No one knew how to respond, so they turned their attention to the land around them. Aside from a small orchard and a few windbreaks, the only trees they saw this time were in a forest a few leagues away. The river was full. The waterfall pouring down from the cliff was wide and powerful. The river supplied irrigation to endless miles of rice paddies and plots of vegetables. What Turesobei had first thought to be hundreds of farmers were scarecrows.
Kurine spun around slowly. “All this food…you could feed my village a hundred times over with such abundance.”
As Turesobei summoned the Storm Dragon, Zaiporo said, “These people love scarecrows, don't they? Makes you wonder how big the flocks of crows they need to scare off must be.”
“Something’s wrong here,” Iniru said. “It’s midmorning and there’s rice growing, but there’s not a single person working these fields. No houses, animals, or tools either.”
“It’s a trap,” Awasa said flatly.
“The fields can’t be real,” Turesobei said. “We are never going to find people living anywhere near these guardians.”
Iniru cocked her head. “You hear that? Sounds like…like dogs, maybe.”
Turesobei shook his head. He couldn’t hear anything subtle over the roar of the waterfall. “Lu Bei.”
Storm Dragon Lu Bei took off up into the sky. “On it, master.”
Kurine sighed. “This place really is beauti—”
A howl echoed across the fields…a second…a third…then a hundred-strong chorus of barks and howls broke across the distance.
“Trouble in the east and the west, master,” Lu Bei called down.
Turesobei was about to ask what kind of trouble, when on their side of the river there emerged, in the distance, a yelping horde of moon-white foxes. He spun around.
From the forest on the other side of the river arose a giant cloud of scarlet and gold leaves that formed into a dragon. And then, naturally, the scarecrows on both sides of the river began to move.
“I am so going to have nightmares about this one,” Iniru said.
“Me too,” Zaiporo said. “Those scarecrows are creepy.”
“Scarecrows? I meant the foxes.” Iniru noticed they were all staring at her as if she were crazy. “A fox bit me when I was a kid.”
The two dragons rushed toward each other.
The Storm Dragon breathed lightning at her opponent, but before the bolt reached it, the leaf dragon’s body split apart. The autumn-colored leaves scattered wide. The lightning went through a gap in the center, where the mass of the leaf dragon’s body had been, and scorched only a few leaves. The Storm Dragon clawed and blasted as it flew through the slow-moving cloud of leaves, but caused little harm.
Once the Storm Dragon had flown by, the leaf dragon reformed and hurtled toward Turesobei and his companions.
Twice more, the Storm Dragon fired lightning bolts at the leaf dragon, but each time the result was the same. The leaves would scatter, and the lightning would hardly cause any damage. The only good thing was that as a cloud it moved much slower.
Though the leaf dragon hadn't injured the Storm Dragon, Turesobei felt certain it would hurt them.
“Is this as bad as it looks?” Iniru asked.
“Probably,” Turesobei replied.
“What can a bunch of leaves do to us?” Kurine asked.
“Blind us,” Zaiporo said.
“If they have thorns, a swirling cloud of them could shred us,” Awasa said. She patted Motekeru on the shoulder. “Well, not all of us.”
The leaf dragon and the white foxes drew closer, and the scarecrows had all climbed down from their poles.
“We need a plan, and fast,” Iniru said.
Turesobei finished scanning the leaf dragon with his kenja-sight, confirming his worst fear. It wasn’t a single entity but a linked host of smaller ones. He groaned.
“I'm going to have to cast the spell of greater binding.”
“What’s so bad about that?” Kurine asked.
“I'm certain casting it will knock me out.”
“No other choice?” Zaiporo asked.
“Not that I know of. The Storm Dragon can only delay it, and I can’t shield us from it if we’re also getting attacked by scarecrows and foxes.”
“Can the Storm Dragon still fight if you are knocked out?” Iniru asked.
He nodded. “It can.”
“Get to it then,” Awasa said.
Kurine gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I'll protect you, my love.”
Turesobei drew the strip for the spell of greater binding and began his quick-casting of it. Normally, the spell only targeted a single entity, but it could also lock a lot of small entities together—for a few moments. Unfortunately, binding that many beings at once, no matter their size, required a tremendous amount of energy. That was why the technique was better used as a ritual, not a spell, and especially not a quick casting of one.
Along with all his internal power, Turesobei drew on every available thread of kenja pouring toward the ley line convergence. He completed his chant. The strip turned to ash between his fingers.
As the leaf dragon dived toward them, the spell activated.
The world went dark around him, and he collapsed.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Turesobei's first thought, as an amber-colored hound licked his face, waking him up, was that it smelled as if he'd taken a nap in the midst of a forest fire. Groaning, he sat up and realized it smelled that way for a good reason. He was covered in ash and bits of burned leaves. Straw lay scattered all around, and some of it was burning.
“Hey, you're awake,” Kurine said, smiling at him.
He pushed Rig and Ohma away, scratching them behind the ears as he did so. “Is everyone okay?”
“Looks like it. The two teams are heading back toward us, and everyone’s walking. I figure that’s a good sign.”
From one direction came Motekeru and Zaiporo; from the other, Iniru and Awasa, though it took them longer since they had to forge a shallow section of the river. Lu Bei circled overhead and the Storm Dragon mirrored him, high up among the clouds.
As soon as everyone reached him, Turesobei recalled the dragon.
“Your spell worked brilliantly,” Iniru said as she dusted ashes out of her hair. “The leaf dragon tried to separate, but your spell held it together long enough for the Storm Dragon to blast it.”
“It was good thinking, master,” Lu Bei said without his usual exuberance. The longer the fetch had to be a dragon, the more dour and taciturn he was for the rest of the day.
Iniru patted Motekeru on the shoulder. “Thank you for taking on the foxes and letting me do the scarecrows.”
Motekeru shrugged. “Made no difference to me.”
They retrieved the heart stone, Kurine found a pebble with a rust-colored spiral, then they returned to the Nexus of the Realms.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
During the next week, Turesobei visited the Inner Sanctum twice. The second time, he was actually able to study the energy signatures of the heart stones while blocking out the time stream and not getting nauseated. He was slightly familiar with the cylinders he had recovered, but he hadn't had time to study them out in the realms. And they behaved differently here, resonating in their matching pairs and with the other solitary cylinders. He tried hard to focus on them, but he could only do so for a few minutes at a time before getting overwhelmed.
Because talking made it easier to avoid looking out at the time stream, Turesobei tried to get as much information out of Lord Gyoroe as possible while he rested.
“Is there a reason you only made nine realms?”
“I did not need any more than that.”
“But I thought you didn't have enough power to achieve your goals before.”
“I needed more power, yes, but of a different nature. Also, my system was too inefficient, a problem I have now corrected.”
“It sure does take a lot of energy to ghost back in time,” Tu
resobei said.
“The farther you go back, the more energy required. I have explained all of this to you in detail before.”
Turesobei didn’t doubt that, but most of Lord Gyoroe’s nearly incomprehensible lectures explaining the metaphysics of the realms had put him into a state of near sleep.
“So what do you expect to see, when you finally succeed?”
Lord Gyoroe shrugged. “No Kaiaru has any idea how we came to be…not even me.”
“Master knew.” Lu Bei was shielding his eyes with his hands so he didn’t have to look outside the dome. “But he understood that the information was best left unknown.”
“Your master was not the visionary I am,” Lord Gyoroe said. “Or else, he was a fool.”
Lu Bei scowled and bit at his lip. And Turesobei wondered: had the memory actually been wiped from Lu Bei, or was it merely locked away like so many other things? It wouldn’t surprise him if Chonda Lu had erased the knowledge from his own mind while leaving it locked away in his diary, in case he ever needed it again. After all, why did he need a living diary anyway?
* * *
Turesobei met Enashoma, in her room, for an early breakfast tea the next morning.
“I know it’s super early for tea,” Enashoma said, “but I figured it would be the only time we could talk alone, just the two of us.”
Turesobei yawned and stretched. “I don’t mind. I only sleep about an hour each day anyway.”
“Oh yeah, you’ve got other things to occupy you at night.”
Turesobei blushed deeply. “Yeah…well…you and Zaiporo….”
“We don’t share a room at night,” Enashoma said.
“For all of the few hours you sleep. You’re together all the rest of the time.”
“Yeah…but that’s different. We don’t—” She huffed. “Why on earth am I talking to you about this?”
“You started it,” Turesobei grumbled.
Enashoma slapped him on the arm. “Don’t you start with the you started it bit.”
He laughed. “Okay.” He took a deep sip of mint tea. “I was alone last night anyway. Working with the heart stones gave me a terrible headache, and I needed a little time by myself. Iniru wanted to spend some quality time with Kurine anyway.”
“How’s that going?”
“For me, everything’s going great,” he said. “With them…there’s some tension. But nothing has boiled over.”
“Yet,” Enashoma added darkly.
“They’re trying to get along, and I think it’s going to work out.” For luck, he rapped his knuckles on the table. “So what did you want to talk about?”
She gestured at the amethyst kavaru on her forehead. Turesobei had been trying not to look at it. As much as it pleased him that Enashoma had a kavaru, which she deserved, it was still weird to see her wearing one. But what really bothered him were the implications.
Enashoma now had a special bond with the only kavaru to ever wake up after a long sleep. To him, that suggested she had a special destiny as well. And he didn’t want her to suffer such a burden. The worst thing, though, was that it meant she was going to be of extra interest to the Blood King. Plus, it gave Lord Gyoroe another avenue of success, should ghosting back in time fail to reveal the secrets he sought.
“I can feel the power growing in the kavaru,” Enashoma said. “I think I’ll be able to talk to Nāa again soon. Only, there’s so much to ask him that I don’t even know where to begin. Is there anything in particular you’d like to know?”
Turesobei drummed his fingers on the table as he watched steam trail up from his tea bowl. “You know, I don’t think you should press him with questions. Let Nāa talk to you. Let him reveal things at a pace he’s comfortable with. That might prevent him from fading out like last time. Honestly, since you share a bond with him, I think the important thing is for you to just get to know one another. The big questions can wait a little longer.”
“That makes sense,” Enashoma said.
Turesobei scratched at his chin. “Though if he is experiencing the world through you then, in a way, I’m talking to him right now.”
“Does that weird you out?” Enashoma asked.
“Not really.”
She sighed dramatically. “Could you please tell Zai that then? He won’t even kiss me on the lips anymore.”
“I can try. But to be honest, if I were him, it would weird me out, too.” Turesobei grinned. “Besides, maybe I don’t want Zai kissing you on the lips. You are my little sister, after all.”
“You have two girlfriends who alternate spending the night with you. You have no room telling me what I can do with Zai. None. Zero. Zilch.”
“I’m just messing with you.”
Enashoma scowled. “So, anything you want to ask Nāa?”
Lu Bei stifled a cough, or maybe a few words. His eyes teared up.
“Is there something you want to say?” Enashoma asked the fetch.
Lu Bei shook his head.
The sound of shouting pierced the walls. Turesobei knew those voices intimately. Iniru and Kurine were fighting again.
“How’s that truce working out now?” Enashoma asked with a smirk.
Turesobei groaned miserably. “What could have happened? They haven't argued in weeks.”
“Who knows?” Enashoma jumped to her feet and, grabbing his arm, dragged Turesobei along behind her. “But if their truce falls apart, there's no way you can all survive the next realm. Come on.”
Turesobei stumbled out into the hallway after her. Lu Bei zoomed overhead, his little face mirroring Enashoma's worry.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Turesobei and Enashoma came to a halt outside the door to Kurine and Iniru’s room. Enashoma nodded at him, silently asking what he was going to do. While he hesitated, debating whether or not he should go in, Awasa and Zaiporo hurried over. They paused, their faces identical masks of dread as they waited for him to make the first move.
His hand reached toward the door, but he couldn’t bring himself to open it. Enashoma was right. The battles for the heart stones ranged from extremely difficult to nearly unwinnable. And that was with everyone working as a team. If Iniru and Kurine were back at each other's throats, they were all doomed. Should he go in there and break them up? Or would him being there just make things worse?
As he hesitated, their angry voices drifted through the door.
“All I’m saying is it wouldn’t kill you to fold your clothes and put them away properly!” Kurine shouted.
“A servant’s going to come through in a few hours and tidy everything,” Iniru replied. “Why waste the effort?”
“Because you should treat your clothes with respect.”
“You want to talk about respect?” Iniru asked. “How about you respect me and don’t take up the whole bed at night?”
“We’re sharing, and I can’t help that I’m bigger than you.”
Turesobei blushed, thinking of them both snuggled together in bed.
“What I don’t like is waking up in the middle of the night having been knocked off the sleeping mat.”
“Well, maybe that wouldn’t happen if you didn’t jab me with your bony elbows.”
“Maybe if you didn’t take up so much space with all your…your curviness.”
“You think I’m fat?” Kurine asked.
“That’s not what I said.”
“You’re just jealous because I have a figure and you don’t!”
“No, I’m not,” Iniru snapped. “Besides, I have a figure.”
“A stick figure.”
“How dare you,” Iniru seethed. “Turesobei likes my figure just fine.”
“Just fine? You think just fine is enough? Well, good. Because my curviness is way better than just fine.”
“Doubt it,” Iniru said. “Especially after you take up the whole sleeping mat and shove him off onto the floor.”
“I’ve never done that to him!”
Why did they have to fight
about this?
Zaiporo shot him a look that was half confused and half admiring. Enashoma elbowed him in the ribs and rolled her eyes. Awasa narrowed hers and looked Turesobei up and down speculatively. A small smile ghosted across her face, revealing her slender fangs.
Turesobei groaned softly.
“Probably because you keep him up all night by—”
“By what?” Kurine demanded. “I don’t do anything you don’t do. I just do it better.”
Turesobei buried in his hands and wished they would stop. He had never been so embarrassed in his life.
“Oh, shut up,” Iniru said.
“You shut up.”
“I know what your real problem is,” Iniru snarled.
“Oh yeah?”
“You’re jealous. I’ve seen your face when Turesobei puts the boosting spells on me.”
“You’re wrong,” Kurine gasped.
“Am I?” Iniru challenged. “Seems to me that it's not enough for you to be the Blood King’s favorite.”
“What does that mean?” Kurine asked
“You got the fanciest armor with the most protective spells. You got the most powerful weapon. And you got a magic shield!”
“I need those things to protect Turesobei. I didn’t spend my whole life training to kill people, like you did.”
“Really?” Something crashed onto the floor. “You’re going to bring that crap up again?”
“Pick up those clothes,” Kurine said.
Turesobei heard something else hit the floor.
“Pick them up!” Kurine roared.
Something else, something heavier than clothes, struck the floor. He had a feeling this was about to get bad.
The others took a quick step back, suddenly serious again, as the sounds of things crashing to the floor got closer.
Suddenly, Kurine shrieked and a dark shape rushed at the door. The wood frame shuddered as something heavy slammed into it. Then the silk panels ripped, and Kurine fell backwards into the hallway. She had one hand locked onto Iniru's wrist as she fell. Iniru was jerked off her feet and landed hard on Kurine's chest. She rolled off, coughing as she struggled to get her breath back.
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