by eden Hudson
He had to think. What would he do if he were fighting a human opponent with greater weight, strength, and reach?
Simple. Find the weaknesses, use his faster maneuverability to get them to overcommit their strength and reach to an attack, then exploit the places they couldn’t defend fast enough.
The guai-ray senses roved over the Great Akane. It found eyes set into the wide, round face at the center of its grasping limbs, three huge soft bubbles of gelatinous humors wrapped in a thin layer of slimy flesh.
The next time the beak snapped open, Raijin shook off the smaller tentacles and let the suction pull him toward the closest eye. His unbroken arm shot out and he speared his fingers into the soft ball of slime, hooking himself to the shoulder to stop his progress toward the razor maw. Corrupted gelatinous humor poured out, gagging Raijin with the thick taste of rotting disease.
Howling with pain, the Great Akane shot toward the surface of the water, its whipping body propelling it like an arrow loosed from a bow. The force of its sudden lunge flattened Raijin to its face. Straining under the crushing pressure, he crawled closer to the eye.
They burst out of the water, the cave thundering with the tidal wave explosion.
Free of the crush for a split second, Raijin pulled with all his might and threw his full body onto the eye. He hit it a heartbeat before the Great Akane slammed into the ceiling of the cave. The impact lodged him deep in the ball of sludge.
With no Ro left to shoot out electricity and no lavaglass to manifest a blade, Raijin couldn’t use any sort of quick and painless technique to end the creature’s life. His only option was awful and savage, but he had no other choice. He turned to the brutal, instinctual fighting of claw and tooth that he had relied on in the tunnels.
The Great Akane howled and thrashed, smashing the cave to bits, but Raijin didn’t stop. With the guai-ray directing his actions, he bit and clawed his way down into the creature, smashing through a thin layer of bone at the back of the eye socket and tearing into the Great Akane’s brain.
The Great Akane crashed into the ceiling of the cave once more, this time breaking free of the underground cavern and falling with a thunderous slap onto dry land aboveground. Its tiny legs scratched at the rain-soaked earth, but weren’t strong enough to budge its enormous head. Its dying howl echoed across the Land of the Immortals.
The Great Akane’s electrical signature flickered, then went out. An enormous quantity of Ro filtered up from its heartcenter, through its body, and plunged into Raijin.
Deep in the creature’s brain, Raijin screamed as the Ro flooded into him. It was too much. His heartcenter was going to explode. Electricity sizzled through his muscles, making him writhe and twist as he fought to contain the Great Akane’s devastating life force. It battered the walls of his heartcenter like a rabid beast trying to tear free. His heartcenter groaned under the strain, on the verge of cracking open and spilling the Ro everywhere.
“No!” Raijin roared, thunder cracking across the Land of Immortals at his shout.
He wouldn’t lose now. Not after everything he’d done. Not after everything he’d sacrificed. His life, his Path, his love. He fought back, cornering the rabid beast, tackling it and clutching like he was trying to break its neck. It raged inside of him, clawing and ripping wildly. Raijin clamped down tighter, crushing the life from it.
All at once, the Ro shuddered and collapsed in on itself, leaving behind a dense, spinning globe of bloodred lightning. Sparks shimmered and popped inside his heartcenter, arcing from the Ro.
In their brilliant red flash, he saw himself cleansing the Grandfather Spirit’s immortal energy so many lifetimes ago, the payment for being sent to the mortal world to find his wife.
Panting, exhausted, broken arm hanging limp at his side, his flesh covered in needle holes, scratches, and cuts, Raijin crawled out of the Great Akane’s head. He dropped into the mud on his stomach, the rain pouring down from overhead rinsing away a small measure of the filth covering him from head to toe.
The guai-ray senses let him know that the Great Akane’s corpse was dissipating in a haze of smoke and that two much smaller electrical signatures were approaching, both leaping off wildly into madness at irregular intervals. Tentatively, Kitsu and Tsune crept out of the tangle of brush and vines where they had been hiding.
“You did it.”
“You survived.”
“Misuru won’t know we helped you.”
“I can’t believe he survived.”
Raijin ignored them. He focused inward once more, finding the sparking, angry globe of red lightning in his heartcenter. Following the pattern he had just seen in the flash of memory, he began to cycle the Ro. Not along the known Ro pathways he had learned to use as a child, but through his muscle and organs, from his head to foot and across his torso, the circuits crossing one another at his heartcenter.
The Thunderer’s Cross.
Slowly, painstakingly, one hair-thin strand of the Ro began to shift, going from bloodstained red to a dark orange, then a pale gold, then finally deepening into brilliant green jade. He was so happy to see the familiar shade that he laughed. It wasn’t his, and he couldn’t keep it, but it was such a relief to know that his Ro wasn’t stained forever. As long as he could cycle like this, he could purify any corruption from it.
Raijin turned his attention back to the rest of the Great Akane’s life force, pulling it through his body in the Cross, cleansing it one strand at a time. The rain outside began to lift as the storm dissipated, but he kept his focus inward until the last of the Ro shifted to the bright, beautiful green of the purest jade.
Finally finished, Raijin got to his knees and breathed the purified life force out into the clearing created by the Great Akane’s tree-crushing body.
As he breathed, the Ro took on solid mass: A wide, round head the size of a bison surrounded by gill fronds as long and thick as yearling cedars. A mouth like a fissure in the earth. Four weak legs crushed beneath a huge, fat body and a long flat tail to propel it through the water.
The Grandfather Spirit shook his enormous head, gill fronds slapping wetly.
“The Thunderer has returned, and with a healed heartcenter no less,” it rumbled. “Welcome home, Jin-Rammael.”
Chapter Twenty-six
MORTAL LANDS
For miles outside the city there was nothing but vast, endless grassland dotted by the rare copse of trees. The moon shined bright, illuminating the way to one of these wooded islands.
Koida directed Pernicious around to the far side of the low, scrubby thicket, away from where Cold Sun and Hush were climbing down from the war ram. There, she dropped to the rocky ground.
Free of his rider, Pernicious screamed and reared, pawing the air with his enormous brimstone hooves.
“I don’t have time to fight you tonight,” Koida said. “I need to see if Cold Sun and Hush are well.”
Snorting with obvious derision, Pernicious spun and galloped off into the night, hooves striking sparks against the rocky soil. Clearly, their brief run from the junk hadn’t been enough to make up for his imprisonment at sea.
Koida picked her way through the brambles and twisted branches to her friends. They were easy to find, as Hush’s hands were lit with glowing ruby Ro and pressed to Cold Sun’s ankle.
“What happened?” Koida asked, taking a seat beside the huge warrior.
“My foot was caught between Cliff Breaker and the door of his cage,” Cold Sun explained. “The Wise Physician Hush has been kind enough to repair it.”
His explanation broke off as something cracked audibly. In the red light of Hush’s Ro, Koida saw a dark shape move beneath his skin. Cold Sun’s lips flattened into a hard line, but he didn’t grunt with pain or cry out.
Hush squeezed his shoulder.
Cold Sun gave her a shallow nod. “Understood.”
Finished with the hulking warrior, Hush turned to Koida, her dark almond eyes roving over Koida’s face and upper body with obvious c
oncern.
“Oh,” Koida said, realizing how dreadful she must look. With the glass moon serpent numbing her pain, she couldn’t feel the bloody nose and whip-cuts. “I forgot.”
Hush’s brows drew low in a scowl. She plucked back the sleeve of the silken purple robes and snatched away the glass moon serpent. Pain poured into Koida like boiling waste, making everything burn and throb and hurt. She slumped against the twisted trunk of the bent little evergreen behind her. Fear, too, returned, though Koida knew she must surely be safe, and her arm shifted to the lavaglass moon broadsword, its deadly edge hissing against the rocky dirt as it appeared.
Disgust drawn in the lines of her face, Hush tossed the demon adder at the gently waving grass surrounding the trees.
“No!” Koida protested weakly.
The little two-headed demon beast, however, seemed to know its best source of food. It slithered back over to Koida’s side, taking refuge beneath her thigh. Relieved, Koida pulled the glowing white adder out and slipped it into an inner pocket of her robes.
With a roll of her eyes, Hush leaned in and began to prod Koida’s bloody nose.
“Apologies, gifted healer,” Koida said, intending to explain that she couldn’t lose the one creature that guaranteed she could return her lavaglass blade to an arm, but a searing pain in her cheek stole her breath away as the torn muscle separated. Wincing, Koida grabbed the gash the Demon Fox of Nine Tails had opened in the side of her face.
Hush pulled Koida’s hand away from the wound, then inspected it with Ro-enhanced vision.
“Will...” Koida faltered, feeling stupid and vain for asking, but she couldn’t help herself. “Will it scar terribly?”
Hush shook her head, then pressed a hand to Koida’s forehead. Deep calm washed through her heartcenter, relaxing her knotted muscles and clenched teeth.
Koida’s eyes slipped closed. A broken branch poked into her back and she felt sap pulling at her robes, but she felt as if she were half a blink from falling over the edge into sleep.
“Are you certain?” she asked Hush, unable to let go of consciousness yet. “The alchemists at the palace always treated my cuts with cream. Shingti said with my skin, the smallest injury would become a disfiguring scar without it. I know it shouldn’t matter, and I know I spent so much time angry at the poets who would only ever praise my face, but—”
Cold Sun’s heavy hand came to rest on Koida’s shoulder. She tried not to flinch at the sudden flare of pain in the whip-cuts there.
“Do not fear, Koida,” the huge warrior said. “You are in the care of a master. The Wise Physician Hush is a healer to make the best-trained alchemists look like charlatans. Because of her, my ankle will be capable of holding my weight in under an hour and heal without taking on the eventual storm-induced pains broken bones gain over the years. I have seen her do the same for my Uktena brothers and elders, without leaving a scar or a limp. Rest easy and trust her.”
Whether it was the certainty in Cold Sun’s voice or the pause from speaking while he said these things, Koida slipped off to blackness.
What felt like a moment later, bright, hot pain scoured the wound in her cheek. Koida cried out through gritted teeth. Hush sent her an impression of washing the wound clean. From experience, Koida knew this was the worst of the physician’s techniques. She tried to will herself to fall back into unconsciousness, but it was no use. She squirmed and clutched at the sparse grass beneath her until the cleansing process was finished. Then bright red light filled Koida’s left eye as Hush’s Ro began to stitch her face back together one burning suture at a time. Once that was over, Hush had Koida lean forward while she scoured and closed each of the remaining whip-cuts covering her back, shoulders, and upper arm.
Finally finished, Hush sent more calm pouring through Koida’s body, followed by an impression of resting.
“My sincerest gratitude, gifted physician,” Koida said, giving the woman a seated bow. “You are always healing me far beyond my ability to ever repay you.”
In the moonlight Koida could see crinkles form around Hush’s eyes as she smiled beneath her cloth wrappings. The silent woman stood and gestured at the city behind her.
“You are going back to find Lysander Foreign-Born?” Cold Sun asked.
Hush nodded, then slipped off into the night.
Koida must have drifted off to sleep again, because when she opened her eyes once more, Cold Sun had dug a pair of pits next to each other, connecting them by a small tunnel to allow air through. While she watched, he built a small fire in one with twigs and dry grass. It was quite a feat of engineering, hiding the flames beneath ground level without smothering the fire.
“Where there is a fire and a friend, one may rest easily,” he said, settling down in front of it as if it were a cookfire in his father’s longhouse.
“Tonight, I am especially grateful for both,” Koida said, rubbing her eyes with her flesh and bone hand.
Glowing lashes from Rila’s Demon Fox of Nine Tails flashed across the backs of her eyelids.
Koida flinched, then shook her head at herself. By Hush’s incredible healing, her injuries were almost entirely gone, and she felt no tenderness or pain where they had been, but a black, draining heartsickness had taken root in her chest. It came and went in waves, intensifying when she remembered Rila’s stump pouring blood or the quartermaster’s furious scream as she lunged.
“That woman just wouldn’t fall,” she said, turning to Cold Sun. “I don’t think even all that I did managed to kill her. Are fights always like that? So hard?”
“Most I have seen end much faster.” He speared her with a knowing glance. “Of course, you were only tasked with distracting her until the demon beasts were free.”
“I wasn’t going to fight her,” Koida protested. “But she was so...cavalier about serving up ship’s boys to Singh. As if we were the ones who had done something wrong.”
“And so you, who among us has the least experience in combat, let your anger goad you into attacking?”
“I held onto my Stone Soul.” Koida looked down into the fire. “I just didn’t retreat into it very well.”
Cold Sun’s lip twitched.
“At least you are learning the difference.” He broke off a small dead branch and used it to stir the embers. “I suspect the quartermaster is used to her weapon intimidating those beneath her into compliance. At most, she may have had to deal a lash or two to maintain order. I do not think she was prepared for a subordinate to challenge her openly. Her stubborn refusal to relinquish control may have been what kept her fighting for so long.”
“Tell me truly, Cold Sun—it would have been over far sooner if you’d been fighting her, wouldn’t it?”
“The Uktena train to kill with very few strikes. Each blow is precise, and the Armor of the Stone-Souled Warrior reinforces them so that they immediately incapacitate what they do not kill. It is the most efficient way of conducting a battle, and it is much less painful for our enemies.”
Koida let the air hiss out of her lungs, remembering the slice that opened up the backs of Rila’s legs.
“I spent my whole childhood wishing I could manifest a bladed weapon so I could go to war alongside my father and my sister.” She held up her lavaglass blade, its intricate spurs and deadly curves glinting in the competing colors of the moon and fire. “Today I fought one woman who wasn’t even used to fighting. I don’t think I could survive a real battle.”
“This is one way in which you are like my brother Raijin.” Cold Sun’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “You believe you should have mastered your blade in spite of neglecting your training. He often returned to the tribe after long stretches away and failed to defeat me.”
With a laugh, Koida closed her eyes and leaned back against the evergreen trunk again.
“I know it’s been almost thirteen days since we last trained, but, Cold Sun, if you tell me to get up right now and practice the Uktena war art, I will stab you without any remorse.”
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“You will try to stab me, but I will deflect the blow because I have not been neglecting my training.”
Giggles bubbled up from Koida’s heartcenter. It felt so good to laugh after such an awful, brutal day that the fit lasted much longer than Cold Sun’s teasing deserved.
When finally she lapsed into silence, Koida forced herself to focus and rebuild her Stone Soul. She coaxed the lavaglass back into her arm until it surrounded her bones, then turned her attention to the dual Ros in her heartcenter. The deep calm of Raijin’s jade life force looked cool and inviting. She missed him so badly that her throat ached at the thought.
“I saw him again,” she said quietly. “I meant to tell you.”
Cold Sun’s eyes met hers over the fire. “My brother?”
Koida nodded. “He saw me, too. At least, he heard me. When I saw him, his eyes were torn out.” A pang of sympathy pain shot through her own eyes at the thought of what he must have endured. “Have the Uktena collected any information about cycling Ro through the body? Not in the heartcenter or the Ro pathways, but through the muscle and bone and organs, from head to foot.”
“Now, where did you hear about something like that, Princess?” Lysander asked.
Koida jumped, her lavaglass blade reappearing, and Cold Sun snapped his head around to face the foreigner as Lysander and Hush stepped out of the shadows.
The foreigner’s blood-soaked traveling clothes had been replaced with loose-fitting black fabric—a jacket that tied down the side, a hood that wrapped around the face until only his icy blue eyes could be seen, and a pair of billowing pants tucked into his boots. Over his shoulder, he carried the oiled leather bag Koida had seen him with at the Uktena encampment.
“Hush found you,” Koida said.
“Sorry to disappoint.” Lysander smirked. “I know you were hoping otherwise.”
“Only a little.” Surviving this day had put Koida in a good enough mood to even jest with him. “How did you evade the guards?”
