"The Jade Scythe of the Architect Afterword"
- The Final Part-
Chapter 36
White Rice's subtle manipulation against avoiding direct confrontation presented Juno with a fleeting opportunity.
The mirror beneath her feet failed to reflect White Rice, yet he remained indifferent to her presence atop it.
Perhaps the key lay in the nature of the mirror itself; a specific kind, one that neither captured his reflection nor belonged to his illusory constructs, but was anchored in tangible reality.
The ever-watchful fox had not been idle. Undoubtedly, he was orchestrating his own intricate stratagems.
As Juno diverted her gaze from White Rice to navigate the disarray, the surrounding structures began to retract.
Segments of stone peeled away, tessellating outward in a spiraling pattern, and unraveling like the shell of a mollusk.
Though White Rice altered his illusion, he left the existing elements untouched. Instead, he folded everything inward, ensuring no path could be retraced.
More disconcertingly, he fractured her perception. Each mirror angled to reflect another, creating a prism of misdirection. Looking ahead revealed a dozen false corridors.
Juno closed her eyes and gathered her disordered thoughts.
Now, he resorted to constriction, to tangle her within a logical loop that forced her to chase reflections until the true path vanished from sight.
Juno's gaze was abruptly drawn to a vertical ring of stone suspended ahead. Weathered and worn, it resembled a fragment of a dismembered archway.
Beneath it, a broken platform of fractured marble slabs revolved slowly in the air, encircling the center like a disjointed crown. Chains hung from its edges, swaying gently.
At first glance, the chains appeared ornamental, but Juno discerned their latent purpose and recognized their potential utility.
An isolated mirror drifted near the arch's curvature, with a prominent crack bisecting its surface.
Amidst the surrounding chaos, it seemed unremarkable until Juno noticed its reflection: an anomalous tree adorned with glass vials hanging from its branches.
Within these vials resided a luminous, pale green substance, bearing a hue akin to bright jade.
The sight immediately captured her attention.
Though the location was unfamiliar, the objects were not.
'Those must be the potions Li needs to rejuvenate his elixir!'
Yet, the possibility that it was a mere illusion lingered.
Unfortunately, with no alternatives, Juno resolved to assume the risk, hoping that the mirror reflected a genuine fragment beyond the confines of the illusion.
'There. He's not within its vicinity; it shouldn't be tethered to him. That's my opening.'
Unfortunately, this particular frame was hovering just out of reach, as it was suspended much higher above than either of them.
She felt her mind begin to slowly strain. 'Damn... how do I reach it?'
She cast a brief glance to pinpoint the fox. Her foot anchored firmly behind her as she propelled forward.
The vast expanse between the nearest supports compelled her to leap.
Her boots landed on a tilted, opalescent stone step, square and suspended mid-air like an abandoned suitcase.
She transitioned swiftly onto a ring of floating hexagonal tiles.
Each tile rotated subtly beneath her weight, demanding constant recalibration of balance.
Their surfaces glistened with lacquered gold, cool as slate, yet their stability was insufficient.
White Rice's eyes ignited with flame.
Suddenly, shards of glass erupted from the ground, dangerously scoring through the air.
She ducked instinctively, evading their deadly trajectory, then sprang up and landed sideways as her boots skidded from the momentum.
The glass shards hadn't been an attempt to wound her, they were a diversion.
Juno's reflexive head turn, prompted by the near-miss, momentarily diverted her focus.
A resonant thud of hooves landing snapped her attention back. White Rice had found footing and now raced alongside her.
"Just a bit closer," she assured herself.
The ascent demanded precise landings on scattered objects.
With the fox's ability to leap over multiple platforms at once, her chances of reaching the destination first diminished.
Thrusting herself forward, she thought, 'I need to be faster… a shortcut would be invaluable.'
She settled her gaze onto the nearest mirror.
A frown creased her brow as she planted her dominant foot and twisted her body to deliver a forceful kick.
The mirror shattered instantly and proceeded to drift apart.
In an instant decision, she grasped onto the bottom edge of a fragment, and used it to lever herself closer toward a chain.
Juno's fingers clasped the cold iron links, the metal biting into her skin.
She released the glass, letting her body swing through the air in an arc.
A groan escaped her as she hauled herself higher, and her muscles began to burn with exertion.
Her foot found a triangular platform; she pushed off, narrowly avoiding the spinning obstacle that whirled past, grazing her leg.
The chain burned against her palm from the friction, but she tightened her grip.
Around her, the reflections in the mirrors began to converge, bleeding into a repetition of the same images.
White Rice had halted, perched above as he gazed downward intently.
After each panel grew clearer, it became evident that they were refracting the image of the tree through dozens of iterations.
Some bore red vials, others lay shattered, and a few grew inverted, roots reaching skyward. They were all illusions, crafted to mislead. Yet, none mirrored the original precisely.
Juno's eyes narrowed. "You're mind games have come a little late this time," she muttered.
The fox hadn't anticipated her next move. Releasing the chain prematurely, she launched herself across an enormous opening.
The arch's edge bore a fractured relief ridge, its fluted stone etched with patterns long devoid of meaning.
Juno drove the spine of her fan into a groove, leveraging it to vault upward.
A breeze split around her as she ascended, and landed hard on the platform just below the 'real' mirror's reach.
This pane differed mostly because it lacked the shimmer of the others and presented a dull, matte surface.
She pressed her palm against it.
A crawling sensation spread across her skin.
Then, a ripple emanated from her touch, cascading through the mirrors, extinguishing their reflections into black slates.
White Rice had jumped so fast that a tide of something waved outward from the reflection in the mirrors, making it look like the glass was briefly liquid.
However, rather than feeling threatened that he had emitted too much force into the illusion, a smirk touched Juno's lips."You should hold less pride in architectural art," she said aloud, "especially if you can't control everything that mixes into a spiral of chaos."
An ivory claw scraped onto the end of where Juno stood; however, her hand had already breached the mirror's surface.
Like stepping through a fog, her fingers slid beyond the illusion and met a slightly cooler surface.
She pulled herself through, limb by limb, crossing beyond the illusion.
Only when the tip of her boot touched solid ground did the shockwave react on the side she was entering.
A resonant crack reverberated around her, echoing like a vast chamber fracturing in slow motion.
Juno stumbled forward, rolling out of the mirror and landing hard on the ground below.
As she lifted her head, she discerned that the mirrors were about to shatter.
Starting from those closest to the ground, the mirrors began to break, sending jagged shards tumbling like a deadly rain.
She sprinted in the direction of the entrance, ducking to avoid the falling fragments.
The impact was so intense that some shards bounced off the ground, flying into the corridor.
Reacting swiftly, Juno snapped open her fan and drove its edge into the ground, forming a sturdy barricade of branches at the opening of the tunnel.
After the cacophony of shattering glass subsided, a new sound emerged like a slimy spill expanding ominously.
She closed her fan, and the branches transformed into petals, before she cautiously stepped out of the corridor.
A hill of black glass had formed in the center, treacherous and unstable.
A single misstep would be inevitably fatal. As she navigated the perilous terrain, her gaze lifted over the pile of shattered reflections.
The chamber had hazed greatly, as the shattered mirrors ceased their glow.
Yet, a faint, sickly luminescence persisted, emanating from the grotesque figure ahead.
The very atmosphere seemed to slant, as if reality had once again been torn asunder.
Juno's grip tightened around her fan, though she refrained from opening it.
White Rice no longer resembled the creature he once was. His form had dissolved into an amorphous mass, writhing and contorting in the throes of disintegration.
It was akin to witnessing a flower's life force being drained, as a black mist consumed the once-majestic entity.
Its head began to melt, oozing from its body and sliding over the glass shards like viscous sludge.
A tremor coursed through Juno's limbs, the scene before her fermenting a sensation that seeped into her bones and set every nerve on edge.
Suddenly, a blood-curdling screech filled the cavernous space.
Juno's breath hitched as she took a step back, and her mind scrambled.
The trial keeper was no longer in shape.
It only took a second for Juno to surmise that whatever was happening was no longer part of the trial, likely only something she had to survive.
'Did I do something wrong?' She didn't dote on the potential of herself having made a mistake for more than a moment.
A sky-sized wall of darkness grew from the spirit, completely replacing its body after just a few more seconds.
It churned without a shape or direction, and no wind followed it.
Something resounding and wrong pressed in from above, crawling with eyes.
They turned slowly, unevenly, surfacing from the black like thoughts rising uninvited. Some of them blinked while others didn't.
Juno's hands tightened at her sides. She didn't retreat, but her knees felt unstable, and her throat had dried without her noticing.
The absence of the mirrors that also contained White Rice had unshackled the entity's true form. What had been bound now coiled into a formless cloud, leaking in all directions.
It didn't look at her directly, yet the weight of its attention settled upon her, akin to standing beneath a heavy roof not built to last.
Juno steadied her composure.
A low growl rumbled in the air, the ground shifting beneath her as the walls distorted in a slow, eerie dance of space.
Each step she took led her deeper into a wavering void.
There was no time to hesitate. The monstrosity seemed boundless, growing without limit. Intervening before it enveloped everything was imperative to avoid discovering worse.
A crackling sound broke through the disorienting growl. She had stepped on a large shard of glass, the sound triggering the monster.
Multiple black tendrils shot out, recoiling and snapping before rearing back to strike once more.
Juno's demeanor hardened like tempered steel.
With a swift motion, she unfurled her fan, sweeping it upward in a flat arc.
Six vines erupted from the fan's frame, latching onto the advancing tendrils before they could reach her.
Holding her arm aloft for a heartbeat, she rotated her wrist gracefully, facing her palm downward, and pulled the vines down with force, slamming the tendrils into the glass and severing them.
A shriek pierced the air, a cacophony resembling the screams of a hundred pigs, as the creature recoiled, withdrawing the remnants of its severed limbs.
'It can feel pain in this state,' she acknowledged.
Yet, she knew this would not suffice against the void that had supplanted White Rice's once-precise form.
Her early intervention had failed to halt its expansion, and the monstrosity continued to grow.
Juno drew a steadying breath, anchoring her resolve.
She had reminded herself, subtly and repeatedly, that she was not entirely alone.
'I hope he doesn't have equal run-ins because of this,' she mused, concern crawling through her thoughts.
. . .
Li's sword felt more like a burden than a boon, its weight uncharacteristically heavy in his grip.
Beneath the crumbling surface of the maze, he traversed a damp, oppressive corridor.
The walls, lined with timeworn stone, seemed to beat ominously.
The air was dense and saturated with dampness that clung to his clothes.
The path that stretched ahead was punctuated by occasional flickers of light filtering through gaps in the high ceiling.
Pale spores drifted down like ghosts, adding to the corridor's eerie ambiance.
He had taken the open trapdoor leading down this winding path as a chance to bypass the final competition of the maze.
However, he knew he couldn't simply take the shortcut.
The laws and nature of the Soterice trial were subtle, and a single misstep could cost them everything.
Li's boots echoed off the stone as he passed beneath tall, cracked pillars that rose from the ground like overgrown giants.
The hall stretched endlessly ahead, a path that never seemed to end.
He did not make a sound, not even to murmur to himself.
The only sound was the constant drip of water that had come to be the background to his every movement, like the ticking of a clock.
The path led on, with shadows deepening around him as the cavern stretched high above, and the strange forest of stone pillars grew even more dense.
At the end of the hall, there was a clearing, the final chamber of this strange, underground world.
Eventually, he beheld its sight.
At the center of the cavern stood an ancient, gnarled tree, its roots clinging desperately to the uneven stone beneath it.
Thick vines cascaded from its branches, and each vine was suspended by some unnatural force.
Within the vines, a single vial of a jade-bright potion dangled like a golden apple.
'The Sanguine Bloom,' he called out to it in silence.
He faltered in his footsteps to scan around it for a moment.
Though his eyes were only briefly separated, the glow seemed to beckon him forward.
But something felt off about it as well.
There was a weight to the decision he had to make, like a palpable pressure in his yearning for sudden greed.
Li's jaw tightened, a small vein pulsing at his temple. 'Tsk, nothing is as simple as it seems here. What a pain. To be manipulated by my own eyes.'
He ascended the moss-covered steps and kept his attention fixed on the lone tree ahead.
Many more glass vials came into view. They all dangled like fruit on the verge of ripening.
The cavern from further inside stretched high above, and the ceiling was an intricate lattice of openings where beams of pale sunlight filtered through.
More faintly glowing spores drifted in the air and were carried by an invisible current.
From a near perspective, the vial he had noted first acquired much more detail.
Aside from appearing slender from afar, the vial was also sealed at both ends with dark metal caps.
The glass was polished to a near-crystal-like gem, and suspended inside was a stalk of golden grain, its husks intact, frozen in a state of undisturbed preservation.
Around it, a pale green radiance ticked, and something of richer color seeped into the contours of the grain, as though nourishing it from within.
The vine holding it remained still, offering neither resistance nor invitation.
'I am only permitted to take one.'
Li's fingers hovered over the glass.
The palpable weight of the strange energy that leaked around the tree exacerbated his nerves.
Even though he was intent on taking the one he had chosen, his hand trembled with restraint, and his fingers spread out oddly.
The moment he reached for it, his index finger tapped the glass. Something stirred within the roots.
Glyphs along the tree's trunk began to glow; even the vines started to move as if they were coming to life.
Li's fingers hovered over the vial, the green radiance within casting eerie shadows on his face.
He hesitated as his eyes flicked toward the other potions now refracting light in a mesmerizing dance, each vying for his attention.
He knew that even the slightest touch of another would unleash unspeakable consequences.
Despite the oppressive energy coiling around him like a noose, he had faced such trials before.
The knowledge etched deep within his heart guided his actions.
With measured breath, he steadied his trembling hand, focusing solely on the chosen vial.
. . .
Above, the battle raged with relentless intensity.
The monstrous entity, once known as White Rice, had regenerated a broken tendril, deliberately sweeping it through the glass shards to hurl them toward Juno.
Her instincts flared; she darted aside, and a shard grazed her arm, drawing a sharp sting of pain.
She briskly summoned a flurry of petals, forming a barrier that intercepted the oncoming shards.
The petals swayed briefly before disintegrating under the assault, but they had served their purpose.
Juno's eyes narrowed, and she held tighter onto the fan.
A sudden inspiration struck her, and she drew in her lips, the gesture subtle yet bound.
With a swift motion, she raised her fan and drove it into the glass before her.
From the fragments, branches sprouted, intertwining and expanding, forming a barricade that widened with each sweep of her fan.
Once the barrier reached its intended breadth, Juno executed an upward arc with her fan.
The branches responded, lancing forward to pierce the myriad eyes of the grotesque mass. Another cacophony of shrieks erupted, reverberating through the chamber.
"This should impair its vision momentarily," she hoped.
Nonetheless, the creature's tendrils flailed erratically, their movements wild and uncoordinated, striking indiscriminately.
"Close combat is futile," she assessed, recalling the entity's regenerative capabilities. "Defeating it through conventional means seems impossible."
As she evaded the onslaught, her body twisted and contorted, narrowly escaping each strike.
Her exhaustion mounted, with her movement swiftly draining her remaining energy.
Despite this, her strategic acumen remained her greatest asset.
"The mirrors contained the trial keeper," she mused. "Perhaps this mass is merely a weakened manifestation." But if the mirrors were destroyed, why did this abomination persist?
A sudden surge of dark energy forced her to retreat hastily.
In her haste, she stumbled, a sharp cry escaping her lips as a jagged shard of glass embedded itself in her knee.
Gritting her teeth, she bit down on her wrist, suppressing the pain as she extracted the shard.
Then, with a determined grunt, she rose to her feet.
Her injured leg trembled, but she stood firm ground and sharpened her gaze onto the undulating black mass before her.
A surge of frustration welled within her; there had to be a means to tip the scales.
The Soterice Trials, in particular, weren't designed to flaunt brute strength, because in truth, they were a competition of strategy.
Each trial consisted of a delicate balance that would offer both adversaries a final gambit.
Victory belonged to the one who discerned and wielded it first.
As Juno bowed her head, a sudden glint pierced the periphery of her vision.
She turned her gaze without lifting her head and honed in on the source of the anomaly.
There, nestled in a shadowed corner, stood a single mirror.
Unlike its counterparts, which had succumbed to the chaos, this mirror remained untouched by the destruction.
It lacked the chains that had bound the others, leaning precariously against the wall, with the surface partially obscured by the mass.
Juno's breath hitched. 'White Rice must have leapt into the mirror to safeguard it, ensuring his essence wouldn't be entirely extinguished!' The entity had been so drained of power that it had devolved into an unrecognizable form.
Summoning the final threads of her strength, Juno collapsed her fan and released the branches that had ensnared the mass's eyes.
She took a few long strides forward.
The eyes shuttered momentarily before knitting together the ruptures that had marred their pupils.
Once restored, the eyes swiveled erratically.
Their movements betrayed a disoriented frenzy as they scoured the chamber in search of Juno.
Upon locating her, the pupils contracted in a show of alarm.
Instead of ascending, the mass began to ooze laterally, as it surged toward the mirror, intent on enveloping it entirely.
Juno sensed the imminent threat and acted instinctively.
She directed her fan toward the mirror, and with a decisive motion, two branches erupted from the wall behind it.
They collided with a resounding crash, as fragments of the mirror exploded outward.
In that pivotal instant, the oppressive entity that had cloaked the chamber writhed and evaporated into billows of steam.
A final scream echoed across the walls before the mass imploded.
The eyes blinked rapidly, but their movements slowed until they ceased altogether.
All that remained was a drifting wisp of smoke.
Juno stumbles against the wall that the entity had dispersed from.
With a weary exhale, she murmured, "I must've gotten lucky. Li. You're welcome."
. . .
Li's fingers coiled tightly around the vine.
His fingertips grazed the cool surface of the vial before he released a long sigh.
'…The only issue now is that the vine won't release it to me until Juno finishes—'
As if in response to his thoughts, a deep, resonant grinding drilled across the surface, a sound that seemed to emanate from the very bones of the tree.
A low hum followed, rising from the depths of the trunk, as the glyphs etched into the bark pulsed with renewed light before dimming once more.
The slender vine recoiled, detaching from the vial's apex and retreating up the branch like a desiccated tendril.
A subtle smile appeared on Li's lips as he turned the vial over in his hand, observing the liquid within as it swirled gently.
He brought it closer, positioning it just above his heart.
Raising a hand to his face, he traced a line from the bridge of his nose down to his lips and splayed his fingers across them.
A low chuckle escaped his throat.
However, the sound was more exhalation than laughter, like a tremulous release of the tension.
After allowing his hand to fall, he whispered in a reserved tone, "You did well."
「The Jade Scythe of the Architect Afterword has been concluded.」
To be continued…