#got a little waylaid by the Magnus Archives

[windlion]

Transmigrator Pile-up Pt 3

In which I cheerfully abuse my protagonist, because that’s what he’s there for.

TW: Animal death.  We’re sad about it, too.  Also cheerful abuse of the Chinese name generator because Author Don’t Care and I can’t do this on my own.

The clue, when it came, was not subtle.  It was, in fact, written in characters that had to be several miles high.  At least.

"What the FUCK is that?!"

He couldn't help it if he was loud, that was entirely involuntary!  There was only a sliver of the moon visible; one eighth waxing or so.  That wasn't what floored him.  No, the moon had apparently gotten a new special effects budget because glowing lines of red stretched across the darkened surface like someone had taken a giant calligraphy brush and sketched characters across the surface of the Earth's only natural satellite.  Well.  That was more or less what they did.  Projected by talismans, sorta, and he still really hated that whole bullshit mission because what the fuck was up with putting an array on the moon.

Oh fuck, he knew what that was.

Dimly, he also registered that oh, look, there was more than one natural satellite now: a few chunks of rock glimmered faintly red and malevolent in the night sky aaaaaaaaaaand as he turned to what had to be the south, yes, there was a sparkling belt of shimmering gray like a cloud obscuring the stars in a wide swath that followed the equator.

If he went far enough north, he could probably see the new northern lights and the walls of the post-apocalypse's most exclusive gated community.  He kinda wanted to hate them for existing.

Outside the Array. Mountains.  Eagle.  Fast healing.  Had to be beast tribe.  OG was with the bandits, then.  OG was a big dude with a lot of scars and red swirling tattoos and fuuuuuuuuck he landed in the Mountain King Feng Mahti, didn't he?  

Oh fuck fuck fuck that meant the eagle was Taifun.  He'd killed the Mountain King's bird.  All Taifun had been trying to do was protect him.  His breath hitched and stopped in his chest.  Not fair.  

Grandma Xu shuffled out of the house, cautious and curious as to what had him yelling in the night on the way back from the outhouse.  Because plumbing happened to other people.  She gently touched his shoulder, and he realized he must have sat down. "Hielang-ge?"

"Here." His voice came out choked, and he swallowed before saying lamely, "I'm just. . . having a moment here." Jay finally tore his eyes away from the goddamn horror show overhead and leaned forward, rubbing a hand across his face.  Yeah, not at all subtle.  Shit.  

Jay Cooper was jaegering fucking Feng Mahti falling on his ass in a farmer's field crying his eyes out because the first goddamn thing he did was get Taifun killed and if he ever ran into the Gardens they'd probably try and kill him before he said a word, especially with the hate-on the Lettuces had for Feng-zong for some pretty good reasons.  Like traumatically killing the best character in the entire series Sect Leader Lin.  

Transmigration stories were supposed to be about redeeming and improving the original.  Who let him fuck up this badly?

He sorta . . . blue screened for awhile there.  

He came back around to Grandma Xu gently patting his scarred cheek, then hauling on his arm.  "Come back in, Hielang-ge.  It is not safe to stay outside at night."

The fact that this little old granny farmer was poking and manhandling the bandit with biceps the size of her head made him want to giggle hysterically.  Did they know?  Did they know who he was?  Before he did, no less?

Big bad bandit king obediently got up and followed Grandma Xu back inside to the fire at the hearth and where the family was winding down for the evening, Xu Ming nursing little Yan while listening to A-Mei babble enthusiastically about something.  Xu Jing looked a little startled at whatever he saw on Jay's face and only settled when Grandma gently pushed him back down into his seat.  "It is nothing, just star-gazing."

It was the first clear night since he'd been able to get back vertical. Literally the first time he'd gotten outside after dark.  And there you have it, bam, he was right in the Arrays of Heaven universe. Welcome to whatever was after the end of the world.  

The way Xu Jing cut a glance across at him, he definitely knew more than he was saying.  Shit, they were braver than he was, picking the Mountain King off the floor and trying to get him back upright.  He owed them a solid.  Several of them.  Maybe in gold.  If he had any. . . . He hadn't asked to see or go through the things they'd found with him.  

It had seemed like a bad idea to make a fuss over asking for "his" things back while he was still in their care.  If they wanted to keep something, what the hell, it wasn't like he was going to know.  They were welcome to it.  

So he didn't need Feng Mahti's personal effects, like a stranger collecting someone else's things on his way out of prison.  But there was something he had to do that he really didn't want to, and the sooner the better.  

Xu Jing tried to evade, but Jay was used to literally and metaphorically herding cats and large birds of prey.  Uh.  What used to count as large birds of prey.  Anyways.  He sat down across from him and caught the man's eyes, trying to project calm and implacable.   "I'd been meaning to ask, now that I can get around again. . .  You know where I went down?"

"I didn't. . . I haven't looked."

Jay breathed in, then out. No one had a minor breakdown tonight, no sir. Totally stable. "But you could take me there."

"To the area, yes," Xu Jing hedged before looking up at Jay with misgivings, brows furrowed, "Are you sure?  It might be dangerous."

Someone shot Feng Mahti out of the sky with the low-tech equivalent of a surface-to-air missile in what was probably an ambush.  Yeah, that sorta went without saying.  "I need to see it."

Xu Jing nodded slowly.  "Tomorrow morning, then."

After the morning chores, before the sun had really properly come up to peek over the rise of the mountain ridges, Xu Jing and Jay headed out.  It felt almost weird to be wearing Feng Mahti's proper clothes, even if it wasn't everything.  The boots fit.  It took him a minute to figure out how to lash the sleeves of his underrobe under the bracers, Grandpa Xu's worn overrobe loose on top.  At least the colors didn't stand out; Feng Mahti had favored rusts, browns and darker reds that faded into the forest, if it a bit dark for spring.

Xu Jing's brown and grey were equally surreptitious, and the man handled himself like he was used to hiking, striking out along the stony ridge downhill.  Jay trailed after at a sociable distance, watching out for loose rocks underfoot.  "You come out into the woods often?  Doesn't look like there's any paths."

"Not this way.  There's a village, little trading post, about half a day's walk over there.  That's where I met Xiao Min."  Xu Jing gestured with his walking stick to the east, back away over his shoulder.  "Never a reason to go southwest."

The small glacier lake they'd mentioned was more to the north.  Xu Jing said the bandits watered their birds there. . .  maybe someone had waited for just that.  Stake out the watering hole.  Bastards.

The hike was mostly quiet.  It had the same feeling as going on an S&R where you knew it was a retrieval.  Jay didn't remember any of the woods, just trusted Xu Jing knew where he was headed.  It'd been a week, and it had rained more than once.  Any trail he'd left behind would need a dog to find, now.

After the first hour coming down from the mountain valley, the rest of the morning turned into a long, steady climb uphill.  He must have stumbled his way down.  If any of that was under his own power, anyways.   Xu Jing had been too polite to mention if he'd rolled the entire way down the goddamn mountain.

Finally, they crested a ridge and turned, and Jay caught his breath hard, freezing mid-step.  

That was the sharp little valley that Taifun had banked into, little more than a cleft in a much larger mountain.  And halfway down the opposite ridge. . . yes.  Trees were broken and strewn aside in a line where a bird the size of a small airplane had made its final short, sharp stop.  

He pushed past Xu Jing, already calculating the fastest route.  He dropped off the rock ledge they had been following up, between trees; at this elevation, it was mostly confiers and some adventurous brush that was just barely leafing out for the season.  Dark green, pale shoots, white flowers, a tumble of those brown-red rocks like gravel across the bottom of the cut.  

He had to go slower through the splinters, finding it easier to route parallel to the path of destruction and then move uphill to. . . to where Taifun fell.  

Jay let out his breath in a slow hiss, then regretted the indrawn breath that followed.  Death always smelt like death.  The vultures and other carrion feeders had been doing their job, and the results were never pretty.  One of the wings had been snapped and strewn aside, more a crumple of feathers and bone than anything else.  The other was folded under, and the sheer jumble of flesh and bones was barely recognizable as a bird.  

Jay stepped wide around it, seeing but not seeing until his eyes finally caught on a sharply curving shape.  The beak.  He crouched, pressing one hand, then the other flat against it.  It was warmer on one side that caught the sun.  There, with his hands cradling the immense beak, his heart just dropped.

Fuck. It was worse than seeing the sad wreckage of animals alongside the road.  Senseless death of things in the wrong place at the wrong time, where their only flaw was getting in the way of humans.  This probably wiped out his kharma from never having hit so much as a chipmunk himself.  Taifun was dead because of him.  No doubts about that.  Taifun would have lived until the desert.  Until the oasis where Feng Mahti, desperate and betrayed, drank the poisoned waters to follow him down while Lin-laozi watched.  

He hated that part of the books.  Read it once. Might have had to scream into his pillow in outrage. Lin-laozi had just . . . walked away from the corpses of the bandit king and his bird, left the well dripping with black malice and resentment in a complete 180 of his beliefs and that  . .  Jay honestly tried to forget the whole scene was canon because that was some utter grimdark bullshit.

Taifun deserved better.  Deserved better than taking the hit for his idiot ass, better than that horrible bitter end in the sands.  Lin-laozi would never have done that.  

At least, if Feng Mahti was here now, they hadn't tried to cross the Wastes into the Empire yet.  Maybe Jay could keep the bandits out of that whole shitheap of a plot twist.  Save something.

He rested his forehead against the cool feathers of the flat forehead, eyes closed.  He wasn't really the religious type, wouldn't know who or what to pray to at home much less . . . on the road, whatever that meant for his spiritual existence anyways, but he hoped that wherever Taifun was, the bird heard.  

"I was your end instead of your second chance.  I might not even be Feng Mahti's second chance.  But I can at least try and make some of this better."