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almondinflowerCharacters: (this chapter) Shindou, Touya, Waya
Wordcount: 1900
Summary: In a world where divination is used to predict the future and govern nations, State Diviner Touya Akira and private investigator Waya Yoshitaka embark on a search for the heretic Sai, the ghostly diviner who may be the most powerful of them all.
This chapter: mostly featuring falling rocks, angsty Hikaru, and anti-climactic moments.
Earlier chapters.
The temple was surprisingly bare on the inside. Over the centuries its fixtures and furnishings had been looted and salvaged, its statues stolen and melted down, its precious metals painstakingly scraped off the murals and altars to which they belonged. Thanks to the breach in the building's facade the entry hall was windswept, but Shindou walked right on without a pause, leading us to a musty, smaller chamber further in. There were no features of note in this room save for some small high windows and a goban approximately the size of a pool table. The grid was marked out in deep grooves; fist-sized stones sat at certain intersections.
It was here that Shindou halted, waiting, giving me the impression that he expected us to do something. His face was unhealthily pale, his cheeks heartbreakingly thin. A jet-dark veil of hair hung across his shoulders, unkempt.
“You divined our coming?” Touya asked. Like me, he'd been transfixed by Shindou since Shindou first appeared.
“The ghosts told me.” Shindou gave an indifferent wave. I realised with a faint sense of horror that he still retained his ability to talk to spirits. “Can't really do old-fashioned divination around here until Sai comes back.”
Touya flushed. “About that, Shindou, I --”
“Don't try to stop me.”
Touya spoke steadily: “I'm afraid I can't do that.”
They stared at each other in the semi-gloom and I watched them. A kind of helplessness hung in the air, a stalemate.
Shindou lifted his hand in the beginnings of a half-hearted gesture, then let it fall. “I'm sorry about your father,” he said. “I buried him out the back.”
“Did you bury Sai there as well?” I asked.
Shindou laughed bitterly. “Sai didn't need burying. He just turned into nothing, and went away. One moment he was beside me, the next he was gone. Then I came back here and found Touya Meijin dead. I'm sorry,” he said again to Touya.
I snorted. “Yeah, your collateral damage has been rather massive these few months.” My voice came out precise and cool, the complete antithesis of how I felt.
A slight spark came into his eyes. “It would have worked fine, the first time! If you'd just given us the time!”
“That wasn't my choice!” Defensiveness flared through me. “Ogata-sensei turned up. That attempt of yours was doomed from the beginning! Besides,” I lowered my tone, “If we could go back, I'd act differently. I wouldn't have let you go ahead. The dead don't live again. That's just reality.”
“And who said that they shouldn't? The living? That's only because they don't know what it's like to be dead.”
“And you? Do you know? Do you really know? Screw that, you have no idea. Do you think just hanging out with ghosts qualifies you to understand what it's like? If you really did, you wouldn't have allowed three people to be killed over this.”
“That wasn't intentional. It was just a side-effect--”
“But they died.” I couldn't even tell if my words were reaching him. One thing for sure: it was hurting me like crazy to tell him these things. I loved Shindou, maybe more than I loved Isumi – or maybe it was one of those things that couldn't be ranked or compared. Shindou needed me – or at least needed someone. Isumi didn't.
“You understand,” he said desperately to Touya. “You understand, don't you?”
“Shut up,” I cut Touya off before he could respond. “This is not about understanding or not understanding. I don't give a damn how important Sai was to you.”
Anger suffused his cheeks with colour. That was better. It made this entire charade feel less like puppy-kicking. But he could not sustain the emotion long. Fatigue covered his countenance again.
He was not capable of resisting us. Touya was beginning to realise it as well.
“Is this the place?” Touya asked. “The tengen?”
Shindou looked up. “You can't – you're not going to--”
“We are,” I said calmly.
There was a pile of black and white rocks piled up in the corner. The divination pieces. Touya walked across and picked up a dark stone. Shindou followed him over.
“Don't do this. Just give me a month to finish. For Sai. Please.”
Touya ignored him. Shindou turned to me in appeal.
“Waya, I can't.”
“I know,” I said softly. “That's why we're going to make the decision for you.”
Shindou tried to wrench the stone out of Touya's hands. I moved swiftly forward and punched Shindou in the stomach.
“Do it,” I growled at Touya, as Shindou staggered backwards. “Break the the damn board and we'll get out of here.”
Six stones. That was all it took, I knew, to break the tengen, send the continent into chaos. Shindou pulled himself upwards, energised by panic, and launched himself at Touya. I struck him again, this time in the face, and moved to pull him into a pinhold.
“I hate you,” he hissed at me, after I'd forced him to the ground, twisting his elbow painfully. Shit. He'd always been able to push my buttons way better than Isumi could.
“Hurry up a little,” I snapped at Touya, despite the fact that Touya was already going about the task rather efficiently.
“Almost done,” he said, putting another two pieces down. His remark was glacial, composed; it was this more than any discomfort I was inflicting that caused Shindou to cease resisting.
Again Touya squatted, picked up a white round stone from the pile, then reached out with both hands and placed it right in the centre of the goban.
Without letting go of the piece he'd just placed, he said, “Shindou, you didn't--”
Then the earth began to break apart.
#
Shindou lost consciousness beneath me just as dust began to seep from the ceiling. Cursing, I hauled him up and dragged him across my shoulders. He was light as a girl, possibly malnourished even.
Touya was still paralysed in front of the board. “Move,” I told him. “You're the one who told us what was going to happen when the geomantic board blew.”
He pointed at the formation in front of us. “Shindou, he ---”
“If we don't go now, we won't be alive to appreciate it.” I made for the door before he could reply, and felt him following me.
Out in the entrance hall, there were fragments falling, and cracks appearing in the floor and pillars. We hurried along as quickly as I could manage while carrying Shindou, although he was an easy burden to carry; frighteningly easy, in fact.
Suyeong and Yeongha were waiting in the courtyard outside. They both looked rather scorched and singed, but otherwise fine.
“We need to go south,” said Suyeong, “to the forest, before the city turns to debris.”
I nodded.
We ran. All around us, ancient Siwang fell to pieces.
#
Late afternoon. The smell of pine needles and powdered stone. Through the gaps between treetops I could see the thick sand-coloured haze that the destruction of the ruins had created in the atmosphere. I was too tired to comment on it, or even make the slightest movement. I remained supine on the forest floor, hands outstretched, Shindou lying next to me. He had yet to rouse from his faint.
Touya was speaking to Yeongha in Dukian.
“What are they talking about?” I asked Suyeong.
“He's asking whether Yeongha knows where Touya Meijin is buried.”
“Oh.” Briefly, I wondered what Touya intended to do with Shindou now he'd found him again. Press charges? Murder by geomantic divination. That'd make a fantastic tabloid headline. It'd even be true. Weariness fell over me. I still wanted to protect Shindou – but from what, now that I'd prevented him from getting the only thing he'd ever wanted?
Somewhere out there the Pagoda of the Nine Stars was dissipating, the Shrine of Darkness was being torn into pieces, and the Council House of Ki with it. The Hill of Flowers was burning, perhaps. It'd taken the collapse of Siwang for me to realise what a crazy, dangerously easy thing we'd set out to do. No wonder Shindou hadn't thought of what he was doing as murder.
Touya finished his conversation with Yeongha and came up to me. “I'm going to visit my father,” he said. “Will you join me? Suyeong says he'll watch over Shindou.”
I eyed Yeongha warily, but it wasn't as if he could cause much more magical havoc than we'd already caused, so I clambered to my feet reluctantly. I walked with Touya further up the hill, into the forest, until we reached a glade where the grass was sparse, the soil dark and ruddy.
There was a small boulder there with a few bunches of wildflowers on it, and in front of it, a long mound of earth packed loosely.
Touya knelt before the grave. After a moment, so did I.
“Will you have him moved back to Ki?” I asked.
“Probably. I hadn't thought about that yet. I was just busy wondering about – I was just realising that my father made a judgement, when he came here. He decided that Sai was something that shouldn't be allowed to exist.”
I recalled the luminous eyes, the breathtakingly exquisite face, the voice Isumi had heard and spoken with, that I would never hear now. “And? Do you disagree with him?”
“I don't know,” he answered. “But whatever my opinion, I don't think I'd have been willing to die for it.”
The wind sighed in the boughs overhead.
“Do you want to be alone?” I offered.
He shook his head. “Not today. Let's go back.”
We returned to the edge of the forest, our footsteps slow. I felt strangely solitary and disconnected from him – as if we couldn't mourn together, as if there were a universe of difference between the pain in his heart and the regret in mine. Perhaps there was.
“There's something I need to tell you,” Touya spoke after a period of silence “About Shindou. That board, he adjusted it so that he would...” He trailed off.
Suyeong was yelling at Yeongha in Dukian, and Yeongha was shouting back. We could hear their voices; a few paces later we came out from behind a massive fir tree and they spotted us. Yeongha looked extremely pissed. Suyeong came over and stared at us accusingly.
“He doesn't remember,” he said angrily. “He doesn't remember anything.”
I looked over Suyeong's shoulder to see Shindou – pallid, emaciated, sitting upright on a fallen tree trunk. His huge green eyes flickered up to scrutinise us curiously.
“Who are you?” he asked, before frowning.
I was too shocked to react. But Touya came forward and leaned down to clasp Shindou's hand, the gesture curiously gentle.
“Your name is Shindou Hikaru,” he said, his face quite inscrutable. “And you're – you're a friend of ours.”
“Was I?”
END, DICE IN A GAME OF WAR
Wordcount: 1900
Summary: In a world where divination is used to predict the future and govern nations, State Diviner Touya Akira and private investigator Waya Yoshitaka embark on a search for the heretic Sai, the ghostly diviner who may be the most powerful of them all.
This chapter: mostly featuring falling rocks, angsty Hikaru, and anti-climactic moments.
Earlier chapters.
The temple was surprisingly bare on the inside. Over the centuries its fixtures and furnishings had been looted and salvaged, its statues stolen and melted down, its precious metals painstakingly scraped off the murals and altars to which they belonged. Thanks to the breach in the building's facade the entry hall was windswept, but Shindou walked right on without a pause, leading us to a musty, smaller chamber further in. There were no features of note in this room save for some small high windows and a goban approximately the size of a pool table. The grid was marked out in deep grooves; fist-sized stones sat at certain intersections.
It was here that Shindou halted, waiting, giving me the impression that he expected us to do something. His face was unhealthily pale, his cheeks heartbreakingly thin. A jet-dark veil of hair hung across his shoulders, unkempt.
“You divined our coming?” Touya asked. Like me, he'd been transfixed by Shindou since Shindou first appeared.
“The ghosts told me.” Shindou gave an indifferent wave. I realised with a faint sense of horror that he still retained his ability to talk to spirits. “Can't really do old-fashioned divination around here until Sai comes back.”
Touya flushed. “About that, Shindou, I --”
“Don't try to stop me.”
Touya spoke steadily: “I'm afraid I can't do that.”
They stared at each other in the semi-gloom and I watched them. A kind of helplessness hung in the air, a stalemate.
Shindou lifted his hand in the beginnings of a half-hearted gesture, then let it fall. “I'm sorry about your father,” he said. “I buried him out the back.”
“Did you bury Sai there as well?” I asked.
Shindou laughed bitterly. “Sai didn't need burying. He just turned into nothing, and went away. One moment he was beside me, the next he was gone. Then I came back here and found Touya Meijin dead. I'm sorry,” he said again to Touya.
I snorted. “Yeah, your collateral damage has been rather massive these few months.” My voice came out precise and cool, the complete antithesis of how I felt.
A slight spark came into his eyes. “It would have worked fine, the first time! If you'd just given us the time!”
“That wasn't my choice!” Defensiveness flared through me. “Ogata-sensei turned up. That attempt of yours was doomed from the beginning! Besides,” I lowered my tone, “If we could go back, I'd act differently. I wouldn't have let you go ahead. The dead don't live again. That's just reality.”
“And who said that they shouldn't? The living? That's only because they don't know what it's like to be dead.”
“And you? Do you know? Do you really know? Screw that, you have no idea. Do you think just hanging out with ghosts qualifies you to understand what it's like? If you really did, you wouldn't have allowed three people to be killed over this.”
“That wasn't intentional. It was just a side-effect--”
“But they died.” I couldn't even tell if my words were reaching him. One thing for sure: it was hurting me like crazy to tell him these things. I loved Shindou, maybe more than I loved Isumi – or maybe it was one of those things that couldn't be ranked or compared. Shindou needed me – or at least needed someone. Isumi didn't.
“You understand,” he said desperately to Touya. “You understand, don't you?”
“Shut up,” I cut Touya off before he could respond. “This is not about understanding or not understanding. I don't give a damn how important Sai was to you.”
Anger suffused his cheeks with colour. That was better. It made this entire charade feel less like puppy-kicking. But he could not sustain the emotion long. Fatigue covered his countenance again.
He was not capable of resisting us. Touya was beginning to realise it as well.
“Is this the place?” Touya asked. “The tengen?”
Shindou looked up. “You can't – you're not going to--”
“We are,” I said calmly.
There was a pile of black and white rocks piled up in the corner. The divination pieces. Touya walked across and picked up a dark stone. Shindou followed him over.
“Don't do this. Just give me a month to finish. For Sai. Please.”
Touya ignored him. Shindou turned to me in appeal.
“Waya, I can't.”
“I know,” I said softly. “That's why we're going to make the decision for you.”
Shindou tried to wrench the stone out of Touya's hands. I moved swiftly forward and punched Shindou in the stomach.
“Do it,” I growled at Touya, as Shindou staggered backwards. “Break the the damn board and we'll get out of here.”
Six stones. That was all it took, I knew, to break the tengen, send the continent into chaos. Shindou pulled himself upwards, energised by panic, and launched himself at Touya. I struck him again, this time in the face, and moved to pull him into a pinhold.
“I hate you,” he hissed at me, after I'd forced him to the ground, twisting his elbow painfully. Shit. He'd always been able to push my buttons way better than Isumi could.
“Hurry up a little,” I snapped at Touya, despite the fact that Touya was already going about the task rather efficiently.
“Almost done,” he said, putting another two pieces down. His remark was glacial, composed; it was this more than any discomfort I was inflicting that caused Shindou to cease resisting.
Again Touya squatted, picked up a white round stone from the pile, then reached out with both hands and placed it right in the centre of the goban.
Without letting go of the piece he'd just placed, he said, “Shindou, you didn't--”
Then the earth began to break apart.
Shindou lost consciousness beneath me just as dust began to seep from the ceiling. Cursing, I hauled him up and dragged him across my shoulders. He was light as a girl, possibly malnourished even.
Touya was still paralysed in front of the board. “Move,” I told him. “You're the one who told us what was going to happen when the geomantic board blew.”
He pointed at the formation in front of us. “Shindou, he ---”
“If we don't go now, we won't be alive to appreciate it.” I made for the door before he could reply, and felt him following me.
Out in the entrance hall, there were fragments falling, and cracks appearing in the floor and pillars. We hurried along as quickly as I could manage while carrying Shindou, although he was an easy burden to carry; frighteningly easy, in fact.
Suyeong and Yeongha were waiting in the courtyard outside. They both looked rather scorched and singed, but otherwise fine.
“We need to go south,” said Suyeong, “to the forest, before the city turns to debris.”
I nodded.
We ran. All around us, ancient Siwang fell to pieces.
Late afternoon. The smell of pine needles and powdered stone. Through the gaps between treetops I could see the thick sand-coloured haze that the destruction of the ruins had created in the atmosphere. I was too tired to comment on it, or even make the slightest movement. I remained supine on the forest floor, hands outstretched, Shindou lying next to me. He had yet to rouse from his faint.
Touya was speaking to Yeongha in Dukian.
“What are they talking about?” I asked Suyeong.
“He's asking whether Yeongha knows where Touya Meijin is buried.”
“Oh.” Briefly, I wondered what Touya intended to do with Shindou now he'd found him again. Press charges? Murder by geomantic divination. That'd make a fantastic tabloid headline. It'd even be true. Weariness fell over me. I still wanted to protect Shindou – but from what, now that I'd prevented him from getting the only thing he'd ever wanted?
Somewhere out there the Pagoda of the Nine Stars was dissipating, the Shrine of Darkness was being torn into pieces, and the Council House of Ki with it. The Hill of Flowers was burning, perhaps. It'd taken the collapse of Siwang for me to realise what a crazy, dangerously easy thing we'd set out to do. No wonder Shindou hadn't thought of what he was doing as murder.
Touya finished his conversation with Yeongha and came up to me. “I'm going to visit my father,” he said. “Will you join me? Suyeong says he'll watch over Shindou.”
I eyed Yeongha warily, but it wasn't as if he could cause much more magical havoc than we'd already caused, so I clambered to my feet reluctantly. I walked with Touya further up the hill, into the forest, until we reached a glade where the grass was sparse, the soil dark and ruddy.
There was a small boulder there with a few bunches of wildflowers on it, and in front of it, a long mound of earth packed loosely.
Touya knelt before the grave. After a moment, so did I.
“Will you have him moved back to Ki?” I asked.
“Probably. I hadn't thought about that yet. I was just busy wondering about – I was just realising that my father made a judgement, when he came here. He decided that Sai was something that shouldn't be allowed to exist.”
I recalled the luminous eyes, the breathtakingly exquisite face, the voice Isumi had heard and spoken with, that I would never hear now. “And? Do you disagree with him?”
“I don't know,” he answered. “But whatever my opinion, I don't think I'd have been willing to die for it.”
The wind sighed in the boughs overhead.
“Do you want to be alone?” I offered.
He shook his head. “Not today. Let's go back.”
We returned to the edge of the forest, our footsteps slow. I felt strangely solitary and disconnected from him – as if we couldn't mourn together, as if there were a universe of difference between the pain in his heart and the regret in mine. Perhaps there was.
“There's something I need to tell you,” Touya spoke after a period of silence “About Shindou. That board, he adjusted it so that he would...” He trailed off.
Suyeong was yelling at Yeongha in Dukian, and Yeongha was shouting back. We could hear their voices; a few paces later we came out from behind a massive fir tree and they spotted us. Yeongha looked extremely pissed. Suyeong came over and stared at us accusingly.
“He doesn't remember,” he said angrily. “He doesn't remember anything.”
I looked over Suyeong's shoulder to see Shindou – pallid, emaciated, sitting upright on a fallen tree trunk. His huge green eyes flickered up to scrutinise us curiously.
“Who are you?” he asked, before frowning.
I was too shocked to react. But Touya came forward and leaned down to clasp Shindou's hand, the gesture curiously gentle.
“Your name is Shindou Hikaru,” he said, his face quite inscrutable. “And you're – you're a friend of ours.”
“Was I?”
END, DICE IN A GAME OF WAR
