Page 38

The Prisoner

The cold metal key bounces frantically against my chest as I scrabble up the stairs, breathing hard, breathing fast. Behind me, there is the terrible scuffling of hands and feet against stone and the chattering of hungry teeth.

It’s caught up to me.

The Dalgyal Gwisin is close enough that I can smell its rancid breath, hear every click of its molars, every drop of saliva dripping onto the floor. I do not turn around, focused on climbing, gripping Rui’s firesword in one white-knuckled hand. There must only be a dozen stairs between us.

Damn it— godsdamn it. There’s no telling where this stretch of stairs ends. I’m trapped here, with this monster hungry for my flesh, and only two choices: run or fight.

The former sounds the most practical at the moment.

“Mmm,” gurgles the thing behind me. “I can almost taste you…”

Yet even as every instinct inside of me screams to keep running, to increase the distance between us, another part of me—colder, one that has faced terror like this before—whispers to turn and stand my ground. If I can kill the Dalgyal Gwisin—or even manage to wound it—perhaps I can make it through the remaining six levels of this mindscape less hindered. Quicker.

“Sweat and skin and salt, oh yes, so very delightful …”

A gnarled, bloated hand wraps around my ankle. And tugs.

Gritting my teeth, I twist onto my back as the Dalgyal Gwisin attempts to drag me toward its stretching maw, its rows of teeth rotating almost hypnotically…

With a silent roar, I grip the hilt of my sword in both hands and shove downward , right toward that awful mouth. The Dalgyal Gwisin flinches back, its grip loosening, giving me just enough time to leap to my feet on the stairs.

Facing down the steps, I have the advantage of momentum to carry me. The Dalgyal Gwisin, on the other hand, has no choice but to scuttle backward as I grit my teeth, slashing furiously at it, attempting to draw blood. Yet, on all fours like this, it reminds me of a deformed crab, avoiding blows with deft ease, even as it is forced to retreat.

Breathing hard, I feel the familiar surge of battle wash over me. But it feels different, somehow, for this time I am fighting in defense—not spilling blood on Sunpo streets. The Dalgyal Gwisin’s lank hair flutters in the air as my sword slashes through the greasy strands, narrowly missing its scrawny neck: a neck that is far too skinny compared to the rest of its distended body.

It lashes out one bloated arm at me, and I see my chance. With a grim finality, my sword swings through the air and severs the limb clean in half. Dark blood sprays as the thing howls, staggering backward, losing its grip on the steps and tumbling down into the shadowed darkness of the stairwell. Breathing hard, I stare after it. Do I rush into those shadows? Finish the job? Yet my eyes cannot make out where it landed, the steps curving out of sight, and I doubt that severing its arm in two is enough to kill such a foul thing. I could be taken by surprise, or I could turn around and make use of the fact the Dalgyal Gwisin is missing a limb. It won’t be nearly as fast as it was.

My hand aches around the sword, giving me my answer. Panting, I turn and resume my sprint up the staircase of my mind. Another level—it must be close. It has to be. I’ve been running for so long that the barley field seems like a long-gone dream. I might have forgotten about it entirely, if not for the key I won at the end of it. The slide of the cool chain around my sweat-slick neck is the only reason I do not despair, that I do not believe that these stairs will go on for an eternity. I cling to it, that key, as I run. I cling to it as my feet pound against the steps. I cling to it as I stumble into a garden. A different time. A different place.

A memory.

…

In this memory, I am happy.

Perhaps that is why my breathing steadies as I step into the scene, into the sunlit garden, where Chara and Chryse lounge underneath the willow tree, drinking Sallinna wine and teasing Sang who sits with his back to the trunk.

“Lina!” the blond twins chorus, green eyes flicking to me as I push aside the willow tree’s drooping green curtain just as I did the first time, when this scene was not yet a memory, but the present. I feel myself smile, just as I did the first time. I sheathe my sword and plop down next to Sang.

“I’m late,” I apologize breathlessly. No , I want to protest. No, I don’t want to speak, not now, not ever again— but these words are from the past, and they never hurt anyone. They have already been spoken. So I allow the memory to keep its course, let the words spill automatically from my lips, propelled by the past. “I was running around Sunpo for Yoonho—”

“Ah, Yoonho.” Chara giggles, laying on her stomach. “He has a longer list of targets than Chryse has lists of clothing she wants.”

Something twists inside of me as my friends laugh. The last time we were all together like this, in Sunpo, they were dead and I was standing amongst the sea of their bodies. I know what is coming—no, what has already happened —yet this feels so…real. Our teasing. Chara’s wicked little cackles, Sang’s fond exasperation. As the sunlight streams through the willow tree, I wonder…if I might just…stay here.

Here, in this moment, with them. Here, where there’s no war, no danger, nothing but the smiles of my friends and a sense of peace that I thought I’d lost when…

C R A C K.

And with that echo of sound splitting through my head, the hope—no matter how foolish it already was—is lost forever. My sister is in the underworld, believing me a monster. The gods are descending in hateful fury. And Rui is fighting alone.

I will savor this memory while I am here. But then I will let it pass, as I must.

As it already has.

Chryse snorts and shoves her sister. “Excuse me! My list of clothing is useful!” she protests. “Besides, if I’m to be showered with gifts by our marks, they might as well be things I actually want —”

“And you want so many things,” cackles Chara. “Your list is longer than one of my legs, which—getting back to the point—means that Yoonho’s target list is the length of, well, two of my legs stacked on top of each other.”

“Don’t be disgusting,” I groan, crinkling my nose.

“I do as I please,” she replies cheerfully.

She was right, though. Yoonho’s list had been extremely long. It was a result of last week’s disaster of a dinner party, where our sponsors had gathered only to quickly disperse as some rival lord had attempted to detonate an explosive in the palace. His plan had failed, but I’d now been tasked with hunting down each and every one of his equally dangerous associates. The rival lord himself had long been taken care of.

“He wants revenge,” Sang says quietly, turning a long blade of grass over and over between his scarred fingers. “You know how Yoonho gets. He’s a good leader,” he adds quickly, “but he allows revenge to consume him all too quickly. Your targets are disgusting excuses of men, Lina, but they had no part in last week’s attack.”

“It’s easy to get caught up in revenge,” I reply, quick to defend Yoonho. “We could have been killed.”

“But we weren’t,” the spymaster retorts softly. “And now he runs you ragged all over the kingdom. That’s the thing about revenge, I suppose—it feels you will die if you do not chase it, but the chase is what kills you in the end. There are parts to life that are more important than endless vengeance.”

“Like what?” Chryse asks curiously. Sang gives her a crooked smile and shrugs.

“Well, like this, I suppose,” he says a little awkwardly, waving a hand at the three of us. “Spending time finding peace. Wanting retribution…it eats you up inside. But it’s only a distraction from a greater problem. Yoonho blames himself, I think. He feels that if he’d only been more cautious, none of us would have been put in danger. But self-blame is frightening and too difficult for some to face. So he hunts others instead.”

I listen to each word Sang says in that slightly raspy voice of his. There’s a bittersweet ache lodged somewhere in my heart. Nostalgia, I think, for…for Sang. For the sweet, hopeful adoration I felt for him, for how everything was simpler then, my idea of love included. I didn’t know that it could be so wonderful yet ruinous, could not even fathom the tidal emotions I would soon feel for a Dokkaebi emperor with silver eyes and a power to rattle the moons.

The fragile, delicate, innocent feelings I held for Sang cannot even be compared to the depth and complexity of being soul-stitched to Rui. Yet I…I remember what I thought I felt for Sang, and I fight back a sad smile. Looking at him, it’s like gazing fondly at such a fundamental part of my younger self, but this time as older…and perhaps a little wiser.

“Revenge is ugly,” Sang concludes. “And it’s ugly inside and out.”

He’s right. Every time I sought retaliation, I was seeking some way to lessen the blame on my shoulders. What happened in Sunpo, with the Blackbloods… They deserved it, yes— gods , they deserved it dozens of times over—but I lost myself in the hunt for retribution, lost myself so completely that I’m now trapped in my mind, body host to a parasite of a Prophecy.

And the need for revenge is an ugly feeling. Like claws scraping against your heart, over and over until you bleed. And when you finally obtain it, that vengeance… It feels nothing like you thought it would, and you still bleed.

You’re still haunted at night. You still hate yourself. You still look, futilely, for somebody else to blame, anybody else to blame, but yourself.

Here, the memory falters. I know that when this happened, I laughed Sang off, arguing that Yoonho was a crime lord, he had a kingdom to run, and besides, revenge was important. Now, though, when I fail to deliver my line, the silence stretches on, silence where Sang’s retorts to my defense would have been. Why this memory? I wonder. Why has my mind plucked this one from the depths of my consciousness to show me?

Yet I think I already know.

It is one thing, to feel remorse for violence wreaked.

It is another to look at that ugly, vengeful part of yourself and…acknowledge where it stemmed from. To try to find yourself again.

To pick yourself back up, one last time. To rise from the ashes of a destruction you created through your own hunger for revenge.

Only after a few moments of reflective silence does somebody else speak, picking up where the missing dialogue would have ended.

“Look at Sang,” Chara says affectionately, passing him the bottle of wine. “Quite the philosopher.”

He ducks his head, hiding his smile. “I don’t know about that,” he murmurs, and then the Talons ripple and disappear as the memory ends. They leave me with a heavy heart in the middle of the garden as the willow tree shudders and cleaves in two, replaced by a staircase.

The chain around my neck grows heavier, and I look down. Next to the beast’s key is another one, small and dark green, this one with a charm attached to it in the shape of a weeping willow.