Shattered Ladder 1-12 (Patreon)

Chapter 12: Echoes

His eyes snapped open to something cold and hard against his cheek. Wha… Ken groaned, half-aware as he leaned away from a plank sticking up from the floor, the edge of it digging a line deep into his skin. A breath came next, rough and shallow; more reflex than choice, his throat rattled as he tasted dust and iron and something else. Why am I on the…

He pulled in another breath as his head rose from the floor, one hand rubbing the impression on one side of his face. It stung a bit, but Ken was used to pain; half-blind eyes blinking in the dark as he tried to get his thoughts to stick together right. Ironvine… 

That was it.

Yeah, it smelled like Ironvine almost, but too much of it. 

More than he knew was in the shop, more than he’d made… ever. The stuff wasn’t rare, but it didn’t keep all that well for long if you didn’t use it up quick enough, at least. But where did it… He shook his head, unsure of himself. Can’t be Ironvine. This was too dense and rough the way it forced itself up his nose, like he was right over an oversteeped cauldron-hearth of the stuff, the stink enough to turn the whole place sour with it. 

Ken stared at nothing, thoughts fading as the quiet hit him.

The shop had a certain peace to it he was used to; kettle bubbling soft in the other room, the papery rustle of herbs drying overhead, and the sound of old man snores coming from a distance. That was normal but this was different, a dead-quiet that pressed on his ears till he wasn’t sure if he’d gone deaf or if the whole world was asleep.

What is… A hand went up, Ken resting it on his gut as something else suddenly made sense. It wasn’t a quiet from the outside.

It was in him.

Gone. He’d spent years with that hungry thing deep inside, fifteen years fighting with every third inhale. Even if the last three had been less than before, he still remembered pushing it since he was old enough to remember fighting anything at all.

That fire with no wood that Gram had told him about; told him to feed slow.

Gone.

Like someone had reached in and scooped out the part of him that was always starving, always shaking, always one bad moment from falling apart. That's not… how does that even…

Wrong; it felt wrong, like waking up and missing a whole limb. A limb you hated, one that made your life harder every single day, but still one of yours. 

His eyes fluttered again as he pushed himself up properly, muscles screaming at him all the way. Ken bit back a groan at the deep soreness in every inch of him; no brittle I’m-about-to-break feeling, but something like the whole-body tiredness he was used to after a hard day moving things in the shop. Huh.

His chest moved, a steady up-down; breaths coming deeper and heavier than before, air passing through in a way he wasn’t used to. A way that always felt like trouble. Ken waited for it, the tension and tightness in his chest, everything that always came just before the shakes; before the shuddering in his fingertips started working their way up till he was useless.

Till he was bad meat all over again. 

But… no.

He waited in the dark for nothing.

Seriously? One hand went up, rising from his gut as a dark shape against a darker room. He flexed his fingers and they obeyed, clean and sure with no weakness bleeding through. All five curled them into a fist, solid muscle doing exactly what it was supposed to without even the slightest shake.

No matter what, it stayed still. Perfectly, impossibly still. How? For one second — just one — wonder cracked through everything else, a smile breaking wide across his face as he looked down at himself; something humming in his chest where the emptiness used to be. 

Low, steady; a flickering candleflame that felt like a heartbeat.

It worked. His mouth worked, a near-silent whisper matching the thought. Old Wei, he… he actually… 

Then memory slammed into him like a fist to the gut, his stomach lurching as wonder went cold.

Old Wei stumbling through the door, gray-faced, and blood everywhere, soaking through cloth, warm and sticky on Ken's hands as he'd tried to, tried to help, tried to do anything at all before the thing wearing his master's face had-

Ken breathed in, ragged and rough.

Oh.

The hole in his grandfather’s chest flashed through his mind again, a ragged wound too big to feel real.

A hole you could see right through.

The sick purple eyes blazing bright, with that iron grip, and something the color of a deep bruise that scraped his insides raw and rough. Old man…

He knew the old man was dead, the thought heavy in his stomach. Just dead weight where the hunger used to be. The same man who had saved him, taught him; his grandpa for the last three years lying broken and dead at the front of their home.

Go. He wanted to. Move. That’s all he wanted to do, just go out there and see the old man, just to make sure, to do something… anything. 

Anything but sit here and breathe bad air.

But his body wouldn't move, frozen in place by the memory of those glowing eyes, the monster that had worn his grandfather's face still there sprawled in the middle of the room where he left it behind, soaked in blood and staining the wood with red. Old Man…

Alone in the dark, sitting there in the silence of a back room, Ken’s arms wrapped themselves around his legs, eyes too dry. His brain was static and noise as he just stared out at nothing, the feel of something crusting his fingers and clothes, tunic hard and crumbling against skin with every shift of his body. His mouth opened again, only for another rough breath to die on his lips when he heard it.

A sound from the front of the shop, soft enough he almost missed it.

Almost. His head went up, eyes wide as he heard the front door swing open wide, creak expanding out into a groan loud enough that it killed any hope of the wind. “...this has to be it.”

Ken’s breath caught in his throat, every muscle in his body tight, as the heavy door thudded hard against the wall; a slam that shook the wood even this far back. No. Wei's ghosts; the revenants and monsters he talked about in the city outside, the ones the old man warned about all the time. They’re here.

He almost scrambled backward, frozen body ready to flee, but Ken forced down the desperate instinct. Noise, no… no noise. Instead, he pressed himself up tighter against the wall to his back, the darkest corner of the room behind a stack of empty wooden crates; just one wall keeping him away from the front of the store.

Splintered wood bit into his back, old planks digging deep as he held his breath.“...Of course this is it, Val.” 

The second voice came with footsteps, several of them. Heavy and confident, the sound of boots on the wooden floor were clear and hard as they entered the main room proper.

“Leaked blood and qi across districts.”

Their voices were strange, words clipped and sharp; an accent he’d never heard before, not the junk-talk tones of the valley or the rough speech he heard in snippets of the city outside. And definitely nothing like Wei’s gentle words.

"Can’t… can’t believe he ran this far. And the bastard was here the whole time too." The first one spoke again, voice low and gravelly but half out of breath already. "Just like the informant said.”

Informant? Ken flinched. Wh-what informant?

"T-took… enough of our… people," a second one, voice higher and colder but even more tired than the first, clicked his tongue. "Let's just confirm the kill and get… get what we came for.”

They made their way in, each one of them not bothering to soften their steps as he felt every footfall through the floor. Three maybe, four possibly, Ken couldn’t count as they overlapped each other.

"Ancients above, look at the old bastard. How’d he even make it this far.”

"Does it matter now?” The cold voice grunted loud. "We got the body. Now, check it for the remnant, Val. We need to confirm it for the masters."

“Of course, Captain.”

Ken blinked through the silence, a faint high-pitched hum starting up almost immediately and carrying through the walls. Some kind of machine he couldn’t make out, even as he pressed his face up to a crack between the wood slats. 

Four. One eye straining in the dim light, Ken counted four figures, three of them standing, and one kneeling over the blood-drowned body of his master. All of them were in armor, dark and fitted to their skin; nothing like the scrap-metal gear of the Valley’s warriors or the black leather he’d seen on the Junker Fists. This was sleek and seamless gear, with a simple white tunic worn over it; the image of a red snake on all their backs, a snake eating its own tail. 

The snake… His heart beat faster, picking up speed at the sight of it; something about the emblem making his mind move just as fast. It only took another heartbeat for him to remember where he’d seen it. Wei’s books.

Wei had almost a whole library scattered across bookshelves all over the shop; too many books and almost all of them with no name. But Ken had seen a few with that same symbol on the cover. He’d seen the old man with one of those books on late nights and slow days, laughing at it like it was the funniest thing in the world, that same symbol staring back at him.

Only in purple.

“What’s the issue, Val?” The captain spoke up again, arms folded across his chest as he turned just enough for Ken to see the man’s front. A mask as black as his armor covered his face, blood splattered all over it and the front of his white tunic. 

Whose blood? He didn’t have to think hard to answer that, not when the man had his arm up to the elbow coated in that same red.

Monsters.

The hum got louder, a faint red glow coming from the front of the one armored figure kneeling down as he suddenly swore. The word was sharp and ugly, even if Ken didn't understand it, and was followed by another that sounded just like it as he straightened up. "I-It's..." The man shook his head, voice tight and grip tighter around a thin red tool with red light shining bright all across one side. "It's not here, Captain.”

"Val..." The captain flexed one hand into a tight fist, dried blood on it cracking loud enough to be heard as the man turned his head. "What do you mean, not here? Did he expend it? Is it just weak?"

"No, nothing like that, C-Captain." The tool-holder shook his head slow. “It’s like there’s nothing there at all. Not even a trace. The old snake… he's a husk, completely empty. Like one of his skins, even.”

The room was silent for all of a second until the one silent man in the room, the one next to the 'Captain', let out a roar of pure, frustrated rage, battle cry and grief both filling the entire space as Ken slapped a hand over his own mouth. “Skin!”

He'd heard that sound before, something like it back in the Valley; the sound of a man who had lost everything and had nothing left but fury. With another shout, the man drew his leg back and kicked Wei's body, a brutal, vicious stomp sending the corpse across the floor. "Skin?! Eleven of our brothers are dead! Eleven! For a godsdamned skin?!" 

He kicked again, one armored boot connecting with the dead man's ribs in a crunch both wet and ugly. "Chasing the bastard for almost six days! Bled for this! And he's empty?!".

"Rai! You must control yourself!" The captain moved, faster than a man his size should, and grabbed the screaming man’s shoulder. "Desecrating a vessel gains us nothing. It's a debasement of the Order.”

"Debasement?" Rai spun on him, and Ken saw the man’s pale face; half of it visible through the half-shattered face-plate attached to his armor. "He killed Lin, brother! Drank Dan dry! You saw him take Jian's arm! And for what? A pile of old, used-up meat?”

The other voice, younger than all the other three, made itself heard again. "Th-that's not possible. The masters… the O-Order said the Old Snake can’t…” A gasp tore itself free from the man’s throat. “Captain, where did it go?"

Ken kept perfectly still in his hiding spot, heart hammering against his ribs, and a hand tight over his mouth. Remnant. Husk. Vessel.

The words meant nothing to him, but the fear in their voices told him plenty. He didn’t need to understand everything to know that whatever they were looking for — whatever they were so afraid of losing — was gone.

And something else, a simple certainty filling his body just the same way it had filled the new, quiet space inside him; that low, steady flickering flame.

All of a sudden, he knew what they were looking for.

He knew where it went.

Master…