#Or the substance of their shared fate ripped out from underneath them

[completeoveranalysis]

[1]

Chapitre 180 - A Place Where a Princess Is

OH NO CLAMP MUST WE?

ARE WE REALLY GOING HERE?

We’re revisiting the cover from Chapter 14 but worse!

Here’s that previous one:

The splash text THIS TIME reads something like: He always believed that, as long as they had one another, that wish could be granted…

The past tense tone implying that this has now been proven incorrect. Considering that, you know, he was the one who ended up stabbing her. :’) 

The splash text from Chapter 14, by contrast, read: I wonder what did you wish that night? So much sadness that flows lovely through the stars. 

BUT NOW THE WISH HARDLY MATTERS DOES IT? SINCE THE FACT THAT THEY WERE TOGETHER DIRECTLY LEAD TO HER DEATH. 

Interestingly these covers are both 100% different nights, confirming that Syaoran and Sakura did this on a regular basis. While they both wore long sleeves in the first cover, now they both wear shorter ones, with different patterns, and the blanket is different too - but the lamp is exactly the same. While they were both excited to see the sky before, sharing the activity together now only Syaoran is looking up, with Sakura asleep beneath him, leaving him alone like he is in the present. 

They’ve visually switched places now too, since before Sakura was the one actively making a wish, but now she’s asleep - matching the fact that she isn’t exactly making wishes anymore in the present. She DID Succeed in her big overarching wish and has SAVED Syaoran’s soul, but now she’s dead. But with Syaoran back he can safely reclaim the memory of this moment, since it happened to him, and he’s still alive to remember the moments like this that even Sakura herself would never be able to recall. 

I’m SO glad they brought this back literal moments after Sakura’s onscreen death c: how lovely. 

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Fear the Light

Winds howled as they traveled through the crumbling ruins that lay at the edge of the desert. Carved into the stone of the earth itself, the eternal sun had scorched the ancient limestone pillars leading up to the entrance. Statues sculpted into the likeness of a god-king flanked them, eroded by the passage of time.

Gusts of dry, unforgiving wind carried sand and dust and continued to weather this once majestic monument. Faded was the glory they once held.

Bleached skulls and bones littered the grounds within the entrance, where rays of light still reached. But these remains had been left behind in a new age. An era in which the royal soul laid to rest in this tomb had transformed from esteemed ruler into a beast of unspeakable horrors and insatiable appetite.

It had been thousands of years since the moon had vanished from this world. It had been millennia since the night itself had ceased to exist. An unfathomable amount of time for mortals, and a terribly long time for those who transcended their mortality by means unnatural.

Such as the one who had been interred here. To him, bearing witness to the passage of time used to be a luxury. Now, he considered it an unbearable burden and a self-inflicted curse. He lingered in the darkness of these ruins, sprawled out inside an open sarcophagus. His bony fingers ended in long, sharp claws that idly scraped over the stone of the lid that lazily leaned against the sarcophagus’ side.

The claws scritched and scratched and then stopped.

He rose from his grave, sitting up and fiercely gripping the edge of the sarcophagus with those claws. Two hollow eye sockets stared out through the darkness. An immortal hatred burned where eyes used to be, tiny flames that sprung from the magic of this being’s twisted essence, minuscule lights from which neither heat nor soul emanated.

They peered through the decaying halls of this once magnificent tomb, knowing that someone—or something—had intruded within the dead king’s demesne. He crept over the edge of the sarcophagus and crumpled to the dusty floors where he stood back up, and stumbled forwards through the darkness, rising to full height once more.

A whole head taller than he had been in life, he had chosen this existence—this unlife—for himself. Not to be trapped within these unhallowed halls, but to transcend the limitations and boundaries of life that common mortals were naturally bound to. To defy the pull of the river of souls, to overcome the mortal coil had been his greatest achievement. It had taken so much to reach this state of being.

It had taken so many sacrifices.

Many of them were buried in this very tomb with him. He lurked, lurched through these halls, past their smaller and less ornate sarcophagi lining alcoves in the walls. Their remains lingered, though none of them shared his immortality. Most of them had willingly shed their blood and thrown away their lives for the sake of their god-king, loyal subjects who wanted to know that their fearless and infallible leader would never cease to lead their homeland to prosperity.

Oh, how that destiny had been warped. How the cruel twists of fate had disfigured those plans laid out to their once proud nation.

Now, King Sin-Zaidu stumbled through the defiled halls of his own desolate tomb. The bones of the unfortunate littered the floors, rattling and clattering as he walked through them, approaching the entrance with each step.

A growl echoed through the halls, claws of a wild beast scraped over the hewn stone grounds from there. The dead king drew closer and closer to these sounds, drawn by the spark of life that could return a false image of life to his withered vampiric body. A living creature had made its way inside the tomb, and the dead king could taste its heartbeat—he could sense its life force.

This desiccated walking corpse with a sinister void where a soul used to be now hungered. Shriveled and dried up, he longed for strength once more. He longed to feel that bounce to his step that he once possessed both in life and unlife, a faded vestige of his virility that had withered away over the millennia.

Long gone were the days when his loyal subjects would send their most valuable and vigorous young, serving them up to their king as sacrifices. The lengthy and ornate rituals leading up to eviscerating these innocent souls and feasting on their blood had become a distant memory for Sin-Zaidu.

In his glory days, even after the sun had turned eternal, he would never even have considered drinking the blood of mere beasts. His vanity would not have allowed such. Undignified acts had always been beneath him, for he had sought to keep his existence pure and his pride unfettered.

Now that the passage of time had ravaged him and the ages had rendered his existence into a dark and cautionary tale that most of his subjects’ descendants merely considered myth, he had discarded every last standard. Not even grave robbers dared venture here anymore.

The thirst of blood had turned him feral, and the deprivation of the crimson life force had turned him into a husk of his former might.

Now, he only had ears for the thrum of a living being’s pulse. The closer he crept to the entrance, the more vibrant it felt. The beast circled on the stones, sniffing and snorting as it explored the entrance and searched through the bones for carrion that it could feast upon. Sin-Zaidu paused, listening and conjuring up his awful powers to read the very essence of the creature he would now feed upon. It was confused, injured. It bled.

It drove King Sin-Zaidu wild with thirst.

Most animals avoided this place. Most natural creatures had a natural sense to avoid his desolate abode. For miles around the statues flanking its entrance, no hawks cried throughout the skies. No serpents slithered between any rocks in its vicinity. Not even vermin swarmed underneath the sands. Life itself knew better—all steered clear of this sinkhole of evil.

The vampire-king’s claw clutched the corner of an open portal leading into the antechamber. He peered at the mighty beast within.

It was a behemoth of exceptional power. Greater than ten horses put together, with rippling muscles that enabled the creature to tear cattle apart like dry parchment. Its fanged mouth measured so big that it could swallow half a man in its maw without chewing. Pitch-black horns jutted out from the mane of dark fur on its head. The chimeric monster pawed at the remains on the ground.

Blood dripped from its side, spilling from a gaping gash. What exactly had inflicted the injury, the ancient vampire could not tell. Nor did he care to. He only had eyes for the life force dripping down. The behemoth had left a trail of blood leading outside.

Sin-Zaidu watched, paralyzed with lust for the blood. He weighed his options with care, fighting back the frenzy that began clouding his mind, obscuring his judgment and making it difficult to coldly calculate how he would overpower the monstrous intruder.

He raised his bony hand and began uttering incantations he had not spoken in centuries. Raspy whispers slipped through blackened teeth and mummified lips. A spark of blood-red fire danced in his palm, casting flickering shadows from his claws as they wiggled with the precision required to summon dark powers.

The beast reared its head and growled, glaring at the desiccated walking corpse. Unlike other predators, it possessed no qualms in attacking the undead—among the dunes and mountains of this land, it was the apex predator. It lowered its head, menacing the god-king with the spear-like horns protruding from its head. It scraped against the floor with a mighty claw, much like a bull preparing to charge.

The whispers from Sin-Zaidu’s mouth gave way to an insane cackle.

Bones of the fallen began to rise from the floor, animated by faint blue glowing lights and reassembling into vaguely humanoid shapes, and standing tall even without flesh or muscle or tendon to hold them together.

The behemoth growled again, claws scratching the stone grounds as it swiveled, taking notice of the army of walking skeletons forming around it. The animated bones wasted no time and lunged at the creature, clawing at it with bare-boned fingers and broken jaws that clattered as they chomped and the skeletal remains that rattled with each step.

The swarm of walking dead jumped and grasped and climbed and ripped and bit and tore. The beast whirled around, shattering dried old bones and flinging the skeletons away like broken toys. Its giant paw smashed through them as if they had little to no substance. The injuries they inflicted resembled mere scratches on the toughened skin of a hardened warrior.

But they were many. And unlike mortal men, the walking skeletons felt no fear. They attacked the beast with reckless abandon, oblivious of their final unnatural existence being cut short as the creature smashed them to dust, destroying them in droves. A chorus of cracking and shattering bones filled the hall, underscored by ferocious growls that could curdle the blood of the bravest souls.

When most of the attacking skeletons had been destroyed, the beast reared back once more and jerked its head back, releasing a deep and rage-filled roar. These puny undead were no match for it.

They had merely bought time for Sin-Zaidu to finish conjuring even greater magic. His clawed hands clasped together, quenching another red flame between them, and he released the spell he had been weaving all the while since animating the skeletons.

Slimy tentacles—glistening and shiny in the dim light, with an absence of color rendering them even darker than black—shot out from the cracks in the floor, whipping and flailing about until they found purchase on the behemoth’s body, wrapping around it and dragging it down with unspeakable and terrible strength.

The beast roared but the force of its head slamming into the cold floor stifled it, transforming it into little more than a pained growl. The tentacles bound it, bent limbs into unnatural angles until living healthy bones cracked and even one of its deadly horns broke off. Amidst the sea of tentacles erupting from the tomb’s grounds, seemingly out of nowhere, this unstoppable behemoth was caught, being strangled and crushed to death.

Staggering and stumbling, Sin-Zaidu approached the helpless beast. More cackling escaped him. The thrum of the beast’s heartbeat raced with panic, intensifying with each step that the undead god-king took towards it. Although the creature dwarfed his own size, his presence transported a tangible menace. The behemoth’s growing fear satisfied his sadistic streak.

His cackling stopped, and lifeless breaths rasped out of the vestigial lungs of his mummified body. Breaths of greed and thirst.

The blood was so close that he could taste it. Smell it. Even though the natural senses of his withered body had long dulled to the point of non-existence, the dark force that maintained his unlife sensed the life force that he so desperately longed for.

Sin-Zaidu lunged forward with a sudden surge of otherworldly power. He sank his claws and fangs into the fur and flesh of this beast. He ripped, tore, bit, chewed, and feasted on the blood. It sprayed, flowed, trickled.

The more he drank, the more color returned to his vision. The more he could feel the pulse of the world itself. The movements of the stone deep down, the fire of the earth, the clouds drifting above, the rumble of the distant floating islands in the sky.

The more he drank, the less life the beast possessed. Its struggles to break free from the tentacles waned. Its limbs went limp. Sin-Zaidu cared not, instead drinking more and more, draining the creature of its very lifeblood. Too greedy to care about all the blood that splattered to the ground, he instead marveled at the spectacular carnage he wrought.

The tentacles retracted, wriggling and writhing while they slithered and disappeared back through the cracks between the floor plates from whence they had emerged.

Sin-Zaidu’s lips smacked, teeth gnashed, ripping the beast’s neck to shreds in his disgusting feast. His body absorbed the life force with incredibly velocity. A fullness returned to his lips. Mummified skin turned lively once again, replete with a healthy bronze color. The blackened claws retreated into his fingers and took the shape of normal fingernails once more, and his fangs shrank down till only his sharp canines might have betrayed any vampiric nature, framing a set of pristine white teeth.

He wiped at his mouth with his forearm, only smearing the blood even more into a mess upon his face and skin. Nearly bathed in blood, the fog of greedy, unstoppable hunger slowly lifted from his mind.

He took a moment to stare at his hands, both palms and backs, flexing his fingers and clasping them shut. He felt alive again, almost like he used to in his original life, in his youthful prime and long before his ascension to undeath.

When reality set in and he remembered the reality of his situation, he sneered at the remains of the dead behemoth on the ground before him, crushed amidst this sea of bones of both man and monster alike.

“What is a beast, but a creature driven by base needs?”

The question echoed throughout the hall. Not King Sin-Zaidu had spoken its words, but a figure just outside the entrance. Sitting in the sunlight. Light from the eternal sun shone down behind him, turning the man outside into an eerie silhouette.

In front of the man, a bloodied spear rested on the sandy grounds. His left hand bobbed up and down from a bent knee, as he lounged with his other leg curled underneath him.

Sin-Zaidu glowered at him. What kind of wretch had the gall to insult him thus?

“In spite of your appearance now, you are little more than beast. Incapable of emerging from your own tomb. A prisoner of the light, trapped in a prison of your own making. Pathetic,” rang more words from the stranger, delivered with an unusual accent that the god-king could not identify.

Although out of reach for Sin-Zaidu, he could have wielded magic to harm and kill him from afar. Curiosity trumped his pride and desire to slay this man on the spot, so he decided to hear him out.

He smirked and asked, “Who dares speak to King Sin-Zaidu with such impudence?”

The stranger’s hand stopped bobbing.

“I am Tezcatl,” he replied. “And I speak not out of contempt for you, but out of pity.”

Unlike the raspy cackling from earlier, new vigor filled Sin-Zaidu’s body—a hearty bellow erupted from his bowels.

“You pity us? For our terrible might? You still have a chance to flee, and imparting you with such wisdom is a testament to our generosity, you fool.”

The man named Tezcatl rose to his feet, picking up the spear in the same motion. He turned and pointed with it to the azure ocean of sky overhead, dotted with floating islands and fluffy white clouds, joining at the horizon with the ocean of sand and rocky crags below. Cracked and flaking paint of a single eye marked the stranger’s forehead. He was clad in simple, rugged garb, weathered by long travel, barefoot, and with no ornaments or jewelry to mention.

“No, I pity you because of the injustices of this world. And how they have shackled you. Liberty—a right that all men share, both kings and slaves, both hunter and beast, both living and dead—was taken from you when human arrogance stole the moon and the night from the sky,” Tezcatl said. The calm in his voice rose into more and more fervor with each beat.

His audacity and confidence mesmerized Sin-Zaidu. For millennia, the god-king had only spoken to those who feared or served him. This man named Tezcatl served none.

He almost admired his irreverence and it stunned him with an unfamiliar silence.

“I seek to liberate these lands by returning the moon to its rightful place. I seek to restore the night,” Tezcatl preached. He took in a sharp breath of air. “If I succeed, you will be free to reign over your lands once more and roam as you see right for yourself. Others may rebel against you, but it is then a matter of might who is right, in the end. However, you will need not fear the light, ever again.”

Sin-Zaidu’s mien darkened, as he knew this course of conversation. Even the most confident petitioners always had a request. Something that they wanted. After a long speech, no matter how rousing or flowery, followed the inevitable demand.

But Tezcatl remained silent. The defiance inherent in this man’s presence was palpable. Only the pulse of his heart and the blood flowing through his veins distracted Sin-Zaidu. So he asked.

“What do you seek from us?”

Tezcatl’s nostrils flared. He stared back at Sin-Zaidu with a roaring fire behind his eyes.

“I seek to learn of all the magic you wield. Forgotten sorceries, forbidden knowledge. If you teach me, I will be an instrument in returning you your right—your right to freedom.”

A howling gust of wind swept up sand, hurling it past the god-king’s visitor, ruffling his thin braids of hair. Tezcatl stood still, stoic and oozing confidence.

The king sensed the truthfulness in this man’s words, in his tone. He could hear it in his heartbeat. Nervous of the danger inherent in speaking to a vampiric monster such as himself. But believing deep down that he would succeed.

Sin-Zaidu’s lips curled into a smile. The god-king would accept this offer.

Even with all this power, he could not accomplish what this man spoke of. He never would have dared to even dream of restoring the night to these scorched lands.

Now confronted with this possibility, he discovered a new desire, even greater than his thirst for blood. Sin-Zaidu wondered if it only had to do with recently feasting on the behemoth.

He turned to look back at the broken beast, lying in the shadows where he dwelt, and the pool of blood spreading out underneath it. The wound in its side—could it have been inflicted by this Tezcatl’s spear?

He peered back at the man. Tezcatl’s steely gaze rested upon him all the while.

“Yes,” said Sin-Zaidu. “We will show you the ways. We shall teach you the sorceries of blood.”

Tezcatl closed his eyes and bowed his head in response. He sprung into motion, approaching the darkness of the tomb, each step driven by certainty and determination.

Just as fearlessly as his new pupil entered the shadows, Sin-Zaidu hoped that, one day, he would exit his tomb with the same fearlessness.

A day in the near future.

—Submitted by Wratts