Anecdote: Never-Ending Winter
01: Night’s Daytime Brightness: Opens with a nightmare. Li Shen sees himself with bloodied hands walking over dozens of bodies to come face-to-face with a child. Just as Li Shen “raises his hand, dark crystals once again forming on his palm—”
Li Shen wakes up on a plane heading towards the Arctic, where he will be going on a rescue mission at Mt. Eternal with the Evol Special Rescue Unit. The unit is stationed on the southern side of Mt. Eternal; before Li Shen can even get to where he’s supposed to be, he gets pulled into a cardiac surgery in a tent. Li Shen performs emergency surgery by way of Open-Chest CPR with his bare hand. The patient stabilizes, and no one but Li Shen notices that the Evol monitor had a sudden spike in activity.
Li Shen reunites with William, another cardiac surgeon from the same school.*2 They don’t have any time to catch up, since the sound of Wanderer attacks can be heard in the distance, and it’s likely the
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02: Deathly Encounter: Li Shen, who can’t remember the last time he slept (and doesn’t even have the energy to have a nightmare if he did,) speaks with Captain Xander outside one of the medical facilities. He is called back inside to attend to a man he discharged the day before. Despite his efforts, the patient dies.
William comes for the death certificate, and reminds Li Shen that there’s no way they can save them all, but they will do all they can.
In a nightmare, Li Shen sees a man in a white coat standing in a mess of corpses, with dark crystals forming on his hands. Li Shen sees that the man is himself, and he is waiting to die.
Li Shen wakes up and reaches for a notebook under his pillow. “The cover’s indents now form a complete tally mark, one of which is from today./ Since coming here, three patients died under his care./… It’s impossible to save everyone. He knows this better than anyone else. Yet he still insists, persists. The Grim Reaper in his dreams mocks him for his folly, futility, incompetence. It wants to kill his desire to save everyone./ But he’s not planning to give up.*3
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03: Determination: A Wanderer breaks through into an active surgery; Li Shen dispatches it quickly, and moves the rest of the group to another room. The surgery ends with no complications, but William shows up to check on Li Shen, but their conversation is cut short by Li Shen’s mentor.
The hospital has instructed that Li Shen return, but Li Shen has already been tapped to head up Mt. Eternal and assist the team there. His professor is furious, but Li Shen is confident he’ll come back safe. “If he can’t save everyone, then he’ll go to the root of the problem and eliminate it.”*4
William welcomes Li Shen to the team.
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04: Through Troubled Times: A week later, 30 members of a special ops team head into Mt. Eternal. While Captain Xander talks about safety, William asks Li Shen who he addressed his will to; Li Shen dodges the question by reflecting it, and William tells him he will introduce them, when they get back.
“Despite being mentally prepared, Li Shen didn’t expect ‘getting back’ to become an unattainable luxury.”
Getting up Mt. Eternal is a fight in and of itself. Captain Xander decides that they have to destroy the Protofield’s center, in order to stop any more loss of life.
William attempts to attend to Li Shen, and points out that throwing himself in front of hits meant for other people isn’t a great way to save lives, and asks what’s weighing Li Shen down. Li Shen doesn’t say anything for a long time, but gives in eventually.
“Years ago,” he says after a long time. “I almost killed someone important.” William is surprised. “What happened?” Holding the ice-cold air with his right hand, Li Shen lets it go. “I lost control of my Evol.” That night, the blood in his hands kept dripping onto the ground, dripping into his dreams. The summer when he was 12 was extraordinarily long. Every little thing—like the ivy climbing up the courtyard wall, the stall that sells popsicles, the swings in the park—is clear in his mind, as if it were yesterday. A snowstorm ended that summer. It was the first time a black-robed Grim Reaper appeared in his dreams.*5
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05: A Long Way Home: Less than half of the original team makes it to the valley. They set up the equipment needed to destroy the Protofield’s center, but the energy fluctuations cause Wanderers to gather. Li Shen uses his Evol to freeze himself in place, “(gripping) his right arm with his left.”*6
The Protofield is destroyed.
Operations gets in touch with Li Shen, who does his best to communicate the state of everyone around him despite his own injuries. William is also still alive, and he’s heading toward the ruins of the bunker when Li Shen realizes that there is a blue glow on his chest, and crystals are slowly starting to spread out from it.
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06: The Nightmare Worsens: William can’t seem to get the crystals off, even using his Evol. Li Shen attempts to approach him when the crystals accumulate and begin to physically break, warp and twist William’s body. Li Shen is thrown back into the snow, and when Li Shen attempts to freeze the crystals in place, it doesn’t work. He gathers himself for another attempt, but the crystals explode out from William. Li Shen continues to try and save William, but “his body begins to fail him.”
William begs Li Shen to kill him as the crystals essentially consume and contort and wring out his body. Li Shen stubbornly continues to attempt freezing the crystals, until the very last minute. “The figures in Li Shen’s nightmares merge with William. Their expressions are distorted by pain, their bodies twisted into grotesque positions. Unable to speak, their minds gone, their eyes can only beg.”
Li Shen kills William. His body dissolves into smoke. “The Grim Reaper stands in the distance, watching him on the snowy mountain covered in blood and death.”
Three years later, Greyson brings Li Shen the Linde Award, which he had mailed to him, since he had an outpatient that day, and couldn’t go. It’s for the initial OC-CPR surgery, but he shoves the award into a drawer, with the award that belongs to William.*7
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*1, It’s absolutely possible that this is a reference to the Li Shen met in Still In Dark. It is a remarkably similar scene, save that instead of a single needle of ice, he produces black crystals instead which, to be fair, is something that Alternate Li Shen would have nightmares about.
*2, See World Underneath: Longly Flame.
*3, Adding to *1, in Still in Dark, the Alternate Li Shen is explicitly called the Grim Reaper.
*4, Please welcome Li Shen’s Canon Control Issues to the ring.
*5, Alternate Li Shen’s ‘positive’ dreams began when he was 12.
*6, This is normal for him, see Under Deepspace: Under Twilight.
*7, See World Underneath: Longly Flame.