Battle Plans
Am I brave enough?
Am I strong enough?
To follow the desire
That burns from within
To push away my fear
To stand where I'm afraid
I am through with this
[I Am the Fire: Halestorm]
Marin fell through the flaming red sky to the earth. She landed at the feet of Suzaku's glittering golden statue in the Temple of the Firebird in Rongyao, clutching Okuda's notebook.
There was a strange sense of dislocation as she looked up into Suzaku's ruby eyes and the unchanging high arc of the painted ceiling above, as if the months since the failed ceremony and the tengu attack on the Temple hadn't happened. As she stepped out of the dissolving red sparks on unsteady feet, though, she became more aware of what had changed since the last time she'd been in the vaulted temple chamber.
The bronze brazier was still burning in the middle of the central dais, but it was surrounded by haphazard piles of bedding and she could tell which one was Daisuke's by the open book that she recognised as one of the Temple histories. The artwork that filled every spare scrap in the margins was unmistakeably his, and she was caught between admiring the drawings and wincing at the defaced book. There was a pot full of something on the floor next to the brazier that had clearly been hastily dumped there and abandoned. The austere magnificence of the Temple was looking oddly lived in.
At first she thought the echoing boom was an aftereffect of the transition between the worlds, but then it came again and she heard muffled shouts and the dim ring of metal weapons. She turned to the sound.
"Open the doors and release the princess into our custody!" someone bellowed outside. The doors of the temple shuddered under another onslaught. "Surrender now, and no one gets hurt!"
"Yeah, I don't think so!"
Marin felt a fizz of connection run through her at Daisuke's derisive voice. She found him, bright as a flame even in the dim light of the temple. His back was braced against the doors, and he had his attention on the altar that Tian Zhen and Zhu Yi seemed to be hauling towards the doors. A sacred tablet tumbled to the ground and shattered as they shoved the altar.
"Leave it!" Daisuke commanded. "It's not sacrilegious if the god himself doesn't give a fuck!"
The doors thundered and bowed again.
Jing Yun was leaning hard on the draw bar, putting his weight into it. Meixing stood back, one hand raised and glowing, and the other balancing her sword. Marin could see the faint skate of uneven light on the blade's edge that hinted that the princess' hands weren't as steady as they seemed. Beyond her, Xuelian stood stiff and unmoving with the pale red glow of power outlining her hands, and Marin found herself oddly startled to find Zifeng there with the rest of the Seishi even after everything that had happened at Mt Daichi.
The young lord watched the doors with the impassive attention of a white jade statue.
"What's going on?" she asked, and it felt as though the universe stuttered. Her Seishi swivelled to stare at her, forgetting the shuddering doors behind them. And Daisuke…
Her name was an exhalation, a prayer, then he was running, sweeping her up in a desperate embrace. For one long moment there was no one else in the world except the two of them.
Another boom thundered through the temple, and everyone jerked back. In the moment's confusion, the temple doors shuddered and smashed open as soldiers poured through the splintered gap. The Seishi pulled back into a tight circle around her, and she could feel Daisuke pressed up against her, his muscles taut as he sized up the soldiers closing in around them.
"What on earth is going on?" Marin repeated in a murmur, and Daisuke flicked her a quick glance and a faint smile.
"The emperor blames us."
"For what?" Marin couldn't help exclaiming, and Daisuke shrugged.
"For everything. We're holding his daughter hostage. We brought the demons here. It's all our fault that the city is in ruins. The Priestess is missing under mysterious circumstances. Take your pick." Then his unusually sombre expression cracked into a familiar, troublemaking grin. "Well, not the Priestess now, obviously, but everything else."
There was the ringing thud of armoured men coming to attention, and Marin had another shock as the Marquis Zhao, Zifeng's father, strode through the broken doors towards them. What the hell had been happening while she was gone?
"Arrest them," Master Zhao said coldly. His eyes swept dismissively over his son. "All of them. And return the princess to the palace."
Even in the dim light of the temple, Marin could see Meixing's face drain of colour. The princess gripped her sword tighter, and Marin was startled to realise that the low, rumbling snarl she could hear was coming from Tian Zhen. Marin edged past Daisuke's arm and stepped forward. The marquis' frigid gaze fell on her.
"I see the Priestess finally deigns to come out of hiding. The emperor will decide what to do with you, along with your miscreant band of treasonous rebels."
"Have a care, your eminence," Marin said, and the honorific was laced with contempt. "I have two more wishes, and Suzaku at my command." She ignored Daisuke's soft snort of laughter.
"You wouldn't dare," Master Zhao sneered.
"Believe me, I would burn this world to the ground if you push me too far."
…
Zifeng saw Daisuke's hands move to the daggers at his side. Smoke rose in a wisp from his fingers, but before he could burst into flames, Zifeng had his sword out of its scabbard, carving a line of red light through the air and halting a hair's width from his father's bared neck. The marquis didn't even flinch. The look he turned on his son was pure disgust.
"What are you doing, you stupid boy?" his father snarled, and Zifeng forced himself to not take that automatic step backwards.
"I'm doing what you raised me to do," he said bitterly. He could feel Xuelian come to stand behind him, a warm, familiar bulwark against the cold wash of his father's palpable rage. "Protect the Priestess at all costs."
He refused to let his sword tremble in his hand, and it was only when he knew that Marin was safely out of reach and behind the wall of protection of Daisuke and the Seishi that he lowered his sword. But he didn't sheath it. It stayed, balanced and dancing with red flame, in his hand.
"The stupid bitch will destroy us all!" the marquis nearly screamed, and Zifeng almost recoiled at the unprecedented vulgarity. His father's face was distorted with more emotion than Zifeng had ever seen in him, and Zifeng allowed a small smile to break through.
"Perhaps that would be no bad thing," he said calmly, but his sword stayed in his hand as he joined the Seishi with Xuelian close behind him.
…
"Kill the false priestess!" the Marquis Zhao commanded, his voice rising. As the halberds swung towards Marin, Daisuke felt himself ignite. A wall of flame slammed through him with the heat of his reaction, and fire crackled over his fingertips and ran down the blades of his daggers.
Over the noise of the flames he could hear the clatter of weapons dropping and the cries of men falling to their knees as he stalked towards them.
"Stand your ground!" the marquis shouted. As Daisuke's eyes met his through the shield of fire between them, Daisuke saw a very human rage blaze in the man's eyes. Then Daisuke saw the Marquis Zhao blink, and for a split second a void opened up in the man's eyes before it was gone.
It was enough to douse a measure of the heat running through his veins, and Daisuke yanked the fire back under his skin. The few soldiers who hadn't fled or grovelled in the street had their attention riveted on Daisuke, and never saw Xuelian until her soft touch dropped them where they stood.
The hand that connected, scarlet with power, with the marquis' cheek as he turned was considerably less gentle. Daisuke saw Master Zhao's eyes go wide in an almost comical disbelief, and then he heard Zifeng's faint inhalation as his father crumpled to the ground in an undignified heap. Xuelian stood over him, flexing her hand and swaying slightly.
"That felt good," she said, and there was an edge of vindictiveness under her measured calm. Zifeng lifted his eyes to stare at her as if he'd never seen her before, his face frozen in shock and respect.
"I think we need to move," Daisuke said carefully. "Before anyone else comes looking for us." He shot a look around the temple.
"Get what you need quickly. Time to go," he commanded.
The Seishi scattered to gather up their bedding and packs with experienced efficiency, and when Daisuke reached for his own blankets Marin bent and snatched up the book sitting on top of them before it could hit the ground. He couldn't help watching her instead of focusing on the task at hand, his eyes on her face as she turned the pages of the book.
He stuffed his blankets haphazardly into his pack, and broke the silence. "It was a long month, and I was short on paper. Are you going to kill me for ruining the book?" he half-joked.
"Not when you've done something this beautiful with it," she said, her attention still on his artwork. Over her shoulder he could see that she had got to the part where he'd drawn the battle with Genbu. "You drew our whole journey? This is stunning, Daisuke."
"It's just scribble."
"It's more than that," she insisted, and he shrugged disparagingly.
"Hikari wasn't wrong. It'll never be a stable career," he said. Marin looked up from the book at that, and her eyebrows rose.
" 'Stable'?" she asked incredulously. "Is that really what you want? And have you ever in your entire life done anything that your brother said you should do?"
Daisuke stared at her, at a loss for words. When she put it like that …
"Daisuke?" Jing Yun's voice jolted him out of his trance. "We're all ready to go."
They were barely two streets from the temple when they heard the scuffle and startled squawk of recognition, abruptly cut off.
Three tengu fell as they leaped, halfway between human and crow, with Zhu Yi's arrows blooming from their throats. A fourth crow fled shrieking into the sky. Zhu Yi's bow tracked it, but it was out of reach, and he eased the draw on the bowstring, his face grim.
"We have to move," Daisuke ruled. He flashed a quick look at Jing Yun and Zifeng. "You know the city best. Are we better off going for speed in the open, or stealth?"
Jing Yun was frowning up at the sky.
"Speed," he decided, and Zifeng gave a reluctant nod of agreement. "Any protection from the tengu that we had behind the Temple's wards is gone now. We've been seen, so Tai Yi Jun knows we're here anyway, and if we move fast we might make it out of the city before she gets here from wherever that tengu was heading."
There was little to stop them as the group wove through the streets. Anyone still in the city was in hiding and disinclined to interfere with a group of armed and purposeful warriors glowing with power, however ragged they were. The wreckage of carts and corpses and destroyed market stalls lay everywhere, and several times they had to pick their way carefully over the rubble that blocked their path.
The few tengu they found were dispatched swiftly before they could take to the air, and there had been no sign of any other forces within the city. They found out why as they skidded into the wide road that led out of the city, and the gatehouse loomed over them in massive stone.
In the shadow of the gatehouse, the attention of the guarding soldiers were fixed on the gates. Those few who spared attention for the street behind them grew wide-eyed as they caught sight of the Seishi approaching with glowing red drawn weapons. Some fell in obeisance, and Marin leaned towards Daisuke.
"You're on fire again," she whispered to him, and Daisuke glanced down at his hands. Flames flickered across his fingers, and he clenched his fist.
"That may not be a bad thing," he muttered back. He raised his hand higher, and more guards fell back with nervous faces, their eyes travelling from his burning hand to his wild red hair and back again. "It saves time on convincing everyone to let us through. I just wish I could do this on purpose."
"The gates are still barred," Zhu Yi said. "And if we open them somehow, we're leaving the city open to the demon forces on the other side.
"There's another way," Daisuke said, flicking his eyes towards a dark little door set deep in the walls of the gatehouse, and then glancing up. Jing Yun grinned as he caught on to Daisuke's plan. Jing Yun had the lock picked and the door opened on the narrow little staircase before the other Seishi had even realised what he was doing. He stood back with a flourish, and they started up the stairs in single file.
The guards that they encountered on the wall didn't slow them up much, and Daisuke moved quickly to the parapet, leaning out to get a better vantage. He eyed the edge of the deep forest far beyond the city plains, and began to calculate the distance and the dangers involved.
Beside him, Marin was staring out over the churned up wasteland beyond the city walls and the moat that ran around it. The willows that bordered the wide moat had been ripped up and there was still smoke rising from the wreckage of the farmhouses outside the walls and the torn up farmlands beyond that.
"Oh my god," Marin breathed in dismay.
"The troops inside the city managed to hold off the oni, but the monsters destroyed the countryside before the lords and their reinforcements arrived," Daisuke told her, but his attention was on the patches of movement in the ruins. Large, shambling figures moved between the broken houses, and in the distance he could see a cohort of mounted troops fighting a pitched battle with a huge creature that took out a horse and rider with one easy blow before it staggered under the combined assault.
"Zifeng's dad and his army broke up the main attack on the city when they got here, and most of the oni and tengu took off – it's like whatever is leading them isn't really interested in taking the city. They mill around, and they fight, but this-" he gestured at the scene below them "- this is harassment, not a war. Whatever they wanted, the city isn't it."
"I think we can all guess what they were really after," Zhu Yi pointed out, shooting a wry look at Marin. "And now we've got to get her out of here before Tai Yi Jun figures out that she's back."
"Any thoughts about that, god-boy?" Jing Yun asked, and Daisuke made a rude gesture at him.
He turned to Tian Zhen. "Feeling up to a little gardening?" he asked.
Tian Zhen gave him a quick nod and a smile. He spread his hands, and vines climbed the high stone wall.
"Time to go," Daisuke said decisively, reaching for one of the creepers that curled up past the parapet, and they followed him over the edge.
…
It was difficult climbing down Tian Zhen's vines in the clothes that Marin had worn from the other world. She hadn't really realised how close-fitting her blouse and skirt were until she was trying to scramble down the side of a city wall without flashing her underwear at the whole countryside, and she clamped down on the slightly hysterical giggle that she could feel welling up in her chest.
They managed to make it across the broad moat on a raft cobbled together of ruined bits of timber and willow branches and more of Tian Zhen's magic, and began the nerve-wracking journey across the destroyed fields that lay between the city and forest.
It took hours, creeping past the oni that lumbered through the ruins. From a distance, the oni were big, but up close they were huge and terrifying, hairy creatures with leathery, livid faces full of teeth and tusks and horns. Marin followed Daisuke past one creature squatting in the middle of a still-smoking farmyard, gnawing on something that Marin hoped was a pig or a goat, and she felt Daisuke take her hand. He kept throwing her glances as if he was afraid that she would disappear again if he took his eyes off her for too long, and she squeezed his hand gently, giving him a strained smile.
"How bad has it been here?" she asked him in a whisper as they took cover in the shadow of a broken wall, and Daisuke grimaced.
"Pretty bad. That thing in Tai Yi Jun isn't even trying to hide itself anymore." He jabbed a thumb upwards at the sky, and Marin looked up. She hadn't noticed it before, in the scramble to get out of the city, but she couldn't help the shocked, sharp inhalation. Even in broad daylight, the sky was bruised with dark, spidery patches that sent a chill down her spine.
"You wait until you see it tonight," Daisuke said grimly, his eyes on the monsters lumbering past. "The stars are disappearing."
"What do you mean, disappearing?"
"I mean, they're gone. I can feel it. The Pole Star and everything around it are gone, and the stars to the east and west are almost gone too. Not clouded. Not obscured. There's just an emptiness where they ought to be. It's not the right season for the Northern constellations, but I can feel that they're not there either."
Marin's mind threw up the memory of her mirror vision, and the bile rose in her throat.
"All-consuming void …" she said sickly.
"As above, so below," Daisuke responded darkly. "It's only a matter of time."
The oni shambled away and Daisuke tugged her to her feet, signalling to the rest of the Seishi. "Let's get moving before they come back."
Occasionally throughout the day they caught a glimpse of another mounted party of cavalry or archers from the city, engaged in a swift, ferocious battle with the monsters or chasing them down, but Daisuke was right – there was no real cohesion among the oni. They were just as likely to fight each other over a contested scrap as they were to turn on the defended city. Swarms of tengu were still circling over the city, and every so often a handful of them would break off and risk the archers on the walls to attempt to land in the city. Some even made it. More were brought down by the answering hail of arrows. It didn't stop more crows from trying.
The late afternoon sun was starting to grow long by the time they finally made it to the tree line, out of reach of the oni under the thick growth of elm and willow, and out of sight of the tengu who still wheeled in the fading sky as night crept in. When Daisuke eventually looked to Zhu Yi and Zifeng as the ones who would know the terrain, and called a halt, Marin collapsed onto a fallen log and looked properly at her Seishi.
They were all looking a little more worn, and more exhausted than when she'd last seen them before the fight with Tai Yi Jun and before she'd been yanked through the book. Daisuke's red hair was a little longer, falling in a dark, scruffy sweep over his face, and she could see the purple stain of bruises along his jaw. Meixing's forearm was bandaged, and she could see a half-healed scar running down Zhu Yi's cheek now.
"How long have I been gone?" she asked quietly.
"A month, give or take," Daisuke responded. "I sort of lost track of time. But it's about that."
He lowered himself down to sit next to Marin and she could feel his warmth through the thin material of her blouse.
"You made the wish, and we all ended up here, but there was no sign of you." There were shadows in his eyes that hadn't been there before. "The tengu couldn't find us as long as we stayed inside the Temple wards, so that's where we've been, trying to work out what to do next."
"And what was all that, back at the Temple?" she asked.
"A few days ago, the emperor's guards managed to snatch Meixing and hauled her back to the palace. Jing Yun, Tian Zhen and I staged a very noisy, very public distraction while Zifeng and Xuelian and Zhu Yi rescued her. Today the emperor sent Marquis Zhao after us." Daisuke flicked a quick glance in Zifeng's direction. "They've both taken our activities as a personal insult for various reasons - it turns out the marquis doesn't like his son hanging around with riffraff like us. And then you dropped in."
"I wound up back in the National Library where I was when I found the Four Gods Sky and Earth," she told him. "It was only a couple of hours for me, and then I worked out where the book was, tracked it down, and came back here to get you out of trouble."
Marin could see Daisuke grinning at her, and felt that familiar kick in her pulse.
"Clever girl," he said.
"Damn straight, I am. Your mother sends her love, by the way," Marin said offhandedly, enjoying the way his grin froze in shock.
"Wait, you met my mother?"
"We had tea together." Daisuke was still speechless, and Marin gave him an innocent smile. "Well, where did you think the book was? Your mother's been reading about our adventures the whole time you've been away."
She glanced around the circle of Seishi and became aware of something missing.
"Where's Zhang Yong?" she asked, and something changed in the air. She caught the exchange of unhappy, tense glances.
Eventually Zhu Yi said, "We don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know?"
"The wish brought us back to the temple," Daisuke said, gesturing at the trees in the direction of the city, "and sent you home, apparently. But Zhang Yong didn't turn up here with us, and we've had no sign of him."
She was still thinking of the young Seishi and the damaged sky after everyone else had drifted away to gather firewood, or set up bedrolls for the night, or visit the nearby stream. Marin stayed staring into the campfire. She looked up briefly when Xuelian sank onto the log beside her and settled the skirts of her gown carefully.
"What do you think happened to Zhang Yong?" Marin asked quietly, and Xuelian's mouth tightened.
"What I want to know is what's happened to your shoulder?" the doctor deflected. "I can tell by the way you're carrying yourself that you've damaged it somehow."
Marin hesitated for a long moment, then she reached up to undo the top few buttons of her blouse. Without saying anything, she slid the soft fabric off her shoulder, and heard Xuelian's indrawn breath.
"I see," Xuelian said clinically. She pushed the blouse to one side, her lips pursed as she examined the damage.
"The wish?" she asked quietly, and Marin nodded. Without another word, Xuelian went to her medicine chest and brought out a small pot which she handed to Marin. It was full of a dark, waxy balm with a pungent smell.
"Not that it will do much good," Xuelian said. "The damage is internal, and the nerve damage blocks most of the pain you should be feeling."
Xuelian reached out and clasped a firm hand around Marin's shoulder.
"See? I can feel the heat under your skin still."
"There's not much I can do about it. All those accounts of the priestess being consumed by the beast god, it turns out that's not a metaphor, but we need those two wishes," she added grimly. Marin slid the blouse back up over her shoulder, rearranging everything. "And, as you said, it doesn't hurt much now."
She reached for the notebook she'd brought from the other world. By the time everyone had returned from their tasks, and they were all bustling over preparing what little food they'd managed to bring with them from the temple, Marin was already deep in pouring over the book in her hands. She spared Daisuke a quick glance and a warmer smile as he came up behind her, then turned back to the notebook.
"Where did that come from?" he asked, leaning over her shoulder. He dropped a kiss on her cheek and she absently accepted it. "God, I've missed you."
He moved away just far enough to collect a bowl of whatever it was that was heating in a pot over the fire, then came back to sit beside her.
"It's Einosuke Okuda's notes," Marin told him.
"The guy who translated the Book of Sky and Earth?" Daisuke remembered, and Marin gave him another quick smile before she turned back to the book.
"Your mother had the notes and she gave them to me. I'm just trying to work out a few things."
She felt him shake with a sudden laugh.
"Research face," he teased gently, and she rolled her eyes at him.
"I know it's important, I just don't know how. Things aren't adding up."
She shifted, moving closer to his warmth.
"For instance, there's no mention of the tengu that I know of before Takiko Okuda arrived in the Universe of the Four Gods. Or, to put it another way, before Okuda's translation of the Book of Sky and Earth. I don't have the resources here to double-check," she said in frustration, "but I remember references to yaoguai, and all the descriptions match Chinese mythology. So why does a Japanese demon suddenly turn up in the records after a Japanese priestess arrives here?"
Daisuke shrugged. "Well, Okuda did translate the story from Chinese into Japanese, didn't he? Maybe that changed things. Maybe Okuda rewrote things."
Marin's head shot up. She stared at him, arrested.
"Say that again."
"Okuda rewrote things?" he repeated cautiously.
Marin sat there, staring into space. That felt like the words that she'd been reaching after for a while now. One of the missing puzzle pieces.
She flipped rapidly through the pages, skimming over Okuda's descriptions of his search through China for the Book of the Four Gods. She stopped at a passage where his handwriting had become agitated and almost illegible.
'I wrote the incantation and felt the book come alive…'
She kept going, almost holding her breath as she read. Beside her, Daisuke had finished eating and was drawing patterns in the dirt with a stick. He seemed content to just be close to her, his hand busy outlining increasingly detailed images, while Marin lost herself in her research.
'As I translate, I can feel the power in the words and I can almost sense the world within the pages. Now, if only I can find a way into the book, I can make the wish to the gods that will restore my wife to health…'
'The Universe of the Four Gods will only open to a young girl, a priestess, summoned by one of the gods. I can't go into that world and make the sacred wish, but my daughter Takiko…'
'This can't be right! To grant the wishes, the beast god requires His priestess to be joined with His power and consumed by it… I must have mistranslated. I must check my notes… My daughter or my wife, who could make such a choice? No! There must be a way…'
Marin re-read that first paragraph again – 'I wrote the incantation and felt the book come alive…'
"Kotodama," Marin murmured, her mind busy putting things together. "Words have power."
And so did illustrations. Marin watched Daisuke idly sketching out their escape from Rongyao on the bare ground in a few vivid strokes, remembering the lightning snap of power when she had started to read the incantation at the beginning of the Records, and the half-formed ideas crystallised.
She had her answer, and now she knew she needed to find the incantation. There was no trace or translation of it in Okuda's notes, and the book itself was a world away on Daisuke's desk. The Chronicles of Suzaku was at the bottom of the sea in Beijia, and that wasn't what she needed anyway. No, what she needed was in the Records of the Four Gods. And that was in Tai Yi Jun's library.
"I have a bad feeling that we need to go back to Mt Daichi," she said reluctantly.
Daisuke stared at her silently for a long moment.
"You have a plan," Daisuke said, but it wasn't really a question.
"You're not going to like it," Marin told him.
Their gaze met for one long moment, then he said, "Okay."Marin sucked in a deep breath. The thought flashed across her mind that maybe she'd been hoping that he'd talk her out of this.
"Just like that? Okay?" she asked incredulously. "What if I've got this wrong?"
Daisuke snorted. "You're usually right."
"Usually?"
"Well, you thought I was an irritating jerk when we first met."
"Jury's still out on that," she muttered.
"If you believe we need to go to Mt Daichi, then that's what we do. We've got to do something – we can't just sit around here waiting for Tai Yi Jun's minions to catch up with us – and you've got an idea. My money's on you."
She swallowed, feeling suddenly cold. "No pressure."
The rest of the Seishi were gathered around them now.
"So we're heading back to Mt Daichi," Jing Yun summed up, ladling out a bowl from the pot beside the fire pit. "Back to Tai Yi Jun's lair."
"That's about it," Daisuke said lightly, but Marin noticed that no one argued with him. Things had really changed in the time she'd been gone.
"We have to get to Mt Daichi," Marin said. "I need to see the Records of the Four Gods."
"You didn't find anything the last time we were there," Xuelian pointed out.
"The difference is, I know what I'm looking for now. And I'm not making my last wishes until I'm absolutely sure it's going to work," she said grimly. "If I'm going to destroy an entire world, I want to be sure we can get it back again."
There was a dead silence, then Zifeng spoke.
"You are going to use your wishes to destroy the Universe of the Four Gods," he said, and his usually glass-smooth voice was as rough as gravel. Behind him, Xuelian made an abbreviated movement towards him, and her eyes were fixed on him with tight concern.
"I don't see any other way," Marin said quietly. She looked down at her lap, avoiding the eyes of her companions. The tension stretched on.
Then Jing Yun gave an exaggerated sigh. "After all of this, I'd be tempted to wish for the end of the world too," he said, pulling a face at the bowl of mush in his hands. "If it means never having to touch another mouthful of gruel or stew, I'm all in favour."
"Works for me," Zhu Yi shrugged. "If there's anything left standing when we're done, I'll probably be arrested and executed for desertion, so the end of the world's looking pretty good right now."
"My family will never take me back," Xuelian said with a quiet bitterness. She repacked the jars back into her medical chest with meticulous care. "All I ever wanted was to be a royal physician like my ancestors, and make my father and mother proud, but that's all gone now anyway."
Meixing had her arms wrapped around her knees as she stared into the heart of the campfire.
"I wish the world would end," she said in a small voice, "if it meant I didn't have to go back to the palace."
"You're not going back there." Tian Zhen's voice was deep and certain, and she turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. "When this is all done, if we're still alive, you're coming back to the farm with me so my mother can fuss over you like the daughter she always wanted, and my father will spoil you rotten and love you like you deserve. And I'll teach my little sister Meixing how to grow flowers and pick cherries and plums. The emperor can look for you all he wants, but we'll keep you safe."
Meixing's eyes shone bright with tears in the firelight.
"I'd like that," she whispered, and her voice was muffled as she hid her face in her arms, her shoulders shaking.
"If we survive any of this, I want to go find somewhere warm with no demons and no gods. You should come with me," Jing Yun said with studied casualness in Zhu Yi's direction. "There's got to be something out there better than the army."
Zhu Yi gave him an odd look, as if he didn't understand the question. "Of course I'm coming with you."
Marin thought she might have been the only one who heard the soft hitch of Jing Yun's breath in response.
"I wish I had never been marked by Suzaku," Zifeng said tonelessly. His eyes flickered over Marin briefly, then he turned and walked away.
For a long moment, Marin stared down at her hands, trying to work up the courage, then she pushed herself to her feet. Daisuke looked up, but she shot him a glance and a quick shake of her head as she followed Zifeng into the shadow of the trees.
He was some distance from their campsite, a dim blur of dusty white robes in the forest, by the time she caught up with him.
Marin tentatively reached out to him.
"Zifeng, I'm so sorry-" He lifted a hand abruptly, cutting her off.
"Don't."
He stalked away a few paces, then wheeled to face her.
"Do you truly intend to use your wishes to destroy this world?" he asked harshly, and Marin pulled back.
"I don't see any other way. Chaos overwhelmed the Great Sage, it claimed three out of the four beast gods, and I felt what it did to the priestesses who tried to stop it. It's devouring the sky, and the earth will be next. And if I just wish for everything to go back to the way it was then it will still be there. All we've got left is two wishes to defeat it, and this is the only way I can think of to use them."
"So after everything, after everything I've done, we can't save the world anyway. I abandoned my duty to my emperor and my country. I betrayed my father and left my men stranded in Beijia with no hope of return. I have fought and endured to save this world and be worthy of you, and it's all for nothing."
"Zifeng –"
"We were meant to be together! All of this, this whole quest, was supposed to bring us together. But I could never compete with a god," he said bitterly.
Marin opened her mouth to say something, and then closed it. After all, what could she say that would make it any better for Zifeng?
"How can you be so certain that you can bring this world back?"
"Not me," Marin told him. "Daisuke. And it's a risk, but the alternative is that the Chaos inhabiting Tai Yi Jun does to everything and everyone what it did to the other gods and their priestesses with no hope of rewriting the world again. I felt it, Zifeng. I felt every second of what it did to them, and I will do whatever it takes to prevent that."
The steely whisper inside her that had threatened to let the world burn if Daisuke was harmed reminded her that, if nothing else, at least she would send Daisuke safely home. But she didn't say that out loud.
"Xuelian told me about your injuries from the last wish," he told her. "And what they mean. You don't expect to survive, do you?"
Marin felt a swift blaze of anger burn through her at Zifeng, at the gods who had called her here, at the whole damn universe that kept expecting her to pick up the mess it had made, and Zifeng recoiled as he met her eyes.
"Did you think that fixing this was going to come without a sacrifice?" she said furiously. "That's what the priestess is."
Zifeng's expression shifted to an uncomfortable mix of pity and horror.
"And you must ask Daisuke to fulfill his role as Suzaku," he said slowly as understanding dawned. "For the first time, I am glad that I am not the one you chose to love. I do not think that I would have the fortitude to grant you those wishes, knowing what it would cost."
As he turned and walked away, he glanced back over his shoulder.
"I do not think that Suzaku's love will bring any of us happiness."
…
Daisuke pushed away from the tree where he'd been leaning in the shadows and came towards her casually. Marin didn't realise that she was crying until he quickened his pace and his hand came up to cup her damp cheek. His gaze flickered in Zifeng's direction.
"What did he say to you?"
"Nothing that wasn't true." She brushed away the tears and drew a shuddering breath. "I never wanted to hurt Zifeng like that. Or Xuelian. And you."
"If you hadn't, we'd all be worse than dead by now," he said so matter-of-factly that it jolted her. "You did what you had to do, and it's not your fault that the situation you're dealing with sucks. If anything, this is all on me, because Suzaku somehow dragged you into this mess in the first place."
Daisuke gathered her close, and she let herself melt into him when his arms went around her. He pressed his lips to her hair.
"I wish you didn't have to deal with this," he whispered against her ear in that husky voice that sent shivers down her spine. "I wish you were safe back in our world, but there's no one else I'd trust more to see what has to be done and do it, and I'm glad you're here with me."
"I couldn't leave you like that," Marin whispered back, her arms wrapping around him, and he sighed into the curve of her neck. "Who knows what you'd get up to without me to keep you in line?"
He kissed her softly at the juncture of her jaw, and her breath caught. Leaves rustled delicately in the night time breeze, and even in the damaged sky the stars of Suzaku's constellations shone steady and brilliant as they slipped below the soft, dark horizon of the fading summer.
"You smell good," he said into her hair. Marin couldn't help the giggle that escaped.
"I had a shower," she told him. "Do you remember those?"
"I'm so jealous right now."
He was kissing his way down the curve of her throat, and his hand drifted under the hem of her blouse, sending shivers through her as his fingertips brushed the skin above her waistband.
"Daisuke," she protested, as the faint sounds from the campsite reached them. "We're not alone here."
"At least let me hold you for a while," he begged, and there was none of his characteristic cockiness in his voice. "I've missed you."
"Your mother is watching all of this."
The noises from the camp settled again. Daisuke looked up into the few remaining dim stars far overhead.
"Mama, stop reading for a minute," he told the air. "I'm going to kiss Marin."
And he did just that.
The world dissolved in bright sparks and a perfect kiss. Marin could feel the rough bark behind her as Daisuke pressed her back against a tree, the warmth of his hands on her, and the intoxicating heat of his mouth on hers. She pushed her fingers through the soft flames of his hair, tangling and tugging him closer into the kiss. He made a desperate little sound that did something indescribable to her as his hands ran like heat over the swell of her hip and up the bare curve of her back under the thin fabric of her blouse.
And his fingertips brushed the burns running down her shoulder. The livid marks in her flesh flared into agonising life at the contact with Suzaku's hidden heat and she couldn't help the smothered yelp of pain.
Daisuke jerked back at the sound as if he was the one who'd been burned. He pulled away so fast that Marin almost stumbled until he caught her with uncertain hands on her arms. As soon as she was steady he stepped back, his eyes on her with worry and a hint of fear in the hazel depths.
"Are you okay? Did I hurt you?"
Marin shook her head.
"You didn't do anything wrong." She hesitated for a moment, then told him. He needed to know. "The first wish burned me. It's mostly fine – Xuelian said I won't feel it much, and she's given me something for it – but it just hurt a bit just now."
"When I touched you," Daisuke said grimly. He was still standing away from her, and she felt a little bit cold now without his touch and his warmth. The hazel in his eyes was darkening with a growing realisation. One hand lifted towards her and jerked back. "Is this going to happen again if you make another wish?"
"We need those two wishes," Marin insisted, and Daisuke's eyes narrowed.
"Was this what you meant when you said I wouldn't like the plan?" he asked quietly. He shoved his hands through his hair and stalked a few paces away from her, then pivoted back to face her. "We're not doing this."
"Daisuke." Her sharp tone cut across his restless pacing and brought him to a halt. Marin met his eyes steadily. "Is your money on me or not?"
He didn't answer, but he stayed still, watching her.
"Do you really think I'd do this if I thought there was any other possibility? Whatever has taken over Tai Yi Jun is very old and very powerful, and it's got its hooks into this world. Those wishes are the only chance we've got, and I'm not going to not use them because it'll hurt a bit."
She glared at him. "I don't want you to refuse to grant me my wishes because it will hurt me. Because believe me, it'll hurt me worse if we fail when I could have done something to stop what Tai Yi Jun is doing."
Daisuke's fists were clenching and unclenching at his sides.
"It's not going to be just a bit, though, is it?" he said, his gaze falling on her shoulder.
Before Marin could say anything further, there was an abrupt flurry of raised voices from the campsite, and their heads whipped around. They were running before the sound had died away.
…
Zifeng left Marin and the camp behind him, needing to be alone with everything roiling through him. He moved silently between the trees, and came to the edge of the stream, startling the creature drinking there. The spindly human shape squawked and scrambled, but before the tengu could morph and take to the air Zifeng's sword shot out, pinning it to the ground.
The crow's dark eyes blinked, and the void gazed back at Zifeng from under his sword.
"Greetings, lordling," Tai Yi Jun's voice said. The creature turned its neck with a stiff, jerky movement as if it were a puppet, taking in as much of its surroundings as it could from its awkward position. "Border trees, elm and willow. Interesting. Now, where are you going?" the voice speculated.
"It matters not," Zifeng said, and drew his sword back slightly for the strike.
"And you here all alone, not a companion in sight," it said with a deep compassion and sorrow. Zifeng's hand stilled.
"You have given your priestess loyalty and devotion beyond measure, and this is how she rewards you. How does she plan to use those wishes? To save the world you've fought so hard to protect, or to be with the man she betrayed you with?"
"Who are you?" Zifeng asked. "What are you?"
"Oh, I've been written into many forms. Chaos, hundun. Void. Xingtian Opposing Heaven. Amatsu-Mikaboshi." The creature's mouth stretched in an unsettling smile. "I like that one. Dread Star of Heaven sounds so grandiose, although strictly speaking it's not very accurate. I was around long before there ever were stars, or a Heaven. All this was mine before that witch Tai Yi Jun willed herself into existence and stole it all from me."
The crow-creature jerked furiously as if someone had yanked on its puppet strings.
"All I want is to take back what's mine," the tengu snarled in the old woman's voice. "Surely you, of all people, should understand. That damn bird took everything from you – your honour, your place, your destiny." Jet black eyes fixed on him knowingly. "Your true love. I could help you get all of that back."
"Where is Zhang Yong?"
The tengu's head tilted erratically.
"What?" Tai Yi Jun asked sharply through the creature's beaky lips.
"What has become of Zhang Yong?" he repeated expressionlessly, and when there was no response, Zifeng severed the tengu's head with one swift movement. It slumped as the living darkness vanished from its eyes, and Zifeng walked back the way he came until he had reached the campsite.
The Seishi eyed the naked sword in his hand, and the bead of crow's blood that rolled down its edge to fall gently into the dust at his feet. Jing Yun came to his feet, one hand on his own weapons, but Zifeng didn't acknowledge the wary tension in the thief's stance, and when Marin and Daisuke hurried into the clearing he barely registered their dishevelled state.
"Tai Yi Jun has made contact with me through a tengu minion," he said tonelessly. "We need to leave here before she locates where we are and where we are going."