Interlude 1: The Princess

Hae Narim, the Crown Princess of Hanulbeol-guk, Beloved by the Gods, had been ecstatic when she realized that the ritual worked. Ecstatic but exhausted. She had sensed it, something had passed through from the Spirit Realm, answering her call.

She had known she shouldn’t have been happy about disobeying her elders. They strongly advised against, or forbidden her even, to ever touch those cursed grounds in Surao Mountains. There, almost swallowed by the surrounding forest and nearly forgotten to anyone but the most knowledgable sages lay the ancient ruins of the Broken Temple, and within their strange carved stones slept the forgotten force. Hiding in plain sight, people in the nearby village didn’t even dare to speak its true name.

Hae Narim dared. Desperate times had been calling for action now that Hanulbeol-guk had fallen to the Jin Empire’s army. As invaders laid the siege on the capital, and even if the city could hold for months, nothing prevented the barbarians from pillaging the rest of the country. The war was close to being lost.

Narim had been tired, as she had channelled all her energy into the spell wishing for a hero - no, a miracle, a power to sweep away the so-called ‘Great Jin’ armies.

Ceremony completed, the antique scroll scattered by the wind, caster energy drained, she thought she could rest.

She was wrong.

The guards that had accompanied her were equally fatigued, as they had ridden day and night to reach this remote place.

What she didn’t expect was that the enemies would catch them so fast. Briefly paralyzed by the ritual, with her mind just lingering at the edges between dream and waking from the ordeal, she didn’t even realise her guards had been attacked until they fell before her eyes.

Jin soldiers seized her, shaking her out of her state.

She didn’t have the strength to resist and looked for salvation elsewhere.

A stranger, a man she called from Spirit Realm, lay in the middle of the stone circle of the Broken Temple and two of Jin swordsmen stepped out, most likely intending to stab him while he was asleep. As was typical for those barbarians, Narim thought while weakly resisting Jin’s brutes that held her. She wanted to fight them, but the toll the spell took on her was too high. She could barely stand.

Then the foreigner woke up and very ungracefully tried to flee from the two soldiers, to the edge of the cliff on which the Broken Temple stood. He almost fell over. Narim felt disgraced by his action. She didn’t deem him to be like the hero she had hoped for.

He didn’t see her, among the woods, she was certain, but at that point, she thought it didn't even matter.

The princess was certain the Jin captain would taunt her, but neither of them could predict what happened next.

The stranger spoke the Word of Power.

Narim didn’t understand it. It was a foul, a dreadful word, and she could feel it’s unnatural effect, its commanding presence on the material realm.

And with it, the barrier to the Spirit Realm broke as something answered his call. Unhuman, beast-woman covered with fur of fire, gleaming with energy. And without any hesitation, she burned both men alive as flames obeyed the beast’s command.

There had been people that mastered Fire Art. Fire Star of the South was one, but he wasn’t there. Maybe he wasn’t even alive anymore, considering the state of the kingdom. But the beast-woman did the same with equal ease.

Though shocked, Jin soldiers tried to use archers to bring the stranger down, but he called another servant out from the Spirit Real to shield him from the rain of arrows.

Then his beast-woman set the forest ablaze. Jin archers burned in the greenery they were hiding in. The stench of burning wood and scorched flesh filled the area.

Narim heard the beast-woman laugh over the loud booms and crackling of the fire, only the grace of the Gods protected the princess when the blazing projectile tore through one of her captors, while the other fell to the claws of another she-beast.

The Jin captain brought the she-beast down. And even if he did it with ease, he utterly failed in restoring order as his unit fell to the ravaging fire beasts.

As the body of the creature dissolved into the red mist, and then into the nothingness, almost as if it was never meant for this world, the princess decided to use the opportunity to run as far as her weary legs could carry her. It felt like a sensible choice - it didn’t matter who won that fight.

She could hear the screams behind her, and then, with the final boom came the silence.

Narim didn’t get far, her legs gave up after a short while, her body still fighting the backlash from the ritual. Perhaps it was what killed everyone who tried before, perhaps it was what elders had warned her about, she didn’t know.

The horses were gone, both hers and those of the Jin soldiers. They probably fled, startled when the whole commotion started, leaving her stranded in the hills. She decided to rest hidden among the bushes.

Narim could see the stranger collapsing on the road - she didn’t know if he chased after her, and was weakened as she was, but he didn’t remain alone for too long. Soon his beast-women were fawning over him, there were a dozen of them now.

She didn’t understand their foul speech though, it made her skin crawl and Hae Narim did regret performing that forbidden rite that called them there. She did not know how to revert, nor how to utilize it. It wasn’t what she had expected to happen. Jin were barbaric invaders, but would those disgusting beasts of fire be any better, she wondered.

Thoughts she had hiding here among the foliage were disturbed by the band of drunken commoners, likely bandits, stumbling into the stranger’s bestial entourage and were slaughtered to the man.

Perhaps gods were smiling at the princess at that moment once again as the creatures didn’t seem to know she was there, though they had the scent of the armed men before they even came close.

Narim used the chance to slip away, to continue through the forest downhill. There was a shrine to the Yellow Dragon, they had seen it on their way there, though they never stopped for rest, or paying respects.

It was a place of spiritual importance and the princess felt they could be drawn to it like a moth to a flame. A place as this would certainly drive away evil spirits, though as the Narim stumbled forward through the forest the spiritual taint along with the stench became too apparent, and she soon ran into more soldiers.

Not Jin, but ones of Hanulbeol, though none of them wore the colours properly.

“Greetings, warriors of Hanulbeol-guk. This one is the Crown Princess…” She started immediately, with an authoritative, yet respectful and polite tone. The princess understood her difficult situation, yet she was pressed to maintain the decorum. Though she was of higher standing, she felt she did need to show…

It fell on deaf ears. The soldiers didn’t care and attacked her, her protest futile, and probably would force themselves on her if they weren’t stopped by the giant of the man that commanded them.

Hae Narim knew that man. It was Chae Sochun. He was a retainer of her father, sent to the south to raise an army for Hanulbeol-guk. She had remembered that by the point she was leaving the capital, it had been clear that help from the south was not coming.

While Sochun did stop these men and threw a few aside even with his impressive strength, they still seized her, as a prisoner. He exchanged a few sentences with them, in a southern dialect she and no one in the capital spoke or even understood.

“This is not proper…” Narim protested.

“No, it is not.” Sochun agreed, “We don’t do proper things anymore.”

“But you swore…”

“As did your father! To feed all those who raise arms in defence of his reign! And there is no food left…”

“But by the king’s edict, the granaries…”

He didn’t let her finish.

“You lie. There were few of us left, and when we came asking for help, Gam Youngjae’s men drove us away! Now we take what you owe us.” He unloaded on her and after silencing her protest with the slap across her cheek, he ordered his men to drag her away.

She resisted, but even now, aftereffects of the ritual lingered making her body weak and draining her of energy.

They threw Narim into the makeshift cage along with three frightened women.

Narim had no idea what was going on here. It was obvious that the shrine had been looted, and Chae Sochun’s men made the camp there, but other than that, nothing made much sense. Chae Sochun didn’t even have a real army, his men were few, ew, less than a hundred in total, as far as she could tell. They looked worn out, more deserters than anything else.

“What happened here?” She tried to ask the other prisoner once the guard left them alone. A scared woman in the corner of the cage, in torn, dirtied clothes, apparently taken from one of the villages here.

She didn’t get a reply.

Narim tried to ask again. She did her best to speak in a kind voice, but though they were women of lower birth than her, it did nothing. Perhaps they didn’t know who she was, but it hardly mattered - they wouldn’t talk to her as to fellow prisoners either.

The only answer she got for repeated questions was: “Soldiers.”

She tried to press, to find out if they meant warriors of Hanulbeol, or Jin barbarians, or perhaps others, bandits and such, but no explanation was given. Shaking, impoverished girls weren’t able to hold any conversation, huddled in the corner, shaking. The answer was always the same.

“Soldiers.”

Hae Narim didn’t want that suffering - she wished to help, but her energy was gone, and the gods were ignoring her plea for help, even if that prayer was for sake of the people of the kingdom, not herself.

Captives just repeated the same word, she couldn't expect any answers from them.

She realized she didn't know what was happening in the countryside until now, and she wasn’t any wiser even when she found herself in the middle of it.

When the princess thought the gods didn’t look at her with favour anymore, her power was diminished by the forbidden rite and she wondered if tribulation from the gods came in other forms than the lightning strikes from the heavens, then something happened.

The call from the alarm from outside was one she understood despite the dialect being so foreign to her. Stomping feet, shouting men and other signs of commotion sounded from outside the building that was also their prison. An attack, perhaps, she thought, a chance for them to be freed perhaps.

Though soon cries become more desperate, and thundering booms and the stench of burned flesh brought her mind to the ruins.

A man, one of the soldiers, ran into the building and slammed the door behind him. Briefly, he looked for something to barricade the entrance but failing to find anything he hid in the corner, shaking and quietly babbling to himself.

A few final, dying screams came from outside, and then, the silence. The fight was over.

Hae Narim could swear she could feel the tug of the Spirit Realm. No being, living or dead, could return back from there, it was impossible, at least, until the ritual she now regretted.

A door flew open.

Nothing but the distorted light from the outside came in.

Then, the last cowardly soldier hiding in the corner died, torn apart by the monster that appeared from nowhere. A wolf-like mockery of the human and the animal, with the fur of shadows and mane of blood. It considered them - she considered them. Women wailed in terror.

Then, for a moment, Hae Narim had a brief, hopeful moment when she took a glimpse of the armour of the bright red and gold armour of the Royal Guard through the door.

Then it was immediately crushed. It was the stranger, fitted in the armour of one of her fallen guards, accompanied by the flock of his beast-women, bloodier of ones clinging to him as some kind of the wicked pets.

Despite the armour, he looked foreign. His facial features weren’t similar to one of Hanulbeol, and he didn’t have traits of Jin invaders either. A light tone of his skin would perhaps be in line with people of the court, the princess observed, but his face was round, with a thin nose, and short hair. His look sufficiently foreign, he gave out a vicious, deeply unsettling aura even without his monstrous followers, Gaze of his dark eyes made Narim's skin crawl.

Narim stood up, defiant.

He barked out something, the language somehow more alien than others.

“This one is the Crown Princess of Great Hanulbeol-guk…” She introduced herself.

The response was unintelligible, there was something disturbing about the speech, yet the perceived hostility only made Narim more determined to not buckle under the unnatural influence.

“I used ancient ritual to call you there, to assist our lands against barbaric Jin!” She announced in the most regal tone she could muster. Deep inside though, she prayed for gods’ protection.

She didn’t know if her words were understood, but his bestial followers seemed deeply upset by it, growling viciously, their powers seeping through.

“I called you to this world, you should obey me!” She said and immediately came to regret her sudden burst of arrogance as the black beast-woman tore away the wooden cage, and grabbed the princess by the throat. Sharp claws dug into Narim's skin and she felt her death was drawing near.

Then, the stranger gave an order. Without the slightest hesitation, their monsters acknowledged the order of their foul language and lunged forward.

They brutally dragged them away, through the courtyard of the ruined shrine, and out, toward the road, uncaring about the wails and protests.

There were bodies everywhere, blood, gore and burnt flesh, monsters once again did slaughter everyone without mercy. There was a large body among the slain, scorched to the blackened crisp left in the pool of blood, which means Chae Sochun was dead as well. Though Narim felt she betrayed her father, she didn’t wish that fate for the man.

It was almost shocking they didn’t tear the women to pieces as well.

Instead, they dragged them in front of the gates of the shrine, leaving them be. The largest of them spoke in their obscene bestial tongue and gestured them away.

Narim didn’t have to understand their alien tongue to understand the message they wanted to send.