Quendalon/Session13Bloodlust
Li glides through the forest, the glimmer from her blades lighting her way. Aekino trails in her wake, his silken strangling cord dangling from his hands. Behind them, two patrols of Ledaal Vir’s guards lie crumpled upon the mossy ground or gasp out their final breaths, clinging bloody to the branches for support.
The camp is awake and fully alert, there was no mistaking the fact now. The soldiers know that there are intruders and though Li knows that her Circle may be able to slip unnoticed into the tomb, it is impossible to contemplate with half a dozen of Rei’s men and Kurokami the Scavenger Lord in tow. The element of surprise is fading now and the soldiers begin to organize themselves and retreat to the open ground of the camp, where they hold the advantage. Bells ring out into the night, recalling the far-ranging and vulnerable patrols and the soldiers of the Realm mass their ranks.
The Dawn-child realizes instinctively that should they manage to overcome their initial shock from the ambushes sprung by her compatriots, the soldiers pose a far greater threat. From the edges of the heavy forest at the base of the tomb-crowned hill, Li analyzes the situation and instinctively devises a course of action.
“Watch me from here,” she tells Aekino, “and be ready to call the Obsidian Butterflies at the best opportunity.” Her brother nods and ducks behind a thick oak. Then, Li charges directly from the treeline towards the camp.
The soldiers shout and point and their officers command the archers to fire. Radiance and Brilliance whirl in devastating arcs, faster than humanly possible and arrows fall behind the Bronze Tiger as she sprints uphill, closing the distance. Her anima banner flares brilliantly to life like the sun rising from behind a hill, and Li’s small frame is suddenly suffused with a kind of terrible ferocity that grips the soldiers’ hearts with fear. Some of them scream, others shout the obvious, “Anathema!” and many turn to flee.
Li is among them then and impossibly, her twin blades burst into an even more furious light, showing why they are named Radiance and Brilliance, and the sudden, shocking illumination fills the eyes of her enemies. A brave – or mad – few stand their ground as she advances among them, cutting down a pair of archers as they turn to run. Half a dozen men with spears, at the exhortations of their sergeant, charge her. With six quick passes, their weapons turn into so much firewood and before they can draw their short swords, her blades rise and fall six more times and she presses on past their bodies towards her goal: the officers and the battle standard.
Behind her she hears Aekino’s voice rise to a crescendo and she throws herself flat upon the ground. Around her, a shrieking, hissing torrent of black glass cuts the air above and around her and men fall like flowers before a frost. The Death of Obsidian Butterflies expends itself and she rises to look about the carnage it has wrought. Tents everywhere in its path are shredded into rags and men and horses have fared no better. Overturned cooking pots bubble their contents onto the ground and mix with the blood of the fallen in the muck and mud. From the treeline, she sees arrows arc into the camp and kill with deadly precision. Zera Thisse, she thinks and a moment later, Thorvald bursts from the forest and charges into the decimated camp.
She spies her object, then: there, the captain shouts to his men, “To me! To me! Rally to me!” and the signalmen ring frantically at their bells, blow through their horns and wave their flags, trying to enforce order upon the chaos of the melee. Like a golden meteor, she descends into their midst, cutting down the two bodyguards in her path with barely a glance. The signalers cry out in terror, abandoning their equipment, trampling it into the ground, and the bells clang one last time as booted feet crush them underfoot. The captain curses, leveling his sword at the radiant golden demon, her dark tattoos outlined in stark contrast across her glowing face, her cloak a deep red from the blood soaked into it – or is it the red of the dawn’s light? Her blades are unnaturally clean as if they reject the touch of blood upon them.
Li falls upon the captain, who puts up a brave and completely futile defense. She flicks his sword aside; Radiance finds the chink in his armor just above the knee; Brilliance slips into a shoulder joint. With a flourish and a flash of light, she withdraws her swords and as he collapses to one knee, she stabs him once through the throat and is past him, moving to her next opponent before he has even toppled to the ground.
Now the chaos is complete. The soldierly professionalism of the Ledaal troops has dissolved in the face of myths and legends spat out by the night to deliver death to them. As her blades whirl, rise and fall, as blood arcs and spurts, and as the cries of the wounded or dying mix with the battle cries over the field, Li enters another time. She is again within the realm of her dreams and of alien memories, she is again the ancient Katsuro upon plains of ice and blood. She remembers the bloodlust and it seeps into the calm mindlessness of her battle-focus and obscures her reason. Only moments pass before Li realizes she is chasing the backs of a half-dozen fleeing soldiers, hundreds of yards from the camp, and she has just let out a primal scream as her blades behead a straggler.
She stops, the shock of it overwhelming as blood covers her feet. The fleeing men do not stop and splash across a small stream, disappearing into the darkness of the woods. The frenzy recedes and she notices her cloak is drenched in dripping red. Her anima still flares around her, a corona of cold red-gold flame. Behind her, from the camp, she hears Thorvald’s battle cry as he cuts down the last few soldiers.
Shakily, she stumbles into the middle of the small stream. The water doesn’t even reach her knees and is cool and fresh after the heat of battle. Slowly, dazedly, she unclasps her bloody cloak and dips it into the water in an attempt to wash it clean. Red swirls form immediately in the clear water and are washed downstream. She rubs fitfully at the canvas material, trying to get more blood out. Suddenly, she turns her head and vomits into the water.
Li crouches in the stream, her anima beginning at last to fade. She draws ragged breaths and chants words from the Mountain Sutra of the Great Monad to herself, trying to calm her mind. She has killed men before, and demons and all kinds of unclean creatures – but this slaughter, this battle, is something she has never experienced. Never before has she killed so many men. Even worse: she knows that a dark place within her reveled in it and took joy in the death-dealing, a thoroughly disgusting feeling not from the memories of long-dead Katsuro, but from her own heart.
At last composing herself and finding her place of inner calm, she rises, water running in rivulets from her leather armor and great canvas cloak and makes her way back to the tatters of the Ledaal camp.
