There Is No Peace

The man with the oily black hair and fondness for lace had been very persuasive.

Lotus thought of herself as a top-notch security officer and her position in the chain of command for the Omexon branch of Goshi Mining Corporation confirmed such an appraisal, but she also could not deny the fact that she had just defied several important directives by cooperating with that alarmingly persuasive man. His request had been ludicrous, now that she thought about it, but at the time it had seemed as normal as breathing. He'd marched in the front doors of a high security facility without clearances and yet been permitted every step of the way to go further without being harmed. He had strutted (yes strut was the word) directly to her station at the disLocator monitors and he'd asked, in a very polite fashion, to be escorted by a squad of Hei-Shi to coordinates that... well let's face it, the coordinates were ridiculous.

But she hadn't resisted him anymore than the guards posted between the entrance and her desk had done. She nodded, she even (shudder) giggled girlishly, and she did exactly as he requested.

As the squad of Hei-Shi disappeared taking the persuasive man with them in a swirl of smoke, she looked down at her monitor. Yep. They'd gone thousands of kilometers to the West. They were somewhere in the middle of an uncharted ocean. Weird.

***

Kijuuki was as happy as a kitten in a string factory. This island was full of the Mana-Beings and many of them would do nothing but flee to defend themselves. She could not remember ever being so full of shining glory, before. Of course, she could not remember very much - part of the curse of being a Kyo-Tee-Shee, yesterday is nearly as indecipherable as tomorrow. Nor was she really full. True she had a glut of the beautiful light bursting through her every pore, but she never seemed to tire of the consuming. The consuming, in fact, became more of an obsession with each delicious morsel.

The One Who Unravels Mysteries had been wrong. He had created Kijuuki and her siblings and bound them in mysterious ways only he could unravel to the Kata-bearers, the God's of Ben Hamor, the Scions of Karia, the Cosmic Incarnation of the Answer to the Question of the All. Yes, this last title was sufficiently obnoxious to be an accurate representation of these beings. She and her siblings had been bound to them, believing that they could ride them to a cataract of Mana that would come along the timestream, but her own mount had been destroyed prematurely. It turned out that waiting for the cataract was a waste of time, because these Mana-beings were right here, now - and they were deliciously passive.

Not all of the Mana-beings were passive, however. Sometimes, Kijuuki encountered one of the beings she now referred to in her mental monologue as the "Dark Ones". The Dark Ones were Mana-beings, delectable in appearance, but overwhelmingly powerful. She avoided them assiduously, because they controlled her as surely as gravity determines the orbit of a planet, if she got too close. It was good, she reflected, that most of the Mana-beings did not resist, for they would be hard to eat if they all became Dark Ones.

She thought this while her beak was buried half way in the chest of a Mana-being sucking out delicious rainbow glory like a milkshake through a straw. The Mana-being raised its head, looking her in the eyes, and its expression made her hesitate.

"Kijuuki?" it said. "You are free?"

She refrained from pointing out the obviousness of this remark.

"Then Mokuzai is dead and all of Karia must mourn. The Answer moves closer to revelation. The Question is asked. Mokuzai is dead. There is no peace."

As he said this last thing, his mask caved in and she sucked up every delirious drop of Mana, until he was nothing at all.

She lay still for a moment while the All spun around her. She was intoxicated. She grinned idiotically. She heard someone coming, but she didn't care enough to check who it was.

***

Nero arrived on the Emerald Isle in a whirl of smoke, near the apex. Immediately behind him, a massive column of White Rock in the shape of a flame towered up to the sky. A magnificent omen that he was once again on the right path.

Oh, Spark. You doddering fool. Your mind was a cracked and rotten egg by the time I got to it, but it still contained more information than even you realized.

The Hei-Shi accompanying him looked around blankly for a moment, but Nero reasserted his control over them as easily as clenching his fist. They were soon forging ahead in every direction, through the jungle, teleporting to cover more ground, and reporting back at regular intervals. He would know the layout of the island in a few minutes. Some of his Hei-Shi did not report back, which let Nero know that the island was not a meek paradise, but it had a sting.

Then, one of his cobalt blue minions reappeared with a shocked expression on his face... His words were inarticulate, but his mental images were crystalline. He had seen something beautiful being consumed. The Hei-Shi had no way to know what it was, but he had instinctually recoiled at the sight.

"Take me," Nero commanded.

Nero arrived in time to see an enormous purple crane drowsily pecking at the shriveled remains of a... Inase Spark had called them Initiators: animate, non-living tools of the universe. A sudden cold rage came over him. He fell upon the crane in a flurry of balletic violence. Hovering knives sprung out of his coat and pinned the crane through the wings to the ground. His own fists and knees followed a split second after. As he struck he cursed it...

"You...vile...parasite! You have transgressed! This is a God you have destroyed..."

Kijuuki was sure she was hallucinating. Too much Mana consumed too quickly. This man was one of the Children of Steel. He did not belong on this island... except his eyes were so familiar. Those eyes compelled her to speak.

"Not Gods... Mana-beings... this one said," she wasn't precisely sure why she felt the need to repeat it, "this one said that there is no peace."

Nero's eyes narrowed, occluding the white, turning them to pools of blood. He gripped the bird's head pulling it intimately close to his mouth.

"No," he whispered, "not for you. For you there will never be peace again."

With that, he tore the crane apart, piece by piece, and ate it. It felt magnificent.