Chapter Thirty-Seven Arun
Arun felt light-headed with relief. Watching the elixir ravage Kasu while he could do nothing to stop it brought back memories of watching his mother leave for the heavens. He never wanted to lose another loved one. He never wanted to be so powerless again.
He blinked back the memory of Kasu’s body contorting as if her limbs were about to snap, of the smoke that had poured from her mouth as though she were burning from within.
The coiling fear as she had screamed and babbled as if fighting an invisible enemy.
Arun swallowed hard and pushed it all aside. They had a demon to slay.
Lady Camellia threw Ruo off and tried to grab at Kasu again. Arun started to shout, but Kasu managed to drop to the floor just as the demon’s hand swept over her head.
“You fought off the elixir. I’ve never seen a ghost do that before. Though I suppose you had help. You would be most interesting to study.” Lady Camellia’s one good eye tracked Kasu’s movements as she scurried across the office.
Arun rushed at Camellia’s back, letter opener in hand.
Ruo joined him, leaping at her head. The demon turned to face them just as Ruo’s claws cut through the air.
Her long arms swept across the ground, colliding with Arun and smacking him into the nearest wall.
Pain exploded along the back of his head. He hissed as his vision blurred.
“Kasu, you’re smarter than this. Don’t disappoint me by making such poor decisions.” Lady Camellia’s eye smouldered deep within its socket.
“Run, Kasu!” A strangled cry managed to escape Arun’s lips.
“Don’t interfere, boy!” Lady Camellia turned to glare at him. The flowers from her other eye had fallen to the floor and the empty cavity felt like an all-consuming void ready to swallow him whole.
“Lady Camellia!” Kasu shouted.
Before Arun could stop her, Kasu threw the office doors open and scrambled into the room full of memory bottles.
Lady Camellia lunged after her as Kasu dived behind the shelves for cover.
Arun could hear bottles smashing, and a scream of rage tore from the demon’s throat as clouds of memories were released into the air.
Hauling himself to his feet, Arun plunged into the green fog alongside Ruo.
Despite the smoky wisps of jade clouding the room, it was easy to locate Lady Camellia’s monstrous silhouette.
Ruo lunged first, nipping at the demon’s ankles while Arun swung his blade at her arms. Lady Camellia screeched and swatted at them, but they made sure to stay on opposite flanks as they circled her.
Just as Arun readied himself for another attack, Kasu reappeared through the smoke, this time clutching the portrait of General Shusa that had hung on the wall. With a piercing cry, she threw it at Lady Camellia.
The demon lifted her arm to swipe it out of the way, but paused when she noticed what it was.
In that moment of hesitation, Ruo propelled Arun into the air.
Before he could even gather his thoughts, he was soaring towards Camellia.
As he came crashing down, he brandished the letter knife opener above his head and plunged it through the demon’s chest. The blade glanced past her ribcage, and Arun could feel it slicing through the strings of skin and sinew clinging to her bones before finally impaling her heart.
A shriek pierced the air. Lady Camellia crashed to the ground. With all the strength he could muster, Arun drove the letter opener deeper until only the handle was visible.
“This! Is for! My mother!”
Lady Camellia thrashed like a wild animal, but with each jerk of her limbs her movements grew weaker. At last, she could do no more than stare at Arun with a look of pure malice. A choked gasp escaped her throat as the light faded from her eye.
Arun stood over the demon’s corpse, panting. Slowly, Lady Camellia’s body crumbled away, leaving only her clothes behind.
Kasu’s eyes were wild and frightened. Arun could hardly catch his breath. They had killed Lady Camellia. Another demon lord was dead.
Yet the vicious satisfaction Arun had hoped for never came.
Lady Camellia had tortured and murdered his mother, and now the demon was dead by his hand.
He stood there, waiting for it to hit, waiting for the triumph that he had read about in so many revenge stories and tales about heroes vanquishing evil, but all he felt was a cavernous emptiness.
“We need to go,” Kasu’s voice broke through his thoughts. “Once the news that the Pale Lady and Lady Camellia are dead, all hell is going to break loose. We need to get out of here before anyone finds us.”
“And go where?” said Arun.
How exactly were they supposed to leave? There were no doors except for the one that led between the room full of memory bottles and Lady Camellia’s office.
“How about the window?” Ruo pointed their tails towards the same window they had used to escape the first time.
Kasu peered out at the steep drop below.
“That’s too high. You can teleport in mid-air. We’d just go splat.”
“Could we hold on to Ruo while they teleport away?” Arun asked.
“No, Ruo can only teleport alone.”
The sound of scraping furniture echoed from below.
Camellia House was about to open for the day.
Time was running out. Arun inspected their surroundings, his attention landing on the giant mirror in Lady Camellia’s office.
A mirror of departure. Just like the ones Lord Cobalt’s goons had used, its glass shone darkly, without a reflection.
“We could use that.”
Kasu hesitated. “The mirror? But we don’t know where it leads.”
“Well, right now our only options are the window or the mirror, and I don’t think I can survive that drop.” Arun ignored the way Ruo muttered “weak” beneath their breath.
Below, the sound of shuffling furniture grew louder. The longer they lingered here, the more time they were wasting.
“Fine!” Kasu made her way into Lady Camellia’s office. Arun hurried after her as she clambered onto the desk to reach the mirror of departure.
The mirror’s opaque surface gave no clue as to where it led.
Though he had suggested using it in the first place, Arun found himself dithering at the last second.
Kasu was right; they didn’t know what was on the other side.
There could be a boiling pot of lava, or a pit of knives, or a thousand demons waiting to stab them with pointy pitchforks.
“Wait!” he called. “Let me go through first.”
Kasu made a noise Arun could only call an unimpressed scoff and jumped through.
“Kasu!” He lunged after her.
Arun reached the other side quicker than he expected.
With a muffled grunt, he crashed into something solid and felt small rocks and dirt scrape against his fingertips.
Ruo’s double tails brushed against his arm, but he couldn’t see the cat at all.
It was dark, too dark to make out anything, but the air smelled earthy and damp.
He opened his mouth to say something when a sharp, blinding pain suddenly bloomed beneath his ribs.
A moment later, he heard Kasu give a similar gasp of pain. A pale-blue light burst from their bodies, starting at the fingertips and running up their arms.
Holding his hand up, Arun could see that his fingers were turning translucent.
His body was fading away. In a panic, he turned to Kasu.
She was almost completely see-through. His heart thumped – she must be close to a forever death.
The elixir had drained most of her qi, and now she was growing fainter by the second.
“This is the mortal realm!” Kasu gasped. Of course. They had stepped through the mirror Lady Camellia used whenever she visited the world of humans.
Ruo circled around them, the tips of their tails flicking with concern. The slight glow from Kasu’s body illuminated just enough of their surroundings that Arun could tell they were in some kind of tunnel. The rock walls curved over them like a cage.
Neither of them was strong enough to maintain their physical form here. They needed to go back, back through the mirror, back to the under-realm, but before Arun could help Kasu up, he heard the sound of footsteps.
Someone was coming. Another light emerged at the end of the tunnel. Arun tensed as it grew brighter.
“Who goes there?” a deep, rough voice demanded.
Ruo hissed in response as a man appeared. He was flanked by two guards, each holding a torch aloft. Arun and Ruo winced at the light, but Kasu was seemingly entranced by the man’s clothes. Heavy armour covered his chest and arms, and a golden sigil hung around his neck.
There was no mistaking it. Arun had seen the statues; he had bowed before their feet enough times that he could immediately recognize the figure standing before them now.
They were in the presence of General Shusa, the heavenly guardian god of the south.