Sacred Ground

Kurri hardly slept on the cold and unfamiliar ground of White Ash Mountain. It felt like he had just finally gotten to sleep when Kalen woke him up. After breakfast, the collective split up. They decided to divide their medics, and so Kurri went with Kalen and Lein, as the companions to a Thean priest-apprentice on his holy pilgrimage to the domain of a guardian.

Kurri feels relieved to be on the less dangerous mission, but nervous to be on his first mission as the only medic along. But to be part of something like this, he feels overjoyed. He’d never dreamed he would accompany an apprentice on such a sacred rite.

Nisho leads them far across the mountainside, going the way he feels compelled to go. Every hour they travel, the plants only seem to grow bigger, more vibrant, and healthier, seemingly completely free of the blight. Even the colors are more vibrant here. The grey clouds covering the sky have parted to a beautiful sunny day, not too hot but not too cold. The whole grove feels familiar and welcoming.

“Slow down, Nisho!” Kalen says. “Do not let the beauty of this place lower your guard to whatever dangers may await us.”

“We’re in the protection of Chi now, can’t you see?” Nisho says. “This has to be the place, it’s calling me deeper and deeper in, it could only be the life-bringer!”

“Will...will we get to see her?” Kurri says.

“Only the initiate may enter the domain of the Guardian. At some point you’ll have to stay behind, but I’m not sure if we’re there yet or not,” Nisho says.

“According to the scrolls of Jakan, you will hear the call of Chi, and you will know when you must go on alone,” Kalen says.

“That’s right,” Nisho says. “You have done your reading.”

Kurri is falling behind as Nisho presses faster ahead. “Can we...can we stop a minute?” he says, out of breath.

“Sorry, Kurri,” Nisho says. “We can rest. I just feel so drawn to this place that it’s hard to resist it.”

“It just feels like we’ve been going this way for hours,” Kurri says.

“That is a little strange, the mountaintop isn’t this big, after all,” Kalen says.

“Well that just proves that we aren’t on the mountaintop anymore, or on Zenaran at all. We’re deep in the Aeonwood, the plane of Chi!” Nisho says. “Just look around you!”

As Kurri turns around, he can’t even see the end to this forest. The mountains have vanished, obscured by such dense growth that only trees stretch to the horizon. All of them are in bloom, a perpetual spring of radiant colors. Even the sky is changing colors--the horizon glows pink.

Kalen is as mesmerized with it as Kurri and Nisho. But Lein looks confused as he looks back and forth between the three.

“This is it,” Nisho says. “I hear her, she is calling to me! I must go on alone from here.”

“The Goddess and the Guardians walk with you, initiate.” Kalen bows her head and makes a sign of an upward arrow over her chest.

Kurri does the same. What a thing to behold. When he decided to join the K.R.A., they told him he couldn’t know where this path would take him, but he never expected it to take him to another plane of existence, to the presence of a Guardian herself.

Lein walks in front of him and puts his hand on Kalen’s shoulder. He looks into her eyes with a look of deep concern.

“This doesn’t feel right to you, Lein?” Kalen says. She closes her eyes and breathes deep. “I may be letting old sentimentality cloud my judgment. I don’t think it feels right to me either.”

Kurri isn’t sure what they’re talking about. Everything is so alive, the flowers dance upon the vines, the leaves sway to the music of the wind. He stares up at the pink sky, he doesn’t know how much time is passing anymore. He feels sleepy. He wants to close his eyes.

“Nisho, wait!” Kalen says. Kurri snaps to his senses for a moment. Kalen and Lein are running ahead. He runs after them.

“What’s going on! Wait!” Kurri says.

Nisho walks up to the edge of a wall of thick green starflower vines, covered in flowers of all colors, colors starflowers don’t even grow in. He stops and turns back around to face them with his eyes glazed over, staring off into some space beyond them all.

Kalen and Lein keep running towards him. And suddenly the vines come to life. They lash out and wrap around Nisho’s limbs, and pull him into the brush until he vanishes.

“Nisho!” Kalen says.

“Help!” Nisho says. His voice sounds like a far off echo, drowned out by the increasingly loud music coming from nowhere.

The sky is glowing so bright--pink and yellow and green and white--they swirl around each other in an endlessly flowing landscape of spirals. The bright green leaves all around them morph into sharp green blades. The branches start to flail about, growing longer and slashing ever closer to Kurri’s skin. He covers his face with his arms. His comrades flank him on either side, their rifles raised at the chaotic fauna encroaching on them.

“Enough!” An unfamiliar voice echoes past him, distorted like it’s underwater.

The lights above grow more intense, flashing bright and shifting in a disorienting pattern. Kurri feels nauseous looking at it and closes his eyes. The music of the forest becomes a sharp high pitched sound, a chorus of cicadas playing a haunting, dissonant song. He covers his ears, but it changes nothing, it is inescapable and only growing louder and louder.

With his eyes closed, it is still bright as day. He sees himself and his comrades strangled by vines, their skin cut a thousand times by needles and blades that grow from the plants. His blood flowing down his skin is a vibrant sea of colors, growing brighter and brighter, blending in with the agonizing song and shifting color with each change in its pitch. Kurri is screaming as loud as he can, he can feel it in his throat, but he can only hear the song of the forest.

“Enough!” the voice says again.

He opens his eyes. He is unharmed, and there is no blood flowing down his comrades’ skin. He looks up to see the sky itself shatter. The colors dissolve into thousands of tiny crystal shards, and they fall away revealing the grey clouds above. The plants and the trees and their terrible blades all start to wither and die, slowly turning to grey ash, and dissolving into a dull grey soil. The music is gone, there is only wind.

Men in brown coats face them. They couldn’t see them before now--Imperial soldiers, with their rifles aimed at them all. They are not surrounded by plants with blade leaves but by soldiers with sharp sword-bayonets. Nisho is restrained, not by vines, but by one of the soldiers, who has his arms behind his back. Kurri hears a metallic click as he snaps manacles around the apprentice’s wrists.

At the front of the circle, a familiar Imperial officer stands, in her yellow-fringed brown coat--a woman with short blonde hair, and light brown eyes. And next to her stands an Imperial Wizard, face concealed behind a black mechanical mask. It has its arms extended to its sides, and a light is shining from the arcane sigils tattooed on its palms. The officer has one hand on the wizard’s arm and the other on a syringe she has injected into it through its white sleeve. The profane light starts to slowly fade away, and the wizard falls face forward into the grey dust.

“Goddess damn it all,” Kalen says. “We walked right into a wizard’s trap.” She raises her rifle and points at a soldier’s head. Lein has done the same, they both did without hesitation. Kurri reaches down to his side, but feels only his empty belt there. Unsure of himself, he had left the gun behind.

Nisho has broken out of the spell now. He struggles, but his restraints are tight. He looks over at the officer. “It’s you!”

She lowers her carbine, but seven of her men keep their weapons trained on them. “Lieutenant Ilyssa Karrys, first officer, I.A.S. Deliverance, Kogaku Defense Forces. But you know this, Nisho, overseer of the Temple of Korben.”

“You are interfering with a sacred rite! The temple will hear of this!” Nisho says.

“Save your words, priest. We know you are part of the Thean Underground,” she says, approaching the restrained apprentice and staring him down. “I could have guessed by your companions’ appearance, but Mirage confirmed this for us. You allowed its conduits right into your sanctuary, so helpful. Our wizard could see and hear everything through their eyes and ears.”

“You bastards!” Nisho says. “Using your own sick to spy on a holy sanctum of healing.”

“You should have listened to your comrades.” She looks at Kurri. “Nice to see you again, priestess.”

He looks away and to the ground. Being surrounded like this, he is paralyzed. The terror is as great as that of the illusory world he just escaped.

“Impersonating a priest and impersonating a woman, serious charges,” Ilyssa says.

“These people have committed no crime. I am an initiate on a pilgrimage to a holy site, these are my companions, this ritual is sanctioned by the highest orders of the temple of Thea, and you have no right to interfere!” Nisho says.

Lt. Karrys looks around her. “I see nothing holy in this place, do you?”

In that moment the light on the wizard’s hands fades out, as the last of the illusion vanishes. They are standing on a flat grey plain, surrounded by grey walls--in a hole, a vast pit, just like yesterday at the mountaintop. That is where they are, another part of the mine.

Nisho’s eyes open wide. “What! No! It can’t be, this is the holy sanctuary of Chi?!”

“Hel, we were too late,” Kalen says. “They already demolished it. She’s right, there’s nothing sacred left on this mountain.” She falls to her knees, staring down at the grey dust.

Kurri is frozen, shaking, as he looks around him. Lein stands ready with his rifle still in hand, but he looks uneasy, looking between all the soldiers around him.

“I admire your courage, but can’t you see you’re beaten?” she says.

He throws his rifle to the ground and lowers his head.

“By the authority of the Empire of Kogaku, you are under arrest for trespassing on private property.” She turns to the soldier holding Nisho. “Take this one to the ship.” She gestures to the wizard on the ground. “And take this back with you, let the captain deal with it.”

“Yes, sir!” the soldiers respond as two of them kneel down to pick up the unconscious wizard.

“The rest of you, take the other prisoners and follow me.”