Chapter Text
bower bird
It all began in the heart of the demon realm, with a veteran merchant and an easy mark.
“Lovely, isn’t it? You’ve quite the discerning eye,” the merchant said slyly. The glasses-wearing demon startled, his hand falling away from the tarnished brass pitcher. “But I’m afraid it’s not for sale.”
“Oh, you say that, but when—if a handsome hero rescues your daughter from marauders, you’ll be singing a different tune,” the customer chuckled as he pushed his glasses up his nose.
Normally, the merchant would take that as some sort of bizarre bargaining tactic or threat. “But I don’t have a daughter.”
The customer froze and smiled awkwardly. “It was just theoretical, theoretical. Now—”
Theoretical her hat. Really hoping she hadn’t read this wrong, the merchant bowed her head and introduced a tremble to her voice. “And I never will have a daughter, nor a son. I’m… infertile, you see.” The customer reeled back, eyes wide, and the merchant buried her head in her hands to hide the flicker of a smirk, sobbing, “We just found out. It’s all still so fresh!”
A hesitant hand patted her on the shoulder while its owner stuttered apologies, rambled about adoption, and otherwise completely fell apart. The merchant sniffled one last time and lamented, “Oh, I didn’t mean to blubber all over you. Please, take this pitcher as a token of my apology.”
“…butterfly effect? Did my presence…? My god. I can’t risk…” the customer muttered beneath his breath nonsensically. The merchant pretended not to hear and began wrapping the pitcher in cloth, sniffing loudly every now and again.
Finally, the merchant heard the telltale jingle of victory, and the customer cleared his throat. “On second thought, I’ll take the ewer, but I must insist on paying for it. Also, I heard that the Evergreen Swamp might have some stuff to help you out. With that. Best… best of luck. Thank you for the ewer. Sorry about that again.”
With that, the demon fled, pitcher in hand, leaving a tidy pile of coins on the counter. The merchant counted them and whooped, making the shopkeepers on either side seethe with envy. Leave some rich suckers for the rest of them!
Around the corner, a thoroughly flustered Shen Yuan unwrapped the pitcher just enough to rub at the tarnish covering its engravings, confirming his worst fears. “Not again,” he groaned.
cassowary plums
Luo Binghe sprinted through the jungle, trampling vermin and shouldering past towering monsters. For once, they had no interest in pursuing him. All of them, big and small, clawed and feathered, were united in one goal: escape.
On their heels, bushes and trees snapped at strange angles, thrust upwards by the growing curvature of their terrain. Something beneath, something massive, was pushing its way out.
The bulging earth put off heat like a summer wildfire, baking mud into clay and robbing the air of moisture. Cracks shot through the ground and split the undergrowth apart at the seams. Luo Binghe jumped from chunk to chunk, outrunning the dying shrieks of less nimble creatures.
He split from the stampede ahead of a sheer rockface, the rest of them peeling off to try their luck at kinder paths. Luo Binghe, who had come from this direction, knew the area, however much a soul could know anything of the Endless Abyss. He launched himself up a nearby tree, cursing as his hot grip dissolved the spun sugar bark, and scrambled to the top.
Almost before he breached the canopy, the tree began to tilt. He had no time to second guess. He leapt.
As Luo Binghe flew towards the gray rock, he thought for the thousandth-thousandth time in the short, heinously long period of his exile: This is the end. I’m going to die here.
Then he burst through the brittle façade covering the cave, rolling until he hit the wall on the other side. His own tenacity amused him. He survived. For what?
Outside, a loud boom punched through the air. He looked out the him-shaped hole, slowly closing over.
A geyser of hot sand sprayed into the heavens, plants sizzling and withering beneath its spittle. Fissures raced through the toppling forest, massive yellow towers erecting themselves two, three at a time, until all he could see were hills of desert being spewed into existence.
The false rockface finished repairing itself. Luo Binghe fell asleep in total darkness, hurt and alone.
“Finally,” Shen Yuan breathed, very far away. Lowering his telescope with shaky hands, he observed the now pinprick dunes. The sparkle in his sunken eyes dimmed as he mapped the distance against his growling stomach.
It would all be worth it. Soon.
bower bird
The sun baked him from above, the sand from beneath. Luo Binghe bit his own tongue bloody just to swallow the ghost of moisture. When the first drops of acid rain fell, he couldn’t help but open his mouth to catch them.
That moment before the pain hit, he could almost pretend he was saved.
Choking, gasping airlessly, burning and healing and still so, so thirsty, he hadn’t questioned the ragged cottage that appeared on the horizon. Just staggered towards it as fast as he could, until he collapsed at the foot of the door, vision near-black.
The doorknob swam in and out of sight, just beyond his grasping fingers. An agonized gurgle escaped his throat as he scrabbled at the pitted wooden door, blood dripping from his broken nails, half-digested muscles spasming. He wanted to live. He wanted to live.
The door opened.
Inch by wretched inch, he dragged himself over the threshold. The door creaked closed behind him, barely audible under the wet thunk of a full vessel against the floorboards. He licked the moisture that splattered onto his lips with a dying man’s resolve. But the cool, watery broth didn’t burn, didn’t raise his blood. It was euphorically painless.
He moaned through the ravage of his throat and shoved his face into the spill, slurping and lapping at it like a dog. Chasing the broth to where it pooled between floorboards, he tongued the wet crevices until he had savored them to the last drop. Eventually, his mouth found its way to the ewer’s narrow lip, impossibly still dribbling liquid.
The floorboards squeaked. The rooftiles clattered. Normal sounds, for a house enduring a storm.
He kept a constant suction as he pulled himself up on his elbows, then into a seated position against the wall, all the better to pour broth directly down his throat. Only when his stomach threatened upheaval did he draw away.
Even then, he didn’t retreat far enough to snap the string of saliva connecting them. His hot breath passed into the ewer and back, mingling with the divine scent of sustenance.
He had survived. With this artifact, he might even live.
The door opposite him creaked open. Instinct drove him to his feet. His head swam as a cloaked figure spoke—human language, words, intelligent thought outside his own. It took a second to parse as, “Greetings, traveler. It is good—”
He lunged towards it and instantly buckled to the ground, losing his grip on the ewer. A plaster-white hand slipped from its velvet sleeve and plucked the vessel from the ground, ignoring Luo Binghe’s garbled shout.
“Woah! Calm down,” it snapped, tone clearer, then took a deep breath and shook its hooded head. Its voice returned to its noble, aged accent. “I understand your wariness. The Abyss is harsh, but you need not fear me.”
It stepped towards him, arms spread in surrender, ewer dangling from its right hand. As though Luo Binghe had never played the fool to create an opening! Baring his teeth, Luo Binghe urged strength into his barely healed limbs and drew his dagger. The blade trembled, but the threat of it was enough the stop the creature in its tracks. Luo Binghe staggered to his feet and rasped, “Give it.”
Silent and still, it bent its head until the hollow of its hood was trained on his weapon. “…that’s the leg of a four fires spider.” Its words spilled at a pace to match the torrential downpour outside. “The strongest exoskeleton in the Burrowing Desert, yet you’ve managed to sharpen it. How? On what? Where? Tell me. Tell me!”
In its desperation, its sagely pretense went up in smoke. But what was left wasn’t violent. When it took a half step forward, its hood fell back enough to reveal four glowing eyes, fixed on Luo Binghe instead of the knife inches from its chest. It wanted an explanation more than its own safety, less than Luo Binghe’s blood. It could lie, but not very well. Maybe it could be reasoned with.
“The ewer first,” he tested. He thought it would demand that he lower his knife, but it didn’t hesitate to toss it to his feet. His legs twitched with suppressed violence. No ordinary house could withstand acid rain. If this creature was tied to its endurance, killing it was a death sentence.
So Luo Binghe ordered it to sit on the other side of the room and slid gratefully back down the floor, one hand resting on the dagger in his lap. He told it of the giant spiders that emerged from the sand, the desiccated shreds of former jungle denizens clinging to their mandibles. Where every patch of moisture glistened, a burrow was not too far beneath.
Luo Binghe had crept up on one when it had freshly eaten, bloated and slow, and brained it with a rock he had taken from the false cliffside. The puddle it used as bait turned out to be regurgitated blood mixed with bile. It had been the spiciest thing he’d ever drunk, and the spider meat only made it worse. Coughing but determined to walk away with something, he smashed the rock against one of its joints and wielded its leg as a club against its fellows. In one battle, he wedged it into a spider’s mouth, and the half left after it bit through was sharp enough to pierce its tough skin.
“Yes, that’s it,” it murmured after he told his half-true tale. Its voice dripped, soporific, with something wistful. “What a rush. God, you must have feared for your life.”
Luo Binghe’s hand tightened around his dagger. “The spider was frightened, and then it was dead,” he corrected. “I won.”
“And what a victory. I mean, it nearly had you!” It rose to its feet and swayed towards him. Luo Binghe urged himself to match it, but his limbs wouldn’t move. Its four lantern eyes, almost all pupil, bored into his. “Your hands, inches from its teeth, still clinging to your only weapon. The spider snaps through it. In that split second before it spits it out, you stab it through the head. You barely get the end in… you stab it again, screaming. Until it stops moving, you scream.”
For a second, Luo Binghe was back in the hot sand, pinned by a spider the size of a pony. He was also a foot away, watching his leg-club snap in two. When its mandibles sank into his forearm, the pain was both immediate and distant. He thrust the point into its eye. Obvious weak spot. Why didn’t he go for it first?
It sighed with relish, “So cool.”
He blinked back into the room and leapt for the creature, arm and throat stinging anew. It yelped but didn’t bother to move; it didn’t need to. Luo Binghe stumbled straight through its form. “Okay, I got a little overzealous, but I can explain.” So did his dagger, even when he channeled qi through it. A spirit? But it picked up the ewer like a living thing. “Calm down, you’re reopening your wounds!”
Broth sloshed over the floor as the ewer thunked solidly against its head. The thing cursed and fell onto its back, wet hood sliding off to reveal a short-haired demon. Luo Binghe swung again. This time, it blocked the ewer with its palm. He tried to wrench it away, but the curve was glued to its flat hand. Luo Binghe would need to be the one to let go.
Outside, the acid rain poured. With its hood down, Luo Binghe could see the creature’s glare softening as its stupid, warm eyes traced his face. “I’ll let go of the ewer, okay? You can have it. Just don’t do anything stupid.”
True to its word, the ewer came unstuck. The demon sat up, open palms on its knees, and smiled without teeth at Luo Binghe. It had unnecessarily pink lips. He glanced out the window and followed suit.
After a long silence, it began to babble. “Don’t let me stop you if you want more broth. There’s no way you’re satisfied, the way you were going at—it. That.”
It was like a succubus, the way it fawned over him when it saw an opening. Luo Binghe didn’t know whether it was the eye contact or the conversation that had opened himself to feeding, so he glared silently over its shoulder, ewer in his lap.
“…The immersion thing was an accident, and I stopped as soon as I realized what I was doing, so calm down. Plus, I saved your life. I think you can excuse a little gluttony, since (A) you already tried to kill me for it and (B) I’m keeping the roof from melting onto our heads.” It side-eyed him, as though waiting for him to apologize for defending himself. “I know you know how to speak.”
Luo Binghe’s head started to hurt from the influx of words. He forced himself to think through the pain. Even with his sparse education, its feeding habits coupled with its control over its lair pointed to one conclusion.
“How did a spirit house end up in the Endless Abyss?” It should be on the mortal plane, sustaining itself on the turbulent qi produced the daily dramas of its unwitting inhabitants.
“You are quick!” It flashed a gaunt-cheeked smile at him. Clearly, whatever method it had used to survive until now didn’t suit it as well as its normal diet. His overfull stomach panged with traitorous sympathy. “How anyone does: wrong time, wrong place, big crack in the ground with the gravity of a black hole. Not ideal. I’ve been trying to get back to the surface, but I can barely hold myself together, let alone go off chasing myths.”
Luo Binghe stilled. “Myths. About escaping the Abyss.”
“A sword that can open portals, if you can believe it,” it laughed with faux casualness. “I’ve been able to recreate the storied journey to its resting place, but it’s been slow going without, ah, an actual body. Which is why you and I should make a deal.”
“If this is a trick,” Luo Binghe intoned once they finished negotiating, wary of how easily things tipped in his favor, “I will beat you with this ewer until you are paste.” It had to sleep sometime.
“Oh, that’s very nice. We’ll never get anywhere if you’re just looking for an excuse to kill me the whole time.” Blowing out a breath, it rubbed its temple then held its hand out. “Look, maybe we got off on the wrong foot. My name is Shen Yuan.”
Luo Binghe stared at the proffered limb, then clasped the creature by his smooth, white forearm. “Luo Binghe.” He tightened his grip, and Shen Yuan rolled his eyes with a fond smile. A shiver ran down Luo Binghe’s spine.
As they let go, a bright bolt of lightning struck outside the front door, flashing through the window. The proceeding thunder shook the earth, the house shifting beneath their feet. Unlike Luo Binghe, who dropped to a ready stance, Shen Yuan rushed to fling open the door.
A rocky structure, thinner than Shen Yuan’s wrist, stuck out from a nearby dune, lightly smoking. Around it, grey veins branched their way across the surface sand. The earth rattled again, and a hole opened beneath the lightning rock, swallowing it and the toxic mud that surrounded it. As they watched, the hole yawned wider and greedier, until the very hills began to recede.
“Looks like the Burrowing Desert is moving on. That means… aha, yes, the rain is letting up as well. Clear skies and happy trails! Perfect traveling weather.” The skies bruised purple and yellow as the clouds dissipated, leaving a stinking, acrid humidity behind. Even with his back turned, Shen Yuan’s satisfaction was audible. “Auspicious, don’t you think?”
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