by eden Hudson
The Uktena placed another page on the stack farthest to his right, the barest hint of confusion touching his stoic features.
“I thought that was your stomach,” he said. “I was about to suggest that perhaps when Lysander Foreign-Born and the Wise Physician Hush returned, we should search the surrounding homes for provisions.”
Koida’s eyes fell on a shadowy pile of limbs leaking dark liquid onto the floor beside the public staircase. Something about it nagged at the corner of her mind.
“We may be able to find a place to stay, too,” she said absently, holding up her handful of prairie hen buttons to get a better look at the pile. “Lysander mentioned making camp here, but even with the glass moon serpent...”
Her thought trailed off as she followed two of the legs stretching up into the darkness rather than lying haphazard on the floor with the rest of the body parts.
That shouldn’t be. No wall lay behind them to support the freestanding limbs.
Cold Sun saw her directing her light toward the area. Being the closer of the two, he picked up his paper lantern and shined its light on the pile.
The legs were not dismembered limbs after all, but attached to a man. As he stepped out of the shadows, the hungry stomach growled once more.
Without the shock of fear, Koida’s mind skipped over a more normal panic response to the realization that she knew this man. His hair was nearly all gray now, and his right arm ended just below the elbow, shearing off his colorful Heroic Record, but she knew his face. She had seen it in the training courtyard nearly every day for four years.
“Master Lao?”
Cold Sun got to his feet with a limberness that belied his hulking frame as his left arm shifted into the enormous machete. The lavaglass gleamed in the dull blue-green light of the prairie hen buttons.
“You know this false master?” he asked, bewilderment painting his voice.
“My former students have found one another,” Lao said, limping forward on bleeding feet. “For all its breadth, this continent is rather small, isn’t it? Or perhaps it was my fault for doubling back on my own trail. Yet who would blame me?” His eyes rolled up in his head as he inhaled deeply. “The scent of your vulnerability is so...delicious.”
“Your nose misled you,” Koida said. Like Cold Sun, she called the living lavaglass to her blade arm. The deadly moon broadsword hissed through the tattered material of her sleeve. “We are no longer vulnerable to you or anyone else. Though you’re welcome to come closer and find out for yourself.”
The floor creaked in the body-piled staircase behind her.
“You’ve come a long way from the broken doll you used to be, little sister. It is incredibly endearing.”
Without the glass moon serpent, Koida knew she would have been cringing at the sound of Yoichi’s hated voice. She turned to face her illegitimate half-brother, putting her back to Cold Sun’s. The prairie hen buttons in her hand cast Yoichi’s white hair in a pale blue that nearly glowed against the darkness.
“Where are the rest of your guardians?”
“Behind you,” she said, nodding over his shoulder.
A smirk pulled at his beautiful lips. “You lie like our father. Poorly. Tell me the truth; you can use it to betray me later. That is your true talent.”
“My father, Yoichi, not ours,” she said in the chilly speech tone of a royal addressing a noble of very low rank. “Do not mistake his desire to save face by showing courtesy toward a bastard as proof that you were wanted.”
Yoichi’s smirk never faltered, but his eyes grew cold and flat, proving that she had hit her mark.
Ruby light flooded the room. She glanced over her shoulder to see that Cold Sun had manifested his spike-plated Armor of the Stone-Souled Warrior. Just beyond the huge Uktena warrior, Lao held his favored Double Crescent Knives, the blades flickering erratically between red and an oily black.
“Control yourself, Lao,” Yoichi drawled.
When Koida turned back, her half-brother had manifested that razor-bladed fan from sick-looking, toxic black Ro. He spread the petals and fanned his face subtly.
She raised the moon broadsword.
“Put that down,” Yoichi said in a bored tone. “We’ve already seen how a fight between the two of us ends. No matter how many physical weapons you acquire, you cannot cheat my poison with that crippled, unrefined excuse for Ro. That’s why you came here, isn’t it? To find a way to strike down your weaknesses.” His dark purple eyes glanced down at her wrist. “Ways such as that.”
Koida followed his gaze to find the glass moon serpent glowing faintly through the sturdy black material of her sleeve.
“I suppose you’ve come to help me overcome my deficiency,” she said. “That’s why you manifested your fan. So we might talk.”
“I manifested it to keep you from making a foolish mistake, little sister,” Yoichi said, holding the bladed fan at arm’s length as if for inspection. “Today, the poison in its petals is lethal. A scratch can fell a century-old demon beast. Come with me willingly, or I’ll strike down every one of your guardians and let you watch while they die.”
The glass moon serpent tightened around Koida’s wrist, reacting to the flood of fear and helplessness she should have been feeling at Yoichi’s threat. With the venom in her veins, however, she felt nothing more than a slight bewilderment as she tried to work out how to kill her brother before he killed Cold Sun or her. Her mind searched through every bit of training with Hush, Cold Sun, and Lysander that she could recall, but came up with nothing. Her best hope was to coax Yoichi into babbling until Lysander or Hush snuck up behind him and cut his throat.
Which of course would only work as a temporary solution until they learned how to kill him for good.
“Do you truly believe I’ll turn my back on my friends and leave this place with you, Yoichi?”
He smirked. “You think you know so much of this world when, in truth, you know nothing. You don’t even recognize your own nature.”
“You do, however,” she said.
“I’ve seen things you can’t imagine, little sister. Worlds beyond your comprehension. Power unending. Come with me, and I will give you the power to take anything you want for yourself.”
“First heal my deficiency. Then I’ll believe you.”
“Koida,” Cold Sun said.
She turned, expecting the Uktena to warn her against trusting Yoichi, but found him instead focused on smoke billowing from the public staircase into the Paramount’s office. This whole time, she had assumed the smell came from Lysander’s wife’s funeral pyre.
Koida turned back to Yoichi. “Did you set the Great Library on fire?”
“I didn’t want your guardians running off with you again,” he said calmly. “To escape unscathed from the flames, you need me.”
“You see, Koida,” Cold Sun rumbled, “if my Stone Soul were founded on a breakable fact, I would attack your brother for destroying such a beautiful place without regard for the likelihood that his poison would kill me.”
Yoichi laughed. “I wish you would, you filthy savage.”
Koida ignored them, the crackling of the flames growing loud in her ears. With the fire consuming the levels below, there was no way Lysander and Hush could get back to them. She and Cold Sun were trapped with Yoichi and Lao. Cold Sun was a powerful warrior, and his Stone-Souled armor was strong, but she remembered the numerous cuts, bites, and scratches her friend had accumulated during the battle with the corpse puppets. A single scratch from Yoichi’s fan would kill him. She couldn’t allow that.
“Fine,” she said, dismissing her lavaglass moon broadsword. “If you get Cold Sun and me safely through the—”
Agony pierced her heartcenter, sharp and impossible. The glass moon serpent writhed and twisted, tearing its fangs out of her wrist and hissing furiously as Koida dropped to the floor. As if he were standing beside her, she heard Raijin’s gravelly voice screaming in pain.
Chapter Forty
MORTAL LANDS
The toxic black roots digging into Raijin’s heartcenter swelled and pulsed as they dragged his jade Ro from Koida, wherever she was, through him, and toward Youn Wha. Inside of him, the guai-ray thrashed. Outside, his body thrashed. Neither of them could break free.
He could see his Ro flowing past, flashes of deep green shot through with brilliant white and shifting shadows. His stolen life force glowed through the oily blackness of the Taproot’s branches like a jade moon through a thin haze of nighttime clouds. It was so close.
The Ro he had cultivated for twenty-two years, strengthened by his mother’s gift and the life force of the first Water Lily Raijin had been forced to kill, was somehow still miraculously untainted by blood. It should have been safe with Koida, should have made his betrothed stronger. He had wanted it to protect her in his absence, knowing that integrating his Ro into hers would protect both from Water Lilies.
After everything Youn Wha and her practitioners had stolen, Raijin couldn’t let her have this, too. She had to be stopped. Not only for the Paths of Falling Leaf and Endless Day, but for Master Chugi, Yong Lei, and every dead master and student of the Path of Darkening Skies. For Hush and her bloodstained Ro and her lost Path of Hidden Whispers.
Demon fury washed his mind clean of any thought but death. He didn’t give the guai-ray control—he became the guai-ray. He grabbed onto the glowing jade life force as it flowed through the oily black Taproot embedded in his heartcenter.
Lightning exploded from him, consuming the toxic roots. Youn Wha shrieked as the force of the electricity threw her backward. Wood and metal clattered as shelves collapsed, filling the tower with the tinkling of breaking glass and pottery. The mess clinked and crunched as the grandmaster leapt to her feet.
“How did you—”
Straightline Winds shot Raijin across the room in between breaths. He thrust his left arm—now a razor-sharp lavaglass stinger laced with backward-facing barbs—through Youn Wha’s chest. Her breastbone cracked like a shattered ice floe. The lavaglass stinger impaled her heartcenter.
Raijin sent bolts of lightning crashing down through his stinger. The Water Lily grandmaster shook and juddered as her muscles seized. A pained howl tore through her clenched teeth, but he didn’t let up until her heart stopped beating.
Finally, she fell limp, dead. Raijin called back his Ro and dislodged her from his stinger. Her flesh had burnt to a brittle shell over her muscles and organs. It crunched as her corpse hit the floorboards.
Eat her heart! the guai-ray thundered.
Raijin held the demon in check as he shifted the lavaglass stinger back into an arm of flesh and blood. He felt a shift in the air as oily black Ro oozed out of the woman’s body, filling the room with the stink of disease and corrupted flesh. Raijin’s instinct was to close his Ro pathways to block that sickness from his heartcenter, but he didn’t want it finding some unsuspecting innocent and tainting their Ro. Swallowing his disgust, he let the poisoned Water Lily Ro filter into his chest and immediately began cycling it in the Thunderer’s Cross to cleanse its putrid infection.
A boom shook the tower. Raijin spun, dropping instinctively into the aggressive demon beast stance as his arm blade shifted back to the stinger.
Another boom.
Images and emotions assailed his mind. Joy, fear, a beast ripping the beating heart from its prey’s chest.
The enormous force slammed into the tower again, the stones around one of the windows bowing inward as the mortar crumbled.
Raijin’s heartcenter erupted with excitement. He knew that electrical signature.
“Nael!”
The young guai-ray sent him the image of a beast ripping out a heart and eating it, insistent, angry, afraid.
Raijin sent back resistance, disgust, questions.
The crunch of burnt flesh crackled behind him.
Raijin spun toward it, putting his back to the wall Nael was trying to break down.
Youn Wha’s corpse shifted on the floor. Though he had just absorbed her poisonous Ro, more was oozing out of her heartcenter and bubbling down her limbs. Dead, burnt flesh cracked and tore away, and a monstrous creature covered in greasy black ichor bloomed from the husk.
In the thin moment between the creature’s foul birth and its first motions, Nael’s thoughts intruded on Raijin’s, and an image of the beast as seen through the tower window appeared in Raijin’s mind. The ray was showing Raijin what he could see.
Much larger than a human, the creature unfolded like a hellish flower. Wet, meaty petals hung off its sides, dripping ichor. Youn Wha’s face lay at the center of the petals, her skin flat and distorted as if she’d been stretched across a drum. The trunk was a fat, pulsing bulb of flesh that looked as if it would pop with the slightest pressure. Roots and vines crept away from it in every direction, digging into the floorboards and grabbing onto table legs and shelves.
Nael showed him as the meat flower’s Youn Wha eyes, rolling with black ichor, found Raijin. With a thought, his lavaglass stinger shifted to the butterfly sword.
Thick, twisting vines shot out. He tried to duck under them, but the angle he felt from the guai-ray senses and the images Nael was sending him weren’t in agreement. Before Raijin could make sense of the conflicting information, the vines slammed him into the wall, pinning him against the stone.
Nael’s sight disappeared from his head.
Reaching out with the guai-ray senses, Raijin sliced and hacked at the vines, but countless others joined them, digging their tendrils into the soft mortar. There were so many that just keeping his blade arm free of the grasping vines took all of his effort. In moments, his flesh and blood arm was trapped against the wall as solidly as the rest of his body.
Another boom rocked the tower, this time from the opposite side.
The meat flower renewed its feverish attack. Raijin chopped at the vines, sensing the Youn Wha thing pulling itself across the floor toward him. There was a strange tug at the sturdy fabric of Raijin’s robes, but he couldn’t spare the thought to figure out what it was.
Nael slammed into the tower again. Mortar and stone dust filled the air.
Something stung Raijin’s side. More stings, up his arm and down his leg, then across his stomach and chest. It was like stumbling into a red fury anthill. His strikes slowed and grew clumsy. Venom was spreading through his veins. He fought it as if it were the Land of Immortals slowing his every move once more, fought toward that tier where he could break free of its oppressive hold.
Pain spiraled down into his muscles as the stinging vines burrowed into his skin.
With a shout that was more than half disgust, Raijin sent off a thunderous wave of electricity from his heartcenter. The burrowing tendrils blackened and died, but hundreds more were already creeping over his body, stinging and burrowing into him.
From the opposite side of the tower, stone exploded, chunks crashing through the room and pelting the Youn Wha flower and Raijin. As Nael broke through the wall, Raijin sent off another burst of electricity. The smaller vines burnt, and the larger ones recoiled, dropping him to the floor. He tried to get to his feet, but his legs wouldn’t move.
Youn Wha howled. Her mouth, already stretched beyond human ability across the center of the flower, opened impossibly wide, tearing her face in two. She lunged for him, fat petals slapping wetly against her bulbous trunk.
Sluggishly, Raijin raised his hand and blade arm. It felt as if each one were struggling beneath the weight of a horde of four-legged akane. He knew he was too slow to evade her, but he would cut himself out from the inside if he had to. Whatever it took, he wouldn’t be defeated by this monster.
Youn Wha’s inhuman jaws dripped fetid spittle onto him as they stretched over him. She stank like rancid meat and rotting peaches. Raijin braced himself to be eaten for what must be the thousandth time.
Before she could swallow him up, however, Nael slammed into her from behind, his stinger skewering her to the wooden floor. Her pulsi
ng bulb exploded in a gush of ichor. Electricity crackled, and the young guai-ray sent Raijin triumph and joy and an image of the meaty flower shaking and seizing and burning on his stinger.
Raijin sent him gratitude and relief and pride in the young guai-ray’s hunting.
When the Youn Wha flower was as charred as her human flesh, Raijin felt another roiling cloud of sickening black Ro ooze free from her corpse. This one filtered to Nael.
After absorbing it, Nael demanded Raijin’s attention, then nosed through the burnt remains until he found the Water Lily grandmaster’s heart. The young ray’s flat jaw plates pulverized the organ to a paste before he swallowed it. He swam to Raijin, nosing him excitedly as his huge wings rilled with pride.
Raijin grinned and rested his forehead against his friend’s flat nose, using the last of his strength to scrub the young demon between the eye bumps. They were both covered in gore and burnt flesh, but for the moment, neither cared.
Chapter Forty-one
MORTAL LANDS
“No!” Koida searched her heartcenter frantically. Her betrothed’s Ro, her last connection to Raijin, was gone. Her amethyst life force spun there alone, its violet rings shifting as if they’d been jostled.
Furious, she leapt to her feet, manifesting the bo-shan stick in her right hand and sending the moon broadsword to her left. She raised the broadsword to Yoichi’s chest, her stick cocked back in First Attack.
“What did you do?” she demanded.
Yoichi’s dark plum eyes narrowed, scrutinizing her. “You felt the Ji Yu’s Ro leave you?”
Heedless of his poisoned fan, Koida stepped in, swinging her bo-shan in an overhand strike. Yoichi caught her wrist, pulling his body sideways to present her with a thinner target. She flowed through the stance change with him, acting on years of bo-shan training, and stabbed the moon broadsword into his flat stomach.
Yoichi started to counter the blow with his poisoned fan—Koida saw the toxic, razor-sharp blades coming, and for a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity, she welcomed the promise of death—but for some reason, he pulled the strike a hair’s breadth from her skin.