The Tree and the Phantom Thief: Curtain Up
The demon rejoiced.
A landscape he had only ever drawn in dreams lay open before him. The sky ran on without end, and clouds brushed the branches. The light was nothing made by hands; it was light the moon gave back. Snow crumbled underfoot. Ice lay slick and cold. Here and there the ground was split, like cracked crayons laid as traps, and from a clump of snow a fox peeked out its nose. A polar bear fled in alarm. A reindeer ran with long antlers winding back upon themselves.
Delicious.
The demon drooled in a long, shining string.
He had starved for months. Hunger had broken his mind, and filth he could not eat he had treasured like gold.
"Ah. Uh. Ah."
It was going to taste incredible. Something purely alive, still raw. He would feel the vivid thrash of it between his teeth as he chewed.
His eyes rolled white. In a frenzy he drove a new root down into the glacier, and hundreds of thousands of tons of ice were eaten away around it. Ancient nutrients sleeping in the glacier were sucked up through the root.
As if the wasting sickness had never touched him, the demon's shrunken body swelled and swelled. Bark that had split and cracked was shoved off by fresh bark forcing through. The ugly tooth-scars carved into him vanished, swallowed by the simple fact of being full. Branches grew as he watched, until the crown thickened into a thatch as lush as a heap of brush.
Teeth grown out like fur never stopped chattering, and eyes made of teeth hunted the next meal down to the atom.
The more he ate, the more he grew. The more he digested, the stronger he became. Like a newborn shooting up overnight, the demon undid every limit he had set upon himself and let them all go.
And then, at last, he reached it—prey made of thick meat and heavy bone.
"Groooargh!?"
The polar bear, already fleeing on instinct, was caught by a root. It barely had time to scream. The teeth along the root gaped to their limit and chewed the bear down in a starving frenzy.
The body came apart in strips. Flesh and bone were smashed to pieces by teeth inside the teeth, and the roots drank the blood to the last drop.
"Aaaaaah!!!"
The demon roared with joy.
Starve a human for ten days and the mind does not merely slip; half of it leaves. The demon had starved for months. A demon whose very trade was eating—not for a day, for months! And from an illness he had never chosen to catch!
One bite of living flesh, and all of that melted and was gone.
Tears poured from the demon's eyes. As the hunger began to loosen, he could not imagine a greater happiness.
Nothing was greater than eating.
There are living things that can survive without air. There are living things that can survive without water.
But there is no living thing that can live without eating.
Not unless it is a god that makes something out of nothing.
Whatever lives must always eat, if it means to go on with the life it was given.
And the demon, in that light? He had been born in order to eat. He could eat anything. A thing he could not eat did not exist in his creed.
Let it only touch these teeth, and it would be taken apart piece by piece and digested.
"Kyaruk! Kyaruk!"
He laughed like a guileless child.
Food lay thick in every direction. Never again would he have to fear falling into that hideous starvation.
"Kehehehehehe!!!"
He surged upward, higher and higher toward the sky, as if he meant to swallow the moon where it hung.
Then a speck caught in the view racing up.
"Kieee......"
Every part of him, drowned in joy, stopped dead, as if lightning had struck.
A dozen or so humans were clustered in the empty air. Two of them were humans his memory would never let go.
A Life that held infinity, and a tiger that was only a tiger.
And—
"Kik!"
It isn't here.
It isn't here!
Then this is enough!
So long as that one thing is missing! No—let it come, if it wants! Like this, he can eat it!
"Kieeeeeeeeeek!!!"
The roots devouring the Arctic rose as one.
Sky and earth moved at the demon's will.
"We're fucked. We're seriously fucked."
Pele broke into a cold sweat, watching the demon fix its attention on them.
"Do we have to fight?"
"We have to. If we run, it won't stop at the Arctic going to hell. The whole planet's ecosystem will come apart."
Dan Miryu opened Life. The barrier floating in the air took on green.
"We fight here. The ground's become that thing's territory, and there's a net cast over the sky. So be careful. Sharpen your senses until it hurts, and hold every direction. If you don't, you die."
Pele's whole body seethed like a volcano. The raiding party settled, each of them, into a fighting stance.
"Child of Heaven takes the barrier. Don't let it fall. I'll go out and burn every last bit of it."
Pele set a foot on the barrier's edge.
The sky was sagging down. The earth was closing in.
"Here it comes!"
Pele drew a road of flame through the air and detonated a volcano toward the sky. A tremendous blast hammered the barrier. One stretch of heaven blew open.
The branches faltered. Then more of them, reaching from behind, shoved the rest forward again.
The volcano did not stop. Magma poured from it, fell with gravity, and crashed over the roots, and the magma fought those roots as if it were alive. In that sacred struggle the others took hope and met the assault with everything they had.
Dan Chuyeon mimicked Pele's volcano. Volcanic bombs and lava poured down, faintly, and joined her eruption until the mass swelled larger still.
Dan Miryu shattered the branches coming from behind with the gale of his fists, and San-gun raised a wind of thunder with a roar and the authority of Heaven.
Na Wangrang, Hwang Seokgu, and Elder Wildflower, who had no ranged attacks at all, cut away every branch that touched the barrier.
Shrine Priest Tsukumi supported Hong Yumin and stopped the gaps. As if to settle whether his title as saint of the Three Noble Gods was an empty name, he did more than keep pace with the immortal. He had room to strike.
Dan Miryong flung the rescued dragon into the barrier and, like Pele, came outside to fight beside Alexei. The wicked dragon's scales held even against the demon's touch, and the swordsman astride his brow ground those grasping hands to dust.
Sipsado poured dragon-fire from her mouth and set its neck ablaze. In her mind she prayed the dragon would wake, and soon.
But for all their heartbreaking struggle, the demon showed no sign of giving up.
It delighted in the prey's resistance. Even that resistance was part of the meal. Like meat too tough for teeth to cut. Like a fish still flapping before it is taken apart.
Given time, all of it would go into the belly anyway.
"......Is there no other way?"
Pele's divine sense warned her. At this rate, they would be eaten without so much as a twitch.
"Quit playing around and get over here. Making people wait for nothing."
Everyone was in danger. Where had he gone?
Had he really been eaten? Or was he getting ready to appear, splendid, at the dangerous moment?
The reliable bastard was nowhere in sight, and a cold ache opened in her side.
If he had said he would handle it, she wished he would show up already.
Keep on like this, and they would all die.
But the one she had been hoping for, as if sulking, did not come.
Pele let out a disappointed sigh.
"Nothing for it, then."
If he wouldn't come, she would have to do it.
Thump.
Her consciousness touched divinity.
She drew up into her heart not the divinity borne by the divine avatar, but the divinity of her true body.
Her presence rose. Her rank as a living being climbed without knowing any limit.
Dan Miryu caught the sign and shouted in alarm.
"Pele! We only have to wait for Mr. Phantom! If we run, or if we simply hold—Mr. Phantom will appear and settle it!"
"It's already too late. He's the one who got eaten first. For all we know, he can't even get out of its stomach."
"It was the same last time! On Jeju! He was the first one eaten by that tree's offshoot! And he came back as if to show us, and he won! I will grant you, the method was horrific, the sort that leaves a person with trauma! But he planted fear in that tree!"
"Well, that's good news. So long as the Child of Man is here, we win no matter what?"
Pele grinned.
"Then I'll just have to beat the lazy bastard until he decides to show up."
"Pele......!"
She ignored Dan Miryu's attempt to stop her.
"If I came to save you and you're off playing, you'd better believe I'll kill you myself!"
The volcano goddess's divinity blossomed. An oppressive presence descended on that place, enough that even the demon felt fear, if only for a moment.
Pele felt her frail flesh beginning to collapse.
Fast. Finish it now!
She had no thought of winning. Rescuing the one child who had been eaten would be enough.
"Haaaaaap!!!"
With a shout, Pele kicked off.
Tuk.
She kicked.
Tuk.
She kicked.
Tuk.
She kicked.
"...Huh?"
She had kicked, hadn't she?
Fwooh.
Someone blew a breath, the way one blows out a candle.
Pele's divinity went out.
The world around them sank into darkness.
Nothing could be seen.
Not the demon's red eyes. Not the bright light of Life. Not the lights of nature, shining in every color.
All of it had gone out.
Dark.
Perfect, and complete. It was darkness.
Pat!
Then, as if a spotlight had snapped on over the company, light gathered in a single place.
A strange figure stood there in a fedora and a cape.
He spread both arms and presented himself.
"Ladies And Gentlemen!"
Drrrrrrrrrrr.
A drum rolled.
"My, my! I fear I have kept all of you waiting far too long!"
Ba-bam!
Bam! Ba-bam!
A trumpet cried.
"Were you worried I might not come? Set your hearts at ease! The one you have been counting the seconds for has arrived!"
Taran!
A beautiful line of piano tickled the ear.
"Now, now, everyone please be seated! Those of you who must visit the facilities, go at once. Once the story has begun, you will not be permitted to leave, however badly you may wish it!"
The strange figure craned his neck and looked about.
"Hmm! It would seem there is no one! Splendid! Then, before the tale, I really ought to introduce myself!"
He snapped his fingers.
Hundreds of instruments played. Thousands. Music that seemed as if it ought to agree with itself, and refused, charged toward the highlight.
Doom!
At the last, a drum sounded.
A full moon rose.
Bright as midday, the theater cleared.
"I am."
The Smiling Mask took on a deeper smile.
"A phantom thief."
Phantom.
"As for today's story."
"I leave myself in your care."
A demon to the demon.
A demon-god had come.