by Gage Lee
“You know?” My heart sank. Hahen had made it very clear what Empyreals would do if they ever discovered one of my kind. I held my breath and waited for the dragon to bite off my head.
“Of course I know.” Zephyr laughed. “The veil around your core is impressive, but even Tycho can’t hide the truth from me.”
“I don’t—”
“I know, Jace. You don’t have to know everything, as much as you think that would make your life easier.” The dragon’s head rose above the serpentine coil of her body to peer down at me. “Trust me, it won’t. And I’m not going to prove it to you by telling a tale that doesn’t belong to me. I am, however, going to tell you something you do need to know.
“The world is a cruel place, and the Empyrean Flame is no different. The Immortal Sun warms us all with its heat, but its schemes and stratagems are beyond even the dragons. It has put your piece on the board. Many hands will try to move you. You must stand firm. Stay true to yourself, Jace. There is something inside of you that the Empyrean values. Hang on to it, because it may be our only hope in the dark days ahead.”
“You aren’t going to kill me?”
“No, but don’t let anyone else know what you are. Not even Tycho. They’d kill an Eclipse Warrior as soon as look at one.”
“Thank you for your wisdom, honored dragon.” I bowed until my nose nearly touched my toes.
“You’re very welcome, Eclipse Warrior.” She nudged my back with her snout. “You have a long and dangerous road ahead of you. This little talk was the least I could do.
“Especially since you’ll likely be dead before any of it even matters.”
The Champion
ADJUDICATOR HARK’S little favor nearly killed me. I spent every day of the summer traveling from undercity to undercity with the team that set up the Five Dragons Challenges. Dallas, Tokyo, Chicago, Dubai, Angkor Wat, Cairo, Atlantis, and so many more that I couldn’t remember all their names. It was exhausting, dangerous work that pushed me to the edge every day.
And, despite Zephyr’s dire warning about my possible impending death, I’d never been happier.
My official martial arts training wouldn’t start until the next academic year began, but this workout made me a better fighter every single day. Coupled with the Thief of Souls technique, my skills were more than enough to face down any ten less-experienced fighters.
That was a good thing, because it’s exactly what I had to do, day in and day out.
I bounced from one foot to another under the Kyoto sun, energy humming in my core. My breath cycling technique pulled in enough to fill my channels to bursting in a matter of seconds, leaving me ready to launch myself at my opponent the instant I laid eyes on him.
Hank Eli, last year’s champion from the Resplendent Suns, entered the ring opposite me, just as ready to throw down. This would be a good fight.
The arena crowd buzzed as the announcer stepped between us to announce our fight. His words flowed over me without making an impression. I was too focused on Hank to hear anything.
My spirit sight told me his channels were filled to the brim. His core blazed like his clan’s namesake, and his eyes flashed with intense focus.
The announcer finished his spiel and hustled out of our way. Hank and I rapped knuckles and bowed deeply to one another.
Hank had had a whole year of training to prepare him for our exhibition. This was his opportunity to reclaim the honor he’d lost when an unknown camper had beaten him in front of the whole world.
All he had to do was defeat the School’s new champion.
Me.
“For honor,” he said.
“For honor,” I agreed. “Good luck, Hank.”
He was going to need it.
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Looking for more wuxia adventure, and need it right this minute? Check out: Darkening Skies (Path of the Thunderbird Book 1). Or keep reading to take a sneak peek.
A BOY ABANDONED AT an ancient school of warrior arts. A princess bartered away as a treaty bride. A lurking evil with the power to topple the world.
Ji Yu Raijin is happy to live out his life serving his school, cultivating his life force, and learning the Path of Darkening Skies, an ancient and noble warrior art—until the day comes when he has to choose: remain true to the teachings of his path and allow his art to die out or commit an unforgivable sin and save the world.
Second princess Shyong San Koida was born the only cripple in a dynasty of powerful warriors. With a broken life force, the only way Koida can contribute to her family’s empire is by sealing a strategic alliance to a barbarian leader with her hand in marriage. But hidden forces within the court conspire to stop the union and obliterate the Shyong San dynasty at all costs.
At the intersection of the servant boy and the princess’s stories lies a secret, malignant art bent on destroying not only them, but the entire world.
Darkening Skies is the first novel in the Path of the Thunderbird series, for fans of wuxia, xanxia, cultivation novels, demon beasts, and all styles of martial arts. Darkening Skies is written by eden Hudson, enthusiastic but terrible martial arts student and best-selling author of Jubal Van Zandt and the litRPG fantasy Rogue Dungeon.
Prologue
22 YEARS AGO
Purple-white tongues of lightning forked through a midnight sky, revealing for an instant the roiling black clouds over the Shangyang Mountains. A crack of thunder followed, shaking the walls of a teahouse nestled in Kokuji, the fishing village at the foot of the highest peak. Rain poured down all at once as if the lightning had broken open the sky. Storm waves pounded the beach in the village’s little cove, and fat, heavy drops battered the teahouse’s roof, partially muffling a scream of agony from within.
“Shhh!” a young woman whispered, squeezing the hand of the laboring soon-to-be mother. As one of the few sensha, or entertaining girls, not engaged this night when no travelers would venture out into the rain to traverse the mountain pass, Daitai was standing in as midwife for her friend. With her free hand, she wiped the sweat-soaked black hair from the young mother’s bright jade eyes. “You have to stay quiet, Lanfen. If you disturb the guests, Madam will send you out into the streets!”
Lanfen fell back onto the bed mat as the contraction ended, limp with relief. She saw the truth in Daitai’s admonishment. Madam was already furious that her most admired sensha had been unable to work these last three months, when it was no longer possible to hide her blossoming stomach. Lanfen would be years in paying back all the silver links Madam believed the teahouse had lost because of her pregnancy. It was enough that her child was coming into the world stained by a house of ill repute. Lanfen wouldn’t further dishonor its first breaths by giving birth in the streets like a stray dog.
As the next contraction ripped through her delicate body, Lanfen bit down on the knuckle of her first finger until she drew blood. Sweet singing drifted through the wall, accompanied by the sharp notes of a double-necked lute. One song after another, interspersed with the clinking of
fine cups set down too hard by callous, slightly drunk hands and the occasional peal of raucous laughter. Through it all came the angry clatter of rain on the roof and rolling thunder overhead.
The next cry that went up was reedy and small, brought forth by a throat just learning to make sound. Daitai forgot to admonish the infant or the mother in her wonder at seeing life’s first moments. It was much smaller than she’d ever imagined, much bloodier. Gently, she bathed the boy with the pile of fabric scraps and the small pot of boiled water Madam had allowed them. Tiny fists, with long, graceful fingers, tipped with scratchy little nails. Scrawny, kicking legs. A head of thick black hair. In the brief flashes that his eyes were open, Daitai saw jade starburst irises brighter than even his mother’s.
As she washed the delicate shell of the boy’s right ear, Daitai found a moon-mark nestled in the hollow behind his jaw. She wiped the spot clean, then pulled a jasmine-scented oil lamp closer and leaned in to inspect it. Pale white against his ruddy skin, the mark was like a painter’s hint at a distant sheet of falling rain.
The more she looked at it, the more the mark reminded her of one of those ancient glyphs from Deep Root, the Old Language, with its multitude of intricate lines layering together to make the words. Babies born marked by those old letters were said to be children of prophecy, their destinies written on their skin. The glyph for white celery predicting a beauty who would topple kingdoms, cicada foretelling the first of an immortal dynasty, phoenix for one who would end a great plague. Or was that cause a great plague? There were so many prophecies that Daitai could never keep them all straight. Lanfen would know—she had such a sharp memory—but the exhausted young mother was dozing so peacefully that Daitai didn’t have the heart to bother her over it.
“Who are you, little one? What does your glyph say you’ll do for us?” Daitai grinned as she chucked the baby’s nose.
He blinked, startled, then opened his mouth.
Daitai giggled. “Are you so hungry? Let’s wake Mama.”
Daitai took the infant back to Lanfen’s mat and knelt at her friend’s side.
“Mama Lanfen,” Daitai whispered, nudging her friend softly. “Your son is desperate for his first meal.”
Groggily, Lanfen pushed herself up and took the child to her breast, whispering soothing nonsense as she helped him find his first meal.
Daitai played with a strand of her hair while she watched the mother and child together. She couldn’t recall a destiny for a baby marked by distant rain fall. Could she have been misreading it? She’d never really mastered reading Deep Root. Who needed it these days when the simpler, more civilized characters of the New Script were so much easier to read and write?
“Does Lanfen remember the destinies prophesied by moon-marks from the Old Language?” Daitai asked, twisting her hair around her finger.
“Mm,” Lanfen said, nodding without looking up from her son. “Why?”
“Oh, silly Daitai!” She pulled a face that never failed to charm the teahouse’s patrons, then gestured to the infant. “He has one behind his right ear.”
The new mother lurched upright on the mat and pulled the baby from her breast. He let out a cry of protest as she folded his tiny ear out of the way and studied the pale mark.
“Is it rain fall?” Daitai asked. “I thought it might be rain fall.”
But Lanfen didn’t answer. Her bright green eyes sparkled with unshed tears, and she caressed the mark with her thumb.
A tingle of fear crept up Daitai’s spine. “What’s wrong? Is his prophecy bad?”
“It says thunder,” Lanfen whispered in a ragged voice.
Daitai’s brows furrowed, then soared for her hairline.
“The chosen one? Daitai held the chosen one?” Her voice was rising steadily, both in pitch and volume. Madam would scold her or worse, but she couldn’t contain her ecstasy. She leapt to her feet and shouted at the rafters, “This filthy sensha bathed the chosen one with these hands! These hands!”
While Daitai rejoiced over her blessed fortune, Lanfen sat silently on her mat, breathing deeply into the soft, soft hair of her newborn son. The chosen one, the thunderbird. A tear dripped off Lanfen’s long eyelashes and onto her baby’s cheek, sparkling in the golden lantern light.
MONTHS LATER, A SMALL form trekked up the mountainside of the highest peak of the Shangyangs, an even smaller bundle slung across her chest. Darkness had long since fallen, making Lanfen glad Daitai had insisted she take a lantern along. Eyes shined in the undergrowth when her meager light passed by—not only the greens and yellows of natural beasts, but flashes of demonic magenta, teal, and ever-shifting rainbows. Fearsome guai, demon beasts, roamed these mountain forests, hungry for hunters and lost travelers.
Lanfen carried nothing more than the child in the sling, the lantern in her hand, and a small pouch tucked into her robes for after her errand was done. When her slender, shaking hand was not comforting her infant son, it frequently returned to the pouch in her robes, as if to reassure itself that the contents had not spilled out. She was more frightened of losing it than her life.
She felt no fear for her son’s safety. Raijin was the chosen one, after all, and the chosen one could not be eaten by guai before he fulfilled his destiny.
Lanfen had no martial skill or training with weapons, had never even cultivated her Ro beyond what she needed to manifest a pick for her moon zither. In the teahouse, she sang and played and danced and giggled delicately when the patrons said something they felt was clever. Entertaining was her skill, not fighting, and so all she could do as she journeyed through the eye-filled forest was sing. Raijin at least seemed to enjoy the music, and through the night, no wild beasts or guai attacked, so perhaps they enjoyed it as well.
The sun was rising when Lanfen finally stepped out of the tree line and into the light. She had only a few minutes’ walk under the caress of its warm rays before she ascended into the smoky cloud layer surrounding the peak. Chilly mist wet her face and beaded on Raijin’s eyelashes and hair like diamonds, but the baby only laughed.
Lanfen’s hands shook endlessly now, and in spite of the chill, she was sweating. With no need for the lantern any longer, she dropped it beside the path and kept one hand on her son and the other on the pouch. Its contents were for later, not now, not before the errand was complete, but touching it, reminding herself it was there, made her feel safe.
Near midmorning Raijin began to complain for his meal. He’d been a good boy, gone the night through without eating, and Lanfen’s legs were unaccustomed to such strenuous use, so she stopped gratefully and sat on a flat rock in the shelter of an outcropping to rest and breastfeed him. Usually these days, Raijin ate rice pudding or soft bits of boiled vegetables, but Lanfen had left too suddenly the day before to think about bringing solid food. Now that she was feeding him, however, she was glad she hadn’t brought anything, glad for the closeness. She bent down and kissed his forehead. This would be his last meal with her.
Her shaking intensified at the thought, the nagging ache in her bones turning into an unbearable need. She couldn’t wait until the trip back down the mountain. She reached for the pouch.
The deep call of a great rainbird rumbled overhead.
Startled, Lanfen looked up, searching for signs of the creature. A trio of trailing plume feathers as wide as a grown man and twice as long cut through the pale gray mist. Each one shimmered with greens, indigos, purples, and blacks.
Just before the tailfeathers disappeared, a soft indigo barbule drifted down through the swirling fog to land on Raijin’s cheek.
Lanfen’s fingers trembled so badly that she had to try three times before she successfully plucked the fuzzy barbule from his skin. It was no more than a wisp, so downy she could hardly feel it. She popped it in her mouth.
The barbule tasted of plum blossoms and dissolved on her tongue like a sugar sweet.
Immediately, strength returned to her exhausted limbs, and her blearing vision sharpened. The shaking vanis
hed, her hands becoming as stable and strong as when they were wrapped around the neck of her moon lute or pouring a drink for a wealthy patron. The nagging, aching need battling to take control of her mind dissipated. The pouch remained unopened.
As soon as Raijin finished his meal, Lanfen pushed away from the boulder and returned to her climb. Her delicate feet seemed to fly over the rocky path as if her silken shoes, which had been nearly destroyed by the journey so far, no longer touched the earth. It was as if she had become a storm cloud drifting through the sky. Before she knew it, a dark shape began to emerge from the mist.
Lanfen had been told all her life that the structure at the top of the Shangyangs’ highest peak was a monastery filled with monks watching over Kokuji and the mountain pass to the east. These holy men were said to be the reason the village had never been overrun by guai.
As she drew closer to the structure, her jade eyes followed the line of the building’s ancient wood porch around each corner. The wooden shakes of the roof had been painted a deep forest green, and its eaves were upturned at the corners in a foreign or forgotten architecture. She counted three sets of sliding doors along this wall, all closed against the pervasive chill. Each panel depicted in golden paint an ornate Deep Root glyph—wisdom, self-control, improvement.
Still floating on the essence of the rainbird’s barbule, she glided up the steps and let herself into the center door—self-control, something she’d had precious little of in her life—sliding the panel shut behind her.
Lanfen found herself standing in a corridor that ran the length of the building. Doorways stood open on the interior wall, and at each end, she could see the hallway turned the corner. A pervasive warmth burned away the cold and wet of the mountain’s atmosphere. She could hear the muted din of many voices, but she couldn’t tell from which direction they were coming.