CHAPTER 16: THE SOUL

For the second time that day, Misaki shrank away from the Ranganese at her doorstep, but this time her fear was not pretend. Even at her physical prime, she wouldn’t have dreamed of challenging a member of Ranga’s special forces in combat. Now she faced two.

The taller of the pair was a towering man with a spray of shrapnel scars across half his face, a sign that he had survived battles in the past. The smaller was a woman with the sort of legs Misaki would have killed for when she was at Daybreak—long and well-built. At first glance, neither fonyaka had any weapons, but Misaki noticed that the woman had a pair of strange straight knives tucked into her belt, one at each hip. No, not knives, Misaki realized. Fans.

Misaki had once made fun of Ya-li for fighting with a folding fan, but she had shut up after she saw the way a deftly-wielded fan could amplify fonya, doubling its range and power. To a jijaka, a fan was an aristocrat’s accessory to go with fine inkstones and scented stationery. To a skilled fonyaka, it was the difference between a strong attack and a devastating one.

The black-clad Ranganese stepped forward and Misaki stepped back. Just from the fonya radiating from them and the powerful grace of their movements, she knew that facing them in combat was not an option. The only thing she could do was try to draw them away from the cellar where her family sheltered.

Turning, Misaki ducked into the nearest side hallway. The female fonyaka darted after her, gaining on her with alarming speed. Damn those legs. The male fonyaka smashed right through a wall to cut off her retreat. Misaki stumbled to a stop, her heart pounding, trapped between two fighters far stronger than herself. The man took a menacing step toward her while the woman drew the fans from her belt.

Thinking fast, Misaki drew all the water she could from the surrounding air. She raised the liquid on either side of her, as if ready to form twin ice shields, as if she had anywhere near the power of jiya to withstand what they would throw at her. The female fonyaka let out a derisive huff of laughter. One of the fans flipped open and struck.

Instead of bracing her defenses, Misaki let go of them. As the water dropped, so did she, flattening herself against the floor. There had been a time she could drop into a full split cold; now just a low crouch strained her muscles and sent a burning pop of pain through her hip, but it effectively put her below the trajectory of the air pressure.

The male fonyaka probably would have been able to dodge his comrade’s attack in an open fight, but Misaki’s water had obscured his view of the fan-wielder until it was too late. The wave of amplified fonya slammed into his body at full force, knocking him through the nearest wall and, judging by the crashing sounds, probably the two behind it as well.

“Aiya-!” The female fonyaka uttered a gasp of alarm.

Misaki’s impulse was to use her enemy’s moment of surprise and distress to close the distance between them, but a twang of pain in her hip told her that wasn’t going to be possible. Instead, she slung a whip of ice-laced water at the woman’s ankles.

Too slow. The fonyaka was light on her feet and leaped over the arc of the attack. The wind enhanced jump sent her spinning through the air toward Misaki. One of those long legs swung toward the ceiling and then dropped, heel first, like a hammer.

Misaki’s days of springing around with that kind of elastic agility were passed; she had to clumsily throw herself to the side to avoid the attack. The axe kick landed with terrifying force, splintering wood and shaking the whole house. If the woman’s foot hadn’t broken clean through the floorboards, Misaki probably would not have survived the next two dinmanu. The moment the woman took to extract her leg from the planks gave Misaki time to scramble into a ready stance. Even so, she just barely managed to dodge the following slash. Fan blades clipped her sleeve, tearing the blue fabric.

As the fonyaka swung through her missed attack, Misaki turned her body into an upward cut, aiming for the brachial artery under the woman’s extended arm. But rather than trying to reset, the woman spun with the momentum of her missed attack. Her body turned before the blade reached it, removing Misaki’s target.

Misaki’s cut brushed the back of the elite’s uniform without hitting flesh, but that was the beauty of a little sword like Siradenyaa: she could change directions on a neye. The moment Misaki’s cut missed, she flipped her sword over for an overhanded slice to her opponent’s neck.

As the woman completed her spin, a closed fan clanged into the side of Siradenyaa, knocking it off course. Misaki pulled Shadow’s Daughter back to her hip as the fonyaka did the same with her closed fan. In a strangely mirror-like moment, both women launched off a back foot, going for the stab.

Stupid girl, Misaki thought, almost disappointed with her young opponent. The fonyaka might have speed and strength on her side, but it wouldn’t matter; Siradenyaa’s stabbing range was so much longer than that of a fan, there was no way the Ranganese woman’s attack could land first. Siradenyaa drove toward her victim’s chest, aimed past the black buttoned uniform, past the breast to the beating heart beneath.

But in her haste to end the fight, Misaki had forgotten about the other fan. It appeared in the way just before her blade could strike its mark. Siradenyaa, of course, passed through the thin metal, but the stab had been diverted, missing the woman’s heart to tear harmlessly through her sleeve.

Misaki made to slice free, but before she could adjust her stance to do so, the fan snapped closed, trapping the Zilazen glass blade in its folds. Gripping the closed fan, the woman twisted the sword from Misaki’s hands, sending both weapons spinning away.

The moment she realized she was being disarmed, Misaki relinquished her hold on the sword and changed her stance to aim Blood-Needle-ready fingers at the woman’s neck. Even with the opening, she still wasn’t fast enough. The fonyaka bent out of the way of the attack, effortlessly drawing Misaki into a joint lock.

Against a stiffer fighter, Misaki would have tried to relax her muscles and slide free, but this woman was so flexible, she might as well have tried to escape the coils of a python. In a heartbeat, Misaki found herself slammed against the wood floor, her arm twisted painfully behind her, a knee crushing down between her shoulder blades. Fifteen years ago, she would have bladed ice across the bottom of her foot and snapped a scorpion kick into the woman’s face, but she knew without trying that she no longer had the flexibility in her spine to make a move like that work.

The woman twisted her weight against Misaki’s arm, wrenching a roar of pain from Misaki’s throat.

Think, Misaki! Think, before your arm is broken!

This fonyaka was sharp. She would notice any overt movement, in either Misaki’s body or the surrounding water. Thankfully, the Tsusano Blood Needle was not the only needle in Misaki’s arsenal. With two fingers, she drew together a sliver of water molecules a stride from herself and the fonyaka: a tiny version of the mighty ice spears the men of Takayubi were so fond of.

Most fighters would choose a forbidding spear over a needle, but the nice thing about needles was that they could slide through cloth, flesh, or air unnoticed, and they took only a tiny movement to direct. The Ranganese woman didn’t notice anything as Misaki’s water thread froze to a hard point. She cranked Misaki’s arm further. As the pain spiked, Misaki snapped her two fingers inward, yanking the ice needle toward them.

The shriek was as gratifying as it was terrible; it let Misaki know that her attack had found its mark in the fonyaka’s eye. As that snakelike grip released, Misaki rolled free and staggered to her feet.

Impressively, the fonyaka found her way to her feet as well, a hand over her bleeding eye. Her scream of pain rising to one of rage, she lunged for Misaki. The remaining fan flashed forward and had the woman’s depth perception not been compromised, Misaki would have been sliced to pieces in the ensuing fit of slashing and screaming. As it was, she had to deflect a few of the attacks with her forearms, shredding her sleeves and splattering her blood across the floor.

The woman drove her out of the hall, into the kitchen, and Misaki knew she had to end this while the advantage was still hers. Her eyes darted to where she and Setsuko kept the knives, but her brain canceled the thought before she risked her neck trying to go for the cupboard. She hadn’t been able to kill this woman with a Zilazen glass sword; what good was a little kitchen knife going to do? Even injured, this woman moved so much faster than she did; she would have to immobilize her to kill her. Misaki was at the end of her stamina, her overtaxed legs ready to buckle beneath her, while the fonyaka’s fury seemed to be making her stronger by the dinma.

Stumbling back from her crazed enemy, Misaki fell against the counter, careful to place herself directly in front of the sink. The woman swung her fan, releasing a burst of fonya, and Misaki dove sideways, letting the air pressure slam into the sink. Water exploded through the room, pouring from the broken faucet onto the floor and spraying high into the air.

The fonyaka let out a cry of surprise as the spray caught her in her good eye. Misaki took advantage of the woman’s moment of blindness and moved in. Not trusting her shaking muscles with a sweep kick or any of the more advanced takedowns in her repertoire, she launched her whole body forward in a tackle. The taller fighter was so well muscled that it felt like ramming her shoulder into solid rock, but Misaki’s momentum managed to take her off her feet.

Both women crashed to the floor as water spread out beneath them and rained from above. Instead of trying to pin the stronger woman down with her weight, Misaki landed with her palms on either side of her victim and forced her exhausted jiya into motion. As the fonyaka’s good eye snapped open, her grip tightened on her fan and her fonya swirled back into motion with a vengeance—but it was too late. The fight was over.

The same clinging ice Misaki once used to scale walls was also excellent for immobilizing an opponent. Where most jijakalu required a considerable amount of water to freeze someone’s body in place, Misaki needed only a thin sheet. In the moment after they hit the wet floor, she had frozen the fonyaka’s hair, skin, and uniform to the floorboards with ice strong enough to stick a human to the side of a skyscraper.

Misaki watched the woman’s working eye widen as she registered the biting cold and realized that she couldn’t move. Her face twisted into a snarl. Fonya whipped Misaki’s hair and kimono, but without its wielder’s limbs to give it direction, the wind was no more than impotent bluster.

Reaching to the woman’s right hand, Misaki pried the fan from her fingers. It might be a messy instrument of execution, but her muscles and jiya were so exhausted that she didn’t think she had it in her to form an ice spear or even stand up and search for Siradenyaa. Flipping the fan open, she tried to find a comfortable grip on the base with her left hand; her right arm had been twisted so hard, she didn’t trust it to hold a weapon.

“You slimy Kaigenese sea slug,” the woman spat, resorting to racist insults, as so many fighters did in defeat. Not good ones either. “You cheated.”

Indignant, Misaki scowled down at the fonyaka. “You try fighting fair after pushing out four babies,” she panted in Shirojima Dialect she knew the woman couldn’t understand.

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, a thought made her pause and stare down at the fonyaka. She was certainly younger than Misaki, but not too young to have children of her own... She had stopped struggling. Instead, she lay under Misaki, still except for the rise and fall of her chest. Her jaw was set in determination. It was the look of a woman steeling herself for death, the look of a woman who knew—who had always known—what she was getting into.

If she had children... well, then she shouldn’t have traveled over the ocean to kill someone else’s. She had no one to blame but herself.

Misaki raised the fan to strike.

“You’re holding it wrong.”

The unexpected words only made Misaki pause for a dinma. It was a mistake.

In that moment of hesitation, the woman moved. An animalistic shriek rent the air as her right arm ripped free of the ice, leaving her sleeve and most of her skin behind. In a lurch of horror, Misaki realized that the woman hadn’t been steeling herself for death but for the worst pain imaginable.

Roaring in agony, the fonyaka caught Misaki’s face in an iron grip, fingers slick with blood. Misaki tried to jerk her head back, but the younger woman was too strong. Powerful fingers dug in, levering her jaw open, and the fonyaka pulled—not on Misaki’s body, but the air inside it.

Breath rushed from Misaki’s lungs, dizzying her, and a sharp pain drove through her chest like knives. Panic took hold as she realized what was happening to her: Lazou Linghun, the Ranganese called it—the Soul Pull—a bloodline technique as rare as the Whispering Blade and as feared as Blood Puppeteering. It took a tremendous amount of power to vacuum the air from another theonite’s body, but with enough training, there were members of certain bloodlines who could do it. And in her pain-spiked rage, power did not seem to be an issue for this woman.

Misaki tried to fight the pull, tried to expand her lungs in a deep breath, but the moment she did, the rib-splitting pain nearly made her faint. In dinmanu, her lungs would be sucked empty, reduced to crumpled tissue. Unable to claw the stronger theonite’s hand from her face, she slashed the bladed fan across the woman’s throat. Blood spurted from the fonyaka’s neck and her body convulsed against its ice prison.

Horrifyingly, her death throes only caused her grip to tighten, her nails drawing blood from Misaki’s cheeks, and the pull intensified. It was as if the fonyaka’s soul itself had dug claws into Misaki on its way out of the living world, determined to drag her with it.

Pain splintered through Misaki’s chest and sides as her lungs started to collapse. Blind with panic, she struck again, driving the fan so deep into the woman’s neck that it hit her spine and stuck there. The fonyaka’s hand stiffened around Misaki’s face, twitched... then finally, finally slid away.

Too late, Misaki thought as the world blurred. Too late. Her aching jaw opened wide, but no air came. Only suffocating darkness.

MAMORU

Mamoru made such quick work of the five fonyakalu that it didn’t seem real. Was this what it was like to be Uncle Takashi, he wondered as he whirled, cutting through two yellow-clad soldiers in the same slash. If it was—if this was how good it felt—then he supposed he was happy his uncle had died fighting.

The bodies hit the snow and lay still. Mamoru stood among them, shoulders back, breathing hard in a mixture of exertion and exhilaration. After confirming that there were no more fonyakalu advancing up the slope, he ran to the Kotetsus’ house and started digging through the rubble. Reaching out with his jiya, it didn’t take him long to find Atsushi.

“Mamo—Matsuda-dono!” the boy’s voice broke in relief.

Atsushi had always been quick with his jiya for a numu and it had saved his life. He had braced the debris off of his body with a pair of thick ice pillars. He didn’t have the strength to push it off him entirely, but Mamoru did.

“Atsushi-kun. On three, we’re going to lift together. Ichi... ni... san!” Their combined jiya shoved the debris upward and Atsushi scrambled out from underneath.

Mamoru grabbed his hand and pulled him to safety. Before he let the load back down, Mamoru stuck his arm underneath the house one last time, extending his fingers, feeling for the pulse of living blood. If Atsushi had survived the collapse, maybe someone else had too. Maybe... but no pulses pulled at Mamoru’s fingertips. Only a slow, iron-laden ooze he was coming to recognize as blood leaving a corpse. Closing his eyes, he withdrew his arm and released his jiya, letting what remained of the house crash down.

Atsushi was clinging to his sleeve, shaking.

“Mamoru!” the little blacksmith gasped, forgetting formality in a mixture of anger and hysteria. “My mother is still under there! My grandmother—”

“Listen to me Atsushi-kun.” Mamoru held the boy firmly by the shoulders. “Your mother is—” The words caught in his throat. He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t imagine hearing those words, so he chose different ones. “All your mother would want is for you to live.” And that was worse—because he didn’t have to imagine. He had seen the look on Kaa-chan’s face when he pulled himself from her hands, watched her fingers grasp at the air where he had been. “That’s all she would want. Your grandmother too. You know that.”

Atsushi was shaking his head in denial, his eyes shining with tears. And, perhaps because he suddenly felt tears threatening in his own eyes, Mamoru slid an arm around Atsushi and pressed the little blacksmith to his shoulder.

“For your mother, Atsushi-kun. Head up the mountain. Catch up with your father if you can. If you can’t, find a safe place to take shelter. You know this mountain better than the fonyakalu. If you hide...”

Mamoru trailed off as something caught his attention: a flash of black on the rocks above—too fast to be a passing bird. His heart dropped.

“Run, Atsushi-kun!”

“What—”

“Run!” Mamoru threw the boy from him.

He had barely flung his own body backward when the fonya hit. The wave of air pressure struck the snow where he and Atsushi had been with a sound more like thunder than wind.

Mamoru tucked into a ball and rolled as he hit the ground. When he uncurled onto his feet, tabi skidding through the snow, Atsushi was still tumbling from the force of the attack. The wind had thrown the two of them several bounds apart.

The elite fonyaka landed in a crouch between them, torn black cloth fluttering about him like feathers before settling about his form. Mamoru hadn’t gotten a close look at the man’s face before, but his eyes passing slowly over the man’s body, confirmed his worst fear. There was the sloppily retied braid cut by Yukino Sensei’s first swing. There were the thin cuts where the Matsuda Dragon’s teeth had sliced through his clothes into his skin. There was the bleeding puncture wound in his left shoulder where Tou-sama had aimed to kill him... and failed.

The dragon killer uncurled into a standing position with lazy grace.

On the other side of the fonyaka, far beyond Mamoru’s reach or the range of his jiya, Atsushi struggled to his knees. The ten-year-old numu was shaken and disoriented. Easy prey. Helpless, Mamoru watched the dragon killer’s eyes flick from him to Atsushi in playful indecision, as if he hadn’t quite chosen a victim yet. If his injuries had weakened him, it didn’t show in his posture, and if he was still at full strength, Mamoru knew that there was nothing he could do to protect his friend.

“Run, Atsushi!” he shouted as Atsushi tried to stand. “Run!”

Atsushi was fast for a numu. Of course, that wouldn’t save him from this demon who seemed to move at the speed of sound.

If I run, Mamoru thought frantically, if Atsushi and I break in opposite directions, maybe I can get the fonyaka to follow me.

Running would cost him his life, he knew. You couldn’t expose your back to a superior fighter and expect to live, but that wasn’t the point. Mamoru was fast. He might be able to buy Atsushi enough time to get to safety.

Then he remembered his first encounter with the dragon killer, remembered how the black-clad demon had brushed right past him and the Yukino cousins, heading straight for Yukino Sensei. This fonyaka was like Uncle Takashi; he had a hunger for a good fight that eclipsed everything else. Where lesser predators were drawn to the weak and wounded, this one was drawn to strength.

The realization snapped into place right as Atsushi found his feet and ran. Like a tiger triggered to motion by scattering deer, the fonyaka darted after him.

“No!” Panic lent speed to Mamoru’s jiya as he raised the snow and fired a pair of spears at the fonyaka. The dragon killer must not have been sufficiently impressed because he blew Mamoru’s attacks away without so much as a glance in his direction, and took another step after Atsushi.

“NO!”

The power of a dozen jijakalu seemed to fill Mamoru’s limbs. The ice wall was bigger than anything he had ever formed in one shot. It exploded from the snow like a geyser and rose to tower over the dragon killer, stopping him in his tracks.

Mamoru was well aware that the fonyaka could break through the wall or vault over the top if he really wanted to. It was a simple show of power, something to draw the man’s attention from Atsushi.

It worked.

The fonyaka turned to Mamoru as if seeing him for the first time. He wore a strange expression, as if he hadn’t decided if he was impressed or just exasperated.

“If you even think about following him, I’ll fill your back with spears.” Mamoru knew the fonyaka didn’t speak Shirojima Dialect, but he was certain that the threat carried in his tone.

The dragon killer raised an eyebrow as if to say, ‘Are you serious? You’re sure you don’t want to run?’

I wasn’t made to run, Mamoru thought. “Face me, fonyaka.”

Realistically, Mamoru wasn’t a match for this man, who had fought Yukino Sensei, Tou-sama, and Uncle Takashi to a standstill. But that was exactly why he had to win. There was no one further up the mountain who would be able to stop this creature. Dozens—possibly hundreds—of innocent people would die if he was allowed to continue on his way.

Maybe I can’t kill him, Mamoru thought, drawing his sword. Maybe I can’t kill him, but I can do something. I can wound him badly enough that my parents will have no trouble finishing him off.

“Hao.” The fonyaka rolled his neck with a resigned sigh that seemed to say Let’s get this over with quickly.

Mamoru bent his knees, ready to spring out of the way of one of the long-range attacks these fonyakalu seemed to favor. Then he remembered how hungrily this particular fonyaka had devoured the distance between himself and Yukino Sensei—not once but twice. His weapons, before he had lost one in Yukino Sensei’s shoulder and the other in the maw of the Matsuda Dragon, had been a pair of daggers, which worked best in a direct physical clash. For whatever reason, this man preferred fighting in close. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t fire off longer-range attacks. Mamoru had to be ready for an attack at any distance.

The fonyaka came at him, shooting over the open snow so fast his feet didn’t even seem to touch the ground. More arrow than man.

Mamoru’s first instinct was to coil back into his stance and look for the perfect place to strike, like Tou-sama. End the fight in one cut, like Yukino Sensei. But Tou-sama and Yukino Sensei had already failed to kill this man, and Mamoru was not their equal. There was no precision or intelligence in Mamoru that this man hadn’t already seen from Tou-sama, no speed or perfection of technique he hadn’t seen from Yukino Sensei, no raw ferocity he hadn’t seen from Uncle Takashi.

Eyes forward, Kaa-chan’s voice reminded him, quelling his panic. Focus on what’s ahead of you.

Mamoru breathed out and Yukino Sensei’s voice joined hers. A student like you, who can absorb what he is told but also think beyond it, is capable of anything.

Mamoru’s only chance—if he stood any chance at all—was to be that student and hit this man with something he wouldn’t expect.

So, instead of setting a stance to wait for fonyaka, Mamoru ran to meet him.

Unlike the other elite soldiers Mamoru had faced, the dragon killer didn’t need to plant his feet to throw an attack. He fired off a palm strike mid-sprint. The lightning-quick blast didn’t land with enough force to throw Mamoru off his feet or shatter bone, but the moment it hit, Mamoru realized its intended purpose—too late. The wind had already struck his right arm, sending his katana spinning from his hand, high into the air.

Losing his sword should have thrown him off, but he had built up too much momentum to let anything slow him down. He was a Matsuda. His sword wasn’t made of ice or metal. It was his soul. Mist and snow rushed to his hands as the last of the distance between himself and his enemy collapsed.

The fonyaka’s next palm strike hit the best impromptu ice shield Mamoru had ever formed. The shield’s hardened outer layer shattered, while the snow cushion beneath absorbed the impact, blunting the force of the palm strike before it reached the innermost ice sheet that protected Mamoru’s arms. The techniques canceled each other out, causing both fighters to stumble back only a few steps instead of sending them both flying.

Regaining his footing, Mamoru threw what remained of his shield at the fonyaka. In the dinma the black-clad man took to swat the inner layer of the shield aside, Mamoru raised his hands and locked his jiya into the still airborne pieces of the outer layer. The ice had broken along planned seams, creating sharp-edged shards.

Let’s see you dodge this, Mamoru thought, and yanked his hands inward, bringing those hundreds of sharp pieces racing toward the fonyaka. Even the most agile fighter couldn’t dodge his way through a hail of projectiles this thick.

At the glint of approaching ice, the fonyaka let out a short sound of surprise. Then he spun. Damn! Mamoru had forgotten he could do that! The rotation created a protective whirlwind around the fonyaka. The cyclone wrapped around him like a cocoon, catching Mamoru’s hundreds of tiny projectiles and flinging them away. Some of the ice shards flew wide. Most of them, however, shot straight toward Mamoru, propelled by a deadly combination of his own jiya and his enemy’s fonya.

He had to push sharply outward with his jiya to avoid getting hit by his own projectiles. His reflexes saved him from fatal injury, though some of the ice struck him in the shoulders and thighs. His opponent didn’t leave him time for the pain to set in.

The fonyaka’s pivoting feet were as subtle as they were quick. Mamoru wouldn’t have picked up the movement with his eyes alone, but he was so attuned to the water around him at that moment that he felt the shift in the snow beneath the soldier’s boots. Even knowing the spinning kick was coming and having seen it in action, Mamoru barely managed to drop into a crouch in time to avoid it. He let out a breath of relief as the kick whooshed over his head, missing him completely. What he hadn’t counted on was the second kick.

He registered the black boot snapping toward his head too late to evade. All he could do was bring an arm up to protect his head. The roundhouse crashed into his forearm, which then crashed into his face, throwing him sideways. His head rang as if it had taken a full force kick and his arm—he was fairly sure something in his arm had broken. But oddly, it didn’t hurt. Flooded with fighter’s madness, he was far past feeling any pain. He spun out of the blow smiling, his fists up, ice sharpening across his knuckles.

The fighter’s high must have lent him speed because he managed to deflect the snakelike hand technique the fonyaka aimed at his neck. He feinted a punch at the fonyaka’s face with one hand, using the other to target the man’s injured shoulder. If Tou-sama had already done half the damage for him, maybe— The dragon killer saw through it. He barely bothered to dodge the feint, letting the weak blow clip his cheek, and parried the stronger punch Mamoru aimed at his shoulder.

Sensing the fonyaka shifting back, Mamoru seized a handful of the man’s black uniform. He couldn’t let the dragon killer out of close range. He had seen the kind of attack this man could throw from his optimal striking distance and had no intention of letting him set up another one. Mamoru yanked the man forward.

The dragon killer didn’t seem to mind, drawing his arm back to throw a punch—a bizarrely telegraphed move for such an apt fighter. Mamoru brought his right hand up to block, but somehow—inexplicably—the fonyaka’s punch passed through it.

The blow caught Mamoru in the stomach, bringing the world to an abrupt halt.

A dull throb pulsed through his abdomen as a smile twisted the corner of the dragon killer’s mouth.

“Got you,” he said in broken Kaigengua.

For a moment, Mamoru was so surprised to hear words—words he understood—coming out of the demon’s mouth that all he could do was blink.

Then he felt the blood soaking into his hakama, and it dawned on him that the attack he had just taken hadn’t been a punch at all. Shock melted into dread as he looked down.

The thumb and first two fingers of his sword hand were gone, sliced off at the second knuckles. There was a blade lodged beneath his ribs—long, bright, and strangely familiar. Mamoru couldn’t understand where the weapon had come from until his eyes fell on teal wrapping and serpent’s coils. It was his sword. The dragon killer had caught it on its way down.

Mamoru’s mind stuttered, confusion, denial, and begrudging awe grinding against one another like wedges of ice on a breaking river. His own sword... Did that mean the fonyaka had planned this whole exchange of blows? From the moment he knocked the weapon from Mamoru’s hand? Was he really that good? If so, Mamoru had never stood a chance. Then again, maybe the wound wasn’t as deep as it looked. Maybe he could still fight. He could still—

The dragon killer ripped the blade free and Mamoru watched his own insides spill from his body. Reality overcame him like river waters breaking through the last of winter’s ice. I’m dead, he realized with chilling clarity.

I’m dead.