Chapter Text
There is no rest for the wicked.
Monsters raged rampant, even in “times of peace,” they did not rest, did not wait, not for when one finally relaxes, not for when stability had finally settled over the rocky crags and crevices of gray, jagged rock, not for when silence fell thickly, and the full moon shimmered with its luminescent, silvery glow.
Evil was always there, even under that bright, blinding glow from the current “good times.”
They lurked in the shadows, in dark corners, on the dirt-padded paths, near the rivers and sandy banks, on the desolate fields of long-ago-flowers and the dreams from once-upon-a-time.
Everywhere, their taint was there, no matter how faint the traces; Xiao would always find them. There was no escaping his gaze, sharper than an eagle's and refined through centuries of honing and patient practice; he would always find their darkened presences.
Slaughter.
Bloodshed.
War.
Battle.
Fighting.
Xiao knew and had become one with those concepts, those thoughtless, blood-red notions; they were as much him as the blood running through his blood was him.
He was nothing but a weapon to carry out this endless, eternal duty.
It was his nature to protect, to fight, to continue on and on and on.
And yet his hands would still be stained crimson, dripping fresh red.
Red, red, red.
Red was what he saw as his blade sang through the air, sharp and clear like the notes from a familiar wooden flute.
Red was what he saw flaunting its cruel image across his broken, shattered mind every blink, every second of brief black, as he sank his spear into the darkened ground, his eyes searching and searching those evanescent flashes of light and dark and gore-tarnished scenery every temporary flutter of eyelashes closing and opening.
Red was what he saw as it bloomed and spread from his wounds, flowering and opening like buds and petals of new life; unfurling like weeds across his torn clothes, fanning out like the tendrils of danger that curled their fingers around his body in a dark, dark cocoon of suffocating and pain, pain, pain.
Red.
Red…
A blanket of black covered the bright red...
I’m sorry…
They finally claimed Xiao.
* * *
The wind blew hard, and the clouds hung low in the sky, dark and heavy with rain.
A storm was coming, Xiao could smell it, and clearly see it, in the humid air that seemed thick enough to slice through with his spear; in the distance, a few smoky dark smudges moved about.
Monsters.
Thankfully, it was only a simple encampment of those masked ones.
The ones who seemed to fear their own reflections.
In a flash, Xiao appeared in front of the congregating beings, who were dancing in a circle, occasionally moving into a tighter mob or backwards into a looser mass, while another smaller one wearing a mask, not unlike his own, but more ornate than the other dancing monsters’ masks, was in the middle of it, holding its arms and totem-staff upward to the sky and chanting some strange song-like monologue.
In the corner, near a bubbling pot of something, probably a meaty food, based on the savory smell drifting into Xiao's nose, sat a large, lying monster, its fur as dark as night, and its horns red like blood, lounging near the fire’s warmth with its orange-glowing axe on its side in front of it. Around the monster camp, between sections of scattered fences, were primitively made wooden lookout towers that housed bow-and-arrow-wielding, masked monsters who stood atop the towers on high platforms.
Overall, everything looked completely and utterly normal, with nothing out of the ordinary, except that all the monsters shared one perilous fact: they all had an all-too-familiar dark aura surrounding their humanoid bodies.
They were tainted by divine wrath, divine wrath that stemmed from the consequences of Xiao's endless slaughter. He had corrupted them because of the evil resting in the dark depths of his soul. He was the one who caused this problem, and therefore, he would be the one to fix it. After all, it was what he had been bound to do (what he should do, to make up for all his unforgivable sins of the past).
A snarling nuo mask appeared over his youthful face and the wind whistled sharply as the vibrant green of jade cut through air, enveloped in a snaking plume of inky black and bright teal, before shooting aloft like fireworks, intense against the gloomy backdrop of ill-lit clouds, and then back down to the ground, causing more spears to suddenly protrude out of the bloodying soil, piercing the monsters unfortunate enough to be caught in their fatal range.
They gave their last warbling sounds of death as they dissipated into nothing but dark sparks of crimson and ink, the aura that once embraced them like cold, whispering flames staying instead of fading away into the air as their bodies did.
“What…?” Xiao's whisper was tinged with surprise as he watched that aura of darkness around the disintegrating black and red remains of the monsters expand and solidify into a shifting black orb instead of simply absorbing into his body, into the depths of his broken soul.
A wave of pain washed over Xiao, turning the world into a blurry mess of colors, a throbbing pain erupting into flames of pain that spread to cover Xiao's entire body, mixed with a cacophony of voices from the karmic debt that screamed and yelled, loud and piercing his mind like a thousand sharp weapons stabbing into his head. Tears pricked the edges of his eyes, but they didn't fall, stubbornly clinging to the corners like rock climbers, unwilling to drop. His entire body trembled and shook like buildings during a violent earthquake, his knees threatening to buckle before the orb of god remnants, yet Xiao only stumbled slightly forward, his spear shooting out to stab the ground, in an act to try and stabilize himself, preventing him from collapsing onto the ground from the pure agony that was consuming him.
And the orb continued to grow, larger and larger with every passing second, like some strange, twisted vortex eating away at the world. It swallowed up the puttering flames and ate away at the metal-tipped arrows of the bow-and-arrow-wielding monsters that remained on their high perches. Tendrils of the murk shot out, piercing their masks and coiling around their necks, dragging them into its all-devouring maw, turning them into motes of nothingness like how Xiao's spear shredded them into specks. Those same tendrils headed for him, too, aiming at not just his neck but at his wrists and ankles, as if they wished to become chains to bind him like one would their prisoner.
Xiao stood on shaking legs, attempting to stand in a defensive position, and slashed at the orb's smoky gloom, but it felt like cutting through thick mud, sucking at his spear with an iron vise. All Xiao could do was watch helplessly as it, too, 'ate' his spear, disappearing into the depths.
The tendrils that had engulfed his spear had now finally reached his wrists, quickly wrapping around them and clamping down before he could try and pull away, especially with how the karmic debt was making his entire body feel bone-tired and sluggish. The smoky tendrils felt chillingly cold and icy against his skin, as hard as rock, and unwavering in strength even as Xiao struggled and fought against the binds, trying to yank his hands away, hissing like a provoked cat when he felt the same bitter coldness enclose themselves around his ankles, just as strong as the ones around his wrists.
Xiao's eyes darted around, but he only saw the orb of darkness thin itself out, becoming a sort of 'blanket' or 'shield' as it stretched around the destroyed monster encampment, slowly inching towards him in all its swirling black glory. His heart pounded in his ears, and the voices screamed inside his mind, yelling and roaring for his impending doom, for his long-awaited fate, sending sharp swords of pain through his head, making the world blur and become smudges of shadows and harsh ice.
Xiao's own aura of evil surfaced in a slender film on his skin like a layer of armor, turning into flickering flames and knife-tipped fingers, digging into his skin and dragging their sharp nails across his body, causing beads of crimson to bubble forth and long lines of red to appear, sending waves of pain to wash over his body like flaming water that burned everything in its path. Yet Xiao's burning 'wounds' trembled and warbled, one second a scene of his bloody body, and another of a shaking one.
It was all an illusion
Albeit a very painful one. Xiao's head still felt like someone had repeatedly smashed it against a mountain, then shoved a concerning amount of weapons into it, and proceeded to put him in a room with a few thousand screaming souls, continuously, again and again and again.
The gloomy shield had now settled on his own layer of murkiness, and Xiao could feel the pressure on his neck, squeezing and squeezing. Short, ugly gasps escaped Xiao's mouth, his limbs flailed uselessly against what felt like layers upon layers of mud, a searing pain radiated from his throat, like being crushed by boulders, and a loud ringing that rose above the cheering voices filled his ears, pulsing in tune with his frantic heart.
Death was something that came to all the creatures of the land, sky, and sea.
It was a completely normal thing. Xiao had seen many, friend and foe alike, succumbing to the throes of death, and at some point, a quite recently ended and long-lasting period in his long life, he himself had once wished for it to befall him, too.
But if he died, who would continue his duty? Who would defend the land from divine wrath? Who would remember all that was lost all those centuries ago?
Many thoughts rushed into his head, worries, doubts, guilt, and the like, flooding like a great tsunami of internal struggles.
But they faded like transient dreams, soft and fleeting like gentle breezes on high mountaintops.
Pinpricks of light danced across Xiao's vision, exploding like the loud, booming fireworks that humans adored, but a haze of exhaustion and darkness soon drowned out the light as his movements grew weaker, and red claimed his sight.
As the red bloomed like roses opening their velvety petals, and a veil of shadows fell over those same roses, Xiao's last thought was not one of joy or one of excitement in seeing loved ones of days past, but one of sorrow, and it echoed through his head.
I'm sorry...
I have failed my duty.
And once again, his mask shattered.