[LORE] BED OF THORNS

They say that everything comes with a price, that those who mess with powers beyond their control will pay for it in ways no human can imagine. Most die gruesome, painful deaths. Others, however…

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CHILDHOOD

I grew up in a little village along the fringes, areas of sparse vegetation that bordered the entrance to the sacred valley. As a child, I was told tales of the powers that lay within the valley — mystical healers with spiritual powers beyond human comprehension, strange sounds that could be heard if you dared venture close enough to the border, special plants that could keep you from death. Or bring you closer to it. 

My parents were simple farmers, they owned a plot of land large enough to grow wheat for the entire village and, for the first few years of my life, that's all I knew. My parents taught me everything there was to know about tending the fields. I learnt when the best time to sow and to harvest was, I could tell if the harvest was going to be full or if we were going to struggle through the winter. It was only after I turned ten that I found out those were not common skills.

A stranger visited our village a few days after I turned ten. They were dressed strangely, robes dyed a mixture of onyx and lilac embroidered with twisted vines and roses. I was intrigued. And terrified. Somehow, I knew that if they wanted to, this person would be able to remove our entire village from existence. And yet they were nothing but kind and respectful, from what I could see anyway.

They were invited to an audience with our village elders but, no matter how hard the other children and I tried to listen in, ears pressed to the rough wood surface of the door to the main hall, we couldn't hear a single thing. The wood hummed under my hand though, a strange feeling that I felt right through my toes, but the other kids only laughed, saying I was imagining things. I believed them.

Until the stranger approached me. 

He was kind, his voice low and soft. He spoke like he'd lived centuries but he didn't even look older than my parents. He asked about things I didn't understand, about energy and the spiritual realm, things most common folk avoided. I watched my parents exchange cautious glances when he asked them if he could look at my palm. I was not ready for the wave of energy that rushed through me when he hovered his hand over mine. It knocked me to the ground, but I barely felt the impact, my body overwhelmed with the feeling of the energy running through my body. It was unlike anything I've ever felt. It both scared and excited me.

There was a sad look in the man's eyes when he told my parents that I would have to go with him. 

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THE SECT

I was ten years old when I found out that all the tales told of the valley were real. The valley was home to mystical powers. But, more importantly, it was home to the people who were able to wield them.

These people were members of a sect, one that specialised in using spiritual cultivation to heal people. The villagers they visited called them wuyi, or wuxian for those who had cultivated long enough to gain some semblance of immortality. I learned, after a while, to call them my brothers and sisters. A family to replace the one who had let me be taken by a strange man into a strange place.

There, I learnt that I had an usual amount of spiritual energy and that I was more easily affected by other types of energies. They called me a perfect conduit. I didn't know, at the time, what that meant. I was taught how to cultivate along with the other children brought in from other villages. Most of them were sensitive to the energies around them, like me, but none of them seemed to be as affected by them as I was.

It turned out that, not only were they sect healers, but they were the keepers of a special flower. One that was the key to the sect's healing practices. Growing up, we were taught how to tend to these special roses, purple ones that grew on vines so full of thorns you'd never be able to pluck a blossom unscathed. It was for that reason alone that we were not allowed to set foot in the sacred garden until we were eighteen, old enough to face the consequences of our actions according to our teachers.

That was where I met the man who took me from my village once more, where we found out he was one of the elders tasked with tending to The Garden. He taught us how to harvest the roses safely, how to brew the draught required for the more difficult healing rituals.

"This draught is not for everyone," he said when our first batch was completed. "It is meant to increase a healer's connection with the spiritual realm. But it only works on those who have been designated the sect's spiritual conduits." His words weighed on me like a stone and I realised, then, what the other elders had meant. What I was meant for. 

The first time the draught took me under was an experience unlike anything I could have possibly imagined. It felt like I was being sucked under the surface of something that hovered between solid and liquid. The world faded out into shades of purple and the healers around me disappeared, to be replaced by shadows and flickering wraiths. I turned back to find myself lying on the ground, eyes closed, unresponsive. No amount of study could have prepared me for that. 

I was twenty-one the first time I stepped foot into the spiritual realm. 

According to xiansheng, the draught allowed the other healers to channel spiritual energy directly from the spiritual realm through my body. It gave them greater power than they would have if they relied on their own reserves. It was an honour, they told me, a rare gift. I didn't agree. It made me feel like nothing more than a prop, another instrument, as useless as the crushed petals of the roses in the tea I had to drink. 

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THE INCIDENT

I was twenty-three when it happened. 

A village further out than we usually travelled had sent a messenger requesting our services. They were suffering from a plague, a terrible one by the sound of it, one that had already killed off half of their population. All the telltale signs were there — fevered nightmares, a darkness that spread from their extremities to their core, a slow loss of all their senses. One by one. Except most plagues never moved as fast as this one. It had barely been a week, according to the messenger, who, himself, was starting to lose sight in one eye. His fingers and ears already the colour of soot.

It seemed xiansheng suspected as I did and so when we left it was with a full team of elders. They were some of the strongest healers our sect had, some of our best teachers. I don't know why I was chosen to go with them but xiansheng always said I was able to connect to the spiritual realm stronger than other conduits. At the time, it made me feel proud to be picked over more senior conduits. How naive I was. 

It took us two days and a night to get there and when we did, we knew we were dealing with something we'd never dealt with before. The village was quiet save for the groans and wails of the sick that punctuated the silence in a way that made our hair stand. The air smelled like rot and death. It made me glad I had skipped dinner. Whatever spirit had chosen this village to drain must have been exceptionally strong to have gone through most of the population at the rate it was going. I wasn't going to lie, it terrified me.

The elders were scared too, I could tell from the way they glanced at each other, from the way some of them reached for each other when they thought no one was looking. I should have known then, but I believed in their combined strength, if not in my own. The last thing I saw before the draught took me under that night was the steely gaze in xiansheng's gaze as he took his place in the circle of elders that surrounded me. 

The spiritual realm was turbulent that night, the village rippled in waves of purple, blue and red. I had never before then sensed a disturbance of such a magnitude. And underneath all of that lay a note of sulphur -  it made me feel like the world around me was burning even though I knew otherwise. I looked back at my body, helpless, with only a circle of healers for protection, and wondered, for the first time, if I would ever make it back to the physical world. 

I came to in agony; it felt like my body had been ripped apart and pieced together. The smell of sulphur was stronger here, but the smell of iron was stronger and, for a second, I refused to open my eyes. I wanted to believe that as long as I didn't see anything, that nothing had happened. That everything was as it should be, that it didn't feel like knives were travelling through my veins. But that would be foolish. And no one should willingly allow themselves to live in delusion.

Delusion would have been a better place to live.

My elders lay around me, their bodies broken, darkness creeping up their arms and along the sides of their faces. Every single one of them. I wanted to scream, to cry, to do something. Anything. But my body decided that was the perfect time to finally collapse on itself and I couldn't do anything but let it. It felt like I was being broken and put back together, shoved through blades of fire and ice. But the pain across my back was something else entirely. I must have blacked out at some point too because when I came to I was surrounded by inky black wings. Wings that must have just grown out of my back. 

I didn't know what was happening. Everything hurt, my back, my gums, my lips. I brought a finger to them and found that, on top of wings, I now had fangs. Fangs that were tearing my lips to shreds even as they were healing themselves. The world spun and I took off. I didn't look back, I couldn't. It was only when I had gotten far enough away that I realised that I was carrying a single, purple rose in my hand.

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THE AFTERMATH & THE PRESENT

Of course, when I had come to my senses I went back for the bodies of my elders. One by one, I delivered them back to the sect in secret, trying with every trip to not think how much slower I would be without my new wings. I was hideous, a monster. I had become a servant of Death, for that was who my elders had fought against that night. The God of Death, Lord of the Underworld. They had banished him, but at the cost of their own lives. This fact I only discovered because xiansheng had taken it upon himself to scratch his symbol in the sand. Like he had known someone would be alive to see it. 

I removed myself from the sect once the job was done. No one needed to know I was still alive. If I could even be considered alive. Human food no longer satisfied my hunger, something I only found out the hard way, once I already had my fangs buried in the neck of an unsuspecting farmer. I didn't kill him but, a few seconds longer and I just might have. I was terrified of myself, of who I had become. Abstaining from blood only left me weak and exhausted. And more likely to attack people. 

It wasn't a difficult decision to remove myself from society after that. I lived in utter seclusion for the better part of a millennium, only showing myself to a select few people I thought trustworthy enough to keep my existence a secret from the world. But even then, it has been a couple hundred years since the last time I set foot into society. The people of today seem a lot more willing to accept those who are different though, which has given me the courage to once again step out into the light. 

I may no longer be a member of my sect but my spiritual powers remain intact even if my connection to the spiritual realm is stronger than ever before. I'm pretty sure that Death wouldn't mind if I kept a few people from his clutches, even if just for a little while longer. So, what do you say?

Will you let me tend to your thorns?