by May Peterson
Umber tried to stop me then. It was bizarre—he didn’t lash out, but seemed to want to make me think again. He seized my arm, put one hand on my shoulder. “Enough. You achieve nothing. Are you this ready to die? Do you care so little for what—” He paused. “What you lost?”
No more. Heaving against the virtue-burn, I shoved him aside. A shout wrenched from me, and I almost fell to my knees. But he stepped back. Staring, as if in awe.
I leaned down, wrapped my hands around the sword. The chemical fire of silver was almost nothing next to the adornments I had put on. Staying on my knees, I crawled over to Hei. There, under the place I had bared, was the stone. The blessing that had not protected him.
I cut my palm with the sword. The sensation somehow cleared my head, brought the urgency of steel to my senses. I clenched the stone over the cut, and let my blood pulse over it. My blood and his, mixing in this vow.
The battle against Tamueji raged on in the background; Tamueji had snatched out someone’s eye, and was now pummeling a crow-soul into the floor. Her wings were ragged, her chest streaked with blood; they might overwhelm her soon. But for now, they had no eyes for me.
Only Umber and Kaiwan did. I lifted the red-stained stone to my chest. And it began to blaze. The pale blue flames licked my fingers, consuming nothing, only gently exuding the light of hallowing over me. It magnified the intensity of the pain, as if I were being tattooed with it. But I did not let it go. It throbbed as if Hei’s needs still kindled it, giving it the force of suns.
“You are a fool.” Umber sounded almost horrified. His eyes were wide. “An abject fool.”
Maybe. But it made no difference now.
I tucked the stone under a bandage and wrapped it around my chest. An azure glow sprang over my body, lighting me to the tips of my hair. Maybe this was the real blessing Hei had brought, the gift within the piece of him I had swallowed. The hate or love or simple desperation to see that the mist was eating me alive, and I did not care. Because somehow the pain faded, becoming a hum at the back of my mind. Because I did not resist the agony, it began to disperse. Relaxation rippled through my body, the pain giving way to clarity.
I lifted the sword and poised for battle. This time, my limbs obeyed without difficulty.
I leapt forward, blade aimed at Umber’s heart.
He must not have known what to expect, because instead of dodging, he grabbed my arm mid-motion. It halted the momentum—but cold fire flared around his hand, and he snatched it away, screaming. How long had it been since he’d had to face real pain? Since his own numbness had not protected him?
The angle of the blade veered away from his heart, but the point still connected. My strength was enough to push through his ribs.
Blood sputtered from his mouth. But the shock in his eyes was fading. Rage rose in its place. With a kick he expelled me from him. The sword ripped free, and I fell back onto one knee, panting from the effort.
Umber gazed down at the tear in his chest. His blood was almost invisible against his black garments. “Oh, dear.” His inflection was flat, but harsh as frost. “I really should stop concerning myself with pet projects like you. The rats always bite, in the end.”
He fell on me like a storm. I was more ready than I’d ever been, but his strength was horrific. His shoulder hit my abdomen, grinding the stone into my skin. Talons lashed at my face, and the shiver of his wings reduced everything to a field of shadows.
But I did not need to be ready, to answer him by myself. He screeched in the next moment, his grip weakened. The blessing burned him in a way it no longer did me. I was no longer trying to control my pain, and so I breathed through it. Gasping, I pushed him off me and rolled. I released the tucked bandages under my thumbs. We inverted so that Umber was on his back. Blue light painted his face in ghastly colors.
He swelled into an array of black feathers. Human hands dissolved, becoming birdlike claws. The change was nearly as fast as Tamueji’s—in the next instant, bludgeon-sized limbs were battering my face. He was shrieking, a raw animal note over the background noise. Each bellow brought another crash, another push back into the dark. I couldn’t hold on. The shrieking thundered in my mind, amplified by lifetimes of emptiness, as if his wrath were consuming me whole.
I must have fallen then, the outline of wings fluttering through my sight. Carnal flames enveloped me, bit through my resolve. Umber had become a wild outburst of spite, of violence and malice and hunger, and the blows kept falling. I had to endure this. And I could. I could endure like he could not. The pain was not weakening me anymore like it did him. In frenzy, I seized his talons, dug into his flesh. He gasped, tried to pull back, and opened the way for me.
Hei’s move flashed through my memory. With a trick step and a sideways twist, I pulled myself under his wings, springing up behind him. While he staggered, I drew the bandages around his throat.
Umber was kicking at my ankles, his wings flexing as if to force me off his back. But I wound the cloth tighter and tighter, adding new loops as I held on. The shape of a beak was emerging from his face, grotesquerie taking over his features. He was trying to crow-shape, but I had him around the neck. Blue flames still lit my body, traced an aurora over his feathers. If he changed any faster, the cords would tear through his flesh. A predatory wail rolled from his throat, one long siren of denial.
Bucking on his back, I felt echoes of the fight with Kadzuhikhan. But something had changed. Hei lay meters away. The fight against Tamueji had stopped. The battered crow-souls had come to a halt. Some lay on the floor, wings shredded. One was on his back, face unrecognizable. But all that were still conscious watched the struggle between me and Umber, faces blank. Tamueji towered over them, shuddering for breath. She was wounded, but her bleeding already appeared to be stopping. If they gave her much more time, she’d regain strength faster than they could overcome.
And her black eyes seemed to gleam with hope.
I slipped one leg between his, locking ankles together so he couldn’t easily force us backward. Even if he tried to crush me under his weight, I was too closely entangled. The others continued staring, as if transfixed by this possibility.
His half-hand, half-talon curled at his throat, trying to slip under the bindings. I put no effort into blows, into any attempts to inflict wounds. Against the clatter of wings, I began winding more cloth around the freed hand, pulling with all my might.
The press of his body into mine was like gravity, all forces in the universe turned on me. The blessed stone felt like a wound in my chest, and its white-blue aura was growing brighter. Hei’s blood was waxing with vengeance and not being consumed. I almost viscerally felt the heatless flames draining Umber of his power. But mine was fading too, as if the hallowing were using me as fuel. The pain was resurging, smearing my senses with haze.
Umber and I slumped down together, my weight on his. His legs and arms continued making erratic lashes, but couldn’t land a direct strike. The cords were like molten wire in my hands, but I did not let go.
The misshapen beak flapped. “H-help...meee—” His voice was like a venomous creature, skittering across the stones. “You—worthless—”
It seemed like they’d all been hypnotized, until Tamueji pushed forth to stand between the flock and Umber, as if daring them to try to aid their lord through her. I understood. Tamueji would buy me the time—but I had to end it now.
I allowed one of my hands to let go. Losing contact with the cloth was like jumping into cool water after standing next to a furnace. But time was running out. Not daring to look away from Umber, I pawed behind me for the sword.
It was too much. A cord burst. Umber’s body whipped under mine, one more superhuman pulse of effort. More cloth snapped, and my grip was lost. He spasmed, and the motion shoved me across the floor, rolling once before landing on my open wings.
There it was, less than a meter away. The swo
rd. Lightray sparkled with colors as if it had drunk in the dawn. I pushed to one elbow, tumbled toward it.
All eyes in the room fell on Umber, free of his constriction. A terrifying world’s-end cry began again, louder than Tamueji’s had been. Umber swelled, expanding to the size of his fury. He rose up in a cloud of destruction, howling with the might of an earthquake. His transformation was now unrestrained, though tangles of still-blazing cloth hung from his neck like a noose. Birdlike maw and eyes sprang into fullness, wings and claws stretching into their full monstrous proportion.
When he glared down at me, his orbs were as crimson as dying stars. And no hint of human awareness remained. Only the blood-sick hunger of a god of prey, of drowning and amnesia and death.
My fingers brushed silver. My strength was waning, and every spark had to be for this. Teeth grit, I forced myself to my feet.
His head plunged downward like lightning, beak open to crack me in half.
This was the only path left. Let this be the new promise. Azure and agony, burning me up. The final hour of life I would see. But the promise would be kept. Let Hei’s memory be scorched into the earth. Let my ashes sanctify the last undefeated place in this hell. Let there be something that would remember.
I would not dodge him, not completely. He moved with the speed of inevitability. But Hei had taught me this. Do not flee. Dance with it.
Stay with me.
When he struck, I threw myself to the side. Umber’s beak cracked the stone at my feet. His beak closed around my ankle, which twisted slightly in the grip. The nauseating pang of a broken bone washed up my leg.
Shouts gathered around me, cries that now seemed focused on my defeat, on this last moment of carnage. Shouts that may have been from Kaiwan, those turned against the traitor Tamueji, or the remnant sound of Hei calling for me.
But azure plumed up the length of my body, and though it was like holding a burning brand to my flesh, I would not let Lightray go.
I promise this.
Umber lifted me in his beak, claws dug into stone, wings spread wide. That second—through the mist and the pain—was enough. I let myself drop and swung in an arc. Lightray sung as it whipped through the air. My upper body fell like a stone into the cleft of Umber’s neck and torso. And with all my strength, drove the sword into his neck.
And upward, into his skull. There was a moment of resistance, and then a jagged, surreal crunch.
I dropped from his maw. The beak clacked open, gaping, gurgling sounds pouring forth. His wings splayed. The floor hit me like a swat, the lava-hot sting of the sword’s presence gone from my hands. It remained lodged under his jaw, conflagrating onward with wisps of blue. No screech gushed from that broken beak. Only the dry, mechanical sounds of his breath slowing, accompanied by a grisly jerking. Umber, at last, collapsed into a heap on the stones.
I gasped, and gasped, the thunder of my lungs the only thing I seemed able to understand. My muscles were ablaze, and my skin felt like it had to be melting. Everything else seemed to be annihilated. Except this—Umber was not dead. But he was close.
It occurred to me now that the shouting had been for our battle. Tamueji was limping closer, the younger crow-souls inert in a ring around her. None of them looked better than they had moments ago, but their fight was at least for now at a stop. Perhaps the shock of Umber’s defeat was too massive for them to absorb.
I was still moving, my promise not yet satisfied. It would never be satisfied. And it bore me up to my knees. My ankle felt like it was being twisted off, but it was healing, righting itself. Slowly. The pain was receding once more, as if my capacity for healing was finally winning.
Hands were on me then, pulling at the cloth around me. Ripping free bands, pulling it away from my skin. Kaiwan. She tugged the stone loose, and it tumbled into her lap. I saw then. Blood seeped from under her leg; she must have been wounded in the chaos. The hem of her robe she used to wipe blood from my skin, trying to minimize the blessing’s fire.
A quiet, mournful feeling rolled out in me, like an echo of my grief. I didn’t want the pain to end. For Hei’s beautiful fire to be done with me.
Tamueji stood crookedly over Umber’s husk. She looked exhausted—black eyes bleak, feathers matted with blood and dirt, wings tattered. But one claw rose up, and crushed down on Lightray’s scabbard. She struck again, and again, gaining speed. Then I understood. The blade sunk through, puncturing the other side of Umber’s skull.
Finish the job.
I rose from Kaiwan’s care, shaking as I gained my feet. She did not try to stop me. And then, with the surprising strength I had left, I crawled up Umber’s corpse.
As the pain vanished, I realized my skin was not injured, just red and raw. But as it healed, my grief sharpened. I began raking talons across Umber’s chest, tearing flesh, ripping out feathers. Tamueji was pounding his face with her claws, shrieking in ragged bursts. None of the other crow-souls moved. I lost awareness of them. Together, she and I began taking him apart.
The blows loosened the sword, and I lifted it and tore into his chest. Soon, we rent him apart, silver and vengeance down to his heart.
I sobbed as I cut. Each thrust was also a stab of mourning, rising unfettered from me. Just as I had lain in Hei’s blood, so now Umber’s covered me. Tamueji bit hanks of flesh away in her maw, swallowing them down. This was the old instinct, the greatest defeat of any immortal foe. Devour them. So we did, as he had devoured us.
The taste of his blood was acid and regret and malice, but it was also purifying flame. We drank until we were slick with red, taking back the strength that he’d stolen. And there it was. His heart. We were not human anymore—not like we had once been, like we could have been. He had eaten our hearts.
So we consumed his, gaining strength with each moment. Tamueji and I, crying like infants as we destroyed what remained of the lord of crows.
Chapter Fourteen
Kaiwan stayed by my side. Her face, too, was lined with tears, like a painting so weathered it could never be restored. It was small comfort, but a comfort all the same—she would have saved us again, if her heart had allowed it. If one of us had been strong enough.
She held my hand while I lay next to Hei. His body had not been further harmed in the battle. I thanked God for that. He was tucked under one arm, small and pale and motionless. How I’d wanted to carry him to freedom. I still did. I breathed, and touched his cold face, and let Kaiwan squeeze my hand.
Tamueji had not stopped wailing. She didn’t sound like she had before, a being of thunder. She sounded like a little bird now, crying. She lay in crow-shape across the wreckage we’d made of Umber, as if mourning the years given up to him and declaring victory, all at once.
He would not regenerate. We had destroyed too much of his body. The man who had hollowed us out, replaced our insides with puppet souls, was finally dead.
This was the end. For all of us.
One of the young crow-souls came to stand over Tamueji. She looked strangely heartbroken. “You killed him.”
Tamueji quieted then. I looked up, scanning the rest of the flock. They were gathering again. Even the one who had been crushed by Tamueji seemed to be healing, moving where he lay on the floor.
“The lord of crows is gone.” Kaiwan pronounced this with all her mysterious grandeur, like making a royal proclamation. “There is nothing more for you here. Be gone from me.”
Another boy stepped forward, and he too was crying. His eyes shone like daggers. “There will have to be a new lord.” He raised a shaking finger at Tamueji, and then swung it to me. “I will not let it be you. Never.”
They’d been groomed for this, just as I had been. And Tamueji had almost destroyed them. They would want revenge, or power, or just want someone to blame for how they’d been hurt.
Who cares? Let them kill me. This was the end, after all.
Tamueji struggled to stand, but nonetheless she dwarfed them all. A fight yet burned within her. And already, vigor was returning to my limbs, if not my heart. The pain was diminishing into the soft harmony of aching. My wounds were healing. So too must Tamueji be regaining herself—not simply from time, rest, but from consuming such a great foe. His heart had been reclaimed, and his thieved blood was divided between us. All the power he’d retained would go to us now, and pay back some echo of what had been taken.
The flock was orienting back into formation, their combined gazes as heavy and bright as hot metal. Maybe Tamueji should simply join me. Give up.
Then, Kaiwan’s grip hardened. She raised my hand into both of hers. “Ari. Will you try?”
What? Try? Hadn’t I already tried, and proven I was incapable? Then, it hit me. She meant the test. Would I do what Hei had come to do?
“You don’t have to.” Her voice was no longer consoling, but it was also peaceful. “It is not necessary. Time flows, and all phases must end. But the chance yet remains. Will you try?”
Terror eclipsed my grief, flooding my heart like icy water. “I—I can’t. I’ll fail. Umber was right. There’s nothing to protect me from the despair.” I had to stop and take a deep breath. “I’m already dead anyway.”
And yet...she was also right. The chance remained. Even if these dice had odds of one in ten thousand. One spark of possibility within an endless cosmos of ruin. It was there. I let myself imagine for a second. This all being wiped away.
I sobbed again, my chest sore from crying. “I—I don’t know.”
Kaiwan pressed a kiss to the back of my hand. “I have failed as well. So many years I have lain in wait. My hope was to avert this very crisis. The paths are innumerable. In each moment, it appears as if one path alone exists, and yet the intersections of cause and effect are infinite across the threads. I do not know now if I could have done better.” She paused, lips tense, holding back tears. “All I can do is offer. Will you try?”
