Chapter 22 Broken Wings
Through tears that blur the world into watercolour smears, Peach watches as two Rock Guais trample into Tiantan once again. Their massive stone forms move with the inexorable weight of mountains given sentience, each step a tremor that shakes the very foundations of hope itself.
Peach can feel them. She can sense the townsfolk’s hearts beating in hidden places—behind locked doors, huddled inside their shacks that might soon become their tombs. The farm girls who greeted her. The curious children who played in the fields. The humble workers. The seniors with kind looks in their eyes.
All still there.
All still alive.
For now.
Zobito’s final words echo in her mind: “Head south straight for the Capital. Find the Earth Princess. You are our salvation.”
The instruction is clear, the logic sound. Her divine armour is battered. Her remaining wings sputtering. Her single gauntlet barely holding together. She has no Zobito to guide her.
“Run.”
She should run.
Suddenly another building collapses beneath a Rock Guai’s fist, as she hears the terrified cry of a child carried on the wind, her heart tightens like a knot that refuses to unravel.
“I can’t run.”
The word forms in her mind with the clarity of water in a desert. She refuses to leave. Not yet. Not while there’s still breath in her body and the faintest flicker of power in her broken armour.
The Elite Riders are close—Zobito said so. If she can just stall for a bit longer. Create diversions. Draw their attention. Keep the Yaoguais occupied until help arrives.
That much she can do.
That much she must do.
“I can help.”
Peach pushes herself to her feet. Her armour protests, systems failing, but something—will, desperation, or the last dregs of Celestial energy—keeps it responding. Her remaining wings—only two barely functional—manage half a rotation. Her right gauntlet still flickers with faint warmth, still carries the echo of ancient fighting spirit.
She tests it, flexing her fingers. The gauntlet sparks once, twice, then responds with a surging glow.
Good enough.
She takes a deep breath.
“YIP. YIP. YIIPPP!!”
The remaining Black Husk Soldiers scramble and flock onto a Rock Guai. The rocky giant stops right before stomping a shack. It tries to sweep away the Husks with frustration, struggling to reach behind its back.
Peach doesn’t wait. She’s already moving, her damaged wings giving one last sputter that propels her near the second Rock Guai. She needs to get its attention. Keep it away from the building. Make it chase her instead.
Her gauntlet lights up with heat to form a fireball in her palm. She hurls it at the Rock Guai, bursting on its head, not enough to destroy it, but enough to knock it off balance and land on one knee.
“Hey uglyface!” Peach taunts. “Over here!”
The Rock Guai’s head, glowing with red molten heat, turns to Peach with a deep grumble. It regains composure, stands back up, lets out a loud savage roar, and charges toward her.
Good.
She runs, zigzagging through the buildings, using every last bit of wit and strength she has remaining. She throws stones, creates small explosions with her gauntlet, makes herself as loud and distracting as possible. It’s not elegant. It’s desperate improvisation, a dance of survival performed with broken steps.
But it’s working.
Peach keeps running, her breaths coming in ragged gasps. Her armour getting heavier with every step, every last energy draining drip by drip. The ancient wisdom flickers, offering glimpses of movement patterns, but her body can’t keep up. She’s getting too tired. Too broken.
Still, she keeps moving, dodging the Rock Guai’s strikes.
Still, she keeps diverting.
Peach finds herself out of the gates in the eastern fields. The Rock Guai is still chasing after her, but at a safer distance. Using the last of her gauntlet’s power she creates another fireball and hurls it at the Rock Guai’s face. The creature roars, molten rocks run down its eyes, it swings its arms madly as it loses sight and orientation.
She is ready to run again, and turns back to the town when movements catch her eyes…
A building collapses.
Peach sees the first Rock Guai broke free of the Husks. She lost control of the Husks when diverting the second Rock Guai, and it’s tearing a building apart.
Figures emerging from the building, fleeing.
“The girls!”
The three farm girls ran out of the building. They are helping the children, shepherding them toward another building.
The Rock Guai’s eyes tracking the girls. It does not stop and tramples forward toward them.
The girls don’t see it. They are too focused on getting the children to safety, their backs turned to the approaching danger.
“No!” Peach shouts, but the word is lost in the chaos. She readies her sputtering wings, but there’s too little power left. She runs forward, but she’s too far away. Too slow.
The Rock Guai reaches out with its massive hand.
Time seems to slow, every moment stretching into an eternity of horror. Peach can see everything with terrible clarity: one girl turning, her eyes widening. The other girl realising too late. Another pushing a child behind her just missing the monster’s grasp.
The Rock Guai’s hand comes down. It grasps three of them, its rocky fingers closing around them like a cage. It opens its second mouth on its giant belly and shoves them inside.
It swallows them whole.
Within moments, the girls disappear into the rocky giant’s belly, their forms vanishing into the darkness of its stone interior. Gone. Consumed.
Peach watches in horror, helpless, unable to move, unable to breathe.
She was supposed to save them. She was supposed to protect them. That’s why she stayed. That’s why she fought.
But she realises she failed.
The Rock Guai continues moving mercilessly. Its massive form rumbling forward, carrying the girls within its body like a satisfied meal. It recognises its source of distraction, and continues stomping forward towards Peach with killing intent.
Behind her, another grumble carries through the wind. The first Rock Guai has re-entered the town gates. Peach quickly glances behind her, the molten face has cooled and the monster has regained just enough sight between that hideous mess—just enough to find its prey.
Peach is devastated. Her sense of failure crashing down.
She couldn’t save Zobito.
She couldn’t save the girls.
Her armour finally gives up, the last of her halo fading away with her despair. She’s alone. Powerless. Broken.
She could still run.
“But what sort of hero am I?”
But she remains tenacious, and her mind racing through what other options she might have left.
“Ok, think, Peach, think!”
She sees a faint glow in the distance on the hill. The Elite Riders are nearby. Close, but not close enough.
The Rock Guai approaches, its shadow falling over Peach like a shroud, the remaining Husks follow behind it. She looks up, her eyes filled with tears she can no longer control. Her body shakes with exhaustion and grief.
The Rock Guai raises its hand to form a hammer, preparing to finish its opponent once and for all.
Suddenly, Peach’s gauntlet lights up with its final reserve of ancient energy and her resolve. Her halos return their spark.
“You wanna go?” Peach shouts through her tears, she clenches her glowing fist, and channelling all her strength into the gauntlet.
The monster’s giant fist come crashing down.
BOOM!
A massive explosion tears through the Rock Guai from within. A giant dust storm erupts and shrouds the entire town square in a thick cloud. Stones hurl outward in a shadow of fragments, the creature’s body shattering from the inside out.
Peach’s ears are ringing. As her senses are returning, she opens her eyes to look around. All she can see are dust and cloud.
“Um… What happened?” She blinks. “Where’s the Rock Guai?”
As the last stones fall like rain, the dust and debris are settling, a figure emerges from the destruction.
“Who’s there?” She squints through the thick dust.
Peach stares, her mind struggling to process what she’s seeing. The figure moves with grace, stepping through the settling dust as if walking through morning mist. The figure is gently placing one of the farm girls on the ground with one arm, whilst still cradling another girl.
“Elite Riders?”
Small. Thin. Dressed in simple farming clothes stained with mud and herbs. The figure carefully lowers the girl she is holding.
The figure turns, and for a moment, Peach catches a glimpse of a face—young, humble, familiar. Two simple braids frame features that she recognises.
“The farm girl from this morning?”
Then the dust swirls again, obscuring the view, and the second Rock Guai roars its mountainous wrath through the cloud.
The small farm girl turns toward it, and the air itself seems to shift.
But Peach can’t see what happens next.
As the world tilts around this impossible moment, the only thing she knows for certain is that nothing is as it seems.
Nothing at all.