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“This just in. Chaos has erupted in downtown Le Yu City. Our correspondents on the ground are reporting that a giant wolf monster is on a rampage, causing panic and property damage as he makes his way through the city core. Just a minute – we have live video feed now from the chopper. What you’re seeing now is the monster climbing up a clock tower on 12th and Main and – Bob are you seeing this? He appears to have a helpless young man in his jaws! In this time of panic, we can only hope that The Traveler will fly to our aid. Traveler, if you’re watching – Le Yu City needs your sword!”
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Abruptly, the livestream winked out. Signal lost. Sun Yunniang frowned and slipped her mobile into her pocket. No matter. She’d seen enough. She looked up, shadowing her face with her hand. The monster was climbing steadily up the face of the tower; it had almost reached the spire. A delicate, vermillion-clad man swung precariously from the savage fangs, each razor-sharp and ten feet long. Now that the broadcast had gone out, there was no chance that The Traveler was far away. It was only a matter of time now. Sun Yunniang pushed her glasses up on her nose, and smiled.
Sure enough, it was mere minutes before a small blue dot appeared on the horizon. A cheer rose from the panicking crowd as the lithe, costumed form of Le Yu City’s own superhero landed gracefully on the sidewalk beneath the clock tower. A woman in a floral house dress broke from the mass of onlookers and threw herself at his feet.
“Traveler, Traveler, save us!” she moaned. “Who knows what that beast is after, or why it has taken that poor young man!”
Inexplicably, the hero grimaced beneath his half-mask. “I have a pretty good idea on both counts…” he murmured. “Idiots. Can’t keep the domestic squabbles to the confines of the farmer’s market, eh?” The woman gaped up at him, then resumed her wailing. The Traveler sighed. “There, there,” he said comfortingly. “No need to panic. I have this well in hand.” Another grimace, then he spoke up, voice carrying easily over the crowd. “Everyone, please make your way in an orderly fashion away from this area. I’ll take care of the creature, no need to worry!”
With a flash of a smile, he leapt into the air and soared toward the spire. Murmurs rose from the crowd as they craned their necks upward. Hardly anyone had obeyed the Traveler’s instructions to leave. Instead, most pressed closer to the tower and were lofting up mobile phones in hopes of capturing a viral moment.
Fools, all of them, Sun Yunniang thought with shivering glee. A suitable audience for her moment of vengeance. With The Traveler present and the helicopters circling, these few at the tower were only a fraction of the thousands who would bear witness to her glory. The hundreds of thousands, the millions who watch the video clips later. The days of obscurity for Sun Yunniang had come to an end.
She spared one last look up to verify that the superhero’s attention was fully engaged by the wolf beast. Curious; rather than fighting it, he was hovering near its snout and gesticulating wildly, almost exasperatedly. No matter. The key point was that he wasn’t paying any mind to the ground. He had finished his part in this affair by simply arriving, in ensuring that world was watching. Sun Yunniang put him out of her thoughts.
Closing her eyes, she reached down with her mind to the throbbing, rotten thing within.
The egg of her torment in its fragile cage of ivy.
A spark of hesitation held her in stillness. Once she took this step, there was no turning back. There would be no more Sun Yunniang, the human.
Sun Yunniang, the unpublished.
Sun Yunniang, the forgotten.
Desperately, she picked through her memories for a gleam of light, for anything soft, any reason to stay alive. But all she could see was the shabby, ill-lit lab. The stacks of papers meticulously prepared for journal submission.
Rejected, rejected, rejected.
Just because her specimens were a little on the homely side, just because they triggered comments of “interesting, but no application, also hideous” and “commercially inviable in the extreme” and “what is that smell” and “oh god, what is that thing, why is moving, get it away from me” – just for this, no one would publish her work. No one would partner with her to bring her little green beasties to market. Pushing thirty-eight now, her dreams of notoriety having long since died, no tenure on the horizon –
There was no reason, no reason at all to go on.
Let her plants have their moment in their moment in the sun; it was only what they deserved.
Sun Yunniang reached down with her mind to the center of her being and twisted.
The shell of the egg cracked apart in a shower of splintered vines. The putrid green mass within boiled out eagerly and detonated through Sun Yunniang, unzipping every coil of DNA and beading like verdant pearls on every cell wall.
And Sun Yunniang the human knew no more.
The creature that opened its eyes was named Hemlock, and it had two simple goals. To teach these apes the name of its mother, and to feed.
At the back of the crowd, a man in a long, cowled robe watched with interest; his eyes glinted deep within the shadow of his hood.
In front of him, the onlookers were screaming in earnest as the slight woman in spectacles transformed without warning into a hideous, reeking mass of swollen vines and feathered jaws that wheezed out a name, over and over again.
Sunnnn...Yunniang! Sun…Yunniiang! You will...regret! Brought this on...yourselves! Sun Yunniang!
After a few repetitions, as if satisfied, the voice died away and vines snaked out through the crowd. Seeking, grasping. The shrieking bystanders dodged and weaved, stumbling over each other in panic.
The onlooker in the hood peered up at the clock tower, squinting at the slim blue form of The Traveler. A lazy smile crossed his face. In a blur of motion, he passed through the crowd to the heart of the thrashing vines, as if offering himself to the monster. The tendrils gathered him up instantly and drew him towards the largest gaping jaw.
Only to drop him to the pavement as a shining black scimitar arced down, severing the vines in a gush of yellow goo.
The Traveler hovered above the robed man. He glaring ferociously at the plant creature.
“What do you want?” he shouted, scimitar extended in a straight, threatening line.
The plant-thing writhed in silence for a moment.
And then the tendrils parted, and a face emerged from the sleek shining heart, disembodied and floating in sea of whispering leaves.
It was the face of the women who transformed, unfashionable spectacles still perched on that narrow, unlovely face.
“What do I want?” the face said, and in its human-seeming mouth was a thicket of swaying stamens. Pollen poured from the corners of its lips in a golden mist.
“I only wanted to reach my goal! I wanted to make something that would last forever, and for people to know me for it! I wanted to be seen! If you didn’t want Sun Yunniang, then you shall have Hemlock, and die in torment like she did!”
Scimitar never wavering, the Traveler dropped a few feet to where the robed man lay. He grabbed a fistful of robe and dragged the man back to the swarming edge of the crowd.
“Stay back,” he hissed, darting a glance down. The robed man noted that the hero’s eyes glowed blue. He smiled again; this time, the lazy flash of teeth had a hint of predatory satisfaction.
The Traveler didn’t notice, already having turned back to the fight.
“You can’t stop me!” the creature shrieked on. “My roots are already sinking into this city. If I can’t have what I want, neither shall any of you! This city will pay for the pain it caused Sun Yunniang! And you can do nothing! Every vine you cut will return tenfold, useless hero!”
It was true. At the base of the severed vines, thick as tree trunks, sharp new growths were already sprouting. Screams rang out afresh as the creature’s words sank in; the woman in the floral house dress fainted dead away.
The Traveler rose to float above the scene. His cape fluttered gently in the breeze. Illuminated in the afternoon sun, his slender shoulders proud and straight, the black scimitar pointed with careless ease as if it were a part of him – he looked a god among mortals. There was a reason he got so much press coverage, and it wasn’t just his acts of derring-do. He never stayed in one city long, but while he did, the municipality was sure to drown in tourism dollars. No one knew what The Traveler was searching for as he quested from place to place. Most city councils hoped he never found it.
The hero spoke. His voice was low, but carried cleanly through the noise.
“You should have kept trying,” he said, drifting closer. “You had a dream. You’re weak, and you don’t deserve your goal.”
The face wreathed in leaves contorted with rage and hissed out a spray of pollen; the superhero made no attempt to dodge. He lowered his sword, and waited.
When the pollen neared his face, it burst into a cloud of blue flame.
The crowd fell silent. Far above, the news choppers continued to thrum. The robed man looked up to the clock tower. The wolf beast was descending hastily, looking as worried as was possible for a hairy monster to look. On the ground, no one said a word. Even the plant-thing seemed stricken into stillness.
“Tu Shan League…that’s the blue fire of the Tu Shan League of Supervillains! You’re no hero! You’re with them!”
It was unclear who said it, but with that lonely shout of accusation, the floodgates opened. Suddenly mobile phones were thrust up again, snapping and flashing as the mob pressed forward to capture the moment that The Traveler was revealed to be a villain.
The hero paid them no mind. The robed man strolled closer to hear his next words.
“You’re pitiable,” the hero continued. He floated down, down, closer still. The plant-creature lurched toward him with spearing tendrils but he evaded every one, fluid and graceful in flight.
"Hemlock…Sun Yunniang. You chose your path, yet you didn’t have the courage to follow it. I did not choose mine, but I will not turn away. Do you know why they call me The Traveler, Sun Yunniang?”
He had reached the center of the creature. Perching on the base of a vine, he sheathed his scimitar and held out his palms. Fire poured from his skin, leaping and licking. His face glowed blue in the light.
“They call me the Traveler because I walk a road with no return. This is not my only name. Whenever this curse is discovered, I must change my mask and flee yet again. You may know some of my other names. In the past, they have called me The Singer, as in a requiem for death. And they have called me The Reaper, as in the one who brings farewell to the world. I will not be weak, like you. I will find what I’m looking for. I will destroy it. And if anything gets in my way, I’ll destroy that too.”
With a smile made eerie in the fire’s blaze, The Traveler reached forward and cupped the creature’s face in gentle, burning hands.
“Hemlock,” he crooned. “You’re in my way.”
The light that exploded was searing, a swirling inferno bright as the heart of a star. The mob cried out and threw up arms to hide their faces.
All of them, except for the man in the robes.
He watched with the same idle interest as before, gaze unbroken as the plant-thing died screaming, crumbling to ash in the column of flames.
This strange, final twist of the plot seemed to be a bridge too far for the gawkers. Heroism had probably occurred, but performed by a villain who would more than likely go free. Who could say whether justice had been served? Certainly the story was too murky for a punchy viral moment. As the wail of sirens approached, the crowd began to disperse.
The masked man who was once named Traveler shook his fist at the wolf beast on the tower. The vermillion man in its teeth shrugged apologetically at him from afar. With a sigh, the hero made to depart.
“Wait,” said the robed man.
The hero paused, looking down.
“You saved me. I have yet to thank you for that. Will you allow me to do so? Perhaps I might treat you to a meal?” As he spoke, the man pushed back his hood to reveal his face.
There was a pause.
Seemingly involuntarily, the hero sucked in a short, sharp breath.
If the hero was a god among men, then the man in the robe could only be called an angel, and a prince among angels at that. Smiling blue eyes shone star-like over delicate features. A fall of silver hair was gathered away from his temples and cascaded to his shoulders. If the news crews had been close enough to capture his face on camera, they would have filmed from every angle. Nothing generates clicks and social media engagement like a beauty, after all.
As the hero's eyes wandered, a smirk twisted the robed man's lips, knowing and smug.
For the first time that day, the hero seemed uncertain.
“Well…” he stammered, and toyed with the hilt of the scimitar nervously. The other man tracked his movement, examining the sword with interest.
“Quite a weapon you have there. I’d love to hear how you acquired it, and what you’re searching for. I couldn’t help overhearing earlier – apologies for eavesdropping,” he drawled, not a trace of regret in his voice. “I know a lot of things, you know. I might be able to help you reach your goal.”
The hero shifted from foot to foot. It was a peculiar sight, as he still hovered mid-air. The robed man chuckled.
Tilting up his chin, he cocked his head, and smiled.
It was every bit as blinding as the blaze of blue flame.
The hero panted slightly and wiped his forehead.
“…Maybe just a drink,” he said uncertainly. Drawing in another breath, he flew down to land in front of the robed man. He looked up. Their eyes met, and locked.
“Might I know your name, sir?”
The robed man chuckled again. It was an indolent, unhurried laugh, yet carried a note of triumph.
“Rong Bai,” he answered, and extended a hand. “You may call me Rong Bai. Shall we go before those sirens get any closer?”
The last shot that the news choppers caught was of the caped villain soaring away, a man held close to his chest.
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“Breaking news. Former superhero “The Traveler”, now revealed to be a member of the Tu Shan League of Villains, spotted today in Qinchuan City! In exclusive footage, we’ll show you this notorious evildoer caught in a salaciously compromising position with his new traveling companion! Hostage or sidekick, no one knows who this mysterious figure is exactly as of yet, but we have experts in the studio to break it all down tonight! Tune back in at 9 for more on this explosive story…”