spiritwield:
@thegoldendemon
This is a trap. Come alone, he said. Let us meet. For so long had the Demon evaded Shen, and how he arrives inviting him to tea or what have you. Shen is ready for bodies, for blood, to come away with perhaps an arm or a leg missing – but not to die. A show is not a show without an audience.
But he does not have much choice. Shen is not the type to pass up an opportunity to catch the Demon, no matter how unlikely his chances. The Demon knows this – and much more of Shen.
Shen arrives at the proposed meeting location, dressed in armor and armed with only his blades. Akali insisted he bring some shuriken, a kunai or two – even put poison underneath his fingernails or along the edge of his swords. He declined them all. She looked as if she was between screaming and striking him.
“Khada Jhin,” Shen says aloud, looking around. “I know you’re here.” He can feel him: his ki like tar filling the inside of Shen’s mask.
“This place was a tea-house some twenty years ago,” goes a curt voice whose direction could be left or right. “I feel as if the Hunters are watching our every move.”
The building is dilapidated, but not abandoned; for every smear in the tatami mats, there is a short tableau of porcelain vases who house whole bushes of spider-lilies. For every cut on the paper walls, a mural whose paint is only just beginning to set.
A mask is all there is to greet Shen in the far corner of the hall-- it is not golden. No. Pointed, harsh and of steel, it does not belong here.
It belongs to the Master of Shadows.
“You listened to me.” There’s laughter, cold and distant. It comes from the left. The next few words come from above. “Tell me, Shen, what does this stage make you feel?”
He’s dying for the answer.
