Though she had braved many of them in the past, the sight of a dead city all in ruins was no less terrifying now to Arisa than it was years ago. It was the same horror of looking at a carcass and making out only the faintest traces of humanity that rot hadn't consumed: the recognition of a hand or a face amidst what had been reduced to a hunk of flesh, gruesome not only in the butchery but in the sheer wrongness of it. Amidst the ruins overgrown with vines and misshapen nature Arisa caught glimpses of tavern signs, hammers and anvils, copper coins scattered along the floor, empty mugs placed atop weather-worn tables. It was more than pure and utter desolation, for signs of lost lives remained in far more than just the bones that jutted out of the dark greenery like white thorns.
She concealed her shaking hand. For now, Argentum was eerily silent, many of its monstrous denizens slaughtered in the earlier battle, so Arisa could just follow Aya thoughtlessly, her mind always returning to frightening images that lingered there. The scattered bones she found here were like the ones that became part of the soil of the Deadlands; woven together as though they were fabrics, spines made for skeletal pathways where the old roads of Coloratus had disappeared underneath the barren, cracked soil. On and on they went, as though there was no end to that grotesque ossuary.
Underneath her boots she felt leaves twist and twigs and bones crack. Shards of glass, too, she soon noticed: as nature dominated this city, it spread its roots into empty buildings, and in time trees burst through the windows and rooftops. This growth was unnatural, too fast, as though all the death that happened here had fed this abundance of horrid life.
Night fell on them, voracious, the sudden darkness of a moonless sky. Though the sight of ruined Argentum swallowed by gloom was frightening, the dead city was in no way more dangerous than it had been before, for where the abominations called home the light could no longer make good on its promises of safety. Aya's soft humming gave life to a small orb of radiance that spun around the five of them, illuminating little but the path directly ahead of them.
Masuki's careful eyes found a path through a collapsed building, an old apothecary's laboratorium before it was destroyed. Small boxes of silver powder had been left by the entrance, an inscription just barely legible beneath the dust revealing that this silver came from Shirokane lands. Even now some herbs remained within vials or glass boxes; itchweed and gilliflower, tall nettle, savoury sage, rosemary and thyme. Even some scents lingered, familiar to Arisa: aqua regia and powders of all sorts, the unmistakable smell of the base components of sea fire. This Arisa found most concerning of all; sea fire was not supposed to be stored in urban areas such as these. Whoever ran this laboratorium had been a fool, and, despite all other worries she might have currently, Arisa could never suffer the sight of her own noble art so mishandled.
She forgot her anger at the sight of bones scattered by a cauldron. Skeletal fingers coiled around a black mass that could either be nigredo or ashes. The dead alchemist had been so savagely mauled that half of his bones had cracks or snapped in unnatural contortions. By his feet, the charred bones of beasts, and the scratch marks by his hands were too small to be the work of monsters. An agonizing death, slowly eaten alive before some fire finally put a stop to that misery. In the end, Arisa had to pity the poor soul. She could not muster the scorn for someone who had suffered so much.
Once they were back on the streets again, life moved around them, but paid them no mind. Warped creatures walked on their four legs, aimlessly, before finding a place in the darkness to fall asleep on. They roamed as though they were hurting, seeking some solace, and the glimpses Arisa caught of their faces took the breath from her, even after all she had seen: they were visages frozen in pained expressions, lips twisting into their mouths, keeping the beasts from closing them without ripping their own flesh with their fangs. Their heads were a disturbing mixture of lupine and bovine, with the prominent jaws of a predator and oversized noses that limited what their eyes could see. And perhaps this was for the better, because when the light hit their eyes just enough for Arisa to make out the details, she saw the frightened eyes of men and women, unblinking, unchanging.
Like all those of all the corpses she had seen in the Deadlands. Arisa reached into her belt, quivering hands taking hold of a wineskin. She drank it all in one gulp, and the warmth was enough to make her hands steady again, and for her to move forward, following Aya's lead and Masuki's tracking. In time, they had delved deep enough into Argentum that Arisa caught the sound of a soft distant whisper. The Melody they sought, the treasure buried deep in this hell, the last remaining life in this place of death and worse.
Nearby foliage moved even though no winds were blowing. More worrisome still was that Arisa heard no footsteps but her companions', nor did she hear the flapping of wings. She turned back and saw little but the darkness; the thin branches of dead trees, and lumps swaying from them. She did not inspect more closely. Arisa closed and opened her hands, feeling the cold metal of her rings against her skin. Save for some gold, she had left Teienshiro with no treasures but these rings infused with magic, all three of them - which would have been four if not for the one she returned to Kasumi in anger. If her own magic failed her, she could rely on these jewels… But not much. She had not truly fought or ventured into the darkness in some time, and now that she found herself in the midst of monsters again, she remembered why she had been so afraid. Each sound brought a new worry, a new gruesome thought or memory. The slightest movement, imagined or otherwise, brought to her the images that had forced her to live deep in her cups. Misaki, of course, could not show her own fear, if she felt any, and Masuki was far stronger than Arisa had ever been, but Aya and Maya moved with confidence through collapsed buildings and infested streets, as though they had no fear of what might lie ahead.
As though they had never lost a companion in a dark place such as this.
Suddenly Arisa found herself envying her companions, all of them. Only Masuki knew what existed beyond the Rift, and Lady Satou was an exceptional spirit, brave to the point of apathy before danger. But Aya and Maya had never tasted failure such as Arisa had. In the field of battle and in the heart of darkness they had never faltered, and it had been only due to their clashing hearts that they were separated. When Aya turned back to face Arisa, she managed to smile, and for a second Arisa really wished to believe in that smile, that all was going to be okay. But how can you smile in a place like this? How can you be strong, how can you be brave? In a place like this, we are but prey.
That was what she loved about Aya, she thought as her light shone on her, and what she despised about her, she understood when the light drifted away. This certainty, this unwavering faith in herself and her companions, the most passionate and sincere belief that something akin to destiny guided them to victory if only they were strong and hopeful enough, if they did their best and made the right choices. At times Arisa found it an infuriatingly naive idea. At other times, in her darkest, Arisa found it frightening.
Am I not strong enough, then? Is this why I stumble where others run, why I have fallen more than most, why my foolish heart is so uncertain? A strong person would not sabotage her own heart's desires, like Arisa had.
She wished she had more wine. The five passed underneath a stone archway just beyond the open air markets. Cloth and shattered pottery littered the cobblestone even here, and only after passing the arch and looking back did Arisa notice the eyes gleaming in the dark behind her. They were not eyes that hungered, but ones that suffered instead. Eyes heavy with a fearful curiosity and melancholy. We are intruders in their home, Arisa thought, and frightening though they may be, they are pitiful as well. Not that it made them any less dangerous. If anything, it only deepened the discomfort of being in their presence.
Arisa looked up once again, and now she saw that the night skies were concealed by the dense canopies that covered Argentum. These were no trees that Arisa had ever known; they were taller than any tree should be, and though some of them had thick, sickly trunks, they supported great weights, labyrinths of branches that grew all over one another. They did not end in fruits, however, but thorns, and their leaves were blackened, ill. Arisa would not touch them if she could avoid it: there were poisonous leaves in the Rosenreich that, when brushed up against one's skin, could cause a hideous death within an hour. If Arisa had the misfortune of being a denizen of the Rosenreich, perhaps she would consider that death a mercy, but she would prefer to remain alive for now.
The distant Melody grew louder, its words clearer. Arisa could not recognize the language, nor the voice that sang it: it was a curious thing, indeed, as it always was with Melodies, that as one focused on its sound, it inevitably shifted to other sounds, ever protean, and where only a minute ago it had been a woman's voice, now Arisa heard the plucking of harp strings, and an instant later the howling wind was drowned by the beat of drums. The sound came from the dark heart of Argentum, now consumed by overgrown, hateful nature, but when Arisa tried to locate it, it felt as though it rang inside her head and nowhere else. Melodies defied all laws of the world, for what else was the meaning of magic?
Aya extended her hand, pointed towards a large domed building some hundreds of meters ahead, its silhouette easily recognizable in the dark. A great gathering hall, it appeared, though what it had been made into since the creatures took over was anyone's guess. A nest, a food stockpile, a hoard of what they considered treasures. Whenever Arisa found herself in the homes of these monsters, she had more pressing concerns than investigating what it was that they concerned themselves with. It was true, no doubt, that she had rarely actually seen them eat, and the areas they inhabited were barren, and mere cannibalism was unlikely to sustain such great populations, so something had to nourish them.
Fiends gathered before the battered stone doors; Misaki and Aya readied their blades, Masuki and Maya their bows. Arisa motioned her fingers ever so slightly, and thought back on a song that she once had loved, a song she unearthed in the ruins of Rubicundus, alongside Rimi. The two had spent a week deciphering the runes they had found in a damaged book, and their reward for their efforts was an erratic composition, full of life and energy, a song that Kasumi fell in love with. It was a song of flame and wind, a song not of rage but of passionate righteousness. It was not the kind of magic that touched Arisa's heart, but right now its sheer power might be exactly what they needed.
Their approach was met not with howls or fangs but with absolute apathy. Lethargic, the monsters standing before the doors did little but lift their heads to stare blankly at the women approaching. Their minds were elsewhere: completely consumed by the Melody just past the doors, they hardly qualified as alive anymore. And this, regardless of what Tae and Kasumi might wish to believe, was the inevitable fate of all who fell prey to Melomania. It was not by chance that the condition had been thus named. When Aya retrieved the Melody, Arisa knew, they would truly be endangered.
A beast purred as they passed by and pushed the doors open; its furry body was grotesquely elongated, and though it did not seem particularly deformed, the way its body coiled like a serpent's was uncanny, and its very existence seemed painful. As the five entered the hall, the creature feebly tried to crawl towards them, but its diminutive limbs didn't carry it far at all.
"Fuck," Misaki said as she stepped into the hall. Arisa had to agree. The building was impossible to recognize as somewhere that had once been inhabited by humans, for most of the walls had either collapsed long ago or were now covered in vines or a disgusting red and fleshy substance. Arisa felt her knees weaken, but that was far from the last of the horrors.
Most of the dome had collapsed, but there was no seeing the sky through the gaping hole, as that whole portion of the building was now a frightening array of branches that twisted together to make for walkways over a dozen meters high, and all manner of warped beasts roamed there, looking down on the interlopers. Whatever purpose this building might have served once was now completely lost, and all Arisa could offer were guesses. No furniture or hint of what it had once been had remained, and so many of the walls had been torn down or replaced by thick tangles of wood that nothing was left to recognize. Closer to the entrance, there was no sign of life, but in the center of the building, where massive piles of debris had been taken by nature, hundreds of creatures were sprawled along the cracked floor and the rubble. And in the middle of it all, the Melody.
"There's no way we can get there," Misaki said.
"Actually, getting there would be incredibly easy. The Melody makes them docile, so even if it seems as though they are staring directly at us, they're likely not even aware we're here," Masuki replied. "Of course, the second we try to take the Melody away from them, they'll come after us and tear us to pieces. That is the inconvenient part."
"You think so?" Misaki said. "Before any of you even thinks of suggesting it, I will not serve as bait. I don't have the slightest intention of learning what it'd feel like to have all of my pieces scattered and buried underneath a mass of… Of abominations."
"You wouldn't serve as bait," Masuki explained. "In case you didn't notice, their world is reduced to the Melody. They will chase us once it's in our possession, until we put a fair amount of distance between us and them. After that, I expect they'll lose their minds and start killing one another, or simply expire in time."
"Will they?" Aya asked, suddenly concerned. Arisa, too, wasn't aware of this, because she had the good sense of leaving cursed places such as these behind once she was done with them.
"Hm? Oh, so you do not know," Masuki continued, casually. "It is not simply emotional dependency that keeps them anchored to sources of music, namely Melodies. Have you ever seen a monster starve to death?"
"Only very rarely," said Maya. "Or, rather, we would find corpses with no visible wounds, so starvation was the only conclusion we could reach."
"They eat for pleasure," Masuki explained, "but nothing I have learned indicates that they require nourishment. Not of the sort we are used to, at least. The Silence has done more than just make people into freaks: it was a fundamental rearrangement of the primordial forces of the world."
"I didn't take you for a scholar," Misaki remarked. "That's scholarly talk, the kind I'd expect from Hina."
"I just happen to know it," Masuki said, diverting the subject. "What is relevant is that we are beings that are bonded to the inherent magic - or music - of this world. We did not merely forget those forces, but were ripped apart from them. So it's not simply that we can no longer remember the past but that we have been changed so profoundly that we cannot properly recognize what once was."
"If you had been beyond the Rift," Arisa said to Aya, "as I have with my former companions, you would see that all is in disarray, even time itself," she would rather not remember her time spent after crossing the Rift, but this was information Aya would have to learn in time. "But we are stumbling in the dark, knowing very little of what has happened and what is the true nature of the Silence."
"But I do know that it is their food now," Masuki looked towards the mass of beasts, frozen in place with arms stretched towards the gleaming Melody, that silver gem whose intense light made it appear far larger than it truly was. "Without it, yes, they will die."
"So we've been killing them all along," Maya said, disturbed. "I thought by only slaying the ones on our way we were doing what was kindest, but…"
"You really think what they have can be called life?" Asked Arisa. "There is no way to save them. To put them down is the kindest thing you can do to them, because no one deserves this sort of existence. Now come, let's get this over with. To linger here will do us no good. Maya, Masuki, you stay with Misaki here. She'll guard you while you let your arrows fly at anything that comes our way. Aya, I'll help you get to the Melody. And, most importantly, I'll help you get out of there when it gets ugly. Understood?"
Aya nodded in acquiescence, and the other three took their positions, bows drawn and blade poised to strike at the onslaught that was soon to come. Arisa trod lightly towards the fiendish cluster, their attention only briefly diverted towards her and Arisa. After that, they returned to their harrowing trance. Empty eyes, enslaved by the repetitive humming of the Melody, stared helplessly at the small gem, held atop a pillar of twisted, gnarled wood. At the top of the pillar the wood thinned and split just enough that it looked like a mass of elongated, emaciated fingers.
"Start singing when I reach out for it," Arisa told her, "and maybe I won't lose my hand."
"I know what I must do," Aya told her, never one to suffer her condescension. "I'm ready."
I truly hope you are. The Voice of Peace filled the world around them, and the attention of the monsters was diverted to them. Illuminated by the Melody's glow, they looked sickly, but Aya's song granted them some respite, enough that the humanity they had lost became clearer: Arisa recognized a trace of consciousness behind their black eyes, and, for a second, she felt a sting of pity for them.
She grasped the Melody, and the wooden fingers coiled around her hand, thorns biting into her skin. They cut at her knuckles, spread towards her wrist, but she pulled her hand free, spilling her blood all around. Her scream was overwhelmed by the furious hisses of the monsters all around: even Aya's Voice did nothing to ease their wrath, and they began to rise on maimed limbs, crawled towards the two or leapt from the wooden walkways above. Aya grabbed Arisa's hand and started to run, and Arisa placed the Melody within a glass vial, and then into her pocket.
Their pursuers were met by arrows, then by Misaki's blade. With each swing of her greatsword, half a dozen monsters were bisected: a burning blood spilled on Arisa, but some of the fiends were hollow, and when they were cut, nothing came out of them and they just lay still on the cracked stone floor.
Nature, too, had started to move, vines writhing with a life of their own, whipping at the interlopers and the beasts alike. There was no intent behind their movement, only mindless thrashing, nothing but a response to all stimuli atop it. Cracks spread along the floor as roots rose to surface and wrapped around the legs of anyone and anything they could catch. Aya drew her blade, Sieg, and freed Maya when she was caught, but the rest of the monsters here had no such luck: they were grabbed and pulled under with tremendous force, as though nature tried to squeeze them through the growing cracks and openings along the floor. Instead their bones were shattered and their flesh minced upon the jagged surface and the rising thorns.
This place is alive, Arisa realized to her horror. With her magic she tried to wrest control of the vines, the roots and the thorns, the tree branches spread out like filigree above them, but she understood this was not nature, this was not a forest. This was a creature that had grown around the building, within it, underneath it. We are inside it.
She couldn't feel her legs. Memories flooded beyond her control, and she tried to silence them by remembering a song, by trying to recall Kasumi's voice, but the fear lingered. Around her, Masuki had disposed of her bow and fought with a warhammer now, loudly shattering bones and splattering beasts into pulp and grotesque stains, while Aya and Misaki held back the onslaught of despairing souls rushing towards them, their blades both cutting down any enemies approaching and keeping the hostile flora at bay. But it was not enough. This was not a battle that could be won, and the longer they stayed here, the worse all would get.
"I'm going to do something dangerous," Arisa screamed. "When I raise my hand, I want you to turn back and start running. Close your eyes until the light dies down. You'll know it when it happens."
"The light?" Maya asked. "Arisa, what-"
"Come," Masuki urged her. "Do what Ichigaya says."
"You're coming with us, Arisa," Aya pleaded. "I hope you're not planning anything reckless and stupid like staying behind, like sacrificing yourself…"
"Ha! No, I mean to die of old age, you thrice-damned fool," Arisa tried to sound confident, but her voice failed her, and her fear was plain to all. "You're the one with stupid and reckless notions of sacrifice. Now, fuck off. It's going to be rough. And don't look at the fucking light."
Her companions turned, then, urged on by Masuki. As soon as the fiends were upon her, she clenched her fist and felt fire on her hands as her rings shattered into gold and gem dust. A forceful organ boomed, and she put all of her strength into the song she had uncovered with Rimi, that song of ruinous light and dread. A red sphere lingered briefly in front of her before it caught fire, so intense that Arisa's own clothes were singed, then caught flame for an instant before she could control the magic. The fire made ashes of the closest beasts, then rushed to the center of the chamber, where the Melody had been. The fiends were torn between fleeing and admiring the pure scarlet, the resounding organ. But it would make no difference.
Arisa closed her eyes, but still she could see the light. Everything shook and dust began to fall on her head, and a nightmarish boom silenced all else. She ran, eyes wide shut, the light burning through her eyelids. She could see the vague shapes of the world around her, all of it consumed in a flash of white. When she looked down, she could not make out the ground she trod upon, but she saw her own bones aglow, the insides of her body plain to see through her shut eyelids. Behind her, she felt the fall of something heavy, and she felt the lick of searing winds on her back, felt the fabrics of her clothes wear out with the flames, and she screamed in silenced agony as the remains of the gold of her rings melted and fused with her skin.
Only when she felt the wind again did she open her eyes, and to her relief she saw all her companions alive, the four looking up in horror in the middle of a deserted street. Their faces were pale, and Maya had fallen to her knees. The light had died down, but the fire burned on, and oh how it burned. The tree-like growth that covered the building caught fire, and so did the stone, the whole building collapsing on itself, a furious bright red flame roaring as it broke through the stone and hissed, reaching for the skies. Molten glass rained down on the streets, and the rock itself began to turn into a grey blob, enveloping the trees.
Arisa retched. Blood left her mouth, and yellow bile, and she felt so weak that she would have fallen if not for Misaki holding her by the arm. She just stared at the building crumble, long spires of bark writhing like hugely deformed limbs, the limbs of a creature in pain. Arisa started to cry as the horror was too much for her to bear. She had seen nightmares like this beyond the Rift, but never here, never in the heart of a great kingdom. She remembered all she had seen, and to her companions' dismay, she covered her face with her arms, panicking, spewing out senseless words, and she found herself desperately longing for Kasumi.
"Arisa!" Aya put her hands on her shoulders, tried to her her to look at her. "Arisa, it's over. Arisa, please, you don't have to cry, it's alright, we're alright."
"No, no, no," she repeated, shoving Aya away from her. "We have to leave. We have to leave now, I can't… No, I can't bear it… Not like this, not like this…"
"Arisa…" The pity in Maya's voice was almost maddening. How could they speak, how could they not weep after this? If they knew what memories consumed her, they would understand…
"Come, we are not out of danger yet," Masuki called out. "There's still-"
A roar came from the crumbling building, then a gust of burning wind. Like innards, vines began to spill out through the gaps in the stones, and from beneath the earth something massive began to rise. A tree, it first appeared, but not quite. Its branches were not rigid, and found passage through the rocks, and they reached for the five outside as though they were long fingers, tentacles. Tentacles made of wood, creaking as they twisted themselves into smaller forms. Masuki was distant enough to avoid this death knell, while Aya and Misaki started to run, but Maya struggled to rise, tripping on roots that clung to her ankle, and Arisa found herself paralyzed in horror as she looked at the grotesque branches and saw that, once again, she was wrong. It was not one being she was looking at.
Faces were spread along the tree bark. They were frozen in pain, in horror, in fear, the wood like a tight mask pressed against them, and through the holes that were their eyes and their mouths vines burst out, lashing out at anything before them. But the dissonant, muffled screams of pain were the worst thing. Arisa had heard them before. She froze, and couldn't even find the strength to cry, even as, by her side, Maya was enveloped by vines and dragged to an open mouth, teeth of thorns ripping the leather of her armor and sinking into her stomach. She extended her arm to Arisa, shrieking for help, but she could not move. Underneath her legs, she felt the warmth of a puddle of her own making.
Not again. Not again. Not again. Not again. Not again.
Sieg gleamed and cut through the air and through the vines imprisoning Maya. Aya helped her up, a pool of blood following Maya where she walked, and Arisa felt cold fingers around her body. Misaki lifted her, and carried her as she began to run. Arisa didn't blink. She stared at the writhing, dying mass in front of her, she regarded the fires with dread, and by the time she heard howls all around, dark figures approaching underneath the fading red glow, she couldn't find the strength to move.
Deeper and deeper they went, the suns swallowed by the unreachable canopies, the darkness of the woods enveloping them with its cold. Arisa looked up to see a tangle of thorns and eyes gleaming in the dark, withered leaves falling like rain over them, disappearing as they reached the surprisingly soft ground. The earth swallowed them, and held on to Arisa's boots as well, and she felt herself sink whenever she stayed still, so she never did.
Behind her, only the soft breaths of her companions; they were six in all, but Arisa could not tell if they were too few or too many to come here. That there was a sinister aura all around was no surprise, but this was hardly the first time Arisa had delved into tainted lands, so why did it feel so unfamiliar? She knew what she would face. She no longer found any surprise in horror.
"How long, do you figure?" Saya whispered.
"Hard to say," Mayu replied. At least Arisa thought that was Mayu; she had not yet had enough time to grow accustomed to the voices of her new companions. They were Saya's friends, not hers. Kasumi, Rimi and Tae stayed behind with Rei in the hovels of the beasts' nameless village, but instead of simply heading back north, there was, of course, an impediment keeping them south of the Rift. "The shack shouldn't be more than thirty minutes away from the village, but as you can see-"
"It's been two fucking hours," Arisa said. "Are we lost? How could we have gotten lost when we have walked in a straight fucking line all this time?"
"That's the thing," said the girl who was probably Satomi. She spoke softly, but her words were always easy to hear. "When I journeyed from the village to the shack, the journey took me an hour. I brought Fumika with me the second time, but after three hours we had not gotten anywhere near the heart of the woods, so we headed back. Natsuki had gotten there in just minutes, but it took her almost an entire day to leave."
"'Least I think it was a day," she admitted. "Not like I can rely on the sun and moon to tell the time, not here. Just the other day, instead of the sun rising in the morning, three moons did instead, and the day was just as bright even though when we looked at the sky, it was still black and full of stars. Disturbing."
"All the same," Arisa continued, "what this means is we have no idea when we'll get there. Brilliant. We should head back. They're dead. We'll find only corpses."
"You don't know that," Fumika insisted. "If we leave without learning the fate of the folk of the village, I'll blame myself until I die."
"Then learn to live with it," Arisa groaned. "Guilt's not poison. You'll endure. We should be leaving as quickly as possible. It's not safe beyond the Rift. You were mad for staying."
"We had no choice," Mayu said. "The Eaters wouldn't allow us to leave. We would be hunted down before ever reaching Coloratus or the Rosenreich. And we had people to care for. Rei and the others-"
"Are almost animals now," said Arisa. "Yes, it'd be very sad to leave them here to suffer and die. But there is only so much you can ever do. To simply die in this folly…"
"But we won't die," said Natsuki. "We have you with us now. All we needed was a few more hands, and you've collected plenty of Melodies already, so you're no strangers to this. To monsters…"
Monsters. That, of course, was the obvious truth behind the disappearance of the village's entire population. But monsters were a matter none ever wished to speak of, least of all the monsters that lived beyond the Rift. Arisa and Saya had only been there briefly compared to their current companions, and seen far lesser horrors, but there was no doubt that as they moved further into the woods, they would face terrible dangers.
As they delved deeper, the trees thrived with grotesque life, their bark now fleshy, cancerous growths in the heart of the forest, and along their surface, veins pumped blue blood. They breathed, Arisa realized as the air grew thick and warm, and the roots of the living trees sucked the earth dry, rendering it no longer a deathly brown or cracked grey but a tone closer to white. Arisa felt the urge to turn back. The people they hoped to find here were surely dead.
"This is madness," she told her companions. The ground beneath her feet shook to the rhythm of a heartbeat. "Let us head back. The villagers are dead, I'm sorry to say, and if we keep going we'll join them."
"Have you no courage?" Fumika asked. "Or honor, for that matter? You can weave magic: this power also tasks you with defending those who cannot protect themselves. If we had more people like you, then we would not have been living underneath the boots of the Eaters."
"You cannot always flee, Arisa," said Mayu. "True, we may be fighting only to find corpses, but the missing villagers were under our protection. We must avenge them, or, at the very least, find out what happened to them."
"They died. That's what happened."
"You're noble-born, aren't you?" Natsuki asked with disdain. "As far as I know, and do tell me if I'm mistaken, but in exchange for us bowing and licking your boots, it is your sacred duty to guard the helpless. These people we've been tracking, they might mean nothing to you, just a bunch of unwashed peasants, nameless and faceless, and so it means no great deal to you to simply turn back when that's safer for you. Why would you risk yourself for your lessers, hm? 'Course, the chance that we'll find anyone alive is meager, and so is the worth of their lives. If we keep going, if we happen to find one surviving soul, then that is one life we will have saved. One life that may endure for decades still, a life to be lived fully. But of course that doesn't matter at all to you, does it?"
"Natsuki, that's enough," said Saya. Arisa was glad that, at least, she bothered to stand by her. "We will see this to the end, as promised. But don't antagonize Arisa simply because she's cautious. We may yet be grateful for her thoughtfulness."
From the look on the four women's faces, that was not fucking likely. So be it, Arisa decided, sighing. She didn't care about their opinions: soon they would find that no survivors remained, because when had monsters ever spared anyone's life? After that, they would turn back and leave the woods, head north past the Rift, go back home and hopefully never return to this eldritch place. Arisa had seen enough for a lifetime.
Of course, the horrors of the Deadlands had little consideration for what she had and hadn't seen, and continued to display more of its indifferent cruelty: the twisted trees bore no fruit but hanged corpses, ropes of sinew coiled around their necks. When they turned, swaying as the fleshy trees breathed, there were only reddened skulls where their faces should be, the eyes long since devoured, leaving a deep darkness behind. Worms ate their way into the exposed bones, and when Satomi approached a dead child to investigate, brittle fragments of the skull crumbled into shards the wind soon scattered, and the bone and flesh underneath had been made into small, hollow hives where larvae nested.
"Enough," said Arisa. "To go any further would be folly. Pray tell, what do you hope to find? Go and count the corpses, you'll find there's as many as there are people missing."
"There are not," said Satomi. "We would not remain hopeful if there were. The village was to the south of our main encampment, and there were seventy-three people living there on our last count. There are definitely nowhere near as many dead in the woods. The others may be alive."
"The others may have died on the way," Arisa proposed.
"We are six," said Natsuki, "and from what Saya has told us, when you were five you accomplished quite a lot north of the Rift and in Suilen. Why should it be different now that we are more?"
"Do you hear your own words?" Arisa couldn't believe it. "This is no adventure, this is no time for bravery and boldness. The five of us survived this long because we always respected the danger of the forsaken ruins we explored. Because we did not wantonly march into the jaws of death. Every time one chooses to fight, they are at risk."
"And the risk is worth it," Fumika insisted. "We're not fools. We know we could die. But that is a risk we have decided to take. We have judged it worth it. I'd sooner die in battle, fighting for the soul of the world, than cowering, withering, all the while telling myself it's safer."
There would be no arguing with them. At any other time, Arisa would have found their sense of duty to be admirable, the way they were fully prepared to go to such lengths to rescue the people who depended on them. But now her unease was too great for that. Now she ventured into unknown depths.
Fumika pointed at something in the distance. The shack previously mentioned, the one Natsuki had convinced herself simply had to be where the missing villagers were being held by monsters. That they had been carried away from their homes whilst still living had been a reasonable enough conclusion, given their tracks had been found right next to a trail of metal scraps, pieces of cloth and belts and clasps a prisoner might manage to free oneself of; a clever safety measure taught to the common folk by these more experienced rangers who had spent years surviving in the Deadlands. But a captive would not remain alive for long, and already the better part of a week had passed. Monsters were ravenous, hasty, unlikely to preserve a meal for another day, because to them there was no such thing as tomorrow.
Cautiously, Satomi slid the door open, its creak a mournful cry that sounded like a woman's voice. Weapons were drawn then; Saya's long spear led their advance, and would put some space between them and the monsters ahead - that was the hope, at least. Arisa focused on well-remembered songs, ones she had rehearsed alongside Rimi and Tae, but hoped her spells would not be needed. Her music had always been most attuned to nature, and she could inspire life and strength into the withered soil, its flowers, vines and thorns, but here there was nothing.
There was little inside the shack: a table left on the corner, and half a dozen chairs scattered senselessly. Footsteps on the floor led to a half-opened trapdoor, one that Natsuki needed almost no effort to lift: indeed, it was as though it opened itself for her, inviting her to descend into the darkness. Steep stairs led down, and Saya poked at the darkness with her lance. She called for light, and Arisa promptly complied, but there was little to be revealed but a round tunnel leading into an abyss far below, far ahead.
Something felt wrong at once. The tunnel walls were of no material Arisa could recognize: it looked like rock, but, just like the ground underneath her boots, its consistency was more like that of a blighted fen, her feet sinking ever so slightly with each step she took. And the stench was miserable - but, distinctively, it was not the smell of death and rot. That was a relief, but worrisome at the same time. It meant Arisa had even less of a notion of what to expect than she had first thought.
Long lines of dark blue ran along the ceilings, accompanying them as they delved deeper into the tunnel. The walls widened while the ceiling became only slightly more distant, but still too close for comfort. The rocks reddened and the blue brightened, and in time sounds other than their footsteps grew louder, and though they were still distant, they called them to come closer, and Arisa's companions promptly followed its call. They were voices: men's voices, women's, even children's, many of them, some half-whispered cries for help, others confused, anguished moans. And howling.
From the darkness ahead, a dozen huge, corrupted mastiffs pounced on them, and were immediately cut down. They were easy enough to dispose of, but an inspection of their bodies gave pause to even Natsuki, who was horrified to see that some of them had paws with long human-like fingers, not claws, and that they wore the faces of the corpses hanged at the woods above the surface. They were stretched poorly over their heads, like ill-fitting masks, and the way their eyes shone behind the holes on the slabs of hollowed flesh was positively disturbing.
"What the fuck…?"
"This is not the first time we see something like this," said Mayu. "These monsters are drawn to collecting… Trinkets, usually, but sometimes body parts, too, anything that will make them believe themselves to be a little bit human, still. But I'd never seen them take people's faces like this. And to flay them, to stretch them out like a mask… They don't usually do anything so complex."
"Complex wasn't the word I had in mind," said Arisa. "So, what now? The voices are not far. Shall we go?"
They didn't have to be asked again. They were so close now, and with the voices still calling out to them, Arisa found she was glad to be proved wrong, to learn that there was still a chance to save all the people who had disappeared. They quickened their pace, Arisa urging them to remain cautious, but finally tempted to succumb to their optimism.
The odd smell became more intense, the air around them hotter and damper. Even though there was now more space all around them, so much that it was now difficult to even see the walls to their sides, Arisa found it harder to breathe; there didn't appear to be any gases in the air, no poison she could recognize, it was more like an absence of air. But they were close enough now that the voices were distinct enough to tell apart, but the pleas for help were strained, slurred. No wonder: they would have been starving for days at this point, and close to death. So they ran, following the voices, hoping they were not too late.
Arisa was the first to see them, and at once she wished she hadn't: they were not imprisoned in cages or tied to a pillar, but instead clustered all together, clumped up against the ceiling just one or two meters out of reach, their bodies enveloped by a sickly reddened mass that bubbled and oozed, drops falling onto the ground. All those people were alive, that much was beyond doubt, but Arisa was compelled to kill them right now and put them out of their misery, as they were not merely imprisoned, awaiting torture or execution.
They were being digested.
Where the vile ooze touched their bodies, their flesh had sloughed off to give the slime its disgusting color, and the desperate cries for help came from barely-alive people whose faces were hard to fully recognize as human: their flesh was like molten candle wax, their skeletons exposed, some of them little more than just their bones now. Arisa caught a glimpse of a still-twitching head attached to the exposed bones of an upper torso, the remaining organs somehow still functioning. The dying cried for help in a gargle of pained sounds, but there was no help that could be offered to them. Half-digested faces turned to the six women who had just arrived, and as they moved their eyes spilled from their sockets, and their ghastly moans grew louder and louder, the gelatinous mass clinging to the ceiling stirring, until there was a loud popping sound and a red bubble burst, spilling its contents all over Mayu.
She did not scream. Indeed, it was as though she had never even been there in the first place. She had been no more than three meters away from Arisa, but now all that remained was a misshapen pile of sporadically jerking flesh. Saya babbled some unnerved words, while a quivering Satomi dropped her sword to the ground. An inhuman noise came out of Natsuki's throat, and Fumika stared blankly at her friend's remains, calling out Mayu's name.
The reality of it only sank in when Arisa shrieked and started to cry, and the writhing mass began to descend upon them, its entrapped victims still deep inside it. It slithered along the ground, and Saya's spear did nothing to it but be consumed. Arisa began to run away, Fumika right behind her; a fleshy tendril extended from the monstrosity, and wrapped itself around Fumika's ankle. Arisa turned back to help, but already Fumika had fallen, her sword clanging by her side, her leg split in half, blood trailing behind her as she crawled, but she did not last long before her limbs were ripped one by one, as though the abomination was not merely famished but sadistic.
Natsuki and Satomi continued to try and repel the monstrosity, the former with a heavy mace and the latter with magic, azure sparks shocking the mass of flesh, convulsing the bodies trapped inside, but doing little to halt the creature. It stared at them, not with its own eyes but with those of its victims, floating inside it. A red lash snapped at Satomi, and her innards began to spill from her body, almost cut in half. Natsuki tried to hold her, to help her up, but she was already dead.
If not for Saya lingering behind, Arisa would have already abandoned them all and fled, knowing there was no way to fight something they didn't understand. Yet Natsuki continued to try, less out of hope of victory and more because of the grief and rage she felt for her slaughtered companions. Arisa grabbed Saya's arm, tried to convince her to run with her, but she continued to plead with Natsuki, to try and force her to let go, but she continued to shriek and bludgeon the disgusting mess in front of her, doing little to it but deforming its ever-shifting shape. A tendril circled her gauntleted hand, then slithered up her arms, the metal starting to smoke and melt. Screaming, she called out to Saya for help, extending her free hand. Saya tried to pull her, to no avail. There was no freeing her, and she was dead already, even if they didn't realize.
"Let go, Saya," Arisa begged her. As soon as Natsuki was consumed, Saya would be next. Arisa could not lose her. Arisa would not lose her. "Please, let go of her."
"No! No, no, Natsuki, hold on, I feel you coming free," Saya disregarded Arisa, putting even more effort into it, when the truth was that Natsuki's trapped arm was being torn, devoured, its upper half connected to the lower only by thick strands of flesh, muscle and bone that started to snap and break. "I'll save you, I'll save you, I'll-"
Arisa lifted Fumika's sword and brought it down on a gap between Natsuki's pauldron and her arm, cleaving through her flesh and freeing Saya from her. She grabbed Saya's hand and did not look back as she dragged her out of the tunnels. Either Natsuki died in eerie silence or Arisa blocked out her screams; thankfully, Saya followed her, and helped her on the final stretch, supporting Arisa when she felt her strength fail and she almost collapsed. When they neared the exit, Arisa turned back, but did not focus on the sight far ahead of her, in the dark, instead closing her eyes and recalling the song she had rehearsed earlier, remembered its fire and wrath, and unleashed it against the darkness.
And then she fell on Saya's arms. What happened immediately after she did not know: she recalled only flashes of red light, a dozen voices screaming, the feeling of the world rumbling all around her, and the smell of burned flesh. When at last she woke, she was abed, Kasumi asleep on the floor next to her, and though Arisa was tempted to reach out to her, to call her name and wake her up, she found she struggled to even move. She was not wounded, exhausted though she may be, but even now her whole body continued to shake in fear.
Even before Lady Nonomiya explained to Eve what had happened, she could figure out from Aya's absence, Masuki's horse, and the hole on the gates of Argentum that she was too late. Every word coming out of Lalafin's mouth only confirmed Eve's fears, and even increased them. Near the gates were the marks of battle, bloodstains remaining even after all corpses had been moved away, either burned or buried.
"You should have turned them away," Eve reprimanded Nonomiya. "You should have-"
"I've heard enough from Yamato to know that you, too, backed her choice of leaving with Maruyama," Lalafin said, sitting by the battered remains of a palisade, her soldiers receiving medical treatment before she did, so she endured a rather nasty cut on the cheek. Eve misliked the look of it, and her sloppiness in getting proper care. A wound like that could easily infect. "Thegn Wakamiya, I don't know if I find your loyalty to Queen Shirasagi admirable or twisted, that you were quite alright with Lady Yamato acting behind her back, but as soon as you received strict orders from your liege you rode off to put an end to the quest that you, yourself, had supported! Isn't that a bit hypocritical, and even senseless?"
"I do what my queen commands," said Eve, "but I am not my queen's eyes and ears, and certainly not her brain to make decisions for her. Besides, I'm no fool. I knew she would command me to retrieve Maya, so the only unexpected order was regarding what is to be done to Countess Ichigaya. I trust Aya to retrieve the Melody safely, and I would have trusted her to find a way into Argentum without your permission. But by openly supporting her, Lady Nonomiya, you have defied Queen Shirasagi. You had to have known that she would not suffer Yamato risking her life like this."
"Oh? But, just like you, I only followed orders, and had received no such command from the queen that I was to forbid Yamato from proceeding," Eve could not know if this was true or not; if Queen Chisato had sent Argenturris a messenger raven, Lalafin could easily justify herself by saying the bird had not arrived. "I've committed no treason, surely our beloved Queen Shirasagi would not be so unreasonable. Still, Thegn Wakamiya, you are eager to assert that you are no fool, but I had never assumed such a thing of you. Come, now, we are both adults, we should respect each other's intelligence. I admire your daring, I must say, and your craftiness… Are you truly Shirasagi's loyal, devoted servant, or have you perhaps dared to hope that you would have arrived just a little after your friends enter Argentum, with perfect timing to rescue them? You do have quite a lot of knights with you, and you did support Yamato's decision to accompany Maruyama, so it's not too difficult for me to make the connection that, save for Ichigaya and the Mad Dog's early arrival, everything that has transpired is quite to your liking."
"You presume a great deal, Lady Nonomiya," Eve said, stern. "You presume I would cross my queen's strict commands."
"Of course not. But if you could not arrive in time, if you reached Argentum only after Aya had already delved deep into the city and reclaimed its Melody, then you would have no choice but to help her in any way you can. In fact, with Yamato by her side, it would be your duty to ride into Argentum and guarantee their safety."
Eve did not wish to betray whether or not that truly was her intention, but Lalafin's smile reminded Eve that she had always been a terrible liar. What could she do, then, but sigh?
"It's what I would have done, you know?" Lalafin told her. "It's a convoluted plan with no promise of success, one that requires on misleading everyone around you, generously interpreting the orders you're given, and that would only work if everyone acted exactly as you expect them to. I love it. Still, perhaps it was not so risky after all, because you know the queen better than anyone else in this world."
"Almost anyone else," Eve said, bitterly thinking of Aya. When she returned to Albio, Eve had dared hope that she and the queen might make amends, but that never came to pass. "There was no other way. Queen Shirasagi would never allow it otherwise. She is too stubborn. If Maya and I pleaded for her to allow us to accompany Aya, we would be denied. Were it any other way, there would be impediments."
"Would there?"
"To my honor," Eve explained. Faced with Lalafin's skepticism, she elaborated. "Honor is not blind obedience, and deceit that gives everyone what they want may be more admirable than absolute honesty. That's what I like to believe, at least."
"Your secrets are safe with me, Thegn Wakamiya," Lalafin attempted to smile, always a difficult proposition with her scarred face. "It seems that I have misjudged you."
"You don't spend years in the presence of Loremaster Hikawa without learning a thing or two about deception," Eve said.
"Hm, this sort of craftiness makes me think of a different Hikawa entirely. No matter. You have friends to rescue, no? Go on, then. I shall not bar your path, but I will not have my men sent into Argentum to offer you aid, as they have bled enough and have earned plentiful repose."
Eve commanded her riders to mount their steeds again, and as she approached the ruined gates, she heard Masuki's horse neigh, as if calling out to her, and the animal began to follow Eve and her knights, even after they attempted to shoo her away. In the end, Eve found it best to allow her to seek her master. Besides, having a spare horse was always useful, and this one seemed more clever than an ordinary beast.
Past the rubble and the ashes they found old Argentum, abandoned for about as long as Eve had been in these lands. She had never seen the city before it fell into ruins, and so could not mourn its lost grandeur as so many others did. Even so, the feeling of wrongness was overwhelming in Argentum, and the trotting of their horses would no doubt call attention to their presence… But all throughout the night they rode onwards and were undisturbed, though a great deal of time was wasted circumventing the narrow streets, covered by the debris of crumbling buildings and the thick roots of overgrown trees that burrowed their way through wood and stone. In the dark, it was practically impossible to find any tracks in this environment of ashes and dust.
Little stirred but their shadows. Argentum extended much farther still, and without Aya's gifts Eve was uncertain of how to track a Melody, how to find Yamato and the others… A daylight search would be far easier, but there was no point in waiting. Perhaps they might find a sign in the distant darkness…
Or the rumbling of the earth. Frightened, most of the horses tried to gallop away, before being restrained by their riders. Eve looked up at the small, discrete stars in the sky, the only light that shone other than their torches. Within minutes, they disappeared, devoured by the night, by what Eve thought at first might be a cloud, but soon realized could only be smoke. The smoke of a violent fire far away; she commanded her riders to put their torches out, and then, immersed in complete obscurity, a faint red light revealed itself far away, many miles north. They were headed the right direction, at least. And yet a sight and sound like that could not be good omens. Their way uncovered, Eve had the torches lit again, and commanded her knights to make haste.
Perhaps it was simply that her eyes had gotten used to being here, but now Eve thought she saw more than just shadows and ruin, and from all directions, something was moving, something watched them, but there were no eyes to be found, and when lights were cast upon darkened corners, alleyways and broken homes, there was nothing there to reveal. The horrors would always avoid them, but Eve knew better than to assume that meant they were afraid. They were hunters, not prey, and to ever forget that was a carelessness that could relinquish one's life.
Eve heard the crackling of fire, heard the shaking of the earth somewhere far away, but it was howls she focused on, attempted to hear, howls and screams for help. She would know, then, beyond doubt where to find her former companions and the three new ones that had replaced her, Chisato and Hina. Though Eve aimed to avoid low feelings like bitterness and jealousy, she couldn't help but wish she could have been by Maya's side, that she could hear Aya sing once more, that Hina and Queen Chisato could be with them as well, all taking care of one another in this dangerous place. Ichigaya, Satou and Okusawa seemed reliable enough, or at least Aya didn't seem afraid to put her life in their hands, but still this did not feel right. It had to be the five of them, just as they had been, once. Three were more than willing, but the other two were a different matter entirely…
A hiss from the dark, the flapping of wings. A flock of carrion crows passed them by, and these were just as twisted as the city they inhabited, their swollen bodies far too heavy for their stunted wings, keeping them flying low, and with difficulty. But they sought something, and they flew with determination and purpose. They tracked the scent of blood and death, but whether that slaughter had come to pass or was yet to be, Eve could not know. The latter, she hoped. It meant she was not out of time.
A hurried gallop kept them ahead of the dark wings that gave chase, and the light of their torches gave life to shadows that far outnumbered their own. Behind us now, Eve realized, but did not turn back to see. Instead she drew her blade and rode at full tilt towards the red, towards the heart of Argentum, her steed leaping over tangles of oversized roots, and soon the shadows that had been behind her were now by her sides, claws swiping at her before she swung her blade and spread limbs across the city streets. Lupine creatures lunged at her horse, as though realizing that Eve herself was too difficult a target. She yelled a command, and a spear was thrown at a fiend that had come dangerously close to her, piercing through its head.
There were more and more noises now, more shadows and more lights, but the monsters on their way could not withstand the brunt of a cavalry charge, and were trampled to bloody pieces. Eve shouted, called out to Aya; though she could not yet see Maruyama, she could see her magic and its pink sparks, not too far now. A whistle sounded in response, and Cherrywind darted off to follow it.
They are not five, Eve thought in horror when she saw humans emerge from the darkness, but was relieved to see that Arisa and Maya were being carried, and were still alive, though likely wounded. Eve rushed to their aid, keeping their pursuers at bay with precise strikes of her blade, and Masuki ran towards her horse to lay Maya atop its saddle. She was bleeding heavily, and the wounds on her belly were deep. Eve concealed her shock and kept herself from recoiling so as not to worry Maya, but it made no difference, because when Eve called her name, Maya struggled to even move her head to face her.
A line of spears guarded their retreat, and Aya mounted right behind Eve, yelling at her to hurry. Eve did not hesitate for an instant; she galloped away as quickly as her steed could take her, screaming the command that they were to battle the fiends on their way only to open a path, and otherwise were to rush back to the gates. She didn't even think of asking Aya about the Melody. She only took her eyes from the roads directly in front of her to look to her sides, to the encroaching shadows and, most critically, Maya.
Eve had seen wounds like that on the battlefield. She had rarely seen, however, them turn into scars. As the shadows scattered and the sun started to come out, painting the sky a faint red, Eve chose to silence her mind of thoughts and fear. She would have time for them later.