by Claire Luana
The sunburner soldiers attacked the other creature with sword and spear, but it grabbed the spear-wielding man, pulling him close. It lowered its shadowy helm to the burner’s golden head while the other man hacked uselessly at it with his sword, howling in anger.
Rika’s wide eyes flew back to the other creature, the one that had taken her father. The moonburner, already fading to ash, turned a face cracked with graying skin and mouthed a single word at Rika. “Run!”
The creature hissed in frustration, a high-pitched clicking scream that grated against her eardrums. Rika met Koji’s terrified eyes and began to crawl towards the corner of the tent. If they could wriggle under, they could take Enzo and ride for Yoshai…warn her mother…
Rika screamed as a hand wrapped around her ankle, yanking her back towards the center of the room. She turned to find the man in black leather, his green eyes glowing like emerald coals. She fought against him, landing a vicious blow with her boot to his jaw. It hardly fazed him. With one swift motion, he tossed her by her ankle into the center of the tent. She tumbled to a stop in the pile of her father’s clothes, gagging as her hands scrambled in the powdery ash that was all that was left of her father. Her flailing fingers brushed against her father’s sword hilt, and she grabbed it, clinging to it like a lifeline.
A navy-blue uniform collapsed onto the carpet next to Rika with a shower of ash. The creature—the soul-eater—had finished off the moonburner. Rika shied away, crawling back, dragging the sword with her. She bumped against a pair of boots and looked up to see the dark-haired man holding a knife to her brother’s throat, his other hand twisted painfully in Koji’s golden hair. Enzo was backed into the corner of the room, rearing and tossing his head, his horn swinging in dangerous arcs. But the man seemed to understand that Enzo wouldn’t do anything to risk Koji, and so he had subdued the seishen more effectively than the bars of a cage.
The last sunburner was being sucked dry by the other soul-eater now, and Master Tato, the last member of her father’s party, was huddled in a ball against the far wall, his knees drawn up to his chest.
When the sunburner’s empty armor clanked to the carpet, the soul-eaters turned as one. First they looked at her, then at Koji, then at Master Tato. She felt like a pig at the slaughterhouse, having her fate decided for her.
The soul-eater who had taken her father turned to Master Tato, and he cowered from it, scuttling as far as he could against the wall of the tent. “Take them,” he said, pointing a shaking finger at her.
Rika narrowed her eyes, a surge of anger cutting through her terror. He was a sunburner, sworn to protect the royal family.
“I’m a historian,” he said. “Scholar. Librarian. I have much knowledge about this world. About its people. Their defenses, their resources. I could help you.”
Rika’s jaw dropped. Not only was he willing to sell her and Koji out, but to save his own skin, he would sell out their whole civilization?
“Master Tato,” she hissed, the fire of her fury burning away the fog of fear and disbelief. “Don’t do this.”
He ignored her, keeping his focus on the soul-eater’s black form.
The soul-eater turned to its brethren and spoke in that hissing, clicking language it had used before. She wanted to clap her hands over her ears, but she held them at her sides, one hand tight around the sword hilt. It seemed the creatures reached a decision, because the one with all its fingers advanced on Master Tato and buried its claws in his tunic, hauling him to his feet. Master Tato whimpered, squeezing his eyes shut. But the soul-eater didn’t take him in its embrace as it had the other burners. Instead, it took his head between two hands and breathed out a green mist that glowed like swamp gas. Master Tato squirmed but couldn’t help but breathe it in. As soon as he took a breath, his movements stilled and he went stiff. Then his eyes flared the same green as the other man’s, and the creature dropped him to the ground, where he stumbled but caught himself, swaying on his feet. Master Tato’s face was strangely blank. And those eyes.
As soon as Tato’s feet hit the ground, the soul-eaters turned on her and Koji, the last two alive and free in the tent. Enzo reared with a fearsome whinny, his golden hooves flashing through the air, his teeth clacking viciously. The man in black leather twisted his knife more tightly against Koji’s throat and Koji cried out in pain. A trickle of blood ran down towards his collarbone.
The soul-eaters must have seen the threat that Enzo posed, because the one missing fingers moved towards her brother, its claws outstretched.
“No!” Rika cried, rushing to stand before her brother. She didn’t know what had come over her—what had finally moved her feet. Whether it was bravery, a desire to protect her brother, or cowardice, not wanting to watch him die too. But either way, she couldn’t do nothing anymore. “Take me,” she said. “He is heir to the throne. If he dies, my mother and our armies will hunt you down until every last one of you is dust on the Earth.”
“She lies,” Master Tato said, his voice monotone. “She is the heir.”
The soul-eater took a step forward, its armor clanking. It took all of Rika’s restraint to stand her ground. The thing was immense—she hardly came up to its chest. “I care not for heirs or bargains or peace. This land is ours. We will take what we want from it. Your armies are flies to be brushed aside.” Its breath smelled sour, like sulfur from a hot spring. Bile rose in her mouth and she swallowed thickly.
“You’re wrong,” she said. Her voice was small. It was all she had, this small bit of defiance. She wanted to scream, to beg, to collapse over her father’s clothes, weeping. But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t let this beast have the satisfaction. And then she realized it wasn’t all she had. She still held her father’s sword limp in her hand, its heavy tip trailing behind her on the carpet. That’s how she would go out. So she summoned her training—the years on the sparring ground with Armsmistress Emi—and swung the sword with all her might, right at the crease in the creature’s armor where helmet shadowed its shoulder.
The sword made contact with the creature’s outstretched hand with a clang. It had caught it in the air, its movement impossibly fast. It wrenched the sword from her grip and flung it across the room. Master Tato had to scramble out of the way to avoid being clubbed by it.
The creature’s claws shot out and wrapped around her throat, jerking her into the air and against its hard armor, its other arms wrapping around her, its claws digging into soft flesh. Breath left her as her body smashed into its breastplate. She tried to scream, but nothing came out.
It let out a strange hissing noise that Rika realized was laughter, but she was too wrapped in fear and pain to feel the outrage she should. It leaned over her, bowing its body over hers how it had her father’s, and its piercing green eyes plunged into her soul. She felt it swimming through her thoughts, her memories, gathering them to it, ripping them from their rightful home towards the unnatural vortex of its magic. She railed against it, struggling to hold on, to fight it, to deny it the sustenance it so desperately craved. And as she grabbed for a handhold, a grip, anything to keep her mind and her soul in her body, her mental scrambling brushed against something. Something warm and bright and good and strong. Something strange, but familiar at the same time. She gripped it desperately, not knowing what it was—a piece of herself, or this world perhaps. But it held fast, held firm, and she pulled more of herself back into herself. She heaved herself away from the soul-eater, its power sucking at her like quicksand. But blessedly, she broke free of its hold and found herself fully back in herself—her mind, her body, her soul where it should be. Firmly, securely inside her body. And there was something new. When she had broken free of the soul-eater’s grip, her handhold had loosened as well. It was tumbling towards her as if a rope had come untied.
The soul-eater was keening its strange sound, its claws still firmly affixed in her body, but its eyes were glowing like fiery green embers. She could feel anger radiating off it, through the strange unearthly conn
ection between them, and she could feel power growing, surging towards her, energy enough to make her hair stand on end.
The soul-eater seemed to feel it too, because it looked up from her with confusion, its grip loosening. Rika pulled her feet up and kicked against its armor, twisting herself out of its grip, its claws tearing from her skin in furrows of pain. The walls of the tent flapped in an unnatural breeze and for a moment, all grew still.
A jet of pure white light tore through the ceiling of the tent and exploded into the soul-eater, enveloping it in a brightness so sharp it burned through Rika’s closed eyelids. Stunned by the ringing in her ears and the blinding of the flash, it took Rika a moment to realize that the soul-eater who had seized her was on the ground, shimmering ivory flames licking across its broken body. It was dead. She had killed it. Something was rising above the smoking corpse, a shimmering mist that undulated and rose towards the freedom of the hole in the tent and the starry sky beyond. The mist looked like…people. With a start, Rika realized what they were. Hundreds of souls, floating, spinning, faces with strange features cast in relief and abandon.
The black-haired man had dropped his knife from Koji’s throat, overcome with shock at the sight of his dead master. Enzo wasted no time and barreled at the man, his horn lowered like a spear. The man leaped to the side just in time, rolling towards Master Tato. The lone remaining soul-eater came for Rika, hissing and clicking, its talons outstretched. She scrambled away, stealing precious seconds while her mind tried to work out what had just happened. And how to recreate it. What had she done? How had she done it?
Koji pulled himself onto Enzo’s back. “Come on, Rika!” he cried, holding out a hand to her. As Rika rose to make a run for him, a sharp blow landed on the back of her head. She crumpled forward, falling to the ground with a crash. She rolled over, gasping, to find a blurry Master Tato standing above her, a war-hammer held high. He had clubbed her. Rika couldn’t believe it. The librarian had hit her. She tried to scramble away, but her body was sluggish to respond, her thoughts no better. The remaining soul-eater clamped his claws around her, hoisting her into its arms.
Enzo pawed the ground near the door of the tent, rearing in fury. “Rika!” Koji yelled again. Rika tried to pull at the thread of power she had felt a moment before, but whatever it was now slipped from her grasp.
“Go,” she croaked to Koji, motioning with her hand. “Run! Tell Mother…what happened…one of us…warn them…”
Koji’s face was streaked with tears, and he bit his lip as Enzo danced beneath him, clearly torn over abandoning his sister.
“Enzo, save him!” she croaked, hoping the seishen had more sense than her brother.
The last image she saw before darkness overtook her was a seishen’s golden tail disappearing into the night.
CHAPTER 8
RIKA AWOKE TO pain. Her head throbbed and her body felt wrung out and exhausted, as if she had just run up a mountain pass. She turned her head gingerly to take in her surroundings. She was lying on her back on a hard table, a tent of black fabric above her. The flap of the door was propped open, and she squinted into the sunlight beyond. It was daytime. She must have been unconscious for hours. She tried to sit up and found that she couldn’t. A stab of panic lanced through her. Was she paralyzed? She looked down at her body and saw that she was held down by thick leather straps—her wrists, ankles and chest affixed to the table. Fear clawed at her insides as she jerked her arms against the straps.
A shadow passed in front of the sunlight and she froze, craning her neck to make out who entered the tent. It was the black-haired man—the one who had helped the soul-eaters murder her father. “Don’t struggle,” he said in the deep honeyed tone she had heard yesterday. But something was different. His voice—it had inflection. Personality. His handsome face—rather than the blank featureless mask she had seen as he grabbed her by the ankle and dragged her across the tent—was now twisted with something that looked akin to regret. And… “Your eyes,” she said with surprise, her voice nothing more than a hoarse whisper. They no longer glowed with the soul-eater’s unnatural magic. They were still green, she realized, but a light, lovely hue like fresh-cut lemongrass.
He stepped in close and bent over her. She jerked away reflexively but was anchored in place by the leather bonds. “We have little time. They are coming. When your magic killed Twelve, it freed me from their compulsion.” His breath tickled her ear.
“Twelve?” she asked, curiosity overcoming her revulsion at the murderer’s closeness.
“They are called by numbers, not names. It is not important. No one has ever killed a soul-eater before. At least not that I have heard of. They are frightened of you—and intent on learning the secrets of your magic so they can rip it from the world. I am to torture you until you reveal it to us.” The words he spoke were clipped, his accent peppering her language with staccato rhythm.
“Torture?” She yelped.
Deep voices sounded outside the tent. Cold fear twisted her stomach in an iron grip.
“They are coming,” he said. “I need you to pretend I am hurting you.” He looked back at the tent flap, where tall black shadows hovered outside. “Do you understand?” he whispered.
She didn’t, but she nodded sharply as two of the soul-eaters entered, together with Master Tato, strange green eyes blazing. She narrowed her eyes at him. Traitorous coward.
“This puny creature killed Twelve?” one of the soul-eaters asked. She cringed at its grating voice.
The other one nodded, stepping closer to examine her. Still out of reach, she noticed with some small bit of satisfaction. It was the soul-eater with three fingers, the one that had killed her father. It now held the strange staff that had been in the hands of the other one last night. Perhaps it had taken it after the death of the other?
The soul-eater spoke again, without looking at Master Tato. “What can you tell us of her magic, historian?”
“Her magic is unknown in our world,” Tato said, his voice flat. “The primary form of magic is drawn from the sun and the moon. In women, the ability to burn the light of the moon manifests physically in the form of the hair turning silver. As you can see, her hair remains black. It appears that she did something new. Something unknown to me.”
“Something new,” the creature seemed to sneer. “You promised that you would be of use to us. Yet you know nothing.”
“There was a prophecy. It was foretold that she would confront a great shadow. It is believed that your armies are that shadow.”
The black-haired man shifted slightly at this, watching Master Tato with veiled interest. The mention of the prophecy had peaked his interest for some reason. Could she truly trust that this man was on her side? Someone who had offered himself to be a slave to these horrible monsters? Who had stood by as his own kind were turned to ash before his eyes? While her father…Rika’s mind stuttered over the thought as tears pricked at the corner of her eyes. With a silent apology, she shoved the thought away. She couldn’t fall apart now. She needed to be smart. Like her mother. What would Kai do? The most unlikely alliance is often the most effective. Her mother’s words, spoken in the midst of a torturously long lesson on foreign policy. She looked back at the black-haired man, his eyes fixed on the floor, his stubble-covered jaw working. No, she couldn’t trust him. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t use him.
“Does this prophecy speak of others like her?”
“No,” Master Tato said. “I believe she is the only one.”
“So we kill her and our problem is solved,” the soul-eater said. Rika glared at it, struggling against her bonds.
“I believe so,” Master Tato.
“Unless this fool is wrong,” the three-fingered soul-eater said, its green eyes glittering with malice.
The black-haired man inclined his head in a respectful bow. “Seven, the girl might know of her own power. Know if there are others. Let me question her. If I learn nothing, I will end her.”
Th
e two soul-eaters looked at each other and conversed in their hissing, clicking language. The one the man had called “Seven” made the decision. “Do it. If you learn nothing by nightfall, she dies.”
Some of Rika’s tension melted at the sudden reprieve. Her life was now in this strange man’s hands.
“You.” The other soul-eater pointed to Master Tato, who straightened at the word. “Stay with them and observe.”
No! Rika thought. With Master Tato watching, reporting back to the soul-eaters…the black-haired man would actually have to torture her. Her stomach flipped.
Master Tato inclined his head in agreement and the two soul-eaters swept from the tent.
“You—Tato is your name?” the black-haired man said. “Fetch me a bucket of cold water and a brazier to heat the coals.”
“I’m supposed to observe.”
“You can at least be of use!” the man snapped, and Master Tato jumped, shuffling out of the tent.
The man must have seen the fear in Rika’s eyes because he leaned over her. “I have an idea. It’s going to be all right. But when I signal, you’ll need to scream like you’re in the worst pain of your life. Do you understand?”
She nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat.
“We make it through this day, and tonight we escape. Understood?”
“Escape?” she asked, hope blooming like a cherry blossom in her chest.
He nodded, his green eyes blazing with intensity. “You can kill soul-eaters. That makes you the most precious treasure in the world. I will not let them kill you.”
