DISCLAIMER: Mage: the Ascension is the property of White Wolf Publishing. All characters used in this story are my own creations, however, as is the particular hell-dimension where it takes place.
For anyone who wants to know just how Veronica/Rin managed to end up in Hell, I recommend reading This business of saving the world. Otherwise, all necessary information is strictly speaking given here.
One note: I'm feeling very uncertain about the uses of the words "Yin" and "Yang". I'm almost certain that I've read that Yin is the male, active, heavenly force, and Yang is the female, passive, earthly force… but this is the way they're used in all World of Darkness sourcebooks, so this is the way I use them. I'm almost certainly wrong on the issue, anyway – it was some time since I read about this stuff. ^_^;;
***
How do you go on living, when your honour has died?
The people of old would kill themselves when they failed their duty. For them, it was better to die than to live as a broken and failed creature. A harsh code, but perhaps in some ways preferable. It is the way of Yang; the immediate and forceful solution to any problem.
Yet I am a creature of Yin. I endure. I remain. Therein lies my power, and therein lies my tragedy. If I took my life, I would, perhaps, know peace… but that would be to leave the path to which I am sworn, which would be a greater dishonour still.
And so I live with my shame and my broken honour. I walk through life as best I can, and I wait. I wait for change.
Change always comes, if you are patient. That is the first truth of Yin.
***
I woke up on a bed of straw, covered with a blank of rough cloth that stung my naked skin. For a long while, I lay there, my eyes closed. I let my thoughts drift back. What was the last thing I could recall?
I had been in Kevin's home for the weekly meeting of the Children of Sunset. Desmond had been late. The rest of us had talked about this and that while waiting for him. An ordinary day.
After that?
Desmond had arrived, bleeding and furious. He had brought a young man with him. They had been attacked.
After that?
The people who had attacked them had come. We had gone out to face them, to drive them off with magick and weaponsforce.
After that?
There had been a battle. I had been injured; the attackers were far more powerful than we could have guessed. I had slammed open a door to the Thousand Hells and stepped through, letting the flames from the gateway burn one of my enemies as I did so.
After that?
Nothing. My memories ended there.
I opened my eyes.
The bed I was lying in was standing in a small, wooden room. There was a fireplace, with a pot brewing over it. There was a small table, and a solitary chair. There was one door, and no windows. That was all.
I did not recognise any of this. It did not seem very frightening. Indeed, for all the poverty of the scene, it appeared that someone had taken care of me. I could smell the stew in the pot, and it made my stomach growl. I wondered how long it had been since I had last eaten; how long I had been here, without suffering any apparent harm.
Even so, barring some very unexpected developments taking place during my long sleep, I was in the Thousand Hells. Innocent as my situation seemed, I had no doubt that it was full of surprises. Unpleasant ones.
I let the blanket slide off me and got up from the bed. I felt weak as a newborn kitten, and a little stiff to boot, but I was in no pain. Looking down on myself, I saw nothing that was cause for worry, save that I was wearing no clothes.
Courtesy must be observed, even in Hell; indeed, especially in Hell. Therefore, I did not yield to the temptation to taste the food. Instead, I walked – unsteadily at first, but gaining in ease as my muscles got used to moving again – around the room, seeking for something to wear. I quickly found the black dress I had been wearing when I travelled here, folded together on the floor next to the bed. It had been washed, for the dust and grime it had acquired in the battle was gone, but I smelled no chemicals on it. Hand-washed, then.
I put the dress on, feeling somewhat better once I was decently attired. I could find no sign of my underwear, but that was a minor loss in comparison. I pulled my fingers through my wild-grown, waist-long black hair, wishing for a mirror. Nothing of the sort was to be found, though.
Thinking of something, I looked at my hand. My nails, long and black-painted, were still the same length and shape I always kept them. Perhaps, then, I had not slept for too long. Or perhaps nails and hair did not grow in Hell? I found I could not remember.
I looked at the door. If it was locked, it would be the work of a moment to slip my essence into it, find the cracks deep in the wood and worsen them to the point where a single strike of my palm would break it. I wanted to leave; I wanted to know what sort of place I had arrived in. Reluctantly, I admitted that to do so – to leave by whatever means – would be a breach of etiquette. Someone had tended me in this room. I was obliged to wait for him in it.
I sat down on the bed in lotus position and closed my eyes. Slowly and patiently, I trailed every shred of unease in my mind and dissolved it, until my soul was as clean and smooth as a virgin snowfield. In that state, I waited.
I did not need to wait for long.
A stooped, frail-looking old man entered through the door, bearing a large bundle of firewood. From what short glance I got through the door, there was a street outside; this small room was in fact an entire house. The man put the wood down in the near-empty bin next to the fireplace and started stirring the pot.
I watched him in silence.
Eventually, he was satisfied. From over the fireplace, he took a wooden bowl and spoon, poured some stew into it, and walked over to me with it.
"Eat, Miss Kimura," he said, a smile of almost weak-minded servility on his wizened face. "I cooked it for me, but you should have it. You need to regain your strength."
"Mister Saul Peterman," I said. I took the bowl, but did not eat – not yet. "Are you my host?"
"Oh yes. Yes." He nodded eagerly. "The honour knows no bounds, Miss Kimura. To have one of your stature in my humble household – I had never dared dream of such a thing."
"I surrendered the name of Kimura long ago, sir," I said. "I am Veronica Long now."
Immediately, he was on his knees by my feet.
"I beg your forgiveness, Miss Long," he said. "If I have offended, I ask you to take my life in recompense."
"You have not offended, sir," I said. "Rise."
He rose, with an expression of gratitude that I could read no falsehood in.
"For that matter," I said, "how can I take your life, sir? You are already dead. I know this very well, because it was I who killed you."
"So it was, Miss, so it was." He nodded happily. "And you were in your full right to do so. Your cause was just, and mine was wrong."
I nodded shortly. His cause had been the assimilation of a native South African tribe, which still partly acted on the old ways of magic and spirit-worship, into the world of the Technocracy. My cause had been their right to choose for themselves which world to live in. The tribe had, to my eye, been foolish and backwards, but that was of no consequence. The fundament of honour lies in the voluntary placing of allegiance; in choosing where to stand, and then to drink the consequences of that choice to the last drop. Saul had wished to force allegiance on other people. That had been dishonourable, and his death had prevented a great wrong.
"Hell has taught you this?" I said.
"I always knew it, Miss," he said. "I opposed you out of pride and greed."
I wrinkled my brow as I took my first spoonful of stew. I had not been aware of this. Saul had appeared to me a man who believed in what he was doing, though to me it was obvious that it was wrong. I had read no hypocrisy in him. Though by all means, I was hardly infallible. I had proven that fully and beyond all doubt not long after my victory over him.
"Am I alive?" I said. "Or dead? Do you know?"
"You are alive, Miss," he said immediately. "You were near death when you arrived, but I took care of you, and you recovered."
"How long was I unconscious?" I said.
He fell to his knees again.
"Forgive me, Miss, for I do not know," he whined. "Time is… unsure here. There have been no arrivals since yours. Before you, there was a man who died in 2001. Before him, me. Before me, a girl-child who died in 1928."
I nodded. In a world where little or nothing ever changed – and how could Hell ever change? It could only get better, and Hell must never get better, or it will betray its purpose – time was all but meaningless. 'No new arrivals' could mean that very little time had passed in the world of the living, or it could mean that many years had gone by.
If too long time had passed, I would never be able to return. If you lingered too long in Hell, you changed to become little different from a demon. I might force my way out of this place, find the path home, and discover that I no longer belonged there. But there was nothing I could do about that.
"Very well," I said. The bowl was empty; there had been little in it to start with. I put it down beside me. "Thank you for your hospitality, sir. I am glad to see that Hell has taught you humility."
He remained on his knees, staring at the floor.
"You taught me humility, Miss Long," he said. "Only you. And I thank you."
I nodded to him, rose to my feet and walked to the door. There, something occurred to me and I turned around.
"Sir?" I said. "Why do you speak like this?"
"Like what, Miss?"
"Like I do. You did not do so while you lived."
"I seek to be like you in all things, Miss," he said. "It is the proper way to be."
"I see," I said. "Good-bye, sir."
***
Outside Saul's cottage was a whole village full of similar – nearly identical, in fact – ones. People walked around on the streets, haggling, arguing, or talking amiably. Most where Asian, but not all; most wore old-fashioned clothes, but not all. The mechanics of who came to spend eternity in the Ten Thousand Hells were mystical. After a lifetime of study, I had only glimpsed the barest outline of them.
Many of the people I saw seemed dangerous, with hard eyes and grim faces. I kept myself aware of them, but did not fear them. I am a Disciple of Spirit – I had a modicum of authority within the Thousand Hells.
Some of the people on the street were children. It pained me to see that. I have born no children, in this lifetime, but every human being is part of the All. After a fashion, I am everyone's mother; I am everyone's daughter, everyone's sister, everyone's lover. So are all other people, but I am aware of it, and it makes a difference. As such, it wounds me to see young and helpless ones suffer. What sin could anyone commit within the first few years of his life that would be enough to warrant an eternity in Hell?
All things serve Heaven, and Heaven's laws are just. But I do not always understand them, and they sometimes strike me as cruel in the extreme.
Though to be sure, I was uncertain just what the punishment in this Hell consisted of. The life the people lived here was simple, to be sure, and it was certainly no paradise, even compared to the harsh world of the living. Yet I found myself wondering – was this all? Why create a Hell that was little different from the Technocracy's version (which is not the truth, and which is intended only to glorify the Technocracy's world on the expense of the ones that came before) of the early ages of man? Why not just send the souls here back to Earth, if so to an undeveloped and poor part thereof?
However, that question did not aid my task, and so I let it sink down deep into my mind, to be recalled at a time of leisure.
I could find no end to the village. One street exchanged another, and the houses went on forever. Nowhere could I find anything that resembled a gateway out of this place, even a guarded gateway. Nor could I find anyone who seemed to be a person of authority. There seemed to be no law and no government in this world – none that I could address, at any rate.
I knew that there was a way out. All worlds that can be reached by man can be entered and exited. But in the Thousand Hells, every step was a riddle. To solve it would take time; I have heard tales of sorcerers trapped in some strange world while entire generations passed on Earth, trying to solve the puzzle that would free them. And every second brought me closer to the point where I might as well not bother to leave; where I, while not a damned soul, might as well be one.
Fear has no place in the enlightened mind; why should I fear my own fate, when I know that I am nothing but a small shred of the All? Even so, I was ill at ease as I sat down by a house wall to ponder.
I should not wonder that the next blow hit me just then. After all, this was Hell.
"Rin," a voice said. "I wondered when you would arrive."
A man, slenderly muscular and with long hair braided into a heavy, black whip, looked down on me. I struggled for words, finding none.
What does one say to a man one has betrayed to death?
***
Western mages speak of chantries. They are places you go to when you need to hide from a world that keeps getting more hostile to anyone who rejects the illusions that are hailed as truths – hideouts, safehouses. Sometimes, rarely, the mages who count themselves to a chantry will work together for a common goal. More often, they will squabble for what meagre resources a chantry can have in our time, scheme against each other and pursue their separate agendas.
The Chi'n Ta, the mages of Asia, speak of bodhimandala, and the Western mages believe that we mean chantries. My mentor would smile at them when she heard them talking, and tell me: "They are very young."
To be sworn to a bodhimandala is to serve it in body and soul. You are bound to it by honour and duty, which is the strongest bond of all. If the time comes when you must die for it, you do so willingly and with dignity. The other members of your bodhimandala are your first family, and it is the only true home you will ever have.
I swore myself to the bodhimandala of the Pouncing Tiger, and I did so with joy and pride. It was a great honour for me to be accepted; the mages of the Pouncing Tiger were disciples of Yang, the vibrant light, and I was always a creature of Yin – of darkness and stillness. That they accepted my pledge in spite of my different nature was a testament to their respect for me, and their faith in my abilities.
And yet, when the time came for me to prove myself, I failed each and every one of them.
The Pouncing Tiger had been feuding with the King of the Hell of Ravaged Seas for several generations. As such, we were not surprised at the attack, only at the ferocity of it. The demons had finally decided that we all had to die, and they threw themselves at our defences again and again, sacrificing dozens of themselves for every crack they made in our wards.
I was the Disciple of Spirit; it fell to me to uphold the spells keeping the demons out while the others prepared their counter strike. Had my life been enough to succeed in my mission, I would have given it – but I was not granted that option. Instead, I was struck by a demon's sorcery, and fell into a deep sleep while my wards came crumbling down around me and the demons stormed through them. When I awakened, the bodhimandala of the Pouncing Tiger was no more, and my honour had died with it.
Kenichi Hagimoto was one of the fallen. He was one of the youngest mages sworn to the Pouncing Tiger, a Disciple of Forces and a great warrior. We held each other in great affection. The night before the battle, he came to my bed. And so I betrayed him twice; he believed that I was worth making love to, and I allowed him to remain in that belief. That I did not know differently myself then is no excuse. Ignorance does not wash away dishonour.
He died.
He went to Hell.
And now I had followed him there.
***
"Rin," he said again. It felt strange to hear it, just as it had felt strange to hear the other part of my old name from Saul. Rin Kimura – yes, that had been the name I had been born to. Two of my friends say that names define you. I have the outmost respect for both of them, but they are mistaken. Names are nothing. I changed nothing in myself by becoming Veronica Long – I relieved myself of not a shred of dishonour. I did it only to hide from the Technocracy, who could have found me by my old name.
But despite that… it felt strange to hear it again.
"Yes," I whispered.
"When I came here," Kenichi said, "I expected to find you here already. How could I have been slain, unless the one set to guard my back was already dead?"
I bowed my head.
"I was incapacitated," I said. "I failed my duty."
"You should have died," he said.
"Yes," I said. "But I did not."
He did not answer. His face was still as he watched me. I bore his gaze, though I wanted nothing more than to hide. I owed him nothing less.
"You are dead now, though," he said.
"No." I shook my head. "I fled a battle, and found my way here. But I am still alive."
"So," he said. "You have no honour left in you."
My debt to him was beyond repaying, and my shame great enough that sometimes it felt like it would crush me. But against that accusation, I felt I must defend myself.
"I could do nothing more there," I said. "In fleeing, I unleashed the flames of the Thousand Hells on one of my enemies. Perhaps I gave my friends a chance to escape, too. And if not, I will return and bring suffering to those who slew them. This I have sworn."
He shrugged.
"You swore to defend us with your life," he said. "Yet you are alive while we are dead. Your oaths mean nothing."
I did not contradict him.
"I intend to keep this one," I said instead. "But I must find my way out of this Hell, first. Do you know the way?"
"I do." He smiled thinly. "Do you know where you are?"
I shook my head.
"This is the Hell of Shame's Burden," he said. "Those who come here are those with stubborn hearts, which will not admit to being guilty of their sins. Until you accept, fully and without reservation or excuse, that you have forsaken your honour, you cannot leave."
"I accept that already," I said.
"Part of you does not," he insisted. "If you did, you would not still be here."
He turned around to leave.
"Why are you here?" I called after him. "What sin could you possibly have committed, that you have not accepted?"
He looked at me, coolly, over his shoulder.
"Loving such a wretched creature as you," he said. "That was my sin, and in time, I must come to admit it. But as yet, I cannot. For you deceived me."
And then he walked away.
***
After that, I wandered around aimlessly for a time. I do not know how long; there is no time in Hell. I nursed my aching heart, and sought within myself for some trace of defiance, some spark of stubborn pride. I found none.
I am a creature of Yin. To accept, to embrace, is part of what I am. I could not see that I was harbouring any resistance to the truth. I had failed. I had fallen. I was broken. There was nothing in me that denied this.
Yet there had to be, because otherwise I would have been able to leave this place. Kenichi was a man of honour; his rightful hatred for me would not have made him lie. In order to escape and rejoin my friends, or avenge their deaths, I had to find and eliminate some final trace of resistance.
I did not know how.
Finally, I returned to Saul's cottage. I had nowhere else to go, after all; no coin with which to acquire lodgings or food, if such a thing could even be purchased in this world. I found the Technocrat at work washing his floor, which he did with much enthusiasm, singing happily all the while.
"Sir?" I said. "Forgive me. I must ask to tax your hospitality for a while longer. I know the way home, but I cannot walk it. Not yet."
He looked up at me, nodding eagerly.
"Yes, yes. Of course, Miss. It is my honour to house you. My very great honour."
I carefully walked around the cleaned part of the floor to sit down on the bed.
"If it is within my power," I said, "I will do my best to return your kindness. I am alive; I retain my Avatar. I can work sorcery for you."
He bowed his head.
"Your generosity knows no bounds, Miss," he said. "I thank you."
"It must be difficult for you," I said, "to live in this world, where tools are so simple. Mister Hagimoto spent his life seeking to free himself from material objects. You, sir, spent your life embracing them. What is for him only a dreary existence must truly be Hell for you."
"Oh, I would not touch technology even had I the chance, Miss," he said quickly. "It is an abominable thing, and I am well rid of it."
I hesitated. Reliance on tools for tasks that did not truly require them led to weakness and the lessening of the human spirit. Even so, some tasks were impossible without tools – without technology. It was not weakness to do something worthwhile in the only possible way. But it would be most rude to contradict my host, so I said nothing.
"You have changed much, sir," I said. "I recognise hardly a thing in you. Was then everything in your life a sin? Do you need to forsake everything so that you may leave this Hell of Shame's Burden?"
"Oh, yes." He nodded eagerly. "I opposed your will, Miss. How can any sin be greater?"
I watched him, thoughtful.
"My will is not always in tune with the All," I said, "nor is it always guided by full knowledge. Your willingness to make betterment honours you. But I would do you a disfavour if I let you believe that I am an ideal of virtue."
"Thank you for enlightening me, Miss Long," he said, bowing again.
I sat in silence for a long while, while Saul continued to wash his floor. There was so much here I did not know – but still, I thought I could sense a pattern arising. What I had seen, what had been told to me, slowly began to add up. I resisted the urge to act in haste, though. Instead, I let the time since waking from my unconscious state roll through my mind, untangling itself piece by piece. When I was satisfied, Saul was all but done with the floor.
"Sir," I said, "I wish to leave this world."
"Of course, Miss Long," he said. "And so you will."
"In order to do so," I said, "I need honest answers. The best way for you to harm me is to continue telling me what you believe is exactly what I wish to hear, and the best way for you to help me is to tell me the simple truth."
Saul's expression froze for a moment. Then the servile smile was replaced by a disgusted frown.
"Took you long enough to figure it out, you stupid fucking bitch," he snarled.
***
It may have been hours or days before I found Kenichi again. Surely not more, and probably not less; that is as close as I can come to the right amount of time. When I did, he was sitting in a tavern, drinking sake as if it was water. I did not believe that he had had a drop of strong drink in his entire life – and there, of course, lay the answer to the puzzle, if I had still had need of it.
"You are still here," he said when I sat down on the far side of the table. He smirked slightly. "You still do not regret failing us."
"I regret it with all my heart and all my soul," I said, "and I always will. But that will not let me leave. It will chain me here with fetters of solid steel."
"Believe that, if you wish." He shrugged. "I have no objections to letting you stay here. You deserve Hell."
"But why is this a Hell?" I said. "Where is the torment? It may be a bleak life, spending eternity in this infinite village, but there should still be a modicum of joy. Yet this is Hell; there must be no joy. And so, the answer must lie not in the world, but in the damned souls themselves."
Kenichi shook his head.
"You always believed yourself far more clever than you were, Rin," he said. "And you fail to understand the nature of the honourable man. To live forever knowing that you have failed to even admit your shame, much less cleanse it from your soul, is Hell enough."
"Mister Peterman is no honourable man," I said, "not in his heart. He is a Technocrat; he sees honour as an archaic folly, and hails pragmatism as the highest virtue. Yet here, he has acted with the outmost reverence to the ideals he always hated, and renounced with force all that he loved."
Kenichi said nothing.
"The torment inflicted in this Hell is only this," I said. "Each man, woman and child does at every instant the thing that makes them hate themselves the most. They have become their own definition of a loathsome creature, a being worthy of nothing but hatred and contempt. And all the while, there is a part of them that is still the same, forced to watch them betray all that they have ever believed in, unable to stop it. Only the fact that I am alive saves me from the same fate… for now."
"Did you hear me renounce honour?" Kenichi said. "Did you see me turn my back on what you know me to believe in? You are a fool, Rin. Can you not see that act as I always acted?"
I glanced at the clay goblet in front of him, but did not mention it. It was inconsequential, after all.
"Had you acted differently," I said, "your contempt for me would have been one of many changes in you. I might have assumed that Hell had simply twisted you from the man I knew. Therefore, you acted in a way I would recognise, making me believe that what you said about me reflected your true feelings. You said and did what you had to in order to hurt me the most, as that was what would make you hate yourself the most."
"You think much of yourself," he growled between his teeth. "I took my pleasure in you for one night, and you fancy yourself the love of my life."
I smiled sadly.
"Your every word betrays you," I said. "If you did not care about me, hurting me would not make you loathe yourself, and so you would not do it."
He went silent, his expression angry and uncertain.
"I know how to leave this place," I said. "Mister Peterman told me. Helping the Reality Deviant who killed him was the last thing he wished to do, and so he did it. The thing that imprisons us all here is our own guilt and shame for our failures and crimes. If one of us seizes to torment herself, if only for a second, she goes free."
"And you expect me to help you?" he said. He smirked. "I will not. Nor can you make me. You say I care about you? Very well, I admit it. But that does not mean I do not blame you for letting me die. I live in Hell, Rin, until I can release the guilt I feel over not being able, with all my swordsmanship, to save a single member of the bodhimandala of the Pouncing Tiger – which is to say, forever, for I will never forgive myself. Why should you suffer any less, when the task you failed at was so much easier than the one I failed at? How can you possibly make me say that I have forgiven you?"
"You are saying it already," I said. "I am a Disciple of Spirit, and I studied the simplest aspects of Mind, as do all Chi'n Ta. I can feel how strongly you yearn to free me. And I can feel not the slightest taste for vengeance on me."
I leaned forward and kissed him, softly, on the lips. He did not react, only stared at me, speechless.
"Thank you, Kenichi," I said. "I wish our time together had not been so short. Know that I would gladly have given my life to save you – to save any one of you. Know how sorry I am that I was not given the chance to do so." I got up from the chair and looked down on him. "And now you have saved a single member of the bodhimandala of the Pouncing Tiger. Not through your swordsmanship, but true your heart. I hope that that might help free you from your guilt, in time."
And so I took my leave of the Hell of Shame's Burden.
***
Ending the shame for one moment is not simple, but possible. Banishing it forever may be impossible, and if it is not, then it should be. If honour was so simple to regain, why would we struggle to keep it?
The people of old would kill themselves when they failed their duty. It is the way of Yang; the immediate and forceful solution to any problem. The way of Yin is sometimes harder and sometimes easier, but always different. No single grand gesture can erase our shame; neither a knife plunged into your heart nor the forgiveness of a loved one. Grand gestures are not part of Yin.
But for the first time since I woke up in the ruins of what I had believed was the only home I would ever have, I wonder if time and discipline might rebuild a broken soul. Changing my name did not make me someone else, but perhaps I can make myself someone else simply by overcoming the weaknesses that led to my fall.
Change always comes, if you are patient. That is the first truth of Yin.