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The Black-Feathered Monk Chapter 4 By Draconicon

Settling into the ruins of the temple was not so straightforward as merely setting up a bed. The first thing that had to be done was to ensure that the grounds were cleared of any survivors from the battle. The big ones, the ogres and the warrior demons, they would have been destroyed by the great flames that Master Kazir had released, but the little ones - the imps, the little devils - could have found hiding places in the grounds or on the surrounding slopes. They could yet cause problems.

He dispensed Silra to look for them after binding her in new golden runes, and he sat down with a groan at the 'purified' desk in one of the lower floors. Seeing the songbird's feathers shimmer from blue to a black-red sent an ever-so-slight shiver down his spine, but he refused to give in to the little fears that plucked at him at the sight.

She might be a demon, but she is on MY side...for now.

Shaking his head, he turned his attention from her to the scroll that had drawn his attention on the way up the tower. It was bound to the table now, burned to it just as the fires had burned the weapons to the wall and had nearly sealed the doors shut at the ground floor. Pushing on the scroll did nothing to unroll it, and the raven knew that if he pushed it too much, he ran the risk of breaking it. Purified or not by the Ancestral Flames, he doubted that its strength was much greater than it had been before.

A pity, as well, considering that it not only belonged to the Order of the Quill, but it listed those that had made deals with them.

Satres dragged his finger across the page, cocking his head to the side to examine the names of monsters, spirits, and worse that were listed on the scroll. He knew of some, such as the Toad of the White Rock, but there were others that had made deals with the Order over the years that the temple had stood on the side of the mountain. If those still held, then he might have allies. If not...

Well, if not, then he had to learn more, faster. That was the long and short of it, wasn't it?

The half-unrolled scroll obscured more than a few things from him, from the names of those that had been bound to where they lived, but he was able to draw out incomplete listings. There were possibilities, locations to check out, names to look up and cross-reference in other records. There was a chance that the monastery could be rebuilt faster than he had imagined, and sooner than he feared.

But that wasn't going to happen today. Taking what encouragement he could at the possibility, he shifted his seat to the side and laid out the three scrolls that he still had, the ones that were not 'purified' and stuck together.

The scroll of the Order of the Quill. The scroll of the Order of the Talon. The scroll of the Order of the Clipped Wing. They were his only hope of holding the temple until other monks came to join him. He took a deep breath, then took the scroll marked by the talons of a striking hawk, and opened it.

Before he had exposed so much as a feather's width of the scroll, the entire thing burst into a bright yellow light. He held up one arm to keep from being blinded even as the chi lashed out at his hand. It struck, and hard, hard enough to yank him down and slam his arm against the table firmly enough to rattle the wooden thing.

He grunted from the impact, huffing as he flexed his hand in the grip of the mysterious chi. Of course. Why would this be easy? The scrolls were meant to keep the secrets of the Order out of the hands of those that would abuse them, and more than most, the Order of the Talon was highly martial, focused on the physical, on fighting and breaking their opponents. It would be something like this.

Satres grimaced as his arm was squeezed again, the seal of defense threatening to break his wrist. He clenched his beak hard, his breathing coming harsh, but even, as he focused on his own body, on his own chi.

It flowed out from his core slowly, forming a golden glove around his hand. He flexed his fingers, pulling the two middle ones together, the pinkie and the pointer pushing further out, while his thumb pushed down. It was the symbol of the talon, and more, it glowed with the chi that the Order was taught from the first day.

Slowly, the seal faded, allowing him to open the scroll the rest of the way. Satres shook his head, wringing out his wrist.

"That...that was stupid," he admitted, rubbing feeling back into his hand. "Don't do that again...you can't afford to do that again."

As he pushed the scroll open, it spread from one side of the wide table to the other, and along the inside were painted many things. Characters that named different techniques rained down from above, curling in the grips of claws, and they led down to different figures that were demonstrating forms, meditative stances, and more for the Order of the Talon.

However, the more that Satres read through the scroll, the more he realized that this was not a list of advanced techniques. This was the base, the beginning, with perhaps two techniques that he didn't know. There was nothing in the scroll that told of the different chi strikes and reach techniques that Master Sarin had pioneered and crafted, nor any of the other great steps forward that the Order of the Talon had bragged of during his early days in the temple.

The raven's heart leaped into his throat as he frantically went over the scroll again, desperately looking for whatever he might have missed. This was the one scroll that Master Kazir had given him, just to make sure that the Orders could survive if the worst happened. Why wouldn't they have their most powerful techniques here? Why wouldn't they make sure that the techniques could be passed on?

Satres was just about to lose control of his panic when he saw something in the lower-left corner of the scroll. The talons and the characters that made them up were different there, shaped in a slightly different way. He paused, holding onto his fear by the thinnest of grips, and he traced the lines of the curling talons with a finger.

They were shaped so that they curled upward, almost like the shape of the roof outside. The raven looked out the window, held up the scroll, and he realized that the terraced, tiered roof of the tower was a near-exact match, and would be matching it exactly if it weren't for a little artistic license.

He turned the scroll around, tracing it again. Yes, there were exactly the right number of claws to account for the different levels of the temple, and arranged this way, he could see it spreading out along the side of the scroll, almost like...

Like a map. A map of the temple itself, and with a few other marks that were given new meaning in this layout.

It's more security, he realized. Just in case someone managed to get the scrolls, they wouldn't get everything. Even if they figured it out, they would only know where to look next.

And with the seal's power and strength, he had every reason to believe that wherever the map led, he would find himself facing yet more dangers. The Order of the Talon, it seemed, guarded their techniques well.

He took a deep breath, rubbing his face and shaking his head. So much for learning something from that. Letting it roll together, he glanced at the other two scrolls. After nearly getting his wrist broken from trying to open the first scroll, he was going to take the other two far more methodically.

Pulling a feather from the back of his head, he channeled a hint of chi into it, laying it against the side of the scroll dedicated to the Order of the Quill. No sooner had the feather touched than the scroll lit up with chi of its own, burning with golden light. Satres nodded, scrawling his name, and then his request for the scroll to open.

Instead of opening, however, other characters appeared on the side of the rolled-up record. They asked, 'What will you give?'

"..."

He didn't have an answer for that, and he pulled the feather away. The letters faded, and then the light went with it, leaving it as dim and dull as it had been on first contact.

One scroll that had tried to break his arm, one that acted like a toll-booth to knowledge. He wondered what the security of the last one would be. The raven glanced at the final scroll, and a shiver ran down his spine.

The Order of the Clipped Wing. While there were stories about the long-dead Order, they conflicted with each other on the most base level. Some spoke of monks that never left the ground, whose style forced them to fight with great defense and whose power came from being unable to fly or leap. Others spoke of monks that had been given great jumping powers, who could move faster than any could believe, whose acrobatics were unrivaled. Still others spoke of warriors that had given up one part of their body to strengthen others.

If the legends could not agree on the most base information, then how could anyone learn what the monks actually did?

He sighed, getting up and stepping away from the table. Satres leaned his head out the window, looking over the grounds, at the dust in the courtyard and gardens, at the burning head that was just outside the walls where the Demon King had died. There were a hundred little things that needed to be handled just to make the temple liveable again, and he doubted that they were going to get them all done easily.

He might as well get started.

By the time that Silra returned that evening, he had managed to clean a portion of the gardens. Those plants that had been killed by poison had been swept away and burned, leaving great swathes of ground that were dead and barren, empty and ugly to the eye. He had begun raking it, a methodical action that allowed him to lose himself in the activity without thinking about anything else, and was almost irritated when Silra reached out and shook him by the arm.

"There's nothing out there. We were worried for nothing."

"A pity for you; you could have fed," Satres said, shaking his head. "I'm sorry that you will have to go hungry tonight."

"Hmmph. I'll find something. What have you done?"

"Aside from clearing the remnants of corruption?"

"Yes, aside from that."

"Then very little, I suppose."

"I thought you would be studying the scrolls?"

Satres shrugged, continuing the slow raking. He dragged the stone tips of the tool through the ashen, poisoned ground, raking the dead earth up and breaking it apart in hopes that there was some life further down. There had been little luck in the endeavor just yet, but he had hopes.

The songbird followed beside him as he kept breaking the earth up, stirring the corruption out of the ground and allowing it to breathe the air again. There was little that he could do besides that when it came to purification. It was not a skill that he had, and he considered himself lucky that the earth had not been burned together into a full solid the way that much of the rest of the temple had been.

He was about to start a new row in the earth when Silra grabbed him by the wrist. Pausing, he glanced at her with the feathers over his eyes raised.

"Yes?"

"Why are you doing this?"

"I am taking time to think."

"No. You're afraid, aren't you?"

"...If I was, would it be so unforgivable?" he asked, turning his attention back to the earth. "I came back. And I'm going to do this. But...yes. I suppose I am...a little afraid."

"If you let that win, then you're never going to stop."

"I don't plan to let it win."

Satres pulled the rake through the earth once more, the deep earth rising up and darkening the gray, ashen earth at the top. The miasma of the Demon King lingered, but slowly, the poison was being allowed to leech itself free, rising through the air to the sky once more. It would rain down as poison and acid again, sure enough, but that would fall on the top of the mountain, well away from him. The earth, as ever, would recover.

Another long pull, another bit of cracked earth, and then Silra grabbed at him again. This time, however, she grabbed the rake by the handle, squeezing it before spinning and throwing it over the nearby wall. It clattered as it went over the tiles, and clicked as it hit the ground outside the temple. Satres watched it go, then turned to face her.

"Why did you do that?"

"Because you're wasting your time."

"And you care about this?"

"Since I'm bound to you, and I can't let you get hurt, yes. I am forced to care."

He met her eyes, then glanced down at the golden light on her shoulders. The commands that he had written in his own chi glowed there, spilling out the power that bound her to his commands. The most literal command, to do no harm, was still the brightest of them, but since learning her name, he had added others. To tell no lies was, perhaps, the most strict of them, but the rest had been merely a way of streamlining the first, to allow for greater flexibility under more strict circumstances.

It was her decision, however, to consider that to mean that she could not harm him, and she could not, therefore, allow him to be harmed. He did not know if that was a good thing for her, or a bad thing for him, but it was holding her for now.

Satres knelt in the dirt, pressing his hand into it. The remaining poison hissed against the dark gray scales on his fingers and palm, and he clicked his beak as he felt them burn as if in contact with acid.

"Do you know why I'm doing this?" he asked.

"Because you're afraid. You already said that."

"Do you know what it means to be afraid?"

"..." Silra sighed. "Yes."

"When were you afraid?"

"When am I not?" she muttered.

"The most recent time, then."

"When we fought. When we fought, and I lost. When you took away what I could do..."

Satres nodded, still digging his hand through the earth regardless of how much it hurt. Silra knelt down beside him, grabbing for his hand, but he shook his head, digging deeper, pushing through the cracked earth as the poison continued to rise through the cracks.

"When you were afraid, could you think?"

"Enough. Enough to know to hate you."

"And when you hated me, did it give you any way out?"

"...No. Where are you going with this?"

"To suppress a feeling and move forward is occasionally required," the raven said, clenching his hand into a fist in the earth. "One can...and is sometimes required to...move forward despite not being ready. However..."

He took a deep breath, feeling the heat of the poison burning through some of his feathers, through his skin, down to the bone. It made his entire arm ache, made him feel like he had been battered and bruised down to the deepest part of the limb.

"However. Feeling the fear...or the anger...or the pain...feeling it, letting it pass, letting it have its time and then fade...gives you a space to think. I am not avoiding the scrolls. I am giving myself time, time to calm down, time to be afraid, time to..."

"Hurt?"

"Yes."

He closed his eyes tightly, feeling a tear or two rising before they were blinked away. With one final thrust of his hand, he found what he was looking for, and he slowly pulled his hand back up.

Rich, black earth came up with his fingers, and he held it in the palm of his hand. It was untouched by the poison that had burned the surface, that had killed everything at the top. The raven crumbled the wet earth from below, letting it fall around scarred, burned, white-marked scales along his arm.

"Time may heal all things, if you do not bury the poison among the pure. You cannot forget...though you do not always have to forgive."

"...I wish I could hurt you right now."

"Why?"

"Because of how much you hurt yourself! That's at least two days worth of pain, and you did it to yourself!"

"Couldn't you have fed from that?"

"I was too busy trying to stop you from doing it in the first place."

Shaking his head, Satres pulled his arm back. The pain was not precisely fading, but he was able to process it, to put it at the back of his mind for now. And more to the point, the gardening had done what he had intended. It had cleared his mind, given him time for the worries and the fear and the anger he felt to run their course, finish affecting him, and let him get back to the work at hand.

He got to his feet and walked toward the main part of the temple. It was time to see what was in the final scroll.

Silra followed him through the open bottom room and up the stairs, and soon, he was seated beside the scroll once more, and she stood behind him. He rested his hand along the side of the scroll, feeling for any chi that might be hidden in the scroll, any trap that was waiting for those that shouldn't read it. He felt nothing, but that meant very little in the grand scheme of things. The raven winced as he flicked a finger beneath the curve of the scroll, looking over his shoulder.

"Be ready to feed, if you must."

"You've taken that choice from me. I can't cause you pain, and I can't allow it to be suffered if I can help it."

"Then be ready to help."

He took one more deep breath, and then thrust the scroll open, waiting for the trap.

The trap never came. Instead, he was left staring at a great map of the avian body, a spread-out illustration that touched on both the points of chi connections within a living person as well as the points of pain within the body. He leaned forward, looking it over, and he cocked his head to the side as he studied it.

In his time at the temple, he heard of the Order of the Claw and the Order of the Eye, those that could see and affect the nerves of the body with their talents. For a moment, this seemed like that, except that there was nothing about how to disable an opponent. At least, not directly.

Satres traced the elegant lines of green and blue characters across the body of the peacock in the illustration, muttering to himself, his beak clicking as he whispered faster and faster, almost arguing with himself.

The scroll contained little in the way of information regarding the Order of the Clipped Wing itself, but rather seemed to be about a single technique of theirs. He didn't understand it, though. The scroll pointed to chi and nerve points, points that would explicitly limit a limb if one were to damage them, except here, it seemed to almost encourage it. Not even on an enemy, but on oneself.

Why? Why would you harm yourself as part of your technique?

"This...this makes no sense," he muttered.

"What doesn't?"

"The technique. It's as if you're supposed to go into battle weakened."

"Does it have to be a way of fighting?"

"I..."

Perhaps not. He looked at it again, cocking his head to the side. The Order of the Clipped Wing...what would that mean?

At first, he thought that it might have been an Order that learned how to fight under such strict limitations that when they released those restrictions they were unstoppable, but that didn't seem to fit with the technique that he saw. He traced the points again, shaking his head slowly, muttering to himself until -

"Wait...Wait..."

He ran his hand along the edge of the illustration again, tracing the line from the first chi point upwards. It started at the fingers, at the very edge, and then ran up the arms. There were other points, always beginning at the extremities, always where one would first touch something else.

Satres looked at his hand, at the damage that the Demon King's miasma had done, and then looked at the scroll again.

"Silra...Bring me some of the poisoned soil."

"Why? Do you plan to burn your other hand off?"

"No. I think...Just, please. Bring it."

The songbird left and returned swiftly, having gathered the soil in a planting pot. Satres touched his hand again, squeezing the points that were marked on the scroll. The pressure certainly did something; while his hand didn't quite go numb, he could no longer channel his chi out through his fingers, nor through his palm. It stopped as if bottled up at the base of his hand, right behind the wrist.

Now...let's see if I am right...

Taking a few deep breaths as he remembered the pain, he slowly pressed his fingers into the poisoned earth. He waited for the first hint of a burning sensation, ready to withdraw his fingers as soon as he felt them starting to degrade, but nothing happened. The raven pressed his hand deeper into the poisoned earth, and still nothing. Finally, he submerged his hand.

Nothing.

As he pulled it out and saw no scars, he shook his head in amazement and Silra stared in awe.

"What...how?"

"The Order of the Clipped Wing. You clip the wings to make something safe, to keep them from getting away." He turned his hand around. "My chi cannot escape...and the demon's energy cannot get in."

That was a technique beyond anything that he had ever heard of from the Orders of Talon and Quill. It was a power that could put one on a more even keel with demons, if one was careful in how they used it. One of the great powers of demons was to reach out with their poison, their malice, their corrupted chi and bring one down from within. Each strike had the risk of turning one's own body against oneself, but this technique removed that in exchange for pulling one's own weapons deeper into the body.

And that's hardly the limit, is it? he thought, looking back at the scroll. One could shut down an entire limb, if they needed, cut out the pain of battle for a time so that they could keep fighting. What else could you do?

And this was but one technique of the Order of the Clipped Wing, and there had to be more of them. Satres leaned over the table again, checking the scroll for a map just as he had done with the Order of the Talon.

It took him time, but he eventually saw it. The peacock feathers in the illustration corresponded to the mountains that surrounded half of the Valley of Heaven, with each blue dot on the feathers one of the temples that surrounded the mountains. More than that, there were little hash marks here and there, patterns that were more than artistic license. He turned it around and around, and spotted further irregularities, further little patterns within patterns that answered the unspoken question.

There were x-marks along the feathers, places on this mountain where things were hidden. All he had to do was find them.

Satres sat back in his chair, letting out a long, slow breath. Today had been a series of set-backs and welcome breaths of relief, and this was one of the latter. He brought his hands to his face, covering his eyes as he breathed in slowly, evenly, but only once. The second breath came ragged and harsh. The third hit him harder than all the others, and he shuddered.

It finally hit him. There were no more masters, no more teachers to guide him. Nobody to ask about the scrolls, nobody to talk to about his discoveries. The urge to run to Master Wulin, to tell her about his understanding of the Clipped Wing, had surged even as he understood what it meant. The urge to train with Master Sarin, to be stronger for his journey, was fading.

And the need to ask Master Kazir what to do...

"I'm not staying for this," Silra said, stepping out of the room, doubtlessly because she didn't want to be forced to give comfort.

He didn't care. The feelings, the grief, came rushing forward once more, and for the tears that fell, he wanted to be alone. There were other things that needed doing, but they could wait. For five minutes, they could wait.

The tears fell, and he mourned the loss of his teachers anew.

The End