by Rick Scott
“Yeah, I’ve put on a few years since then.” Olja rocked her shoulders as she raised her fists. “Look, the Holy Seer has made her selection and it’s no longer you, Li Wan Fu. Respect it and leave now.”
“She chooses an imposter?” The Duke pointed at Kenji with a frown before turning back to Olja. “I’ve come for my body, young one. To reclaim what is only rightfully mine. For the sake of your mother and her memory I’ll offer you a chance to live…if you leave now.”
Olja’s jaw tightened as she gritted her teeth. “I’ve made my vows, Li Wan Fu. Just like my mother and sister before me. This boy is under my protection now.”
A silence fell between them, neither backing down.
“Very well then,” the Duke said, Dark Qi swirling around his body as he brandished his uchigatana blade. “Even with this measly, low-Dan shell of a body, I have more than enough skill to best whatever you have become. Prepare to face me now, Second Princess Olja of the Divine Holy Seer.”
Kenji stared up at the giant woman, shocked. “You’re a princess?”
The word and her image couldn’t be more dissimilar in his mind.
“I’ll tell you about it later, kid,” she said, lowering into a fighting stance. “I hope you have another rope trick up your sleeve. I’ll engage him for as long as I can. Figure something out quick.”
“Come then, little Olja.” The Duke flexed his fingers at her with a beckoning gesture. “Let’s see how well your mother trained you before she died.”
A scowl creased Olja’s face as what he said filled her with rage, her Qi palpable. She let out a savage war cry and leapt into the air, bolts of lightning flashing across her body. Her fist slammed into the ground a few paces from the Duke and the entire riverbank exploded with thunder.
Bolt of lightning flashed outwards, crashing into all four of them. The Duke’s swirling Qi absorbed the bolts, while the witch managed to deflect the same with a shield of Dark Qi. The undead Dao master and the claw wielder, however, were both struck and blown backwards into the muddy waters of the river.
“Go now, Kenji!” Olja screamed over her shoulder at him. “Run!”
Kenji grabbed Shinoto’s hand and dashed into the forest behind them. Twigs and branches scratched at his face as he ran, but he dared not stop. Olja was risking her life facing them all at once. He needed a plan and quick. And for that he needed time and space to think.
“Get the boy,” the Duke called out from behind him. “Kill him if need be. But cleanly. The body is what I want. Do not burn him.”
Kenji glanced over his shoulder just in time to see the witch form a scythe made of dark Qi in her hand. With a wave of his arm, the Duke then commanded the dead sellblade and the undead body lurched from out of the river with a howl, surrounded by Dark Qi. The claw-wielding man jumped out of the river next with tremendous force, kicking up sand as he gave chase across the riverbank.
They had a head start, but it wouldn’t last for long. They ran through the forest of densely packed bamboo, ferns and thick cedar trees. Entering a clearing, Shinoto jumped onto a fallen log ahead of him.
“I’ll hold them off!” Shinoto said, turning about to face them.
“No, they’re too strong!”
“What choice do we have?” she said. She summoned her Qi and activated the glyphs upon the yellow rope about her waist, making them glow. “Use the time to make another rope! I’ll cast a shield.”
Kenji dove into his pack as he jumped over the log, Shinoto remaining atop it.
Retrieving glyph parchment and brush, Kenji looked for what else he had left to draw from within his dwindling supplies: a single length of black rope, as well as the mysterious gold.
He dared not touch the thousand-year rope. The 100-year rope would have to do. His mind raced with adrenalin and he braided the black rope with blank glyphs, still trying to think of what to write upon them. Trees cracked through the forest ahead of them as the sellblades drew near.
“Hurry, Kenji!” Shinoto yelled.
The undead warrior appeared first through the trees, running on all fours. Shinoto screamed in shock at the abhorrent sight, but managed to aim her Force of the Palm technique at him. With a flash of blue Qi, the creature was hit by the beam of pure energy and was pushed back into the forest with a snapping of tree branches. He cried out with hollers and snarls—an inhuman sound that caused Kenji’s flesh to crawl.
Suddenly the sky burst with a tremendous boom. A swath of trees and bamboo fell some distance away from them as Olja came flying through the air, her huge body slamming through trunk after trunk.
Kenji’s heart leapt. Olja…!
Closing in right behind her, the Duke pursued the Xjian woman with Qinggong, flying more than jumping. He sailed forward with his five blades spinning behind him in a ghostly trail of glowing runes. With a lightning-fast slash he charged at Olja before she could even stand to her feet. She took the strike to her midsection while hefting herself off the ground and the giant woman doubled over with a grunt of pain.
Amazingly the blade left only a light wound across her stomach, but the power of the technique carried through with a shockwave on either side of her, felling a dozen trees on both sides.
Kenji’s mind froze as he took in the impossible sight.
The Duke let out a harrumph. “Your Iron Body Mastery is impressive, young one. Too bad this fossil of a body doesn’t have the power to unleash the full potential of my skill. It’s making this last far too long.”
“Just shut up and fight!” Olja said and launched into him with a flying kick.
The Duke blocked the kick with a ring of steel from his uchigatana and retaliated with a swath of strikes from his five flying swords. Olja deftly deflected each one, moving in a blur as she parried with her gauntlets. Summoning her Qi with a surge of lightning, Olja went on the offensive, forcing the blades to block as she unleashed with a thunderous volley of lightning-charged punches and kicks.
From the amused look on the Duke’s face, however, he seemed to be finding more sport in the assault than challenge. But Olja was doing her job all the same. She was buying them precious time. Compared to the Duke, she was perhaps as skill-less as he was versus these sellblades they now faced. The battle raged between them, Olja sending the Duke flying through another set of trees with a savage kick. They disappeared deeper into the forest then, seen only by the flashing of lightning and the falling of distant trees.
By the gods…she won’t last long in a fight like that.
He needed to do something fast.
While Olja might have far less skill than the Duke, she at least had some and far more than Kenji. He on the other hand would need an edge to survive. He couldn’t risk offending the heavens again with another freezing of time, but perhaps he could affect just himself. At least that was what he hoped. Kenji wrote two symbols for time and the word for equivalence and flow. He had no idea if it would work or not, but his intuition firmly took hold. Like forming a character he’d never written before, he broke the spell into its components and arranged them in a sequence he hoped made sense.
“Enhance the flow of time within the bounds of the rope.” He muttered it like a mantra as he summoned his Qi, feeling the energy flow smoothly though his meridians as he took hold of the glyphs. “Three seconds spent to move just as quickly within the time of one.”
He held his breath, expecting for it to fail, but the glyph flashed to completion near instantly. Mercy of heavens, yes! He set to imbuing the remaining glyphs, infusing them with his Qi, enduring the slightest sting to his doma each time.
“Kenji!” Shinoto cried.
He looked up just in time to see Shinoto let loose with another blast of Qi, aimed at the other two sellblades as they emerged from the tree line. They both deftly evaded Shinoto’s blast, leaving the surging beam of blue energy to shatter the trunks of several small trees between them.
Curse the fates, there was no time left now!
Kenji tied the black
rope around his waist and jumped up over the log just as the claw wielder lunged towards Shinoto in a spinning dive with his claws.
No!
Kenji engaged his Qi through the rope and the world slowed.
The sellblade went from flying through the air to floating, inching forward in miniscule increments of time. Although he had not truly slowed time, but rather it was Kenji who was now moving faster through it. The black rope burned and hissed about his waist. Three seconds for one was clearly not a simple three-to-one exchange when it came to subverting the flow of time itself. By the way the rope was dissolving, each second was perhaps costing a year or more of the rope’s time.
That meant he couldn’t use this trick for long.
Enduring the painful bite in his doma, Kenji summoned his Qi into a wild punch, channeling energy into his arms and knuckles. He released a yell as his fist slammed into the sellblade’s side, moments before his blades reached Shinoto. The girl screamed as the world sped back up again and the barrel-chested man went flying to the side, crashing into the trees with the force of his hit.
Blood seeped into Kenji’s mouth as he looked to the witch next.
The woman had a look of shock on her face and he used it to his advantage, engaging the rope once more. He crossed the distance to her before her mouth could even open in a scream. Kenji channeled his Qi again and landed a powerful hit to her jaw, hoping to either finish her or at least knock her unconscious. She flew end over end with a startled cry and disappeared into the trees, toppling several of them in the process.
Sharp pain exploded from his leg as the Dao wielder suddenly emerged behind him in a cloud of Dark Qi. Kenji looked down with horror to see the blade had sliced through the better part of his thigh. He cried out and collapsed, falling under his own weight. The half-dead thing wheeled on him as he fell, snarling and lashing its blades. Kenji barely got his hands around the corpse’s throat to keep it from latching onto him further. Its milky-white eyes invoked a terror inside of him and he fought with just as much survival instinct as fear. The Dao wielder wasn’t just dead but possessed—a demon or something else controlling him from within.
A brilliant burst of blue energy came from behind and landed squarely on the man’s head. The powerful beam pushed its head back, its neck straining under the force until it ripped clean off. The sight was horrifying, and the body fell limp and heavy atop of Kenji as thick congealed blood leaked from its severed neck. Kenji struggled to roll it off of him, hissing with pain both from his doma and his wounded leg. He dumped the corpse and steadied himself on one leg. He then turned toward Shinoto, just in time to meet the claw-wielding man face-to-face.
“Got you,” he said and stabbed his claws into Kenji with a shallow angle from below, plunging just beneath his armor. Blood erupted from his mouth as his vision blurred, white-hot pain lancing through his soul. Dear gods…
The man leered at him. “No more tricks for you, boy.”
A yell then came from behind as several trees burst into flames. “You’ll pay for striking me, you little wretch!”
The witch re-emerged, her robes cut and torn.
“Kenji!” Shinoto cried to him from atop the log. Her face was covered in sweat and she looked weak and unsteady on her feet, drained from the two palm techniques used in quick succession.
The witch glared at him as she rocked her jaw from side to side, a bright-crimson bruise on her face. She then scowled at him with bloodstained teeth. “I have no idea how you’re able to do what did. But it’s going to cost you your pathetic little life!”
Dark flames erupted in her hands.
“Stop!” the clawed man said. “We can’t burn him!”
“No,” she said. “But he can watch me burn her.”
Kenji’s heart leapt as the witch turned to Shinoto and thrust a volley of flames towards her.
“Shinoto!”
Summoning his Qi, Kenji engaged the rope and the flames flickered to a crawl. Pain rifled through him as he rose to his feet, his insides feeling torn apart. He had no time to reach the witch, and the flames were already on their way. He jumped for Shinoto instead, shielding the girl just as the time on the rope wore off.
Scalding heat burst upon his back as the flames seared him.
Kenji screamed.
He went flying forward with the force of the Qi-infused strike and landed a fair distance away with Shinoto still in his arms. The acrid stench of burned hair and flesh assaulted him as the very armor about his torso began to burn him a second time. He cried out in more agony as he struggled to get it off.
“Kenji!” Shinoto stirred and tried to help as well, but yelped when her hands touched the searing-hot metal.
The claw-wielding man and the witch came from behind them with Qinggong, following the fiery path of destruction that had just blasted Kenji through the forest nearly a hundred feet, setting several trees alight.
“Still alive, eh?” the witch said with a blood-stained leer. “Good. You’re a tough one. Now step aside so I can finish what I intended.”
The witch raised her hands again, her bangles sparking with rune stones as she summoned her Dark Qi for another blast.
Pain wracked his body. He needed to move. To get Shinoto away.
Summoning his Qi again, he engaged the rope, but nothing happened.
What the hells…?
Looking down Kenji saw the black century rope lying in two pieces at his side. Half of it burned straight through from where the flames had seared him on his back.
“Curse the fates!” he said. “The rope…”
Shinoto looked down at it and then back to the two advancing sellblades. “Kenji, I’ll need to stop them now.”
He struggled to sit upright. “No, they’re too strong. Run, Shinoto. Run to Olja.”
“No…” She looked down at the ten-year rope about her waist. “Remove it, Kenji.”
“What?”
“The glyph that limits the time on the rope. Remember what Master Yushiro said? The Force of the Palm technique has no limit. Remove it and let me attack with its full power.”
Heavens no. He shook his head remembering that calculation he’d first made back in Hu Dong’s office—the huge number that was nearly impossible to compute. “No, Shinoto. It’ll be the strength of hundreds of Dan. Your doma won’t be able to take it. It’ll kill you...”
Shinoto closed her eyes. “Then so be it…”
His heart lurched. “What?”
“We have no choice now, Kenji. You heard what Olja said about you. It’s more important for you to survive than me. If they get your body, not just you but all of us will eventually die. Please, remove the seal. I don’t know which one it is.”
Tears dampened his eyes. She was ready to sacrifice herself for him…for everyone. His soul felt as if sundered a second time. He knew what she said made sense, but he could hardly bring himself to do it. He looked to the sellblades again, nearly to them now.
A hole opened up in the pit of his stomach as he pointed to the glyph on her rope.
Heavens forgive me…
“I believe in you, Kenji.” She tore it off and then raised her palm. “I’ll love you forever. I’ll see you again, when you reach the celestial stars.”
“Shinoto…!”
Tears streamed down her face as Shinoto turned to their attackers.
“You face judgment now, witch!” she cried, a scowl creasing her brow as the glyphs on the rope engaged. “You burned my parents…and now you shall burn as well.”
The witch formed a dark shield as she gave Shinoto a condescending leer. “Come on then, little girl. Do your wors—”
The heavens exploded in a brilliant flash of blue light.
Shinoto screamed with a high-pitched wail as a glow brighter than a thousand suns streamed from her palm in an arc that spanned half the forest. The yellow rope about her waist twisted and burned, constricting as Shinoto grew from a child to woman right before his eyes—ten years of cultivated
essence released in fifteen seconds of raw energy and power, her body growing with each pulse.
The sellblades’ screams lasted for but a second, cut short as they were vaporized to ash by the crackling stream of Qi. The rope finally burned out and the technique faded, leaving a wide path of destruction in its wake. It cut cleanly through the forest, leveling nearly every tree in sight, leaving a clear, unobstructed view of the river far beyond.
Shinoto wobbled on her feet, a full-grown woman again, her body now dwarfing the tiny robe and leather armor she’d been in. Her eyes glazed over as a trickle of blood spilled from her mouth.
“Shinoto!” Kenji cried as he rushed to catch her.
She collapsed into his arms, her body hot as if burning with fever.
She lay still, unmoving. Her eyes, glassy and fixed.
Heavens no… “Shinoto! Shinoto!!”
He shook her again and again, but she didn’t stir. Tears fell upon her face as his stomach lurched. Her jade eyes stared vacantly into the heavens, her mouth slightly ajar and dripping with bright-red blood. In that moment every hope and dream faded within him as the light dimmed from Shinoto’s eyes.
His soul emptied.
The only thing he ever wanted in the world…was now gone.
Shinoto…
Kenji cried out with grief. He buried her head within his chest and wept, feeling her warmth slipping away. This couldn’t be. He rocked as he held her, cursing both the heavens and the fates. The cruelty of his life was nothing compared to this. Why did you need to take her? Why?
He held her for what must have been an eternity and then suddenly she moved.
Kenji’s heart leapt as he looked down at Shinoto. Her mouth opened wide, drawing in a huge gulp of air with a gasp.
“Shinoto!”
Her bright-green eyes focused on him as they filled with life again and his heart exploded with joy. “Shinoto!”
“Kenji?” The girl looked up at him, perplexed, a furrow on her brow. “Why are you crying?”
Kenji stared back at her with stunned silence for a moment and then laughed through his tears.
“Nothing,” he said, holding her again. “No reason at all.”