夜祭 Night’s Work

黑夜一直都是黛安娜最喜欢的时段，从小就是。儿时的她经常翻过烈阳神庙的层层高墙，看着月亮在繁星的海洋中穿梭。她抬头望向森林树冠之外的天空，紫色的眼眸搜寻着银月的踪影，但只看到树杈和密云后面朦胧的光晕。

Night had always been Diana’s favorite time, even as a child. It had been that way since she was old enough to scramble over the walls of the Solari temple and watch the moon traverse the vault of stars. She looked up through the dense forest canopy, her violet eyes scanning for the silver moon, but seeing only its diffuse glow through the thick clouds and dark branches.

树林越走越密，漆黑的树干上布满苔藓，枝杈犹如扭曲的手臂，摸向天空。她无法看清前面的路，只有一行行的野草和狰狞的荆棘。夜风拂动荆棘在她流线的铠甲上刮擦，黛安娜闭上眼睛，感受着一段回忆从心底激起。

The trees were pressing in, black and moss-covered, their branches like crooked limbs reaching for the sky. She could no longer see the path, her route forward obscured by rank weeds and grasping briars. Wind-blown thorns scraped the curved plates of her armor, and Diana closed her eyes as she felt a memory stir within her.

一段回忆，但她却从未亲自经历。这是另一种东西，来自她体内寄存的天界精魄的碎片残影。当她再次睁开眼，一坐闪光的森林景象与面前这片密林重合相叠。她看到的是相同的树木，但是来自不同的时间，回忆景象中的森林还很年轻，果实累累，林间小道上洒满了阳光，路边还点缀着野花。

A memory, yes, but not her own. This was something else, something drawn from the fractured recollections of the celestial essence that shared her flesh. When she opened her eyes, a shimmering image of a forest overlaid the close-packed trees before her. She saw the same trees, but from a different time, from when they were young and fruitful and the path between them was dappled with light and edged in wildflowers.

黛安娜生长在巨神峰的荒凉地貌，从未见过这样的森林。她知道自己眼前的景象是远古的回忆，但是这金银花和茉莉花的香味和她亲身经历过的任何事物一样真实。

Raised in the harsh environs of Mount Targon, Diana had never seen a forest like this. She knew what she was seeing was an echo of the past, but the scents of honeysuckle and jasmine were as real as anything she had experienced.

“谢谢你，”她低声说到，继续沿着古道在回忆中的残影前进。

“Thank you,” she whispered, following the spectral outline of the ancient path.

黛安娜沿着古道穿过了一片枝干粗壮的枯树，已经枯死很久了。随后爬上了遍布石块的高地，又经过了几丛扭曲的松树和冷杉，穿过山间流淌的小溪，蜿蜒绕过陡峭的山坡，最后她来到了一处遍布石块的高原台地，俯视一片巨大的寒冷湖泊。

It led Diana through overgrown and withered trees that ought to have been long dead. It climbed the slopes of rocky highlands, and passed through stands of twisted pine and wild fir. It crossed tumbling mountain streams and wound its way around sheer slopes before bringing her to a rocky plateau overlooking a vast lake of cold, dark water.

在台地的中间有一个圆形的巨石阵，每一块巨石都刻有螺旋的弧线印记。黛安娜在每一块巨石上都能看到相同的符文，与她额头上泛着微光的符文一模一样，她知道，自己已到达了目的地。黛安娜的皮肤一阵酥麻，一种燥热的预感油然而生。她已经知道，这种感觉往往意味着某种狂野而且危险的魔法气息。黛安娜警觉起来，走到巨石阵近前，四下扫视寻找危险的迹象。黛安娜没有看到任何异样，但她知道，这里有东西，某种充满敌意却又似曾相识的东西。

At the center of the plateau was a circle of towering stones, each carved with looping spirals and curving sigils. On every stone Diana saw the same rune that shimmered upon her forehead and knew she had reached her destination. Her skin tingled with a sense of febrile anticipation, a sensation she had come to associate with wild and dangerous magic. Wary now, she approached the circle, eyes scanning for threats. Diana saw nothing, but she knew something was here, something utterly hostile and yet somehow familiar.

黛安娜走到了巨石阵圆环的中心，抽出了弯刀。苍白的月光穿透云层，映在刀刃如钻石般闪亮。她单膝跪地，埋头沉思，刀尖抵在地面上，刀柄护手贴在脸颊处。

Diana moved to the center of the circle and drew her sword. Its crescent blade glittered like diamond in the wan moonlight penetrating the clouds. She knelt with her head bowed, the blade’s tip resting on the ground, its quillons at her cheeks.

眼未见，心已知。

She felt them before she saw them.

千钧之势破于一瞬，裂空之速就于一蹴。

A sudden drop in pressure. A raw charge to the air.

黛安娜猛然起身，巨石之间的空间被撕裂了，空气挤压变形，三只怪兽嘶吼着向她猛扑过来；这些怪兽的皮肉蜡白，长着白骨甲片和钢牙铁爪。

Diana surged to her feet as the spaces between the stones split apart. The air buckled and a trio of screeching beasts charged her with ferocious speed; ivory flesh, bone-white carapaces of segmented armor and steel talons.

恐兽。

Terrors.

黛安娜向斜下方俯冲，让一张尖牙密布的血盆大口狠狠地咬了个空了。黛安娜顺势用弯刀在头顶划出一道圆弧，将第一只怪兽厚重的头骨切到了肩膀。怪兽倒下了，血肉立刻开始显露出原貌。她一个翻滚麻利地站了起来，其他的怪兽开始围着她转圈，像围困猎物的猎人一样。现在它们已经开始畏惧她手中闪着寒光的弯刀，刚才被她杀掉的怪兽已经化为一滩冒泡的黑泥。

Diana dived beneath a snapping jaw filled with teeth like polished ebony, slashing her sword in an overhead arc that clove the first monster’s skull to its heavy shoulders. The creature fell, its flesh instantly unraveling. She rolled to her feet as the others circled like pack hunters, now wary of her gleaming blade. The creature she had killed now resembled a pool of bubbling tar.

它们再次扑了上来，从两个方向同时进攻。他们的血肉逐渐变暗，呈现出淤青血斑的紫色，嘴里用这个世界的敌意发出嘶嘶的响声。黛安娜跳到左边怪兽的上方，手中的弯刀划出一道月牙形的弧线，奔向怪兽的颈部甲骨。她喊出了皎月教派的神圣咒语，弯刀燃起了白热的光芒。

They came at her again, one from each side. Their flesh was already darkening to a bruised purple, hissing in this world’s hostile atmosphere. Diana leapt over the leftmost beast and swung her sword in a crescent arc towards its neck plates. She yelled one of the Lunari’s holy words and incandescent light blazed from the blade.

刀下的怪兽从体内炸裂开来，新生成的血肉在月刃的力量之下化为碎末。她着地以后立刻被最后一只怪兽的袭击冲到一边。说时迟那时快，剃刀般的爪子刺透了她的钢护肩，将她肆意拖拽。怪兽的胸口张开了，显露出内部被粘液覆盖的感觉器官和钩状牙齿。它一口咬在黛安娜的肩膀上，黛安娜立刻感到伤口处渗出一阵令人麻木的寒冷。她翻转刀柄，像握匕首一样持刀，然后深深插入怪兽的身体。怪兽嚎叫着松开了巨口。身体中流淌出黑色的脓水。黛安娜翻身躲远，虽然疼痛正在蔓延至全身，但她依然硬扛下来。她持刀的手向侧面伸展开，天空中的云彩开始退散。

The beast blew apart from the inside, gobbets of newly-wrought flesh disintegrating before the moonblade’s power. She landed and swayed aside from the last beast’s attack. Not fast enough. Razored talons punched through the steel of her pauldrons and dragged her around. The beast’s chest split apart, revealing a glutinous mass of sense organs and hooked teeth. It bit into the meat of her shoulder and Diana screamed as numbing cold spread from the wound. She spun her sword, holding the grip like a dagger and rammed it into the beast’s body. It screeched, relinquishing its hold. Steaming black ichor poured from its ruptured body. Diana spun away, biting down on the pain racing around her body. She held her moonblade out to the side as the clouds began to thin.

怪兽尝到了她的鲜血，唤起了掠食者的饥饿。它的身体现在已经全部变成了漆黑，泛着恶毒的紫光。怪兽的利爪完全伸展，变成了钩与刃的扇轮。异界的血肉像热蜡一样流动，将她刚刚切开的伤口闭合起来。

The beast had tasted her blood and hissed with predatory hunger. Its armored form was now entirely gloss black and venomous purple. Bladed arms unfolded and remade themselves in a fan of hooks and talons. Unnatural flesh flowed like wax to seal the awful wound her blade had ripped.

黛安娜体内寄存的精魄突然激发，她脑海中充满了遥远时代的不灭憎恨。她眼前闪现了许多场远古时代的战斗，惨烈至极让整个世界都陷入火海，这场战争几乎让整个世界化为乌有，而且时至今日也依然有这种威力。

The essence within Diana surged. It filled her thoughts with undying hatred from a distant epoch. She glimpsed ancient battles so terrible that entire worlds had been lost in the fires of their waging; a war that had almost unmade this very world and still might.

怪兽向黛安娜冲了过来，浑身上下都散发出另一个空间的纯粹能量。

The creature charged Diana, its body rippling with the raw power of another realm of existence.

乌云退散散开，一束明亮的月光射了下来。黛安娜的弯刀汲取着月光的能量，刀刃燃起明亮的火光。她用刽子手的绝杀之势，伴着夜空中的光明之力向下一斩，劈筋裂骨。

Clouds parted and a brilliant shaft of silver speared downwards. Diana’s sword drank in the radiance of distant moons and light burned along its edge. She brought it down in an executioner’s arc, cleaving plated bone and woven flesh with the power of the night’s illumination.

随着白光的炸裂，怪兽的身躯四分五裂，在她的奋力一击下化为灰烬。它的血肉融入了黑夜，台地上只剩下黛安娜自己，胸口起伏，喘着粗气。她在巨峰顶端融合的神力已经开始退散，撤出她的身体。

The beast came apart in an explosive detonation of light, its body utterly unmade by her blow. Its flesh melted into the night, leaving Diana alone on the plateau, her chest heaving with exertion as the power she had joined with on the mountain withdrew to the far reaches of her flesh.

她眼前浮现出一座繁华喧闹的城镇，与这片空旷的台地正好重合。她心中充满伤感，虽然她从未了解过这个地方。就在她默哀的时候，回忆的景象渐渐退去，她又是黛安娜了。

She blinked away after-images of a city that echoed with emptiness where once it had pulsed with life. Sadness filled her, though she had never known this place, but even as she mourned it, the memory faded and she was Diana again.

怪兽消失了，环形阵中的巨石上闪现出银色的纹路。它们已经摆脱了帷幕另一端的憎恨之所，现在开始散发出治愈的力量。黛安娜感受到这股力量浸润了整片野地，渗入了岩石，渗入了世界的骨架。

The creatures were gone and the stones of the circle gleamed with threads of silver radiance. Freed from the touch of the hateful place on the other side of the veil, their healing power seeped into the earth. Diana felt it spreading into the landscape, carried through rock and root to the very bones of the world.

“今晚的夜祭已经完成，”她说。“此道已封。”

“This night’s work is done,” she said. “The way is sealed.”

她转身面向湖水中摇曳的月影。她感知到了一种召唤，拉住了她的灵魂深处，一如既往地引着她不断前行。

She turned to where the moon’s reflection shimmered in the waters of the lake. It beckoned to her, its irresistible pull lodged deep in her soul as it drew her ever onwards.

“但是永远都有下一个夜祭，”黛安娜说。

“But there is always another night’s work,” said Diana.