Chapter 34: Now It Rests with You
Heaven wept. It wept in sorrow, arms wrapped about itself, and the tears fell. One drop, drawing nearer the earth, began to change, and at last it became wrath.
Boom!
The tears came down without number. Boom, boom, boom! At the will of a single being, judgment was passed.
"Nothing but flight, like a rat!"
The Immortal looked upon the loathsome Akho. It scattered and gathered like smoke, shrieking sounds foul to hear, and as it ran it spilled resentment. That resentment struck at her mind.
Die...
The likes of you...
Save me...
"Wretch!"
One roar drove the ghost-wails flickering through her skull out into nothing. She returned her dimmed sight to the eyes of nature. Akho was already tearing through the forest, here and then gone.
"Come!"
She made wrath. No—she created it, from the sky, from the earth, from the empty air. It was wrath a god had forged, and it was swung now as a spear, now as a sword, now as a hammer.
Rumble!
The sound arrived late. The destruction did not wait for it.
Crash! In a single blow, the ground was sheared away.
Crash! In ten, a mountain vanished.
Crash! In a hundred, the mountains were gone.
"Kyaaaak!"
Akho burst through a wrath that could not be resisted. It swelled, then scattered itself, and the darkened sky grew darker still. In a landscape of nothing but ash, the dead rose. Eyes gouged, sockets pooled, they looked upon the Immortal.
Seize her.
At the fallen command they crawled, grotesque, and charged.
"Mere stray ghosts!"
Thousands of them vanished without a trace at a single wave of her hand.
"Kyaaaak!"
As if speaking for the vanished, Akho moved. It leapt, and in the space of a blink it was gone. To the Akho she could no longer see, the Immortal spoke.
"Know you how the old court disposed of monsters of prodigious, uncanny power?"
She laughed, fierce and bright.
"They gathered the generals, and they poured cannon-fire down upon them."
And was that not exactly right?
A snap. Flame caught. The clouds turned to a firestorm, and a great conflagration rose out of the sky.
"Let us see if you can endure it as well!"
If she could not see it, she would burn everything.
"Kyaaaak!!!"
The beast howled at the firestorm. Whoosh! The flames swallowed the mountain whole. Amid fire that seared flesh, the Immortal watched it. The beast opened its mouth. That mouth, torn open without end, covered all the earth, and when it closed, the firestorm vanished—absurd in its emptiness.
"Did you think a firestorm was absent from the sins you committed?"
The beast snickered.
"You cannot remember, and so you do something wretched."
"I shall tear out your tongue."
Whooosh!
The clouds covering the sky moved at a gesture of her hand and began to let fall the grace of nature.
"Water? Fortunately, there is no sin of the flood among them."
"Your arrogance ends there."
The Immortal swallowed the blood forcing its way up her throat. She felt her body coming apart.
I cannot hold much longer.
She would settle it. Still seated, she formed a hand-seal and required it of the world: the voice of nature stood here. Her long red hair lifted. Eyes steeped in killing intent were swallowed in light. The water that had soaked the earth rose, and water that had drunk the ground flew at the beast.
"A wasted effort."
It did not dodge. The water passed straight through and fell on the far side.
"As expected?"
She had known that much. Against Akho, a thing of impurity with no substance, physical force was meaningless—unless that force was overwhelming enough to ignore even law.
"You ought to have dodged, rather than take the blow."
"Gone senile, have you?"
Rain was falling over all the world. To dodge it was impossible, and least of all when it fell from an Immortal streaming killing intent.
"Then take your beating in silence."
The soaked earth moved. Slick as mud, it became a swamp and seized the beast by the ankles.
"What..."
It tried to tear free, but the weight in its body would not let it move.
"Weight?"
A substanceless illusion, and so physical law should not have applied to it. That certainty shook.
"I told you to dodge."
The water had drunk the earth. All things under heaven begin from the ground we tread and the water upon it, and the beast was no exception.
"Hm."
Not being an exception did not mean it could not get free. It tore its own feet away, left them sunk in the mud, and lifted its body into the empty air.
"This poses no problem."
"Oh? Tricks in plenty, I see."
Floating there, the beast stayed unfazed even under the weight crushing it down.
"The one who made me is great. Tricks of this sort do not work."
"Were you fashioned by a god, then?"
"Something of the sort."
Akho looked upon the ignorant one. She knew nothing, and still she burned her life away—worse, in that, than a moth at a flame.
"God or rubbish, how long do you mean to stay up there?"
The Immortal found that gaze rankling. And so she commanded.
"Come down. This instant."
⟨ Word-Command ⟩
The beast nearly crumpled where it hung.
"A word-command?"
No. It had not been spoken to Akho. It had been spoken to the water falling over this place.
"One must manage at least this much, to be called a god."
A chill prickled along Akho's back, and it lifted its head.
"This..."
A sigh escaped that it could not hide. The sight before it was a wonder. If the end of the world were to come, would it not look like this? Every cloud in the world seemed to be gathering. A single person had made a typhoon.
Dangerous.
It had broken past every measure, and then past the breaking. What would unfold up there could not even be imagined. Bound by the word-command, it could not flee—and even unbound, evasion was impossible. A mere living thing cannot run from a calamity. Inside the typhoon, a god's wrath coiled and writhed.
"Do you mean for all to die?"
"Was that not what you wished?"
Akho shook its head at the killing intent pouring off her.
"At a scale like this, the harm to the mortal world needs no saying."
"It is fine."
The Immortal's eyes shone. Light erupted from the whole of her body.
"If one cannot do even that, one is no god."
"Ha!"
Akho accepted it. Let her make a typhoon. Let her make a calamity. It did not matter. Yes—let her try. No power was of any meaning to it. More precisely, no power the Immortal could emit was of any meaning.
"The time has come."
A wet cough. The Immortal, breaking apart, looked at Akho.
"What time is that?"
"The giving of enlightenment to a fool."
"Puhahahaha!!!"
She burst into laughter. Blood ran from her mouth, and still she did not stop.
"You, who have done nothing but sit caged for hundreds of years, mean to grant me enlightenment?"
She ground her teeth.
"Enough. I am sick to death of your bullshit."
Still seated in meditation, the Immortal rose. At the same height, their gazes met: one spilling blood and light, one in which hundreds of people had been pressed together. Wind passed between them.
"Kyaaaak!!!"
Hatred came crashing down.
The Phantom Thief, who had been watching the two of them fight, could only marvel.
"Wow."
The landscape left him blank. The lightning that had stabbed down at the last had left nothing standing. From every side there was only the smell of char.
"Going to have to redraw the map."
The Taebaek Mountains had shrunk. From a satellite, this whole stretch of land would look as if it had simply caved in. An immortal, truly. They had not set god at the front of that word for nothing. The Phantom Thief walked into the heart of the fight.
"Hah—hah—"
The one who had made the calamity lay collapsed.
"Are you alive?"
"Kkh. Hah—"
Apparently not.
Wretched was too small a word for her. Her body was cracked like a shattered glass. From the wounds ran something that could not be told for blood or ditchwater. Both eyes had burned away, leaving pits, and one arm and one leg were simply gone.
"Are you satisfied?"
He asked it from up close. Her mouth opened, then closed.
"Hm."
He brought his ear to her lips.
"...Eat... shit."
At the words barely forced out, the Phantom Thief nodded.
"I would like to say you have suffered enough, but it is still too soon."
He told her the regrettable fact.
"It is the full moon."
At his voice she turned a neck that would not obey her. Both eyes were blind, and still she saw it plain: the full moon, filling the sky.
"It is not over."
Akho descended from the full moon. It had survived even that calamity.
"Krrrrgh."
It alighted beside her.
"Ah... ah..."
As if she had understood that it was there, tears ran from the Immortal's eyes. The thin trembling of her was heartrending.
"At last... I shall see the end..."
Akho murmured it as if glad, or as if sorrowful. Was it relief? Or was it mockery?
"Miss Hong Yumin. From here, it begins."
The Phantom Thief pronounced what was to come. Akho bowed its head to him.
"...My thanks."
"Hurry. While she still holds."
"...! Youuuu..."
"I am sorry, Miss Hong Yumin."
He turned his back on the Immortal howling in a ruined voice.
"This was the only way."
From a distance, the Phantom Thief watched the two of them. Akho drew near Hong Yumin.
"No... don't..."
"Now face what you have turned away from."
Akho scattered into pieces. Scattered like powder, it was drawn into Hong Yumin.
"Aaaaah!!!"
The voice that had been breaking off became a scream. Twitching on one arm and one leg, vomiting blood, she was a miserable sight. The Phantom Thief looked up at the moon. The moon was watching this place.
"Hoo."
He let out a breath of relief.
"So it begins."
A way to live had opened. And, in turn, a way to die. He looked at the girl screaming in grief.
The girl who had been thrashing went, at last, suddenly still. The Phantom Thief closed his eyes.
"Will you be able to escape it?"
Or would she not?
That, no one could know. Not anyone. Not even Heaven. This waiting would be long indeed, and it would ache.