When in Mulwhen

         It was a bright and cloudless day, far too cheery for such a dread task. Ilhun had been on the road for nearly a week, and his destination was finally in sight. He could see the tops of Mulwhen's tallest buildings as he trotted along on the cobbled road. From his vantage, Ilhun could only see the outskirts of the city.
         He hadn't expected to see any real damage at the city's edge, but collapsed buildings and debris littered the street, and people milled about salvaging the wreckage of their homes, sloshing through languid puddles of muddy water.
         This is bad. There must have been a flood some time after the pirates attacked. The Ukjokuns have spread their violence and disorder to even our shores now.
         Ilhun began to make his way to the garrison, intending to speak with the captain. A rowdy crowd blocked his path. A few heads turned to him, his priest's robes standing out among the ruddy discolored garb these poor souls wore.
         A shout came from somewhere deeper in the crowd.
         'Your doom is upon you all! The end is near! For too long we Seong have been complacent! You allow yourselves to be led, like a great bull led by his ring, your masters have cowed you, led you to believe they are wiser, stronger, that they have all the answers to your suffering! But, they are not, and they do not!'
         'The clans sit secure in their manor houses, reaping the fruits of your labor, growing rich off of your toils! The priests sit in the temples reaping your taxes. To allow them to care for our ancestors they say, aiding us in times of trouble, and protecting our lives in the hereafter, yet where are they now, when we truly need them? The very waters we live by send forth their own to punish us! Doom is on us all if we do not mend our ways! We must throw off their shackles and restore the land as only we who live with it know how!'
         Ilhun pushed his way through the crowd to see this blasphemer for himself. The orator stood on a crate, dressed in the same stained rags as the rest of the crowd. His eyes flicked to Ilhun as he came up to the front.
         'There! There is one who bears responsibility! A false-priest, he comes to show us the Righteous Path, yet he himself has strayed from it!'
         The man was in a frenzy, spittle flying from his lips, arms gesticulating wildly.
         Ilhun was so shocked, he didn't even realize that he had stepped forward to speak until he was staring up at the man. He turned around to face the crowd, their eyes were all on him.
         'Good people', he began, 'I have not come to lead anyone astray! The Hwarang knows of the attacks and hardship your city has faced, and I am here to report on the damage so that we can send you help. The priesthood is here to help you, in this world and the next. We do not lead, we advise. The Hwarang will send healers to care for your wounded and workers to aid you in rebuilding. I simply wish to find the garrison, to find out how these raiders could possi-'
         Someone from the crowd cut him off with an angry shout.
'Raiders?! Someone in the crowd cried. There've never been no raiders! It was demons! Demons out of Lake Tinha!'
         'Please, sir! I just want to see wh-'
         A shoe flew by his head, barely missing him. A smattering of random objects followed behind it. A clump of mud hit him in the chest, splattering him with filth.
         The original speaker, still on his crate, took his cry back up.
         'Do you see my brothers and sisters? How can he claim to guide you when he will not heed your words! The Hwarang has failed you, the Clans have failed you, the Emperor has failed you!'
         The people hurled mocking shouts at Ilhun. He was all too visible in his no-longer-clean robes. He spun his head about nervously. They stood at the intersections of two lanes, the only path unoccupied by the mass of angry, needy people was a thin alleyway near the speaker. Ilhun turned and ran.
         He went quickly through the murky back alley paths for a long time before he decided to turn and check if anyone was following. They weren't. Now that he was safe, he needed to find his way to the city's fortress-temple. Someone there would be able to talk sense, a Hwarang or a Chaplain. Someone in possession of the wherewithal to know how the world worked. Demons - phah.
         It was commonly acknowledged in more erudite circles that the creatures from before the Bukhan campaigns were more than likely not real. More than likely they were merely exaggerations of the barbarians that had plagued the Seongin people in the distant path.
         These townsfolk were just repeating what their kind have been doing since time immemorial - trying to make sense of a world beyond their comprehension. Truly, what happened here was tragic and required immediate redress. The Ujokuns' raids had been increasing in intensity in the south for years now, enough that it warranted an ever growing number of galleys on the lake. He was going to take everything he saw here back to Am'ruen and get these people help, regardless of how they treated him.
         Ilhun exited back out onto a wider thoroughfare. The empty streets unsettled him as he walked through the lanes, devoid of people and commerce. The flooding had stained the buildings up past their ground floors, and had left detritus strewn all about. The most striking thing though, was the algae clinging to the walls. The pale, pink gunk gave off a dim glow, and it hummed as the light it shed waxed and waned in intensity. It had spread far from the lake since the flood.
         After hours of wandering the desolate streets, the central tower of the city's fortress temple revealed itself to him. It rose above the wreckage on the streets, unsullied by the flood damage. Rejoicing, Ilhun hurried as quickly as was possible through the streets, around the waterlogged plaster walls and through the central gate. He shouldn't have gotten his hopes up.
         Unlike the rest of the area, there were people here, and thank his mother's line for that, but the state of place did not give him heart. The temples, the barracks, almost everything lay in ruins. Men toiled to remove what they could from the heaps of cracked wood and stone on the ground. Only the prelate's tower stood tall and proud.
         'Stop right there civilian', a bedraggled guard call out to him, it's dangerous here. 'Please return to your home, or to the camps on the south side of the city at once.'
         'I am not a civilian', Ilhun replied firmly, 'I am Ilhun, Apostle of the Am'luen Hwaji. Who's in charge here?'
         Does it look like there's a chain of command in place 'ere? The guard swept his hand out and around the grounds. There were few enough people, and fewer wearing the crest of the city garrison. Captain's dead. Most of the officers 're either dead or taken, same with the priests. If you want to go to the temple, fine, but stay out of our way. We got to salvage what we can before nightfall.
         I see... Ilhun said, thank you sirrah. The guard went back to his business and Ilhun approached the tower. It was several stories tall, and he worked his way up to the top. The top floor was small, the landing he entered in merely an antechamber into the prelate's rooms. Like the rest of the tower, the town's Hwarang, and the city at large, it had been ransacked. The only difference, really, was that the structure had been able to withstand what damages had come its way. The same could not be said for whatever was inside.
         The events of the day had exhausted him. He was no closer to seeing a tangible threat, the city was torn apart, and it threatened to tear him apart with it. He walked out onto a balcony that overlooked Lake Tinha. He closed his eyes and let the energy of the body of water vibrate through him. It washed over him and through him, leaving his mind buzzing gently with a reassuring warmth. After a time he opened his eyes again. The light that always came off the vermilion water was becoming more vibrant as the sun set behind the mountains to the far west.
         He decided to look back over the events of the day before he found a place to sleep. Reaching into his sleeve pocket, he pulled out a small cylindrical object. He twisted the pieces into place, taking time to look over the intricate designs carved into each of the panels before slotting his signet ring into one of its ends. He pressed on both ends of the pieces until he heard them click together. The finely worked device projected the day's events into the air over the balcony.
         As he watched, the sky grew dark and light radiated from the lake, illuminating the coast until it stretched beyond the horizon and out of sight.
         Something below the water began to shift and stir. Shadows squirmed beneath the surface, growing larger and more numerous. The first of the creatures came forth, clawing and slithering up the rising tide. As high as he was, he couldn't make out many details. They had long bodies that undulated in the water. The lake expanded. Not with the calm rhythm of waves and tides, but like an avalanche.
         He halted the projection and stood to return to the inside of the ruined tower. As he moved to stand, something hit the bricks next to him with a clap. Droplets of water pelted his skin and stung him. He had been seen. He flew down the stairs, preparing to go as fast as he could away from the Hwarang and back to the inland road.
         By the time he emerged from the dark stone tower the water was already breaching the gate. He hesitated. Everyone knew what happened to those who spent too long in Lake Tinha. His face was already pulsing with stinging exhilaration as it sank into him. What would happen to him when he started sloshing through this water?
          His moment's hesitation was too long. There were scores of them slithering past the gate. They were tall, and they were fast. He lept into the water and tried to flee. The water bogged down his legs even while it innervated his spirit. The need to flee and fear for his life clashed with the elation he felt as the glowing ambrosia seeped into his skin. He stifled a giggle, or was it a sob? It didn't matter. Something smacked hard into the back of his back, then his shoulder, then his head, and he was plunged into unconsciousness.










CHAPTER 2
         He was laying on something cold. His mind swam in the murky waters of semi-consciousness. He wasn't sure where he was, or what had happened, but his head hurt, and he was cold. Was he cold? He certainly wasn't warm, but there was another sensation all across his body that almost overpowered the chill. Like he was being prodded all over with pins, or pricked lightly with thorns. Captivating in its intensity, the sensation took his attention away from anything else. It made it easier to ignore the cold, to ignore the wet clothes, and to ignore the hard stone floor he lay on. Wet clothes... something about that seemed important...
         He opened his eyes. In the ceiling, a hole ascended upwards, a distant light trickled down, dimly illuminating the room. Around him, maybe a score or so of disheveled individuals sat despondent in the bare stone chamber. His mind raced as panic began to sink in. There had to be a way out. He couldn't be trapped here. This couldn't be happening. The prickling gained pressure in intensity on his shoulder, a million little ants swarming to carrion. He looked to the source, it was a hand on his shoulder. I'm glad you're awake, son. The source was a thin oldster. His ascetic appearance was only offset by his priest's robes, the five-colored flower of the Hwarang shone brightly in the low light.
         I don't recognize you from the temple, the old clergyman said, why come you to Mulhwen?
         From there, the two launched into a discussion on what they had experienced. Ilhun, as the junior of the two, talked about his mission from the Patriarch of Am'ruen, his shock that this was not just another of the increasingly common raids, and his capture from the lake serpents. The old man, whose name he learned was Olwei, was not the temple prelate. That one had been taken from their prison prior to Ilhun's arrival.
         Olwei was near certain that these creatures were Naga - legendary serpent warriors from the time before the Severing. This was a frustrating revelation to say the least. The only magic with any substance was supposed to be what was extracted from the land, for human hands to shape. These creatures, and their manipulation of reality, were simply beyond the pale of anything he had ever considered.
         He heard a noise coming from above. It got closer and closer. A great tumbling rush that would fall in on them through the overhead portal. It was so close now. He could hear it - it sounded like water. He couldn't spend much longer in Lake Tinha's waters before the potency whisked him away like a candle in the wind.
         He braced for the crushing force of unrestrained rapids, but none came. The water had stopped right at the lip of the tunnel, suspended in the air. Its serene surface was unbroken by any ripples or debris
         The first one to come through did so with surprising grace. It broke the surface of the water, arms over its head in a divers wedge, maneuvering itself like it were hanging from an acrobat's bar. Suspended only by its serpent's half that remained in the water, it lowered itself to the prison floor and gradually reeled in its tail, winding the tail around itself.
         This was the first real look Ilhun had gotten at any of them. Its torso was similar to his own, but the scales that patterned its skin shone a deep blue in the dim light from above the water. Several more of its kin twisted down from the ceiling and took their places behind it. The graceful one, clearly the leader here, spoke.
'This time take half.'
         Olwei had said last time they only took four of twenty. Even one more was too many. Ilhun stood up, despite the pain that shifted strongly to his feet.
'Where are you taking them?' He demanded. 'What do you want from us? These people have done nothing to you! Let us go.'
         Something lashed his cheek, drawing blood that felt so hot on its it should have steamed. He stumbled backwards. The tip of its tail slithered back into place, its tip gleaming deep red. The naga extended itself forward on its long tail, looming over him. It stood so high that the ceiling prevented it from fully unfurling. Its forked tongue darted in and out and a hacking rasp escaped its thin lips. He thought this might have been taken for laughter.
'We are but taking what was already ours. You will learn your place in this world soon enough, no need to rush to your death.'
         Cries rang out across the room as they descended and took the other townsfolk, dragging them back up the tunnel with them. The leader eyed Ilhun up and down. Suddenly, it grabbed Ilhun's hand and raised it up near its face. Slowly, it slid the signet ring off of his finger and replaced it on its own.
'What a lovely little bauble. It took time savoring the words.
         It smiled, revealing a row of sharp, interlocked fangs.
'I will be back soon enough for you, soft one. '
         It raised itself up to the tunnel and was gone, water receding behind it as it left.
         The water that came down with the naga went back up with them, and the light it brought receded also. They sat despondently on the damp stones and waited, even fewer in number than before.
         Ilhun knew a despair all his own. He had always wanted to protect the sanctity and beauty of the world that the Seong Empire had built. At seminary, he learned to guide the human soul, to teach it what was right and true, and what practices one must make to maintain a family's place in the here and the hereafter.
         Where had he gone wrong? So many of his brothers in the faith were students of history, of the world that their empire had forged. But the laymen of this city, the people they all sought to lead, had told him what had happened, and he had not listened. They had all known, but he refused to believe.
         What did that make of his life's work? What did it say about him as a leader? What did it say about the Hwarang? He was educated. He had received lessons from the finest scholars and historians, priests and monks, poets and musicians, but what did it mean when the lattice of beliefs he had constructed had its very foundation crumble?
         
         Ilhun decided he would talk to each of the other prisoners in turn. He wanted to see their perspective, hear their struggles. A sailmaker, a stevedore, a merchant, a clerk at the tax docks. None of them were caught in the initial raid, but had been caught when they returned to their homes. Foolish, he thought, to cling to lost possessions in the face of such a calamity, but he supposed that they had to try to salvage whatever parts of their lives they could.
         The sailmaker saw one Naga fight three militiamen and a Hwaki Knight. They wielded long spears, and used their tails to prevent being flanked. Their human ends looked similar, but were covered in hard scales that warded off blades. It didn't help that so many of the muskets were waterlogged in the flooding. The stevedore had tried to run, but was outsped and outmaneuvered. They were quick in the water, and they could trap you just by surrounding you with one tail alone.
         The merchant had actually never left her home. She evaded detection for several nights by hiding in a well-provisioned attic. She wasn't sure how she was found out.
         The clerk was just a boy, barely fifteen. He told Ilhun that she saw some of the naga women doing something to the water. He had lingered too long in the washed out wreckages of the apprentices' tenements, and had heard the most beautiful singing coming from the lake. He found that he couldn't help but wander towards it. When he got there, he saw them. The half snake-women chanting their song over the water's hum. They raised their arms to the sky, and that was when the water began to rise and pour over the quay. They had taken him not long after.
         Ilhun, together with his newfound brother Olwei, did what they could to provide what comforts they could, but no one was in much of a mood to welcome comfort just then.








Chapter 3


         Some time later, he was sitting with the others when the rush of falling water approached from above. The chamber rapidly grew from dim, to bright enough that he had to shield his eyes from the red fluorescence. Only one naga came down from the shaft this time. It beckoned him forward. I told you your time would come, soft skin. You will come with me. It waved a finger to beckon him forward as it showed a too-wide smile. On its finger still sat the angular signet ring.
         The trip up the shaft was not pleasant. Conscious this time, the Tinha water was like a thousand bolts of lightning running over his skin, penetrating every inch of him. It woke the faded remnants from his last immersion and amplified them to new heights. He was spending too long submerged in this font of power.
         Recalling his training he closed his eyes and centered himself, reigning his mind from the sensations that whirled through him. He controlled himself in the confines of his own body. The flashes of thought that flickered through the mind were fleeting, temporal. They would go as quickly as they came.
         After an eternity, Ilhun emerged from the water in the grasp of his captor. The man-serpent flung him to the floor, and he spasmed like a fish out of water, unable to ignore the fiery puissance that clashed against his body. He did his best to point his mind somewhere else, to direct his consciousness somewhere the world wasn't searing him. As he struggled to disengage from himself, he heard the naga were discussing something.
'Your slave has brought you a special morsel, Great Dragon Lord. It is ripe, brimming with Hon. Please partake of this humble servant's offering, your crimson radiance, and let it fan the flames of your glory to new heights.'
         Ilhun's eyes gazed at the ceiling, unseeing. He focused on control, he focused on himself. Not his body, that was only a vessel for the self. The part of him that lurked behind his seeing eyes, perceiving the world through his five stifling senses. That was what he truly was. Not the pain that shocked, not the fear that poisoned. Not the eyes that saw nor the hands that felt. None of it was him. Amazingly the sensations all began to fade. He felt lighter, like he was coming untied from all of his worldly burdens, floating away in their absence.
         He felt his perspective shift, like he was looking at the room from a heightened vantage. His giddiness was gone, swept away with the retreating tide that was his physical form. Somehow, he hovered above his body as it lay on the floor, eyes staring up at him.
         His escort was still debasing himself in front of his lord. The one that the naga bowed down to was another creature entirely. Whereas the naga were half man half serpent, their lord bore no resemblance to a person. Its long slender body was armored in shifting prismatic scales that ended in a long beak. It bore long powerful jaws, and its eyes were adorned with hard ridges and long whiskers. It stared at him. Not his human body below, but at him as he was now, hanging incorporeal in the air.
         At that moment, Ilhun wanted to be anywhere else. His thoughts returned to the Hwarang in Am'ruen, its luscious gardens that provided him so many peaceful afternoons of contemplation under their trellises. As he thought, he wished so dearly to be there, so strongly to be safe.
         The veil of the physical world parted and shifted around him. It twisted and warped, shapes contorting, colors changing. And he was there, right under the very chestnut tree where he had gone on his first afternoon there. No, this wasn't right. He couldn't be here, he wasn't safe. He was a captive, held by foes that were beyond his imagining not even a week ago.
         For an infinitesimal moment he felt the world shift again. Colors again melded into each other and took on new, yet familiar, shapes.
         He was back under the lake in the serpent's domain. Now they were all looking at him, eyes wide in shock from his sudden return. A voice emerged from the dragon across the chamber.
         So much Hon for such a small being. It is not for such as you to possess. Truly, your power will nourish my body. Take heart, little one. Your death will usher in our true return.
         The great serpent uncoiled itself. The energy in the room shifted, like it was being sucked in by a great vortex with the dragon at its center. Ilhun too was caught up in it. Unable to hold his ground he slowly began to tumble towards the dragon. He tried to find whatever purchase he could, but it was too powerful. He was going to die. He was falling faster now. No resistance was enough to withstand the onslaught of this powerful beast.
         He again remembered his lessons at seminary. His favorite lectures were on the power of the Soul that existed in each and every individual. The Soul was what gave people the power to shape the world in their image.Three parts, they were made up of: Heart, passion, feeling, love; Mind, the capacity to think beyond the present; and Will, the drive to accomplish, to achieve our heart's desires.
         Ilhun reached deep within himself, finding the drive to shrug off what the dragon tried to impose on him. He could not be moved, he could not be intimidated. The naga were but the element of water given physical form. Creatures of water had power over water in this plane, but Ilhun was a creature of the Soul, he was weak in body, but strong in spirit. Exposure to the innervating water had brought him closer to a level underneath the material..
         He focused - all of this was his to shape. He expanded his self, encompassing the grand chamber. Reality began to shift again. All retracted around him as if he moved at a blurring speed, so fast that all substance became blurs of color, passing him by in an instant.
         Ilhun held to himself, he held to the space around him, and all of the naga that he would never let touch the world of Man again. He gripped them with a fierceness he didn't know he possessed, and flung them out of the world of substance. In opening the curtain and pushing them through the veil, he touched the Plane of Spirit for but an instant, but that was all it took to experience the primordial chaos of that place. It overlaid the material world, but it had no substance. It consisted only of the essences tied inextricably to each place and thing. Wood, Fire, Earth, Air, and Water. They each struggled, pushing ever forward in a cycle of momentary victory to momentary defeat as each took its place from its predecessor before giving way to another, and on and on forever.
         He pulled away from the primal power of that realm and returned to his own. He awoke floating in the deep red water, suspended in place. He was back in his body, but the incessant tingling was gone. As his mind came more and more back in line with his body, he looked around. The bright water illuminated everything around him, seeing the 6 prisoners, struggling for purchase in the open water.
         Finding the wielding of all reality not quite as phasing anymore, Ilhun enveloped them within his self and whisked them safely from the lake's all consuming grasp. They transitioned rapidly from open water to solid earth. His passengers all dropped bonelessly. From each of the six freed people, he felt the effect of the energy's extreme potency like it were heat off a fire. Some held more than others, but all were overwhelmed by it. In an act not unlike the dragon's, Ilhun siphoned off the power that coursed through them. He drank in their excess energy, and felt it bolstering his own reserves. He shuddered at the similarity, but resolved that he would only take what they could not keep.
         As the pressure emanating from them eased,they became still. He was worried that he had taken too much from them, but the slow rising and falling of unconscious breath relieved him. One of them was still awake though, and he made an effort to stand. It was Olwei. He struggled to his feet, and looked at Ilhun.
         'What happened? They took you away, and then everything fell away! We were drowning and then... '
         He trailed off as his eyes caught on something. Ilhun looked down at himself, and saw what had changed. It was very faint, but the cobblestones of the street were apparent through him. He raised a hand up between himself and Olwei, and saw the man's astonished face through it.
         'I will explain in a moment, but I would like for you to come with me.'
         Ilhun began willing Olwei to shift back to Am'ruen with him, but he couldn't quite find the path. He tried to will himself back under the chestnut tree in the garden like before, but it was like twisting the handle of a locked door. Ilhun shrugged, a bit chagrined.
         'I guess I'll tell you while we walk.'
         The two men returned to the temple grounds and told the holdouts where to find the recovered prisoners. As they walked further and further, Ilhun began to feel something pulling at him. The further into the city they walked, the stronger it became. It tugged at him as if to yank him backwards... toward the lake. He stopped suddenly and turned around. The feeling eased.
         'What is it?' Olwei asked.
         Ilhun looked at his hand. The translucence was more sharp, the outline of his surroundings more apparent through his fading skin.
         'I don't think I can go with you.' He pulled the cylindrical projector back out from the sleeve pocket. Take this to Patriarch Sen at the Am'ruen Hwarang. My signet ring is lost, but that is of no matter. This contains the events of everything I have witnessed since I left Am'ruen. It is of dire importance that the patriarch see this. He turned to go.
         'You've become akin to the spirits!' Olwei breathed.
         Ilhun turned his head back as he spoke. 'I think you're right. The seasons change, and so too the world. Something is happening. We must make whatever preparations we can to defend against whatever is to come. May your mother's line guide you on your journey, Olwei.'
         Olwei watched Ilhun go, totally awed. An incarnation of the old legends. One like the first emperor, who had gone to the other side and returned. He stood there dumbstruck as Ilhun's took a few more steps, paused, and then disappeared. He stood there for a while longer, thinking little but feeling much. But then he remembered the task he had been given. Olwei faced west and went to finish Ilhun's work.