Chapter Text
On the outskirts of Xian Le City ran two blood rivers. One, into the fertile lower plains of the country. The second, into the treacherous mountain ranges of Qing Ning, where Yong An rebels perched in their watch towers and camps, surveying the cannibalistic carnage of Xian Le City with vultures’ distaste.
Feng Xin knelt to the river bank, dipping two fingers into sludgy red. The liquid felt warm to the touch, coating his skin like molten rubber. When something bumped gently onto his hand, he jerked his head up. Exhaled a quick breath.
Then the bodies started coming. Bloated. Disfigured. Bobbing listlessly like broken ships down the crimson water. Soon it became apparent— even corpses didn’t want to stay in the capital city. If there were anything but corpses behind those city walls. By then.
“Dian Xia,” breathed the young god, stumbling to his unsteady feet. “I thought you said… you said you could handle this.”
Wind rattled the ceramic tiles on the roof of the Crown Prince temple, seeping through the gaps of white-painted walls. They no longer stood white though, but were stained with something darker, splashes of mahogany splattered like animal guts across the four outer walls. Swallowing, Feng Xin mentally braced himself before he made his way closer to the door, his boots squelching in the soggy red ground. He was careful to tiptoe past the littered chunks of fresh flesh on the temple’s front garden, careful to take only tiny breaths of the putrid air. A stench far too similar to a slaughterhouse spiralled up his nose, and his fist tightened on the grip of his bow, knuckles flashing bone white.
A quiet sort of dread overcame him then. It was as if the truth had already dawned upon him like a cold sun, and Feng Xin was no Hou Yi. He could not shoot down this ill-bearing sun on a winter’s bitter morning.
The person on the altar lay very still, very quiet. There was no shape to his body anymore. No curve of a hip, no dip of a slender waist. He simply lay there, a pile of mangled meat, like minced pork or mutton with too much blood, flashes of orange and pink. The first thing Feng Xin thought was that His Highness had no clothes on— nothing covering that mound of flesh— how improper! The next thing he thought was: shit.
He didn’t dare speak. He couldn’t. His feet felt clamped to the ground. He could hear the blood rushing past his ears, could feel the pathetic and panicky tremble of his heart. But he could not move. Could not bring himself to walk up, to touch that body that was no longer a body and say, Your Highness… I’m here . Are you?
He couldn’t leave either.
Then, with excruciating slowness, something turned in His Highness’ face. A single eyeball, rolling around, almost skittering down the meat mound. The black centre of the eye widened like a mouth when it caught a flash of Feng Xin’s hesitant figure. It tumbled towards the ground.
Feng Xin rushed up, his breath coming in quick bursts, his mind a white hot explosion of shock. With agile hands he scooped up the sphere, then fell kneeling at the feet of the altar, feeling his clothes soak up the blood and gore of Xie Lian’s remains. A strangled noise slipped out between Feng Xin’s clenched teeth. Then tears fell, leaking like worms out of his eyes, wetting his shaking palms and the single eye— Xie Lian’s eye— that gazed silently up at him. Grief shook the young god’s shoulders, rattling his lungs as he gasped. Staring wide-eyed at what remained of his Crown Prince, at what remained of this once-glorious hall of worship, love and glory.
There was nothing lovely or glorious about an undying mutilation of a man.
So , Feng Xin thought numbly, biting deep into the insides of his cheeks till hot blood welled in his mouth, an abundant spring, yes, but not enough to fill the bodies of all the dead Xian Le corpses. So this is how it ends.
The weight of those words was too heavy to bear. Feng Xin’s shoulders caved in like two weeping angel’s wings.
*
Xie Lian was crying.
Feng Xin couldn’t tell at first, but the deathly silence gripping at his throat soon loosened to tiny, indecipherable noises, sniffling, grovelling, the moan of a newborn dog born with a too small head, never meant to survive beyond infancy.
His Highness was crying like that. Lipless, mouthless, throat ripped open by too many wounds. Feng Xin tried very hard to ignore the sounds. He still didn’t know what to do, his bow now discarded at one side, the tremors down his body slowly decreasing in size. Should he kneel there, prostate, say he was sorrysorrysorry? But what could his apologies bring to this new version of his Crown Prince? Certainly not comfort, right?
The tear tracks had dried along Feng Xin’s colourless face when he realised a second thing: His Highness was trying to tell him something.
“Mmmmhhdh,” said the remnants of Xie Lian, blood dripping down his sides in nauseating spirals. Feng Xin shifted in his position, feeling microscopically useless. And though his skin crawled in repulsion, he pressed closer towards the body, feeling the wet bodily liquids seep into his own skin.
“Your… Highness?” He started hesitantly. He was about to continue with “you alright?” but that question seemed redundant in the circumstance. Instead, he gingerly placed a hand on what could have been Xie Lian’s arm, careful not to press down on the wet meat too hard. And pleaded, because he had nothing else left to say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
But Xie Lian’s didn’t stop. The painful noises rose in tempo and pitch as his muscles convulsed, some tendons exposed to the air as he grabbed Feng Xin’s hand, shaking it with all the strength he had left. His other eye bulged in its mangled socket, as if out of fear, or insanity, or a combination of both. Feng Xin felt that eye pierce into him, dragging claws into his cheeks, driving a white-hot iron sear through his chest.
Xie Lian didn’t have a nose, but his wheezes shook the suffocating air between them.
Xie Lian didn’t have hands, but he held Feng Xin locked in place, too terrified to move.
Xie Lian didn’t have a mouth, but Feng Xin swore he was trying to say something. One thing. Over and over and over again.
Then the word tore like a spearhead through his shapeless lips.
“…Run!”