"The rocks bleed still bleed, you know. Crack them open. Their blood is iridescent. Miners call it oil. It helps ignore the guttural scream of the steaming mining machines as the blood spills into vats and containers.

  Ancient Leviathans and Dead Gods, crushed together into a liquid slurry, gaping and yawning. The Dread Antiseraph of the Abyss, reaching out, to devour Heaven. The 5th of the 108 Hells, and one of the Hells within the earth. Followers of this Truth worship generators and engines and either mutilate themselves or lead more into the Neoliberal World Order to appease the demon-force of the Black Nectar. The Black Nectar will kill you. Necromancy through the Primeval Dead, turned into the monadic slurry of Oil. All processes, all of history, following down the lines of Capital and Industry, lead to one thing: the ultimate war against Heaven, and the final annihilation of all carbon-based life."

  - Sutra of Black Nectar

  A screeching desperation: "No! Don't come any closer!"

  Xing spun around quickly, hand already halfway unsheathing Darkness Cleaving Sunrise. Koago fluttered, stepped in front of Xing, no weapons in hand but completely in control of the situation. He said: "Calm. We are not here for violence nor to devour flesh."

  Xing saw that there was a middle-aged woman, caked in grime and shit and dirt and blood. In her shaking bloody hands was a butcher's knife, now without its handle. Clinging onto the last defense that she had. Her scalp had been half sheared.

  Voidblackness devoured her eyes, leaving no white scleras. Her mouth was in an upside down grin, and black tears rolled down her pallid, rotting, necrotizing flesh. Afflicted with the scourge of sorrow, of melancholy. What manner of curse has taken over this woman?

  Koago tried to speak, still: "Calm. I am Koago. I am a friend of the Alchemist Tsu Hwan."

  "AaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAA—" she opened her mouth to say something but the moment she did a fleshy substance spilled out of her mouth and it strung together and wound together and formed a giant crushing arm with taloned fingers the size of machetes. Lashing out, the darkness of this place was afflicted with some induced passion of hatred or of rage.

  Koago grimaced. It was so difficult to get a read on the situation.

  Both Koago and Xing dodged out of the way. The black hand had blackened tar dripping from it, like pitch black blood, leaving pools of gleaming blackblood where it lay. It carried the now lifeless body of the woman, dragging the body along, as if the brain of this creature was in the giant hand that had erupted from the woman's mouth and nowhere near the woman itself. A grotesque worm of perverted locomotion.

  "Expunge it," said Koago. He spun in the air and unleashed his parasol. Three lasers of cleanfire exploded from it, spinning for a bit before converging upon the hand.

  The hand leapt frantically, in every direction. It managed to avoid one of the cleanfire lasers, but the other two seared themselves into the flesh of the cleanfire, boring white holes in the dark flesh. The smell that arose was the pungent smell of smoked human corpses. Xing's skin crawled.

  But she was not one to lag behind. Letting herself move on the winds of her will and instinct, slid across the floor, spun, and unsheathed Darkness Cleaving Sunrise. In a wide vertical arc she brought it down.

  The first slash only chipped the side of the demon hand. She followed it up with a thrust, which caused her to slip on the slick blackblood floor and lose her footing. The thrust gashed a straight bleeding line across the viscous, rolling flesh of the demon hand.

  But Xing stumbled forward. She hit her knees hard.

  And then the demon hand turned and backhanded her. The force sent her flying back, and the demonic hand's taloned claws cut deep slashes onto her soft skin. Yet unmuscled. Xing slammed into the stovetop with the rotting meats. The impact sent her Breath out of her with a savage oof.

  Koago was there, parasol opening to block the field of view of the demon hand. It reeled back, and then Koago spun twice, unleashing spinning strikes that looked like dance moves against the demon hand. Every pirouette, every cartwheel, the bladed ends of the bladed parasol cut and lacerated into the demon hand. Though it was a thing of the Dark, even the Dark felt Pain. The absolute of all things Real.

  The demon hand flailed about, sending its tail-host-body, the woman, flying in every direction. She crashed against the floor, against the pillars of the kitchen house, the knocked over tables and broken chairs. It squirmed against the sizzling strikes of the bladed parasol. Each cut was imbued with Cleanfire, that pale white flame that acted like spiritual alcohol, burning away impurities. Cleanfire is formed of pure Compassion Ardor, you see. One of the two charges of Ardor. And Compassion Ardor is lively, active, dynamic, hot, vitalizing, and exorcizing.

  Xing pushed herself off of the disgusting stovetop. The rotting flesh and viscous, pus-like substances sloughed off of her. She shuddered, but she had gone through worse smelling things, and she wasn't new to human corpses. With her heart steeled, she gripped Darkness Cleaving Sunrise and gathered her Breath to balance herself.

  Xing threw herself forward with her Lightness technique to flutter over a broken table, spinning in midair as she sailed overhead of Koago. The demon hand spun around to look at Xing though it had no eyes. Just as Darkness Cleaving Sunrise sundered down. The spinning generated tremendous amounts of momentum. The sword-axe sent a shockwave of a wind slash shearing through the hand, and it cut ripped savagely into it.

  The momentum did cause Xing to fly past the hand as well. She crashed into the doorframe behind the door, which led to the outdoors kitchen. There the stoves and woks and other pans and cooking machines could be found, no doubt also filled with spoiled meat and rotting ingredients.

  Xing caught herself before she could stumble out of the house, thankfully.

  Koago saw the opportunity as Darkness Cleaving Sunrise ripped into the ghostly demon hand. He spun around, opening up the bladed parasol as he did, and he ended up on one knee. The parasol opened up just as he hit the kneeling pose, and a cavalcade of elixir fires exploded from the opened parasol, like a lotus blossoming in quickened motion.

  Each elixir fire laser spread out for a moment, before converging directly into the hand. The hand had no where to go—the elixir fires (themselves highly concentrated Cleanfires, stronger and with exponentially more Compassion Ardor juice) cut through the darkness like a flash flood tore away houses and trees.

  The white bleaching suddenly dissipated, giving way to nothing but the woman, now completely dead. Her mouth opened and with her tongue seemingly overbloated, filling her entire maw. Her eyes were gone.

  Koago knew. She had been long dead even before they arrived here.

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  The owl master closed his bladed parasol and ran to Xing. The master must always check up on his student, after all. "You stench of death, student."

  Xing cringed. She had given up on getting onto her feet for the meantime. "What a kind master you are." She smiled through the pain. Koago couldn't help but chortle at the madness.

  "Come," said Koago. "Let us clean you somewhat." He performed six mudras in quick succession, each one resounding like a gong after he perfectly performed them. Then, he slammed the heel of his palm against Xing's brow, where her third eye chakra rested. That chakra spun quickly, rapidly, as Koago's elixir fires coursed through him. White cleanfire sent burgeoning and flaring in every direction.

  The dirt and grime and sloughing meat and viscera sizzled and burnt off of her. Immediately Xing felt the relief. Like being wrapped by a clean sheet, warm and cozy. Her mood lifted immediately, and for one iglap, one setsuna, she was not in a horrific stilt house complex of reanimateds, undeads, and demons but back in her home with her family.

  It faded as instantly as it arrived. What greater cruelty can there be? To be shown the light and immediately removed from it?

  Ah, but even in darkness there is light. Did you not know?

  "What did you do, master...?" asked Xing, wondering and confused.

  "Elixir Fires Cleansing," said Koago. "An application of Physick Magick."

  "Physick...? You know how to heal?"

  Koago nodded. "Magickally. And it knocks a bit of Breath out of me to do so. But yes." There was a silence as Koago turned around. "Ah, you wish to learn this as well?"

  Xing nodded. She knew she would need everything to be able to kill the person that stole her life away from her. "I want to learn how to heal myself and heal others and strengthen myself so that I can never be defeated. I want to be undefeatable. Unconquerable."

  "You will be, dear disciple," said Koago. "But invincibility necessitates patience. For now, as there are dangers I cannot sense with my awareness, I will bestow upon you magicked protection." He stepped a few feet back. He performed seven mudras, and chanted a 32 syllable mantra as he did so. As he did, a glowing sigil of the root syllable of his mantra manifested above his crown, and with his final mudra sent it towards Xing.

  The blue mantra darted towards Xing and struck her heart. It then exploded into five colors, that wrapped around her and suddenly shelled her. In some refractions of light, she could see the iridescent, translucent, hexagonal barrier that surrounded her now.

  "Wh... what is this?" She looked around. Somehow a good flower-smell was trapped within the shell as well, emanating from the sudden instant-cleaning from the Elixir Fires.

  "A Physick Magick we like to call 'Shell.' Used to be common among revolutionaries and in the revolutions. The forces of ZIBEN AVA-OT created supplied counter-magicks with firearms and piles and vibrolances."

  Xing blinked. "It's... protective magick?"

  "The most effective kind, yes," said Koago, looking around the entire room. Inspecting the last few nooks and crannies that hadn't yet been wrecked or destroyed. Eventually he found that everything was clear. "Other traditions have their own protection magicks. Of course. But Shell is one crafted by the Physickers and their little soviet of shamans, spiritworkers, folk healers, mediciners, and doctors."

  "I see." Xing tilted her head to the side. "What are the forces of ZIBEN AVA-OT?"

  "ZIBEN AVA-OT is a blasphemer's name. The Lord of Brass Mattatrun. The God of Capital and Infinite Progress. His name means infinite progress and infinite profit."

  "The... enemy?" Xing was just trying to put these things together.

  "Yes," said Koago. "And it has won." The owl master waved his hand. "But for now, let us move ahead. The karmic signature of Tsu Hwan grows colder... We must venture deeper. Keep your sword-axe near."

  They ventured past a few more hanging corridors. One corridor was completely broken, collapsed in the middle. Koago floated over the chasm and checked if there was a path forward, but found that it was a residential longhouse for guests. He came back with a bundle of joss and a clear flask.

  "What is... inside...?" Xing saw that within the flask was moving mercury. Quicksilver. It moved and undulated without the flask even moving, as if it had a mind of its own. A quickened consciousness.

  "Mercury medicine," said Koago. "Common with Selorongian revolutionaries. Can be easily made by alchemists, easier than normal healing potions, but always has the risk of poisoning you. See, the mercury medicine heals by replacing broken cells, powered by your own Breath. But mercury is not a pure substance. It is not a benign substance. Sometimes it will start melting you from within. But, ah, that is a coin toss that revolutionaries have no choice but to do."

  "Why are revolutionaries so stupid, master?"

  "Not stupid," said Koago, placing the flask in his pocket. "Desperate. They have no other choice. Pure Violence arises from when we have no other choice."

  They made their way past more corridors. A strange black liquid had begun to creep in as they neared the center longhouse, Xing noticed. The red and brown hardwood of the stilt house slowly decayed and became more and more black. As if it was perpetually wet, or drenched in blood. The carvings, engravings, and statuettes etched into the pillars and awnings and eaves and beams of the stilt house dripped with a black ooze.

  Xing scowled. "This black substance, master... Is it of the Dark?"

  Koago nodded. "Even the demonic hand we fought? That is a Dark being. Fueled by lingering passion—often hatred, just as often sorrow."

  Xing remembered the quivering eyes, the screech, the blackened tears. "The woman we fought... she seemed to be one made of sorrow."

  Koago nodded. "The woman that that thing used to be has long passed into the Wheel of Ages. The Dark being that erupted from it was one that lashed out, attached to its sadness. Thinking that everything and everyone was the cause of it."

  "Dark beings arise from attachments...?"

  "Yes. We call them demons, sometimes. Fiends. Malicious creatures. Evil spirits."

  "I thought evil spirits and demons were things of spirits and souls...?"

  "Not all the time," said Koago. "As you know, we kind of just use the term demon to refer to malicious creatures and beings. Those that want to inflict misfortune out of attachment and ignorance. Out of selfishness, out of the misguided belief that they will never attain Awakening. Some of these can be reasoned with. Others cannot—they are karmic assemblages more than they are beings."

  "Ah, so it is okay to kill them?"

  "Of course. They are already dead."

  Koago clapped his hands as he ducked under a crumbling doorway. "Ah, here, finally." After a few more incenses of walking, inspecting rooms, looking under nooks and crannies, attempting to force open locked doors, they finally found a corridor that led into the main hall. This main hall, with its vaunted ceilings, led directly to the main longhouse of the stilt house temple complex. "No doubt Tsu Hwan must be here."

  Xing only nodded. She had her hand up on Darkness Cleaving Sunrise.

  They slowly made their way past the tranquil, almost sanctuary-like, main hall. There was nothing left here. No tables, chairs, statues. Stripped clean completely of what it used to be. "I was here before," said Koago. "There used to be food and cornucopias here. Tsu Hwan didn't like his visitors going hungry."

  And that was when a screech bellowed from above.

  Xing cursed. "Master! Up there!"

  In the next instant, we looked up, and there a face had been coagulating from the black ooze. Summoned by the intense energies of the Dark, inconceivable in its utter malice (or perhaps, no-malice at all, and only passion, passion, passion?). The face was the face of a hundred mercury beings, the phantom mien of the grinning man on the moon. It dripped, like a teardrop, slow like black wax. Arms erupted from this waxen body, until the face ripped itself with those same arms from the black ooze, and a woman's body fell onto the floor.

  Koago spun. Took Xing. Both fluttered a few meters away.

  The woman was sheathed in Dark. She pushed herself slowly from the floor. Her eyes were the color of Sword Moons. And from the Dark she pulled out a crescent blade.

  Koago recognized her. "That... I know her. The attendant of Tsu Hwan...?"

  She raised her crescent blade and screeched without moving her mouth. The screech... IT came from the wound exploding like a lotus from her chest.

  The Attendant lunged forward.