by eden Hudson
Koida. Raijin recognized her immediately, though he could feel that in this memory he didn’t know her yet by any name. She stood alone, watching Raijin, head cocked slightly like a hawk trying to discern whether a creature was prey or a foe.
He bowed to her.
She didn’t return the gesture. “Your technique sent Xun-Li’s soul to the mortal lands?”
It was clear from her voice that she was not asking from interest in the art, but accusing him of being harsher than warranted, a common charge among the immortals who had decided they were above the law.
“His punishment was decided by his crime,” Raijin said. He infused his muscles with immortal energy and leapt into the sky.
She followed him.
Raijin touched down on a darkening thunderhead and slowed to a walk. He felt a stirring of curiosity in the Thunderer. Other immortals rarely made the effort to speak with him at length, preferring to make demands of him or hurl accusations, then ignore any response he gave.
“Are you close with Xun-Li?” he asked her. Perhaps she was the tiger’s lover and wanted to plead for his return to the Land of Immortals.
“I do not know him,” she said. “When I heard a trial would be held nearby, I wanted to see how the god protector of the heavens conducted it. It was swift and callous, and you disregarded the fact that the tiger only acted in accordance with his nature. It cannot be fair to punish an immortal for that.”
He considered this. “Do you remember your mortal life?”
“Much of it.” She fell into step beside him.
“Then you remember that your choices led to consequences. Pain or joy, life or death, not only in your own life, but rippling into the lives of those closest to you. Mortals are punished or rewarded based on their choices. They have only one lifetime, but many grow wise enough to adjust their actions accordingly, overcoming their nature and bettering themselves and the world around them.”
“This is not the mortal world,” she argued. “We have Ascended beyond that.”
“We have had an eternity of lifetimes to learn to control ourselves. We are held to a higher standard because we should be wiser. More importantly, our choices affect not only ourselves and the Land of Immortals, but have consequences that ripple throughout all of the mortal planes. It is our responsibility to protect those mortals who would suffer the fallout of our actions.”
“Noble sentiments.” She studied his face, violet eyes narrowing. “Do you actually believe them, or do you just enjoy hearing yourself pontificate on morality?”
Raijin’s eyes traced her full lips as she spoke. They were perfectly bowed and looked as soft as rainsilk, just like Koida’s, but the pearlescent teeth behind them were studded with four sharp lavaglass fangs. Raijin was fascinated by them and felt the body he was in was fascinated by them as well, but the Thunderer ruthlessly pulled his gaze back up to meet hers without regard for its interest.
“You asked for an explanation of my judgment. I gave it,” he said. “You are the Dragon Ha-Koi, correct?”
She smirked. “You’ve heard of me. Then you must be watching me, waiting for a misstep.”
“My duty is to the law. I guard against any who might break it.”
“Because you are perfect and would never do such a thing.”
“If I were perfect, I wouldn’t require a law to hold myself to,” he said.
They reached the edge of the cloud and leapt, the fabric of their robes fluttering in the wind. Rain and hail pelted Raijin’s face, but he welcomed the distraction of the stinging cold needles.
“Xun-Li was right,” Ha-Koi said. “It’s easy for one to talk about overcoming temptation who has never felt it himself.”
Raijin landed easily at the foot of a sky castle. Though in truth he had never seen such a place in his life, in this dream or vision, the Thunderer recognized the stark, utilitarian citadel as his home.
“You assume I feel nothing because I don’t act on what I feel.” He turned to Ha-Koi. “Has it occurred to you that I fight against my nature the same as any other immortal?”
“What temptation does the mighty Jin-Rammael, god protector of the heavens, cold emotionless sword of the law, struggle against?” Her sharp violet eyes roamed over him as if she could find his weakness by looking hard enough, but there was a glimmer of humor in their depths.
Was she teasing him? It had been so many centuries since he had spoken to someone besides spirits and condemned and outraged immortals that he wasn’t certain how to respond.
So he told her the truth. “All of them.”
“I would think an immortal who struggled with all the same temptations as the rest of us would be more forgiving,” she said.
“The tiger had millennia to turn away from his crimes, but he chose to revel in them instead. I condemned Xun-Li to put a stop to the suffering of those too weak to stand against him.” Raijin met her challenging stare. “I’ve heard the case against you, Dragon, and I know what you are capable of, but I haven’t condemned you yet. There is still time.”
White-hot anger flashed in Ha-Koi’s eyes like a lightning strike, and Raijin could feel the heat radiating from her heartcenter.
She lifted her chin, all lightheartedness gone. “And if I choose to revel in destruction and death instead?”
“It’s your choice whether to give in to your nature or overcome it,” he said. “But if your choice harms others, then the destruction will be your own. I will make certain of it.”
RAIJIN’S VISION FADED to blackness, the heat of the Dragon’s heartcenter receding as the dream disappeared. Icy water poured onto him from above as if he were standing in the spray of a winter-chilled waterfall. He struggled up to sitting, the lightning bolt of pain in his side and the pounding in his head letting him know that his ribs were still broken and his eyes were still gone.
No chunks of chewed, bloody flesh cried out for his attention, however. No pack hunters scrambled over one another while eating him alive.
Thunder rolled overhead.
He wasn’t dead. Was he back in the sinkhole?
Shivering, Raijin tested his theory, scooting backward until he was out of the downpour and then crawling until he reached the wall. Dirt and dust clung to his palms as he stood and began to feel his way around the cavern.
His left hand ran over a furrow about a hand’s breadth deep. He stopped and traced it from the floor to as high as he could reach.
That answered that. Dying had returned him back to the place where he’d first fallen into this underground cavern. Would every death in the Land of Immortals do the same, or did he have a finite number of times he could return before he was dead for good?
An eternity of deaths in this hole, blind and injured, was a supremely depressing prospect. However, it would also mean that he had an endless number of chances to find an escape from this prison.
A flicker from Raijin’s heartcenter caught his attention. He turned his focus inward. Where there had been only emptiness before, a tiny amount of Ro now flashed like distant heat lightning, the life force of the single pack hunter he had killed.
It was bloodred.
Raijin fell back against the wall and slumped to the floor.
His entire life, his Ro had remained untainted by violence and malice. It was like a kick to the groin. Hurt and sickness washed up from the pit of his stomach.
Was this how Hush felt whenever she looked at her bloodstained Ro? His silent friend’s futile attempts to cleanse her life force made much more sense to him now. If he’d known what technique she used to purify things, he would be trying to scour his Ro clean as well.
Raijin leaned his head back against the dirt wall, ignoring the crumble of filth into his hair and down his back. While he sat, he began idly Pouring Ro into Itself. The old habit was of little comfort. He had come to the Land of Immortals with an empty heartcenter only to fill it with the stolen Ro of a creature he had killed in hatred. A betrayal of the Paths of Peace he had sought to
save.
A moral failure, the kind Master Chugi had warned him about.
Raijin wanted to curse Misuru for throwing him into this pit, but she had not forced him to kill the creature. That had been his choice. He had given in to the anger and pride.
Perhaps it was always going to be this way. Hadn’t he given in to his pride at the Sun Palace, when Koida discovered that he had no Heroic Record? He had wanted her to know he wasn’t a coward, had cared more about how she saw him in that passing moment than he had cared about deviating from the correct variation.
By then, they had diverged so far from what he’d seen in the Dead Waters Kingdom that it was almost unrecognizable. Koida hadn’t been the calculating, manipulative princess he’d expected from the visions. She had been openly challenging, determined to prove him a liar and a fake at every turn, and yet so guileless that she had blushed whenever he spoke familiarly to her. She had wanted to serve her family and her empire, while also being so honest that she’d snuck into his room after the negotiations to tell him that he should refuse the marriage because her father hadn’t told him she was a Ro-cripple.
That sort of earnestness couldn’t have been an act. The guai-ray senses would have felt the insincerity grating along his nerves.
Raijin scrubbed his hands through his wet, dirty hair. He hated the thought of trusting anything Misuru said, but her accusations of Ha-Koi’s treachery had taken root inside his mind, tinging every memory with suspicion.
Had that conjured up the death dream? Or was it a memory of the Thunderer’s immortal past? Jin-Rammael had said he was withholding judgment, giving Ha-Koi a chance to overcome her nature. If Misuru could be believed, then the Dragon hadn’t changed, but Raijin had felt the Thunderer’s hope that she would. She had been the first immortal in centuries to treat him like a living creature rather than a stone statue. Had even that been a part of her cunning plan? A trick to get him to overlook her crimes long enough to commit the Great Treachery Misuru mentioned?
Without knowing more, it was impossible to guess at Ha-Koi’s motivations. And he couldn’t blame Koida or himself for a past neither of them remembered.
I’ll give your greetings to the Dark Dragon when I see her. Misuru’s parting shout. Had she been telling the truth? Had something seduced Koida away from the Path of the Thunderbird to the Path of the Water Lily? Had his pride and conceit doomed his attempt to save Koida and the world?
Raijin forced himself back to his feet. He had to get out of this pit. The uncertainty would eat him alive as viciously as the pack hunters if he stayed trapped there. Maybe it wasn’t too late. If he could climb the tiers enough to return to the mortal world, then maybe he could still protect Koida from the darkness inside herself.
That had to be his focus. Otherwise, he would fall apart down in this blackness with nothing but a bloodstained Ro marking him as a traitor to his Path.
He began to feel his way along the wall once again, searching for a way out.
The guai-ray senses bristled. Another group of pack hunters was approaching. Or was it the same pack? His mind jumped to the pain of their needlelike teeth tearing into him and the thud of his fists on their fleshy bodies, like tiny versions of the huge akane Misuru had defeated upon his arrival in the Land of Immortals.
Just as before, the pack hunters closed in from all sides, trapping Raijin against the wall. This time, however, there were only eleven of the slavering creatures, and a few were limping or injured.
The same pack, then. It seemed when Raijin died, he was returned alive and at the same level of health he was in when he first fell into the sinkhole, but the akane were not provided the same luxury.
He raised his hands in Inviting Attack and waited, the guai-ray senses following the pack hunters’ signatures.
I know you want to be the goody-goody honorable artist, Raij, but when you’re outnumbered, you don’t wait around to defend yourself, Lysander had told him once after they were waylaid by a group of bandits. As soon as you see them coming, you hit first, so hard and so fast that they regret ever looking in your direction. You start the fight, you finish the fight, and you don’t let them get a single lick in between.
The guai-ray instincts swelled in his chest, hungry for battle, hungry to prove its dominance over these lowly pack hunters. Their numbers and his injuries made them bold, but they would find no easy prey here.
Raijin heard the pack hunters’ steps falter uncertainly. They could sense the guai-ray’s eagerness to rip them apart.
Out of habit, Raijin fought to contain the vicious demon beast inside of him.
Warily, the pack began to creep forward again.
But where was the virtue in waiting around to die when he knew the swarm wanted his blood? The Ro in his heartcenter was already stained red. There was no going back. His only hope now lay in fighting his way out of this prison and back to Koida, to finish what he had started as the chosen one. And if it was too late in this cycle, he would try again in the next, mercilessly crushing his human failings and desires until he did save her.
The pack hunters grew bold, a few loping toward him.
They had to die if he was going to make it out of this pit.
The demon ray rilled invisible wings, hearing nothing but the promise of battle and bloodshed. It would send as many of these craven pack hunters to oblivion as it could before it joined them there.
Raijin launched himself at the creatures.
Chapter Ten
MORTAL LANDS
Koida expected that once the provisions Rila had assigned her to bring aboard were loaded, she would be given a break. But as soon as she and Won-Shik finished loading the final barrel, Cook sat her down at a pot large enough to bathe in and handed her a turnip and the same hook-bladed knife she’d used to open the sacks.
“I’ll put in with Rila for a chopping knife if you decide you’re staying on in the next port. In the here and now, you’ll have to make do with the game knife. Fill the pot. Small chunks. They cook through better.”
“Should I wash them first?” Koida asked.
“They’ll cook clean.” With that, Cook turned back to her work, slicing blood oranges into a cask of what smelled like a very stiff liquor.
As she had never handled a knife before, Ro or otherwise, learning to cut the turnips into chunks took several trials. The hooked blade made the task even more awkward. Luckily, the glass moon venom kept Koida from feeling the frustration and defeat of the difficult and tedious task and allowed her to keep a clear enough head to figure out what she was doing.
After a time, the sounds of Cook working and the clomp of feet on the deck above faded to the background and Koida fell into a mindless rhythm. She didn’t trust herself to meditate while she worked, but she found she was able to work on strengthening her Stone Soul. Holding the mental construct while doing another task would help her keep it strong when she wasn’t using the glass moon serpent.
Using Raijin’s rescue of her as her unbreakable fact, she was soon centered and shielded inside a soul of stone. With a glance at Cook, who had turned her back to stoke the fire in the hanging stove, Koida set her hook blade in her lap and pushed up her sleeve.
The two-headed demon serpent was curled lazily around her wrist, well-fed and dreamy, glowing with its haze of white Ro. The little beast had certainly grown in the days she’d been using it. When it had first snuck up on her around the campfire, the white adder was no longer than her hand and only as wide as her smallest finger. Now it encircled her wrist twice and was easily as thick as her thumb.
No wonder. She was learning to control her emotions—or at least, not let them control her—but as Cold Sun and Lysander were fond of reminding her, her empire’s Path of the Living Blade was built on high-strung temperaments and hot blood. With her, the demon serpent had plenty to feed on.
Koida stroked a thumb down the glass moon adder’s spine, from the place where its half-heads forked away from one another to the tip of its tail. The cr
eature relaxed, letting its fangs slip out of her flesh. As it went, the deep aches of a morning spent training with Hush and Cold Sun followed by a day spent carrying objects throbbed to life in her muscles. Her right hand was cramped and blistered from clutching the hook blade, and her legs and back were stiff from sitting for so long hunched over her work.
The living lavaglass in her left arm, however, remained beneath her flesh, encasing her bones rather than shifting into a moon broadsword. In spite of the returned aches and pains, her Stone Soul held strong.
Gently stroking the glass moon serpent’s heads with her thumb, Koida coiled it back into the puzzle box. She’d been terrified of the little demon adder when she first found it slithering around her neck, but she had to admit she was growing rather fond of the beast. It was a much more pleasant demon than Pernicious, and its blue half-tongues and mouths against its white scales were actually quite beautiful.
The loud scrape of wood on tin made Koida jump and snap the puzzle box shut. Cook grunted mightily as she hefted herself onto a large stool she had dragged over to the hanging stove.
“Girl. Whatever you claimed your name was.”
“Koi—er, Ha-Koi.”
“How are the turnips coming?”
Koida glanced into the depths of the enormous cauldron. Though it felt as if she had been working for hours, she had only managed to cover the bottom of the pot.
“Slowly,” she admitted.
Cook’s expression darkened. “What do you plan to feed these hungry sailors tonight, Koi-Ha-Koi? Water soup?”
“No, Cook. Apologies, I—”
“They can’t eat apologies. Bring me that pot and a pile of turnips. While I’m doing the task that I assigned the lazy little ship’s girl, she can take the water buckets and fetch them full.”
Koida’s left arm tingled, the living lavaglass trying to shift to the surface with the combination of shame and anger building in her heartcenter, but she forced herself to keep breathing and focus on her unbreakable fact.
