today double chapter because i feel like doing it : )
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The iron hilt of Kū-on bit into my palm, slick with sweat and frozen slush.
My forearms were burning, the muscles twitching in involuntary, violent spasms.
I needed the plateau. I needed the light.
I spent the final hours of darkness preparing.
I dragged a heavy cedar branch—a rotted thing twice my size—across the rock to create a fulcrum for a lever trap.
I scoured the edge of the plateau for loose boulders, stacking them into an unstable pyramid rigged with a tripwire made of scavenged vine.
As I jammed the cedar branch into a narrow rock fissure, a memory surfaced—sharp and cold.
The forge. The smell of burning coal and iron. He was dying, his chest a ruin of torn flesh, his fingers clutched around my throat to keep me steady. He spat a mouthful of blood into the dirt, his eyes fixed on the horizon. "If they catch you in the night," he wheezed, "you are already dead. You don't fight them. You stall them. You hold them in one place until the light does the work. The sun is an executioner. Just hold them. Hold them until they turn to ash."
The night was thick. I felt them before I heard them.
The first one emerged from the shadows of the pines—a creature with skin like wet parchment, moving with a series of quick, jittery hops.
It knew I was wounded. It circled, waiting for me to falter.
I backed toward the edge of the plateau, keeping the tripwire of my boulder-pile between us.
I let him get close. The air radiating from his skin was stagnant, smelling of wet earth.
I snapped the vine taut.
The boulders exploded downward in a landslide of jagged granite.
The demon shrieked, caught by the shoulder.
He wasn't dead, but he was pinned, his arm crushed into a pulp against the basalt.
He roared, a grating, mechanical sound, and tore his own trapped limb clean off to reach me.
I raised Kū-on.
The blade felt heavy, the steel vibrating against my calloused palms as my fingers locked in a cramp.
My shoulder joint popped, a dry, clicking sound, and the sword dipped, scraping against the stone floor before I yanked it up into his neck.
The steel caught on the ridge of his collarbone, shuddering as I threw the weight of my torso into the hilt.
I felt the grit and bone grind against the edge of the blade, the friction traveling up my wrists until my knuckles cracked.
I shoved, twisting the hilt hard to the right until the resistance snapped and the head gave way.
He dissolved into ash, but the noise acted as a dinner bell.
The second one was already there.
He was larger, his torso twisted at an unnatural angle, skin translucent and grey, showing the pulsing muscle fiber beneath.
He didn't have eyes. He tracked the rhythm of my heart.
He lunged.
I dove into a fissure, barely feeling the stone tear my clothes.
His claws struck the rock where my head had been, sending a spray of granite shards into my face.
I had no more tripwires. I had the lever trap, but I had to get him to the center of the plateau.
I turned and ran.
My boots skidded on the black ice.
The demon pursued, his claws digging deep, rhythmic gouges into the stone.
Every breath I took felt like inhaling needles.
I reached the center of the plateau, right where I had braced the cedar branch.
The "Sound of Gold" started to vibrate in my inner ear—the metallic screech of the atmosphere heating up as the sun crawled toward the horizon.
The hum reached a crescendo—a wall of high-frequency white noise.
I couldn't hear the demon anymore. I only heard that abrasive, metallic screech.
I dove toward the fissure.
The demon followed, his body arching for the final pounce.
I swung for the tendons behind his primary limb.
Crr-ack.
The steel bit through the gristle. The demon shrieked, collapsing.
I scrambled to the cedar branch, shoving it under his mangled leg, using Kū-on as a steel wedge to jam the limb against the rock.
He thrashed.
The force of his struggle was astronomical.
My ribs shrieked as I threw my entire body weight onto the lever, locking it in place.
A sharp, snapping sound echoed in my chest, and the world went grey.
I clamped my mouth shut to keep from vomiting, pinning the creature down with my own shuddering frame.
He snapped his teeth, missing my thigh by an inch.
I stayed low, pressing my spine into the cold basalt, keeping the lever pinned.
"Do it," I rasped, staring at the horizon.
The first sliver of dawn pierced the mountain peak. A thin, searing line of gold.
The demon's face twisted in terror. He clawed at the stone, but I forced the branch deeper.
The light touched his feet.
Ssssss.
The grey flesh turned to white ash, then grey, then vanished in the wind.
The sound was like a forest fire consuming dry paper.
When the gold hit the center of his chest, the demon erupted.
A violent, silent burst of soot coated my face, my hair, my clothes.
The weight beneath the branch simply dissolved into nothing.
I fell backward, my back hitting the stone.
The warmth of the sun flooded the plateau.
I didn't close my eyes. I just lay there, the black blade clattering to the rock beside me, watching the sky shift from violet to a brutal, blinding blue.
The mountain was silent. The demons were gone.
I didn't move until my heartbeat stopped sounding like a war drum in my ears.
I forced my fingers to unclench from the hilt, then grabbed it again, using it as a stake to drag myself upright.
The summit was behind me.
I turned toward the northern slope.
The path was steep, covered in a crust of frozen snow that broke under the weight of my boots.
Every time I shifted my body, the fractured ribs in my chest ground against each other, a constant, sharp pressure that made it difficult to draw a full breath.
I didn't stop.
I walked with the blade dragging beside me, the tip carving a continuous, jagged line into the ice.
My muscles were twitching from the adrenaline drop, my legs feeling heavy and unresponsive with every step down.
The wind hit the cuts on my face, the cold biting into the exposed skin, but I kept my eyes fixed on the path ahead.
I took another step. Then another.
I wasn't going up anymore.
I was going down the other side.