God Obliterating Vajra [Esoteric Dark Fantasy]

"Severed roots thirst for answers in a world
drenched in godsblood and revolution.
sword in one hand. sutra in the other. cut a path
through the heaven-ruin. may you attain
violence."

From the Treatise on the Revolutionary Road

"Now I will teach you the Martial Art most associated with the Ultramystic Sect. The Ten Thousand Swords Against Heaven Martial Art!" The Ultramystic Sutasoma balanced atop the mountain peak. Bamboo swayed upon the light breeze of the mountain gales. The monsoon winds.

Zan Reng frowned. "You mean to say... we have not been doing that all this time?" They had on their training uniforms—loose light linen shirts and pants, with kung fu shoes for easy movement. "All this sword training?" Zan Reng was drenched in sweat, their lungs burning from the effort. Their mouth was wide open, gasping for air. For breath. For any semblance of relief. Their Cultivation Womb burgeoned, sending blackfires through their meridians as the moves of the Ten Thousand Swords Against Heaven Martial Art activated them."

Mijja was already flat on her back. Her hair tied up into little buns atop her head. She was sighing deeply. Her wooden practice sword on the dust before her. She could not even gather up the lung-power to say: "I'm... I'm so... fucking tired..."

Kancil was on one knee, wincing. They adjusted their spectacles—it was a spectacle to see him still fighting with their glasses on. "I had thought we would be doing magick training today."

Xing Naramao hopped up. They readied by bouncing on both feet. Left right left right. They looked like they had a boundless well of endurance and stamina. At this point, Zan Reng was scared that they might have had it. But then again, Xing was the newest one among them, and she had been dropped off from training with another Ultramystic. Someone who was just a few rungs below Sutasoma's Cultivation level. What was their name again... Kwago Pesilong Sajaninu, the Adamantine of Endings.

Sutasoma grinned widely. Despite wearing the four of them down to their cores, she was not sweating at all, and she even wore her formal looking cheongsam get up to rub salt on the wound! "Ready or not!" And she swung her sword in an arc above her. Phantom blades materialized as afterimages as she did, then calcified into spirit-swords ready for her to use. Then, she leapt up into the air, spinning gracefully like a spider, and with an exhalation of her Breath, lunged straight down at the trainees.

---

But before the bloodbath, let us look to the intervening times to bridge the threads of karmic resonance.

Let us begin.

Firstly, the sword dancer dialectician and student of the Adamantine of Endings, Xing Naramao. Xing was a beautiful girl, through and through. She often did not agree with this assessment herself, but boys and men fell over her again and again and she simply chalked it up to her personality. She was correct, somewhat, but her beauty was the kind of beauty that came with admiring a beautiful flower. It was the inevitable realization of tenderness. It was realizing something is beautiful before you even have the words for it.. Having grown up in a theater troupe where her parents provided for her, she traveled across the Charnel Isles as a child, learning the family trade of entertaining others. She became a superb dancer, a superb orator, and great at conversing with others. The commoners and the audience lover her for her honest and direct personality.

She was set, and in her mind this was something she wanted to do! She wanted to become a performer. She loved performing, seeing the eyes of children light up as she leapt and flipped in the air. Seeing the glistening beads of tears as she sang her heart out to the crowd. She was a performer from a poor family and she knew that if she could just reach the Thundercloud Palace in Shen in Tsingssi, they would be set for life. Her and her family and her next generations would all be completely safe and secure. And at that point, that was all she wanted. She had two younger brothers she had to help bring up as her mother couldn't keep up. And being a traveling performer meant your livelihood—and consequently, your ability to feed yourself—is dependent on who hires you for that day, that week, that month.

It all came crashing down one day. They were preparing for a big event. A song and dance performance to a Merchant Prince of the Central Yavinian Guild, Yasson Ostiyya. The Twelve Merchant Princes of the CYG ruled the twelve Slices of the Islands and could extract resources only and only from their own slice. This led to much feuding over bordermarches and arbitrary lines.

They were going to perform in Selorong. They had camped out in front of Katizan Town, right to the east of where Selorong dissolves into suburbanity. She was sent out to the nearby Katizan Town to collect medicines, oils, and camphor to help prepare everyone's throats after the rehearsals tired everyone out. They practiced out in front of a marsh to be able to keep their location hidden. At that point, their entire troupe was around thirty people strong. A collection of cooks, chefs, dancers, singers, performers, marketers, advertisers, drivers, and more. They all essentially lived within three merchant junks lashed together by abaca fibers. They lived and died in the rivers and in the seas.

They were a whole extended family. It was the most important thing in the world to Xing, of the family of Naramao.

When she returned from Katizan Town, she returned to fire.

She had never seen a conflagration so pure and so cleansing. The little traveling troupe that they had. The little home and little heaven that she had grown up to with her family. It was all set ablaze. She ran to the chef, and found the chef decapitated. Her knees grew weak, and she thought she would collapse on the spot.

Then she remembered her two younger brothers. She ran to them and found them along with her mother huddled by the corner of one of their mobile homes, surrounded by flame. She rushed in, risking her own life, just at a chance to save theirs. When she moved them, however, they fell to the ground limp and lifeless. Her mother's neck was cut open, cleanly. The only mercy she could ever say her mother gained from this. Her brothers died from asphyxiation.

She managed to break out of the walls of the mobile homes and ran. She ran, finding the few gasps of air that she could to shout out: "Father! Papa! Papa!" But no matter what she did, she could not find her final repreive. Her final safety.

The world went up in smoke. Against a field of scarlet spider-lilies. She remembered an old story as she succumbed to her fatigue and exhaustion. Spider-lilies were the flowers of the Afterlife, the Underworld, where all the ghosts and demons and those weighed down by their karma would be reborn in after death. It represented death as its most beautiful, or life at its most menacing. It glowed in the dark—specifically in the Dusk Hour, at the 6th hour at the twenty-sixth minute. They only blossomed during at the Ninth Month of the Lotus Year. And to see them is a bad omen. Go to your local shrine or shaman or spiritworker and have them bless you. Have them cleanase you of bad merits.

Xing hadn't done that. She realized how cruel fate was. How cruel heaven is. How cruel spirits can be. What stars watched her from up on high only to see her dwindle? What savage metaphysics drove this cosmos, and caused its cogs to spin and its equilibriums to wheel, that they would watch a young girl—barely able to defend herself—lose everything she ever had?

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

When she awoke, her caravan was smoke. It had been turned into a Charnel Field. A skeleton danced in the middle of the field, to inaudible music. The dancing was eerily beautiful. It was horrifying to watch. Xing rubbed at her eyes and thought surely she must have been dreaming but she was not. No matter how much she wanted it to be true, she was not dreaming.

Her world had been shattered, and dancing upon its grave was the ghost of Enlightenment.

"Do not stare at it for too long."

A soft voice, with basalt hardness framing it underneath. Xing looked up to see a... monk? No... he looked like an immortal. His hair cropped short, eyes long and wide. Eyelashes like lotuses. He wore a long sleeved silk shirt buttoned up to a mandarin collar. Wrapping around his waist was a sword sash, and then below that two sets of sarongs, folded together, and flexible pants beneath it. Together, they were dyed a uniform deep indigo, with flecks of silver and gold. Over it all, he wore a shawl that he wore length-wise, cutting his body in half.

When he walked, he walked as if floating on the ground. His upper body did not move when he did. It was just as eerie. It was like seeing a ghost after seeing a dancing skeleton.

Xing did not know how to respond to what the monk had said.

He continued: "That is a Charnel Spirit," said the monk. "An emanation of the Charnel Guardian Omniscient. They dance to bless all those that have perished untimely deaths here, so that they will be reborn in Heavens."

Xing blinked again. "Wh-who are you...?"

The monk turned to Xing, and he was deathly beautiful. His smiled, and it was like seeing a sword reveal its cutting edge. A haunting premonition of a cut. "I am Kuwagu Sajannin. Many call me the Adamantine of Endings. I am nothing but a lowly and kindly thresher of wheat, deliverer of messages, and sweeper of dust." He looked up at the dancing skeleton. "And I summoned that Charnel Spirit to bless the ones that have died here."

Xing's brow furrowed. "So you are some kind of... necromancer?"

He shook his head. "More of... a death servicer. A blesser. The authority to bless the dead, like monks and priests would."

Xing felt the wind go out of her. She grit her teeth and did not even know what else she could be doing at that point. There was nothing left for her. When she opened her mouth, a choked sob came out, and she had to stop and weep for the world that she was no longer a part of.

Kuwagu watched her wailing. Watched her despair melt away into melancholy, into heartache, into numb void. In the interim, the Charnel Spirit finished its job, and then burrowed its way into the Underworld Heaven that it came from. Kuwagu foled his hands in front of his mouth in a mouth reverence and uttered a quick chanting mantra to consummate the blessing and to spread the merit of the blessing to all the eight corners of the world.

After that was done, he looked down with a horribly guilty gaze at Xing. As if he had been the one to kill her family.

He sighed. To be an Agent of Heaven is to be broken upon the wheel.

***

When Xing next awoke, she was on a bed, and it was the middle of the noon, and her body felt completely rejuvenated but there was a heavy leaden feeling in her heart. She woke up to the immediate thought that she had no more family, no more friends. She was alone now, and she was better off dead.

She rose to her feet, immediately spotting herself against a silver mirror. Silver? This must be the house of some prince... Her body was still waifish, frail. Her chest only mildly supple, her height stunted by the lack of calcium and milk during her growth, causing her to only be 152cm in height. It was a terrible height, but good for when one needed to be carried, or when one needed to sneak into places. Despite this, the ratio of her body established a slight illusion of a taller height despite it all.

She wore a simple bed dress. A cloth wrapped around her chest. She turned around and saw a stack of neatly folded clothes in one corner of the bed. "I assume this is mine..." She picked it up and put it on.

It was, more or less, training clothes. An indigo sleeveless top, some wide pants, stretchy socks, and even a hairtie to tie her long hair back. She realized that her body was fresh, even smelled a bit like scented oils. Had she been bathed? she thought.

Xing heard the sounds of clanging steel outside the door. Where the hell am I? She reached for the door and opened it.

She jumped back when she saw who was on the other side. Fear seized her and she tried to scramble out of the window, but the marionette raised her hands and shook her head and said, in an appropriately hollowed out voice, as if someone trying to speak with her through a mesh screen—"No, no! It is all right. My name is Irowa and I am a marionette made by Master Kuwagu for housekeeping services! Please becalm!"

Xing paused, her chest still breathing heavily. The "face" of the marionette was a plain smiling silver mask, like the kind of faces courtesan dancers would wear. Her mechanical skeleton was covered by a beautiful dress, but it did not hide her mechanical spirit-rod arms and neck. Irowa was a real marionette without plating-for-skin.

"Forgive my appearance," said Irowa. "I know how I can look to the unitiated into the Puppet Arts."

"P-Puppet arts?" Despite her voice quivering, Xing's heart slowed down. Just a tad.

"Yes. Master Kuwagu is a master of the Puppet Arts as well. In crafting, animating, and even in the martial aspects of it. Ah, but, here." She put down the wooden tray she had brought in. Arrayed upon it was a silver cup, a porcelain teapot, a pot of sugar, and a small cup of milk, and sticky glutinous rice cakes. "I was tasked to bring this to you. The Master Kuwagu had, well apparently correctly, predicted that you will be awaking to day."

Xing furrowed her eyebrows again. When she looked angry, she looked exceptionally angry, even though she was not completely inundated in wrath. "I... Hold on. How long have I been gripped by unconsciousness?"

"For three straight days. The exhaustion of the horrible fate befallen upon you must have taken its tall upon you. I can only empathize."

"Empathy from a marionette..." Xing calmed down just a tad, now. She sat down on her bed.

"I see that you've put on the clothes. Full glad am I that they seem to fit you well. Please, go ahead and eat the snacks and the teas. They are infused with healing properties. They will be a balm upon your exoteric and esoteric bodies as you heal. When you are feeling better, the Master Kuwagu awaits for you downstairs."

Xing blinked. She looked over at the wooden tray. Hunger was a distant, yet present, concern for her at that moment. She said: "Thank you, Irowa. Forgive me for my brash reaction. I-I did not mean any—"

"No forgiveness required! U-Uhm..."

Xing realized she'd never given her name. She said: "Xing. Xing Naramao." She found no logic nor reason in trying to hide it now, when she had nothing left.

"Master Xing. Please do take your time to recuperate. Now, if you will be so kind so as to excuse me." She bowed deeply from her mechanical waist, and then marched out of the room, closing it shut behind her.

Xing looked at the door, realizing just what that was. "A marionette, huh? Puppet Arts? Automatonics? What sect of Cultivation have I been pulled into?" The stories of cultivators and practitioners of the greater arts were deeply embedded into most of the cultures of the Utter Islands. To read about them in the great texts, or in the small and cheap booklets that published them serially every week, was a common pastime for everyone in the Post Calamity Era. But these things were real things, and they were often scary to deal with. Due to the violent nature of the Realms Belligerent, many commonfolk eschew martial cultivation altogether, choosing safer means for cultivation and practice. Ones wherein they can gain money, perhaps, or support their family. Farming, merchantry, studies, academia, business.

But the Puppet Arts... those were ancient techniques performed by hidden and lost sects of Praxes. Xing had read about them before—many of them disappeared after the United International Coalition won in the Second World Revolution. So to find real working automatonics... real practitioners of the Puppet Arts.

Xing shuddered. Was this going to be her life? Was she going to be joining the criminal underworld of the Realm Belligerent? I don't think I can take that... she thought ot herself. She roiled over these thoughts as she poured a drop of milk onto her tea, and mixed some sugar into it. Then she ate some of the sweetened glutinous rice cakes. They were filling, but they were truly just pastries of Selorong.

In a few moments, the sound of clanging steel abated. Was Kuwagu training someone? Thought Xing. Kuwagu seemed to be of someone of great Cultivation. Perhaps, through him, she can find who had done this act of violence against her family, and through him, she can learn the ways to avenge her family, to avenge her world.

It was not a difficult choice, to be swallowed up by vengeance. Xing Naramao wholly embraced it. This might be my only chance at a second life, and one that avenged my first death... she thought to herself.

She did not even have any keepsakes of her old family. She needed answers.

The fires of vengeance burned in Xing Naramao's heart. She rose to her feet and went out of her room. Down to the ground floor, and out of the front door.

There sat Kuwagu Sajannin upon one of the railings of the front porch. As with all Utter Island houses, this was a house built raised off of the ground, with the front porch jutting out, a few meters from the ground, with a set of hardwood stairs leading down to the soil. He sipped on his own porcelain teacup. "Ah, you're awake."

"Adamantine of Endings," said Xing, walking forward close to him. Just when she was close enough, she kowtowed deeply. When she said the next few words, she could not stop the tears rushing through her face. "Please! Please teach me the Ways of Violence, that I may enact my vengeance upon whoever slew my family!"