Chapter 28: The Obsidian Phalanx

We are at the bottom.

The last step is taken, and we are standing on the cavern floor. The plaza is ten yards away, blocked by a living, breathing, shaking wall of pointed stone.

"Vorr! Vorr! GAAAAK!"

The sound is a physical thing, a wave of high-pitched, terrified rage that crashes over us. The air is thick with the resinous smoke of their torches and the coppery tang of their fear. There are hundreds of them. What looked like a small phalanx from above is a deep, layered defense, five or six ranks of these small, grey-skinned people, their faces contorted in expressions of pure, primal terror.

Their bulbous, dark eyes are fixed on us. Their spears, tipped with gleaming black obsidian, are not held in a steady, disciplined line. They are shaking. The front rank is being physically pushed forward by the ranks behind them. This is not the bravery of soldiers. This is the desperation of the cornered.

"They are... terrified," I murmur, my voice lost in the din.

"They think we are here to eat them," Yogawa whispers, his voice a reedy tremor. "This is... this is not a negotiation, Mizuki. This is an execution. Ours."

"Hold... your... ground," Kizawa commands. His voice is impossibly calm. He is a rock in this screaming ocean. His hands are still on the hilts of his swords.

"Kizawa, your plan is not working!" Hachiro hisses, his own fists clenched so tight his bruised knuckles are white. "They are about to turn us into pincushions!"

"It is working," Kizawa replies, his eyes scanning the phalanx. "They are screaming. They are shaking. But they are not charging. They are waiting."

He is right. For all their noise, they are holding their position at the gate. They are a dam, holding back their own fear.

"They are waiting for a sign," Kizawa says. "For us to make the first move. To prove their fear is justified."

He takes his hands off his swords.

It is a simple gesture, but it ripples through the crowd. The chanting falters for a half-second.

"Kizawa, what are you-?"

He raises his empty hands, palms forward, just to his shoulders. A universal sign of peace. Or surrender. With Kizawa, it is a sign of control. He is showing them he is not here to draw his blades.

"Mizuki," he says, not looking at me. "Your hair. Now."

My hair. The single strand. It feels so useless, so small.

I mimic his gesture. I raise my hands. I am trembling so hard I can barely keep them up. I push back the hood of my cloak, letting the torchlight fall fully on my face, my silver hair.

"It is not enough," I whisper. "They cannot see it from here."

"GAK-TA! HESH!"

A new voice cuts through the chanting. It is deeper, raspier. The phalanx shudders, and a gap opens in its center.

A new figure steps through.

This one is old. The skin is a deeper, mossy grey, wrinkled and pulled taut over a small, wiry frame. It is adorned not just in scraps, but in a full, intricate cuirass made from the iridescent black-and-purple plates of some massive, unknown insect. A long cloak, woven from what looks like pale spider silk, is draped over its shoulders. It holds no spear. It carries a staff, a gnarled piece of pale root, topped with a glowing, fist-sized crystal that pulses with a soft, sickly green light.

The light of the Green-Lit World. The light of the demons.

My heart sinks. A shaman. A magic-user. One who draws power from the very thing that is trying to kill us.

The old one-I cannot tell if it is male or female-shuffles forward. The chanting stops, replaced by a tense, heavy silence, broken only by the drip of water and the hiss of the torches.

It stops ten feet from us. Close enough for me to see its face. The eyes are not the black, bulbous orbs of the others. They are clouded, milky-white. Blind.

It lifts its head, sniffing the air.

"It... it cannot see us," Erima breathes from behind me.

"It does not need to," Yogawa whimpers. "It can smell us. It can smell our spirits. It can smell... him." He nods toward Hachiro's pack, where the tiny, unconscious rat-demon is still hidden.

The blind shaman takes another shuffling step. It cocks its head, listening.

Kizawa remains perfectly still, his hands raised.

I am frozen, my own hands still held up, my heart hammering against my ribs.

The shaman sniffs again, a long, wet, rattling inhale. Its head turns, passing over Kizawa, Erima, Hachiro, Yogawa...

And it stops.

It is facing me.

Its clouded, white eyes seem to stare right through me.

"Gak... hesh... Vorr?" it rasps. The word is a question now. Not an accusation.

It takes another step. It is reaching out a small, gnarled, three-fingered hand.

"Mizuki," Kizawa's voice is a razor-wire of tension. "Do. Not. Move."

I cannot move. I am paralyzed. The creature's hand, its grey, leathery skin, its long, claw-like nails, is coming... at my face.

It does not touch my skin.

Its fingers, surprisingly gentle, brush against my hair, the long silver strands hanging limp and damp around my shoulders.

It sniffs again, its flared, flat nose just inches from my head.

And then... it finds it.

Its fingers close on the single, silver-golden strand.

The reaction is electric.

The shaman recoils, hissing, as if burned. It stumbles back, its staff striking the stone floor. The crystal on its staff flares, the green light pulsing with sudden, violent agitation.

"REKKA!" it screams.

The phalanx roars. The spears are not just leveled. They are tensed. The front rank lowers into a crouch.

"This is bad," Hachiro says. "This is very bad."

"Rekka..." Yogawa is shaking his head, his face pale. "No... no, that is also from the First Tongue. It means... 'Fire'. 'Scourge'. 'The thing that burns'."

They do not think I am a demon. They think I am worse.

The blind shaman is pointing its staff at me. It is chanting, its voice rising in a guttural, angry cadence. The green crystal is glowing brighter, the light sick and oily.

"It is... it is cursing us," Yogawa stammers. "It is placing a mark on us. A... a death-curse!"

"Mizuki!" Kizawa's voice is sharp. "The fire! Your fire! Show it to them! NOW!"

"I cannot!" I cry, panic finally breaking my paralysis. "I am empty! It is gone!"

"It is NOT gone!" he roars, his calm finally shattering. "It is in you! You are the Phoenix! BURN!"

His voice is a command. It is a plea. It is the one thing that cuts through my terror.

I am empty. I am cold. I am exhausted.

But I am angry.

I am angry at this... this thing, calling me a Scourge. I am angry at this world, at the Miasma Heart, at the Spinner King, at this cold, dark, endless place.

I lower my hands. I clench them into fists.

"I... am not... a Scourge," I hiss.

I close my eyes. I reach down, into the cold, empty pit inside me where my power used to be. It is a hollow void. There is nothing there. No flame, no warmth.

Just... an ember.

A single, tiny, stubborn point of light, buried so deep I did not even know it was still there. It is the last remnant. The seed of the Phoenix-fire.

It is not enough to fight. It is not enough to heal.

But it is enough to glow.

I pull on it. I tear at it, dragging it up from the depths with every last scrap of my will.

It hurts. It feels like ripping my own soul apart.

I open my eyes.

I hold out my right hand, palm up.

"Rekka," I say, my voice a broken echo of the shaman's.

A single, tiny, golden flame, no bigger than a candle-light, flickers to life in the center of my palm.

It is pathetic. It is weak. It casts almost no light.

But in this world of green-lit demonic energy, it is a sun.

The shaman screams.

It is a sound of pure, unadulterated terror. It drops its staff and scrambles backward, falling onto its robes.

The phalanx breaks.

The "goblins" do not attack. They flee. They throw down their spears, their shields, and they run, trampling each other to get back into the city. The organized, terrifying wall of warriors dissolves into a panicked, screaming mob.

In seconds, the plaza is empty, save for us and the old, blind shaman, who is trying to crawl away, its milky eyes wide with fright.

The silence that descends is absolute.

"Well," Hachiro says into the void, his voice cracking. "That... is one way to handle diplomacy."

The golden flame in my palm sputters, and with a final, painful pop, it extinguishes.

The effort sends me to my knees. The world spins, dark and cold.

"Mizuki!"

Kizawa is there, catching me before I hit the stone.

"I... I did it," I whisper, the darkness closing in.

"You did," his voice is rough, full of a strange, fierce pride. "You... stubborn... fool. You did."

"Look," Erima's voice is quiet, but it cuts through my haze.

I look up. Kizawa supports me, my legs too weak to hold me.

The blind shaman has stopped crawling. It is staring at us, its fear replaced by something else. Awe. Disbelief.

It pushes itself up onto its knees. It places its palms on the stone floor, and it lowers its head, pressing its forehead to the wet, grimy rock.

It is bowing.

Behind it, from the dark, narrow alleys of the city, the "goblins" are creeping back out. One by one, they emerge from the shadows, their spears left behind. They stop, they stare, and they, too, drop to their knees.

One by one. Ten by ten. A hundred by a hundred.

The entire plaza fills with the silent, kneeling forms of the torchlight city.

"What is... what is happening?" I whisper.

Yogawa steps forward, his face pale, but his eyes wide with a dawning, impossible understanding.

"They were not... they were not calling us 'Rekka'," he says, his voice shaking. "They were calling the light 'Rekka'. The green light. The demon-light. That is their 'Scourge'."

He points at my hand, the one that held the flame.

"And your light... your tiny, golden light... They have not seen that before. It is not the Scourge."

He looks at the bowing crowd, at the shaman still prostrate on the ground.

"It is... 'Anti-Rekka'. It is... 'Salvation'. They do not think you are a demon, Mizuki."

He lets out a shaky, hysterical laugh.

"They think you are a God."