The Trickster: Part Three
--
It very nearly killed him one day, in that broad use of a word he had no meaning or need for, a sudden explosion of blinding agony that struck the back of his mind like a knife to his arguable soul. He had spasmed, plummeting through the pointless air and clawing at his head with his sharpened nails, trying to rip his own head off in futile hopes of cutting away the pain. Like an animal he had raged, screaming high-pitched echoes that shattered the smaller rocks near him with the quivering cruelty in the sound, and only after thick blood began to peel down his hands did the internal pain subside at the heels of a self-inflicted agony.
Pausing, catching himself on a rock shaped as a darkly edged chair, he heaved deep breaths, not so much frightened as on edge, wondering where or what had attacked him, tried to kill him when he could not touch anyone but his siblings. He had crept over the rock, absently licking away the blood and ruffling his canvas wings in the air agitatedly, and he spat out the blood, a bitter taste to it akin to dark acid or the ilk. The sky attracted his solid scarlet eyes, flickering from corner to corner in a predatorial manner as he sought the deathly source, and he had found nothing. There were, just as he had suspected and known, no beings near enough to attack him from inside or out.
In that case, what could it have been? Age it was not; he was far too young to even be close to decaying, as not one of his elder siblings showed any signs of their own age. They were youthful yet and though he often wished in fits of boredom to simply pass away just for the sake of a change, he had found they could not rot or change any more physically. It simply could not happen in the gods damned void, no matter how he wished it would happen to Sister Po Kong or any one of his brothers. Sister Bai Tsa, really, was the only one he could stand or trust at all, and that lead him to considering whether or not one of their brothers or horrid sister had played the demonic trick on him.
No, it was not in their blood nor their sorcery. The god of pestilence, if he could recall the smug imbecile correctly, was far more interested in ruining the lives of young women than granting his powers to a mere demon. Thusly, it could not have been one of his siblings.
Brother Shendu, he considered briefly, and then discarded that thought. The shamed fool could do naught in either direction, and besides, someone would have noticed had he tried anything suspicious.
This left, once he had thought and narrowed the selection down, frequently touching bloodied claws to the superficial gouges in his scalp in test, only the sprawling world outside in the mortals' dimension. There was someone who was seeking to kill him and it arose the bloodlust inside him, stirring him to loathing and a hating drive to find the unthinking human questing for the key to his death. He would tear a hole through which he could peer to trace any energy he might be able to catch, a remnant of whatever prayer or ritual had spiced its magic in his streams of dark blood.
He would not admit it, but he did feel a string of fear deep inside; Hsi Wu of the Sky did not feel prepared to meet the nothingness that awaited his death. He was a demon and would never be permitted the grace of a true hell, but would simply fade from existence, disappearing from mind and heart and soul until even the histories would not recall his ever living. Revenge kept him from succumbing to the worming fear, the knowledge that there was a bastard out in the mortal realm desiring to kill him, and knowing that Jade still dwelt in her passage of time. She would not be let free so easily by some human sorceror who thought to slay the demon birthed from Ch'ien, aspect of sky and the creative mind.
The hole was easy to make, for he had grown skilled at making them as he spied on the Chan girl, and he, too tired to attempt finding a new spot and waiting for his speedy healing to cover the gashes, stayed on the unnatural rock formation. Pricking claws into the air, he tore with quick, strong gestures, peeling the atmosphere aside to create a thin veil through which he could see the passing of the mortal world. He could try to push past that veil, as he had often tried in the past, but he knew already that he would fail as he always had.
It was Jade he saw, as he always saw as soon as he opened a viewing portal. Perhaps it was the gods' way of laughing at him, at pointing fingers and giggling heinous laughs that he would always see her first. The revulsion and the hated thread of caring, buried under a mountain of rage and disgust, sparked bile in his throat immediately, meeting with his anger at the foolish human he believed had attacked him. Only when he saw her make a traditional gesture across her face for protection from demons did he first realize what it was.
She prayed for him, a demon of depravity and no salvation, and through that was he being slowly killed.
He had known there was something innately uneasy about her praying, though he had first laughed at it, and then felt a smoldering outrage as she continued it throughout the years. Jade was going to kill him, he understood with some amazement and a growing fury, she would cause him to kill himself just to stop the agony her prayers brought him. He was a demon, not a fallen soul! He had never been an angel, never been pure, and those who do not fall but are simply created in a land others fall to cannot be saved or rescued.
Damnation was all he knew; damnation was all he could live in.
Hsi Wu was convinced she was doing it on purpose, a tricky underhanded deception to make him believe she was but a fool when in truth she sought to rip him from the inside out. How could she do such to him? He was a god, an omnipotent creation of darkness and soaring evil, and she was but a mortal woman of now seventeen years. It was not her place, as many things she did were not her place, and he hated her even more for the knowing he could do nothing to stop her. She would kill him and he would never stop her, because there was no way for him to do so.
A furious scream tore from his throat, driving him to slash his claws enraged at the veil and pull back, cradling his paw and seething as his wings unfolded sharply with his rage. He wanted to kill her in that moment, wanted to take from her what she was seeking to take from him, and it had nearly frustrated him into a blind rage. As it was, he scratched his arched toes along the rocks beneath him, gouging deep scrapes through the stone as he thrust his wings through the air and pushed off into the atmosphere.
The need to destroy wove into his flying, causing him to dive and scream, using echolocation and lean limbs to break apart several of the rocks of varying sizes, and he landed gracefully on one, smashing a thin, small pillar with the back of his charcoal hand. They tumbled, vanishing to the unending amber sunset space, eternally falling away from him and toward a solid earth that did not exist in this realm, and he snarled again. It was not enough! He could still feel the consuming hate, the revulsion of knowing she was praying for a salvation that would rip him apart and knowing that she could very well do so as he watched, helpless.
Hsi Wu, like all demons and gods, was not used to feeling helpless. Others had felt powerless beneath him; he crushed them and fooled them, deceiving minds into games they could never win, as forever it had been until the Immortals had locked he and his equally cursed siblings in this hideous void. Thus had it been done for centuries upon millennia, and to know the prospect of being slayed by some girl who had dared contradict his power was unlike anything he had felt before. He had never felt such hate or rage, a continuous reviled explosion of unstopping fury that lasted for weeks and months of the outside time.
She had deceived him yet again!
She had thought to be his friend, had dared cross the lines of feminine inferiority and his being a deity, as though it were her right and her privilege, but she had fooled him again! She had made him believe she was praying for him, trying to salvage him from the darkness of his natural existence, and t'was all to trick him into a state of amused evil. And now she would kill him with her deceptive words of inexplicable kindness.
"I will kill you!" he screamed into the shadows, into the undying light of the void, and then he waited in smoldering silence for the next dagger of pain.
--
Notes: Ah! Season three of JCA is not canon in this fic, sorry. I also apologize for this part being so short – I've redesigned how the fic will be, and I'll keep ya'll waiting 'til I get to the good part. ^.-
Feedback: Mmm!
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em, sorry.
Status: I /will/ be writing longer parts, and there'll be more references to Eastern and Western theology.
Thanks: Lisa-Chan, I certainly hope it's still good! VampireNaomi, oh, a blog is basically a web journal for pretty much anything; I'm posting informal essays and thoughts related to JCA (at chanclantime!.blogspot.com, natch). Chibi Hime, yes! *victory!* Still creepy? I hope so. Aglaranna, /love/ your name, by the way, very lovely. It's enthralling! *double victory!* Amanda/Artiste, I'm trying to blend a mix of the JCA perception of demons with the original Chinese perception (the former being a bit lighter, while the latter is very sinister – JCA-esque won't be for a while, though). Glad ya'll liked it!