Voyages of the Flying Dragon

by Ben Chandler

  Missy looked around the bridge at her crewmates. Captain Shishi and Arthur Knyght were great warriors, and Gekkō no Niji Shin and Kenji Jackson were strong fighters too, but even if the entire crew worked together, they were still only a few people against an entire army. She caught herself staring at the princess. The girl had given up almost everything to gain the power to fight her enemy. Would it be enough to destroy Lord Butin? Missy didn’t know, but the crew would need powerful allies if they were going to have any hope against their adversaries. Missy wondered what sort of power a Lilim had. She knew there weren’t many of them left since the Great War, but if the crew could somehow find those who had survived, could they convince them to help fight Ishullanu? Lilim shared their power by forming pacts with humans. Could a pact be forged that would grant someone enough power to stand against a Caelestia, the race of gods more powerful than any other creature, who had given birth to the Jinn and the Totem? There was only one way for Missy to know.

  She turned to the princess. ‘Excuse me, your highness?’ Anastasis regarded her blankly and made no reply. Missy cleared her throat and tried again. ‘May I ask you something?’

  ‘Is it about Butin?’ The princess delivered the words in her usual monotone.

  ‘Indirectly,’ Missy hedged. ‘I was wondering how much power a Lilim can bestow on a human.’ Anastasis said nothing. ‘I mean, would they be able to give you enough to defeat Lord Butin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Missy waited, but the girl provided no further information. ‘What about a Totem, or a Jinn, who had been turned into a Demon? Could a Lilim make you strong enough to defeat a Demon Lord?’

  Anastasis didn’t even shrug. It seemed she wouldn’t answer any of Missy’s questions unless they were directly related to her desire to kill Lord Butin. Missy tried to frame her next question in such a way that Anastasis would answer it, but before she could, Disma spoke.

  ‘No, Missy.’ The princess’s Lilim was sitting on Anastasis’s shoulder. Her wings were folded against her back and her tail was wrapped around the girl’s waist. ‘A Lilim’s power is not equal to a Jinn’s or a Totem’s. We are the children of the Jinn, just as the Bestia are the children of the Totem, and both are descended from the Caelestia.’

  Missy looked from the princess to her Lilim. ‘So how much power do you have?’

  ‘More than you.’ Disma smiled widely, revealing her fangs, and then winked. ‘You humans are physical beings. You are bound by the limitations of the physical world. This makes you weak. We belong to the spirit realm, which has no limits, but we cannot affect your world unless we form a pact with one of you. By forming a pact, something is given and something taken by both parties. Through us, you gain access to the realm of the spirits, the place of primordial and elemental powers. We, in turn, can enter the physical world. The more you give, the more we give. The more you lose, the more we lose.’

  ‘So, the more Anastasis gives to you of herself, the more power she can draw from the spiritual realm and the more …’ Missy searched for the right word, ‘physical you become?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happens when a person gives everything?’

  Disma looked quickly at the princess, and Missy was sure something passed between them but couldn’t tell what. It wasn’t any sort of communication she could fathom, but there had been something. ‘For a time,’ the Lilim said, ‘that person is very powerful. Then they die.’

  ‘Die?’

  The Lilim smiled her wicked smile again. ‘How could they live without the desire to eat, to drink, to draw breath?’

  Missy mulled this over. ‘Then what happens to the Lilim? Do they go back to the spiritual realm?’

  Disma shook her head, sending a ripple through her blue hair. ‘No. When a person gives us everything, and I mean everything, we enter fully into this place. We become physical creatures.’

  ‘So, you die too?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Sometimes?’

  ‘You cannot live without dying. That is the way of the world. But not everything that has a physical form is alive.’

  Missy glanced around at the others on the bridge. They had been following the conversation closely. ‘What does that mean?’

  Disma looked her in the eye. Missy felt pierced by her red gaze. There was something disturbingly human in that stare, but also something so totally foreign that Missy knew she would never be able to fathom this creature. Not completely. ‘What I mean, Missy, is that not all Lilim choose to manifest as living creatures when they enter the physical realm, and of those of us that do, not all of them choose death. When a pact is done, there are ways … well, you have seen what remains of the Lilim who were bonded to the Greygori line.’

  Missy shuddered, remembering all of the statues in the King’s audience hall in Asheim, the place where she had first met Lord Butin. When she had been standing in that hall amongst the statues, she had thought they were so perfectly carved that they could almost have been real Lilim turned somehow to stone. She’d never imagined she’d been right about that.

  ‘So,’ Missy said, ‘when a pact is done, you can choose to die, or to live forever as a statue?’

  Disma flicked her hair in such an offhand way that Missy wondered if the trait were something she had taken from Anastasis. ‘Oh, it needn’t be as a statue. That was the Greygori way, but really any physical object will do.’

  ‘Isn’t that worse than death?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Disma countered, ‘as neither fate has yet befallen me.’ She paused. ‘It is a cruel trick, don’t you think? We yearn so for the world of physical things, yet the cost … the Bestia have it easier, I think.’

  Lenis woke slowly, drawn to consciousness by the dull throbbing of his body. He was in his bunk in the engine room. Yami had probably carried him there after he had succumbed to the soporific effect of Long Liu’s medicine. Lenis was getting used to the aches and pains that accompanied his training. The fact that he could feel himself getting stronger made them bearable. He might not yet be a match for Shujinko, but he was confident that, in time, he could beat the older boy on his terms, without falling back on his empathic abilities. Ever since he had used his powers to subdue Warlord Shōgo Ikaru, Lenis had been aware of them growing in ways he had not expected. He had always been able to feel what others felt, to form bonds with Bestia and sense what they most needed or wanted, but he had never suspected that he would be able to affect the emotions of others, or to use his own feelings to exert influence over them.

  His altercation with the Warlord had been an awakening. Ever since, his powers had grown stronger, his sense of others more pronounced. In quiet moments when he lay alone on his bunk, he had even begun experimenting with his own emotions, taking hold of them and manipulating them intentionally instead of by instinct, which was what he had done when in the Warlord’s grasp. It was not that he wanted to control anyone – since Nochi he had never attempted to overpower someone with the force of his empathy – but he was intrigued by what he could do simply because he could do it. Lenis wanted to test the limits of his developing powers. He would never actually use them against someone, he told himself, unless they were trying to do him harm, but if he did ever have to use them again, he wanted to know what he was doing.

  Sometimes, when his training had left him tired and battered, he entertained fantasies of throwing Shujinko over the railing, propelled by the power of the boy’s own fear, but Lenis knew he would never exact such revenge. Not really. He didn’t have it in him to intentionally hurt someone and, he had to admit to himself, Shujinko was helping him learn to fight. Maybe he didn’t want to help Lenis. Maybe he took a little too much pleasure in pummelling Lenis senseless. Maybe he didn’t like Lenis at all, but whatever he felt, however much he punished Lenis during their training bouts, Lenis was still getting stronger. He grinned as he imagined the day when it was Shujinko who had to limp to the doctor’s cabin.

  Lenis suddenly cried out a
s a sharp pain erupted in his earlobe. Suiteki had soon learned the most effective way to get Lenis’s attention.

  ‘Come here, you.’ Lenis reached up and grabbed the baby dragon around the midriff. She allowed him to pick her up, hanging limply from his hand as he held her above his face, her tail wrapped around his forearm. She didn’t seem to be growing at all, though at the rate she was eating Lenis had expected her to be as big as her mother by now. Suiteki scrabbled against his hand, and Lenis brought her down to his chest. Her tiny claws dug through his robes and into his skin. ‘You can’t be hungry again.’

  But she was. He could feel her hunger as an ache deep in his own belly. He’d never known a Bestia to be so hungry so often, but Suiteki wasn’t a Bestia. She was a Totem. The rules Bestia Keepers usually followed in the care of their charges were, he suspected, largely irrelevant when it came to caring for an infant Totem.

  With a sigh, Lenis hauled himself off his bunk and headed towards the galley. The Bestia radiated what Lenis could only describe as a parental tolerance and affection for the baby dragon. They barely stirred in their hutch as he passed them by. Ignis raised his head and flicked one of his ears before settling back down amongst the pile of furry bodies. Suiteki gave a high-pitched squawk in response to the flame Bestia’s attention. Briefly, she struggled against Lenis’s grip, suddenly overcome by the desire to bury herself amongst the Bestia and their warmth, but then Lenis’s stomach growled, re awakening her own hunger. Caring for her, Lenis decided, wasn’t all that difficult. How hard could it be to keep her warm and fed?

  Missy startled as Andrea Florona, the Hiryū’s lookout, called down through the airship’s speech tube. ‘There’s smoke to the west, Captain Shishi, over the shoulder of that peak, three points from the northwest.’

  Kenji Jackson looked up from his map table. ‘That’d be Fronge, down on the coast. Nothing to –’

  The lookout cut the navigator off. ‘There’s a lot of it, Captain. Too much for household fires, and it’s black.’

  Arthur Knyght, the Hiryū’s first officer, frowned and crossed his arms over his massive chest. ‘Could it be factory smoke?’

  There came a rustling of papers from the navigator’s desk. ‘There’s no record of any factories in Fronge. It’s a mining town, but they ship all of their ore to the mainland for processing.’

  Missy’s curiosity got the better of her. While the others discussed what the smoke could mean, she threw her spirit-self out of her body and went to take a look. Her awareness sped west, up to and over the snow-topped shoulder of the mountain Andrea had pointed out. She saw the smoke immediately. It was everywhere. Great billowing black masses of it obscured an otherwise white and blue world. Soon everyone on the Hiryū would be able to see it, even if they kept their northern heading. Even this far away Missy could feel the acrid tang of it stealing into the back of her throat aboard the bridge.

  If Missy had been relying on her eyes she would have been blinded by the smoke and soon lost her way, but her spirit-self didn’t see with physical eyes, so she was soon able to pass through the blackness to the source of the smoke. Unsurprisingly, it was a fire. A big one. Missy was reluctant to get any closer, not because of the heat – her spirit-self was immune to physical harm – but because a fire this large could only mean one thing. The entire town of Fronge was burning.

  Missy built up her courage and entered the inferno. She could sense the flames devouring the buildings of Fronge around her, eating into any wood it could find, lapping at anything made of stone, but she couldn’t sense any life. She lacked her brother’s ability to sense spiritual energy, so she had to scan the burning town methodically, searching for stray thoughts just as Raikō had taught her when he had forced her to search for a cure for the Wasteland sickness. Now, as then, the search proved futile. She couldn’t sense any minds. The people of Fronge must have fled when the blaze started, or else – Missy heard something then that would have sent shivers down her spine and the hair to stand up all over her body, if it wasn’t safely back aboard the Hiryū. It was a psychic scream, and it was coming from the far side of town.

  Missy raced through the blazing streets, searching for the source of that terrible cry so full of pain and panic. Two more joined it, then even more until there were too many to count. Missy drew closer, dreading what she would find. The cacophony of mental anguish suddenly began to diminish. One by one the mental cries cut off. One by one the people of Fronge died.

  The Hiryū was too far away to save them, and there was nothing Missy could do in her spirit form, but she felt compelled to be there, to witness the deaths of the people of Fronge. They were on the next street over. Missy went flying straight through a still-blazing, half-collapsed building. She emerged into a giant square. The townspeople huddled in the centre of it, away from their burning homes. They were mostly dressed in trousers and linen shirts, including the women, and were covered in soot and ash, but the warriors encircling them wore drab-coloured Shinzōn robes. Missy drew a little closer, trying to work out what was going on. Were they making sure no one got close to the blaze? But surely the people wouldn’t be trying to get any closer. Then two of the Shinzōn guards grabbed a young man with blond hair from within the pack of townspeople. They carried him, screaming, over to the building Missy had just passed through and threw him into the blazing house.

  Missy reeled, unconsciously drawing her spirit-self back even though she couldn’t be seen. The blond man screamed as his skin blistered, but the guards ignored him. Another pair grabbed a girl, no more than six years old, and dragged her across the square.

  Missy fled, tearing through the air in her attempts to get back to the Hiryū. She could feel her body screaming, was vaguely aware of the others asking her what was wrong. She slammed herself back into her body and wrenched her cries under control.

  ‘We have to get to Fronge!’ she shouted.

  Arthur placed a hand on her shoulder, trying to steady her. ‘Miss Clemens –’

  ‘Now!’ she shouted him down. ‘They’re killing the townspeople! They’re throwing them into the fire!’

  ‘They’re what?’ Shin demanded.

  ‘Who?’ the captain asked.

  Missy glared at him. ‘Does it matter? We have to go! There isn’t time!’

  Captain Shishi nodded. ‘Miss Shin, please correct our course. Mister Jackson, how long until we reach Fronge?’

  The navigator scribbled something on a scrap of paper. ‘At our current speed, Captain? A little over an hour.’

  ‘No!’ Missy cried. Great sobs burst out of her. ‘They’ll all be dead by then!’

  She reached inside her jacket and felt the Quillblade, the shintai of Lord Raikō the Thunder Bird. It was throbbing slightly as if in anticipation, as though it could sense her fear and anger. She hadn’t used the Quillblade since she and Lenis had summoned Lord Raikō to defeat Ishullanu, the Demon King. She didn’t even know if she could use it on her own. The first time she had tried, Raikō had plucked her soul out of her body and tethered it to himself. It had taken the Clemens’s combined will to take control of the Demon Lord that had once been Raikō and turn him against Ishullanu. She drew the blade out of her jacket and felt it stiffen in her hand, turning into a sword as it absorbed her fear and fed off her anger. All her doubts disappeared. To save the people of Fronge, she would once again attempt to summon the Lord of Storms.

  Lenis startled. Something was wrong with his sister. He launched himself off his chair and out of the galley. Suiteki squawked in annoyance, and Yami called after him, but Lenis ignored them both. The ache in his ribs exploded, sending waves of blood to his head and making him dizzy. He pushed through them. Missy was in trouble.

  He ducked under the mast-shaft, wincing again at the pinch in his side. As he reached the foot of the stairs leading up to the bridge, a wave of nausea hit him. Missy’s fear, the thing that had woken him, had suddenly vanished, and he knew what that meant. His sister was holding the Quillblade. Lenis didn’
t like the way the shintai fed off Missy’s emotions. It reminded him of a leech, sucking something out of his sister she would have been better off keeping.

  ‘Lenis!’ Yami had recovered from his shock quickly and was right behind him as Lenis climbed the stairs, two at a time. The swordsman reached up and grabbed Lenis’s hand.

  ‘It’s Missy,’ Lenis panted as he spun on the swordsman. Yami nodded and dropped his hand. Together, they continued up.

  When they reached the deck they had to push past Shujinko, who was headed below deck. The cabin boy scowled but didn’t complain. He never did. Instead he maintained a stiffly formal façade that Lenis was starting to understand was the Shinzōn manner for expressing dislike. He preferred the open hostility he used to get in Pure Land, back when he was a slave.

  Two more steps and Lenis was on the bridge, just in time to see Missy raising the Quillblade above her head.

  ‘Missy, stop!’ Lenis reached to grab her hand.

  ‘Lenis, I have to! You don’t know –’

  But in the instant they touched, he did know. He saw what she had witnessed in the burning town of Fronge. He saw the Shinzōn guards drag the young man to the inferno, saw them throw him in, saw them snatch a young girl from her mother’s arms … but he saw something else, too, or rather someone else. Someone his sister hadn’t recognised because she’d never seen him before. Lenis had, though, months before in the Wastelands to the west of Gesshoku, outside the ruins of the temple of Seisui.

  ‘Karasu.’ Lenis let his hand drop. ‘It’s Karasu.’

  Missy brought the Quillblade down to rest in her lap. ‘Karasu’s there?’

  Lenis nodded. ‘The one with the giant sword strapped to his back.’

  ‘Mister Clemens,’ the captain interjected, ‘is there any way to increase our speed?’