Disclaimer: "Gensomaden Saiyuki, Saiyuki: Reload, Saiyuki: Gaiden" and all of its characters were created by Kazuya Minekura. They belong to her and were used without prior permission. No profit is made through this story.

Author's note: English isn't my first language, and this story isn't betaed. I apologize for any inconveniences caused by this.

This is an Alternate Universe for Saiyuki. Outside of Minekura-sama's Saiyuki-verse, I was inspired by the manga 'Devil & Devil' and the original 'Journey to the West' novels.

Some explanations:

- Empyrean: This is not some tweaked version of 'empire', but the highest reaches of heaven, believed by the ancients to be a realm of pure fire or light.

- Abaddon: another word for 'the bottomless pit', destruction, or hell

- Terra Firma: Latin for 'Solid Land', but in this story used for the human realm, Earth.

- Ex Adyto Cordis: Latin for 'From the Bottom of the Heart'

Constructive criticism, feedback and flames (directed at the story) are welcome. However, if you flame me as a person, I'll send Gyoukumen after you. You have been warned.

Warning: This story is not shonen-ai, Boy's Love, Yaoi or slash. It's also not a story that will lead to any of them becoming lovers. Thanks for accepting this.

Additional Warning: This story contains bad language and violence. Proceed at your own risk

Dwellers: Ex Adyto Cordis

by Lee

(c) August 2005

A shadow fell on the leaves. Like gunshots, the sharp flaps of mighty wings disrupted the peace of the moment. Wind sent ripples across the calm plain of water and an angel landed elegantly on the leaf closest to the blossoming lily stem.

His entire air screamed 'important', from the way he straightened his magnificent, bright white feathered wings; over his elaborate clothes and long, perfectly groomed silver gray hair; to the dignity his sheer presence radiated. The angel folded his wings, studied the shore with a wistful smile and counted down slowly. “...five... four... three... two..."

“Intruder!” A warning yell boomed over the battered park that surrounded the Pond, and finally the guards showed up.

“Idiot!” an older colleague scolded. “Are you blind? That's Sanzo Koumyou!”

“Fourteen seconds. Unacceptable,” Koumyou of the Toa growled instead of greeting. Band-aids and cotton bandages covering various body parts of the guards told of recent injuries, but those were no excuse for negligence in Koumyou's eyes. Devils' attacks on the hatching ponds never were an issue to be taken lightly. He briefly wondered how many angel hatchlings the Kinship of Toa had lost in the raid two days prior.

“Sanzo! Sanzo Koumyou here!”

Quickly, the shore of the pond was crowded with angels of all ages. Koumyou smiled at them, despite his annoyance over the lax security. He was one of the currently four designated Sanzos, but his exalted position had not mellowed his sharp mind.

Koumyou knelt down and gently stroked the lily bud that stretched to reach the sky. "Poor thing. You're the only one left, mhm?"

As if the flower had waited for his touch, the septals suddenly sprang open, revealing an array of pure white petals. While the petals unfolded, a soft glowing ball appeared in the center of the large blosson.

Within a few minutes, the lily was in full bloom, and the glowing ball had taken on size and shape of a newborn; in a way, Koumyou mused, it was like watching hot metal fill a form and cool down. The glow slowly died and revealed dark skin - just like humans, Dwellers came in all colors. With outermost care, Koumyou picked up the brand new angel girl and presented it to the stunned onlookers. “Grow strong, little one.”

There was a murmur of approval from the crowd when he blessed the hatchling. The angels of Toa needed a sign of hope more than anything after the devils had plundered their Ponds for the fourth time in a row. It didn't help that the lands of the Kinship were located directly at the conjunction of the Rivers Lethe and Archeron, which were two of the five border rivers between The Empyrean and Abaddion.

Alas, he had no time to waste on geographic observations. With a swift move, Koumyou rose and tapped from one lily leaf to the next until he had reached the shore. “It's very kind of you all to come here to greet me, but this isn't the time for idling. Please, return to your work, everyone.”

“You've heard the Honorable Sanzo! Let's not waste time.” The Doyen, in his function as local leader and supervisor of system of Ponds in this area, bowed deeply. He signaled the guards to usher the crowd away, and soon the two angels could talk more privately.

“I apologize for my late arrival, Doyen Yalong.” Sanzo moved his right hand to indicated a bow. “I was kept by urgent business at the Sanctuary.”

Doyen Yalong looked surprised. “To tell the truth, I had hoped you'd give us a bit more time to clean up.”

“They really left a mess this time, didn't they?” Koumyou looked around and sighed. Just like the other lakes he had passed over on his flight here, this Pond was in a desolate state. Gray and sand colored blotches in the water indicated where Sacred Water Lilies were ripped away. It was like a bleeding wound, the soil didn't settle but swirled in the current above the ruptured underwater roots. Except for the lily leaf he had had landed on, a lot of the remaining plants had suffered badly when the Toa guards had fought the thieves.

“A mess doesn't even begin to cover it.” Yalong's sorrowful expression deepened. “The devils destroyed our lily plantations.”

Koumyou had known Yalong a long time and had a hunch that this wasn't the end of the bad news. “The Ponds at River Archeron...”

“I'm afraid that the situation there's the same.” The Doyen shook his head. “They got us good this time. There are no plants within a day's flight to fill the gaps in the Ponds... and as you know, our Sacred Lilies can only be seeded when there's a Full Dragon Moon.”

Koumyou swallowed hard. It was a well-known fact that only in the plants grown at the right time a Dweller's soul merged to a physical body. How precisely this worked was unknown. Even as a Sanzo, Koumyou could only guess about the miracle that repeated with every new lily bud that bloomed.

He recalled the last Seeding Festival several weeks ago; it would be centuries before the moon moved into the proper position again.
Usually, the Ponds within a Kinship traded lily seeds or plants, but the recent attacks had cleaned out plantations in many districts. Many villages had to start from scratch, and to lose an entire plantation was a disaster.

Despite the longlivity of Dwellers, they were not immortal and the aeons of conflict had cost the angels dearly. Without new plants, the Ponds, and with them the Empyrean Dwellers, would not survive. “I'll send a request to the Sanctuary. Maybe the other Kinships can help us out.”

x

Later that day, Koumyou took a stroll along the shores of River Archeron. He had no idea what drove him there; towards evening, the air above the river was buzzing with mosquitos and other blood sucking insects. Hot wind blew over the water from the Abaddion side, carrying a foul stench with it. The distant shore looked like a fire had recently scorched away scrubs and trees, and with them every life. Even the birds had fled. Outside of the gurgling of the dark water, it was deadly quiet.

Koumyou wondered if the rumors were true that the enemy's land had been plagued with drought and disease recently — but then, Abaddion was not exactly a holiday resort to begin with.

The morose scenery wasn't doing any good to his already dark mood, either. He had thought that this short respite away from the destruction would cheer him up. Instead, the grim, heavy feeling intensified. The angel sighed. “Time to go back, huh?”

He wasn'tquite willing to walk through the mosquito-infested landscape again. The devilish creatures knew no mercy, and telling by the number of bites that covered his arms, they had found the blood of a Sanzo to be a special delicacy.

Koumyou spread his wings, flapped them a few times to shake out tense spots in the flow of soul energy, and took off. Suddenly, he heard a voice. Though faint and distant, it still called out for him.

“Hello?” he yelled, then hovered on spot and listened intensely into the quiet of dusk. When there was no answer, Koumyou shouted, “Where are you? I'm here to help!”

“...help!” a child's voice echoed. It seemed to come from somewhere across the river. Koumyou hesitated, torn between his instinct to rescue the poor soul in distress, and the mountain-size stop sign his common sense had put up. Of course, his common sense had a point; this could very well be a trap. Catching a Sanzo would be a triumph for the devils.

“Help!” the child called again, and this time Koumyou heard the voice clearly in his mind. This came as a surprise. The child must have an extraordinary strng will to survive if it could reach out to a stranger just like that. Koumyou concentrated on the source of the call until he saw a small bundle on one of the large water lily leaves that floated by in the lazy current across the stream. He noticed that the group of leaves with its cargo drifted towards a couple of dead trees that probably one of the winter floods had dumped there.

“Help me,” the child whispered, sounding desolate as if it had sensed his hesitation. The first of the lily leaves bumped into the obstacle, then another, rapidly causing a pileup. If the leaf with the child on it got caught in this barrier, it would topple over and...

“Oh, zing it!” Koumyou rolled his eyes and threw caution to the wind. Ten minutes later, he landed in the Toa village, dripping wet and clutching a shivering baby in his arms.

This didn't go unnoticed of course, and soon he was surrounded by other angels. “Honorable Sanzo!”

Some went for towels and others for dry clothes, but Koumyou ignored them. He carefully put the fever-ridden infant down on one of the blankets that were offered to him. The boy was perhaps a few weeks old at best, malnourished, weak and probably infested by parasites of all kind. His sun burnt skin was unspeakably dirty, and the tiny white wings were sticky with filth and vermin. There was no say how long he had drifted on the river; it was a miracle that the young angel had survived for so long. Koumyou frowned, wondering how high the chances were that this young angel would recover from such an ordeal. “Poor child. Did the devils dump your lily into the river?”

As if he had understood every word, the boy's lids fluttered open, revealing intense amethyst colored eyes. Brilliant blue with a tinge of black, a bad omen if Koumyou had ever seen one. He sighed. Doyen Yalong would so not be pleased about this foundling. ”Maybe I should take you with me to the Sanctuary. What do you think?”