by eden Hudson
When she straightened up again, Cold Sun had dismounted and joined Lysander and Hush. Not wanting to give up the comforting protection of her half-demon mount, Koida nudged Pernicious forward with her knees.
“That was not a hellfiend,” Cold Sun said. “They can speak. They use the voices of humans they have heard.”
“Maybe it’s never heard a human, only eaten them,” Koida suggested, succeeding in giving herself another series of violent shivers.
Lysander shook his head. “It wasn’t a hellfiend.”
Hush cocked her head at him, dark almond eyes probing his face for answers.
Koida asked the question for all of them. “Then what was it?”
“My wife,” Lysander said.
Chapter Thirty-three
MORTAL LANDS
Icy wind pulled fine white hairs from Yoichi’s topknot and whipped them around his face. He scowled into the gusts. He hated for his hair to be out of perfect order. For any of him to appear less than flawless, in fact. A disheveled façade was indicative of a disorderly interior, and he kept both under rigid control at all times.
Especially times like these, when it seemed like his nightmares were melding with reality. Barren sand stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. In his dreams, he was always crawling across a dead landscape while the poisoned sand scoured his skin from his muscles and the harsh green sun baked him with its toxic rays, but the muffled hiss of this desert, the lifeless dunes, the endless thirst...they were too like the nightmare land. If he heard the shriek of the Dark Dragon overhead, he would feel no surprise.
The reassuring scent of lotus blossoms filled his head.
Don’t fear her, my hero, the feminine voice whispered. A creator has nothing to fear from his creation.
Locking his eyes ruthlessly forward to keep from searching the sky, Yoichi found Lao’s dark form running along the horizon, keeping well ahead of the demon ram Yoichi rode. The leech’s strange galloping gait made him easy to spot.
“We’ve been in this desert for days without a sign of Koida or a drop of water,” Yoichi said. “If that fool’s brain truly is rotted through, he could be leading us in circles. Then we’ll both die out here.”
I would sustain you, she whispered. You’re mine, my heart, and soon you’ll join me in eternity, immortal.
Yoichi thought back to his mother, so focused on the Ro of that Ji Yu scum. Her mind was so entrenched in the mortal world that she had never even tried to reach for immortality.
That’s why I chose you and not her. You have always known you were destined for more than the power a mere mortal can wield.
It was true. His entire life, Yoichi had felt universes turning upon his decisions. The power of life and death had belonged to him from the day he’d found a fox den filled with newborn kits. One by one, he had decided which would live and which would die. Over the years, he’d seen countless others presented with the same power, but rarely if ever were they brave enough to wield it.
A soft invisible hand caressed his cheek.
Don’t lose heart, my white-haired hero. You’re so close now.
Yoichi manifested a black Ro prod and, with a slap, urged the demon ram beneath him into a sprint.
Chapter Thirty-four
MORTAL LANDS
“Your wife?” Koida asked, fear forgotten in the face of her incredulity.
Rather than respond with sarcasm or a cutting insult, Lysander stared into the place where the woman had disappeared.
“She should be almost twenty years in her grave,” he said.
“Can hellfiends mimic the dead?” Koida asked.
Cold Sun gave a minute negative shake of his head. “The dead are beyond their reach.”
The Uktena’s lavaglass machete remained out, the wave-edged blade taller than Koida and so dark that it seemed to be folding the night over on itself. Maybe he was still afraid. Her moon broadsword hung to her left side, away from her body and Pernicious, and she had no plans to dismiss it any time soon. Even if she had wanted to, she doubted it would go away without the help of the glass moon serpent.
Lysander started forward once more. Hush darted after him.
“Where are you going?” Koida called.
“The Great Library, Princess.” Lysander’s voice had regained its rudeness, which was strangely reassuring. “It’s what we came here for.”
Koida wanted to argue that the Great Library was also what the hellfiend had been gesticulating emphatically at, and that she thought anywhere a hellfiend wanted them to go, they should run in the opposite direction. But the protest died on her tongue.
There was nowhere else she could learn the ancient secret restoration rituals of the Water Lilies without becoming one herself. Without that knowledge, she would never learn how to kill Yoichi—and keep him dead—or heal her crippled Ro.
Forcing herself to take a deep breath and push it out, Koida looked down, catching Cold Sun’s gaze. His head inclined a fraction in a reluctant nod. Either he had come to the same conclusion or he was willing to be devoured by a hellfiend just to get a look at the vast stores of information inside the Great Library.
Koida nudged Pernicious into a trot. They caught up with Lysander and Hush, Cold Sun and his war ram joining them a few moments later.
The oasis seemed to have been built in rings around the Great Library. In the faint gray beginning to touch the sky behind them, Koida could see that the street they were following led straight to the base of the huge tower, and smaller curved streets crossed over it. From the top room of the Great Library, she imagined one could look down and see a network of streets that looked much like the spokes of a wagon wheel.
As they closed the distance to the Great Library, the glowing magenta woman appeared again without warning.
Pernicious bucked and wheeled, and Koida gave an undignified yelp, though this was covered by Cold Sun’s war ram trumpeting angrily. In the street closest to the woman—supposedly Lysander’s dead wife—Hush dropped into her favored back-legged fighting stance, Ro sais in hand.
Once again, Lysander made no move to attack or defend himself.
Magenta shadows flickered across the square buildings as the woman pointed at the Great Library desperately.
“Are you telling me I’m not allowed back?” Lysander asked. “You can’t keep out what doesn’t exist, Kwai Un.”
“She is attempting to communicate something about the Great Library,” Cold Sun rumbled when he’d gotten the war ram under control. “That much is clear.”
“She was a Greater Librarian, just like her parents before her, and on track to become the Paramount.” While he spoke, Lysander didn’t take his icy blue eyes from the woman. “She was born there. We met there. She spent more of her life in the stacks than anywhere else. She died there. It would make sense that she might not be able to let this place go even in death.”
Koida studied the frustration and concern in the woman’s magenta face. Something about the set of her wide, dark eyes reminded Koida of Cook’s the day she’d cautioned Koida not to go ashore.
“What if she’s trying to warn—” Koida never got to finish the sentence.
The enormous double doors of the Great Library burst open and people flooded into the street, moaning and murmuring. The magenta woman dissipated in a spray of sparks. A wave of putrid death stink so strong that Koida gagged filled the air.
The gray fingers of dawn lit up the oncoming crowd’s skin, not with the pinks, browns, and olives of healthy flesh, but with the mottled purples, yellows, grays, and greens of bloated corpses. There were hundreds of them. Men, women, children. They trudged forward on soles slipping with overripe bodily juices, reaching for the living with hands blackened by coagulated blood. Strange, moaning sighs escaped their dead lips as if forced through festering vocal cords by guts too bloated with gasses to contain them.
“Corpse puppets!” Cold Sun shouted, manifesting the thick plated spikes of his Armor of the Stone-S
ouled Warrior. “Damage the heartcenters!”
With this, his war ram charged into the throng, crushing rotting corpses on its enormous iron horns. From the demon’s back, Cold Sun leaned out to the side, chopping into the chests of the shuffling puppets.
Hush followed him, her ruby Ro sais flashing as she punched their blades through heartcenters. Lysander disappeared.
“Kill whatever you want that isn’t living,” Koida told Pernicious, then kicked him into the fray.
Right hand twisted in her destrier’s inky black mane, she leaned far out over the ground as Cold Sun had done and slashed her moon broadsword at the rotting chests of the dead.
They circled and battled, slicing and trampling, for what felt like both an endless lifetime and a passing blink before Koida realized that this was the first time she and Pernicious had ridden down a line of enemies in the heat of combat together. This was what the half-demon had been bred for, what she had been bred for.
Pernicious let loose a Petrifying Shriek of Legions. It had no effect on the ranks of corpses shuffling from the doors of the Great Library. Koida let out a scream of her own, a war cry the Exalted Emperor Hao, Conqueror of a Thousand Tribes, would have been proud to hear from his youngest daughter.
A shambling puppet that had once been a man stumbled into Koida’s path. She threw her blade arm forward, stabbing it into the thing’s chest. Its breastbone snapped beneath the lethal point of the moon broadsword, and glowing ruby Ro filtered up out of the destroyed heartcenter. Rather than speed to Koida to be absorbed, the cloud of life energy darted upward, higher and higher, and disappeared into a window near the top of the tower. Dozens more joined them, flitting up from the puppets falling to her friends’ attacks.
Beneath Koida, Pernicious whirled to trample another victim.
Her moon broadsword, however, remained planted deep in the corpse puppet’s chest. The dead man dropped, dragging her off the wheeling half-demon’s back. As soon as she hit, Koida instinctively curled her legs to her chest and covered her head with her flesh and blood arm. Brimstone hooves thundered into the earth around her, each one the sound of a near miss with death or dismemberment.
Then Pernicious’s enormous hooves were gone, and corpse puppets flooded in. The closest bent awkwardly to grab her, clutching at her hair, her throat, her clothes. Desperate, Koida sent her amethyst Ro careening down her arm to manifest off-balance as a bo-shan stick in her free hand.
She flailed and battered with the bo-shan stick while she kicked at the dead man skewered on her moon broadsword. One puppet fell wetly across her legs while the soggy hands of others raked at her. Jagged fingernails tore at her skin. Some ripped free of the rotting nailbeds, but others held fast, cutting jagged lines of pain into her face and chest. She struck out, breaking their fingers, hands, and wrists with audible cracks, but this had little effect on the corpses. They were beyond the reach of pain.
She screamed in frustration, furious that she was trapped by the moon broadsword she couldn’t pull free. Blade and death, she had a weapon now, she wasn’t some helpless Ro-cripple!
Corpses went sailing, several of their cold ripe hands tearing free from her.
Lysander grabbed Koida’s upper arm, tearing her broadsword free and jerking her to her feet.
“Slash, don’t stab,” he snapped. “That’s not a dagger or a sai, it’s a moon broadsword. It’s made to tip a spear, brace against the dirt, and hang up charging mounts at the front line. Gets caught in anything it pierces.” He sliced his burled steel dagger through the air, cutting edge out. “Kill.” Then he stabbed it forward like a Spear Hand. “Get hung up and be killed. Understand?”
Koida gave a sharp nod. “Slash or get stuck.”
“There’s a good girl.” He disappeared again.
Where he’d been, corpse puppets began to drop and Ro to fly.
Koida turned the opposite direction and slashed viciously across the heartcenter of a dead woman. Robes and bloated flesh parted. Heartcenter divided. Ro flickered up the tower.
In spite of the stink of decay and flying juices, Koida felt a rush of grim satisfaction. She just had to keep attacking, over and over, until this sea of corpse puppets ran dry.
One attacked her from behind. She spun, slashing its chest open as well.
Keep attacking and keep moving, she amended.
The thick ruby plates of Cold Sun’s spiked armor glowed just ahead. She had no armor of her own, but if she could catch up to him, she could use him like a shield.
Koida dashed after the enormous warrior, cutting and slicing as she went. Several of the shambling puppets went down. Several others didn’t, either because she didn’t cut deep enough or because she missed the heartcenter.
One particularly lively corpse dove for her, arms out to slam her to the earth, but she dodged to its side and chopped into the back of its leg, slicing the long tendon there in half. It tried to rise and dropped to its knees. Koida’s leg snapped out like Hush had taught her, kicking the corpse facedown to the ground.
She was about to throw all her weight behind her moon broadsword, skewering the dead thing to the sand, but remembered at the last moment that this would get her stuck and overrun again. Awkwardly, she pulled the strike and hacked into the center of its back instead, setting loose its Ro and a gut-wrenching green cloud of gasses.
She held her breath, getting away from the foul stink, and started running after Cold Sun once more. She fell in behind the massive warrior as he blazed through the rotting throng, bashing the puppets he didn’t immediately end aside. Behind him, Koida sliced open the stunned remainders.
They fought on as dawn broke on the horizon. The shambling masses were reduced to a few dozen, then ten, then the final twitching puppet, crawling on the sand, battered and broken by the battle. Cold Sun stepped on it, pinning it in place, and Hush stabbed her sai through its broken back and into its heartcenter.
The Ro filtered out into the morning light, then rushed up the side of the tower and disappeared into the window at the top.
As the rage of the battle left her, Koida let her arms drop to her sides. She felt like collapsing in the sand, but there were corpses everywhere. Disgusted, she wiped her hand on her jacket, realizing as she did that the material there was already soaked with rotting blood and decomposition fluids.
“It’s on me.” She gagged, then grabbed at the hood around her neck. It was strangling her. She leaned over, stomach kicking up desperately, and choked out, “It’s all over me!”
She retched bright yellow bile onto the orange sand.
A soft chuckle drew her attention to Lysander. He was sitting on a pair of corpses that had fallen over one another as if they were a luxurious seating cushion. Koida was sick again at the sight of him touching their slimy, moldering skin.
“You were doing well up until you remembered you were a pampered little princess,” Lysander said.
Chapter Thirty-five
MORTAL LANDS
Raijin’s skin burned with the cold. Darkness surrounded him.
Of course, he remembered after a moment. Blind.
But no. That couldn’t be correct. He was returning to his mortal body. Misuru hadn’t stolen its eyes, and the Great Akane hadn’t broken its bones. Yet he could feel the ache in his upper arm and the pain in his ribs, both dulled by the cold.
Lavaglass prickled beneath his skin, flowing from its accustomed place in the canes embedded in the back of his left arm to the broken bones. The living stone molded around them, reinforcing the breaks.
The guai-ray senses were no less confused than Raijin was. The demon beast could feel nothing but ice. Had the Grandfather Spirit trapped him in some frozen lake?
Raijin tried to move, but his entire body was locked in the ice. It wasn’t as tight as the narrowest point in the cave tunnels, but his heart lurched and his lungs panicked all the same.
As Raijin fought against his frozen bonds, the ice gave a deep groan. The edges of unseen fissures beg
an to grind against one another. The guai-ray leapt in his chest.
Seizing upon this small progress, Raijin tried to send out an electrical explosion of Ro, but he received no response from his heartcenter.
He turned his attention inward. Breathing out the purified Grandfather Spirit had taken nearly every bit of Ro he had absorbed. All that remained was a wisp so thin it was nearly impossible to detect. A pale jade mist. Barely enough Ro to keep him alive in the mortal world.
Somehow, the injuries and life force he had obtained in the immortal world had returned with him to his body.
Raijin gritted his teeth and strained against the ice. It was like trying to tear a planet in half with his bare hands. Cramps dug into his neck, back, shoulders, and legs, but he kept fighting. The path of the demon beast was a brutal, disturbing one, but it had taught him a singlemindedness beyond any he had known before. Time must have passed, but the guai-ray had no sense of it. All it felt was the desire to defeat its captor and break free.
Around him, the ice creaked and shifted. Cracks opened, allowing in air from outside. Raijin filled his lungs and redoubled his efforts.
Finally, his icy prison shattered. Chunks of it clattered and slid away as Raijin collapsed to an unseen wooden floor.
He was not alone.
The guai-ray senses felt the menacing electrical signature of a predator. Something more deadly than the Great Akane. Venomous and poisonous, and yet...human?
Human or very close to human.
Cautiously, Raijin pushed himself up. The guai-ray senses felt a stone wall near his back. He reached out for it, intending to lean against the wall as he got to his feet. He had grown so used to struggling for every movement in the Land of Immortals that he expected to face the same resistance here. Instead, he stood easily. It felt as if he could leap over a city with little more than a running start.