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The Black-Feathered Monk Chapter 3 By Draconicon

Morning came, and it arrived with pain. Satres groaned as his arm clicked ever so slightly, reminding him of what he'd done to it recently, and the raven clicked his beak twice as he rolled to his good arm. He stressed to himself the importance of not using the bad arm repeatedly, but he doubted that he would be able to remember it until he'd hurt himself a few times.

As he got to his knees, he saw that the songbird had pulled away in the night, the demonic beauty kneeling with her arms crossed over her chest. She had yet to assume her blue-feathered form again, and it allowed him a moment to study her.

Unlike the other demons that he had seen, from imps to ogres, from the minor creatures to the demon king himself, she looked like a mortal. Her body was unscarred, save for where their fight had left scratches beneath her feathers. She did not have the wrinkles and tumors of corruption that would grow beneath the flesh over time, nor did she have the marks that one of the sexual demons had when they were not focused on their illusion.

It led to one conclusion for him.

"That isn't your body."

The songbird turned to him, her eyes narrowing. Red lightning flickered between them, crossing her beak before she turned away again. Satres shook his head as he continued getting to his feet.

"Was it alive when you took it?"

"...No."

"Did you kill her?"

"Does it matter? Will you kill me, if I did?"

"If I must."

"You would kill someone helpless, then?" she asked, letting out a chuckle that was half-keened, half-huffed. "Truly, you are a demon hunter. Killing one that can't fight back. A marvelous heir to the orders of your temple."

His fingers twitched, but no more. He was not going to be baited.

For she was right, in a sense. To kill her while she was under the bindings he'd put upon her would be akin to murder, for she would not be able to fight back against him. The words that he had put upon her, signed in his chi, ordered her to do no harm to mortals. No harm, and that was all. He doubted that she would be able to keep to that order while defending herself, either.

Shaking his head, he turned from her. The Toad of the White Rock seemed absent, and he imagined that the old frog had gone to the depths, searching for food for the morning. He remembered that there were caves that stretched for miles beneath the mountain, linking the different places like this to one another. Monsters and demons alike shared the caverns, though there were frequent arguments between the two.

Satres cleared his throat, the raven rolling his shoulders. His bad arm clicked once, then settled properly.

Do not use it, he reminded himself.

"We must get going."

"We?" she asked.

"You told me that you weren't going to leave me alone. I might as well assume that you will follow me."

"You'd assume correctly."

As she got to her feet, he saw the gold lines of his chi in her feathers, shining as brightly as they had when he had applied them. He wondered if they would ever fade, and then wondered if it would be a bad thing when they did.

The Order of the Quill taught others how to apply chi to things in order to bind another to one's will, but it was a more complicated matter than merely stating the course of the future.

To begin, one could not merely write the commands in the modern language. The tongue of devils, demons, angels, and other beings that had created the world and breathed life into mortals was ancient, nearly forgotten, but the temples had maintained the teaching of their writing. Unlike the tongues of mortals, where the words could be divided into different shapes, like pieces of a puzzle, the tongue of the ancients was written in concepts, in shapes that changed meanings based on the context that they had around them, or even - supposedly - with the thickness of the lines, though his lessons had never covered that.

The power of the Order of the Quill to enforce their will on spirits and demons was not perfect, as nothing that mortals made ever could be. Instead, the writing was akin to a bargain, a seal that was formed between two individuals in a moment of power exchange. The one that wrote the command stated the end goal of the compact; the one upon whom it was written determined how that goal would be achieved.

As a result, it was risky to write more than the binding terms upon a demon, for they would always find ways to try and shirk their side of the deal, or cause pain in the process of fulfilling it. To use it in battle was to risk a grave misspelling, or worse.

Satres had managed to say what he wished. "Cause No Harm" was all that he had written in the side of the songbird. Anything else that she translated from it was down to her, and her understanding of the words.

He took a deep breath again, and he felt the rags of his novice robe stretch around him. Several places ripped further, while other holes merely sagged as the weight of the remaining cloth threatened to rip his attire apart. Satres pinched at the yellow sleeves, shaking his head. Perhaps there would be something to replace them at the temple, perhaps not, but one thing was certain. The robes of a novice were no longer suitable.

"Come."

"And the toad?" she asked.

"He will know where we went."

Satres paused only briefly outside of the tunnels, glancing down at the village of Water's Birth. Even from the white rock, he could see that their population had swollen during the night, filled with the farmers that had escaped down the mountain. He could not tell if they had all made it, but no wailing came up from the village, nor did any candles glow at the edge of the village to mark the passage of spirits from one world to the next. He could only hope that meant that things had gone well.

He reached down with his good arm, pulling the songbird demon out of the depths. As she was exposed to the sun, her power flared. Black and red feathers turned blue once more, and she was garbed in a dress of white and gold. She looked akin to a priestess herself, though her side glowed with the chi letters, still. The golden cloth she wore hid it well, but knowing it was there, he could still see it.

There was no shame in her as she stood beside him, her arms crossed and her eyes narrowed. The raven shook his head.

"You're angry with me."

"More than that."

"Why?"

"Because you are making me be someone else. You are making me be someone I am not."

"Someone good?"

"Ha. Someone that cannot..."

She clenched her fists under her arms, turning her head away. The tremors of pain echoed along her arms and the sides of her face for a moment before she regained control, and he knew that she had once again fought against the bindings on her feathers.

"I hate this. And I hate you."

He had no words. After all, how did one respond to that, knowing that one had merely stopped another from causing pain? What did one say, when the great complaint was that one refused to allow evil to be committed?

Instead, he turned from her, pulling his robe together as much as he could before taking his first step up the mountain. His legs ached still, a reminder of their fight. For all that he had sheathed them in chi to take the worst of the damage, they were still the legs of a bird, and the bones within were tender and fragile. It was only through the use of the Order of the Talon's teaching that he was able to fight with such force at all.

One step after another carried them up the river, and the further they went, the more bleak the land became. The water ran like mud, with flecks of brown and gray through it, ash and worse. Here and there, he saw fragments of cloth and chunks of burnt meat. In places, the earth itself still burned, smoking from the fight.

Satres kept his head down as they walked up the rock path, his breathing coming a bit faster, then a bit slower, then faster again when the control he had slipped.

No-one will have survived, he thought. You shouldn't have survived.

It was like a blow to the chest, and he sucked air as if he might not get another breath. The raven clenched his fists again, stumbling, and he did the thing he had told himself not to do.

"Nnnngh!"

His air whistled through his beak as he huffed and puffed in pain. The sudden ache in his shoulder, the near dislocation, forced him back to the real world, away from the ache of his guilt.

No. He survived. It might not have been his plan, and it might not have been due to any value that he had, but he had survived, and he had little choice but to continue surviving. He had to, if Master Kazir was to be honored properly.

The scrolls at his waist were the last remnants of their order, of the Temple's history, as far as he was aware. If he did not care for them, then the Orders of Talon and Quill would be completely forgotten. Their skills would be left on the winds of history as tales and stories, never to be repeated in life again.

He refused to allow that.

More than that, however, he needed to see what had happened to the Temple itself. Whether or not any had survived - and he knew from Master Kazir's technique that none could have - he had to see to it that they were given their proper farewells. Spirits left untended could easily become monsters, or worse, demons. For what they had done, the masters of the temple, their students, the novices, none deserved that fate.

He managed to push himself back to his feet, though it took more effort than it should have. His demonic companion said nothing, merely sheathing her arms in the sleeves of her dress. Feeling her glare on the back of his neck, Satres continued his walk, knowing what waited, and fearing how bad it would be.

Eventually, they arrived at the Temple, and it was worse than he had feared.

The ancient walls of the temple, formerly painted with scenes of peace and glory upon the white stone, had been cracked and shattered. Where color still stood, it was the color of dried blood and cracked bone, brown-red and yellow. Elsewhere, it was black, marked by smoke, fire, and death. Gaping holes were left in the wall, and the tiles above were empty of the marks that had once decorated them, the spirits of fire, forge, and history released.

The gates to the grounds had been shattered and melted, the ends of the bars burned and dripping in unnatural spikes towards the ground. To touch them, he knew, would be to touch fire; the metal burned red all these hours later.

As he stepped through one of the many holes in the walls, he saw what the miasma of the demon king had wrought. The plants that had filled the gardens with the smell of flowers and fruit, that had attracted birds and bees and life itself from the valley below, had crumbled to ash. Leave and branch, flower and seed had been poisoned, and the ground itself breathed yellow fumes, as if still dying. Hedges were burned from the inside by the demonic plague, and the trees clung to a hint of unlife, the branches stirring unnaturally in the still air.

And then, there were the bodies.

No feather lay upon the ground, for the monks that had been caught by the gas had been killed in an instant, their bodies consumed by the hellish fumes. Only a hint of them, a talon here, a skull there, a beak there, could be seen in the ashes of their bodies.

Satres's coughed as his heart sped up, almost choking on the ash in the air. He covered his beak with the edge of his sleeve, stepping around the dead when he could, moving through it as respectfully as he could when it was unavoidable.

Further in, the bodies of the dead, those of the Orders that were slain by the demons lay piled in a small mountain of white ash. Their bodies had still been whole when Master Kazir's technique of fire had been released. The white blaze of the Ancestral Flame had collected them, their bodies and spirits likely taken away in the same moment.

At least they were given peace.

Satres lowered himself to his knees, bowing his head over the pile of ash. He lowered his forehead to it, allowing the white powder to stain his forehead, and he whispered softly to it, breathing out very carefully to not disturb their remains further.

"May peace carry you on swift wings."

"You speak as if they can hear you."

He restrained his anger, though only barely. The raven held his head down for another moment or two, letting his emotions course through him and tire themselves as they ran through his body, then sat up once more. Kneeling on his ankles, he kept his tail feathers fanned gently, then looked over his shoulder.

She had nothing but disdain on her face, shaking her head as she looked over the grounds. The songbird gestured about her.

"A Master of the Ancestral Flame couldn't prevent this. What are you going to do when the demons come again?"

"..."

"They will. The way is open, now. The Temple is empty. Once the demon king recovers, he will lead another horde through here. If not him, then another, or another. There are thirteen demon kings, each one immortal unless slain. As soon as he recovers -"

"Master Kazir did not leave any alive."

There was no need to say any more than that, he thought, and he got to his feet once more. The back of the temple had been scorched, too, but not by the demonic powers. The white flame had run down the building, the tiered rooftops bleached white, the walls cleansed of all their history. Everything had been left smooth, fused, even the doors and windows locked together as if the back of the temple had been created out of a single block of stone.

Satres walked up to the door, resting his hand on it. Just by leaning on it, he could feel that it had been fused together; the wood did not shift save to pull on its neighbor, and it would not give without being broken down.

The raven stepped back several paces, focusing himself before channeling his chi down his right leg. It glowed, a soft yellow in the land of death.

Then, he kicked. The glow extended, stretching out by nearly twice his body length, and the claws grew to the size of his arm each. They curled, crunching through the door as he imitated the motions with his own toes, curling them as if he gripped the wooden frame directly.

The chi gave him the strength to remove it, and he pulled it free laying it respectfully on the ground. The glow faded, and he lowered his leg back to the earth.

"How - I thought you were a novice."

He glanced over his shoulder, slightly pleased at the shock on the demon's face. The songbird obviously had thought that he'd merely beat the door down. He shook his head, turning back to the temple.

"I know many techniques, but I am not a master. To use them swiftly enough for battle isn't one of my talents."

Stepping through the door, he was unsurprised to find the air purified. Whatever miasma had been spread through the tower by the deaths of different men and women in its defense had been burned away. The earth was all that was left to hold it, and that was releasing the fumes in a desperate attempt to live again. The world wished to live, he knew, but it was a powerful thing to see it struggling to do so.

It was a reminder that there was an obligation to try just as hard to keep oneself on the same path.

He climbed the steps of the temple, gradually winding his way up. The stairs were smooth, smoother than they had ever been in his lifetime, and likely smoother than they had been when they had first been added to the temple building. The fires had truly scoured everything.

Up, up, up, they went, with no bodies and no supplies to find in any of the rooms below. The mats in the great hall where he had meditated had melted into the floor. The weapons that he had trained with above that had fused to the wall. Everything had been preserved in that one moment in the burning flames of Master Kazir, and it would take great strength to separate them again.

Finally, he reached the top. The fires had gone out, but among the ashes of old logs was the master's blue robe and a single peacock feather. The blue eyes in the feather had gone white, and it stood proudly, a banner of defiance to all that had occurred.

Satres slowly fell to his knees. He could stand no longer, and he rested his hands against the iron framework around the old fire pit. Even here, the metal burned, and the scales along his arms and fingers hissed as they came in contact with the iron.

"Master..."

The raven hissed in pain both physical and of the heart, and that hiss grew and grew until it was a squawking shriek of agony. He screamed it out at the top of his lungs, the sound echoing up the mountain and back again as his arms burned.

It only stopped when the demon grabbed him by the shoulders, wrenching him away. Had it been seconds? Minutes? His hands screamed in agony of their own, a pain that was prominent enough to hold the tears for his master at bay, at least for now.

The demon looked down at him, shaking her head. Yet, at the same time, she seemed almost smug.

"What? Why do you look like that?" he asked.

"I can't harm you, but it doesn't seem like I have to. You're hurting yourself more than I ever could, save in death." She shook her head. "Yet, you still make me rescue you...Hmmph."

Another reminder that she took something from the binding that he hadn't given her. At no point had he said that she needed to save someone that was being harmed, merely that she could not harm another. Perhaps, in some part of her mind, she knew that she caused harm by not stepping in. Or perhaps there was more good to her than he knew.

Satres hoped that was the case. He hoped that he had not wasted his time, his chi, in saving someone that would not do something with it.

Grunting as he dragged himself more upright, he reached for the feather in the fire pit. It was whole and healthy, despite what it had gone through, and he tucked it into the belt of his robe next to the scrolls.

The demon had already gotten to her feet, and she had turned to look over the grounds. He was just getting to his feet as well when she gasped. He turned, watched as she covered her beak with one hand.

"What?" he asked, turning. "What do you see?"

"He...He..."

"What?"

"He did it..."

It took a moment more to see what she meant, but when he did, his beak dropped.

There, just outside the walls of the temple, was the head of the demon king. Blackened by fire, scoured and sliced by weapons, fed on by scavengers that had died as soon as they had taken a bite, there was no doubt that it was the demon king.

Master Kazir's death had not been in vain.

"...Twelve," Satres said.

"What?" The songbird turned. "What did you say?"

"There were thirteen demon kings. Now there are twelve. And there are none that know what happened here...save for the Toad, you...and me."

There was an odd emptiness now that he knew that. The demon king would have made a target for hate, but now there was nothing. There was only the temple and its empty halls, its grounds of death. Nothing of his old life was left behind, save for...

He looked at the grounds again, saw the ash that had been spread by their passage, by the smoke that still burned in the distance. The spirits of the monks were still out there, and they, at least, could be given peace.

Scavenging a candle for all of the fallen had been difficult, but Satres managed it. The songbird helped, more out of some attempt to keep him from hurting himself than anything else, he was sure, but by the end of it, they had the candles.

A small square of two-hundred-twenty-four candles were laid out on the stone before the temple itself. Three masters, forty monks in each order, and one-hundred-forty-one novices. If he had been among them, then his candle would have made the square perfect; as it was, it was missing one at the very end, in the bottom-right corner.

Satres lit them all, one by one, whispering the name of the fallen with each lit candle. Some names came to him immediately, while others he struggled for. He fought to remember each one, knowing that without that guidance, the flame meant nothing to the spirit that it called. Without a name, the dead could not be called to the light. Without a name, a spirit would lose itself, drifting from the mists to the darkness, where it could be remade into something else, a nameless thing finally given purpose again.

Every name, from those that he loved to those that he hated was recited, and he lit every candle. With every new flame, he felt them, the spirits slowly coming to the light, slowly gathering from where they had been cast about. They rose over the walls, came through the trees and the discolored petals. One by one, they came.

When he finished, he closed his eyes, gathering his chi, and when he opened them, he saw with the eyes of spiritual energy. Before him floated the birds of the monastery, from the crows that had joined just last week to the great masters themselves. Wulin, Sarin, and Kazir floated at the top, and the peacock master of them all looked at him with the softest of smiles.

It was too much. He could not maintain his grip, and he lost it with another caw of agony.

The spirits disappeared, and as he wept, so did the world for a time.

The songbird was still there when he woke up. The candles had burned down in the meantime, and he knew that he had been unconscious for a long time. He started to roll, stopped himself, and then rolled the other way towards his good arm.

"How long?" he asked.

"A few hours."

"Why are you still here?"

"Because you have not given me what I want."

Satres sighed. He knew that this had been coming, but he didn't know what to tell her. He wasn't going to release her, and he wasn't going to allow her to feed on any of the people that lived on the mountain. The raven turned to face her -

Only to feel her grip his shoulder. His unhappy shoulder. He stopped moving, knowing she couldn't hurt him, but also knowing that he could quite easily hurt himself.

"I told you before. Today, we will discuss my terms," the songbird said. "You bound me, and you will be responsible for me...because without you, I will die. There is no question about that now."

"I only...took away...your ability to do harm."

"How do you think I feed?!"

Nearly screeching before she pulled herself in again, she seemed almost ready to scream again when she spoke, her fingers digging into his flesh.

"A demon...may survive...on the pain of another demon. It is not...easily sustaining...nor is it easily done...but I may survive on that."

"If that's true, why don't more of your kind do it?"

"The demon kings have the power to demand it. Their subordinates have the strength to force it. I do not. And besides." She clicked her beak, letting him go. "I might as well ask why mortals do not more often engage in cannibalism, if you want meat. After all, if it's possible, why not do it more?"

He didn't answer that, shaking his head instead. She didn't stop him when he turned to look up the mountain once more.

One thing she'd said was correct, and that was that demons would take this route to get off the mountain from now on. With other temples along the Mountains of Hell, and several others on this very mountain, the paths to the valley were guarded. Those that wished to traverse the upper paths had to go through the temples to reach those heights, and those that wished to hunt along the lower slopes had to force their way past the temples in order to do so.

The demons might not have any survivors to tell them of the destruction of the Temple of Quill and Talon, but that didn't mean that they wouldn't eventually find out. Probing attacks came down the mountain all the time, and many of them were turned back rather than annihilated.

The songbird would get her food, there was no doubt about that. The question was rather whether he could hold the temple, even for a short time.

Satres reached for the scrolls again, and almost felt as if he could sense the masters of the temple still around. Perhaps they were; spirits made strange choices, at times.

"What are you thinking?" the songbird asked.

"I'm considering..."

"Whether you can beat a demon?"

"As you've pointed out, I am a novice."

"Yes...you are. But...not as much of one as I assumed."

It was a very strange thing to be complimented, even in an indirect way, by a demon. He slowly turned to look at her, and she shook her head.

"If it were up to me, I'd tell you to leave. There's nothing left here but ghosts and ashes, but if you're determined -"

"I am."

"Then you'll learn. This temple is broken; nothing less than a capable monk can defend it now. You'll have to do until someone else can take your place."

Satres nodded. It was as much as he had expected. He had the scrolls, and he had the time. Time that would no longer be spent doing chores, but rather in learning the techniques to defend what was left. The more advanced forms of Talon, the more elaborate commands of the Quill, and most important of all...

He took the last of the scrolls from his belt. The Scroll of the Clipped Wing, an order that had died out long ago, whose secrets had been entrusted to Kazir and his temple. Whatever they were, perhaps it was time for another to take up that order.

Putting the scroll back for the moment, he met the songbird's eyes.

"What is your name?"

"...Why?"

"I have already bound you; I can't add another command without taking away the one that I've given you already. I'd like to use your name instead of just...you."

"...You may call me Silra."

"Thank you, Silra."

She made such a face at that, and he didn't quite understand why. Perhaps demons did not exchange those words.

The End