She did not know how long she stood there, lost in thought. At some point the darkness of night faded into gray mist and she could see the cattails waving in front of her. The mist clung to her skin, causing goosebumps. She roused herself. Dawn Star would be up soon and it would be a nice surprise if there was a fire going.
She wasn't sure where she would find dry firewood in this place, but that was what Dire Flame was for. She set off on an animal path, hoping it would lead her towards something useful.
Dawn Star found her later.
Behold! Words would not have sufficed!
The corpse of a god was stretched out in front of her, above her, around her and the horror of her bound companions tugged at her mind.
Rebirth is impossible while this continues…
Blood flowed, but this blood was pure and clear and it was a river that ran through the palace and watered the empire.
Lian gasped. "I have never seen such a crime against the proper order of things."
She ignored the other raised voices of her companions because the Water Dragon was here, above her and waiting for her to make a decision.
Your Empire must find balance without the flow of heart water that is released.
Wu nodded. Blood could not flow forever, not even the blood of a goddess. What would happen when this corpse became a dessicated husk? What god would need to be violated then?
You must defeat your Master. You must stop the power he draws from me. Soon he will be too strong, even for you. The goddess paused, as if she were gathering her strength. You must destroy the source of that power. You must destroy my body.
The Water Dragon was pleading for release, for mercy, and for Wu not to do what she was contemplating. She did not have to let the Water Dragon go free. She had learned of another way to compel the power of the gods.
She needed all the power she could muster so that she could cut the ties that bound her to gods and masters once and for all; for their plots and plans had killed her love just as surely as if they had struck him down by their own power.
She would be no one's pawn again. Moreover, the power of a god might restore what she had lost.
Dawn Star's thoughts were like a sword in her mind, just as her voice said, "Wu, you cannot. You cannot."
She turned to her friend; there was no doubt that Dawn Star knew her plan, knew the possibility she was considering. It took a moment to build a wall, to shut her out of her mind. It wasn't hard. She'd been shutting her friend out of her life since that day in Tien's Landing.
She did not have much time to act. Sun Li would learn of her presence shortly; Lotus Assassins would mass to fight her.
She would need blood…
Wu looked into Dawn Star's eyes and then pulled a Lotus Assassin's spear from his dead hands. She stepped forward.
The spear flew true and struck the heart of the machine that kept the Dragon alive and bleeding. There were sparks and the apparatus shook the tomb they were in. Wu lost her balance, fell to her feet and watched as the machine destroyed itself. A twenty year long abomination was now destroyed.
Somewhere Sun Li was crying out in rage. The thought made her smile.
She stood and found the eyes of her bound companions on her. Dawn Star spoke first. "For a moment, I thought..."
"You thought wrong. I am here to restore order and balance," Wu said shortly.
That was a lie. The true answer was that becoming a god would only make them more interested in her. Would she become a pawn in just a much stronger god's games? Or would she become a gameplayer herself, moving mortals like pieces on a board, spending their lives like coins in a dice game? She knew she was not strong enough to say 'no' to both of those questions.
And she did not think that Zu would appreciate her finding him if it meant she had destroyed the Empire to do so. She was not the only one he had died for.
The Black Whirlwind swung his axes. "We have company."
Lotus Assassins poured in the room. "Hold them here," she ordered. "Death's Hand, it is time to confront your brother."
She did not know if her friends would survive, though she had no doubt that she would know immediately if they died. But there was nothing she could do now. Sun Li had to be destroyed and only she could do it.
Death's Hand led her through long hallways and tunnels until they came to the throne room again. "My brother will send assassins to strike from behind. I will hold them here so that you may confront him."
She nodded and he asked, "And then I will have earned mercy? Release?"
She shrugged. "That will be Lian's decision. It is not my right to decide the fate of an Imperial family member."
He took her judgment well. "You have surprised me, Spirit Monk. You still speak of her as your Empress."
"You have been around power-mad Imperials for too long, Sun Kin. And I am cut from sterner stuff than them."
She left him there in the shadowy hallway, knowing that he would do his duty to protect her from threats from behind. This is why she had kept him at her side; an immortal warrior to save her from distractions.
Sun Li was waiting for her at the bottom of the steps to the throne. He seemed calm, sure of himself, even though she knew that he did not have the power of the Water Dragon to rely upon.
He was wearing the same armor as Death's Hand. That would make it easier to kill him.
"Ah, there you are. I knew you would come and I have grown very good at waiting. You are very different from the student I once taught. Death has changed you."
"Yes," she agreed. But he was referring to her death and she was referring to Zu's.
"I apologize for that indignity but it was necessary."
"No. It was not," she said firmly. "You had no idea of my loyalty. Perhaps you have been playing games for too long to understand true loyalty, but you had it from me once. I would have killed Lian for you, served you as a servant to her Prince, but it never occurred to you that there might have been another way. You have been alone for so long, I do not think you can remember how to place trust in another."
"It is time for this to end." She dropped into her stance and waited for him to fight her.
"You are all that stands between me and my empire," he said, as if in afterthought. She felt him summoning the power of the Water Dragon that he had conserved and the throne room shook.
Stone constructs of demon elephants and oxen fell to the floor, cracking the stone they stood on. She laughed, high and loud. Stone was so easy to crack with the application of ice! Did he not know that? They broke under her hands like carelessly dropped clay pots in a marketplace.
But ice could not defeat the stone spell that he threw at her and for the second time in her short life, she found herself immobilized by the power of a god. Unlike the Spirit Fox's power, this was too much for her to break from within and she found herself on a nebulous plane. Alone.
His voice surrounded her. "Yes. This will do nicely. Seeing death come and being unable to stop it."
She felt heavy, drained.
"Physical barriers are no match for those we place in our own mind. My power has encased you in doubt, held you within your own burden."
His words drove her to her feet. Here, doubt was both a physical and mental force, pummeling her body and her mind but she tried to resist, "I am stronger than this. Than you!"
"You and your followers are playthings," he mocked. "They are held just as you are and you are all too weak to match my power!"
Before her, four Sun Lis materialized, mist and fog, but she knew they could hurt her in this place. She willed herself to her feet and just as she did, three of her companions came to her side.
"You are not alone," said Chai Ka. "We can assist you."
"Lend your strength to mine," she ordered. "I cannot defeat him and save you without him."
The Black Whirlwind's confusion and Hou's uncertainty still pulled at her, but Chai Ka said he would show them the way. They ran forward to face the doppelgangers and then disappeared, leaving only one enemy to face. She cleared her mind and defeated it easily.
She walked towards the pillar the doppelgangers had been guarding, but as she approached it four new threats appeared. "Amusing, but pointless. My talons are deep within you."
And her companions came again. Dawn Star, Sky, and Lian stood beside her, filled with doubt but yes – Dawn Star had hope.
Wu made her choice and undid the binding between them. Their presences left her mind, leaving her stronger. "I have no right to ask you for your help, but without it, we will be trapped here until our souls are destroyed. Will you aid me?"
Lian frowned. "It seems we have no choice."
"Not much of one," Sky added. "But it is preferable to being compelled."
Dawn Star smiled. "I knew my Wu was still in there. I am with you."
They ran at her enemies without thinking or flinching, taking them off the battlefield and leaving her one. "Do you see that? My allies strengthen me, Li! You were too quick to throw yours away!"
And she attacked him again, her anger at her betrayal driving her to fight. Again she won and again she approached the pillar that held her. This time nothing attacked her.
"Your efforts are meaningless," he sneered. "A god holds you. Nothing in the mortal realm can save you! Nothing!"
She could fight forever, but he was right. He was a god now and she was less than that.
He had always been right. What was her right to defy him? She never used to question Master Li and now he was much more. Could she question the will of a man who was an Imperial prince? If she found that strength, she would be questioning her life, her childhood, her very name. If she found the strength to fight him and she won; she would be destroyed in the same way as he if struck her down himself.
Who was she to fight him?
Her questions wrapped around her, each a chain that bound her power, strength, heart and soul. The pillar in the mists was the only solid object here. That was his power and she ...she felt herself fading into her chains.
You showed me a door I had thought closed.
She saw a wavering in front of her.
This is your swamp, Wu. He can't keep you under the dark water.
It was. It was him. He gave her that half-smile that she loved, one that she had sworn to destroy a prince for. "I told you I would watch you."
She said his name, a prayer and a lament and she hated herself for not knowing that he had always been with her.
"Even here, I have moved with you, hidden, trying to keep focus."
She struggled to her feet, the chains binding her spirit falling away. She rushed to his side, reached out to him, but her hands passed through him. Now his smile was tinged with sadness.
"You cannot stay here or you will die, Wu."
She wanted to say that that was fine, she wanted to die if it meant she could be with him, but she couldn't. Why did she get to give up if he had not? She only nodded, not knowing what to do now.
"All that I am, all that I was…" He turned to face the pillar and aimed a strike at its heart. His glance fell to her one more time and he said, "Is yours."
She felt a breath on her lips and then the pillar cracked and the light poured out…
And she was screaming his name as the stone fell from her lips. Her master's look of frustration moved to fear and fear her he should. "You killed him," she murmured. "You and your machinations. Your schemes. This ends!"
She did not wait for his answer, but attacked him with all she had. This close Sun Li's power reminded her of the fetid stink of the Mother. There was death in it; it could take and take and take…
Then she saw it; a glimmer of a silverfish in a dirty stream. Then another and another until she could see a school of silver swimming through his dark power.
Death took and took – youth and beauty and the strong - but that was not always true. The Water Dragon had also given peace from the pain of life and another chance at redemption. The Water Dragon had given water, just as she hadn't.
Wu knew this and she knew that Sun Li didn't. This was his flaw. She allowed herself a smile; the smallest one.
Wu would give him everything he wanted.
It did not take much once she discovered the chink in his fighting style. He expected opposition and taking, so she gave him openings that had no exits, showed weakness where there wasn't one.
Her final blow was with her hands. It felt right that way.
He fell at her feet and raised his head. "You surprise me, yet again." He coughed and raised himself to his knees. "I'm a better teacher… than I thought."
As Sun Li fell to the ground, his grip on heavenly power loosened and with it the bonds of the Water Dragon. Wind that smelled of spring rain whipped the tapestries in the throne room in a frenzy and above her appeared the goddess.
She was not the insubstantial spirit of before, but a force and a thought, a blessing and a curse. The Water Dragon bowed to her and she bowed back, not out of deference, but of duty.
Sun Lian was restored as the rightful ruler. The Wheel turned. The heavens were in balance.
When the Companions entered the throne room, they found empty black armor in a pile, surrounded by many dead assassins. Near the body of her master, they found Wu sobbing, but she refused to say why.