by MJ Lyons
Ji-min spent much of the day in his supernal armour, and was more skittish when out of it. I remarked on his fastidious grooming, a habit shared by his people. Even at the peace talks I’d noticed that the people of the Warlord Lands seemed assured that some invisible pestilence would assault them outside of their armour, or beyond the safety of their underground castles.
“We’re more susceptible to illness, since we live in a cleaner environment,” he explained to me as he washed for the second time that day, a habit I found strange even though I didn’t mind the sight of it.
This charge, however, was irksome, “We keep our villages clean.”
He regretted his words and tried to explain what he’d meant, using words like “microorganisms” and “disease resistance,” but when he noticed my blank expression he changed the subject.
We woke early the third day of our travels together to the smell of smoke. A dark grey column smudged the sky to the north. I convinced Ji-min that we could scout faster and more quietly without his armour suits, so he commanded them to guard our camp as he pulled on his tunic and boots.
He was thankfully softer on his feet out of the demon armour, so silent and hidden we moved through the forested mountainside. We were in the neutral lands near the border, and I feared the worst as we took sight of the village.
The lower half of the village was burning, corpses strewn about the small pools of rice built out of the mountainside. The survivors were gathered higher up near the small shrine, perhaps that of their mountain god, or their ancestors. Soldiers walked among them.
“Are they mine or yours?” Ji-min asked, anxious. I drew Cheonjiwang over my shoulder and whispered a command spell, and a magical eye extended from the upper limb of the enchanted bow. I muttered more incantations and the eye focused on the soldiers.
“Mine,” I muttered, disgusted. I watched two scouts of the Sacred Mountains in their scale armour throw an old man at the feet of a grim looking woman of middling age, perhaps the town leader. Another soldier stepped forward and drew a sword. My mind reeled at the sight of the metal, that of the sword and the demon hand that clutched it, the mad, fevered look on the face of the man who wielded it. I stumbled backward as it cut through the old man.
Ji-min called after me, concerned as I scrambled away from sight of the village and ducked into the underbrush. “They’re looking for me,” I called back, my mind on the impossible task ahead.
We began to descend from the the mountain that afternoon, towards the flooded lowlands at the heart of the Ancients’ empire, what they once called “Soul.” After fording a swampy valley we began up another mountain where we camped for the night. Ji-min asked me if I’d ever seen the city before, and I told him I had not, foregoing mention of the elders’ superstitions. I got the impression he found our beliefs amusing but silly, and I didn’t want him to think me some backwater rube.
“The sprawl of the city is as intimidating as the extent of the destruction,” he said. “The Soul City was once cradled between the mountains and followed a river, you’ll be able to see it in the terrain, though much of the city will be flooded from when the waters rose, swelled by the rains.”
I nodded, “My people say the Ancients did great injury to the goddess of the waters, they brought too much death to the land and poisoned her children, so she conspired with the mountain gods and rose to swallow up their works.”
Ji-min listened, smiling, but offered no commentary on the story.
The next morning as we reached the far summit of the mountain north of the city I couldn’t help but gawk as we got our first look at the sprawling, abandoned capital. Even in decay it was breathtaking. As I’d been warned, much of the city was flooded from the destruction of rising waters that forced the lost civilization into the mountains, but towers of the Ancients still stood hulking out of the water and desolation. South of the larger mountain, at the heart of the city still above the waterline, was a smaller mountain with a strange shrine or tower at its summit. I wondered if mountains had meant something to the Ancients, that’d they’d build something so beautiful at the peak in the midst of their city, though I kept my thoughts to myself.
Ji-min nodded; he’d taken his helmet off to view the city with his own eyes, instead of the demon-tinged red that gave him magical vision. He pointed at the smaller mountain. “That’s our objective by this evening.”
Presently, it was impossible to avoid the ruins of the city, and so with some encouragement from Ji-min we pushed down out of the mountain into the devastation, walking the debris-clogged, cracked, overgrown roads of the Ancients. Here the land was thick with the strange metal structures we’d seen outside the city; in such number it was hard to imagine how the Ancients had gotten anywhere with so many on their roads. Even greater were the structures, or foundations of them, at least, that still stood despite the eons since their fall, overgrown with green, now home only to birds and vermin. One of these foundations could have fit my entire village within its boundaries with room to spare.
As we rounded one corner there was a flicker of light, and a strange form shot out of the ground nearby. I leapt sideways, wedging myself between two of the smaller metal structures in the road, notching an arrow on Cheonjiwang’s ancient string. Ji-min pounded on the metal, his voice crackling from within his suit of armour.
He was laughing.
“You idiot, it’s just a picture, it’s not going to hurt you.”
I glanced over the edge of the structure. The light seemed to form a painting before our eyes in rich colours but, perversely, the image was not still. It depicted a man and a woman in queer garb sitting at a table, drinking from strange bowls, smiling at one another and bringing their cups together. The strange script of the ancient language danced about their heads.
“This land is cursed with the ghosts of the Ancients,” I spat as Ji-min continued to chuckle to himself. The image disappeared, and he moved his gauntleted arm, making the image appear again.
“This device.” He pointed at a small cylindrical piece of metalwork on the ground. “I believe it reacted to our movement. It probably draws its power from sunlight. I’m surprised it has lasted all these years. Keep your wits about you, Hyun, this will not be the last ghosts we see here.”
I spat again, uttering a prayer of protection as we walked away from the two smiling ghosts, who were long dead if they had ever been real. How had he convinced me to tread this cursed place?
We saw other remnants of the Ancients’ great powers as we moved through the abandoned city. Magical lights emanating without the power of fire, other moving paintings worked out of light, displaying other sights of the lost world. As evening began to draw itself on the world there was one set of lights shaped in the queer script of the Ancients’ that shone in such a shocking pink it was an affront to the darkness.
“This is good,” Ji-min said, perversely interested in the wonders of the Ancients like all of his ilk. “This means fragments of their work survives, and it’s a very special fragment we’re looking for.”
So distracted was he by the sights of the ruined city that he failed to hear the guttural hoots and movement growing closer. I growled a warning to him that we needed to hide, so we ducked into a cavernous, debris-strewn stone building mostly intact. He whispered incantations to the empty set of demon armour, preparing for battle, while I drew my blessed bow, should I need it.
From the cover, we watched as four ragged, wretched beasts came into view: hunched, hair long and matted, leathery brown skin and clawed hands and feet, naked, dragging what remained of a large boar that must have roamed down from the mountains.
“What are they?” Ji-min asked, horrified at the sight.
“We call them shades,” I whispered, watching them bicker in grunts and snarls as one of them dropped its end of the boar. “They were once people but some curse has stolen their souls. They haunt the deep woods or old ruins, and care for little more than killing and feeding.”
T
hey seemed wholly intent on their task, which was a relief. They weren’t looking for us. We moved as soon as the sounds of scuffling faded. They wouldn’t be the last shades we’d see in the soul city.
I would not get in the armour.
The morning after we camped on the smaller mountain, below the tower shrine, Ji-min laid out his plan for the day’s travel. This, he explained, would be the most dangerous leg of the journey. He pointed his finger to what was once a wide road at the southern extremity of the mountain. This open ground led south before terminating in the wide open water of what was once a sizeable river. We had waded through some shallows in the lowlands north of the city, and in some spots as the city neared the wide expanse of the river, but we would not be wading, or swimming. We would be going through the water. Under it.
“You’re a cursed fool,” I told him.
His finger continued, up out of the water into the highlands beyond. That is where the sanctum would be found. That is where we would find the salvation for both our people. There was no way around it.
I asked him how. He told me this was the reason he’d brought the second suit of armour. I swore at him and called him a twice-cursed fool.
He explained that the suits closed themselves to outside elements, and they would allow us to breathe beneath the water for hours upon hours. He told me we would use the powers of the demon-cursed things to navigate in the realm below the surface, that all we would find there was more ruins.
“We’ll be safe,” Ji-min said, sidling up to me, taking my hand. “I’ll be beside you the whole time.”
Ji-min spoke an incantation and, hissing and screeching, the armour opened from the back, perversely resembling the petals of a flower as they unfurled to the sun. Ji-min was beside me as I approached the demon-cursed armour slowly. I reached a tentative hand out. Within the armour meshed metal and padding, any parts that touched flesh was protected, he explained. He guided my hand into one of the metal gauntlets, which responded to my touch. The metal fingers danced in time with my own. He helped me step up onto small platforms where the feet rested in either greave, and the armour seemed to constrict gently around them. I was not ashamed to admit to myself that I trembled out of fear.
“It’s alright,” Ji-min breathed, behind me. “The armour is going to close around you, and I’ll get into my own. They’ll be connected, you’ll hear my voice as if I’m directly beside you.”
My breath quickened as the pauldrons and cuirass began to wrap around me, more hissing and squealing. Last the helmet fell down to rest on the vambrace section. Lights danced before my eyes as the world came to life around me, enhanced by the demon-vision of the armour.
“Warning, unidentified user detected,” a calm, androgynous voice purred in my ear.
“Seonnyeo 22b, initiate recalibration protocol,” Ji-min’s voice came as if echoing through the helmet. I flinched and the armour shuttered. “Accept new user with voice command, designation, Private.”
“Authorized. New user, please state your name,” the cool voice answered.
“M-my name is Choi Hyun, prince of the Kingdom of the Sacred Mountains,” my voice wavered as I spoke.
The armour buzzed and more lights, arcane symbols of the Ancients, danced before my eyes. “New user accepted.”
Ji-min, fully armoured, stepped before me, and the demon armour revealed much to me. Among a number of symbols, beside his armour floated a light that pulsed gently, keeping time with his heartbeat, a strange but comforting ability of the demon armour’s vision. Above that read, “Designation: Vasiliev Ji-min Valerian, Captain.”
Vasiliev . . . Valerian . . .
His face appeared, as if my suit of demon armour could see straight through the plate of his helmet.
“You look terrified,” he was grinning, his voice amused. He could see me, my face. I called him a thrice-cursed fool and a heathen for using such unholy artifacts of a cursed people. He laughed and told me to try taking a few steps forward.
The sensation was disorienting, as I was more than a foot taller in the demon armour, but the plating responded to my movements with little effort on my part. Climbing would be difficult, but walking was . . . satisfying. The ground seemed to shake with every step I took in the armour.
We collected our supplies, including Cheonjiwang and my quiver of arrows that Ji-min had placed in a metal casing he called “waterproof,” which he attached to the back of my armour. Without my magical bow strapped to my back I felt naked, even within the heavy metal plating, but I took comfort that it was nearby.
We descended the mountain, and soon I had almost forgot that I was encased within the cursed demon armour of my people’s enemy. Ji-min showed me other benefits of its power. He spoke more incantations and the eyes of the armour seemed to show us the best approach to climbing down the mountain, and where the terrain was stable or not. When I stepped on the cusp of a stone structure of the Ancients that overlooked the city before us a buzzing came, and the armour’s voice purred in my ear, “Private Choi, integrity of ground at 22% and falling. Please take three steps back immediately.”
Mystified, I did so, and then watched the stone structure I had been standing on, seemingly sound but likely weakened by eons of rain and exacerbated by the weight of the armour, crumble away directly in front of me, crashing down the mountainside. Of course, had I not been in the armour, I would have been lighter and faster to move, but even so, had that collapsed beneath me it would have been a mad scramble.
I heard Ji-min laughing to himself, and I turned away, fuming.
Soon we made it to the waterside, a steady current that lapped at the ruins of the city it had partially swallowed. There were lines on the toppled stone structures showing the centuries of water life, where it had fallen and risen. Ji-min dropped a small, magical orb into the water and began speaking more incantations. Now I could see the orb in the vision of the demon armour, clipping through the water. And now I could see vague outlines of submerged structures, underwater outcrops and drops formed by the millennia of the goddess of the water’s push and pull on the ruins, even the individual fish that passed it. The orb left behind markings the demon armour could see. The path before us.
I turned to Ji-min, his face visible through his helmet, horrified. “This is how your people cut through water without boats. How they appear suddenly in riverside villages.”
His armour gave a shrug. “There aren’t many suits left with the integrity and seals for subaquatic walks . . . but I made sure these ones were performing optimally,” his face fell, and he looked out across the water. “There is nothing worse than losing a friend as armour fails deep beneath a river.”
I said nothing more on the matter.
After a moment Ji-min motioned. Our path was before us. He took a few steps into the water, which lapped at the metal. Soon he was swallowed wholly, ripples and air bubbles the only sign he had been there a moment before. I took a few tentative steps into the water, my heart pounding.
“It’s safe, Hyun,” his voice came in my ear, just as clear as before. “Trust me.”
With that, I descended into the realm of the water goddess.
The demon armour’s vision was the only thing that kept me sane as the crushing roar of the water’s silence consumed me. Light shone from my helmet, revealing grey-green shapes on all sides of us, the bases of ancient towers, the yawning maws of submerged dwellings, the infinite abysses where the ancient city had collapsed in on itself.
I could see the light from Ji-min’s armour shining dimly ahead, but I could also see the visual constructions of the magical orb as it showed us what lay ahead, the outline of his armour enhanced by my armour’s vision and our connection, the gentle pulse of his heartbeat. Above the armour was powerful but cumbersome. Below, in this hostile, inhuman world, there would be no travel without it.
The deeper we got the less light penetrated from above. Shadows darted about through the darkness. “Just fish,” Ji-min said as I gasped. The
school appeared out of nowhere, like a flock of flycatchers on a breeze, and exploded in a frenzy, disappearing into the gloom.
We moved slowly, picking our way through the ruins. The path laid out was not a straight one. A number of times we had to double back and consult the orb to plot a new route because of insurmountable collapses, or potential danger. Only once did we pass through an actual structure of the Ancients, a tower that still stood up and out of the water against all odds. “This entire district is structurally unsound, it sits on ancient, flooded tunnels that have collapsed in on either side,” Ji-min’s voice came through the helmet. “We have to go through here or else we’ll spend too long below.”
I followed him into a gaping hole that seemed to lead into an underwater gallery, or a great hall of sorts. Much of it was collapsed from within, but occasionally there were oddly preserved artifacts of the Ancients scattered about. A bank of seats where they once sat, what looked like a shoe of queer design, intricately designed bowls of faded colours. I spotted a small shape in front of me, it appeared to be a miniature human, some idol or plaything, its bright colouring still visible through a thick layer of algae. I bent slowly to lift it, but when I got closer I noticed the skeleton beside it, the fingers and skull too small. I shuddered and moved on.
We emerged the structure and continued through the alien world, our movements slowed by the water, and the suits of armour compensating for the current, Ji-min explained. Soon the ground beneath us began to incline steeply and became more muddy and unstable. Signs of the Ancients began to disappear.
“This is the beginning of the river, the old river before the flood raised the water,” Ji-min said, picking his way more carefully now. We came to a drop off, the darkness below impenetrable.
“This is insane,” I said, and Ji-min agreed, then leapt.
And, curse the bastard, I followed.
Of the depths of that river I will say little, except that it was the most harrowing experience of my life. We barely survived, for the journey took longer than Ji-min had anticipated, and he grew worried that we wouldn’t have enough air captured within the armour to climb the ancient river bank and get to the other side.