Chapter 19: Drink the Water, Remember the Source (飲水思源)
They'd flown west from the heart of the Mingdao Wood (冥道森林) for nearly an hour before Daiwen realized they were riding naked on the ex-director's serpentine spine. They looked back at the endless green under the rising sun. Their hands slipped in wind jetting off the dragon.
Daiwen snapped back to attention, failing for a grip. They slipped down the side of the bone. Their hands slapped the spine, the wind whipping away their scream. Their fingers grasped at thin air. Daiwen fell off the dragon.
Their back slammed a solid, scaled claw. Black talons as long as Daiwen's own legs closed around them, a safety cage. Daiwen steadied their breath. They sat up with their legs around one claw, bare feet dangling in the jetting wind.
Any remaining desire to turn back blew away with wind. They just hoped there'd be clothes to spare wherever the ex-director was taking them.
Ex-Director Cai finally landed on a dusty plateau in the Yousi Mountains (游絲山). They opened their caging claw. Daiwen hopped down into the orange dust and hopped straight back up. The ground burned under the high noon sun. There wasn't a single cloud in sight.
The ex-director stepped on either side of Daiwen, offering the hole-ridden shade of their half-flesh, half-skeletal form. Daiwen patted their scaled foreleg in thanks. It was better than nothing. They walked under the dragon's opened chest toward glints of metal waving in the heat.
The closer they got to the growing glints of what had to be a mining town, the more crows descended from the blazing sky above. The large, black birds circled and squawked at the undead dragon. When the ex-director continued to shamble mindlessly forward, they perched down on their back, pecking at the gore.
Daiwen shuddered and forced their head toward the town. A line of crows perched on the town's metal gateway, the name obscured by their white shit. Despite the dragon's shade, Daiwen held their arms over their head and crossed under the gateway.
Every crow squawked and flapped up from every corner of the town into soaring tunnel to the burning heavens. They left the gaping metal buildings below covered in white shit and black feathers. As the wind died down, the reek of decay crept into Daiwen's nose and mouth as thick and heavy as shit.
There were bodies everywhere, spoiling under the sun. It was as though the whole town had left their homes only to be struck down by...it had to have been magic. But there, at the center of town-movement.
Daiwen ran toward the survivor, the ex-director keeping pace. Daiwen and dragon skidded to a stop at the edge of the ruined plaza, orange clouds billowing out from under them. The squatting, dust-covered survivor never looked back.
All that remained in the plaza was a metal-roofed well with half its stones caved into its hole. Outside the plaza, the survivor had built a low wall. The top layer of mortar was still wet. The survivor continued to put down mortar with their trowel.
"Excuse me!"
The survivor turned. They raised their dust-covered goggles and squinted at Daiwen.
"You're naked," their squint turned on the ex-director, "and your dragon seems to be-"
They raked their gloved hands through the air, flinging mortar on the dust and bodies at their feet. Daiwen folded an arm across their chest and lowered a hand over their crotch.
"Sorry, do you have any clothes to spare."
"Take your pick," they shrugged, turning back to the wall.
There was stealing, then there was stealing the clothes off a dead person's back. Daiwen stepped behind the dragon's leg instead. They shouted across the plaza.
"If it's not too much to ask, what happened here?"
"The Whispering Way came through-I take it you're looking for them?"
"Should I be?"
"They're a cult of necromancers, like us."
The survivor snapped their fingers. The nearest, hole-pecked body rose up from the dust. It laid down on the new mortar like any soft bed.
Despite the blazing heat, Daiwen's blood ran cold as the 'survivor' trowelled more mortar around the body. The wall and its peeking bits of not-brick swam at the edges of their vision. They braced their arms against the ex-director's leg for support and called out as lightly as they could.
"The Whispering Way didn't come for a dragon heart, did they?"
The other necromancer froze. A glob of mortar fell from their raised trowel onto the body's half-buried head. The necromancer straightened. They turned, very slowly, toward Daiwen and the undead dragon.
Their eyes locked across the plaza. Daiwen's pulse pounded in their ears. The necromancer's aura flared electric green. The bodies rose. The ex-director shifted low and coiled in the rising walls of dust. Daiwen huddled under them on the balls of their feet, muscles tensed.
The dead struck without a sound. Their clawing hands tore through the dust.
The dragon slammed them away with one leg. A second wave piled onto the other, ripping and biting.
A hand grabbed Daiwen. They yelped and swung their fist, eyes squeezed shut. Their hand never connected with the dead.
Hands grabbed their arms, their legs, their body. The dead shoved Daiwen to the ground, ripping and piling onto them. Daiwen burst into a wide-eyed shriek.
An undead chomped down between their throat and shoulder. The shriek choked off with a bloody gurgle.
The dragon rose up off the ground, throwing off the dead. For every ten that thunked to the burning earth, another twenty sprang through the orange dust at the ex-director. They coiled and lashed out over Daiwen.
The dragon's tail swung into the pile on Daiwen, bowling them over. Daiwen, coated in blood and dirt, forced themself onto their shaking hands and knees. The knocked-down dead rose with them.
Daiwen crawled as fast as they could. Hands grabbed their feet and ankles, dragging them back. They clawed at the dust.
The dragon's tail swung back. The dead went flying. So did Daiwen.
Daiwen slammed into the caved wall of the well. Cracked mortar broke under them. The stones fell away. Daiwen plummeted back-first into darkness. Their scream echoed up the stones to the vanishing sliver of light.
Their back hit water hard as rock. The splash drowned out the snap and shatter. Cold waves swallowed Daiwen up.
They couldn't move a muscle. The couldn't feel a thing over their burning lungs. All they could see was black and the dying flicker of their own aura.
The icy water rushed out from Daiwen's lungs, streaming from their nose and mouth in a flurry of bubbles. The bubbles pressed together into a pocket of air around Daiwen's head. As they sputtered and gasped for breath, four glowing blue eyes pierced the dark waters in front of them.
A warrior in bamboo-slat armor floated an arm's length from Daiwen's face. They wore the silk-wrapped upper skull of a needle-toothed fish. The silk extended out from the skull with a translucent, fleshy bulb swaying from its end.
"I am Shuishenmen (水神門), guardian of the water gate. You are dying."
"I don't want to die," Daiwen rasped, spitting blood.
"What do you want?"
"I just want to go home."
"I can put your body back together again, but the process may be painful."
"You...don't care I'm a necromancer?"
"You're a necromancer?"
Oops. Daiwen winced, but the spirit only laughed. Bubbles flurried out from their mouth, spiralling both up and down through the black water.
"I've long stopped caring who or what passes through the gate. So, shall I heal you? Or would you rather give me your life?"
"Please heal me."
The guardian closed their fist. The fleshy bulb swaying from their skull glowed as blue as their eyes. Red blood and orange dust misted off of Daiwen's body into the surrounding waters. A delicate skin of water pressed against their unfeeling skin.
The spirit gathered Daiwen's wrists in one hand. They pulled Daiwen neither up nor down but in the direction from which they'd appeared. As they led Daiwen through the dark, the passing water laid over and joined the delicate skin. It grew thicker, heavier, into a skintight wall of water. It pressed harder against Daiwen's broken body, pushing shattered bones and ripped tissue back into place.
The spirit began to sing. Though soft, their voice rang through the water and resounded in Daiwen's core:
"I dreamed a dream in times gone by
When hope was high and life worth living
I dreamed, that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving."
The walls of water squeezed down against Daiwen, kneading. Waves of magic pulsed into their body. They knit the bone, tissue, and nerve. Feeling flooded back into Daiwen with an explosion of white hot pain.
The pain lanced up their skull straight into their brain. Daiwen screamed. Their entire body went rigid, fingers spasming helplessly in the guardian's grip. The water continued to crush and knead their wracking body.
"You have to stop fighting it!" the spirit shouted back at them.
"I can't! It's too much!"
"I can heal the rest all at once, but you need to let the water inside you."
"Do it!"
"Take a deep breath."
Daiwen strained to fill their lungs against the crushing grip of the water walls. The guardian sang with a roar:
"Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted."
The bubble around Daiwen's head popped. Thick jets of water surged down their nose and mouth, burning and pounding.
-/-
Explicit encounter on AO3