by Paul Krueger
Three more Kobaruto stepped up. The old woman must’ve been important to them, because they fought against him with redoubled fury. With cruel nonchalance, he dispatched them all.
By the time they all lay dead, his hand had grown back, and the new wounds they’d managed to score had already begun to seal up. He felt his grip on his own form slip a little from the aggregate damage, and he prayed to the shades themselves that they might be enough to discorporate him, so Mayon could be taken down once and for all. But the world was not that merciful.
And under Mayon’s control, neither was he.
He turned his sight next to the Sanbunas, whose numbers were already dwindling from the sheer pressure of Mayon’s shades. The soldiers left behind fought valiantly, bolo knives flashing while their shades kept Mayon’s pinned down as best they could.
But Dimangan knew with horrifying certainty that the moment he intervened, it would be over for them all.
From the minute he’d been in the world, he’d fought hard to take back control of his body. But Mayon’s will was stronger. And though he could feel the man’s hold on him slip every now and then, it was only for brief heartbeats, and never long enough for Dimangan to do anything.
He hoped his struggles were having some effect. That he was making Mayon pull punches, so that those he struck who did not get back up were merely unconscious, despite their crushed rib cages and twisted necks. He had to believe that was true, because he had to believe that if he could take back an inch of himself, then he could take back every foot.
He no longer had the tear ducts necessary to cry, but he could feel his body wanting to as badly as he wanted to stop altogether. His vision misted red as he tore his way through the Sanbuna delegation. Most tried valiantly to fight him. Two or three attempted to flee. None of it mattered. He felled one with each blow he struck, while behind him Mayon’s shades tore into anyone he couldn’t reach.
And then there was General Erega. He’d never formally met her, but he knew Lala had. He knew the deep-seated admiration his sister held for the general. Hell, he even remembered it himself from growing up with her, the way she’d fixate on every new report of the daring revolutionary’s latest exploits. Now her latest exploit was standing against the inhuman monster he’d become, bolo in hand.
And, Dimangan thought helplessly as his fist careened toward her, her last.
Stop.
Dimangan felt all his muscles tighten. His fist halted a mere inch from the general’s face with perfect precision. For a moment, hope blossomed in his chest: Had he managed to throw off Mayon’s thrall at last? Was he clawing his way back to freedom?
But then he realized that it was Mayon himself who’d given the order. He didn’t get any words, just feelings: Respect. History.
And, with a brief flashing image of a hospital bed, a debt being paid.
The general looked dumbfounded. Clearly, she’d expected to face her death in that moment. But before she could capitalize on Dimangan’s hesitation, he found himself pivoting away from her.
He saw them next: the Shang, and their paired shades. The dog-shade came at him first, all teeth and paws, but Dimangan laced his fingers together and swung his hands like a club, and the dog-shade’s whole body gave way beneath the impact, violently erupting into a cloud of white light.
“Kohaku!” Jimuro screamed.
As the Steel Lord’s voice drew Dimangan’s attention, something white flashed in the corner of his eye, moving so fast he almost didn’t catch it.
Almost.
He snagged the white rat’s tail. It’d nearly made it past him, no doubt ready to slip through the shades that stood between it and Mayon.
But Dimangan whipped the rat-shade right back at the two Shang. The impact sent both of them skidding across the turf, where they lay very still as the rat disappeared with a gasp of black light.
A gunshot rang out through the air. “Mang!”
With horrible slowness, he felt himself turn to face the only person in the world who called him by that name.
She stood there in a crisp new uniform, gun in hand. She had on her “sergeant’s face,” even though her rank insignia suggested she’d moved up in the world. It was the kind of look meant to scare all the insubordination out of a recruit by freezing their blood. But it wasn’t quite right. There was something new in the way the moonlight caught her eyes. After a moment, he saw it for what it was.
Fear.
His own sister was afraid of him.
No, he thought desperately, reaching for every mental brake he had, every lever he could possibly pull. He couldn’t hurt his own sister. He’d thought hurting his own fellow Sanbunas was impossible, but this was something else entirely. This was—
He felt the blade bite him just below the kneecap and shear clean through his leg. He collapsed to the ground and it shook beneath him. He barely rolled aside in time as Jimuro drove a sword into the ground Dimangan had just been lying on.
Dimangan swiped at him. In the depths of the prison his body had become, he noted that there was a time not too long ago when he’d have gladly swiped at Jimuro of his own free will. But the two had fought side by side now. And for whatever faults the man had, Dimangan had no doubt that he was at least loyal to Lala.
To Dimangan’s relief, Jimuro danced just out of his reach. He rapped Dimangan’s fist with the flat of his sword. He darted back in, sword flashing, and this time he scored a long, vertical cut down the length of Dimangan’s torso. Dimangan was compelled to reach for him again, but Jimuro kept just to the edge of his vision, discouraging any attempts at grabbing him with a swipe of his blade. Each dodge led Jimuro to score a fresh wound on Dimangan, and with each one Dimangan prayed it would be enough to discorporate him and spare him what came next.
But though Dimangan felt himself losing shape as he bled magic, his leg had begun to knit itself back together and regrow. And the moment he had any flesh at all past the knee, he braced it against the ground and surged forward with a lunging punch.
The prince was fast; he whipped up his sword to parry it, even as he tried to dodge away from the impact. But fast as he was, Dimangan was faster. His hit made the prince tumble and slam hard into the roots of a nearby sapling, fracturing it at its thickest part and showering him with screeching cicadas. He slumped forward.
“Jimuro!” Lala shouted.
And then silence settled over the blood-soaked garden. The ground was covered in the broken bodies of the dead and the dying. Mayon’s shades regrouped, while the only one left to resist him was the crow-shade flying high overhead. A few human fighters yet stood, including General Erega.
But at Mayon’s direction, Dimangan had eyes for only one.
He begged his hands to stay open. He could’ve sworn he felt his fingers heeding him even, if only for a second…
But then his fingers curled closed.
He brandished a bloody fist at the woman who’d held his hand as he’d mooned over a boy.
She leveled her gun at the only person who’d lived long enough to watch her grow up.
Inside his head, Dimangan screamed for his body to freeze where it stood, trying in vain to hear himself over Mayon’s murderous drone.
Outside his head, there was only silence, save for the singing of cicadas.
And then, from the corner of the garden, the hollow thunk of bamboo striking rock.
He took his first step.
And Lala opened fire.
The Steel Lord blinked, and his eyes wanted nothing more than to stay closed.
* * *
—
Fumiko sat by the pond, giggling with her friends who had come to court for the Festival of Platinum: Akabayashi Akane, Ishikawa Ikumi, and Kurihara Kosuke, all in yukata. When they caught sight of him peering around bushes, Fumiko, Akane, and Ikumi giggled, while Kosuke’s whole
face went strawberry red, and he shouted to his friends that they were idiots who didn’t know what they were—
* * *
—
His eyes opened.
All around him, bodies lay bent and broken. The ground was pocked with craters, its soil soaked in blood. It was as though a storm had ripped through his garden.
And that storm stood just over there, moonlight splashing across his broad, muscled back and jagged spines of bone.
As he saw Tala raise her gun at her own brother, Jimuro’s eyes closed.
* * *
—
He was in uniform, ready to ship out tomorrow to quash these damnable rebels once and for all. He would miss Hagane, but he was leaving it to ensure its safety. And once he and his troops had given the savages and slavers what for, it would be right here, waiting for him still.
As he sat out there praying, one by one his family joined him. First Fumiko. Then his father. And shortly after, his mother.
It was the last time they were all together in one place.
The last time he ever saw any of them alive.
* * *
—
His eyes opened.
A gun flashed, and Dimangan’s hand whipped out to the side, absorbing both bullets with a spark of magical light.
Tala gritted her teeth. Jimuro could see: She’d been trying to shoot around him, trying to hit the man in the purple coat even once.
He tried to sit himself up, but his muscles felt like they had been mashed to paste. Briefly, panic surged through him. But then he felt his toes frantically wiggling in his boots. There was no telling what else Dimangan may have broken, but at least he could get on his feet again. And if he could get on his feet, then he could fight.
Then he saw the glittering shards scattered around him.
His heart leapt to his mouth.
The fabled sword of the first Steel Lord, Setsuko, a legendary national legacy of Tomoda’s might and his family’s brilliance, lay in pieces.
He could have it remade. Skilled pacters would be able to collect the shards and reforge it into something newer. Maybe even better, though he doubted that.
But he needed to fight now, and the only weapon he’d had left had been taken from him.
He glanced over to see if there was anyone else to assist Tala: Xiulan and Lee, both down for the count. The few remaining Dahali, fighting ineffectually against the man’s other shades. General Erega, dragging one of her subordinates away from danger even as he screamed at the bloody stump where his leg had been a moment ago…
Tala was on her own.
His eyes closed.
* * *
—
He sat near a pond in the garden, as springtime winds carried the pink cherry blossoms past his face in a gentle cascade.
He didn’t recognize this memory; the garden had never once contained a cherry tree. Nonetheless, he peered into the depths of the pond as small pink leaves landed on the water with a gentle ripple and floated just above the glittering koi beneath the surface.
He caught sight of his reflection in the water and did a double take. He wasn’t an old man, but he was older: his face more lined, his temples graying, a trim beard adorning his jaw.
And the woman standing next to him, with her beautiful dark skin and blue-black hair, with hawklike eyes and a smile as rare and precious as a jewel—
* * *
—
His eyes opened.
No, he told himself. Tala wasn’t alone. As long as he drew breath, she couldn’t be. If they were going to lose this fight, Tala was going to lose it with Jimuro by her side, whether she liked it or not.
The man in the purple coat was saying something, though Jimuro could hardly hear it through the pain and the wailing of cicadas all around him. He tried his best to block it all out. Past Steel Lords had shown their worth by making impossible decisions to protect their people, and now he had to—
A possibility settled in his mind.
He looked down at his hands, and saw that they were bloody and shaking. What he was contemplating, he didn’t even know if he’d be capable of pulling off.
And if you succeed, he told himself, your ancestors will never forgive you. The spirits will never forgive you.
But if he didn’t do it, he realized, then he would never forgive himself, either.
The trembling in his fingers slowed, then stopped.
He closed his eyes and laid his hands palms-down on his thighs. He pushed away everything but the song of the cicadas, the unofficial anthem of Tomoda. He thought over and over again about what he would do, what he would endure, what he would force himself to live with, if only he could just survive.
And he prayed that after this was done, he would deserve to.
Her aim was good as ever, but Mang threw his hands out to catch the bullets she fired at the splintersoul. The wounds crackled and closed, and the newly regenerated hand dropped to Mang’s side.
She gritted her teeth. The 13-52-2 had been in its share of scrapes, and she with them, but this was as bad as it got. As long as the splintersoul had Mang, there were no conditions of victory that could be feasibly met. She couldn’t take her own brother out, not with the amount of ammo she had left. And unless she figured out how to metalpact with a gun right this second, she couldn’t take him out anyway. She had her gun leveled, but it was all just for show. She couldn’t shoot him if she tried.
“Mang!” she shouted. “I carried you ten years, and I never made you do anything you didn’t want to! Neither can this lilac son-of-a-bitch! Shake it off!”
The man in the purple coat strode up, careful to remain in Dimangan’s shadow. “When a creature bonds its soul to yours, it becomes an extension of you,” he said. “Right now, I’m Dimangan, and Dimangan is me.” He didn’t look particularly mirthful as he said it, and his expression grew even colder as he pointed up at Beaky circling overhead. Through crooked yellow teeth, he snarled: “Give him to me.”
Tala’s grip tightened on her gun. “I offered him up. You didn’t like my terms.”
“Your terms were merely fair,” spat the man. “I. Want. Justice.”
Tala put on her bravest face, but it was all she could do to stop herself from sliding into despair. There would be no reasoning with this man.
And there would be no stopping him, either.
Desperately, she searched her brother’s face for any indication that he’d heard her—not that his ears had taken in what she’d said, but that he, Mang, was still alive in there. And she could have sworn she saw the barest hint of it in his eyes, for moments at a time, in a way that was too obvious to be just a trick of the moonlight.
“You can’t make him hurt me,” Tala said to the man. “No more than I can make Beaky hurt y—”
There was a rush of wind as Mang charged for her even faster than her finger could pull the trigger. She barely had time to comprehend his shadow falling over her before an inhumanly strong hand wrapped itself around her gun arm and squeezed.
Her vision went white as every nerve and neuron in her arm lit itself ablaze. She heard the sickening snap of every bone shattering, felt the muscles tearing and the tendons snapping. Her gun clattered to the ground as her hand surrendered all the strength it had left.
“Drop her.”
Obediently, Mang’s hand opened. Tala realized she’d been lifted off the ground only a heartbeat before she crumpled back to it.
“You can do anything if you hate someone enough,” the man said quietly. “Think about that as I take back what’s mine. Every part of me burned with a hatred for you, Tala, and I was able to resonate with your brother well enough to steal him from you. If you ask me…it all speaks for itself.”
General Erega was shouting something, but Tala couldn’t understand it. The throbbing pain
in her ears drowned out everything else. She looked up into the face of her brother. Was there truly hatred there? Had there always been hatred there, buried just below where she could see it?
Or worse, in plain sight where she refused to?
She screwed her eyes shut. Maybe Mang had always hated her, no matter what he’d said to her over the years. But that didn’t change the fact that she loved him with everything she had left.
She opened her eyes. “Mang,” she whispered through bloody lips. “Mang, please…We’re all we have left, Mang, please…”
The man finally stepped out from behind her brother. There was no triumph in his expression: just disgusting, bottomless hunger. “I’m going to have him take your limbs, one by one,” he whispered. “I want you to lie there, helpless, as I take everything from you.” He flexed his fingers. “And then I’ll take you with me, Tala. And I will take my time visiting upon you every shred of agony that you—”
“Fumiko!” cried a voice, and a green blast of energy arced through the air, straight for Dimangan. In midair, it took its final shape, revealing a gigantic cicada-shade. Its eyes were wide-set and red, its carapace a gleaming shade of emerald. Its gossamer wings carried a hard edge to them, as did its swollen, jagged forelegs. On its right foreleg, it bore a deep-green pactmark in the shape of a triangle with a separated peak. A mountain.
And an identical mark blazed like a verdant flame on the back of Jimuro’s fist as he thrust it forward and shouted, “Now, Fumiko! Attack!”
Despite her size, Fumiko moved with incredible speed, wings becoming a blur as she darted around Dimangan’s face, attacking with slash after slash of her sharp forelegs. Dimangan swatted, but even with his formidable speed he was too slow to catch her.
