Legacy: B1 — 7. Crimson Moon Temple Pt. 1 (Patreon)

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The orcs came down the highway at a loose run, forty of them maybe, beast-shaped and reeking. Their chants and calls resembled those of the beasts they took on. Jason quickly drew Eli flat behind a dead semi. The false dragon fang sword took the place of the rifle at his back.

Over the past hour they’d walked, the patrols were shockingly growing less frequent. They heard the clashes between monsters, orcs, and cultivators. LA had become a warzone, similar to those first few months of the apocalypse.

He pinned her with one hand, reached with the other for the sword. However, Lilly’s smiling face nearby drew his gaze, the ghost sitting atop the vehicle.

“Nyx is nearly healed. Can you feel her? Reach out. See what happens.”

Is this really the time?

He tried to put on a confident face for his sister, who looked more sure than he felt. She nodded frantically, telling him to do it. Eli probably wanted to see a new, cool technique their master would reveal to them; she was such a handful.

Lilly doubled down.

“Humor me, bumpkin.”

Fine.

Breathing in and out. He allowed the force to weave through his system, touching Nyx and opening the way. The pulse within his chest moved, causing his eyes to blow wide.

A crow caw sounded, and his shadow quivered.

A dark bird flew out, and with it, his consciousness rose skyward. He could see Eli in front of him, and the area around them with the bird’s vision at the same time.

“Jason, your eyes are black, with purple irises… So cool.”

“Shh…”

The world doubled, and it turned his stomach. He stood in the road with Eli’s hand in his, and he was a hundred feet over LA at the same time, riding cold air on wings that weren’t his.

I’m seeing what Nyx sees…

Eli’s concern wasn’t for him.

“Won’t she be found? They’re looking for her.”

Lilly examined her nails with a smirk.

“Normally, yes, but linked with Jason’s qi, or really my own delicate weaves of it, she can access abilities you both normally could not. She is shrouded in darkness.”

Eli’s sparkling blue eyes were back on him as if he were the coolest thing since butter and toast. He had to admit, he did like the feeling.

He kept the sick down and made himself look. Walking would be a different feeling entirely. He’d cross that bridge when it came.

From up there, the Skygate wasn’t a thing in the sky. It was the sky, the whole wounded width of it, and the cracks he’d watched spread on the walk had grown into a web, thin rivers of color running out from a center that bulged like something behind it wanted through. 

How do we even escape that thing… The effect must cover thirty square miles.

Turning south, where the freeway bent toward the bones of the city’s edge, he saw two points of light still tore at each other in the distance. It must have been the general and the High Senior.

The most troubling sight was the Mana Towers spaced around LA and the Skygate. Several were disintegrating in real time, fading away on the wind as if its pristine, white, impenetrable stone were turning to dust. 

I thought they could only be destroyed by entering their spatial distortion, climbing to the top, and destroying their core. Are the cultivators doing it? Not only killing all the monsters around the area, but every floor of the Towers?

Lilly’s thoughts tied to his own as the orc pack below passed them, hidden behind the van.

“There is more than just that one sect who fell into your city, Jason.”

Great. Is that why I have this gut feeling? Like something awful I can’t shake, gripping my stomach. 

He saw the teenage girl cross her arms and look up.

“I am constrained to you. That said, my Divine Senses can still operate to some degree. Weakly, but that’s all I need for that…” Her silver eyes fixed on the sky. “It’s like bad milk on your nightstand. Even to me, that thing is ten fingers wrapped around my throat.”

Jason swallowed, letting the stress release with each breath of qi he regulated.

Let’s not stick around, then… It’s been there over a year.

“Perhaps I could find a rival in that.”

Don’t joke with me…

His thoughts trailed off as he saw the basin, where the freeway had fallen into a flat; something crawled that wasn’t part of the warzone.

Lilly.

“I see it, bumpkin. Nyx, go lower. Slow. Don’t assume you can hide from these ones.”

Nyx’s chirp rippled through them, focused and soldier-like.

The crow dropped a wing, slid down the air, and the shapes in the basin came clear. A line of wagons, made of trailers dragged off their cabs. There were a lot of cages on the wagons. The things in harness pulling them were far too big to be horses.

The play went out of Lilly’s voice all at once, straightening atop the van.

“Rock Nibblers,” she cursed, “they’re coming this way. Nyx, come home. Now. We need you.”

“Kaw!”

Jason didn’t like the look in Lilly’s eyes; it was the same as when she’d killed the clan head. He flexed his fingers, reaching back to grip the handle on his back.

The teenage girl shook her head.

“This is not something to fight, bumpkin.”

Jason drew Eli down further, his sister looking anxious, but she was doing really well with not asking too many questions. He wasn’t sure why she looked so confident while staring at him with those blue eyes.

Nyx folded and came back, a shadow entering his back. 

The double sight collapsed into one, the road snapping close and solid, and Jason swayed with the loss of the sky before he caught himself. The pulse settled behind his ribs again, warm and slightly tired.

“You’re not done yet, Nyx,” Lilly prompted. “Focus.”

Her throaty noise followed, resonant and musical.

“Jason, relax, let the darkness connect with your qi. Nyx and I will do the rest.”

He was starting to feel slightly frustrated in the sight of his sister.

“You have more discipline at twelve than half the disciples I…”

She trailed off before mumbling. “You’re doing beautifully. Don’t fight the shadows.”

“Yes, big sis. I’m starting to feel tired… I felt so strong before.”

“Relax a little more. Don’t force the breathing. To a slow burn… That’s it.”

“That’s better.”

Eli pressed her back to the cold metal, one hand flat to her own sternum, breathing the way she’d breathed the whole hour without once being told twice.

She hadn’t stopped.

So he started mirroring her; he then felt the darkness flow like water, dripping off him. A shadow rose out of the van and his own, poured over the two of them, cold, thick, and dense. 

The hair stood up on his arms. His breath fogged though the afternoon was warm. Eli’s eyes went huge. She pressed her lips white, kept breathing, keeping her qi cycling.

Within moments, he felt Nyx’s wings shrouding them, as if sprouted from his back.

“A spirit crow’s natural element is Shadow, of the six base elements,” Lilly explained. “She controls it. You power it with your qi. It’s a union. Keep the gate open with breathing.”

Despite her ego, Lilly had proven more than worth the headache. Jason’s smile grew as he watched the shadows flow around them as a liquid coat, allowing them to peer through the car’s shattered windows at the street.

He was beginning to feel how his sister acted; they were getting stronger.

And, as was usual, the moment he started feeling good, something came to throw cold water over his head to remind him he was just an ant.

The first wagon rounded the bend below, and Jason recognized the smell, like orcs.

It was a caravan of slaughter.

His hand tightened around the sword until his knuckles hurt.

If Eli or I were caught…

He could see it. Cages. Dead eyes.

Why are we so weak?

He took a breath, trying to release the tension building in his chest.

It was hard when what he saw, he knew could happen to them at any moment.

The wagons held cages that held things they shouldn’t be able to:

Orcs, the great beast-shaped ones, slumped and silent with their eyes open.

Goblins packed so tight they couldn’t fall. 

A whole car of insects the size of dogs, legs working slow against the bars they should have easily been able to slip through.

And pulling the wagons, in harness, more orcs, leaders of packs, by the size of them, with their mounts. They were the kind that had torn cultivators in half outside the bank, and these were yoked, plodding forward, life gone behind the eyes.

The figures driving them wore robes the color of old blood, hoods up, faces in shadow. Nyx’s sight allowed him to zoom in; it came naturally. Over each heart, stitched in thread was a moon behind a temple. Not full. A crescent, and bleeding.

“Crimson Moon Temple?” Lilly hummed.

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