by Nick Harrow
That was easier said than done. When I advanced, Jiro step back. If I attacked, his sword unerringly flicked into the perfect defensive position to parry the strike. If I dropped my guard for even a second, he unleashed another wave of deadly force at me.
“Are you going to keep dancing, or are we fighting?” I sneered. “Get the fuck over here so we can finish this. I’m sick of looking at you.”
“I’m not giving up my advantage because of your insults,” Jiro said. “I’m a trained warrior, my weapon is one of the most powerful in the Empire. You’re a savage piece of shit who fucks bears. You’ve already been worn ragged by the White Tigers. I can do this all day, but you’ll run out of sacred energy long before that. And then, I’ll take your head.”
“You’ll give me head?” I taunted. “I thought we were fighting. Now you want to suck my dick?”
I hoped the crude jibe would pull Jiro out of his shell, but his steely resolve deflected my words as easily as his blade parried my club.
Sensing my aggravation, Jiro launched a brutal series of attacks. An arc of his sword technique screamed toward my body, and when I dodged to the side, he stepped forward and swung the blade itself at my neck.
I got my club up in time to keep my head attached to my shoulders, but only just barely. The impact jarred me down to the soles of my feet and shoved me back a good twelve inches before my heels dug in. He was stronger and faster than I was, and his weapons and armor were more powerful than anything I had at my disposal. If I was going to win this thing, it would have to be with a trick.
Just like the last time we met.
I backed away, retreating outside the reach of his sword. The techniques were deadly, but the blade was sharp enough to end me on its own if I slipped up. My steps carried me back down the beach toward the water, and it lapped gently against my heels.
Jiro scoffed at my move and shook his head.
“No training, savage,” he said. “You’ve retreated downhill and put your back to the water. You’ve surrendered the high ground to me and trapped yourself with no space to retreat.
I shifted my feet uncertainly and glanced back over my shoulder at the water behind me. It was shallow here, but a few feet away from the shore the water became much deeper. Jiro was right. If I backed up too far, there was no way I’d be able to fight.
Emboldened by my mistake, Jiro advanced quickly. His sword was held at the ready, prepared to protect him from my war club.
But not from my techniques.
With a thought, I dumped a node of rin into my Earthen Darts. Shards of stone burst from the ground at Jiro’s feet, slamming into his armor, pounding against the front of his helmet, knocking his visor askew and momentarily blinding him.
Outraged by that trick, he swung his sword in a wild arc. I’d been expecting that, though, and hadn’t moved. The instant his blade twisted his body away from me, though, I charged.
Sacred energy flowed into the Crimson Claws and Bear’s Mantle. The techniques ignited a feral bloodlust within me, and I let the savage beast take hold. If Jiro thought I was a savage, I’d show him what a savage could do.
I slammed into the Seeker’s waist and latched my arms around him. He brought one elbow down hard between my shoulder blades, but the Bear’s Mantle shielded me from the impact. Before the Jade Seeker could react, I lifted him off the ground, threw my weight backward, and slammed him, shoulders first, into the lake behind me.
Jiro’s shout of surprise was drowned by the water that rushed into his helmet.
I twisted out from underneath the Jade Seeker, grabbed his belt, and dragged him away from the shore. His armor’s scripts made it feel lighter and more maneuverable while he wore it, but it was still a bunch of heavy metal strapped to his body, and it pulled him down beneath the water. When I was waist deep, I pounced on Jiro, landing with my knees on either side of his body. I ripped his helmet aside with my claws and locked my hands around his throat. I squeezed until I felt the crunch of cartilage in his trachea, and a gout of bubbles tinged pink with his blood rose to the lake’s surface.
I kept squeezing until my hands cramped and the water’s chill left them numb as blocks of wood. Jiro had long since stopped struggling, but the berserk rage inside me didn’t want to let him go. I wanted to squeeze until my fingers touched and his head floated free of his body. I wanted to squeeze until the monster who directed him to come after me felt it, trembling through the connection they shared.
“I’m fucking coming for you,” I growled. “Nothing will stop me. No one can save you now.”
I clawed Jiro’s head off his shoulders. I tangled my fingers in his hair, rose from the lake, and walked back to the temple.
If the Emperor raised the Seeker again, the cocksucker wouldn’t have a head.
“Fucking asshole,” I grumbled. “Stay dead.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I DIDN’T WANT TO CARRY Jiro’s head with me, but I also didn’t want to let it out of my sight. I was afraid that if I didn’t have the head where I could see it, the Midnight Emperor would steal it away and bring the Seeker back to life.
The stairs seemed longer as I descended. Every turn felt like it should be the last, only it wasn’t. Around and around I went, and my thoughts went round with me.
I’d killed dozens of men that day. They had been more than ready to do the same to me, of course, but that didn’t make me feel any better about what had happened. I hadn’t become a shaman to slaughter my enemies. No one had told me that was part of the job.
I did.
Okay, point taken.
When I finally reached the bottom of the stairs, I found the nexus illuminated by balls of blue shio energy. The spirits were at the heart of the chamber, seated on either side of their mistress, whose eyes were closed.
And, much to my surprise, she had no legs. Her waist tapered to a long serpentine tail that coiled around the spirits. I realized that’s what those bones I’d seen before had been: pieces of her spine and tail arranged in a mockery of life.
The dream meridians were still tainted, but the darkness seemed much more constrained now than it had been before. I wasn’t sure if that was a result of the ritual, or if I was just too tired to see things as they really were.
I also didn’t care.
“Kyr?” Aja asked. “Is it over?”
“My part is,” I confirmed. “How about you?”
“She needs time yet,” Ayo responded. “She can purify the corruption, but it will take her longer than we anticipated.”
“Are we talking hours or days?” I asked.
“Weeks,” Aja said meekly. “It’s more work than we could have imagined, and her core is still damaged.”
“I don’t know if we have weeks,” I said. “I sent the White Tigers packing and killed Jiro as a bonus, but there’s no telling when the next wave of fuckers will show up to finish what they started. Will you to be all right while she works?”
“With your help,” Aja said, a lascivious grin playing at the corners of her lips. “You wouldn’t leave us alone, would you?”
I sat down at the entrance of the ritual chamber, resting the head on the floor behind me. Nobody needed to see that.
“I’ll stay as long as I can,” I said. “I need to talk to her.”
“And she needs to talk to you,” Aja said. “After.”
“After,” I agreed.
Whatever the ritual was, it was quiet. The snake woman didn’t say a word; she didn’t even hum. Her breathing was quiet and regular, and I sensed the flow of spiritual energy through her. She drew corrupted senjin out of the nexus, channeled it through her core, and ejected purified dream energy back into the meridians. It was an impressive stunt, not the least of which because I’d never seen anyone channel pure senjin without breaking it down into rin and shio. What she was doing was very advanced energy work, and I desperately wanted to know how she pulled it off.
My core wanted to know, too. Half my nodes were empty, and
they desperately wanted to be filled with the power I sensed around me. There was so much energy, just waiting to be taken. I could suck it all up, fill my core to bursting, and I might even advance. Hell, with as much power as I sensed here, I could advance two or three times.
No one would be more powerful than me. I just had to accept the corruption, and I’d be good to go. My thoughts drifted to more pleasant times, when my core would glow like the sun. I’d be so powerful no one would dare to stand in my way.
A sound like breaking twigs came from behind me. The sudden series of cracks had me on my feet in the blink of an eye, my war club clenched in both fists. I shook my head, and cursed myself for letting some bizarre power fantasy distract me.
The head. The goddamned head.
Insectoid legs had burst from Jiro’s ears and the stump of his neck. They were long and black, their segmented links articulated on swollen joints that clicked and cracked as the head scuttled toward me.
“You cannot stop me.” A deep, sepulchral voice emerged from Jiro’s slack jaw. The insect legs had grown longer, thicker, until the thing towered above me. Filaments of shadow unfurled from its neck and wrapped around the legs, forming a body of sleek, glossy darkness. “My eyes are everywhere, I am everywhere. You cannot evade me, savage.”
“Fuck you, too.” I pushed a node of sacred energy into my arms and slammed my weapon into the monstrosity’s legs with battering-ram force.
One of the legs shattered like a stick of glass, but the rest remained unmoved by my attack. An undamaged appendage lashed out and struck me full in the chest. The blow sent me sprawling, and I skidded across the floor, rolling through tendrils of corruption before coming to rest on the cold stone.
“You have cost me much, shaman,” the deep voice boomed again. “I sacrificed an entire squad of Jade Seekers to kill the witch. You shattered the army of the White Tigers. You slaughtered Jiro Kos, one of my most trusted lieutenants. You will pay for the suffering and expense you’ve extracted from me, shaman. You will watch as I despoil the spirits you have protected, you will listen as I destroy the witch myself. If you are very lucky, I’ll let you die when I have finished with you.”
“If you’re lucky, I won’t pluck off all these fucking bug legs and shove them up your ass,” I snarled and summoned my claws and mantle again. “I’m just about sick of all this bullshit. Leave me and mine alone, or I will destroy you.”
“I am the Midnight Emperor,” Jiro’s head intoned. “I am the voice of the Celestial Bureaucracy. It is by my will that the world shall be remade. Kneel before me, shaman. Tremble before my might, and know that today, you stand in the presence of greatness.”
“You talk so fucking much,” I groaned and swung my club again.
The spikes ripped another leg off, but two more had already taken the place of the first one. With a snarl of frustration, I leapt up, grabbed hold of a knobby knee, and twisted around until I was standing on top of the leg. Threads of shadow tried to weave around my feet, but I jumped over them and scrambled up higher to where a carapace had begun to take shape.
Jiro’s head was nestled between two chitinous plates, its eyes rolling wildly and a black tongue wriggling from between its parted lips. The presence had come through that head; I felt the connection between Jiro’s skull and somewhere far distant. If I could sever that, the Emperor wouldn’t have any way to reach us. Without one of his servants handy to serve as his dark host, we’d be safe.
I scrambled forward, claws digging into the carapace, and crouched above the skull. Physical damage wouldn’t be enough to break the Emperor’s hold over Jiro’s remains. I’d need something else. I let my spirit sight take over and focused on the thread of power that emanated from a spot between Jiro’s eyes. That was the connection, the bond I needed to sever.
Unfortunately, my claws passed through it as if it weren’t even there. I needed something else.
I willed the dregs of rin energy in my core to pass through my arm and out my claws. The blood-red energy flowed along their length, coating the razor-sharp edges with sacred power.
“Fool,” the Midnight Emperor growled. “You think I’ll be so easy to stop?”
“Yep,” I said.
I lashed out with my rin-soaked talons. Their edges snagged the black thread, and, one by one, tore through it. The bond between the Midnight Emperor and Jiro’s skull fell neatly into three pieces, and then dissipated like windblown smoke.
Well, almost all of it dissipated.
The biggest part of it stuck around.
It wrapped around my claw.
And burrowed into my mind.
Chapter Thirty
THE CONNECTION TO THE Midnight Emperor rampaged through my thoughts and put down roots faster than kudzu from hell. The power of that bond drowned out the world around me and plunged me into a chaotic maelstrom of violence and destruction. I found myself standing in a wasteland of bubbling lava on a pitch-black obsidian plane. There was no sun; the entire sky burned behind a cloud of roiling black clouds that raced ahead of a blustering storm front. Pillars of stone burst through the ground around me, only to disappear in swirls of black shadow a moment later.
“This is the world your people made,” the Midnight Emperor said. “This is the devastation the Moonsilver Bat’s priests would have brought to fruition had I not stopped them.”
His feet, wrapped in golden boots beneath an ornate black robe, floated above the glossy obsidian. He wielded no weapon, save for the glowing orbs of energy that surrounded both of his hands. Despite the horror stories I’d heard about him, he didn’t look like a monster. He was quite handsome, with almond-shaped eyes, a long black beard waxed to a precise point, and jet-black hair slicked back against his scalp. A crown of black crystal rested on his brow, and his jade-green eyes flashed with intelligence and a hint of cruelty.
“My people didn’t make shit,” I said. “Unless you allowed it. Or commanded it.”
“You know nothing, boy,” the Emperor said. “You were gone long before the hungry spirits invaded, and you’ve only returned long after the War of Shudders that dispatched them. The years between are lost to you.”
The Emperor stopped ten feet away from me, his hands at his side, his head cocked slightly to the left as if he couldn’t decide what he was looking at.
“You expect me to believe that in less than a generation my people turned into a bunch of chaos-worshipping cultist freaks bent on destroying the world?” I said. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. They did what they thought was necessary to save the world, right? And they didn’t do it without help.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think,” he spat. “What matters is what I say. I declared them the cause of our woes. Yes, they attempted to defend us from our enemies. In the end, though, they failed. And that failure cost us dearly.”
Raw power radiated from the Emperor in palpable waves that tried to push me to my knees. There was something about him that demanded reverence and obedience.
“Us?” I said through gritted teeth, muscles tensed to keep from bowing before him. “You seem like you made out all right.”
Talking to this asshole was a waste of time. He wanted me dead, and he wouldn’t rest until he got what he wanted.
“The wise always prosper in times of danger and turmoil,” he said. “If you understood —”
I burst into motion mid-soliloquy. The Emperor was so caught up in trying to explain his righteousness to me that he didn’t notice my attack until it was too late. Before he could react, I was on him, my claws still manifested, a savage howl tearing itself loose from inside me. I slashed at him, and ribbons of his robe fluttered away on the stormy breeze. Another slash drew blood, opening his cheek to the bone to expose the twin rows of his teeth through the bloody gash I’d opened.
His hand flashed out and bejeweled fingers slammed into my chest. The blow looked casual, barely more than the effort you’d used to swat away an annoying fly.
It sent me
sailing across the obsidian plane. My back slammed into a stone pillar, shattering the rock, and I fell to the ground, stunned. Worse than the physical damage, the asshole had done something to my core. One of my empty nodes filled with a vile purple power.
Pain tore through my spirit, a splash of acid that devoured whatever it touched.
He wants to change you. He wants to own you.”
Well, that was fucking great. I wrestled with the pain until it subsided, then staggered to my feet. The violet node in my core throbbed like an open wound, its influence struggling to spread through my body. If I didn’t keep a lid on it, the infection would spread to my other nodes. If that happened, there was no telling what this fuckstick would do to me.
An image of Jiro Kos’s disembodied head shambling around on insect legs, a black tongue lolling between its lips, made me shudder. No, I wasn’t going to end up like that. No matter what else happened, I wouldn’t become his slave.
“No?” the Emperor asked as if he’d read my thoughts. “My slaves have more advantages than you’ll ever know. Their bodies can wither and die, but their souls live on. I craft new shells for them, younger, stronger, faster. Jiro knows this, and he will rise again to hunt you to the ends of the Earth for how you hurt him.”
“You think so?” I asked. Wherever we appeared to be, I knew we were still in the ritual chamber. I felt the surging energy of the meridian nexus surrounding us. It was as rich and wild as an untamed river, the flow of corrupted senjin stronger than I’d ever felt before. “You’re strong, but I can take you.”
The Emperor laughed and vanished from where he’d been floating. He reappeared behind me and drove his fist into my shoulder with terrifying power. The blow sent me staggering forward, numbness spreading from the point of impact, my core trembling as yet another node emptied of rin and filled with the purple haze of the tyrant’s influence.
“I will have you,” he scoffed. “I will keep the world’s last shaman as my pet. You will remind the others who would stand against me of the cost of their belligerence.”
