Chapter 1: Discovery
The rain had been going on for the last four hours. Lin, a peahen, sighed as she walked through the storm, her green-tinted umbrella held over her head, just high enough for the small, feathered crest she had to have room. Mud was thick in some spots of the rural road she walked along, and puddles were abound along the dirt path that lead to the palace she was heading to, which should appear over the bend in another half-hour, or so.
"It may be a poor day for a walk, but at least those bandits are taken care of," she spoke, quietly, and cheerfully, an optimistic smile returning to her beaked face, as she thought back to the group of brutish thieves and marauders that attacked the nearby village, which was far behind herself. Their effort to pillage the hamlet ended in defeat at her feathers, earlier in the day, all thanks to her skill with martial arts.
As she monologued to herself, a flash of lightning, followed by the roaring sound of thunder went overhead, illuminating her forested riverfront surroundings, as she unflinchingly continued on. It was at this moment she noticed something impossible to miss, out of the corner of her blue eyes.
Turning her brown, feathered head, she saw a clearly white shape in the nearby river, as another bout of cloud-to-cloud lightning zapped through the sky. Curious about what the out-of-ordinary object could be, she walked further to it, straying from the path. Soon, Lin saw what she thought was a burned, or at least black-and-white, ragged strand of cloth, that was attached to the branches of a toppled-over tree, no doubt knocked into the river by some storm from the past. The river itself was a wide waterway, pulled by a strong current that lead from the sea, but it was a while back that it lost its saltwater in exchange for freshwater. Now only meters from it, she saw what it really was, through the dense rain.
It was no strand of cloth. It was a person!
In surprise, she dropped her umbrella, and rushed up to the shape, her feet and blue dress leaving tracks in the mud, before letting out a gasp when she had a full view.
The broken figure that was before her, caught, loosely, on the tree's black, gnarled, soggy branches, was clearly an avian in shape, like herself, and the size matched too. He wore a heavily damaged, white, silk robe that was stained in blood and water, covering his charred frame. Patches of feathers, as white and bloodstained in color as his robe, lined his body, and, to her immediate horror, the left side of his face, where his eye once was, looked bloody, disfigured, and crushed. It was almost as if something heavy and hard was bludgeoned into it. On top of his head was a crest, each feather making it up ending with red dots, while just underneath them were a pair of long, black feather quills that looked vaguely like eyebrows.
Also to her shock, she saw he held a weapon; a wavy-bladed lance of some sort, clutched tightly in a wing, as if for dear life. Around his skinny feet was what also appeared to be metal talons. The most noticeable thing she saw, however, was his long, bright white tail fan, proving to her, as she thought from the beginning, that he was peacock, if an unpigmented one at that. It was mostly undamaged, revealing many intact feathers, each one with a bright red, eye-like design on it, complete with a black center circle, reminiscent of a pupil, and it flowed in the water like a flag from where it rested in the water.
Without a moment's hesitation, the peahen set to rescuing the hapless, fellow fowl, as the storm around her raged on, and the water rushed forward, mercilessly.
The albino peafowl woke up, his right eye slowly twitching before coming to life. With a gasp, he looked toward the wooden ceiling up above, twisting his long neck on the feather pillow it lied on, causing a sore pain to go about his body, as he stared at his side, the two, barbel-like feathers on either side of his beak waving about.
He couldn't see out of his left eye, which felt incredulously sore, and he quickly realized it was covered in bandages that wrapped around his head, but with his limited vision, he could see, and almost feel the several acupuncture needles that were sticking out his left wing as he spied it, which stuck out from the many layers of wool blankets and quilts that covered him. He was about to lift himself up, to see how the rest of his body underneath the sheets looked, but stopped in his attempt when he heard the sound of light footsteps going across the wooden floor, nearby. Looking to it, he saw a feminine, bird-shaped figure approaching him in a strut, and when she was close enough, even in his haze, he noticed she was a peahen, around his age, if not slightly younger, and was garbed in a long, blue dress.
Clutched in one of her feathered hands was several more acupuncture needles, no doubt for him.
"Who are-" he tried to say, before the peahen raised a feather to his black beak, shushing him.
"Shh... you should not speak," she whispered to him, in a gentle, soothing tone. "Your injuries are too great. You need all the energy you can get."
"I can speak fine," he responded, somewhat stubbornly. "Where... where am I?"
"You're at the Limestone Palace, in the village of Pengyou," she replied. "I found you by the river three hours ago. If that fallen tree you were attached to hadn't been there to catch you, I fear you may have drowned. You should count your luck double that I found you in time before you bled out."
Just as she was finishing her sentence, the injured peacock, with a pain-filled groan, tried to lift his bandaged head from the bed, only for her to bring a wing onto his shoulder.
"Are you trying to open your wounds back up?" she asked, somewhat angrily, as she lowered him back to the pillow. He gave her a groggy glare, before registering her words.
"Wounds..." he muttered. "How bad are they?"
"You have dreadful burns all over your body, a broken wing, several other broken bones, and you're... well... missing an eye," she answered, explaining why he felt as he did.
The peacock's only remaining, red-irised eye shot completely open as she said the last part, before, slowly, returning to how it previously looked. He let out a pained sigh, before speaking again.
"It's missing? As in... gone?" he moaned, as he lifted his intact wing to the bandages on his face.
"To be blunt, and to not get into the details... yes," she said, lowering her head slightly. It was a few moments of silence before the injured bird asked something else.
"What is... your name?"
"Lin," she answered, with a weak smile, still slightly off-put by the memory of witnessing his injuries. "Lin Qiufeng."
"That's a... nice name" he complemented, before letting out a cough. As he spoke, Lin began to tend to his wound, placing a few of the needles into his damaged wing, each one inserted painlessly, and with near-surgical precision.
"I guess I forgot to mention you're running a bit of a cold as well," she chuckled, as she worked. He tried to join her in the tittering, but it hurt to laugh, and he trailed off into a small coughing fit.
"What's your name?" she then decided to ask, in return, as she placed another needle into the wing's wrist. Her patient went quiet for a moment, eye focused on the ceiling, as if in deep thought, before he replied.
"Shen," he spoke. "I... My name is... Shen."
"You sound as though you're unsure. Can you remember anything else, Shen?" Lin asked. Shen looked away, attempting to reach into the fog of his mind, and pull out something, anything, of memory. But, alas, he found nothing.
"...No," he finally said, sighing in a distraught manner, closing his eye. "I can only remember my name. A shadow falling from overhead. An explosion. Nothing... else."
"Well... you shouldn't let it trouble you," the peahen said again, as she placed the final needle she held in his wing. "I'm sure you'll remember again, in time. For now, you must rest, and heal."
"For... some reason, I do not think I want to remember..." Shen said again. Lin's brow curled in slight confusion at the enigmatic sentence, but went back to its previous position as another, high-pitched voice suddenly came from behind her.
"How's he doing?" it asked, catching Shen off guard.
"Oh, Master Crab, I didn't see you there!" Lin spoke, rapidly turning her head to the sound of multiple legs scuttling along the ground approached them both. Shen tried to look past his caretaker to see who it was, but was unable to see anything without straining. "He awoke just a few minutes ago, master."
"Ah, that is good," the voice spoke again.
"He said his name is "Shen," but he cannot seem to remember anything after that," she continued, as Shen saw a small, gray shape jump onto a nearby stool. As its name implied, Master Crab was, well, a crab, possessing eight, long, pointed legs, and a pair of large claws that all connected to his foot-long, gray, exoskeletal, shelled body.
"Hello, Shen," he greeted, as the creature's black, bulbous eyes brought his sickly face into view. "I am the senior master of the Limestone Palace. I hope you've thanked Lin here for the gratuitous service she provided you. I've never had a student as adept in the art of pressure points and medicine as her."
Lin smirked, proudly, as he mentioned her.
"Suffice to say, you're alive because of her. Do as she says, rest up, let her treat you, and you should be healed in... about three weeks," the crustacean continued. "We can go about what happens to you in the morning. For now, and as I said before... Just do as Lin says."
With those words, Master Crab turned, hopped off of the stool, back to the ground, and began to scurry away, before speaking one last time.
"You are free to stay here as long as you wish, and do not worry about the possessions you came here with. They are in a safe place."
As the sound of the door, which was only open a crack, was heard closing with an eerie creak, Shen noticed Lin's expression had changed to one of worry as she looked at him.
"What is it?" he asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
"I... need to change the bandages around your face again," she replied, tapping two of the feathers on her wings together, anxiously. Shen, slowly processing what she said, let out an understanding sigh, and let the back of his head fall onto the pillow, in a tired fashion.
"It's to keep your injury from getting infected," she spoke again.
"I know that..." Shen mumbled. "Just... get it over with, please."
"This may sting a little..." she started, uneasily, as she began to place her feathers on the first bloodstained bandage, preparing for what was inevitably going to come next from unraveling it. Shen, holding his breath in, and scrunching his talons up, closed his remaining eye, and readied himself for the pain. He could feel the cloth, slowly, getting folded back, the dry blood peeling off with it, giving him a rather sick feeling in his gut, and then...