Night Watch
Dragonfly wings brush Ke Xing’s hands as he offers up a piece of leftover meat to his fey companions, the glowing blue lights within their bodies pulsating gently as they land daintily on the meat and begin to feast. Beside him, Bailin is uncharacteristically silent after the events of the day, staring out into the cloistered darkness within the temple. People, age-old and long gone, had once walked the halls of this temple before them, offering prayers and seeking shelter. The group of them are here for the latter, spread out in the entrance hall of the temple, the air within still faintly smelling like meat and alcohol.
Ke Xing had only been able to read the last two characters hanging above the entrance of the temple, but he had heard someone say that the temple they were in was called “Bichen Guan”, the Temple of the Blue Dawn. The water genasi immortalised in the statue Ke Xing had seen in the worship hall had been vaguely familiar, the details of her life lost to the time Ke Xing had spent away from the books his grandparents had once made him study (half-heartedly, with no real concern for whether he understood what he was being taught). The deity, a former master of the Summer Palace, was beautiful, carved out of stone as she was, her hand extended out towards worshippers, holding a bowl of little blue stones.
Temples always offered blessings to the devout. Out of habit, Ke Xing had reached out to pick up one of the blue stones, clasping it between his hands as he put his palms together and thanked her quietly. The stone sits in Ke Xing’s pocket now and he shoos a dragonfly off his hand to touch it absently, the stone cool against his skin. If there was any time he needed a change in luck, a blessing, it would be now.
Today had been… a trying day. What had started as a search for a missing student at an academy had taken him and the others through a strange portal and into a stranger, unfamiliar land—or so he thought. After all this time, Ke Xing had found his way back to the one place he thought he wouldn’t step foot in again.
Tianxia. Right on the outskirts of the Summer Palace.
The world sure worked in mysterious ways.
The forest they had landed in, Yu Lin Peaks, had tried to eat him alive earlier in the day, taking greedy chunks out of his travelling companions, rubbing salt into old wounds Ke Xing didn’t like to think about these days. After he had finally come to, he had seen the way Sophia and Sprinkles clung onto each other, half-collapsed on the ground as their tears flowed freely. Yu Die had been ashen grey, standing stock-still like the breath had been stolen from her lungs. Bailin had been choking on god knows what, saltwater pouring from her mouth and clogging his throat, trying to make them breathe their last.
Ke Xing himself had been swallowing down bile threatening to rise from the depths of his stomach, sick in a way he hasn’t felt for years, remembering the oppressive gaze of his grandmother on him, the distant voice of his father ringing in his ears. He had heard the inquiring clamour of his dragonfly companions from the other plane, their phantom wings flitting against his sleeves, perching on his arms and shoulders, their tiny voiceless thoughts asking what was wrong, who to swarm, who to protect. They were the one good thing that had come into his life as he struggled to adapt to life beyond Tianxia and they had kept him grounded in that moment as he urged the group to keep moving forward to wherever that strange girl, Mya, had been leading them to.
Back in the present, his dragonflies nibble on the piece of meat he had laid out for them, swarming whatever available space there is on the meat. The rest of them flit in the air around him, lighting up the dark with the softly glowing blue lights within their bodies, like a swarm of nightlights. Ke Xing lifts a finger and one of them lands on his finger, barely weighing anything.
From beside him, Ke Xing suddenly hears a “pop” sound and he turns to see Bailin looking stricken, her hand raised in mid-swat. The dragonfly that had been unceremoniously discorporated by Bailin’s hand pops back into existence in the next moment, flying away coolly from Bailin, and Bailin looks relieved. He swats at another dragonfly curiously and it vanishes into another plane before her hand can connect. Some of the dragonflies feasting on the piece of meat start to leave their meal, attracted to this new game being played with a new dragonborn companion, and Ke Xing lets the dragonfly on his finger go with them.
Amidst the numerous “pop” sounds beside him as Bailin discorporates his dragonflies and they try to avoid her hand playfully, the wind blows the faint stirrings of a song towards him and Ke Xing frowns, thinking it to be an old memory of his, resurfacing like an annoyance in his head. But he doesn’t recognise this song and the wind that blows towards him is fresh and smells like the forest outside. Ke Xing reaches for his bow, tucking his swords swiftly into his belt as he stands, swivelling his head back and forth as he searches for the source of the song. Some of his dragonflies peel off from the swarm to follow him, the others choosing to focus on their meal or Bailin instead, as he walks around the temple.
The others beside Bailin and him are asleep so the song cannot be from them. Ke Xing walks until he stands in the way of a draught coming from outside the temple, the fresh air blowing over him and bringing with it the faint notes of the song. He thinks of all the things that he had detected on this strange mountain—and how they had looked back at him all at once, their gazes so piercing and disturbing. But this song feels different from them. He can’t tell how, but the song doesn’t set him on edge, doesn’t give him the same sense of danger the rest of the things on this cursed mountain do. It feels passive and benign, brushing over him like the wind, and Ke Xing loosens his grip on his bow, finding his way back to where Bailin is by the dim, flickering light of his dragonflies.
When Ke Xing returns, Bailin has lost interest in the dragonflies, looking instead at a fistful of small blue stones that Ke Xing recognises in their hand. The silence that falls between Bailin and him is companionable and pensive, a far cry from how their first meeting went. Ke Xing hadn’t liked Bailin then—she had been too loud, too intrusive, too much for his liking. But after falling through a portal together and seeing Bailin come out of the trance the forest had put them into, half-broken by what she had seen, Ke Xing had felt a certain sense of camaraderie towards him. Ke Xing briefly thinks about asking Bailin what he had seen in the vision the forest had granted her, but the thought fades from his mind like a passing cloud. Ke Xing doesn’t know if he would share his vision if Bailin asked the same of him. For now, the silence and the song, the nighttime accompaniment from the mountain, is good enough for him.
Time ticks by and eventually, their watch comes to an end, the piece of meat Ke Xing had laid out on the ground for his dragonflies gone, completely devoured.