Hakkai had lost his dragon, and he wasn’t particularly pleased about that. Especially since he thought Hakuryuu had taken a bullet during the first few seconds of the ambush, and he wasn’t too sure how a wound in jeep form would affect the gentle creature. Either way, he had left the dragon on the path to their destination and hadn’t been able to get back to the road since. That didn’t make him too happy.

Neither was he thrilled at having lost contact with his comrades. He couldn’t hear Sanzo’s pistol anymore, or Gojyo’s cursing, or Goku’s ultimately unnecessary but comforting battle screams. He hadn’t seen any of them for at least ten minutes, immediately after exiting the jeep and entering the underbrush, and hadn’t heard them for well over three minutes. And it was obvious to him that he was being herded away from the path — every time Hakkai made to move back the way he came, zigzagging as it had been, Shien would appear and snap his whips. Said whips were too strong for Hakkai to shield against and run away from at the same time, and so retreating only made sense in that situation. Especially since the god would disappear once he starting moving again. It was an excellent example of divide and conquer, and that wasn’t something Hakkai particularly liked — not when he was the one being divided, anyways.

No, he wasn’t happy that he’d lost his dragon, his friends, and his freedom of movement. But what really ‘cooked his goose’, as Gojyo would say, was that he had just lost his monocle.

Today just hasn’t been my day, has it?

Nothing moved in the jungle of plants around him, not even the wind. The air had quickly become stifling, thick and heavy and humid. Hakkai had been resting long enough to get his breathing under control again, but breathing itself seemed just that tad too difficult — like a suffocating weight was resting on his chest. The right side of his vision was hopelessly blurred, turning the surrounding forest into a mishmash of indistinct greens and browns, and he knew he wouldn’t have the chance to react if Shien attacked from that direction.

He leaned to his left, peering around the tree he was resting against. The bark was dry and rough against his palms, and smelt like clean earth and leaf mold. There was nothing back the way he came except for trees, more trees, the strangling density of underbrush, and the dark green vines of the kudzu. The damn thing was everywhere, he had noticed, woven through the canopy like a strange tapestry; he wondered why it hadn’t smothered more trees and allowed sunlight into the darkness beneath the canopy. His tree was one of the few that hadn’t been buried beneath the thick vines and broad, spade-shaped leaves. But regardless of how innocuously quiet the woods appeared, somewhere back there the god was hiding - seeing everything through closed eyes, apparently content to allow Hakkai to stay where he was but ready to attack the instant the demon tried to rejoin his comrades.

Hakkai shifted slightly and rested his forehead against the bark of the tree, closing his eyes. He could only think of one reason for Homura to try this tactic — to separate Sanzo from the others and capture the monk’s sutra. Sanzo was tough, but his pistol had no direct affect against a god, and Hakkai wasn’t too sure the Maten-kyomen could work against anything other than demons. It probably wouldn’t take much effort for Homura to just reach out and pluck the scripture away.

And there was also Goku. Goku would fight to the death to protect Sanzo, and there were only two other gods besides Homura. Zenon could only hold off one person, and Hakkai highly doubted that god would try squaring off with Goku. No, Zenon was probably keeping Gojyo occupied, leaving Homura with the two people he obviously enjoyed toying with the most. But for what reason? Was he here to goad the golden-eyed boy with more “Become stronger” lines, or would he possibly try to kidnap the youth (again)? Or at the very worst... kill him?

Hakkai frowned and straightened, his bangs catching against the bark. One thing was certain — he needed to get back to the path, to where this damn ambush had started, to where his friends might need his help. The silence unnerved him something awful; he wished he could hear something other than the sound of the branches overhead rubbing against each other, even if it was nothing more than the irritating chirr of a beetle. He didn’t like the idea of Gojyo or Sanzo lying somewhere in this green emptiness, maybe bleeding to death, desperately needing his help —

Well, that decided it. He had to find a way to slip past Shien and get back to the path. If he had to let a few hits get through his barrier in order to keep moving, he would just have to deal with the pain. He would rather die than let any of his friends get hurt because he wasn’t trying hard enough to get past an obstruction.

Hakkai leaned to his left again to peer around the tree, hoping Shien had possibly gotten bored of this game and left.

Instead, he almost put his eye out on a kudzu leaf.

He jerked backward out of reflex, awkwardly focusing on the broad, pale leaf. It stirred slightly in the breeze, larger than both his hands put together. The dark vine it sprouted from clung tightly to the bark of the tree, tiny roots seeping into the crevices and hanging on with an iron-like grip. In fact, the whole tree was suddenly covered with the stuff, except for the side he was on, drowning out the mottled brown of the trunk with a sea of hairy green foliage.

What the hell?!

Hakkai took a slow step backwards, pulling away from the tree without actually removing his hands from the bark. The silence only seemed to wrap closer around him — nothing else was moving except for him and the sudden growth of kudzu, the leaves of which shifted and stirred against each other with the currents of air.

Except there was no breeze — his hair stuck to his neck and forehead with sweat, and never once did a breath of air drift by to cool him. The kudzu was moving by itself.

This is it, he realized suddenly. This is the not-presence I’ve been feeling ever since we entered the forest. It’s not a demon, it’s a plant. They’re alive, but not sentient — they act purely on instinct, the instinct to survive, with no thoughts or emotions...

A thin tendril with pale green leaf buds slithered down the trunk, moving with the gawky quickness of a growing plant on fast-forward. Every few inches it seemed to pause, and the buds would sprout, expanding into new leaves that began to turn and shift as though looking for the sun. One bud lengthened to a spear of tiny buds almost six inches long before it split and revealed the delicate purple petals of dozens of blossoms, which were quickly hidden by the larger leaves. The scent of grapes strongly assaulted his nose.

How fast did he have to move in order to escape this thing? Did it react to sudden movements? How did it sense him? Shit, how the hell could he get away from it? It was everywhere!

Hakkai slowly began to pull his hands away from the tree. The kudzu vine got there first, bursting into vicious growth, wrapping around his right wrist in one lightning fast movement. He immediately jerked back against it, and the thin vine offered no resistance, snapping instantly.

Then the whole plant came alive.

Hakkai turned and ran without another thought. A chi blast would probably be quite effective at this point, but summoning up his waning reserves of energy would slow him down, and slowing down would get him caught by that thing. What the hell was it? Some kind of demented cousin of the ninjingka? Even the ninjingka tree had given off more spiritual sense than this mutated vine, but if the thing that hissed and roared behind him like a miniature waterfall was anything like that cursed plant, he didn’t really want to stick around for lunch. Or dinner, or any other meal, actually. He liked his chi right where it was, thankyouverymuch.

He didn’t have a chance to go very far before he fetched up against a writhing sea of green spade-shaped leaves, a nest of rubbery vines that extended past his vision on either side and surged all the way up into the canopy. He couldn’t get past it, or around it; there was no point in running from something when he was so effectively blocked off. So he reached down into his chi, touched the point of light deep inside that crackled with restrained energy, and let it flow through his veins and nerves and fingers into the palm of his hand.

The effect of a chi blast was actually quite successful. The vines seemed to disintegrate at the slightest touch, leaving a large hole where a green wall had once resided, blackened edges smoking in a decidedly pleasing manner. Hakkai never once paused in his gait, never paused to catch his breath, for that thing was still hot on his heels, hissing like a distressed serpent; he ran, reached the edge of the smoking hole, made to jump through —

Something heavy collided with his back and head and bore him to the ground. Leaves and sticks and writhing vines pillowed his impact, and darkness surrounded him. He was pinned by something large and only barely yielding, allowing him to struggle but not get up. He couldn’t get his hands underneath him to push himself up — he could find no purchase on the vines below. They twisted and slid beneath his hands, curled around his fingers. He could feel one particularly large vine wrap around his thigh and squeeze, cutting off the circulation to his leg.

Jesus Christ — the damn thing fell on me!

He tried to gather his chi again, to blast the darkness in front of him to smithereens, to at least get a chance to sit up, but something stung his shoulder, a sting that rapidly escalated from an itch to a burn that swept through his back like a wave of fire. There was another sting, on his thigh, on his wrist, on his stomach, on his right cheek — and when the fire raced over his skull and into his eye and into his brain and burnt him alive on the inside, Hakkai only had enough time to realize

This was what Homura was planning

before oblivion took him away from the pain.

---

There was blood on his robes.

The stench of something long dead was so far up his nose that Sanzo didn’t think he’d ever be able to smell anything else again. Holding his breath didn’t work; eventually his lungs would start to burn and his vision would fade to black at the edges and a high-pitched whine would echo between his ears — but before he could pass out his lungs squeezed tight and forced him to exhale. He would just have to take another breath at that point, no matter how long he forced himself not to. If he didn’t breath through his nose he wouldn’t smell that... that death — but instead would taste it on his tongue, moldy on the roof of his mouth and the back of his throat, and somehow that was much, much worse.

There was blood on his robes, and on his hands, and even if he had the strength to try Sanzo didn’t think he’d be able to wash it all off.

There are many holy names that I could choose for you, Koryuu, but few would carry as much weight as this one. This has been given to many of the men who bore the scriptures, all of them great in their own ways.

How many men, osho-sama?

Thirty, to be exact.

That’s an awful lot of men. Surely only a handful should have carried the scriptures? If it’s been just a few hundred years since the Maten and Seiten scriptures were given to the same caretaker -

Then perhaps only a hundred monks at most could have been the heirs to the five sutras of Heaven and Earth?

Yes.

The weight of the scriptures is a heavy one, Koryuu. A weight... that can be too heavy for some to bear.

How heavy had it been, he wondered, for such a young man to have so many gray hairs on his head? Osho-sama hadn’t been old — not as old as the abbot, anyway — but the lines at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth did not evince his inclination for smiling so much as they did his mental age. How heavy had the Maten- and Seiten-kyomen been for him, to turn his silky brown hair into a faded mockery of youth? How was he able to keep smiling?

Osho-sama had smiled at everything, even at death. Sanzo had never understood how a simple smile could comfort a man grieving for a wife lost in childbirth, or a woman mourning for a husband lost in battle. Death was final. Death was eternal. Smiling at death did not make everything better.

There was blood splashed over his master’s face, drying in the seams of age around his mouth. Osho-sama wasn’t smiling at death this time.

Something was broken behind his eyes. Something that burned and tickled at the same time, not quite painful enough to break through this... this... emptiness. Nothingness. There was blood sprayed over the tiles of the bedroom like water from a carelessly dropped glass, black as night against the pale robes that tangled over the once graceful form that was now nothing more than a broken doll. Not even the gold crown was free of that... that... stain.

Osho-sama was dead. Dead because of him.

Why had he frozen? Why had his legs turned to ice at the moment his gaze met the slit-pupil eyes that glared through the broken screen? Even if he didn’t have the sutra memorized he could have... have fought, have done something, even if it was as cowardly as running away. He knew how to fight. He knew how to defend himself. Why hadn’t he been able to move?

Why hadn’t osho-sama chosen to recite the sutra, instead of protecting Sanzo’s body with his own?

There was blood on his hands from when the demon had hacked into osho-sama’s frail frame, slicing open the fragile life like a fish to be gutted and thrown aside. He could still feel where it had sprayed on his face, hot as candle wax before it cooled and dried.

I couldn’t save him.

I couldn’t... couldn’t even save myself.

Something was broken behind his eyes, and it burned like fire in his sinuses and down the back of his throat. How could he have failed like this? The one thing that was most precious to him, more important than his own life... was...

Past the broken screen through which the demons had come and gone raged the storm. It had never really stopped, never given a moment’s respite, flooding the compound and battering down the gardens on which the diet of the monks depended. On the pale and shattered rice-paper screening there were muddy tracks from feet both shod and unshod, defiling the room Sanzo had once thought was so sacred. Here was where osho-sama had prayed and taught and slept. Here was where he had lived, and Sanzo had never thought one life’s actions could be so significant, even in the most mundane of ways.

Here was where osho-sama had lived.

Had lived.

Osho-sama was dead.

Koumyou Sanzo was dead.

Dead.

Someone was screaming. Something was burning. Past the rain and lightning and the heart beating in his ears he could hear the sounds of slaughter in the temple halls, the sound of steel striking wood after it had passed through the brittle bones of a neck or an arm, severing limbs, severing lives. Skilled in martial arts the monks might have been, but they couldn’t stand up against these things. Not even osho-sama could.

And he... he hadn’t even tried to stand up to them. He had just... stood there. Frozen. Weak.

The door to the room rattled fiercely when something was thrown against it with a meaty thud, but it did not give way.

Sanzo clenched his hands, felt the dried blood crack and peel away between his fingers and the folds of his palms. They were such small hands. How could he have ever been so bold, so arrogant, as to think that he could hold a life within these hands and keep it from burning out? How could he get up and try to protect the monks outside the walls of this room from the demons who had come back for the Maten scripture if he couldn’t even protect the one thing that mattered most?

Teardrops discolored the sleeves of his robe, and he closed his eyes tightly to prevent any more from escaping.

I couldn’t save him.

Claws scraped against the wooden door, searching for the latch, seeking to draw it open and enter the room. The screaming still hadn’t stopped, but it was further away now, distant, and fainter. It wouldn’t be long before everyone was dead. Including him. Dead like osho-sama. Soon his blood would stain these floors, and wouldn’t that be justice? He had failed to protect his master, failed to protect the Seiten scripture that would eventually become his own. It was only proper that he be punished and have the Maten scripture taken from him as well.

The weight of the scriptures is a heavy one, Koryuu. A weight... that can be too heavy for some to bear.

This burden was too much for such a weak child. He was too weak. Too weak to —

burning in his veins, cramping his muscles, searing his eyes, eating away at his lungs

Sanzo forced his eyes open, staring at his hands. Was that what death would feel like? Instant and quick, there and gone like a lightning bolt before fading into the night, or lingering, painful, and —

couldn’t move, couldn’t see, couldn’t feel anything except that searing fire in his gut and the weight against his

eternal

loam and green foliage his cheek was pressed against

forever

fragrant, heady, like grapes

dead.

No.

This wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right.

The door scraped against its tracks as it was slowly dragged open.

Sanzo unclenched his hands and spread his fingers, exposing the half-moon marks where his nails had bit into the skin of his palms. This wasn’t right — the demons hadn’t come back. They had slaughtered Koumyou Sanzo, laughing as their bloodied fingers plucked the Seiten scripture from off the slender shoulders, disappearing back into the rainy night without a promise to return. The Maten scripture had been in the cupboard — osho-sama had asked him to retrieve it just as the icy trickle of youryoku had touched his spine and the demons had broken through the screening.

They hadn’t returned while he was still here. He had taken the Maten-kyomen from the cupboard and left before Koumyou’s blood had even been lifted from the tiles of the once sacred room.

A footstep whispered across the threshold.

Shuuei — Rikudo — he had used the curse of Araya to defeat the demons when they had returned for the Maten scripture. But Sanzo... he had left long before, descending the steps of the mountain and heading off into the woods in the pursuit of justice and revenge. But all the while those demons had been just a step behind him, and now the Kinzan Temple and everyone who had once resided there was gone.

Except for him. And he still had the Maten scripture, despite the numerous attempts of demons to steal it. If he couldn’t protect the Seiten scripture and life of its caretaker, then he damn well wasn’t going to give up this sutra as well.

The Kinzan Temple was gone. He wasn’t here — here didn’t even exist any more. He was... was...

Where was he?

< ...where are you... >

The hissing ring of a sword being removed from its scabbard.

< ...you promised... >

something brushed against his cheek. it smelled like

Where was he, if not here, if not in this accursed nightmare?

grapes

< ...where are you... >

A kudzu blossom.

< ...come find me... >

It was there — just beyond his senses, like a painting at the bottom of lake. This wasn’t the reality. This was the water through which the painting was seen, distorting the truth and twisting the facts into a nightmare far more horrible than reality. The water was turning the truth into a weapon that could be turned against him.

This was nothing more than a trick.

Sanzo clenched his hands again, and this time he could feel the dirt scraping against his fingertips, even if he couldn’t see it. There were vines writhing against his arms, against his neck, and pain blossomed from his stomach. The hissing of the rain outside the screening became the whispering of hundreds of leaves rubbing against each other. His reading glasses were pressed uncomfortably against his sternum.

This place didn’t exist. This room, this bloody fucking nightmare was nothing more than a memory being turned against him. The smell of dirt was real. The sensation of pain was real. The sense of the Maten-kyomen brushing against his ear was real. The blood was not. The rain was not.

The emptiness in his chest quickly filled with the tightness of anger. Someone was going to pay for this.

I failed once by being weak. I will not fail by being weak again!

Sanzo rolled to his right as the invisible attacker brought down the blade, feeling the air being cut apart as the sword whistled only inches from his shoulder. Blood smeared underneath his hands and bare feet as he scrambled to stand, but he forced the sensation away. The blood wasn’t real. The rain pounding overhead wasn’t real. He had to stay focused on the rasp of phantom vines curling across his arms and the scent of grapes from phantom blossoms. That was where he really was.

But the smell of blood was overpowering.

A brief flash of lightning lit up the demon and its cat-like eyes. There were no features on its face, only a dark black mass where a mouth and nose should have been and yet were not. And then there was only a looming figure in the darkness with pale blue eyes that burned with murderous intent. He could see broad shoulders twitch as the demon wrenched its sword out from where it had embedded in the floor, and light from the demonic eyes gleamed dully on the weapon’s polished surface.

He had to find a way to get out of this dream. But how? Sanzo tried desperately to hold on to the other-world sensations, but they slipped away from between his fingers. Fear was replacing the anger that had bubbled up before — he could no longer smell the scent of the kudzu blossom over the death that filled the room.

The demon lurched forward a step, a low growl issuing from its chest.

< ...I'm cold... >

Sanzo backed up a step, slipped in the puddle of congealing blood, recovered himself. He needed a weapon —

His fingers closed around empty air when he reached for his pistol, and for a moment he could only stare, dumbfounded, at his bare arm. Of course; he had not yet received the banishing gun. It was still stored away in a locked closet, where all the weapons that the monks were forbidden to have in the first place were hidden away. In this dream, it did not exist. In this dream, he was still a child, weak and cowardly from his close encounter with death. This dream was not the truth, but neither was it a lie.

Another step brought the faceless attacker to the hem of osho-sama’s robe, and Sanzo could see the clawed toes stand out in sharp relief against the pale silk.

< ...hungry... >

He had to focus on what was real. But what was real? What could he concentrate on to break the hold this dream had on him? What could he use as a weapon?

< ...promised... >

That was it. Goku, he was real — in this dream, he was still locked away in the mountain, calling plaintively in a voice he didn’t even realize he had. Sanzo had first heard him not long after he had descended the mountain, only days after his master’s death, but it had taken him years before the niggling cry in the back of his mind finally drove him to go shut that voice up. And then the boy had looked up at him with those wide, golden, stupid eyes, and he couldn’t find it in him to smack the child. Goku hadn’t even been aware of what he was doing; it didn’t make sense to punish someone who was involved in an action outside of their control.

< ...come find me... >

That was real. Even if it hadn’t actually happened at this point in his memories — though neither the demon he was currently facing nor the slaughter he heard had happened, either — it was a solid truth he could cling to. In his dream, Goku was still out there, and even if he didn’t realize what he was doing, Sanzo could use that voice as a lifeline to reality. It reminded him that there was a way out of this room and nightmare; outside, there was a mission and a team charged with stopping a demonic revival and retrieving a missing sutra. There was a human-turned-demon, a lecherous water sprite, an ageless child, and a magical dragon/jeep waiting outside this dream.

He just had to wake up.

smelled like grapes

The demon chuckled and hefted its sword. Sanzo could make out the oily swirl of blood — osho-sama’s blood? — congealing on the surface that had, only second before, been polished. He continued to back up until his shoulders hit the handles of the cupboard.

leaves hissing together

< ...hurts... >

Wake up, damn you!

winding across his back, brushing the scripture against his neck

< ...come find me... >

That was it.

The sutra. The sutra existed in his dream.

Sanzo whirled around and wrapped his bloody fingers around the pale-grained handles of the cupboard. He could hear the demon’s roar of triumph as he presented his back, a welcome target; even as he threw open the doors he could sense it lurching forward, raising its sword, the crimson-silver blade cutting a deadly arc through the air, the sharpened edge seeking to embed itself in his back. He wouldn’t have enough time to recite the sutra before the blade reached its mark.

< ...found you... >

Light exploded from the darkness between the doors of the cupboard. For an instant, he thought he saw two small hands reaching out towards him from the blinding brightness.

And then Sanzo woke up.