Ancient Gravesite

Blake was looking over his newfound weapon, the Spirit Whip, when the old nun Dai Tu Liem gasped and fell over.

Old Dai Tien Hoang caught her and eased her onto the bed.

…

"What is it? What's going on?" Blake gasped hovering over the two of them helplessly.

The old man shook his head with regret.

"The nun Dai Tien Ha has died."

"What? How???" Blake cried. "She was with Jasmine. Is Jasmine okay?"

…

Old Dai Tien Hoang sighed with a heavy heart.

"The young girl is fine. She is being protected by the Overlord Anh Hai at the moment."

"I need to go to her." Blake clenched his fists. "Please tell me where she is."

The old man looked up at Blake, stewing on the ceiling.

"I can do better. I'll go with you."

He turned back to the old nun and drew a cover over her frail body. The old nun was catatonic. She normally didn't say anything, but her eyes were always alert and alive.

At the moment, her eyes looked half dead.

They left the old nun lying in the room by herself and launched together from the balcony.

The evening sky was turning an orange purple as they took off towards the distant hills. It would soon be nightfall.

=======

It was early morning in the land of the aftermath.

Anh Hai rubbed his eyes and stood up stretching. He had nearly lost his life and the lives of his men and this girl the day before, all because he had underestimated the powers of those demonic spirits.

Not even the old blind Tong Li had seen those seven fireballs coming.

Anh Hai sighed with the realization that the old man was getting too old and starting to lose the ability to think critically. That was going to affect everyone's decisions going forward.

It was time for Anh Hai to stake his claim. He needed to move onto the next iteration of this Demon System.

He'd been Master Overlord too long, complacent in his comfortable position and allowing Tong Li to remain unchallenged in his Exalted Overlord position.

Had Tong Li been able to analyze the magic signatures well enough, he would have been able to warn Anh Hai so that the nun, his wife in a long distant past, could have been spared such a terrible and painful death.

Anh Hai would have simply brought one more Apprentice with him and that would have been enough to tip the balance of the scale in their favor. It would have been a sure and easy victory.

Instead, two of the men had sustained wounds so critical they had to be hospitalized with third degree burns over half their bodies. The rest had wounds of various degrees of seriousness and were now resting in their tents. Their energy had been drained to the nub.

Even Anh Hai, charged as he was with excess power, was feeling sapped and listless.

It was time for him to take over the Exalted Overlord position.

The gravesite that they had coveted earlier was sitting in plain sight out in the charred area that was once ensconced within the dark and twisted clutches of the banyan thicket.

Only, there was no one who had enough energy to venture near the place, let alone dig up some old bones form at least nine feet of centuries-of packed dirt.

Beside him, the girl stirred and, once again, let out a horrified scream.

Anh Hai sighed and shook her awake. She could not fall asleep without being trapped inside that black nightmare that swallowed her up inside its maws and would not let her out as she kept falling, over and over again.

And over and over, he had to awaken her from the horror that she experienced. He did not know what else to do for her. It seemed as if she was starting to lose her mind from the experience.

He sat on the cot next to her and sipped on a mug of hot tea that one of his black clad Apprentices had handed to him.

There was no other way. He had to dig up her past to show her that it was over, and it could no longer affect her.

But all alone, it would take him awhile to dig up the grave, especially as weakened as he was.

He continued to toy with the idea of digging it on his own as he reflected on his decisions to come to this place. He had risked everything to get here and to do this.

It was funny, but all the deals that he had about the grave's contents no longer mattered so much once he weighed it against the life of the girl who laid beside him.

Something was desperately wrong. He was not thinking clearly.

Maybe, like the old man Tong Li, he too was starting to lose his touch. He needed to harden himself against this girl and the world before he devolved into a ball of confused compassion.

He needed to be re-taught in the old ancient ways of being a man.

Feeling eyes watching him, Anh Hai turned his head and saw Jasmine lying on the cot, watching him with a curious expression on her face.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes." He smiled at her. "I was just about to go to the grave site to take a look. Do you feel up to joining me?"

"Yes."

Jasmine got up with some help from Anh Hai. He handed her a windbreaker to ward off the chill of the early morning fog. It would be his luck to have her catch a cold.

Outside, the morning was surprisingly mundane and ordinary, just like any other morning that they had experienced ever since their arrival to this sub-tropic rainforest.

The only difference was that Jasmine was no longer wary of his presence and he was no longer having to act like the Big Brother to his team of underlings.

They could both afford to, just for once, act like themselves.

The two of them stood at the edge of the blackened rim and stared reflectively at the site that had begun and ended so much of their lives, both past and present. The charred pattern had spread in that large circular characteristic typical of an aerial bomb blast.

Where the banyan tree had grown into the cliffside, the charring spread also to that area, covering over the cliffside like a large tattoo mark, defacing the natural tan color of the hillside.

And there, in the midst of all the destruction stood the scorched gravestone marker that pinpointed the spot where their lives had ended and begun.

It had been remarkably well-preserved partly due to the denseness of the banyan grove and partly due to the sheltered position that it occupied, directly underneath a natural overhang off the cliffside.

"Do we have a shovel?" Jasmine asked Anh Hai, her eyes glued to the gravestone.

"What size, type, and color?" Anh Hai asked, trying to elicit a smile to her grim countenance.