Night came and nestled on Yuri's shoulder like a smothering blanket, just as heavy as it was hot. There would be no reprieve, it seemed, from the scorching temperature that day. It was hard to breathe and even more difficult to will himself to move, especially when the grass on the Liang family's roof was cool and moist with botanic sweat. The city lagged and lazed just as he did – even the camels were swaggering and staggering, and the merchants could have lifted their goods sooner or counted currency faster. All of the world was under a spell and Yuri, quite simply, didn't care enough to wake up for it today.
That wasn't his decision to make, unfortunately.
"You get down off that roof, streetrat!" The Missus Liang was a spidery thing, with limbs so disproportionately long that she looked like she would be able to strike him even from the ground. To add insult to injury, she waved a broom in one hand and performed wild arcs with the other. "Get down! Get down before I have you poisoned!"
"Relax," Yuri replied smoothly, taking the necessary time to pat his clothes free of clinging grass blades. His descent was in perfect tune to the rhythm of the valley: long, languid strides and one cat-like leap down to his still sleepy feet. He seemed unaffected by Missus and her janitorial bludgeon, and the calmer that he looked, the more desperate Missus's gesticulations became. It was with a soft grin and a slight slump that he finally went stalking away.
The task of finding another perch with shade for the morning, and one with room enough to stretch was a daunting one. The streets here worked like a labyrinth, luring pedestrians deep into its belly with half-empty promises of progression and gloating over their unfortunate wandering. Heat sluiced down the walls in visible tremors of steam and air, pressing against Yuri's cheeks and sneaking into the nooks of his jacket to make it a heavy, uncomfortable burden. Even an accomplished wanderer like Yuri could still lose his way if he took a right on to Sinan Lu instead of the customary left, or wandered into Nanjin Xi Lu instead of Nanjin Dong Lu. The settlers there must have been in quite the hurry, because some roads were left unfinished, while others emptied their unaware victims into never-ending spirals that went for many aimless miles.
Yuri started to panic when he realized that it was too dark even for nighttime. There wasn't any shift in the sky, no bridges obscuring the overhead. There wasn't even a tower to blot out the sun or a fence to cast a shade. Light was simply not allowed to exist in this place, and what little of it opposed the odd and hellish physics were mere reflections on the hazey blue-gray fog. It was colder there too, but not the refreshing sort that one would seek after a hot day in the merciless sun. This was the sort that bit at your bones, walked its fingertips down your spine and plucked at the hairs in your flesh. Vague shapes loomed all around him, shapes that logic told him were buildings but his imagination sketched out as tombstones.
Something scrabbled down the path ahead of him, sounding like a thousand sheaves of paper knocking their corners on the street in a breeze. Even Yuri's mind could not logically rule out the eerie clacking as anything but the scratching of claws. This would usually be the hint to run, the moment of blind panic that undoubtedly sent most of this street's victims scrambling towards the exit. Yuri wasn't that kind of chump.
"A monster, huh? All'a the way out here? Why don't'cha show your pretty face an' maybe I'll buy you a drink." He stalked forward, and he heard the creaking whine of leather long before he felt his fists clench. By that time, the creepy-crawlies were usually running laps around Yuri, trying to gain the upper hand and psyche him out in the meantime. This one stayed in place, its form broken to Yuri's sight by the invasive fog. "Yo. I don't got time to waste on you! How's about you get up an' get dancin' before I gotta' come over there an' kick you in your sleep?!"
He finally received a repy, but it wasn't the sort that he was expecting. A soft, strangled cry emitted from the bulging, unnatural form and Yuri had no choice but to press onwards, expecting the worst. This was almost a shittier deal than having something leap out at you; at least in that case the strings of fate were out of your control and there was nothing you could do but react. Sliding haltingly through the thick fog encouraged a lot of thinking, and to Yuri's vast expertise, thinking was usually a bad thing. The whatever on the ground illustrated exactly why that was.
By the time that Yuri had managed to calm his frayed nerves and shove aside the feeling of wrongness, the fog cleared and he was stranded inside of a luminous gray pit of mist with a half-thing. Its body had long become a bubbling mass of shifting matter, boiling as if it was on fire. Thin webs of bone scattered up the length of it like fissures in a plot of black ice, just as unstable and just as dangerous. It was laying on its back but its wings were still visible, stubby, heavy little creations that helplessly churned the dirt on the side of the road into mud slicks. The most disturbing of all, however, was its face and arms. One appendage was longer than the other, linked unevenly in the center and dappled with liverspots and greasy bumps. The other reached for him, grasping with fingers that had already become claws but were otherwise normal.
It had a beautiful face.
"Aw, I don't need this today!" Yuri moaned, pacing around the thing. It didn't take supernatural prowess to see the construct for what it was going to become, and even when its moans were silenced Yuri could still hear the rattling of its monstrous soul. It pressed at his ears, intense and alluring like shaken rice in a wooden bell. "Looks like you got the short end'a the stick, buddy! A better Harmonixer might turn down a free fuse, but damnit if I ain't better!" He went down on his knees and his fingers darted out to cradle one lumpy mound of forming flesh. An acute concentration of Wind. That was what caused the fog, he supposed.
To his surprise, the still-human hand closed over his, weak and invalid. The flesh was drenched in something that might have been sweat but probably wasn't, and there was such a lack of weight to the hold that Yuri could close his eyes and pretend the thing wasn't there, grasping at his knuckles –
Crying.
Yuri lifted his head and there was the clincher: dead, dull eyes that were resigned to its fate. He couldn't venture to guess how long the soul had been trapped here, transforming against its will, all alone with nothing to entertain it but the image of itself melting. Something surged within him, and his arm roped around the thing's neck. The soul came up like a cork in water, but Yuri pushed it away, refusing the offered treat.
Keeping someone from a lonely death was just what he needed to sleep a little better that night.
"Bet you're one'a them rich ponyboys from the gatehouses. Not a care in the world, huh? Not until you got involved with this stinkin' business, anyways." Yuri's coat draped nicely around the gelatinous stomach, shielding it from sight. He thought that he might have heard a sigh of relief from the monster, but, much like his own voice, it was lost in the wind. "I tell ya, if you come back as anythin' that can tooth a coin, you better snatch one up an' deliver it express to me for warnin' you. This's an awful dark road you're headin' down, but lucky you got me here t'pick you right up." Yuri's knife flashed in the air, singing like a virgin harp. "Make that two drinks," he said, shamed at the aversion of his own eyes to the sight of gore. Yuri felt the slice, the frustrating resistance and the beautiful purchase, the moment of agonizing relief when consciousness was allowed to fade as the blade simply followed the grain of flesh with hardly a push. He tried hard to not think too much about the resulting gurgle. "You don't seem like half-bad company."
Yuri slept there, in the cold coffin of the ditch, as the monster shattered into pieces and faded away in his arms.