Revenge Is Only Natural

Halemaumau Crater.

The storm clouds had cleared, and in the light of the sinking sun three figures remained. Hong Yumin sat in a daze, watching magma well up again over lava that had already cooled, and Dan Miryu sat beside her.

"I fell asleep, and when I woke ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it was already over."

The voice that drifted out was soft with relief, and hollow underneath.

"Is it not better that it ended without trouble?"

"Yes. I suppose it is."

Dan Miryu looked at the Saintess, half buried in the earth. Her hair had bleached white. She had lost both the brilliant gold and the gloomy black, and every excess of life had drained out of her until she looked ready to starve where she lay. Now and then she muttered strange things—Clown... Sister... I have to perform... hehe...—and even her mind no longer seemed whole. Dan Miryu shook his head.

"What happened, for a person to end up like that?"

"I do not know. Keeping you alive inside the Sanctuary was already more than I could manage."

Hong Yumin set her long pipe between her teeth. More smoke than usual scattered through the air.

"Need you know? She lived. That is enough."

"...Yes."

"Does it gall you?"

Hong Yumin asked it with a deep, quiet look.

"If I said it didn't, I'd be lying."

The stone in Dan Miryu's fist cracked and crumbled.

"Hah... You worry over nothing. You landed a blow on a god's apostle. Let that be enough."

"......Tch."

"If you are unsatisfied, grow stronger. The possibility, I guarantee."

Hong Yumin tapped the ash from her pipe, and the powder inside fell into the magma.

"Rise. The true one has come."

"...!"

The instant she spoke, darkness gathered before them. To look straight at it was to feel the air grow heavy.

The sun vanishing over the horizon announced the birth of darkness, and the darkness took that sun into itself and hatched. An evil that should not have existed devoured even the sunlight that remained.

Fwump! Black wings beat and stretched. A few feathers fell, and black blossoms opened. The blossoms widened their dominion until they made a road, and that road reached the only three people there.

Step.

Once the carpet was laid, a passenger descended from a carriage of darkness: sharp eyes, a deeply carved mouth, black hair falling to the waist, a torso set with muscle sculpted piece by piece. Wings spread long to either side settled onto the man's back.

Fwoooom! The moment he stood fully revealed, black flame spread as if to bless him. It drew a vast circle overhead, burst, and settled over the earth like snow.

The man—the Eclipse God—looked at the two humans waiting at the end of the black road and offered his greeting.

"Well met. Child born of Heaven, and Life's Guardian. I am called the Eclipse God."

A god's greeting reached them.

Terrifying. And wondrous. On that, the two of them were of one mind.

It had not been like this when they met Pele. The aura about her carried a charm that compelled courtesy, and a warmth like sunlight coming through a window. The god before them was nothing of the kind. Fear. Overwhelming force. The way of the tyrant. And evil. Everything was different—not merely the opposite. This one was wrong from the root.

To look upon him was itself a hymn of blasphemy. To stand on two legs was to plead that one had done wrong. Even breath begged permission. The mind was kneaded; the eyes burned. Fingers hung heavy and cumbersome, and the mouth seemed not to exist at all.

"Ha!"

With a fierce shout, the two of them barely forced their breath out.

"Hah—hah—"

Dan Miryu clutched his throat, proud that his legs had not given way. Hong Yumin chanted in a tongue no one there could name, bit her nail, and cast her own blood in a circle. The red ring boiled against the darkness, then turned white.

"...You carry the jest too far."

Hong Yumin dropped to one knee. Fresh blood ran from her mouth. Dan Miryu clenched his teeth and did not take his eyes off the Eclipse God.

"To show this much resistance without a god's aid. Splendid."

The Eclipse God applauded, praising the effort of humans.

"...Do you mean to continue?"

"No. I will stop here. Even a performance like this is taxing, in this body."

Darkness converged upon the Eclipse God. The dark that had been dyeing the world vanished, and only the dimmed sky remained. With the pressure gone, the color in Hong Yumin's face and Dan Miryu's improved at once.

"Have you come from seeing Pele?"

"I have. And as a bonus, I met a very fine woman."

The Eclipse God turned his gaze on Dan Miryu.

"You keep a good wife. Enough to stir jealousy."

"...She is more wife than I deserve."

"Hahaha. More than you deserve? The two of you make a fitting pair."

He felt killing intent surging all the way to his throat. That human was aiming for his neck in earnest.

"The wife heaped every curse on me, and the husband is worse."

"...What curses?"

"This, and son of a bitch?"

The Eclipse God casually lifted his middle finger. For an instant Hong Yumin and Dan Miryu nearly spat out a laugh.

"Truly... What were you thinking, doing a thing like that with no plan for the aftermath?"

"Worry not. I am not the petty sort who keeps such things stored in his heart."

The Eclipse God grinned.

"Though I might kidnap her. Just in case."

The words did not sound like a joke, and Dan Miryu's face turned vicious.

"......I will kill you."

"Endure it, fool. You'll die."

"Let go of me. That bastard has to die."

"Stop talking nonsense and calm yourself."

Hong Yumin rapped Dan Miryu's head with her pipe and reined his feelings in. At killing intent dark enough to seem to stain his face, the Eclipse God slipped neatly away toward the Saintess.

"A sight past all bearing."

He looked at his child with an expression both sorrowful and proud.

The Saintess did not react, though her god had come. Eyes without focus looked somewhere other than here, and the drool she spilled had soaked her clothes through. The Eclipse God gave a bitter smile. Was he to count it a mercy that her mind remained, or a misfortune that it had not collapsed?

The mind she had won by deceiving herself had been completed by the addition of madness. That mind was, unexpectedly, firm. Even after so great a collapse, it kept her from going fully insane. More precisely, she was only half mad.

"Sister... Sister... I'm... good with Zerglings... praise me..."

"Haa... Only now do I understand a parent's heart, when the child is sick."

His body lacked even the function of reproduction, so a biological child had never been possible for him. But the child brought forth by the heart and divine power he had divided and given was broken, and his chest tore. It was a complicated feeling he had not grown used to, even across long ages. The Eclipse God decided it was not entirely a bad one. Set beside what his own father had done, this was better by a hundredfold, a thousandfold.

Thud. Thud.

Carefully, he dug into the mound of earth that had bound the Saintess. A body that had already spent its strength time and again, and could now barely manage ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to go on existing, demanded menial labor of a god. The god received that labor with reverence. Stone cut his hands. The hard earth did not yield easily to digging. Still he worked without faltering, and with greater care than the work required, lest the child be made uncomfortable.

How much time passed? Only when the moon hung at the center of the sky did the god save his child.

"You have suffered."

Earth caked him from head to foot. His hands were a mess of wounds, his nails torn away to the quick. Even so, the sight of him lifting the Saintess was holy. He looked like a saint who had come through ordeal and trial.

"Will you be taking your leave?"

Hong Yumin, who had watched in silence, stepped up before the god. The Eclipse God's body looked precarious, as if it might scatter at any moment.

"The work is finished, so I ought to go."

"What will you do from here?"

"Who can say..."

Thinking on this affair, the losses were no small thing. He had neither sunk Hawaii and recovered his power, nor formed any meaningful bond with Pele. He had spent strength as strength demanded; go back now, and he would be sick for a long while. One of Ilshikgyo's pillars hung between today and tomorrow. The children fighting in that far land were dying even now, and he had no power worthy of answering those deaths. Utter ruin. It felt like something past the loss of a house—as if his very organs had been stripped. Was he to take comfort, at least, in having come to know of that being?

"...It seems Ilshikgyo must rest for a time."

How long, even he did not know.

"...Does my god have some other thought?"

Dan Miryu came closer and asked.

"What thought? Revenge? Or giving up?"

"...Revenge."

At the Eclipse God's offhand answer, the two of them went rigid.

"Why look at me with those faces? Did you truly think I would not? How naive."

He had been beaten to a pulp, and from one side only.

"I still cannot forget the younger brother who drove a spear into my chest. Nor the father who ordered it."

He had not forgotten the omniscient, omnipotent god, nor that god's right hand. He had whetted his blade and spent each day vowing revenge, and those days had been disrupted. He was not about to let it pass.

"Do not mistake me. We are enemies. My sending goodwill is one thing. Taking revenge is another. Where do you get the notion that you may decide for me? Were this body whole, there would be a second bout this instant."

A god's anger bared its teeth. Dan Miryu bit down on his lip.

"...I misspoke."

"So long as you know."

The Eclipse God sank into the darkness with the Saintess still seated in his arms.

The god's chilling words rang out across the world. It was a prophecy—a god's prophecy, and a warning aimed at an enemy.

The god vanished like smoke. The two humans collapsed where they stood, as if the tension ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠holding them had snapped.

All of this, the moon watched from beneath the sky.

As it always had.