by eden Hudson
Raijin saved me. I can endure something as trivial as this mean-tempered woman to save him.
The hot tingling in her blade arm subsided as she took refuge in the layers of calm protection her fact provided.
“Meals turn on a schedule that doesn’t wait for you, Koi-Ha-Koi,” Cook said, her raucous voice filling the kitchen. “Get that pot over here before our sailors starve to death.”
Koida gritted her teeth. The universe must have truly wanted to test her Stone Soul without the glass moon serpent. Forcing herself to concentrate on Raijin, Koida hauled the enormous cauldron to Cook and dropped it on the table, then carried an armload of turnips to her.
She hadn’t realized how dirty she was getting just handling the vegetables. She dusted her hands on her silk riding pants. Perhaps after she was finished with her kitchen tasks, she could wash.
Looking forward to that unknown point in the future when she could rest, Koida took the buckets Cook had indicated and left the galley in search of water.
Unfortunately for Koida, the break in work never came. She was so busy carrying bucketfuls of water from the freshwater basin—and being berated by Cook for splashing them nearly empty on her way—that she did not realize the cargo junk beneath her feet had set sail until it pitched without warning and she sloshed into a wall, spilling an entire bucket on herself.
When the cauldron was filled to the brim with turnips and water, Cook had her carry wood to keep up the fire. Koida had never gotten a sliver before, but by the time she was finished, she felt certain her hands were more splinter than they were flesh.
Her Stone Soul held the entire time, though less and less from self-disciplined focus and more from exhaustion wringing her dry of even anger and frustration. She decided as long as it kept her lavaglass broadsword hidden, one was as good as the other.
After what seemed like days, the tasks in the galley ran out, and Cook sent her up on deck to find Quartermaster Rila. Thinking she might finally be dismissed for the day, a small measure of Koida’s fatigue slipped away, and she rushed up the ship-tail stairs into the early evening sunlight.
She found the hairless woman pacing the deck, keeping a close eye on someone or something high in the rigging of the central mast.
“Apologies for the interruption, Quartermaster Rila, but Cook said I wasn’t needed in the galley for the moment and told me to report to you,” Koida said, following the woman on her circuitous route around the mast.
“Good,” Rila responded without looking her way. “Here now!” the woman barked at whoever was up there. “Mind your holds! The ship’s pillar is no place for monkey playing time!”
“As you say, Quartermaster!” a familiar voice shouted down.
Koida tilted back her head to find Lysander running through the ropes and clambering out onto the crossbeam as if he had been born high in the rigging of a junk. He looked more at home up there than he had walking on dry land.
Perhaps that was why he’d been so insistent that they take the sea route to the northern side of the continent.
Koida couldn’t stifle a gasp as the yellow-haired man leapt from the beam to a netting of rope and began to clamber down. Beside her, Rila cursed him for an attention-seeking fool.
When he was close enough to the deck, Lysander hopped out of the lines and landed in front of them.
“Main line’s loosed and ready to swing the sail, Quartermaster,” he said, beaming at the hairless woman.
Rila squinted at him. “Wipe that simpleminded smile off your face, sailor. Get over there and belay that line for Fu-Sun.”
“Aye, Quartermaster.” Lysander turned as serious as death, catching Koida’s eyes for a heartbeat before heading off toward a pair of sailors handling cables that stretched high into the sails.
Rila’s dark brown eyes fell on Koida. “You. The swab bucket and brush mop are tied left-gunwale-side. Get that vomit up near the ship-neck swabbed clean before it leaves a stain on my deck.”
“Yes, Quartermaster.”
It took Koida some time and the lucky intervention of a brawny sailor covered in slashing black negation tattoos that marked out his Heroic Record to learn that the gunwale was the low wall running around the sides of the ship. The left and right gunwale sides, the disgraced former warrior artist explained, were decided by which gunwale was to your left or right when you looked out from the helm toward the ship-neck.
Once Koida had found the bucket, another several minutes went to picking apart the dense knots holding the brush mop and bucket to the low wall. The stiff fibers in the ropes poked a myriad of new holes in her hands, drawing blood in a few places.
Just as the brush mop came loose, a long shadow fell over Koida. She spun around, imagining Yoichi’s slender form clad in citrine armor, as he had appeared on the banks of the Uktena’s sacred boiling pools. Lavaglass surged toward the surface of her skin, ready to defend against his attack.
“How are you faring in your tasks?” Captain Singh asked, raising one side of his connected brows.
Koida hurried to hide her burgeoning blade arm behind her back, willing the lavaglass to return to flesh and bone as she considered how best to answer the captain. She couldn’t very convincingly say she was doing well, but she didn’t want him to think she was unable to handle the work and lay claim to Pernicious or Cliff Breaker.
“I...am learning,” she said, hoping it was true. “Apologies, Captain, but the water for the swab bucket—does it come from the same reservoir as the cooking water, or—”
Singh took the bucket from her, coiled the rope that had lashed it to the gunwale around his fist, then tossed the bucket overboard. Koida hardly had time to be surprised. A moment later, the rope around his fist pulled tight, and Singh began to haul it back up. He deposited a bucketful of seawater on the deck beside her.
Koida bowed deeply to him. “Gratitude, generous Captain.”
“Don’t come to expect it. If your mute friend can’t work through her seasickness, then you and the rest of your companions will have to divide her tasks amongst yourselves or pay her passage.”
Before Koida could ask what he was talking about, the captain turned on one booted heel and strode toward the half-deck at the back of the ship.
Chapter Eleven
LAND OF IMMORTALS
Raijin knew immediately that he had returned to the dream, because in it, he could see.
The Thunderer was purifying a corrupted spirit in the cloud forest when he felt the ground shake beneath his feet. An agonized feminine cry went up, then immediately cut off.
As before, Raijin had no control over his actions, but he felt the Thunderer infusing his body with Ro. He shot toward the sound, whipping through the trees with the speed and agility of a hurricane’s unpredictable gusts.
He reached the edge of the impact site in moments. The trees had been scorched and leveled in concentric rings, and at the epicenter lay a smoking crater of churned earth, vitrified into stone. When concentrated, his lightning bolt was powerful enough to do the same, but he rarely allowed them to reach that intensity. It would be too simple to lose control and strike something or someone he hadn’t intended to.
He climbed the lip of the crater, its crude glass shell crunching beneath his feet.
At the center, a woman writhed, clutching her heartcenter and gritting her teeth.
Ha-Koi.
Raijin leapt into the crater. Heat battered him back like debris in a tornado. He called up a torrential downpour. The rain hissed and turned to steam before it touched the ground, but it cooled the air enough to slow the fiery gusts. He fought his way through the heat until he knelt at the Dragon’s side.
Soot and sweat streaked her pale skin, and burns sizzled across her face. Her hands were shaking, blistering and charring over, but she pressed them to her heartcenter as if she were trying to keep it from tearing free of her chest.
Raijin sent Ro down his arms and poured sleet onto her hands. She made a strangled sound in her thro
at, trying to pull away, but he caught hold of her arm and intensified the cold rush of icy rain until her shaking stopped. Carefully, he lifted her hands away from her chest.
The flesh over her heartcenter had burned away, leaving behind glowing, white-hot bone.
“Call your immortal energy back,” he instructed her, shouting to be heard over the roar of an invisible blazing fire. “Contain it or it will destroy you!”
Ha-Koi kicked him away, the strike throwing him hundreds of yards backward into the side of the crater. The vitrified glass cracked around him, knocking the breath from his lungs, but in a heartbeat he was on his feet. If she didn’t control herself, her fire could destroy the Land of Immortals, casting out not only thousands of other immortals, but destroying innumerable spirits and plants that could never reform on any other plane. He couldn’t allow it to come to that.
Using celestial speed, he shot in. His heavenly body looked and felt as if it were still standing beside the edge of the crater, but he crashed into Ha-Koi, pinning her to the ground.
“Control it! Don’t allow it to control you!”
Her eyes met his, glowing as white as molten metal. She pulled back a fist, purple flame covering her arm to the shoulder.
“Please,” he begged. “Don’t force me to destroy you.”
Her irises flickered violet.
“Do it,” she hissed, her black fangs flashing.
He should have. Uncountable souls depended on him holding to his duty, acting with ruthless swiftness and dispassionate judgment. But he waited.
Ha-Koi’s eyes searched his face, switching back and forth between cool violet and molten white.
Was that uncertainty? His jaw clenched until his teeth ached. Unmaking was poised in his heartcenter, ready to strike. He was prepared to do the unthinkable, but prayed he wouldn’t have to.
Slowly, the heat pulled back, coalescing in her breast. With a final agonized scream, Ha-Koi resealed her heartcenter. She fell limp, eyes closed, her body trembling on the rocky crust of glass.
He intensified the icy downpour until finally the cooling drops broke through the shield of heat and made it to her body, hissing against her burns.
“You should have Unmade me, Thunderer,” she said quietly, not opening her eyes. “You’ll never get another chance.”
“Where is your home?” he asked.
“The Carp Gate in the Gartooth Mountains.”
“A corruption has taken root in the woods surrounding those mountains. They are swarming with akane, and in your wounded state, you will draw every pack for miles. Do you have anyone who can protect you while you heal yourself?”
Her head twitched a weak negative. “I live with my sister, but she’s away, a guest of Lord and Lady Shen-Bao in the Flowing Waves Desert. It would cause grave offense for her to leave them so soon for something so small. It is no matter. I will protect myself.”
Raijin lifted Ha-Koi into his arms, her flesh scorching his. He redirected cooling Ro to the area to keep it from burning. Careful not to jostle her, he leapt into the sky.
The Dragon raised her head long enough to glance around.
“Your sense of direction is terrible, Thunderer,” she said. “The mountains are behind us, not ahead.”
“This is the way to my home,” he said. “You will be safe there until you’ve healed enough to defend yourself.”
He expected her to protest, but instead Ha-Koi let her head drop against his shoulder as if she were too exhausted to hold it up any longer.
After a time, she spoke again. “Aren’t you going to ask what I did?”
“You must have consumed the immortal energy of another.” It was the only way her body would not have been strong enough to contain what she had taken on. “Whose was it?”
“An old enemy.”
“Did you know you were going into battle?”
She nodded against his chest.
“Yet you didn’t prepare your heartcenter ahead of time?” he asked.
“I took several fortification pills, which should have strengthened it enough to receive the new energy.”
Raijin shook his head. “Fortification pills are for the unexpected killing of ten-thousand-year-old akane or spirits. When it comes to the accumulated energy of other immortals, they are a teapot trying to catch a waterfall.”
“You are forced to take on the immortal energy of others not only when you Unmake them, but also when fools who believe they can best you attack or when you come upon those abusing weaker individuals. You cannot know when the latter will occur, so you cannot always be prepared for the flood of new energy that comes with their defeat.”
“I can be, and I am.”
“How?”
“Training.”
She scoffed weakly. “The Thunderer who wears the Corona of Falling Stars and sits atop the final tier of the Immortal Path still bothers to train? No immortal stands a chance of defeating you, Thunderer. What enemy do you train to fight?”
“Myself. I am my greatest enemy, and I train to defeat myself and my nature every day.”
Ha-Koi’s hair whispered against his chest as she shook her head. “Those who fight their nature always lose. At best, we delay. We never win.”
“You won today,” he said. “Is that not enough until tomorrow?”
Ha-Koi was silent for several miles.
Then, “You truly believe what you’re saying.”
“I saw your victory with my own eyes,” he said.
“Not that. You believe that one can defeat their nature each day.”
He nodded. “It’s a battle that never grows easier, but with training and self-discipline, you can grow strong enough to fight it.”
Ha-Koi lifted her head once more and looked into his eyes.
“Could you train me?” she asked.
RAIJIN SPAT THICK, salty blood from his mouth, then collapsed in a heap on the stone floor of the sinkhole, surrounded by the corpses of pack hunters.
Drying gore covered him in a sticky film from head to toe, at least half of it his, and there was a bit of gristle caught in his teeth that he didn’t want to think about. He would feel better if he dragged himself back to the rainwater pouring through the ceiling of the cavern and washed some of the slime and dirt away, but for the moment, he just wanted to rest.
He had died and returned to the bottom of the sinkhole three more times, killing a few more of the pack hunters with each trip. The last round appeared as barely more than a blur in his mind. He remembered waking from the death dream in the downpour and immediately switching to the guai-ray senses, chasing down the last of the pack hunters, wily and cagey now that they knew what he was capable of. Then a long stretch of nothing but blood.
He was beginning to wonder if what Ha-Koi had said was true, if he had spent his entire mortal life training to defeat his nature only to give in to it now. If every principle he had believed in and fought to hold to had been nothing more than a delay. He didn’t hesitate anymore, didn’t try to hold back. He fought like a demon beast from the moment he felt the approach of the pack hunters until his heartcenter absorbed their stolen Ro.
The bloody red life force prowled his heartcenter, clawing at the boundaries like a wild animal fighting to break free of a trap.
Instinctively, Raijin fought back. Gritting his teeth, he fortified the walls of his heartcenter and pressed inward from all sides as if he were tightening a fist. The Ro raged at the sudden pressure, clawing and biting, but Raijin clasped it even harder.
Without warning, the Ro imploded, condensing into a concentrated ball of bloody red light. Relief flooded Raijin, and he let out a rush of breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
As he lay there panting, Raijin realized that he had advanced.
He pushed himself up to sitting, torn skin from his most recent fight flaring angrily and the still-drying blood pinching and pulling at his flesh and hair as he did. As before, his movements paused and stuttered.
Misuru
had said the strange halting motion would go away at Tier 2, when he gained his heavenly body. Covered in gore and fighting for his every breath, he certainly didn’t feel as if his body had reached divinity. If not the Immortal Path, then what path was he traveling now?
Whatever it was, he had to get out of this prison.
First, however, he wanted the blood off. He couldn’t do anything about its stain on his heartcenter, but he could at least wash it off his skin.
With a grimace, Raijin got to his feet and limped toward the sound of rainwater gushing down from above. He stepped into the icy spray, letting its cold numb the aches and pains from his last battle with the pack hunters. It took some scrubbing, but most of the gore finally rinsed away as well.
With the ragged edge of a torn thumbnail, he picked the bit of akane gristle from his teeth and spat it out. Though his rational mind was fast trying to cover it up, he knew he’d torn out the throat of at least one of the pack hunters with his teeth. It was disturbing how easily the demon beast had taken control, banishing all reason and thought in favor of survival instinct and savage bloodlust.
Raijin stepped out of the deluge and sheeted water from his arms and chest. He shook his wet hair vigorously, sending a miniature rain of droplets pattering across the stone floor of the sinkhole. He doubted the pack hunters were the only akane in this place, and knew it was likely he would spill more of their blood soon, but he felt a small measure better without it caked onto his skin. More human.
The guai-ray senses remained vigilant, searching for any hint of a threat as Raijin found his way back to the wall. He hated not knowing how large the cavern was or what lurked just beyond his sensory range. His palm ran over the line he’d dug into the dirt, but he never stumbled over pack hunter corpses. Like the akane Misuru had defeated, their bodies had blown away in a swirl of smoke once their Ro was absorbed.
Eventually, the guai-ray senses picked up a change in the air currents just ahead. He felt his way to the mouth of a tunnel, then stumbled as he tried to slide his foot inside. There was a slight step up. Absently keeping pressure on the throbbing pain in his broken ribs, Raijin navigated the step into the passageway.
