Fallen Star

by Ivan Kal

  He managed a cut on Ming-Li’s cheek as she evaded, and her eyes narrowed. Her ki flared and she sent a blast of fire from her foot toward his. Vin jumped to evade, stabbing two of his blades down for balance, which meant that he had left an opening. Lei’s fist glowed with faint jade-colored ki as he punched forward, a roaring dragon forming out of the ki and flying out.

  Vin pulled his other four blades and put them in front of the attack, taking the blow on them. Ashara took the opportunity to unleash a lightning-charged quick attack, her spear sailing toward his heart. He realized that she was really trying to kill him, and something in his heart broke.

  He managed to put his spear in the way, but he was a moment too late. The spear stabbed into his side and cut open up to his ribs as the force of Lei’s attack sent him flying over the rooftops. He crashed and rolled, his blades stabbing to halt his flight and raise him up. Ming-Li was there, her right hand held high above her two serpents joining into one, turning to blue fire before snapping down. His blades moved to intercept, but the serpent flashed down quicker than he could react and bit his thigh. He felt the poison ki enter his body and he grimaced as his blade cut the serpent’s head off before slingshotting himself away and executing a Shadow Step to further the distance. The serpent had bitten him straight through his shadow cloak, and the wound in his side was bleeding profusely. He wouldn’t last long now.

  He felt Lei exit his Wind Step as he charged another attack. He unleashed it at Vin and this time his blades were too slow. The jade dragon caught him in the chest and sent him flying through the air. Vin felt his ribs crack and he coughed out blood as he landed on a flat roof. He rolled until he hit a wall. He managed to right himself and lean against the wall. His ki dropped low, so he pulled his blades inside and dropped his cloak.

  The three landed on the roof and watched him. Lei held one arm against his body, clearly in pain. Ming-Li’s face was red with blood as the deep gash Vin had opened up from just below her eye to her temple bled profusely and skin hanging open. Ashara’s leg was wet with blood and she was leaning on her spear.

  Vin was nearly spent. He could fight for a while longer, but there was no longer a doubt as to who was going to win. There never had been. If he had been in his old body, he could’ve won; but not now, not like this. His heart beat inside of his chest. He didn’t want to die. He had failed, he knew that. He looked at Ashara and knew that he failed her; he looked at Ming-Li and Lei, and knew that he had failed them as well. If he had won against the Arashan in the first place, they would’ve never betrayed their honor. If he had paid more attention to Ashara instead of focusing solely on getting stronger, she wouldn’t have gone to the Arashan.

  Lying there, watching them as they moved closer, he realized that he had failed a great deal, and he felt something stir inside of his heart as he accepted that.

  But he didn’t want it to end here. Vin knew that he hadn’t been becoming stronger just for his own sake as he had before. The moment he came onto this world, he had changed—he had met Ashara, then Kyarra, and for the first time in his life he had people to care about. People to love. He realized that he had wanted to protect them, and so he had done the only thing he knew how to do: he trained to get stronger, to be able to protect them from anything. But he had failed in that task as well; he didn’t understand that to protect was more than just keeping their physical persons safe. It was ironic that he had figured things out only now when he was about to die. But at least he would die knowing everything about himself. His purpose had changed; he no longer gained strength for himself. Now, he was following the Path for others.

  There was a heat inside of his heart as this truth settled in—and then a pulling. He realized that the three were no longer moving, that they were frozen mid-step. But his attention went down into himself. He saw his spirit and his heart gate tremble. It was pulling at his soul, and it was answering. His mind cleared and he realized that the reason he hadn’t been able to make the seventh step was because he hadn’t known himself completely. He had acted as if he was still the old Kai Zhao Vin who had everything given to him, who was alone, for whom power and the Path were the only things that mattered.

  But now there were other things that mattered. He loved Kyarra and Ashara. Even though he had lost Ashara, it didn’t mean that had changed. She was his soul mate, a person he wanted to protect, and he would find a way to bring her back. Kyarra was still here. Even though she hadn’t heeded his words, she was here and she needed him.

  He couldn’t die here.

  A conduit between his soul and his seventh gate formed, and soul fire rushed through all seven gates. It washed over him, remaking his body, forging it into something new and better. Soul Fire burned as it coursed through him. His muscles spasmed as they were reinforced, he felt like his skin was being stretched over his body as it was being reinforced. His vision blurred as his eyes transformed. Every part of him became something better, stronger than what it used to be. He felt his wounds heal and the ki from his inner core, the one where he had been compressing and refining the ki for this step, explode outward, filling his outer core before spilling into his body and combining with his soul fire. Time returned, but the three remained frozen, now just looking at him in shock as he stood up, black substances leaking from his skin and onto the floor as his body purged all its remaining impurities. He took a deep breath and aura around him trembled as he released the full force of his soul on them. The killing intent hit them and they staggered a step back. They had never seen this before; the power that a spirit artist of the seventh step had was more than just physical—it was the power to change their surroundings by the will of their soul alone.

  “What happened?” Ashara asked, glaring at him.

  “He took the seventh step,” Lei answered, his voice filled with longing.

  Ming-Li didn’t respond. Instead, she just readied her swords.

  Vin could feel his legs trembling. He was tired. He might’ve been healed of his wounds, but his body was exhausted. His ki reserves were near depletion as the last had been used to purify his body. He was holding them off by the power of his soul alone, and he wouldn’t be able to do that for long.

  The other two readied themselves for battle and Vin looked inside of himself to his soul’s plane, reaching for his blades. There, he noticed something—his soul’s plane was trembling. Vin remembered the writings of old masters, about the ultimate technique of the seventh step: the soul realm, a manifestation of the spirit artist’s inner world. The last time he had been on this step he didn’t possess a soul plane, or not one he could access anyway. So he tried the technique again, and he felt ki that he had left surge through him as he reached down into his soul plane.

  There, he found the Hunter sleeping on his usual spot. Vin hadn’t heard the Hunter’s voice in a long time. The two of them had joined together, yet still the beast remained inside of his soul plane. The Hunter was the darker side of him, all of his deeper instincts. He would always remain there, but his voice was no longer necessary, for the Hunter’s voice was Vin’s now.

  Yet when he reached down, he heard it inside of his head.

  “Isn’t this interesting?” the Hunter said, and then he surged out. Next to Vin in the real world, aura and ki trembled as the Hunter manifested, and the three looked at him in disbelief.

  The Hunter was massive, his shoulders coming up to Vin’s head. He looked like a tiger at first glance, but he was not. His body was longer, his shoulders wider, his claws bigger; his eyes darker, more intelligent; his fur black striped with dark blue. He was a force of nature, the Hunter.

  “I do not believe we can hold this for long,” the Hunter said, but to Vin his voice sounded strange; it was almost as if he was listening to himself speak. That was probably the case, too, considering the Hunter was his subconscious. Regardless, Vin didn’t have the time to investigate now. He Shaped a spear and readied himself.

  The three hesitated, and Vin and the Hunter pounced on t
heir prey. Vin appeared next to Lei, his spear stabbing at the man’s chest. He tried to evade, but Vin fueled by soul fire was fast, and he stabbed him through the shoulder. The Hunter attacked Ming-Li, his dark fur misting as the beast Shadow Stepped next to her and swiped with his claws that glowed with dark blue ki. Ming-Li’s serpent moved to intercept but was swiped away by the claws that bit into her shoulders and sent her flying off the building.

  Ashara exploded with lightning ki, her movements faster than the eye could follow and stabbed the Hunter in the side, but her spear simply passed through as the beast turned to shadow and split apart only to coalesce next to her.

  The Hunter bit her leg and threw her to the side. Vin saw her hit the wall with her head and fall down without moving.

  Lei exploded with jade ki, shattering Vin’s spear as an armor of ki appeared over him. He charged an attack, his fist glowing, but then the Hunter was there. Lei blocked the clawed attack and fell to his knee, keeping the Hunter’s paw from coming down and ripping his head off.

  Lei struggled and then sent a wave of force that staggered the Hunter and Vin while Lei jumped back to the other side of the roof. The three of them stood and looked at each other.

  “This is our limit. I cannot make another ki fueled attack,” the Hunter said.

  Lei had to have noticed something, but even if he had he clearly didn’t want to risk it. Vin saw him Wind Step behind Vin, grab Ashara and then jump down into the street. Vin fell to one knee. The Hunter stood above him, studying him.

  “We can’t go after them. Narzarah is still with the army,” the Hunter said, and Vin knew it to be the truth.

  “To the ship,” Vin said inside of his mind. The Hunter nodded and grabbed Vin with his mouth, carrying him like a mother would carry her cub.

  “You are too heavy for a cub,” the Hunter joked as he ran across the rooftops.

  Vin didn’t have the strength to move or even look with his net. The only thing he could do was keep his focus on the technique that kept the Hunter in the real world, but he knew that his ki was running out, and the Hunter knew it too. It reached the harbor and Vin could hear the people screaming as he dropped on the docks. Vin tried to see if one of the ships leaving the harbor was the Norvus, but he couldn’t make them out. The Hunter didn’t seem to have that problem—he leapt from the docks to a ship, and then from that to another, using them as stepping stones. As he jumped onto a ship that had left the walls of the harbor, he turned south and pulled himself back before making another jump larger than the one before. Vin watched as the fast-moving shape of the ship came closer to his face, and then they arrived, the Hunter breaking the boards beneath his paws and sending people falling all around him. He was a truly massive beast.

  Vin heard someone scream, but then the Hunter sat on his back legs and lifted Vin up. He could see the stunned faces of Captain Corvo, Solun, and Teressa as they moved their eyes from the Hunter to Vin. He had just enough time to hear them call his name before his ki ran out and the Hunter turned to a shadow that flew inside his body, leaving him with nothing holding him. He dropped to the floor and smashed his head hard.

  People ran over to him and surrounded him, asking him if he was all right, but he didn’t care enough to answer.

  “Kyarra?” he managed to rasp out.

  Teressa heard him, thankfully. “We got her to the ship. She is sleeping below.”

  “Good, good,” Vin whispered, and closed his eyes before going to sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  ASHARA

  Present

  Ashara stood on the roof of a building, looking at the city all around her. She had worried before she arrived back to her homeworld; she had thought that perhaps she wouldn’t have the strength to follow through on her choice, that she would falter when she saw the people she cared for.

  She hadn’t. She realized that there was little on this world that truly mattered to her. She had no family, no real friends, and those she had considered such had abandoned her. Seeing Vin again had only made her feel more anger. She saw that her absence hadn’t affected him much, that he had only gotten stronger. It made her feel so much worse to see just how little she had mattered to him, to see the pity in his eyes as he looked at her. Pity! After everything that she had gone through, after she had gained real power.

  Yet that power hadn’t been great enough to match him.

  She glanced behind her, seeing Lei stitching Ming-Li’s cheek closed. She could feel him using ki in the process, but she didn’t know any healing techniques. Ming-Li had her eyes turned away, looking at the burning buildings in the distance and listening to the battle in the streets. None of them spoke much after they recovered from their battle. The three of them were powerful, Ashara knew that—she had more power than any other person on Enosia could ever hope to attain—and still, the three of them hadn’t been enough to defeat Vin.

  The way that he moved, the way that he seemed to see every one of their attacks coming, the way he held all three of them at bay… Ashara had been in this body for five years, had mastered much of its power, enough that she could take Lei in a duel three times out of ten. Yet against Vin, it was as if nothing mattered—even when she managed to land a blow, he evaded enough so that it wasn’t a fatal strike. He was better than them all. And then, when they had finally managed to tire him out and corner him, he had reached a new height.

  “That beast,” Ming-Li spoke. “It wasn’t a construct.”

  Ashara tightened her hands on her spear as her leg throbbed in pain. The cut Vin had delivered had been closed by Lei, but it still hurt.

  “No, it wasn’t,” Lei agreed. Ashara didn’t turn to face them, nor did she speak. She had nothing to add.

  “It must have something to do with him absorbing a spirit beast’s core. Nothing else makes sense,” Ming-Li continued.

  “I’m not so sure,” Lei said. “Did you see what happened when he took the seventh step?”

  “I felt something just at the edge of my senses, but I couldn’t perceive it,” Ming-Li answered.

  Ashara finally turned and looked at the woman. “He did something with his soul,” she told them. She had felt something similar inside of herself. Ever since she had found herself in this new body, she had spent a great deal of time studying her spirit, as Lei called it. She had found something that she was certain was connected to souls.

  “What do you mean?” Lei asked before Ming-Li could open her mouth. Ashara saw that she wanted to hurl an insult or something in the same vein at her, but she didn’t speak over Lei.

  “There are these seven points inside of my spirit, and I think that four of them are somehow attached to my soul. I felt something similar to how these connections feel to me from him just before he took the seventh step.”

  “The ki gates,” Ming-Li said, hunger flashing in the depths of her eyes. She turned to look at Lei. “That has to be it—the way to take the seventh step has nothing to do with the core, but attaching one’s soul to one’s spirit!”

  Lei glanced at Ming-Li, then back at Ashara. “You said that only four of the gates are connected to your soul?” At Ashara’s nod, he continued speaking. “That could explain why you can’t use the full power your body possesses. The transfer of the soul might not have been complete—or perhaps it has nothing to do with the transfer, but the maturity of the soul… Perhaps yours simply hasn’t developed enough to take the next step.”

  Ashara had always assumed that her inability to use all of the power of her body came from her own failing, but perhaps there was more to it.

  “Do you understand what this means?” Ming-Li asked as she stood and looked at the two of them. “We can finally reach the seventh step, stand at the peak of all spirit arts! We can be his equals!”

  Ashara didn’t believe that Vin would merely stay at his current level of power, but she didn’t say anything as she got the sense that that would only anger Ming-Li. Instead, she turned to look at Lei.

  “Those
six blades of his, they hadn’t been constructs either,” she said.

  Lei shook his head. “No. I don’t know how, but he seemed to be able to store them inside of himself.”

  “That would be a useful skill to learn,” Ming-Li added eagerly.

  They lapsed into silence after that, all three of them moving to the edge of the roof and looking over the city. Tourran was burning. Ashara had wondered, too, if she would feel bad at seeing people she had walked around dying, but she didn’t. She had been alive long enough to learn that, in this world, everyone was out only for themselves. Those with power treated those without it as expendable, and those who were powerless would stab anyone in the back to get some for themselves.

  But the Arashan treated their own with respect. They valued everyone; they were all working toward the same goal, a bastion of civilization and progress, and it was a goal worth fighting for. Ashara, too, would fight for it. She would be the spear to help shape a world like the one Khalio showed her, a place where all were free to do as they willed, to know no fear and never be made to feel like they were lesser. Tourran was just one city among thousands of worlds filled with them, a sacrifice she was willing to pay.

  She saw the people on the streets running for their lives. Soldiers, both mercenaries and those wearing Tourran colors, continued fighting against the Arashan and the Lashians. The army had spilled into the city, however, and it was only a matter of time before it was under their control. Some had realized that, and in the distance, with her enhanced sight, Ashara could see fighting at the docks as mercenaries took over ships and attempted to escape. The sea was filled with ships, and on one of them was likely Vin, along with Kyarra. They hadn’t found her in the palace, and Ashara doubted that Vin would have left her. She wondered how he’d convinced her to run, but perhaps Kyarra had finally started acting reasonably.

  Ashara wanted to go after them, but she knew that they couldn’t. All three of them were completely drained of ki, injured and tired. They were in no condition to fight such a fight. In any case, the Lashian armada would be pursuing them. Ashara knew that they had put their ships further away so as to not alert Kyarra of the attack as well to keep out of range of her grand spells and the wards of the city, but now they would be free to go after the ships that were running away.