Standing at the base of the mountain later that morning, you rocked from your heels to the balls of your feet anxiously, fingers fiddling with hem of your shirt. Your Ayakashi friends were all gathered there with you, in their true forms, the majesty of which you couldn't even admire because your thoughts were too clouded with worry.
Jaehyun was dressed up in hiking gear, complete with an (empty) hiking pack. Unsure of how aware and sentient the Wraiths were, you decided to play it safe and have Jaehyun pretend to be a hiker who simply wandered up the mountain and into the shrine, to keep them from realizing who he was for as long as possible.
"Everyone remembers the plan, right?" Sicheng addressed your rather large group, quieting them down instantly.
"We wait until the Wraiths are visible and keep them at bay for Y/N and Mark to banish them," Yuta called out from beside Taeyong.
"I'll be down here and banish as I make my way up the mountain," Mark added.
You didn't even try to feign enthusiasm as you stated blandly, "Jeno will drop me in at the shrine and I'll banish from there and make my way down."
"Once my brother and I reach the shrine, we will fix the seal over the great evil," Jungwoo finished the timeline.
"Jaehyun?" Sicheng prompted him. "You've got the most important part."
"I go to the altar at the back and activate the talisman then stay alive long enough for Y/N to come save me."
Your grip on his hand tightened just a little bit with apprehension. He squeezed your hand back.
"I still think Y/N should have more than one Ayakashi up there," Johnny spoke up.
"Me too," Sicheng sighed. "But Jeno can only carry one person up there, and we can't risk sending anyone up with Jaehyun."
"Could you carry a person and a cat?" Taeyong asked, voice surprisingly level and gaze unwavering as he looked directly at Jeno.
Jeno seemed slightly affronted at this, "Of course."
"Then I'll go too."
Yuta's fox ears twitched for a moment, "A fox too?"
"Where am I going to put all of you? I can hold Y/N, but I don't know if we're going to have room for both of you, even as animals. She still has to hold onto me. The cat will be pushing it logistics-wise."
"I'll be okay, Yuta," Taeyong quietly reassured him, pushing his head against the Kitsune's shoulder.
You turned to Jaehyun. The talisman was still in your back pocket, and the charm had been put into it back at the café where you'd all met up, but you still hadn't given it to him. It was the final thing you had to do before you saw him off for what could easily be to his doom. Just like getting out of bed this morning, you didn't want to do this, feeling like you were wobbling on a precipice and this would be thing that finally pitched you over to the other side.
Throwing your arms around his neck, you hugged him tightly, uncaring of the others around you or even if you were crushing his esophagus against your shoulder. You buried your face in his neck, breathing in deeply, to fill your nostrils with his scent, and in an effort to keep any tears at bay. Crying wouldn't do anything for you now.
He squeezed you back just as tight, rubbing a hand up and down your back for a moment, "Hey, don't act like I'm about to die. You're gonna save me, I believe that. I'll save you, then you'll save me."
"Sorry," you muttered, still not letting go of him.
"Hey," he murmured quietly, pulling back just enough to look you in the eye. "Do you really think I shouldn't do this?"
Your bottom lip quivered, and you bit it to keep it still, trapped between your teeth, "I don't want you to— I don't want to lose you, Jung Jaehyun, or for you to get hurt. I'm worried."
"But you're not telling me not to do this."
"You've made up your mind, I know I can't stop you."
"Well, you probably could with your magical powers," he retorted humorously, dimples appearing for a brief moment.
"Don't give me any ideas."
Jaehyun kissed you, brief but filled with ardor, before pressing an even longer kiss to your forehead, "See you soon, Y/L/N Y/N."
"Yeah," you murmured back through the lump in your throat. "See you."
"I love you."
"I love you, too."
He finally let go of you completely, and you reached into your back pocket, bringing out the charmed talisman. You solemnly handed it to him, trying not to imagine that you were handing him a one-way ticket to his death.
Your boyfriend accepted it before taking a few steps back to wave to the group as a whole, "And I'm out!"
As he stepped forward towards what you knew to be Wraith-infested territory, you held your breath. He continued further down the trail, seemingly okay as he loudly called out observations like some tourist hiking—which made Renjun snort and Johnny chuckle—until he was out of your sight. Out of your protection.
"At least your boyfriend's got a sense of humor about the whole thing," Renjun said as he came to stand beside you, still a polite distance between the two of you. He spun his gun around his pointer finger lackadaisically as he also looked out at the forest with you.
"He'll be okay, Y/N," Sicheng went to reassure you, putting a single hand on your shoulder.
Johnny suddenly appeared in front of you, poking between your brows and at the tense corners of your mouth with inked hands, "Your face is going to get stuck like that, little lady."
You shook their hands off, unable to even try to make yourself relax. The Domeki let out a short sigh but seemed to get the hint and backed away from you. Sicheng's hand fell from your shoulder, and you continued staring at the forest, chewing on your bottom lip.
Fifteen minutes of silence later and you were about ready to demand that Jeno fly you up there right then. Sure, Jaehyun had never been to the shrine intentionally, so he only had a crude map on a piece of paper that Jungwoo had drawn up from him, and wasn't as familiar with the terrain as you, and it usually took you twenty minutes to get to the shrine, but you still couldn't help but assume the worst—which got even worse with each passing second.
Images of Jaehyun being ripped apart, laying on the ground bleeding out, in various stages of decay flashed across your mind, and you squeezed your eyes shut against them. He'd be okay, that's what he told you. And you had to believe him.
You couldn't even text him if you really wanted to, the Wraiths blocking your cell phone signals. Those of you who were lying in wait were still some distance away from the mountain, but you couldn't get any closer without risking the Wraiths taking notice of you.
"Johnny, can you see him?"
"Y/N, we wouldn't be at the shrine yet, even if we were running," Johnny pointed out to you.
"Did I say that he was there yet? No, I asked if you could see him," you snapped at the Domeki.
Before he could respond, Jungwoo's voice was beside your ear, "Lady Onmyoji, I understand your worries, but—"
"No you don't, Jungwoo."
He sighed, voice lowering as he practically whispered to you, "I have been alive for over a thousand years, do you think that I have not felt anxiety and loss?"
You chewed on your bottom lip again, mumbling out something akin to 'sorry' as you continued to stare out at the trees.
"I understand that you are upset at us all, and especially I, for even suggesting that he do this. But you have to understand that we are all—including Jaehyun—worried about you. We do not want you to perish. Are we really so horrible for that?"
You inhaled sharply. Of course you knew that they were all doing this for you, that the reason Jaehyun was even going along with this was because these Wraiths wanted to kill you. And of course you didn't want to die either, you just wished they could be dealt with in a way that didn't leave so much to chance and hope and assumptions and didn't endanger Jaehyun. You didn't know what you would do with yourself if something happened, what you'd tell his family—oh god, his family, his parents. Nausea gripped at your stomach at the thought, and you clenched your jaw against it.
You'd been staring at the trees for so long that the shadows between them started melding together, become inky and dark. But when glowing red orbs appeared, you rubbed at your eyes. Wraiths. The Wraiths were visible.
Immediately you rushed to where Jeno was, Taeyong bounding after you in his cat form. You picked him up before wrapping an arm around the Tengu's neck.
"Fly fast, featherbrain."
Jeno's wings spread out wide, flapping once to immediately shoot the three of you up into the air. You clung onto his neck with one arm, the other holding Taeyong close to your chest. Dropping him right now would not be optimal. You looked down at your friends that you were leaving behind, already fighting their way through the hoard of Wraiths. Yukhei slashed at two at once, Renjun fired off round after round, Sicheng kept a group barred in by walls of water for Johnny and Yuta to attack, and Ten and Jungwoo worked in tandem to keep more at bay for Mark to begin banishing them.
But they were soon out of your sight as Jeno continued flying. The trees below you blurred together, the wind whipping by stung at your skin, eyes watering quickly.
"Shit, sorry," Jeno muttered, and suddenly there was no wind around your eyes. It was as if you'd put on a pair of glasses, the wind hitting everywhere except there. "Haven't flown anybody else in a while."
Your reply was interrupted by several Wraiths coming up from below you, and in an instant, you had banished them.
"Behind you, Y/N!" Taeyong squeaked, and you looked back at those, banishing them just as quickly.
Jeno suddenly pitched downwards, and a string of expletives left your mouth as you looked up. Another Wraith. That one was taken care of instantaneously. More and more joined you in the skies the higher up the mountain that you went, and your head was on a constant pivot to find and banish them as fast as you could. The Tengu still had to dodge a considerable amount, and Taeyong couldn't do much in his cat form, but it was the best that the three of you could do at the moment.
"T-minus thirty seconds to landing," Jeno informed you, and you took a split second to look ahead of you. The charm you had put on the talisman would've taken down the cloaking charm on the shrine too, and you spotted the gray stone structure from above easily.
"He should be by the altar at the back," you reminded him.
"I know," he grumbled in return.
The feeling of Wraiths was overtaken by something more, something darker, something even bigger. The great evil was getting even closer to its goal of escaping. As you flew over the shrine, you were able to see the back clearing, just in time to spot Jaehyun narrowly avoid a tree being thrown his way, running into the shrine.
"Let me down!" You squirmed in Jeno's hold, panicking as you couldn't see your human boyfriend anymore.
"We're still sixty feet above the ground," he retorted, but nevertheless, hastened your descent.
The closer you got to the ground, the more you fidgeted, until Jeno eventually gave up on trying to restrain you. Maybe a bit too soon, as you stumbled and fell forwards, twisting yourself at the last second as to not crush Taeyong, who was still in your hold. You landed half on your back and half on your shoulder, letting out a grunt. Taeyong leapt out of your arms, turning into his true form to help you up, "Y/N! Are you okay?"
"Yuta's not here to heal you if you do anything stupid," Jeno warned you, flicking one of his wings out to push a Wraith back.
"I know, I know," you scrambled to your feet, brushing the Nekomata's worried hands off of you.
"Taeyong and I will control the situation out here, you go find Jaehyun."
You gave him a short nod of thanks before taking off towards the shrine, banishing any Wraiths in your field of vision. The great evil's energy suddenly spiked, and you knew it had sensed you. Unfortunately, you couldn't sense Jaehyun, so you instead yelled out his name loudly as you cleared each room. You didn't even worry about the yelling drawing the Wraiths to you, your presence alone would be enough to do that. You actually sort of hoped that they'd be drawn to you and leave Jaehyun alone instead.
"Y/N!" His voice carried through the building, bouncing off wall after wall.
"Jae!" You yelled out again, speeding your way through hallways, haphazardly banishing willy-nilly.
"Y/N!" His voice was getting closer, and you took one more sharp turn before ending up in one of the large rooms that typically would house one of the Tsukumo-gami who resided there. Yukhei's room, you guessed, by the random mechanical parts strewn about.
Jaehyun ducked out of the way of a flying screwdriver, instead running straight through the Wraith that was in front of him towards you. Your eyes widened in shock, and you banished the Wraith as an afterthought.
"Y/N!" He repeated your name, this time in relief.
You put him behind you as you faced the doorway, banishing any Wraiths that you could see. That would only give you a couple seconds to check him over for injuries. A scrape here, a red splotch there, but overall, he looked no worse than he would have after a boxing competition.
"Are you okay?" He asked you, grabbing your hand.
"Yeah, fine. You?"
"Same, fine."
"Come on, Taeyong and Jeno are out back," you went to lead him back out of the bedroom, banishing the Wraiths that had accumulated once more.
There was one coming up behind you, and before you could turn around to react, you heard what sounded almost like the hissing of steam, and it wasn't there anymore. Jaehyun's fist was still up in front of him, almost a proper boxing stance if it weren't for him holding your hand with his other one.
"Did you just... right hook a Wraith out of existence?"
"It looked like a person, but with red eyes. That was still a Wraith, right? I didn't just punch Jungwoo and Yukhei's secret brother, right?"
"Yeah, Jae, it was a Wraith. They must be realizing that they can't touch you in their supernatural forms and are making human ones instead."
Another one came swinging, in a human form again, but its fist simply went right through your human boyfriend. He looked down at the arm protruding from his sternum before punching straight up into the Wraith's jaw. That same hissing sound came again, and the human turned back into black smoke as it was flung upwards. Not letting it get its bearings, you banished it.
"Jungwoo was right," you breathed out. "Sort of."
With that, you and Jaehyun finally left the shrine, returning to the back clearing where your two Ayakashi friends were. Jeno was up in the sky, duking it out with a handful of Wraiths that you dispelled as soon as you saw them. Taeyong's ears perked up once he spotted you two, ducking out of the way of a Wraith before sprinting over to you. You banished the Wraiths, but it felt as though they just kept on coming.
"You're both okay?" The Nekomata asked, ears and tails flicking nervously. Jeno descended to join the three of you as well.
"Fine," you said flatly, letting go of Jaehyun's hand to whip around when you sensed more Wraiths coming from behind you. You threw out a talisman from your back pocket, and it ricocheted off four or five Wraiths, banishing them upon contact. "There's so many of them, and we don't even know how far away the others are. I've probably banished a hundred just since Jae activated the charm. I don't know how much more of this I can take. Mark's probably not faring much better, he only has Ten."
Taeyong and Jeno nodded in understanding. Mark wasn't as powerful an Onmyoji as you, and only had one of his True Ayakashi. While he was more adept at using talismans—which didn't require as much power as directly performing charms—there was no way he wasn't exhausting his powers at this point. The Wraiths being supercharged made them just the tiniest bit harder to banish, and when coupled with how many of them there were, the depletion of your powers grew exponentially.
You'd continued sending talismans at Wraiths as you spoke, trying to ignore the tired feeling creeping throughout your body. The talismans weren't as efficient a method, but they staved off the feeling of exhaustion for just a little bit longer.
"Is there anything else that will get rid of them?" Jaehyun asked, holding his arms up in preparation for any Wraiths in human forms that tried him. One did, but he dispensed of it with a solid punch to its left ear, the black smoke leaving through the opposite ear, pulling the rest of the human form up with it as it all turned to smoke, and you launched a talisman at it.
"He can punch Wraiths back into their true forms?" Taeyong asked with wide eyes. "Are we sure he's human?"
"Not now, Taeyong," you retorted, sending another talisman out.
"I've been dissipating some, but they're just coming back in minutes," Jeno said as he casually threw an uprooted tree at a couple Wraiths, trapping them against another tree, causing them to disappear. "It's nothing even close to permanent."
Taeyong nodded in agreement as you threw a talisman over his shoulder, striking against just two Wraiths, banishing each one. Panic rose in your throat as you thought of the only solution possible.
"Elemental manipulation is harder but doesn't take as much energy as banishment."
"Y/N," Jaehyun said your name immediately, and both Taeyong and Jeno looked uneasy about this.
"You do remember the last time you did that, right?" Jeno asked you cautiously.
"Of course I do," you spat out, voice cracking over the second word.
Taeyong said, "Y/N, you don't have to do this. There's got to be another way, we just need to think of it. Wait until the others get here, Jungwoo might know something!"
"Before I pass out from banishing so many? Before one of them gets a lucky hit and seriously injures one of you? We don't even know how far away the others are, or how they're faring."
The Nekomata bit his lip, clearly wanting to argue, but having no good comeback. You, most unfortunately, were right. Digging into your front pocket, you realized that you didn't even have your lighter. You'd essentially sworn off elemental manipulation since that night on patrol, and you cursed yourself: you still should have brought it just in case.
Taking a deep breath, you imagined a lighter in your hand anyway, striking the pretend flint repeatedly, click, click, click, picturing the sparks flying out from it with every strike, until it finally caught fire. Your face was suddenly being warmed, and there in your hand, was a flame.
"Y/N, you just—" Taeyong's awe was cut off by the Tengu.
"Will you be able to make sure you don't burn down the entire forest while you're at it?" Jeno asked curtly as he dissipated a couple more Wraiths
"If I just take out a few Wraiths at a time it should be fine," you said, more to reassure yourself than anything else. "And besides, most of these Wraiths are probably just being created from the great evil being here. Not..."
You trailed off, not wanting to finish that sentence. Not corrupted souls of people.
You squeezed Jaehyun's hand before dropping it, "You should get behind me, Jae."
The other two Ayakashi already had, backs facing yours as they continued keeping the Wraiths at bay. Jaehyun obliged, firmly in the middle of you three. Now with all of your focus on the flame in your hand, you took a deep breath and increased the size, then doubled it, just like last time. The familiarity made your anxiety spike, the flame jumping along with it. You pushed those thoughts away, trying to calm the flames. But the harder you pushed them away, the more they persisted and the larger the fire in your hands got.
"Y/N..." Jeno said your name lowly, a warning.
You knew he was right, you couldn't lose control of the fire. There was suddenly a presence right behind you, a hand gently brushing your hair back from your face before coming to rest on your shoulder, squeezing it gently.
"You've got this, Y/N," Jaehyun murmured to you. "You're saving yourself, and... you're saving me, remember? If something happens to you, the Wraiths could get me next."
You inhaled sharply, resolve filling your veins instead of panic. Jaehyun was relying on you to do this, you didn't want anything to happen to him. The fire didn't die down at all, instead it actually got bigger, but this time you were in control of it. You wanted it to get bigger.
Stepping forward, Jaehyun's hand dropped from your shoulder, and you moved your focus to one of the Wraiths directly in front of you. This time you weren't even thinking directly about what Sicheng or Jeno had taught you, you just did. Throwing out fireball after fireball at the Wraiths, not stopping to watch them burn up even once. One had managed to avoid your attack, and the tree behind it caught ablaze instead, but you took the fire right back off the trunk as easily as you'd seen Sicheng take water up from a puddle. The Wraiths weren't appreciating your new tactic, and you were suddenly knocked into from the side. Leaning into the momentum, you rolled across the ground. The fires in your hands had all died, and you once again lit a small flame in your hands, growing it to launch it at the Wraiths.
Every time you moved, the three with you moved in tandem, staying behind you. You could hear Taeyong ushering Jaehyun around in anticipation with every move that you made, Jeno pushing the Wraiths towards you to make attacking them easier. You'd cleared the back of the shrine, taking just a moment to rest, chest heaving with the physical exertion you'd just put out. But amazingly, your powers felt almost replenished. As if the energy from the fire had replaced your own.
More Wraiths came flooding in from the front, concentrated in the space between the shrine and the trees. Having them all in one specific area made it much easier for you. Bringing your hands back together, palms facing each other and middle fingers and thumbs touching as you thrust your hands out to your right, sharply twisting and throwing your arms up and to the left, casting the fire away from you and across the Wraiths in a searing line. You encouraged the flames to grow as they rushed over the mass of Wraiths, consuming all of them in one go. Before it could strike the trees behind where they had just been, you stuck a hand out, and they returned to your palm, shrinking to fit comfortably there.
"There's more coming up the mountain," you announced, entirely attuned to your Onmyoji senses now. "The others are in pursuit. Mark's powers are weak, Ten's as well."
"Yuta?" Taeyong asked in nearly a whimper.
"Fine. A little weak, he probably healed some people already."
You saw the Wraiths before you saw your friends, throwing out another large strike like before, clearing out another dozen or so. It was with these ones that petrichor began filling your nostrils as they burned. You held your breath, dispensing of more and more as they came up. With a finality to it, you brushed a drop of sweat from your forehead before adding flames back to that hand, throwing up one last wall of fire at the Wraiths, all of them catching and turning to embers right before your eyes—dozens at once. As soon as they were gone, the visages of your friends were across the clearing from you. Renjun was swatting at a flame on his pants, and before Sicheng could put it out with his water, you had brought it back to you wordlessly. Extinguishing the flames in your hands, you rushed towards the group.
"Are you guys okay?" You asked with wide eyes, hurriedly doing a visual check-over for injuries on them.
Miscellaneous cuts, scrapes, and bruising on all of them. Ten and Mark seemed the worst off, the Jorogumo holding a hand over his right side, and the Onmyoji seeming just flat out exhausted, in addition to sporting what was definitely a broken nose.
Yuta was leaning against Johnny, presumably for physical support. You were sure he couldn't risk healing those two without passing out again.
"Broken rib, bruised kidney," the Kitsune gestured to Ten, then to Mark, "Broken nose, fractured occipital bone, and depleted mana."
"I'll be okay," Mark spluttered out, leaning forward to let the blood from his nose drain out onto the ground.
"Are we done yet?" Ten asked with a wince. "Because if we are, it'd be awesome if someone could give us a ride to the hospital."
"Jungwoo and Yukhei have to fix the seal over the great evil," you said, feeling no satisfaction at seeing the state that they were in like you thought you might have.
"You two can go now," Renjun dismissed them sharply. Apparently fighting together in battle hadn't lessened the spite held for them.
"About that ride... Seriously, there's no way we're making it to the hospital like this."
"Call an Uber," Jeno snapped at them.
"Guys, stop," you chastised them softly, bringing out your phone. "I know someone, hold on."
Scrolling through your contacts, you clicked on the number of someone you hadn't called in a rather long time. The line rang almost to voicemail, but the owner picked it up just in time.
"Hello?"
"Kun, I need another favor."