“A bet is a bet, my friend!” smiled Jirgal as he shook the coins to hear the satisfying jingle. He walked over to Zuo Shilong who lay in the ground staring at the sky somewhat stunned or in a sort of silent distress. “How are you feeling, buddy? Got a knot in your stomach?”
Zuo Shilong simply continued to stare at the sky with a blank gaze that passed through the treetop canopy. His face was emotionless and he did not even blink. “I do not want your sympathy,” he muttered, pushing away Jirgal’s outreached hand. Without another word, he got up and walked off into the wood far from sight with the staff as a walking stick.
“Oh, I think you really did it this time, Buff Baby. Our team is beginning to fall apart. Maybe you should apologize? Or…” Jirgal stopped mid-sentence when Buff Baby shot him a menacing stare. “Oooooh kay, I will shut up now,” he said.
“Do the two of you bicker often?” said Fa Lien.
“Yes,” said Buff Baby. “The young fool needs to learn his place and to respect his elders, especially ones that are triple his size.”
“You men can be quite amusing. Your bodies grow old, but your minds remain adolescent,” Fa Lien snickered.
“That bald-headed, has-been monk needed a good spanking. See? Now he knows his place and to show me the respect that is due a true warrior,” he proclaimed, pointing into the direction where Zuo Shilong had wandered off. “He’s probably going to cry and suckle like the child he is.”
“So you put him in his place now. You must feel very proud of yourself,” said Big Bang. “Now we’re one man short and if your mentor were here, he would have not been pleased.”
“Wait a minute… since when did you start thinking coherently??” asked Jirgal with a raised eyebrow.
Big Bang made no response and resumed fiddling with his tools and loading up his weapons.
“Mentor?” asked Fa Lien.
“His name is Famin Jie and he’s the reason why we have been brought together. He’s the reason why we are here. He has touched all our lives, one way or another. Not sure about Fung over there, though,” said Jirgal. “I do wish he were here. He always knows what to do.”
“So that is how the lot of you ended up with the Wandering Wolf? He’s not the sort who values company, especially on the road.”
“Pretty much. We’re on a mission, see, and he figured he needed some help along the way, considering everyone wants to kill him these days. No one else was available so he had to settle for us,” answered Jirgal.
“Settle? I’m worth an entire squad of warriors! He ought to feel most fortunate that I, a great warrior, even agreed to be on this pitiful team!” Buff Baby declared.
“I am in awe of your modesty, sir,” Fa Lien quipped, becoming unamused by Buff Baby’s narcissistic behavior.
“Hmph! I simply speak the truth,” he frowned and crossed his arms.
“Clearly,” she answered with her eyes rolled.
Buff Baby paused for several moments pondering what had just transpired. A look of worry ran across his face, and he looked to the direction where Zuo Shilong had wandered off. He felt a small pang of regret for their hostile exchange. Perhaps even a small part of him was hoping he’d return to the campsite.
Well into the evening hours, the group slumbered by the fire. Fa Lien slept leaning against a tree, her hands grasping tightly the saber resting upon her lap. Buff Baby could not find a moment’s rest. He found himself wondering about Zuo Shilong, though he could not figure why he even cared. One hour became two, and his inability to find rest had worsened. He sat up, massaged his head, and grumbled.
“Blasted kid is going to get himself killed out there,” he mumbled. Compelled to search for Zuo Shilong, he got up, acquired a torch, and secured his glaive across his back. Beneath the moonlight, silhouettes of the landscape could only be discerned in between passing clouds. The faint sounds of the night, rustling leaves, breaking twigs, and hooting owls all served to unnerve Buff Baby. For all his strength, he could not admit to himself that he had many fears. He walked and walked for what seemed like hours on end. He was not much for tracking, but several footprints, disturbed vegetation, and broken branches clued the Shaolin monk’s passage in the area. Fresher tracks along the muddied path hastened Buff Baby’s stride. His gate began with a brisk walk then later escalated to a mid-jog, but the tracks had suddenly ceased to appear and Buff Baby could no longer retrace them. He stood there for a moment or two, unsure of what to do or how to proceed.
The distant sound of wailing and sobbing grabbed his ear and distracted him from his thoughts. It was not of a man, but of young woman, and the sounds of pain and distress worsened as Buff Baby drew near. A young girl was perched upon a large rock and she was dressed in fine garments. Her small, delicate feet were bare and crossed on top of one another. She moaned and wailed as if bereaved with inconsolable sorrow. Buff Baby approached her without hesitation, bringing the girl underneath the golden glow of torchlight.
“Hey, you! Girl— what is the matter?” he asked.
The young woman only continued to sob as if she had not heard a word.
“Are you alone? Where is your family? Can’t you hear a word I say??”
He reached out to touch her shoulder, but the moment he did, she glared at him in an instant with a face of a diseased and tormented hag. Her parched skin was pale as a corpse, and her sunken eyes drooped down with her sagging cheeks. Added to a lanky appearance and apparent lack of pupils in her eyes, Buff Baby was caught completely off-guard.
He jumped and yelled with great fright before he could even retract his hand. The hag shrieked and grasped his face with her long, bony fingers. The hand smelled of death. She lashed out at him with tremendous force. Buff Baby was knocked to the ground, and was sent tumbling down the hill, hitting stones and uneven ground. Even before his descent had ceased, he was already unconscious.
In the Monster’s Abode
The stench of death was so offensive it could have awakened the first emperor from his tomb. It filled the entire… wherever it was. Damp, dark, cold, and foul described the place. It took a while for his eyes to adjust, and he almost wished they had not, for what he beheld was more horrific than anything he had witnessed before. Dozens of decaying corpses, mostly skeletons, were strewn across the ground so that he could not see if it were rock or dirt that lay beneath them. Buff Baby found himself cast atop the highest pile of corpses, many of which were in the advanced stages of decomposition. He gagged and vomited with the sights and smells. In a panic, he stumbled over the bodies and waded through the muck and filth. Severed limbs naught more than skin covering bone protruded from the pile and the horrific faces of the dead seemed to cast a blank stare at his passing. Buff Baby grew evermore distressed; the place was utterly maddening.
The place appeared to be some sort of dungeon or prison. He was met with a set of rusted iron bars and a hefty gate locked in steel. Buff Baby grasped the iron bars, and with all his might, pried them apart. He flexed and pulled until he was able to squeeze through.
A narrow corridor stretched before him as candles and lampstands lit the way. Blood stains adorned the wall and some were made by the hands of those who had been forcefully dragged through the corridor. Buff Baby’s vision had cleared and his mind had realigned to proper focus. Controlled breaths were all it took for him to regain his bearings. He had to find a way out, but not without his Guan Dao glaive. He resisted the urge to remember just what it was that brought him to the place where he was trapped.
He proceeded through the corridor with great caution, armed with nothing more than his fists. His weapon and gear were nowhere to be found, but he was determined to find them before making an escape. Though covered in blood, none of it was his own, and the only injuries that inflicted him, he felt, were beneath the skin. His head and back ached rather terribly, and he was plagued by nausea, no thanks to his harrowing experience. He could hardly reme
mber what happened.
A large and old bronze chest sat wide open at the end of the hall and an array of goods was incongruously stuffed into it. “There must be some item in here that can help me out,” he muttered almost inaudibly. Old boots, some fishing twine, a key, coinage, and several pieces of clothing. Naught but a tanner’s knife and a traveler’s torch were useful in the chest. He kept the coins nonetheless. Evidently, they were the belongings of all who were unfortunate enough to have ended up in this place—one which seemed to have been constructed in past centuries.
The end of the hall was completely blocked off. A pair of large iron doors adorned with beastly motifs created a dead end, probably barred with an iron beam from the other side. He bashed the door with his shoulder, but it would not budge. It would appear that not even he would manage to break it down. He turned back and retraced his steps, this time exploring any possible means to bypass the door. A large section of the wall was dilapidated and on the verge of collapse. With one strong push kick, it crumbled, and when the dust settled, it revealed an older access that proceeded in the direction that seemed to promise an exit. He lit the torch and entered through the dark access. Cobwebs littered every corner, and rats skittered to and fro. Buff Baby hated spiders and rats, and it compelled him to hasten his footsteps.
The small passageway led him to a dead stop with a ladder that climbed some fifty chi straight up. After the arduous climb in the tight space, he pushed open a trap door that had not been touched in so long that it nearly sealed itself onto the latch. When he brought the torch to bear he had found himself in a large room full of weapons. Some were hung upon racks and stands while others appeared to have been carelessly tossed onto the stone floor. Longswords, broadswords, pikes, tridents, spears, and various other polearms were scattered about the room.
“What on earth? These be the weapons of fallen warriors?” said Buff Baby. He scratched his head figuring out why the weapons were being gathered to this spot. It was an activity that appeared to have been in continuation for a very long time. “Maybe some bloke thought them nice as trophies.”
He explored the dark room’s perimeter observing everything mounted and laid on display. To his great relief, his large Guan Dao glaive rested against the wall at the back end of the room, waiting for him to grab hold of it one more time. “Ain’t a thing in the world gonna keep me away from you, love,” he whispered to his weapon. Before he could grab a hold of it however, the room’s large wooden vault rumbled and creaked open, and he scrambled to douse the flame of his torch, and take cover in the darkness.
The very same hag that had lured and attacked him in the woods limped through the vault with a candle on one hand and yet another weapon the other.
“Ah… I remember you now, you little witch,” he growled inaudibly. The weapon she held was undoubtedly Zuo Shilong’s staff, the iron rod he had obtained from Huangshan. The ornate designs and engravings were unmistakable.
“So… you tricked the little brat with your nonsense too I see,” he thought. Buff Baby clenched his fists, thinking she may have already killed him. But still, he controlled the urge to attack and instead observe the hag. There was little knowing if she was alone or possibly one of many freaks lurking in the darkness of wherever they may be.
She was hauntingly strange, hunched over and terribly ugly, with beautiful silver hair that should have belonged to a princess of folklore. They hung over her head, covering most of her face. Though scantily dressed in fine garments like a harlot, her body was disfigured with skin discolored and dryer than rucked tanned leather. She took Zuo Shilong’s weapon and rested it against the wall in a routinely manner. Her face writhed and eyes squinted with pain as if she were inflicted with some nervous disease. The hag paused for a few moments, as if something had caught her attention. She looked around the room, sniffed the air, and grunted until the sounds of commotion coming from beyond the vault redirected her attention and caused her to vacate the premises in haste.
Soon after, Buff Baby grabbed his weapon and secured it back onto his back hip harness along with Zuo Shilong’s staff. An old hunting bow lay near a hip quiver half-full with iron-tipped arrows. “Been a while, but it could help,” he muttered as he tested its maximum tension flex before slinging it diagonally across his chest. Without further delay, he tiptoed out of the room and proceeded cautiously into the darkness. He peaked around a corner and spotted the hag dragging a body he could not distinguish through the darkness.
Buff Baby continued to stalk her until they had arrived at the ruins of an old hall lit with many torches and candles. At the head of the room was a makeshift altar drenched with the blood of countless victims. The bones of man and beast alike littered the ground near the altar while skeletons hung from the ceiling, bound by the hands and wrists. “Left to hang like meat,” he thought. The face of the wall behind the altar was engraved with a mysterious symbol—a set of polygons conjoined together to create a new emblem, with the head of a beast carved into its center. Five sets of trigrams encompassed the symbol.
In the sufficient light of the hall, Buff Baby observed the hag’s subsequent activity. She grabbed a goat, which she had dragged all the way, and tied its legs together with some twine. It bleated and struggled as she looped the final knot. She pulled an obsidian blade from her pocket and brought it down upon the goat’s neck. Blood poured out of the artery like a fountain and spurted in rhythm until it drained down the sides of the altar to form a puddle. She kneeled down for a drink until her face was drenched with it. All the while, the goat’s body twitched and squirmed continuously.
“Disgusting, twisted savage. First it’s necromancers and the freaking undead, now it’s psychotic, disfigured whores. The world is turning daft, becoming the stuff of nightmares,” Buff Baby whispered with a repulsed look on his face.
She took the knife again and this time plunged it into the goat’s abdomen while the creature still writhed and jerked as it bled to death. The chest and belly were cut open and she dug her filthy hands into its body and pulled out the heart… and ate it. Buff Baby cupped his hand over his mouth and fought the urge to gag. The goat bleated its last. The squirming had ceased.
The hag grabbed the goat’s horns and tore off its head like it was naught more than a carrot harvested from loose dirt. She walked off into the dark away from view, carrying the goat’s head for some mysterious or corrupted purpose. He did not want to know.
Buff Baby emerged from his hiding spot and surveyed the surroundings. He wondered about Zuo Shilong’s fate. He did not want to admit it to himself, but he was worried for him. To distract his mind from such thoughts, Buff Baby rummaged through several boxes and chests, some of which had locks he easily smashed. They were filled with useless wares and apparel, save for a few boxes with antiquated gold and silver coins and some expensive lacquerware.
“Have a capacity for hording, do we?” he said. He was disgusted with himself for his undying urge to loot and plunder under such circumstances. His inner fortune hunter was too strong to deny.
One chest in particular was tucked underneath a large desk in the most illuminated area of the hall. The desk was littered with apparatus of all sorts used mainly for practicing geomancy and divination. He paid no attention to them and instead pulled out the chest and sifted through its contents. Its contents were not much more than a stack of books, some papers, and several pieces of jewelry. An inkwell, calligraphy brushes, and a painting were also in the mix. It was a portrait of a lady— a woman of apparent wealth and pedigree. Belongings of a different life, they seemed to be.
He took a moment to analyze the papers. “These are love letters that were never sent,” he said to himself. “These were all written by someone named Xue Yang.” He looked to the painting and to the room around him. “It can’t be…”
Buff Baby stood and turned to loot the next chest. The chest, in particular, looked less enticing than the others, but they
contained unusually looking scrolls. They were dusty, and had not been opened in ages. He took a quick peak, but could not discern the hastily written text. Some of the ink had faded. The other items in the chest were most curious, so he grabbed what he could and stuffed them into his belt compartments and satchel.
Time to get out of here and look for the bald kid, he thought. He stood and turned to leave, but instead met with a face to face confrontation with the hag. He jumped with fright, but before he could respond with action, she nicked him several times with something blunt, precisely hitting his nerves and pressure points in quick succession. The attack instantly turned his neck and face completely numb and the sensation immediately traveled to the extremities of his body, inflicting him with a potent paralysis that even his large, powerful frame could not overcome. He flopped to the floor like a ragdoll, helpless, motionless, yet fully conscious and aware. He could not even utter a single word.
The grotesque, overgrown deformity that was the hag grabbed him by the foot and dragged his large bulk across the floor with ease. She still made no sound nor spoke a single word other than her labored breathing and low, deep growls. They approached the bloodied altar and she tossed him upon it. Buff Baby’s heart pounded harder and faster underneath his chest, and almost could see the beats reverberating beneath his robes. The hag methodically unfastened his belt, tossing away his weapon and Zuo Shilong’s metal staff. She undid his leather waist and hip armor, then pried open his overcoat. She readied her stone knife, scraping it against the altar’s rough surface as if to sharpen it with each stroke. Her filthy hands parted the robes under his coat and she ran her elongated, bony fingers over his bulging pectorals and abdominal muscles. She slurped her tongue around her watering mouth while Buff Baby braced for what he knew what has coming.
Of all the ways to go, I never would have guessed it to be this way, to die like a weak and helpless animal, he thought, reluctant to accept his fate.
Clash of Alliances Page 23
