The Slums

[Umbra of Chaos]

Mai

Generosity? Her eyes narrow for a moment at the offer. Was this some sort of trap? But she saw the strength in his limbs, and the frost of his spirit still sent chills through her soul. No, there was no trick here. He was mighty enough to simply kill her or kidnap her now. And she will not cling to her poverty out of pride. So Mai stands and looks at the stranger she nearly tried to butcher just a few breathes ago. Then she bows.

Her back bends with a grace that disguises how long it has been since her last exchange in formalities. Mai's hands come together to show she cannot reach her blade. Her face looks only at the ground, leaving her neck bare for a sudden execution. No one will ever say that Mai has forgotten humility.

"Thank you for your kindness, my lord. This vagabond is called Mai. If you wish to provide, then I will follow." Then she straightens, and quicker than most can see her sword and bowl are both in her hands once more.

[YOLF]

Lubei

He crosses his arms in lieu of any other salute, nodding firmly. The scowl above his eyes doesn't look any less like it belongs there, but it nearly shakes itself off for an instant, before settling. It is inquisitory but his response is even and clear.

"Think nothing of it. I am Lubei. I've come on behalf of the Seraph of the Fourth Rome, along with her handpicked subordinates. Her wish is to recover this devastated town, and place it under her watchful dominion."

He thinks to mention what precipipated it, the recent event that bled this already withered area further. But if she has been here, she would have noticed already. What comfort can he offer?

"If you have questions, the others will help answer them," Lubei says, turning to the direction he came. He looks to make sure there is space left between them. Her movements are decisive, honed, but strangely careful. Restrained.


The greeting that was waiting for him feels knitted with thorns, and Lubei takes it like a boar running through a hedge.

"I was starting to consider getting a group ready and tracking you down. Where have you been?" The severe-faced woman stares at him with eyes more like a dead fish than ones that belong in a living human. Red, like her hair, but betraying little on their own. Clawed nailguards tap against her forearm impatiently, and they make her more resemble a student of the dark arts than a nun.

Her name is Raisa. Derived after a certain kind of flower, as provided by a single friendly face who spoke out from her entourage earlier. Lubei holds back a scoff.

"Performing the task I was assigned, as agreed," he responds."There wasn't any trace of the creatures. Physical or spiritual. It took longer because I was surveying for survivors willing to come now."

Lubei tries to move past her, to lead the girl to the building the other nuns have commandeered, a tall-windowed, gray-walled community center of some description, which has acquired a thin stream of population headed in, and a handful of female guards around every cardinal direction. But a clammy hand clamps around his upper arm, tugging him back with more than mortal strength towards an untrusting face.

"Hold it. What about her? Is she human?" The nun asks. Flakes of snow fall from the bridge of Lubei's nose and his furrowing brows when he rumbles his answer back. "Why does that matter?"

This time, she flashes her teeth in a sneer. "Because some demons eat humans."

[Umbra of Chaos]

Mai

Mai's brow furrows at the question. Would she hurt anyone here? She looks back towards the procession of victims. Some carry weapons, it is true. But her heart does not itch. Her hands do not ache. She breathes, but not even the mildest excitement rises to the surface. These people are empty already. It will not pursue them. It would not even think to pursue them. Such a thing would be like a river flowing uphill. Try as she might, even the image of it slaughtering these stragglers is alien to her.

It reminds her of the faces of a decimated clan, its best warriors freshly slaughtered and the ground red with their blood. She remembers, oh so clearly, how the Demon saw the trembling survivors hidden in their homes. She knows how easily it could have killed each of them. But it could not, and that makes her glad. For no matter how monstrous her obsession, she was at least not cruel.

So Mai shakes her head. "I do not partake of human flesh, and I am no danger to any of the people here. If they will not raise a sword to me, they have nothing to fear."

Although these protectors... yes, her sword feels close to her when she looks at them. They are strong, and they have the will to fight if necessary. But for now, she faces her unexpected benefactor with a raised brow. What was he expecting, bringing her here?

[YOLF]

Lubei

"You heard her. She's not lying." Lubei can tell there's something fragile and hazardous there, but it is not ill-intent. He rips his arm free, and the nun doesn't protest. "Are you done scrutinizing me instead of performing your tasks?"

"No." She answers, skeptical and dry. Instead of continuing to give him a headache by questioning the mission, she marches up to the girl and accuses her, as though her word was equal to evidence. "You're possessed by something. Is that what it means when you imply that you will be a danger if anyone raises arms?

A murmur spreads through the nuns outside, the ones close enough to listen in. One or other among their number nodding to their sisters. Raisa coldly acknowledges them at the edge of her vision before twisting with a frown at the demon king, as her claws gesture at the girl in question.

"You're too easy to convince. Didn't you feel anything when you saw her? You should have questioned her first. Not much of a demon king if you're easy to dupe. Understand? Put people in danger instead of helping them, or threaten Her Holiness's vision... and I'll make sure she reconsiders your usefulness."

Lubei grinds his teeth together, but the calm of his voice the next moment is surprising. Fractal blooms of ice spread beneath his boots in lieu of the pressure he expects to hear. "Look for whatever reasons you wish to criticize me, but I am not careless. Did Ivanna not send you with me precisely for these reasons? Then anyone who looks to be in need, until decisively marked otherwise, is to receive."

Raisa shakes her head, but primly steps out of the space between him and Mai. "Hmph. Indeed. Carry on then," she says through a grunt for his troubles.

His shoulders slump in release, and Lubei walks forward, shaking his head for the girl to follow. Raisa marks them both with her eyes, and barks out one last thing to her. "You, ask for Sister Lana after you've settled in. Perhaps she can do something about that thing inside you."

[Umbra of Chaos]

Mai

This ends up with them sitting across from each other at a table, bowls of vaguely greyish soup serving as their meals for the day. Mai's hands come together and she utters a basic prayer in thanks to the gods. She has food, she has shelter, she has pleasant company. In this place, all three things are luxuries. So if her words are more genuine now then they have been for the last few weeks, she feels no great guilt over it. After a few mouthfuls of surprisingly filling food, she looks at her unlikely benefactor again.

"That holy woman called you a demon king, but you don't seem obsessed enough to me." She absentmindedly stirs the leftovers of her meal with her spoon, turning her gaze to the ever-present vigil of the nuns for an instant. Some were human. But the others had a familiar intensity to them.

Mai sees it in their faces. Human skin stretched taut over obsession. Like fire enclosed in a shell of wax, it shines brightly through them, and at the slightest shift everything but that fire would melt away. Or maybe she was simply seeing someone else in them. A bitter smile stretches its way across her features. Trust this strange this place to almost normalize her condition. Yet her eyes are soon back upon her benefactor. She had simply left him in awkward silence after that remark, hadn't she?

So she feels the discipline rooted in her soul school her features, her face a perfect image of pleasant neutrality. "My lord," she begins, "why did you bring me here?"

Yes, it was a good question. Even as she eats, the eyes of this place's protectors never leave her. Mai does not truly blame them. Death hangs over her as a shroud. The unpleasant smell of corpses and blood seeps from her body. Her sword is stained with flaking, dried blood. She knows she should have cleaned it long ago, but she could not rouse the effort to do so. Now it is simply another indicator. Yes, death clings to her. It is on her hands, under her fingernails, behind her eyelids, almost seeping from her like sweat in the sun. Even the ashen-faced citizens can see it. They look anywhere else, they play little games, but their eyes are drawn in morbid fascination. Mai has killed, and she will kill again. She knows this even as she defies it.

But for all that Mai sees herself, she is still so very blind.

She defaults to unkindness because she feels it is deserved. She cannot see the pity in the eyes of one of the nuns that watch her, her features just a tad softer and kinder than her sisters'. She fails to understand the meaning behind the chef's frown as he looks at her, his kindly features angry not at lithe limbs that promise violence but arms that are too thin. She is not just coated in death, it hangs over her already like a specter awaiting its due.

All these things that Mai will never know. Still, her gaze is sharp. Her eyes sees through Lubei's skin, peering at the pulse of blood through veins and the twitching of muscle. The things she can see are not few. An unyielding sternness keeps her back straighter than a rod of iron. It focuses fingers that would otherwise fidget and maintains an almost meditative stillness.

Mai would not accept, or be fooled by, any petty lie.

[YOLF]

Lubei

Not obsessed enough.

Bitter memories come rushing down like a river that's slipped from its shackles. It's true. The sardonic nun had a point. Perhaps in his last life Lubei was more like a demon king than he ever will be in this one. Is he doomed to always misread his surroundings? He doesn't want to acknowledge that. Everything so far has to have some value. He's fine with being a demon no monster aspires to be, if only he can do his duties right. And he realizes something, thanks to these thoughts. What he was feeling about her. Her wariness, this marrow-seated discomfort of expecting the world to blame her because she must deserve it, and any alternative is unclear at best, duplicitous at worst.

It hits a little too close to home for Lubei. He clears his throat. "Our respective demons may not be the same entities. Nor our gods." As for the rest, it is easier to answer. It doesn't fill him with vinegar.

"I am repaying my debts. I told you not to mind this kindness, because it is not my own. I'm merely the executor," he explains. But his eyes run from hers after, and he covers the shape of his mouth, lacking even a shitty fan to guard his expressions. There is a flutter of cold feathers at the edge of his vision; he chooses to ignore it. "And you looked miserable. Not by choice."

[Umbra of Chaos]

Mai

She laughs. It's an awkward, throaty thing that soon breaks down into a slight cough. But a smile lingers on her face after. "That is a very foolish position to take, my lord. Would you say that a soldier who carries out the will of his master is blameless? Are his hands unsullied, no matter the crimes he commits?" Her hands gradually come together, and while her smiles diminishes it lingers. The slightest crack in a wall of politeness.

"If sin is a matter of one's own actions then virtue is the same. You cannot live under one while escaping the other. If we must judge ourselves, then we must keep an honest ledger, yes?" Her hands come apart, and her eyes are caught onto the way his shoulders bend under an unseen weight. How his hand guards his face from her, as if he was a noble lady in want of a veil.

And he sees the sympathy in his eyes reflected in her own. "It is hard to remember such things, I know. It would be better if it was more obvious." She draws her stained blade then, even as the gaze of the nuns fall on her like a hammer. She lays it across the table with all the grace it deserves. So it clatters and shakes when she drops it like a common tool. Her finger scrapes off a chunk of dried blood. "Like my sword. Everyone knows it is an ugly weapon by sight. They know it has taken the life from many men by the blood on it. But as shameful as I look, I will never be half as clear. Anyone who sees me would never know the evils I have committed unless I make it clear. I could live my life as shamelessly as I desire. So why is it that we desire others to see our sins?"

She looks at him, and her eyes are cold. They are still. Her gaze makes his soul ache with phantom chills, the emptiness reminiscent of a frozen eternity.

"We desire it," she begins with a slow intensity to her voice, "because we know that we are weak. We know we are cowardly. Because punishment awaits for me, my lord, just as it may for you. And I know that if I was not reminded I may very well run from it. I wish to be seen in all my unsightliness, if only so that their hateful eyes and barbed words can push me towards that punishment, towards redemption. And if we are anything alike, you will know that even that pain is fine. Because what we were before makes us sick simply to think about."

But her voice holds no dread, not even a trace of fear. It is almost airy, almost peaceful. "I've rambled, I know. But all of that was simply to tell you my understanding of the situation, my lord. There is no need to distance yourself from the good that you do." There is a pause then, and when she speaks again it holds all the certainty of a gallows victim. "It will not change your punishment, if that is what you face. It will not alleviate the slightest thorn of suffering. So if you will do good despite that, it will be the purest your kindness ever was. Because it will not save you."

[YOLF]

Lubei

Lubei balks at her. It wasn't humbleness that motivated him, but he was ready to denounce a response that claimed anything of the sort. Not this. He barely pays attention to the blade, how it raises the hackles of everyone around them. His blood threatens to freeze over, but another voice keeps it flowing.

'Denying the good you do will not discount from your sins; denying yourself even the dignity of how you've changed will not alter what you owe.' His eternal shadow whispers.

Mai continues, and his throat grows tight, because this is so much more than he wanted to hear, but can't bring himself to interrupt. She holds his attention hostage as much as the scoldings of the raptor. If she knew every detail of the things he's seen and which await him, it would not feel more like knives. Indeed, it is like being seen, in all of its terror. What has she done, to be able to speak like this?

He wonders what she means, if punishment then, leads to redemption. If that was all, he should not be alive, should not have ever worried for penance. Should they not be ashamed? That is what their sentence tells them, what the brand for their crimes inflicts, whatever those may have been. If it's ambiguous, how can they know what to do with the temporary freedom of this life? It has nothing to do with his wishes for a birth he didn't choose.  Lubei cannot be satisfied if he does not see the length of his chains before they pull him down.

What he understands the least is how accepting she appears at the last of her argument. There is an important concept there. A revelation. It lies on the edge of his awareness, and he can almost make sense of it. This he knows, but he can't tell the shape of it.

'You wish to be demeaned,' the raptor says, sad and weary. 'Because you think there is nothing else for you; but that is not the meaning of this journey. Hearken unto my words - this was not compelled of you. Do you not wish for proof of the distance you have walked? It will not avail you to blame the self because it is less arduous than to look back with eyes purified and a mind opened. Bear with the repugnance. It has only ever been you.'

The demon glares weakly at the shoulder where it stands, as far as anyone else realizes merely angry at empty space. Shaking his head, he hisses for air.

The instant strains like a taut string, and Lubei raises his face to her. "How can punishment bring redemption? It is... compensation. But it is not amends, nor can it fix anything that is gone."

[Umbra of Chaos]

Mai

Her smile is sad, but there is a glimmer in her eyes. She is not herself. In this instance, she is someone a tad wiser and much stronger. She is the sister who can tell this story, even if it hurts. Especially if it hurts. "Imagine," she begins, "two sisters. One is the moon and the other is the shadow. By her nature, the shadow cannot help but be drawn to the moon. Yet she is always lesser compared to her sibling. She grows to hate the moon, because the moon shows the shadow her own face. And the shadow hates herself more than she could ever hate the moon. But the moon is not free either. She is a mirror in the sky, and because of the light she reflects no one is interested in her true face. Not once has anyone thought to understand her."

She exhales then, a shuddering thing that makes her hands quake. "They suffer."

"One day, the shadow finds the answer to her suffering. So she kills the moon. She kills her father and her clansmen. She sullies her hands with the sin of kinslaying until they are stained beneath the skin. She embraces her own nothingness, and she never feels pain again. What punishment does the shadow deserve?"

Mai blinks away the tears before they can form, yet her smile is a sly and bright crescent. She shines like the moon. There is no room for an answer here. "One day, the shadow remembers what it feels to live, and she regrets her choice. Because she regrets, she becomes something human again. So she can be punished. The answer given to her is simple. Walk."

"At first, the shadow is confused. But she obliges the voice of heaven. She walks as the sun sets. She walks in the dead of night. She walks even as the sun rises once more. She walks as her sandles fray apart and crumble." The words become quicker, chained together by a rapid pace. "Her feet blister. They bleed. They are rubbed raw of skin. And she continues to walk. But then one day, she looks up and sees that her destination is no closer. And she remembers what it means to suffer again. She bemoans her fate. Did her regret lead to nothing more than empty cruelty? But that was not the case!"

There is a forcefulness to her voice, an intensity that is almost fearful to see. "She is asked to turn back instead. And behind her she sees herself when she began her journey. She fears this thing more than death, now that she can see it in its totality. She becomes impossibly glad that she has distanced herself from it, and yet she is still too close. Even if she cannot see her destination, she must hurtle herself towards it. It is a journey measured in the paces taken away from herself. So she keeps walking, even to this day. The meaning of this story may be different for you, my lord, but I assure you that it contains the answer to your question. You need only clarify the tale to know it." Her smile shifts into a neutral expression and the piercing quality in her gaze dulls. Yet something lingers in the air, like the heat from a coal taken from the fire. It will burn, even without light.

"Is punishment the steps taken from yourself, or is that redemption? Is redemption the steps taken towards your destination, or is that punishment? Once you answer, you will have solved the previous question as well, my lord."

[YOLF]

Lubei

It is not such a strange story, in the broad strokes, and it is plain to him after the first act where she fits in it. It's no less horrid. Lubei keeps to himself the morbid question of how many times she has recounted it. He remembers driving a cousin to kinslaying for his sake, in his first life, and he's not confident he will be able to keep himself from mentioning it if he speaks now.

His fingers dig into the table, releasing splinters, as he is pulled between commiseration and an inexplicable fury for the suppressed sorrow under her eyes. The demon hears the echoes of Hell in her words, and he wants to scream before he's pulled under and silenced. And most of all, he hears the same plea, the same message as from his cursed phantom guide, and he feels sick to the stomach of riddles.

He begins to mouth words, then pauses. Shedding ice from the ugly lines furrowing his face, as he forces out a response. "To live modestly and pitifully, to accept judgement, to be struck down for every life I damned, all of these are simple. But I cannot trust my objectivity. Should I gamble eternity on the same thing that sent me to the depths of sin? Shit."

Lubei's voice is barely a whisper when he finishes, and it takes the shape of a confession. For an instant he doesn't know how they got here, where he is. But his raptor sits between the two, its croon soft and yet razored.

'Yet you must. It is not a trap, and it is not objectivity that you need, but reflection. Fear alone will take you from one uncertainty to another.'

[Umbra of Chaos]

Mai

"You do not see yourself." Her voice is suddenly accusatory. Mai's hands do not move at all, and yet the phantom sensation of a blade against skin presses against Lubei's neck. "Is it that you cannot look? Or do you simply choose not to? No, the answer is meaningless. You will never understand the question as you are. You have not even taken a single step on the path. You merely mouth the words, stumbling blindly without direction."

"Coward." She practically spits out the word, as if she can barely stand saying it.

Her hand throbs with the killing impulse, with the barely restrained desire to sever his head from his shoulders. To sentence him to whatever eternity he so fears. She can see it so clearly that the man before her seems little more than a phantom. As if the headless corpse before her was true reality.

But Mai knows restraint. So even as her body sits on the verge of action, she does not move. The shadow grants him a chance. "In the story, the shadow hates herself most of all. She despises her sister, the moon, for under her light the shadow's ugliness is revealed. Those who have never seen their own face can continue in their unsightliness. Consider this question carefully, you who fear your own face. Do you seek to escape your punishment or yourself?"

[YOLF]

Lubei

Mai accuses him, and this time Lubei slams the table between them, spilling the tableware through a crash. He roars at that one word of insult, coward.

"And what of it?!" Admitting is like an explosion of bitterness in his mouth. The black ice that serves him shudders to be set free. On the verge of action he thinks - coward or not, it's none of her business, least of all to judge him!

But it doesn't come out. He knows exactly how dishonest it would be, and it turns into old ash on his tongue.

If it was solely his life on the scales. But it is not. Lubei Sang has responsibilities. He has a duty, with a whole lifetime of hubris to motivate him. He has not stopped thinking about those he must return to but for moments where instinct overtakes all else. Even now, he is acting for this destiny to come, expecting to return to Ivanna and hear all she can tell and collect that may offer a clue to leaving the Nexus. But... a king cannot be a coward. If the difference between a tumor of a ruler and a blessed sovereign lies in discerning what should be done from what must be done, and choosing the right one, he will have to try.

Lubei has never been meek but for his second lifetime, when he hurt and regretted too heavily to not cower, to not do precisely as the King of Death demanded. But he was not a coward by nature, and all he had held back came rushing out foolishly in the transmigration that followed. It is fear of the frozen hell that restrains him. Fear of that future, the self-flaggelating terror of proving that he belongs there and that is all he will be remembered for.

In the end, he struggles through the silence, but finds purchase. It is like emerging from a frozen lake without air, and on the other hand, like letting go and floating to the clouds. He sighs. "It... has only ever been me."

He cannot explain the way that shifts the weight from his shoulders. It feels incomplete. But it lets him breathe. It lets him feel his fingers again, curled into fists, and relax them. He raises his gaze to her cold one and inhales. "You are correct. I am, have been... afraid of beholding myself."

[Umbra of Chaos]

Mai

She exhales then, and the tension bleeds from the air. Tiredness suits her. With this lull in her heated demeanor it reasserts itself. And perhaps there is vulnerability. Perhaps he is not the only one with a companion, even if hers is not the guide but the lesson incarnate. For a moment, it is possible he sees It behind her eyes. The seat of nothingness, a place where no one exists, the blind pursuer of the peak of swordsmanship. The thing that can never know what it possesses, even as it clutches its deepest desire in its hands.

Or perhaps not.

Mai truly is feeling exceedingly charitable. It must be the soup, she decides, that has made her tongue so loose. A full stomach makes one chatty. Yet this creature is so pitiful that she is compelled to continue. "You will never escape your punishment. To focus on its inevitability is to be as the man who shakes and sobs every night for he knows he will die. Understandable, perhaps, but stupid. You will die whether you fear it or not. You will only change if you wish to change, not because of your cowardice. If you do not think yourself capable, simply say so. That too is understandable."

Her hand grasps the hilt of her blade, but her eyes hold nothing more than mild curiosity. "Say so, and I will take your head for you. It will be painless."

[YOLF]

Lubei

Lubei leans back, forcing himself to relax into the bench, and he does not see how their surroundings release a sigh of relief. He sees, whether by trick of the mind or by the momentary shedding of a veil, the very picture of frozen eternity, incarnate within a sleeping corner of her spirit as the gruesome mania of cutting. It makes him shiver, but there is a sliver of clarity in it.

"I decline," he answers to her proposal, and for the only time in this conversation he is devoid of hesitation. "Whatever awaits me at the end, there are things I must do on earth, and responsibilities I needs must answer. I am not an island apart from the things and people who have made me, and I would not disappoint them when bearing the ability to ensure otherwise."

It is not untethered from the destined outcome to his soul, it's not a resolve fully actualized. But in this he is focused on the present, and not fixated on the future.

The lull is brief, because his thoughts run away from him without something defined to address. Orbiting around the detail of Mai's chastisement, they prompt examination and doubt. How much could she know, simply by conversing with him and looking into his eyes? But the curse that clings to her, borne of what appears to be her own extremes, is no lie, and her words sank true in the cracks of his defenses, loath as he is to think of it. If his penalty is unavoidable, then he has misunderstood from the onset the purpose of this reincarnation. It is not a chance to avoid punishment, because it cannot be nulled, and neither can the past. It is an opportunity to become better and to prove himself. To do good with the decisions he has left instead of leaving the earth lesser, before... before the time comes where he can never do so again. Stasis unending with only sour introspection left.

It is not a cruel possibility. The truth of your errors can be painful, but she does not offer it out of cruelty. Maybe he deserves the disdain, though. How simple was it to fool himself into the prisoner of an undefined test? How much did he want for it, to be blind to the real terms and limitations that imprison him? It's enough for a headache. Lubei has more to work on than he realized.

He lets the silence wash over them, after that. No one still quite dares to approach.

[Umbra of Chaos]

Mai

Attachment. Who, she wonders for an instant, could be waiting for one such as him? The bitterness behind the sentiment almost surprises her. It erodes, pushing through the cracks in the mountain of duty that she shoulders. Why does he have something return to? How dare he?

How dare he wring his hands, and bemoan his fate, and shut his eyes meandering about when he has a life!

She tastes ash. How long has she been doing this? This path measured in only steps from herself, was it really only for her sake? No, no, impossible. She can still see them. She can still see her. The man before her might not know his destination, but Mai knows her own. She is a corpse haunted by phantoms that will not even speak to her. They simply stand apart, ever distant, even as her feet are left raw and bloody. All this time and they are no closer. All this time and the Demon is still but one step behind her.

A sharp crack breaks the silence between her and Lubei. Mai blinks in surprise at the shattered chunk of the table in her hand. She feels like she should cry, or perhaps howl, or maybe even laugh. But she fails to do even one of those things. The moment is gone, and whatever is left of that fire choked on the ash. She feels empty, again. But that is no surprise. Things have always been like this. There has never been any catharsis in her outbursts. Not even when she was younger, weeping with guilt, and drawing repentance across her flesh as if that meant anything. It was as hollow as when she spilled her heart to a sibling that was no longer here.

Dear sister, everything is gone.

Mai drops the chunk of the table on the ground and finds her sword in her hand. She does not grab at it as it falls. It is intuitive, an understanding as fundamental as water flowing downwards. And when she looks at her fellow sinner she seems just a tad lesser than when they had met. "You are kind," she admits, "so I will take advantage of your kindness. If the time comes, please kill me. It would please me, I think, to die at the hands of someone who would regret doing so."

She stands then, and Mai can only feel a vague disappointment that she does not even have the sincerity of tears to offer in exchange. The nuns do not impede her. She walks through the door and vanishes like an apparition, like a breath of warm air in the freezing cold.

She walks because that is her punishment, because that is her redemption. She walks because there is no other path.

Because nothing else remains.