleep on their feet. The creatures seemingly fused to their shoulders stared at her, as if daring Nidair to show that she could see them. Nidair felt her heart shrivel within her at the cold, alien, gaze of the creatures, their heads swaying slowly from side to side, forked tongues gently lapping at the air. As one, they made a long, gurgling sound that ordinarily would have only made Nidair feel disgusted. However, given their horrifying form and the fact that they were clearly trying to force a reaction from her, the sound filled Nidair with a cold dread.

  What are these things? Why am I being shown this? Is this a nightmare charm?

  A hand alighted on her shoulder, and Nidair whirled, eyes wide, doing her best to control her frenzied gasp and then freezing. She had come face to face with Aoshinama, and the presence that had always brought her a nervous sort of comfort suddenly filled her with a nameless terror. Unlike the initiates, Aoshinama did not hang her head as if surrendering herself to some other being. Her eyes were haughty and leering, and that same black corruption oozed down her cheeks like the most diseased tears that Nidair had ever seen. Veins bulged in her neck and forehead, and more of the sickness dribbled from the corner of her mouth. Another arm – gnarled and grotesque and adorned with needle-like spines and rending talons – sprouted from her ribs, beneath her left arm.

  “A-A-Aoshinama,” Nidair stammered, unable to hide her fear at what she was looking at. “How may I s-serve you?”

  “You see our blessing, do you not?” smiled the taller woman with an expression that warned against attempted deceit.

  “B-blessing?” Nidair whispered, aghast. What have I done? What have they done to Kivaan-tsichi?

  “But of course,” murmured Aoshinama gently into Nidair’s ear. “With our great allies, we have become strong enough to uphold order in the Realms. We maintain decency and justice. None can stop this power. Even the greatest spiritual weapon crumbles beneath the weight of reality when faced with these powers. The weakest of our initiates will shatter the weapons of the greatest spirit champion.” Aoshinama leered hungrily down at Nidair. “I have high hopes for you.”

  “I … I … I …” Nidair tried and failed to say anything even remotely convincing. Why? I know what this is. I could not very well have grown up under the instruction of my aunt and not know … that these are the Fiends. These are the great enemy! How can they be allied …

  “Come, Nidair,” purred Aoshinama, cupping Nidair’s cheeks in her cold hands. “Let me introduce you to the one who will help you dominate your enemies.” And then the scaled, crooked, talons reached out slowly and gently caressed Nidair’s throat.

  “I … I … wait …”

  “Oi, get out of it!” thundered a voice from the other end of the corridor. There was a righteous fury to it that drew Nidair’s gaze immediately, and the corridor was flooded with the sunlight of midsummer that Nidair felt she had not seen in an eternity. She gasped a deep breath of air that felt as if it had blown straight across the forested hills of her home and into her lungs.

  Aoshinama whirled with a livid hiss to face whoever had interrupted her sport. Her eyes flashed with a jealous intensity that made Nidair want to draw back in revulsion, but Aoshinama’s grip on her face had changed from one of infatuated obsession to that of jealous possessiveness.

  The figure – a man dressed in armour similar to that of White Towers, his face hidden beneath a helmet of burnished steel – strode forward resolutely, unbothered by the foul corruption in his path. As Nidair watched, she could see the vile footprints of the initiates disintegrate as if in the face of a furnace’s onslaught, and still the man advanced. In one hand was a straight, double-edged blade with golden cross-guard, the likes of which were only seen in the far west. The shield he held at the ready was medium in size and shaped like an inverted, elongated triangle. Upon a field of unblemished white was a red cross, which was a starkly human symbol.

  “Who are you?” shrieked Aoshinama. “What have you to do with us?!”

  And yet the man did not answer her, instead looking straight into Nidair’s frightened eyes as she peered over the frenzied grip that Aoshinama had on her face. She could see his eyes, and they seemed like twin flames hidden behind his visor, beckoning her out of this nightmarish vision she had found herself in. He came close enough that Aoshinama promptly released Nidair – almost shoving her away in her haste to put some distance between herself and this stranger – and even as Nidair staggered, he caught her against his side, steadying her, but never letting down his guard.

  “Wake up, Nidair,” he murmured, almost as if embarrassed to even address her. “It is daybreak.”

  She stared up at him in wonder, certain that all of this meant something profound, but in no mental state to even begin processing it.

  “Who are you?” she whispered.

  “Wake up,” he repeated, his voice more urgent. “Nidair! Wake up!”

  Bya atsu: literally translates to ‘sight do’, but atsu changes the root noun into a command, so technically the feel of this phrase changes from ‘sight’ or ‘vision’ to ‘look’ or ‘see’. It also has connotations to planning, an idea, or an ideological vision.

  he irugo: translates to ‘death waiting’; these are serpentine creatures with a venom that induces clotting of the blood.