October 11, 2003, 00:01
County Fermanagh,
Northern Ireland
The Marble Arch Cave
It's midnight in Ireland when he gets out of the portal and destroys it using every last grain of magic in his magic core he still holds after shapeshifting back to his fairy form.
LiQin falls to his knees and lets gravity carry him to the ground onto his bare back. He hisses as the ice cold ground makes contact with his bare back. He has brought clothes from his cell with him but he doesn't have it in him to Put them on.
He just lays there, on the ground, taking deep inhales and exhales to untangle his spine and connect it back together.
He takes this moment to think about what to come and what was left behind.
What to come is unknown, pretty useless to even think about it before he dives his way back up to the surface of the cave and see the real human realm. But for what he has left and lost? There's a lot to think about.
What have he lost?
He lost his found family, the Yúns. He lost his friends who he also considered family, Artem, Valodya, Mizuki, Robin and Reema. He has lost his beloved students who he took under his wing like they're his own kids, Evdokia, Ira, Thomas and Jean. He has lost everything he built all over the years when his parents first abandoned him and left him for the wild birds to prey on. He has lost all what makes him himself, everyone that knows him and makes him alive and not just a survivor. Because LiQin has always thought that what makes you alive are the people around you who know of your existence and not the fact that you're breathing and heart is beating.
Because, really, what's the point if you're alive without a single person knowing who you are.
He has taught that to Evdokia and Jean one time, and now here he is, seeking that void that will be haunting him for the rest of his life.
He thinks about the reason why he deserves this. He was just having a cup of tea under a cherry blossoms tree when enforcers arrived and put him in handcuffs, he knew that moment that he has lost everything. He knew that moment he should have never accepted the offer from Ivar. He knew that moment how much the ones he intended to stab in the back actually meant to him.
He was sent to the higher vampires clans dungeons, where they confronted him for his crimes. He thinks he deserved it and more, for who their selfishness takes the wheel shall all fall at some point.
From there the court decided he's sentenced to a life time imprisonment, along with daily tortures which LiQin is sure they only added to the pot just because his imprisoners wanted to have some fun and play time and entertain themselves.
He spent eight years, eight years of never ending torture he almost lost his mind in their hands. He had to find a way to leave this pit hole, he had to find a place he'd be happy to die in rather than that dump.
And so he did. He read the wards around the mountain, he learned the weak spots to find one of those right in front of his cell, perfect.
He lets himself lay down onto the snow, the breeze from a wind storm outside of the cave numbing his limbs with every waft of motion. He imagines himself starting a new life. Writing a new chapter in this miserable of days that he has. LiQin lets out an airy laugh as he realises he's a free man now.
*
When LiQin wakes up this time, he's not in the marble arch cave, more the same dull and lifeless cell on the hard rock mattress, but rather on a very soft one, covered with warm blankets and embraced with the smell of home cooking, one he hasn't had a taste of in a decade.
He slowly opens his eyes and finds himself in a dim room, blackout curtains blocking out the sun rays. LiQin peels off the blanket to find himself wearing a hoodie and a pair of sweat pants, and they smell like...a field of lavender. He wings his legs off the bed to inspect the room, but he ends up toppling over his face, his legs too worn out to even carry him around at this point.
The fall bang seems to grab the attention of the other person in this house right now, as LiQin hears foot steps getting closer and closer to the room door. He panics for a second, not sure how can he explain to a human that he was in a cave, half naked and full of injuries, but all his thoughts and anxiety flies out of the window when he's met with a face of a woman that seems to be in her twenties, a beautiful face.
"ah, you're finally up, thought you'd die on that bed." She starts, and her voice only adds to LiQin's daze. "you know if you have actually died on that bed, I would have no idea what to do with that mattress. Like imagine if it had your soul for life and I sold it, now whoever is taking it wi-" she goes on babbling about shit, and to say LiQin is star struck would be and understatement. This woman found a guy in the wild, took him into her home, and now she walked up to him to talking about his possible ghost haunting her mattress?
"I'm sorry," he interrupts her, confused as fuck, "Why am I here? What do you want from me?" He asks attentively, calculating her moves and emotions showing on her face. He notices that his magic isn't working so well and he can't hear her thoughts.
"Sheesh, weird way to say thank you, don't you think?" she starts, spinning a pencil she had in her hand between her fingers. She eyes him, up and down, but she's met with nothing but a stern face, she carries on, " what the fuck were you even thinking going to an ice cave half naked, dumbass." She walks up to her desk and places the pencil down as she looks for something through a pile of papers, leaving a very baffled LiQin behind her back.
Did some random girl just call him a dumbass? He feels like this is all a fever dream due to him hitting his head too hard. Yup, that must be it.
She turns around, leaning with her body onto the desk.
"So?" she perks an eyebrow at him.
"So?" LiQin asks back, still confused as fuck.
"You're blushing."
"What? No I'm not." LiQin is quick to hiding his face behind his hands, and he could hear her laughing hard at him, and its cute.
"Seriously though," she wipes a happy tear off the corner of her eye, "What were you doing in there?"
LiQin sighs heavily, oh how he wishes he could have a shoulder to lean onto right now and spill everything out to the open.
"You wouldn't believe it even if you heard it." He closes his eyes and answers instead.
"yeah sure." She snickers at him.
"Can I ask you something?" He questions.
"Shoot."
"How are you so laid back about having a strange man in your house, are you out of your mind?"
"not really, you seem like a nice dude."
"I seem like a nice du-, unbelievable. " LiQin whispers to himself.
The woman snorts at him, moving off the desk to leave the room.
"Breakfast will be ready in a minute, get up and wash, I washed your clean clothes for you, you'll find them in the bathroom." She's almost out of the door when she stops in her steps and turns around to look at LiQin.
"By the way, what should I call you?" she asks, smile stretched over her lips.
"LiQin, it's LiQin. And you?" LiQin asks back softly, his heart skipping a beat when her smile reaches her eyes.
"The name is AiLin. " she smiles sweetly at him, and his heart does a flip.
*
May 1, 2021, 13:22
Beijing, china
Mogra safehouse
"How the fuck do you know them?"
Everyone in the room goes silent, and suddenly Evdokia thinks it's about damn time LiQin reveals it to him.
"I used to train karate. They were my students and colleagues." LiQin whips up a lie. An innocent one.
Evdokia mentally face palms herself.
"you never mentioned that before. " YuNing frowns in disappointment, almost, in disbelief.
LiQin's head rests over the crown of YuNing's, where it's laying now on his shoulder. "it was never relevant to tell you about it. I quitted a long time ago."
YuNing leans into his father's touch and his eyes are staring at the ground. Evdokia doesn't think he believes him one bit. But he also doesn't have another option where his father could be lying to him about it.
They shortly take their way up the stairs to the house for breakfast. It's nothing fancy, just fish ball soup with a sunny side egg each.
Reema is having a light conversation about their next job from the FBI when Evdokia hears YuNing's voice ringing in her head.
"What are you hiding?" YuNing asks, but no one hears him. Except for one. And she prefers pretending that she didn't catch it. It's irrelevant like LiQin has said .
*
January 3, 2004, xx:xx
The Onis lands
X
The sky is dark and the world is falling apart, slowly, but surely. Her world is falling apart.
She watches as the last guard gets killed, that's when she hides her face into Amara's chest, hands clutching his jacket with all she could, for her dear life.
They lost this battle, and with it they lost their entire army, and now there's a target on the moonfolks kingdom.
It isn't long before she finds herself tied up and thrown into a caged truck. She can hear Amara's screams ,but she doesn't dare to look, she can't.
Evdokia thinks she blacked out, the world stops for a good second. All she could see is her father's smile, his arm swung onto her mother's shoulder while her head lays onto his chest. All she could smell is Felony's favourite tart that the cook, Ghanny, has been baking for him since she has seen the light of the day. All she could feel is Amara's arms around her, safe warm and sound. All of it comes down crumbling onto her back, all she can see is the father and mother she lost, the brother that was killed before her young youthful eyes, the warm and sacred hug being her loved ones blood instead of their arms.
She lost them.
She has fucking lost them.
She lost everything she ever knew, everything she ever saw, everything she ever smelt, everything she ever felt. She has lost it all.
She silently prays this nightmare can end, be it by her waking up or never waking up again. She doesn't care.
She doesn't care anymore, because there's nothing left to care for.
*
The uncertainty of their fate is what's scaring Evdokia the most at the moment.
They've been flying for hours now, or maybe less, she lost her timing senses from all the electrical whips they've been shocking them with from time to time. They went extra heavy on Amara about fifteen minutes ago and he's still passed out. Evdokia wants to reach out to him, make sure he has a pulse and still alive, but the heaviness of her worn out energy keeps her unable to move a finger, and something tells Evdokia that that's exactly the point they want them to be at.
She can move her eye balls, that's a relief. But she wonders if its a blessing or another torture tool upon herself, as she watches the ships around them filled with her folks, her people and citizens she was meant to rule one day, now chained down with heated chains and getting whipped from time to time. Evdokia thinks if that's how they're treating them as they're on their way, then what kind of a welcoming gesture do they have prepared for them at the dungeons.
She chooses not to think about it, to keep it the furthest away from her current mind set. Evdokia takes a deep inhale, deep exhale, trying to calm down her heart, but it doesn't matter because the moment she feels a bit at ease the electrical shocks come back, and she screams and squirms and screams more, until her throat can no longer produce even an utter murmur.
*
A whiplash onto her bare back gets her wide awake. She catches onto the fact that she's topless when a whip hits her bare ribs. She panics and goes to moving her hands to cover her chest, only to find them hanging high from the ceiling where a chain holds them securely tight.
Evdokia cognizes that the last thing she should worry about right now is being naked, while a man behind her is whipping skin and flesh off her back. It's painful but enough to make her numb. It's been ten days already, maybe more or less, she doesn't know.
She can see Amara on the opposite side of the room, curled up into a red ball with his knees pushed to his chest and his entire body covered in fresh blood. He's shaking, and Evdokia isn't sure if he's sobbing or if that's the effect of the torture he has endured so far.
They're not in a cell, on contrary to what she thought they would be. They're, in fact, in a huge dark hall. The place is filled with different torturing devices scattered around the room, each being used on moonfolks and elves, even vampires, while the rest pf their people, possibly families, watch.
She sees a woman sat onto a pyramid like chair, stripped from her clothes and being pushed downwards onto the pyramid tip, as her body and flesh expand until she dies as her organs are ripped apart by the device. On the other end of the room, there's a man with skewers implanted into his hands and feet to the ground, his bones and flash being torn apart by a giant claw an Oni henchman is wearing on his hands. There's also a child hanging from the ceiling of the hall, fire being lit under him as he slowly sizzles to his death, incredibly, painfully slow. To his side there's a machine that looks like it came out of hell, a huge meat grinding machine made specially for creatures to enter it alive and come out of the other side of it as a pile of bloody flesh and crushed bones. There's also a henchman with a drill, using it to slowly drill holes into skulls, while they're wide awake. Next to him isn't that much of a difference, with a man picking up nails off the side table and hammering nails into bodies and creating patterns of blood and flesh along the poor peoples limbs and heads.
Evdokia asks herself for the million time since this war was declared, what have they done?
What have all those innocent lives done?
Why are they paying the price of something they had no hand or saying with?
Why are they paying a price of a mistake made by their kings and emperors?
She doesn't know. She thinks if Valodya was here and she could have asked him all those questions, he would have said you're still too young to understand.
She's pulled out of her thoughts with a slap of a cold metal wire to her legs. They're like a plain white canvas for the henchman. Evdokia's breathe is shortening with every hit. Hit by hit, she takes them all like a champ, not a single painful noise coming out of her.
She's stone minded, more than they might think. And so she sets her mind onto not giving them the pleasure of breaking her down bit by bit.
"Welcome to your new home, dears." An Oni with a large frame enters the room dramatically, hands stretched out by his sides and all. "Or possible death beds." He smiles smugly.
Evdokia sees red why she realises who he is. Of course it's none other than fucking Ankoku Akuji.
He is shit talking as he walks around the room, but Evdokia's mind has already lost her patience and energy to hold it in.
And when Akuji walks up and steps with his foot onto Amara's head, it's her last straw, and she fucking lets go.
She feels the darkness seep through her veins, like black squid ink poisoning the crystal clear water. She feels as she changes, he white hair turning to black, her nails excessively growing with black blood vomited out of them. She feels her veins painfully stretch and show on her figure, almost popping out of their places, almost.
Evdokia thinks it would have been better if they did pop and she died on the spot, because what comes next is beyond to ever come in peace with it for the rest of her life.
*