Chapter 9
Hoku's fingers trembled upon clutching the white fabric.
'I… need to run.'
His pulse reverberated in his ears, as he stood paralyzed.
The trees swayed further in his direction, and a strange cloud of white ash resembling snow suddenly formed a mushroom above the trees.
His eyebrows rose with astonishment.
Hoku finally managed to step back, dragging a boot behind him.
"Did she solve the issue already?" He mumbled to himself.
'Damn-I should be searching for the…'
Immediately after Hoku put his weight on his other leg to turn around, a thin array of iridescent dust darted past him.
His gaze captured a blurry blend of white and crimson just before his body was thrown back.
He winced as his back collided with a tree.
His head felt like it had been hit with a sledgehammer, and an ache in his spine flared from the center.
Hoku's senses gradually sharpened from his daze when he felt a warm substance drip down the side of his neck.
His head wobbled as he lifted it off the tree.
Hoku used his hands to sit himself up, only when his eyes focused on the scenery before him did the ringing in his ears subside.
Another cloud of white dust threshed around an enormous shadow.
It bore a ridged core that expanded into the fog left by the strange debris.
It was adjoined by curved columns that appeared thinner and less enduring the further they were from the largest side column.
'It looks like a giant ribcage,' Hoku thought, squeezing his fingers into a fist.
He groaned as he picked himself up from the ground and brushed his hair back.
An enormous, dusty haze loomed before him.
As his vision gradually cleared, he squinted, limping down the rows of white columns.
Each was separated by a thick wedge in the center.
"It almost looks like a giant… rib cage," Hoku quietly croaked.
Once he had drawn close enough, he cautiously extended his arm.
"Stop! Don't touch it!" Juno's voice reverberated from the distance, and Hoku flinched, quickly retracting his arm.
Suddenly, the structure swelled upward, drawing in a massive gust of wind like a vacuum.
His heart dropped as he stumbled forward.
The crack of snapping branches and breaking bones filled Hoku's ears. He spun around and ran the other way.
Without warning, Juno landed in front of him, crouched low as if dropping from a height.
She seized the hem of Hoku's shirt, jerking him back.
'!!'
"So now you want to run? I gave you five minutes." She paused, reaching into her mantle.
"Then you tried approaching it? A blind person would use their eyes better than you use yours." She jerked Hoku forward by the wrist.
A thick shadow spread across the forest.
It was as though an eclipse had begun just above them.
Juno moved faster than Hoku, positioning herself in front of him.
Hoku tried to move past, but she grabbed the back of his hair, wrenching his head to the side.
She held him steady by the hair just above his shoulders.
Her grip kept him from stumbling, but as soon as he regained his balance, she shoved him lower.
Hoku's pupils contracted when he saw the fan in her other hand.
"Don't run. Stay low. If you keep running, it'll follow. I need to deal with it, and I can't have you pulling it away." Juno squeezed the red fan in her hand.
Hoku fixed his eyes on her as she finished speaking.
"Why me? Why not leave me behind and lead it away?"
Juno's hand landed on his shoulder.
"You saw what happened. Good thing you stayed close. The Return was already here when I tried diverting it. If you'd been farther ahead, I wouldn't have caught up."
The creature's low hum rattled through the forest again, its presence felt even more acutely now, both sharper and heavier.
"That... thing is the Return?" Hoku's eyes flicked to the massive rib cage, now lying on its side.
His breath caught when his gaze shifted.
It wasn't just a rib cage, though it wasn't entirely alive.
One half of the Return was part skeleton, while the other reassembled an unrecognizable aquatic creature.
Its front half was entirely stripped bare, with missing flesh and organs.
The skull didn't resemble anything familiar. Two structures twisted from its head. The central part was like a centipede, with monstrous pincers that seemed too large for its frame.
The pincers were fused to a larger bone, flat on the underside and rounder on top.
From that bone, two thinner bones extended beneath the pincers, framing the central structure.
Except, it wasn't a second skull. They were teeth!
The monster lifted its fins, pummeling them against its ribcage.
The action seemed to lift it higher into the airspace, turning the dust that encompassed the leaves and dirt into a frolic.
The sudden motion yanked his attention away from the sky, breaking his fleeting curiosity.
Juno gripped the crescent-shaped handle of her fan, the guards sharp against the curve.
The fan's glow flared as she swept it across her chest, settling it over her shoulder.
"Stay where you are unless it comes for you, Juno ordered, sliding a finger through a crease in her fan.
"Put pressure on the wound. Blood is dripping down your neck."
Before Hoku could respond, she shut the fan and sprang toward the nearest tree.
He swallowed watching her disappear into the branches.
As Juno climbed, her fan summoned new branches from the tree.
Hoku's head throbbed as the familiar ache flared up again.
Wiping his neck with his sleeve, he glanced down to find a dark red stain on the cuff.
"Agh!" Hoku groaned, clutching his head as he pressed down on his temples.
Juno didn't turn back. She moved swiftly, weaving past the branches while the massive skeleton crashed through the trees behind her.
A loud 'bang!' reverberates through the sky.
He loosely flinches before briskly shifting his gaze overhead.
Juno was firmly clutching to the sharp end of the tree.
Her other arm was stretched outward toward the "Return."
A seemingly boundless twinkling vine was wrapped around a cracked rip of the creature.
Particles of light floated around the vine that appeared to be retracting the half-skeletal creature.
Juno held onto the peak, gritting her teeth.
The trunk was being pulled by the force of her fan and the weak immunity of the monster.
Each time she drew her arm closer to her chest, the tree bent more in the "Return's" direction.
Eventually, Hoku heard a crack and his eyes widened followed by a nervous shiver.
He is tempted to stand up, but quickly reminds himself of Juno's instructions.
Juno's movements ensue with prowess.
The vine dissolved from her fan and petals fluttered toward the roots, dismantling into petals as they reached the bottom.
Hoku prepared for Juno to lose her hold from the impact of the recoil, but instead, the tree remained bent, without moving.
It was a puzzling sight that quickly dawned on him when he saw the vine firmly secured below the middle of the trunk.
She was using her fan to bend the trunk and balance on the arch!
Juno pulled on her closed fan, extending the line with ease.
She maneuvered the fan and the vine seemed to loosen, swirling around it like ripples while she kept a grip on the trunk.
Juno pushed her ring finger between one of the crevices, holding half of it closed whilst sweeping her arm across her body.
The crescent attached to the handle kindled a pure light.
Juno retracted her hand and repeated the same motion without restraining the other half.
The saturated pattern painted on the red leaf reflected off her eyes.
It spread like water being soaked into a towel, and lit blossoms, scattering them into a star-like disarray.
It was the utmost glorious trinket Hoku had ever laid his eyes on.
Juno squinted, intensely prying in the direction she had aimed her fan.
Although Hoku hadn't discerned what happened to cause the creature to tilt like a ship—he understood at present, that running was an inevitable demand.
Picking himself up, Hoku swiftly moved his legs without giving it a second thought.
He didn't look back to see Juno had used the vine to leap off the curve.
Rather than dissolving, the ring that was harnessed around the center approached the crown which bent a narrower arch.
Juno's steps were stable and calm, as she calculated her motion to a certain distance.
The fan was missing a rivet pin, rather, carrying a handle that was hollow in the center, thus making the vine appear to be latching onto nothing.
She was using the latch to pull the tree back. Hoku had managed to reach a carrying range.
He stole a few glances behind himself as he ran through the forest, and although he couldn't see Juno, he heard the ear-splitting cacophony that overcame the decaying woodland.
Juno stopped beneath an arch, shaped by two branches, and seized the vine.
The monster was drifting rather slowly, giving her the chance to retract the tree further.
She kneeled toward the ground without entirely pressing her knee into the dirt.
"Spread."
She kept her voice subdued to the fan, clasping the guards like a hand before pulling her arm as far back behind her as she could.
A few refulgent vines extracted in unison binding on the trees that were closely aligned to the initial one.
Each vine moved closer to the dirt as they pulled the trunks. Branches snapped and flung at The "Return," a few trees were on the verge of breaking in half.
Soon, the scene looked like a half-constructed spider web.
The creature spits something into the dirt that causes it to bubble and hiss.
Juno stares intently at it, pressing her lips into a thin curve.
It spits again, and Juno reacts quickly, releasing her handle on the single vine to raise her mantle over her face.
The substance cascaded thickly from the stable fabric.
She stepped back, glimpsing over her mantle to sight how close the creature had cruised.
Juno anticipated another dive was approaching.
The moment that the monster reached the minimum range she needed to hit, she used both hands to hold the guards and expand the face of the fan.
"Release."
Rule 10
Corruption is the sequel's concept of punishment. The rules of the memoir must be followed to avoid it. The tenth rule is to abstain from feigning life and age. Any life form responsible for dissolving alternate life will be imparted with unpredictable deformities. The Return was once an extinct aquatic species that interfered by inheriting the 'spell' of an aerial species.
Corruption has changed it into what it is now.
-The Memoir Chapter 5 end-
. . .
The Memoir Chapter 6
Rule 11
The eleven immunities are deadly weapons that require obtainment from the sequel. Most are forged with elements, but low-grade weaponry such as The Elixirs can be gathered through the discovery of time's mysteries. Elixirs link themselves to the holder's soul to remain bound after a sequence has reached an end. These 'higher grade' devices begin as raw materials that can be provided with spells to enhance their effect.
It is theorized that the stream's wiser guardians forged them first.
Objective 5
Your guide resides with Qi. If you are not cautious, your fate will reside at his blade.
Greet him in the nucleus if you must, but avoid sharing too many of the memories you will recover amidst vast journeys.
-The Memoir Chapter 6 End-