Arc II, Chapter 45

Meilan

Meilan wakes with a start, the acrid smell of fire and blood in her nose.

She doesn't remember falling asleep. It's soon obvious that it wasn't exhaustion that put her under; the back of her head throbs in pain, her body aches all over, sharp stabs of agony the result of the myriad of cuts and bruises dotting her flesh. She can taste the blood in her throat, can feel the way her insides protest every movement she makes. She pushes herself up into a sitting position, dizzy and disoriented, but then her mind clears and she is able to take in the horror that surrounds her.

Her home is burning and her people are dying.

LíngÈrLíngLiùzhèn is- was? -not a large place, but their people still numbered into the hundreds. They are trained from the moment they learn to walk for battle, a long history of proud warriors passed down from one generation to the next. Meilan is the heir to that history, is the heir to so much more - and yet she feels powerless now.

Oz's force is well-trained, but more than that, they are numerous; their men number into the thousands, as if they had already known of Meilan's proud heritage and brought more than enough manpower to overwhelm them. Meilan watches her home burn: the houses, the school, the community theater, the library - the flames lick up the walls, tempo matching the screams she can hear in the distance.

Her people fight. Of course, they fight. There are bodies everywhere, blood and bones and flesh, and though many come from Oz's side, even more come from Meilan's. This is their home, after all, and in their home, they have children, they have the old and the sickly, the gentle and the feeble.

Old Man Shi is laying face down several paces away from her, blood seeping out and puddling around his butchered torso; he'd made the best chicken noodle soup in the village. The young girl who'd sold flowers at the market in order to save money for her brother's upcoming birthday is half-buried under the burning rubble of the stationary shop, unseeing eyes left opened. Her older brother lays dead just a foot away from her, the back of his head caved in, one hand still outstretched to the sister he could not save.

Meilan thinks she's howling, but the roar of the fire is loud in her ears, the dying screams of her people even louder. She's moving despite the agony that jolts through her body; she picks up a fallen sword, the hilt of it familiar to her because she had helped train the young apprentice who'd been given it after passing his third martial test. The boy is nowhere to be found, but blood stains the hilt and then her hand as she wraps shaking fingers around it.

Meilan heads for where the screams are loudest, striking down any Oz soldiers she sees on her way. The more distance she crosses, the more bodies of her people she finds - but she cannot stop, she cannot slow down to give them the proper rites. The apprentice's blade cuts down enemy after enemy as moves closer to the heart of her home, and she finds herself shaken out of her murderous haze only as she crosses the steps into her ancestral home's courtyard.

Wufei's field of flowers is burning, just like everything else. The blossoms had been savagely trampled over, more bodies and gore scattered atop them. It does not look like a makeshift grade; it looks like the beginning of a vile swamp, the bodies of her family members carelessly tossed and discarded amongst the dying petals. She doesn't see Wufei's body amongst them, and she breathes a little easier; for all that the bookworm holes up in his study to read, he's never once neglected his training.

She can hear the furious yells and ringing strikes of swords from up ahead, but she stops in Wufei's dying flower field at the sight of the body curled near the steps. There is a moment where Meilan's world shifts back onto the right axis, only it feels so inherently wrong. How could this have happened?

"...Grandfather?" Meilan says.

Against all odds, her grandfather's eyes slip open at her words. There is a bloody gouge where his chest used to be, his finely-tailored robes dyed in such heavy crimson that it looks nearly black. Meilan's feet move her closer and she feels herself reaching out, reaching for the hand that used to take her's when she was still too little to walk the backgarden paths alone.

His hand is cold to the touch. "Xiao...Mei..."

They both know he will not survive this. Perhaps he could have, once upon a time - but Meilan is nearly 18 years old, the proper age to start the inheritance process for Nataku's gift. Meilan has only just started her rites last spring. After the first rite, her movements became more fluid; after her second, her strength could shatter bone upon impact if she tried. She was to pass through her third rite by the end of the next new moon. Her family had honed the rite of passage down over the generations, ensuring an easier transfer from one host to the next; it was a long, arduous process that guaranteed cohesion.

They did not have time now for that guarantee.

"Xiao-Mei... You must..." Her grandfather chokes the words out through blood as it seeps out from his lips. Despite the cold frailty of his hand, his eyes burn gold; she can feel the pressure from under his skin. "Take..."

They both know he will not survive this attack - but only she knows that she will not survive this inheritance.

She could have, if this had been like his inheritance, or the inheritance of his mother before him. She could have, even if it had been like what is needed right now - a quick transfer of power, violent and painful as Nataku willed out the toxins to make room for herself in her newest vessel.

But in order to fully take in Nataku, it requires a vessel in excellent condition. Meilan's ribs are broken; one wrong movement, and they will surely puncture her lungs. Blood oozes sluggishly from the cuts and stab wounds passing soldiers had made into her form after they'd bashed the back of her head and knocked her out. The only thing keeping her moving right now is pure, vengeful fury.

Once she fully inherits Nataku, she will die - but not immediately.

Meilan's hand clasp her grandfather's tightly as she looks into his eyes. "Yes, Grandfather," she swears to him. Nataku will give her enough time to mete out justice, to avenge her people and her home; she will raze Oz's soldiers to bone and ash with a fire so immense that even their souls will not be able to enter the cycle of reincarnation.

"Wife."

Arms reach around her, a warm chest at her back as the smell of sweat, blood, and the well-worn pages of a book surround her. She hadn't realized she was shaking until she felt his still and strong form compared to hers, and what would have made her bitter at any other time instead fills her with a sense of relief.

Wufei's hands lay atop her own, gently pulling her clutching grip apart and instead taking her grandfather's trembling fingers between his own bloodied hold. A distant part of Meilan thinks fleetingly of how those fingers shouldn't be covered in blood and callouses, but how they should be flipping through the pages of the tomes he so loved, or inspecting the hundreds of delicate flowers he'd maintained.

Meilan wants to cry, but the heat of Nataku's fire evaporates her tears before they can even properly drip from her eyes.

"Master Long, give Nataku to me."

The words reverberate from behind her as she leans against his strength. Even though her energy is flagging, even though her home is burning, even though she is quickly running out of things to protect - she still has one thing, one person left. She cannot allow this.

"Wufei, you can't," Meilan says. She wants to push him away, she wants to grab hold of her grandfather's hands and demand her birthright. The little of Nataku that she does have burns through her veins, but it does not rage against her flesh as she knows it should. After all - she doesn't want to hurt the man she loves. "This is my inheritance. This is my heritage."

"We do not have time for your foolish bravery, woman," Wufei tells her. She knows how bad it is, just from the gentleness of his voice.

"Nataku's gift is not something to be accepted lightly! Once it is given in this manner, it cannot be given freely again!" Meilan manages out, furious. "You could die!"

Wufei does not let go; his voice is simmering fury. "If you take Nataku now, you will die."

There is a reason her ancestors chose to prolong the process of inheritance, there is a reason their bloodline has persisted for all these years. Nataku's gift is not something benign; it is not stored in an object or in the delicate writings of an old scroll.

Nataku's gift is an ever-burning flame stored in the blood of her vessels. A single rite is one more blood offering, given from host to inheritor. Meilan has already consumed a small part of Nataku's gift, but it is not enough. In order to transfer Nataku whole - or as whole as She currently was - from host to inheritor...

Her grandfather nods and lets go.

Meilan keeps the small bit of Nataku still humming within her chest quiet. Perhaps this would be enough to ensure Wufei's survival; he will inherit the bulk of the monstrosity that her ancestors had guarded with their lives, but she can still do her part. Withholding a single drop can sometimes mean the difference to keep a glass from overflowing.

Meilan does not look away as Wufei reaches into her grandfather's bloodied, heaving chest and pulls his beating heart from its cavity.

She does not look away as he forces himself to bite into it, piece by bloody piece, until his lips are stained with the blood of her lineage and his eyes burn with the gold of her curse.

Once the fires stop burning, Meilan's home is gone and her people are dead.

And once Shenlong is done, so too are the soldiers of Oz.

- - - - -

In a future

once

written...

Ishigaki's governor laid dead somewhere in the corridor. The fool had tried to run, to escape the justice that awaited him in answer to his misdeeds. The small bits of Nataku still in her veins had sung as Meilan's sword cut through his flesh and bone, had ended his miserable little life and the lives of the men he'd paid to help him commit his atrocities.

Meilan knew she was acting recklessly, but ever since the Duchess passed in the greenhouse fire, it had drudged up all sorts of memories she'd prefer to not remember. The powerlessness she had felt as her home was destroyed had only resurfaced in the wake of the blaze that had erupted on Heero Yuy's property, and though she had been able to pull the Duchess's body from the burning wreckage, it had already been too late.

Hard choices had to be made, and made fast. To tell the Duke about his husband's passing could mean endangering him and the lives of his men on the expedition; to not tell the Duke was tantamount to a betrayal. Howard and Acting Commander Broden had decided on a middle road: inform Duke Maxwell, as the family of the deceased, and His Highness the Crown Prince, as acting general of the country's army in Heero's absence.

The latter had decided to delay the news of the Duchess's passing so as to not distract and endanger the Duke; the former had arrived in the Yuy capital and taken away the Duchess's body, to honor him with the death rites all believers in the Harvester followed.

Meilan had little power or influence to do anything. Howard had asked her to return to the estate in the meantime, and together with Hilde Schbeiker, they kept the Duke's home running despite the rise in tensions. The Duchess had not been well-liked, especially not by Meilan, but even she knew how devastated Heero would be once he heard the news. The guilt sat dark and heavy in her gut every time she looked at the burnt remains of the greenhouse.

Perhaps this was why she'd felt compelled to handle this personally. News about Ishigaki's involvement in human trafficking had made it to the Yuy capital, and Meilan had needed to get away from the darkness that clouded her new home. Howard would have dissuaded her from going, still sensitive over the loss of the Duchess, so Meilan had only told Hilde about her trip before she'd left early in the morning.

The rumors had proved true, and the mercenaries that had been hired to help with the crime were better trained than most - but Meilan had learned to kill before she'd learned to read, and Nataku's blood boiled in her veins like a poison. With every corrupt person she'd cut down, it felt like lancing a blister and draining away the disgusting ooze, leaving something that could be cleaned and made afresh. Like this, she could do something to chip away at the powerlessness that still gripped her.

There are still hundreds of things she needs to do. There are the children she'd left huddled in the basement as she went to slaughter their captors, who will need to be returned to their homes; Wufei's flowers, kept to a single part of the estate garden, still need tending; there are new seeds she bought from one of the vendors in Ishigaki that she will gift him.

There are still people she cannot save, such as the young woman the governor had been using as a shield before she was killed in the scuffle between Meilan and the mercenaries; such as the Duchess, laid cold and decaying in the Yuy mausoleum before Solo Maxwell stormed in to take his brother's body away; such as Meilan's family and village, left as nothing more than dust in the wake of Nataku's rage.

Meilan knows she is strong, in the same way she knows she is weak. The parts of her that are Nataku were not enough to save anyone, but they were enough to kill whoever she wanted. It was one of the things she most hated about what she had become. If only she could move faster, if only she could be stronger, if only she had been strong enough from the start- if only, if only!

"Xiao-Mei..."

Meilan turned around - but there's no one, just the dead.

"Xiao-Mei..."

The hall is dark- how? When? The lanterns had cast a glow over the entire corridor for the duration of the fight, and yet somehow, it felt as if the light was no longer there. It waned into the flickering shadows, the air thick with the smell of blood and death. The only breaths she could hear were her own, yet despite this, she could still hear her name being called in the voice of a person long gone.

"Xiao-Mei." It's right by her ear, but Meilan could not turn to look - pinned in place by the blade protruding out from where her left lung was supposed to be.

She had survived grievous injuries before. Nataku's gift, meager as it was, could do a bit to heal her; faster than most people but still far slower than her husband and his allies. It had allowed her to survive the destruction of her home, allowed her to make the long trek towards the borders of Sanc, where they had first met Duke Yuy. Meilan was no stranger to agonizing pain.

The blade was pulled out from her body and she threw herself forward, pivoting quickly on one foot and swinging forward with her blade. She didn't know what she was expecting to see - one of the slain mercenaries? A demon drawn by the simple lure of spilled blood? Her dead grandfather, still calling her name?

She didn't expect to see Hilde Schbeiker.

"You..." Meilan's next words were lost to a mouthful of blood. She understood and could handle the pain, but she could not understand why Nataku wasn't doing anything. Her lung is collapsing, her blood flowing freely from the wound - and yet Nataku's fire has dwindled within her, flickering like the last life of a dying candle.

Hilde stood still before her, the large blade she'd used to cleave through Meilan's body held aloft. It was large and curved, yet somehow it did not reflect the dying lantern light; the hilt, the handle, whatever it was that Hilde was using to hold it was lost to the dark, as if she was gripping the shadows itself to wield it. Where her fingers wrapped around its base, blood dripped in copious amounts - but this was not from the fatal wound she'd given Meilan, but rather from her own hands.

As if it was eating her.

"Lady Meilan," Hilde's voice was even and unaffected, her violet gaze flat; to Meilan, she hardly looked alive. The blood from her hands fell and merged with the pools of gore on the floor, and with each heavy drop, Meilan could hear her people cry out for her. "I'm sorry, but I need a catalyst."

Hilde brings the scythe down.