by Claire Luana
“No moonburner magic for me,” Daarco said, his voice gravely from screaming. He scooted away from Kai, wincing at the movement.
“Daarco, you can hardly move,” Hiro began, but Emi cut him off with a look. Apparently, she had taken on Daarco as her charge. She stood and towered over him, hands on her hips. She nudged his leg with the toe of her boot and he hissed.
“Kai is one of the best healers in Miina, or Kita for that matter,” Emi said. “You would be so lucky. You could have Hiro bumble over you once the sun comes up, but he has the healing ability of a boulder. You can hardly walk right now, and we aren’t going to leave your sorry ass here, as much as we’d like to. Let Kai look at you.”
Daarco glared at her fiercely but finally nodded, giving his assent.
Hiro watched Daarco’s face as Kai tended to him, feeling the bruises along his legs, wrapping one of his ankles. Eventually, Daarco closed his eyes, his face almost serene in its exhaustion. Hiro had worried for many years that his friend was beyond saving, too caught up in the maze of his own hatred to ever find his way back to his old self. Hiro thought of those times now, desperate to distract himself from the questions he wanted to shout at Kai.
Hiro remembered how they used to play Burning Wars, fighting an epic battle all around the castle, stopping and picking it up again day by day. Daarco played the moonburner, insisting that Hiro, as prince, had to be a sunburner. Being the moonburner was more fun, anyway, little Daarco had said, because you got to be unpredictable.
Daarco’s father, Ashtan, or “Ash” to his close friends and family, had laughed at his son, ruffling his hair. “The only thing predictable about your strategy should be its unpredictability,” he had said. “Be creative.”
And so Daarco had been. He’d set ambushes for Hiro when he’d left his lessons, falling upon him from above after training, or springing out from under the dining room table. They had giggled until they fell over every time Daarco had managed to get one over on Hiro. Which was fairly often. There was nowhere in the castle that Hiro had been safe. And he wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Hiro thought wistfully of the afternoons he had shared with Ashtan and Daarco, when Ashtan taught them to fish and hunt. He had never minded Hiro sharing their private father-son moments, seeming to recognize that if not for sharing theirs, Hiro would have no such moments himself.
And Hiro remembered when Ashtan came home for the last time, the day he lost his surrogate father and his friend in an instant. General Geisa’s moonburners had raided the camp and command center for the sunburner forces, pummeling the camp with endless streams of fire and lightning. Ashtan had died in his command tent, trying to scramble a defense from his sleepy soldiers. The men who were left had delivered the news, together with Ashtan’s body wrapped in a red cloak.
Hiro would never forget the burnt flesh of Ashtan’s face, barely recognizable after the fire had taken its toll. But even more so, he remembered the sound that Daarco had made. A keening, inhuman wail that chilled Hiro to the bone. When Daarco had been pulled from his father’s body, he’d seemed a stranger. His eyes had been cold and his face had been angry.
They had been eleven years old—but Daarco’s childhood had ended that day. He’d never ambushed Hiro again. He’d thrown himself into training, making himself a living weapon. Bent on one purpose. To destroy moonburners. Ryu had found Hiro just a month later, softening the terrible loneliness that had been left in the wake of his friend’s transformation.
Ryu looked at him and then Daarco. There was understanding in his amber eyes.
“Maybe there’s hope,” Hiro murmured, burying his hand in Ryu’s thick golden mane.
“There is always hope,” Ryu said.
Hiro didn’t realize he had fallen asleep until Colum kicked his boot.
“You’ve been sleepin’ for two hours. We should get movin.’”
A groan escaped Hiro’s lips as he got to his feet. The brief reprieve had only given his aches time to settle in. But despite the pain, Hiro was eager to move on. The clearing where the forest had come alive was too close for comfort. Though it had lain still the last few hours, Hiro couldn’t help but wonder what magic lingered there. It was best to keep moving.
Kai walked as stiffly as Hiro did, her thoughts clearly fixed on some distant worry. Or perhaps her worries were closer than he realized.
“Kai,” he said softly, falling into step beside her, “are you all right?”
She let out a harsh laugh. “No, I don’t think I am.”
He risked putting a hand on her shoulder, though this Kai seemed as unpredictable as a wild horse.
She finally turned to look at him, and tears shone in her hazel eyes. “I can’t moonburn,” she whispered.
Hiro missed a step, stumbling. “What?” he hissed.
Kai bit her lip, looking at Emi and Daarco, who walked a few paces ahead of them. She lowered her voice. “I think it’s been…since I was sick. With everything going on, I hadn’t tried moonburning. Until last night—when I was in the spirit world.”
“The spirit world?”
Kai shared her tale of Hamaio and the tengu who had overtaken the spirit world, as well as Hamaio’s musings about the cause of the handprint.
“This keeps getting stranger and stranger,” Hiro said.
“I thought it was the spirit world that was keeping me from accessing moonlight. But when the trees attacked, I couldn’t…I couldn’t reach it.”
The anguish in Kai’s voice twisted his heart. He imagined being blocked from burning sunlight, its sweet honeyed flames that soothed and inflamed his soul in turn. He couldn’t stop himself from shuddering. Who would he be if he weren’t a sunburner?
“You were able to burn that white light though,” Hiro said. “It’s more powerful than moonlight, isn’t it? It’s like the power that is released when we combine our sun and moonlight.”
Kai nodded. “I can feel it even now. I’m standing on a raging riverbank. Trying to pull some of its water…It’s hard not to be swept away.”
“But you can pull from it?”
Kai nodded. “Yes. I couldn’t figure out how to at first, but now that I have… I think I have free access to it.”
“And this has something to do with the handprint?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know!” Kai moaned. “What’s happening to me?”
“Hey,” Hiro said, pulling her to a stop and taking her smooth face in his hands. The freckles sprinkled across her nose like a dusting of spices stood out in the eerie half-light of the forest. “We’ll figure this out—together. We’ll find out what’s happened to you, and you will moonburn again. But in the meantime, perhaps this extra power is a gift.”
“A gift?” she asked, her voice small.
“We face powerful enemies. We don’t know what the tengu are capable of. But now, you have gained an incredible new power. With this white light, you are a greater threat than ten moonburners put together.”
A small smile appeared at that. “A gift,” she mused.
“Come on.” He released her. “We shouldn’t fall too far behind.”
The mood was somber and quiet when they stopped hours later. The strangeness of the forest seemed to settle over them like a weight with its monochrome grays and greens, its unnatural stillness where there should be birds and squirrels and insects.
Despite his exhaustion, Hiro tossed and turned in his bedroll, unable to find a position where his ribs didn’t ache against the hard ground.
Hiro found himself watching Kai, tracing the contours of her angelic sleeping form with his eyes. Quitsu was curled into her chest and she had her body wrapped around him protectively. A lock of her silver hair had fallen across her smooth face. What was happening to her?
In the corner of his eye, he caught movement in the mist. He blinked and focused on the whiteness curling above her. Was it a trick of his imagination? But no…there was…a hand. A dark hand with long, sinister fingers and wicked curving nails.
A hand that was curling over Kai’s shoulder.
Hiro reached for his sword slowly, trying not to betray himself with his movement.
The mist revealed a bony, unnatural limb attached to the hand connected to a grotesque body by flaps of black membranous flesh. Even this preview didn’t prepare Hiro for the rest of what he saw. A face of nightmares, of horrors, emerged from this mist. Its hollow eye sockets were dark caverns over a gaping, wide maw filled with razor-sharp teeth.
As Hiro stared in shock and horror, it went for Kai’s exposed throat.
Hiro scrambled from his cloak, unsheathing his sword with a ring of steel. He would be too late!
But Colum was there in an instant, slashing at the beast with a curved blade. It reared back with an unearthly hiss.
Their camp was up in an instant, Kai scrambling away, dagger clenched in her fist, Ryu and Quitsu snarling, Emi and Daarco on their feet, weapons in hand. The creature retreated, eyes wary, knowing that it was outnumbered.
But then another dropped from the trees, raking its claws down Emi’s back, bearing her to the ground.
She let out an anguished scream.
Daarco roared with anger, burning a river of fire towards the creature, tossing it back from Emi. It scrambled to its feet and launched itself at him, jaws wide, teeth flashing.
The other creature took advantage of the distraction and attacked Kai and Colum.
With a powerful pounce, Ryu knocked the second creature off Daarco and ripped its throat out. Hiro surged forward and stabbed the creature’s heart…or at least where its heart should have been. Did it have a heart? Black liquid oozed and bubbled from the wounds as it screamed in pain.
The creature fell to the ground, where it twitched and jerked before laying still.
Daarco was helping Emi into a seated position, crouched protectively over her.
Just steps away, Colum slashed the other creature across the chest, causing it to fall backwards. Kai, who had retrieved her sword, bore down on its neck, severing its head half off. With a rush of brilliant white, she hacked through the rest of the flesh, and its head toppled to the ground.
She caught Hiro’s gaze, sword in both hands, panting heavily, relief evident on her face. Her eyes widened. “Look out,” she cried, sending another bolt of white over his shoulder.
Hiro spun and leaped backwards, just missing a vicious swipe of the other creature’s claws. Kai’s strike had slowed it, but it was still coming. It was half-charred, its throat was open and ragged, and ooze poured from the wound on its chest. But it was still moving.
“You have to behead it,” Colum called.
As if the creature had heard him, it grabbed Hiro’s sword in its bare talons before he had a chance to strike. Hiro grappled with it, trying to extricate his sword as it drew him in close. Hiro gagged at the sight and the smell of it so close to him, its foul breath like flesh rotting on a battlefield. A mark on its forehead was barely visible in the dim light—a mark that looked like it was etched in blood.
But then, the creature froze, going stock still. Its head leaned forward towards Hiro and toppled off its body, rolling through his arms before coming to rest on the ground.
Hiro shivered with disgust as the body collapsed to the ground, wrenching his sword from his hands in its still-locked grip.
Hiro saw Daarco standing behind the creature, his chest heaving. He had sliced through the creature’s neck with a thin band of sunlight, cauterizing the wound so no black blood flowed. Why didn’t I think of that?
“Emi,” Kai called, rushing to her friend’s side.
Emi’s skin was pallid and her body shook. Her eyes were distant.
“Oh gods,” Kai breathed. “I think the creature had some sort of venom on its claws.”
They gathered around Emi, looking at the wounds marring her back. Hiro and Daarco exchanged a look of horror. The flesh around the marks was already beginning to blacken, the wounds themselves bubbling sickly white.
“Get me my pack,” Kai said, and Hiro ran to retrieve it.
Kai pulled out some herbs, sprinkling them in the wounds on Emi’s back. Emi’s thrashing grew stronger.
“It’s calendula,” Kai explained, placing a bandage over the wounds. “It will fight the poison, but it won’t last long. This venom is powerful. Let me see if I can do anything to slow it.”
“She can sunburn now?” Daarco asked.
In the madness of the attack, Hiro hadn’t even realized. It was daytime. If Kai’s new power had anything to do with moonlight, she shouldn’t have been able to use it now.
“It’s not exactly sunburning,” Hiro managed, watching Kai hover over Emi, her eyes closed. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was.
Kai hissed in frustration, opening her eyes. “It’s bad,” she said, not taking her eyes from Emi. “I think I was able to cool the wound and slow the blood flow to the area so it won’t spread as quickly, but this is beyond my skills. Even if I did know how to use…whatever this white stuff is.”
“Colum, what were those things?” Hiro asked. “Have you ever seen them before?”
“They’re tengu,” he said. “Lesser tengu, but dangerous nonetheless.”
“They were sent by Tsuki or Taiyo to slow us down?” Hiro asked.
“I presume so,” Colum said. “They must be wise to your plans. We have to assume from now on that we’ll be hunted.”
“We’re in no shape to put up a fight,” Kai said with frustration. “Or even travel. Do you know how far from the seishen elder we are?”
“I think less than a day.”
“Would he be able to heal Emi?” Kai asked, looking from Quitsu to Ryu and back.
“Perhaps,” Ryu grumbled.
“He’s our best shot.” Daarco said. “We have to move.” He hoisted Emi into his arms and her head lolled against his shoulder, her eyelids fluttering.
Hiro raised an eyebrow slightly at Daarco’s sudden protectiveness of Emi, and Daarco stared back a challenge, as if daring him to comment.
Hiro declined the invitation. Perhaps Daarco was starting to…no. He didn’t want to curse it by even thinking it.
“Daarco’s right,” Kai said, shoving her medical supplies back in her pack and shouldering it. “Every second counts now.”
They jogged through the forest, Daarco bringing up the rear. Hiro’s wounds were forgotten. Adrenaline surged through his veins and his senses were alive with the possibility of threats. The white fog of the forest made it nearly impossible to see more than a few feet ahead, so he listened for twigs snapping, for rustling, for anything beyond the staccato sound of his own breathing. Anything could lay in wait just steps from them.
He increased his pace to match Colum, who had taken the lead.
“What can you tell us about these enemies?” Hiro asked.
“Not much,” Colum said. Despite his quick pace, he wasn’t winded at all. “These ones were low-level tengu. They were testing us, our weaknesses, our defenses. They’ll send something worse next time.”
“How do we kill them?”
“Beheading is really the only way. They don’t like fire, but it can’t kill them.”
“Where do they come from?”
“Most tengu are from the demon realm. But these ones…I’m not so sure.”
“What do you mean?” Hiro asked.
Colum hesitated.
“No holding back on us,” Hiro said. “Any piece of information could be the difference between life and death.”
“The marks on their foreheads, they looked like they were written in blood. Did you see them?”
“Yes,” Hiro said, imagining the creature’s foul breath in his face once again and shuddering, closing his eyes. He immediately tripped over a root and barely caught himself. Okay, eyes open.
“Those marks were placed on them. By someone. These weren’t tengu from the demon world. They were manufactured.”
Hiro’s mind reeled with this information. “Made? By who?”
&
nbsp; “Someone who put their money on the other side of this war.”
Kai could see Hiro and Colum jogging ahead of them, conversing in low tones. Hiro occasionally looked back over his shoulder at her. She couldn’t muster the energy to care what they were talking about.
She was bone tired, every inch of her body hurt, and now her muscles screamed from the hours of extra exertion she had forced them through. Her burning had betrayed her, abandoning her when she needed it the most, leaving her with some foreign power that frightened her. But mostly she worried about Emi. She couldn’t lose another friend. She wouldn’t. It would break her.
Her mind flashed to the moment on the cold stone floor of the facility when Maaya’s lifeblood leaked out onto her white servant’s uniform.
She shook her head to clear the memory. No. Emi would live. The elder would help them. It had to.
Her mind instead filled in the memory from a few moments ago: waking up to hollow eyes and putrid breath bearing down upon her like the kiss of death. The image wouldn’t clear. When had her mind become a place of horrors?
“Kai,” a soft voice said.
“What?” she called to Hiro.
He looked back with a puzzled glance. “I didn’t say anything.”
She turned back to Daarco, who had fallen behind, bearing the excess weight of an unconscious Emi in his arms. He was oblivious, his face set in a look of strained determination.
“We need to take a quick break,” Kai said. Daarco looked dead on his feet.
“I’m fine,” he called.
“Just for a sip of water,” Kai said. “You can stretch your arms.”
He relented and the group came together as he lay Emi softly on the trail. Her face was a deathly white contrasted with the red of her burn marks.
“Kai,” a voice said again.
She whirled around, peering through the thick mist. “Did any of you just say my name?”
The men shook their heads, confusion on their faces.
“Did you hear…?”
“Kai.”
“There!” she said. “Did you hear that? Someone said my name.”