CHAPTER 17: THE END

“Misaki?” a voice said above her. Why was her chest full of knives? Gods, it hurt so much! “Misaki!”

Her eyes blinked open and she was surprised to see that there were not, in fact, several blades buried in her torso. She was in one piece, the only bleeding from the jagged cuts on her forearms. Setsuko was staring down at her with tears in her eyes.

“Misaki! Oh, thank Nami you’re alright!” Before Misaki could react, the other woman had wrapped her in a crushing hug that sent new spikes of pain through her ribs. And Misaki remembered: the flash of fan blades, a skinless arm, Lazou Linghun sucking the breath from her lungs.

What are you doing? Misaki tried to say. Get back! Go back and hide! But when she opened her mouth, only a wheezing groan came out.

“Yosh, yosh,” Setsuko soothed, rubbing her back. “You’re going to be okay.”

“H-how...” Misaki whispered and felt her eyes watering with pain. How could making a single sound hurt so much? “How... lo-ong...?”

“How long were you out?” Setsuko said. “Just a few dinmanu, I think. I just heard all this terrible screaming, and I know you said to stay in the cellar, but I had to... I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she babbled, “But I had to make sure you were alright. You passed out just as I came into the room. And-and there’s so much blood in here! I didn’t know whose it was and I-I thought you might be dead, Misaki! What happened?”

Mutely, Misaki shook her head. Setsuko wasn’t supposed to know. She wasn’t supposed to know any of this.

“So, this girl here...” Setsuko said, nodding to the partially beheaded, partially skinned mess that had been the fan-wielding fonyaka. “Did you kill her?”

Squeezing her eyes shut against the pain, Misaki nodded.

“And all those men in the halls? Was that you too?” Setsuko spoke slowly, as though she was almost afraid to know the answer. But there was no point trying to lie, so she nodded again.

“Great Nami, Misaki!”

Misaki kept her eyes shut, not wanting to see Setsuko’s expression of horror. She waited in agony for her sister-in-law to recoil, push her away. Instead, Setsuko clutched her tighter.

“I’m so glad you’re here!” Setsuko’s voice broke into a sob. “What would we have done? What would we have done without you?”

That was when Misaki felt it: a vague sense that there was still a living fonyaka nearby. She gripped Setsuko’s shoulders and gritted her teeth, trying to form words.

“Get... back...” she managed finally. Setsuko wasn’t safe here.

“I’m sorry,” Setsuko said as Misaki’s feeling solidified into a certainty. Somewhere in the next room, a fonyaka, was winding up for an attack. “I know you said to stay hidden, but when I heard the screams, I just couldn’t—”

“Back!” Misaki shoved Setsuko with all the strength left in her body—just as the neighboring wall exploded.

The wind sent Misaki tumbling across the wood. She put her hands over her head, hoping that her push had been enough to put Setsuko out of range of the debris biting into her forearms and clattering across the floor around her.

Get up! Her mind screamed even as the numbness of shock and impact pulsed through her limbs. Get up and fight!

Her body wouldn’t do it. Everything hurt so much.

All she wanted was to lie down and let this new attacker kill her. Let it end. But her life wasn’t the only one in the balance. Because Setsuko was there—perhaps only because Setsuko was there—she planted her hands on the floor and tried to stand. She never did make it to her feet.

Instead, a hand seized her loose hair and yanked her upward, wrenching a cry from her damaged lungs. It was the scarred fonyaka. The blood dripping from his head made Misaki glad she hadn’t taken the full impact of the fan-wielder’s attack, as he had. The impact had likely left him unconscious for a few siiranu, but it didn’t seem to have weakened him. With what seemed like an effortless swing of his arm, he hurled Misaki across the kitchen.

She hit the table where Mamoru and Chul-hee had been studying and tumbled across it, shattering teacups and scattering scrolls. When she collapsed onto the tatami on the far side of the table, her whole body seemed to pulse with forming bruises. Her scalp stung and there was now a screaming pain in her neck to rival that in her lungs. Fighting the stars crowding her vision, she gripped the side of the table and tried to stand, but her body was shaking so badly she couldn’t do it. Blinking through the stars, she could just make out the scarred fonyaka striding toward her.

“Stop it!” a voice shouted and Misaki turned to see Setsuko brandishing a kitchen knife. “Leave her alone!”

“No!” Misaki’s eyes widened, panic driving her to her feet. “Setsuko, don’t!”

Too late. Setsuko had already run at the soldier, raising the knife to stab. The fonyaka’s casual backhand sent her smashing through the kitchen’s back door.

“No!” Misaki screamed. “No! No!” She rushed forward—to go to Setsuko? To attack the man? With her mind scrambled from the impact, she wasn’t even sure, but the fonyaka moved faster.

He caught her around the throat and slammed her back down on the floor. At this point, Misaki didn’t even know if killing this man would make a difference. She would live, yes, but when the next soldiers entered the house, she would be far too weak to fight them off. She was tempted to give up, let him kill her—but he had hit Setsuko, so he was going to die.

She didn’t resist as he straddled her and put both hands around her neck to strangle her. Instead, she focused her jiya into two fingers. As he pressed his considerable weight down on her windpipe, he put himself close enough to give her a clear shot through his left eye.

Blood Needle ready, she drew her hand back and—

A blade struck the man in the neck.

Misaki started. Her immediate thought was that Setsuko had woken up and come to her aid. But when her eyes flicked from Siradenyaa’s glass tip to her hilt, it wasn’t Setsuko she found clutching the handle.

It was Hiroshi.

The five-year-old was barely big enough to hold the lightweight sword in both hands, but his stance was solid and his gaze fixed.

Above Misaki, the fonyaka’s face twisted in a grimace. He was wounded but not dead. Blood squirted grotesquely from the cut in his neck as he straightened up and turned to face his attacker. Hiroshi didn’t flinch as the drops spattered his face and chest.

“Hiro—” Misaki started, but the fonyaka put a foot on her chest, slamming her back down so hard her head spun.

Still holding Misaki to the floor with his boot, the soldier looked down at Hiroshi, incredulous. Offended almost. Misaki’s heart lurched in panic, but there was no fear on Hiroshi’s face, no hesitation. He didn’t even pause to adjust his grip on the weapon before he slashed again, opening a clean cut from the man’s hip to his collarbone.

The fonyaka made a strange noise and reached out as if to grab at Hiroshi. Shoving the boot from her chest, Misaki scrambled to her feet to defend her son. But the man only stumbled and crashed to the floor. His fonya rose for a moment, rushing through the room in a howl of denial, then went still.

Hiroshi had killed him.

Blood dribbled down his blank face as he turned to face Misaki. “You’re safe now, Kaa-chan.”

With something like a sob, Misaki snatched the sword from his hands and flung it away. She grabbed her son by the shoulders—roughly, her breathing too quick, near hysteria.

Why would you do that? she wanted to scream, to shake him. Why would you do that?

But Hiroshi was only five. He had only done what he had been taught by his teachers, his distant father, and his monster of a mother. They had created a little boy who was ready to give his life to kill his enemies. A true Matsuda. Misaki’s head dropped onto Hiroshi’s tiny shoulder. The monster crumbled and she was just a woman, just a mother who had failed her son.

“Hiroshi...” her voice broke. “Come here.”

Gathering the boy into her arms, she held him tight, and loved him, loved him as hard as she could, and hoped it would be enough to wash everything else away.

Hiroshi, as always, was cold.

MAMORU

The dragon killer stepped back and cast aside the nameless sword, now red with its owner’s blood.

Mamoru swayed.

Blood drizzled from the stumps of his fingers onto the frozen ground. It was a strange sensation, feeling the liquid that carried his nyama leaving him to seep out onto the mountain. His vision slid. But it couldn’t be over. It just couldn’t. If he could just force himself to move, push through it, it would all be alright. He took a step... and another... fell to one knee. His mangled hand hit the snow—

And the world snapped into focus.

The pain was sharp, but small, unimportant somehow. Suddenly, it wasn’t as though he was missing fingers. His fingers were the snow. They were the rivers, reaching all the way down the mountain to sink into the ocean and grasp the power of gods. He wasn’t bleeding out. He was the mountain. For the first time in his life, he was perfectly, overwhelmingly whole.

He smiled.

A decade later, a fifteen-year-old Hiroshi would become known as the youngest swordsman ever to master the Whispering Blade. What the world would never know, was that he was the second youngest.

By the time the Ranganese soldier registered the blood-red flash of ice, it had already passed through his body. The sword was pure Matsuda—half Takayubi snow, half Mamoru’s own blood—and it cut through the dragon killer like he was no more than air.

Alone on the mountainside, a Whispering Blade caught the last rays of a dying sun. It gleamed once, pointed skyward, as its first and only victim hit the snow. Then, its work done, the sword fell to mist. The sun sank to the sea.

Mamoru didn’t feel the jiya ebb from his body, didn’t feel himself fall. All he knew was that his cheek lay numb against the icy ground as the last of the red left the sky.

I did it, he thought, and the blood spreading from his body seemed unimportant. Tou-sama, Kaa-chan, I did it! He couldn’t wait to tell them!

If part of him was lucid enough to understand that he was never going to see his parents again, he ignored it. The power that had just filled him was too big not to be remembered. He had touched divinity, held it in his hands. He didn’t hear the thunder of approaching planes or the loudspeakers announcing the arrival of reinforcements.

As he and the dragon killer had fought, their feet had churned the surrounding snow into waves, like the brine at the beginning of the world. Red from Mamoru’s fingers snaked through those waves to mix with the blood slowly seeping from the other man’s body. Blood became snow, became blood, became ocean... and Mamoru found his eyes frozen open, staring into the dragon killer’s face.

It wasn’t a frightening face or even a particularly foreign one—pale skin, black eyes, and sharp features, much like Mamoru’s own. In a different uniform, the man could have been an upperclassman or a young teacher at Kumono Academy. People always said the Ranganese were demons of a different breed from the Kaigenese, but their blood seemed to be the same color, now that they lay still, letting it run together. They had all come out of the same ocean, hadn’t they? At the beginning of the world?

The dragon killer didn’t look like he had felt any pain. If anything, he looked faintly surprised, his eyes wide and his lips parted. Just a human. Here with Mamoru at the end of the living world. As his body grew warm and numb, Mamoru wondered if this fonyaka had someone to remember him across the ocean—a father, a mother, someone who would be proud to hear that he had died on the Sword of Kaigen.

CHAPTER 18: THE SHELTER

Misaki started at the sound of a crash, clutching Hiroshi tighter to her. But the young fonyaka who appeared in the doorway was already dead, his spine snapped by a single pale hand around his neck. A wave of icy jiya overtook her as Takeru threw the boy’s limp body aside and stepped into the room.

“You’re a mess,” he said by way of greeting. “Both of you. Where are Setsuko and the other children?”

“S-Setsuko is unconscious,” Misaki said, pointing to the next room. Her jiya had quickly confirmed that her sister-in-law’s heart was still beating, but she wasn’t sure what damage she might have sustained. She hadn’t quite gotten herself to move, not wanting to let go of her son. “Izumo, Nagasa, and Ayumi are hidden in the cellar.”

“Well, what are you just sitting there for?”

“Mamoru,” Misaki started desperately. “Where is—”

Then a roar tore through the sky outside. Another tornado? No. Planes.

“Citizens of Takayubi,” an amplified voice split the night in Kaigengua. “In the interest of national security, his Imperial Majesty has ordered an airstrike on the area. You have ten siiranu to reach the nearest bomb shelter.”

Chul-hee had done it! Reinforcements were here.

“His Imperial Majesty has ordered an airstrike on the area,” the voice repeated. “You have ten siiranu to reach the nearest bomb shelter.”

“Well, we have our orders,” Takeru said as if the mayor had just instructed him to file a bit of paperwork. “Let’s go.”

“What about the others?” Misaki asked. “Your brother?” What about Mamoru?

“They’ll hear the announcement too,” Takeru said in the same uninterested tone. “They’re fast. They’ll meet us at the shelter. Get the rest of the children.”

Nodding, Misaki got to her feet and ran to the cellar. When she threw the doors open, the three smallest children were huddled among the food stores. Ayumi fussed on the floor, still half-wrapped in the cloth Setsuko had unslung from her shoulder. Nagasa was curled up at the back of the shelter with Izumo in his lap, his hands over the infant’s ears.

“Come, Naga-kun,” she said, kneeling to comfort little Ayumi. “Bring the baby to me.”

Takayubi only had the one bomb shelter, further up the mountain by the mayor’s office, and they only had ten siiranu to reach it.

“Naga-kun, I’m so sorry.” She stroked a hand across Nagasa’s bangs before picking up the babies, one in each arm. “I’m going to need you to run. You can run on your own, right?”

“Yes, Kaa-chan,” Nagasa said, his eyes wide with confusion as the planes tore lower outside. Misaki wasn’t sure if he really understood or the response was just automatic, but she only had two arms.

“Hiro-kun,” she said as she emerged from the cellar with Nagasa and the babies, “hold your brother’s hand and don’t let go. Make sure he keeps up.”

“Yes, Kaa-chan.” Hiroshi slid his blood-smeared hand into Nagasa’s and held tight, pulling him after Misaki as she made for the front doors. Misaki led them through the back hallways of the house, avoiding the kitchen and the main hall where most of the butchered bodies lay. Nagasa didn’t need to see that.

When they stepped out into the genkan, Takeru was waiting for them, Setsuko’s limp form slung across one shoulder as if the hefty woman weighed nothing at all.

“Is she—”

“She’ll be fine,” Takeru said. “Let’s go.”

The dusk outside was chaos. Women screamed and scrambled to find others. Children didn’t know where to run. Misaki scanned anxiously for Ranganese soldiers, but the only ones she found were already dead, lying motionless in the snow while the scene around them swirled with the chaos they had created.

“Did you kill all the Ranganese in the village?” she asked.

“Every one whose feet touched the snow,” Takeru replied.

Of course. A Matsuda’s power flowed through the snow of the mountain. No soldier standing outside in that snow would have escaped Takeru’s ice. But that meant that there were almost certainly soldiers he had missed, those who had entered homes to dispose of women and children.

Planes roared closer to the mountainside in the dark, the swooping, scraping sound so big it seemed to exist in multiple dimensions. Nagasa stared, wide-eyed, up at the jets as Hiroshi pulled him along.

“Birds?” he asked in excited curiosity, seemingly oblivious to the pandemonium of adults around him.

“Planes,” Hiroshi corrected. “The Emperor sent his pilots.”

“Why?”

Hiroshi’s answer was simple but accurate: “To kill.”

“You two!” Takeru called to two Mizumaki women—a mother and daughter—nearby. “My wife is injured. Help her carry her children to the shelter.”

“What?” Misaki started to resist as the women moved to obey. “What are you talking about? I’m not—”

“Don’t listen to anything she says,” he told the Mizumakis without looking at her. “She has a concussion.”

“What...?” Misaki realized that he was probably right, but it was hard to say if he could tell or if he was just using it as an excuse to ignore her words.

As the women took Izumo and Ayumi from her, a figure approached—notable because he was moving in the wrong direction, down the mountain instead of up toward the bomb shelter.

Takeru recognized him before she did.

“Kwang Chul-hee,” he said.

The northern boy still had the wakizashi Takashi had given him tied at his hip, but he didn’t appear to have met with any Ranganese. Other than being out of breath, he seemed unhurt.

“Matsuda-dono,” he panted. “Are all of you alright?”

“We’re fine,” Takeru said. “Well done contacting reinforcements, by the way. You have our thanks.”

“My father took a census from the mayor’s office and he’s been checking people in as they reach the shelter,” Chul-hee said. “I came to look for the families we’re still missing.” He looked down at his info-com device, the display illuminating his face in the growing dark, and tapped at the screen. “Now that all of you are on your way up, I can check off your family... except...” He looked up at their small party again. A pained expression crossed his face. “Where’s Ma—”

“Who else are we missing?” Takeru demanded, starting up the slope toward the bomb shelter. “Other than warriors?”

“Um... half of the Mizumaki family is unaccounted for,” Chul-hee said. “We’re missing all but one of the Katakouris, and no one has seen a single member of the Yukino family.”

“What?” Misaki stopped in her tracks. “Are you sure?”

“Sorry,” Chul-hee said. “No one has seen Yukino Hyori or her son.”

“No!” Misaki put a hand to her hip, only to have her fingers brush the lip on an empty sheath. She had left Siradenyaa in the house. Weaponless, she turned imploringly to her husband, still armed with Kyougetsu. “We have to go back! We have to find her!”

“My brother ordered me to get you, Setsuko, and the children to safety. Come now. We have to move.”

“She’s our friend. How can you—”

“These are my orders,” he said, “and I have given you yours.”

Misaki clenched her jaw. “Yes, sir.” Then she swayed, putting a hand to her head. “Sorry, I... I feel dizzy. Kwang-san, could I have your arm?”

“Of course,” Chul-hee said and rushed to support her.

Takeru must have noticed her eyes flicking to the wakizashi at Chul-hee’s hip. He stepped forward to stop her. Knowing she was not physically fast enough to outmaneuver him, Misaki spun. Instead of going straight for the weapon, she turned her body into Chul-hee’s in a move that put the young man between herself and her husband.

“W-wait—what?” The northern boy stuttered in surprise.

As Takeru’s hand closed on Chul-hee’s shoulder instead of hers, Misaki seized the handle of the wakizashi.

Then she shoved off Chul-hee’s body, simultaneously throwing him backward into Takeru and propelling herself forward. The wakizashi slid from its sheath and she was sprinting, weapon in hand, toward the Yukino compound.

She didn’t look back to see if Takeru was following her.

He could either leave Setsuko with Chul-hee, hoping the boy would be able to get her safely to the shelter, or he could try to pursue Misaki while carrying their sister-in-law. Either way, the Yukino compound was close enough that he wouldn’t catch up to her before she got there.

The double doors at the front of the house hung open, knocked from their hinges by the same blunt force fonya that had breached the Matsuda compound. Not far from the entrance, Misaki found a tiny body in a light gray kimono. Ryota. The four-year-old lay face-down on the genkan step. Blood had seeped from his back to stain the Yukino snowflake insignia, but Misaki could feel that the blood in his veins had stilled.

She looked away quickly, knowing there was nothing she could do for the sweet little boy.

“Sorry, Ryota-kun,” she murmured and tried not to think about his bright-eyed smile or his infectious giggle as she pressed on. She had to find Hyori.

The first thing Misaki saw of the Ranganese soldier was his back. He was on top of Hyori, straddling her. Her kimono was torn open, exposing her pale legs.

Misaki was on him before he could turn. Takashi’s spare wakizashi might not have been as light or sharp as Siradenyaa, but Misaki’s slice was clean, cleaving through muscle, windpipe, and spinal cord in one strike.

At this point, Misaki was becoming familiar with the wind off a dying fonyaka—a haunting but harmless breeze from the weaker soldiers and an outright howl from the black-clad elites. None of that prepared her for the power that burst from this man the moment she cut through his neck.

The wind flung its host’s blood in all directions, shattered a few nearby vases, and threw Misaki to the floor, reawakening the stabbing pain in her chest. She struggled to her hands and knees amid porcelain shards as the last of the man’s fonya roared through the rest of the house, making the walls creak.

With a horrified sound between a shriek and a sob, a blood-splattered Hyori kicked, trying to drag herself out from underneath the headless body.

“Sorry!” Misaki exclaimed and scrambled forward to haul the corpse off her friend. “I’m sorry, Hyori-chan. That was... messier than I anticipated.”

Hyori was bloody, her face streaked with tears, but Misaki flooded with relief to feel that her friend’s nyama was still strong. Most of the blood on her had come from her attacker. Sobbing, Hyori tried to rearrange her kimono to cover herself, but her hands were shaking so badly that she couldn’t do it.

“Hyori, I’m so sorry,” Misaki said, touching the other woman’s shoulder. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner.”

Considering the power of the soldier’s dying fonya, it was unlikely Misaki would have been able to kill him without the element of surprise, but she should have tried. Or someone should have tried. Somehow. This should never have happened.

Pulling water from the air, Misaki swept it down her friend’s body, clearing away the blood, and everything else the Ranganese soldier had left on her. Then she tried to close up Hyori’s kimono for her, but the garment was so ripped, it didn’t cover her breasts—bruised where fingers had clawed at them.

Misaki clenched her teeth. Until now, she had not felt true hatred for the Ranganese, but suddenly, she wished she hadn’t killed the man so quickly. Wistfully, she thought of all the things she could have done to him before he died, how many times she could have stabbed him, how many pieces she could have cut off... but no amount of violence would heal Hyori.

Despite her rage, Misaki forced her voice to be soft as she rubbed her friend’s arms. “It’s alright, Hyori-chan. He’s dead now. He’s gone. It’s going to be alright.”

“No, it’s not. It’s not.” Fresh tears spilled from Hyori’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “He killed my son! My son! My baby boy!”

Part of what had always made Hyori so beautiful was her simplicity. Those soft eyes were as clear as spring melt, concealing nothing. In love, in joy, in mirth, she was pure. Her pain was the same. Undiluted. And it was unbearable to look at.

Misaki ruthlessly forced back her own tears. They weren’t out of danger.

“You’re still alive,” Misaki insisted. “You’re going to survive this.”

“I don’t want to.” Hyori’s voice was broken. “I don’t want to, I don’t want to.”

“I’m so sorry, Hyori-chan.” Misaki tucked a strand of the woman’s hair behind her ear. “I know this isn’t going to be easy, but I need you to stand up.”

There would be time to come undone after everyone was safe. Pulling off her own coat, Misaki wrapped it around her friend, tying it closed to cover what the ruined kimono couldn’t.

“Yosh, Hyori-chan.” Misaki pulled Hyori’s arm, doing her best to be gentle in her urgency. “There’s a good girl. Stand up.”

“I can’t.” Hyori was shaking her head. “It hurts.”

“You have to. Bombs are going to start raining on this mountain any siira now.”

“I don’t care. Just leave me.”

“I can’t do that,” Misaki said. “What will I say to Dai-san when he gets back?”

“He won’t want me,” Hyori sobbed into her hands. “I’m disgraced. I’m ruined.”

Ignoring her friend’s protests, Misaki draped Hyori’s arm across her shoulders and stood, pulling the other woman up with her. Hyori let out a pitiful cry of pain, her legs buckling beneath her.

“Please! Misaki, just leave me! Let me be with my son!”

“No,” Misaki said through gritted teeth. “No. You’re not going to die here. Neither of us are.”

By the time Misaki got Hyori to the broken doors of the Yukino compound, the woman had fainted. Takeru was waiting there, still holding an unconscious Setsuko.

“We don’t have time for this,” he said. Shifting Setsuko onto one shoulder, he reached out to pick up Hyori.

“No.” Misaki bent over and hoisted Hyori’s limp form on her own shoulders. “I’ve got her. Just run.”

“Misaki—”

An ear-splitting explosion shook the ground, and Misaki’s stomach dropped. The airstrike had started. She ran. Hyori was considerably taller than Misaki, but Robin Thundyil, Elleen Elden and several other people would be dead if Misaki couldn’t make good time carrying a person bigger than herself to safety. Takeru was running too. And even if there had been time for them to argue, they would hardly have been able to hear each other.

Bombs rocked the lower slopes like thunder, shaking the ground beneath Misaki’s feet. In the distance, men cried out. She could only hope that the screams belonged to Ranganese and not villagers unable to reach the shelter. Amid the deafening noise and darkness, there was no way to tell.

Ahead of her, Takeru skidded to a stop in the snow. Misaki nearly stumbled into him before she saw why he had stopped. A skinny figure stood in the dark before him—Atsushi, the swordsmith’s son.

“M-Matsuda-dono!” The boy yelped. He had an ashen look on his face, as if he had just witnessed sights that struck the soul from his body.

“Atsushi,” Takeru said. “Where is your family?”

The little smith’s lip trembled. “M-my father...” He pointed toward the southern pass. “One of the bombs hit him. H-his leg is gone. H-h-he told me to run. I-I couldn’t help him. He’s still on the path and I’m not strong enough to carry him. Please—Matsuda-dono. You have to go back. You have to save him.”

Takeru stared at the numu boy for a moment. Then he scooped him up around the waist and kept running.

“Wait! Matsuda-dono, no!” Tears streamed down Atsushi’s face as he struggled, kicking ineffectually at Takeru. “Please! Please!”

“This is unseemly, boy,” Takeru said coldly. “Don’t make me knock you unconscious.”

With a last sob of despair, Atsushi stopped fighting and clung to Takeru, burying his face in his lord’s kimono—as if there was a drop of comfort to be found there.

Atsushi’s cries hurt Misaki’s heart, but she couldn’t fault her husband for this particular decision. Her detour to save Hyori had already put their lives in danger. Heading back down to the southern pass in the middle of a dusk airstrike would mean almost certain death. Even to save Takayubi’s greatest swordsmith, it wasn’t worth it.

The shelter was in sight, only a few bounds ahead, when the sound of a low-swooping jet split the air. Deafened by the sound, Misaki stumbled from the force of the wind. Then a bomb hit—mere bounds from her. Had she been unburdened, she might have kept her footing, but with the wind and Hyori’s dead weight throwing her off balance, she fell.

Pilots had good eyesight, but the sun was gone. And in the dark, fonyakalu were indistinguishable from jijakalu.

Misaki rolled over onto her hands and knees. Unable to find the strength to stand, she crawled toward Hyori. The other woman groaned, mournful eyes blinking open as Misaki gripped her arm. Through the ringing in her ears, Misaki could hear her whimpering.

“Why? Why are they firing on us?”

Because we don’t matter, Misaki thought numbly. The only thing the Empire cares about is stopping the Ranganese here. It doesn’t matter how many of us get caught in the crossfire.

Before Misaki could pull Hyori up, she felt Takeru’s jiya rising around them. The snow beneath her turned to a plane of ice as smooth as the surface of a frozen lake. Most jijakalu couldn’t create ice formations strong enough to lift multiple people, but Takeru was not most jijakalu. He lifted his hand and the smooth ice tilted, sending everyone on it sliding toward the shelter entrance.

A shower of bullets shattered the ice where Hyori had just been, but the formation itself held. A moment later, Misaki, Hyori, Atsushi, and an unconscious Setsuko tumbled to the bunker’s jonjo glass floor. The hands of the other villagers immediately grabbed them, pulling them the rest of the way in.

“Kaa-chan!” a relieved voice said and Misaki found Nagasa clinging to her arm.

“Atsushi,” Chul-hee said, helping the battered young smith to his feet. “Are you okay, numuden? Where’s your family?”

Atsushi shook his head. His sob became one of many filling the small bunker. As Misaki got to her feet, Takeru slid into the shelter on his own ice, a hail of bullets following him almost to the threshold. He managed a smoother landing than the rest of them, even as gunfire sent up a spray of cutting ice shards all around him.

“Back!” he ordered the rest of the villagers, outstretched hands stopping the ice shards before they could shoot into the bunker.

“What about your son, Matsuda-dono?” Chul-hee looked from Takeru to Misaki. “Where’s Mamoru?”

“He’s not here?” Misaki scanned the huddle of people in the dark confines of the shelter and didn’t see him. By her quick count, there were no more than thirty-five, most of them women and children. Surely there had to be more survivors than that! But when she turned back toward the town, no one was following them up the mountain.

“Matsuda Mamoru is still missing,” Chul-hee’s father, Kwang Tae-min, said. “Along with his uncle, Yukino Dai, and almost all the men.”

“What?” Hyori said weakly.

Takeru grabbed hold of the heavy shelter door, ready to slide it shut.

“Wait, wait!” Hyori clutched at Takeru’s sleeve. “Matsuda-dono, my husband is still out there!”

Takeru ignored her and started to close the door.

“Wait,” Misaki insisted in a stronger voice. “Hyori’s right. What about all the fighters?” What about Mamoru? Where is Mamoru?

Takeru didn’t look at her. “No one else is coming,” he said in a flat voice.

Misaki felt the whole world gray. The maddened energy that had kept her moving stilled. “What?”

“When I left the line, my brother and son were the only fighters left alive. There were still over a hundred Ranganese advancing on their position. No one else is coming.”

All the strength went out of Misaki’s limbs.

“No... no...” Hyori’s voice started as a low methodical moan that rose in pitch until it was a shriek. “No, that can’t be right! That can’t be right!”

“You should be proud, Yukino-san.” Takeru looked down at the wrecked woman. “He died with his sword in his hand.”

Hyori screamed.

........

That night in the bunker was as close to Hell as any night in the Realm of the Duna. The darkness stank of blood and vomit. Hyori screamed for her son and husband. Ameno Samusa’s wife insisted that her daughter had been awake when she brought her to the bunker, even as those around her tried to tell her that the girl’s skull was shattered. One of the Ikeno elders died right there in the crowded darkness while her daughters-in-law tried to patch her injuries with the meager medical supplies in the shelter. Through the noise, Misaki was dimly aware of Izumo wailing in her lap, but she couldn’t seem to lift her arms to hold him.

It was only now that she was coming down from her fighter’s high, that she understood what had kept her body moving through this whole ordeal, through injuries that should have put her out of commission. It was more than adrenaline. There had been a hope, however ridiculous, that they would all make it through this alive. That hope had started to die in the Yukino compound when she saw little Ryota’s body. The clunk of the closing door had fallen like a sword, killing it entirely. The shelter was sealed and Mamoru was not there. Mamoru was not coming.

After being held back so long, exhaustion rushed over her with a vengeance, weakening her to the point of paralysis. Grudgingly, she realized that Takeru had been right about the concussion. Her head pulsed. Shapes that should have been clear blurred in the dim light.

Even her jijaka senses, which never failed her, started slipping away. The human heartbeats that were usually so distinct in the dark, warped and mashed together with the pain in her own pulsing head and chest. Tears, saliva, blood, sweat, and stomach acid became indistinguishable as they moved through people’s bodies and oozed out of them.

“Kaa-chan?” Nagasa’s terrified voice at her shoulder was the only thing keeping her tethered to reality—a thin thread preventing her from falling into the formless chaos. “Kaa-chan, what’s happening?” The toddler tugged on her sleeve, trying to pull his mother back to him. “What’s happening?”

She couldn’t make her voice work to answer him. She couldn’t even lift a hand to offer him comfort. Not when skin disappeared and Misaki couldn’t even tell what liquid was moving inside all the bodies and what was spilling out.

“Kaa-chan, Baby crying!” Nagasa’s little voice broke. “Baby crying!”

When he couldn’t get his mother to respond, Nagasa cried too.

Eventually, the sobs, and screams, and moans of pain all coalesced into a sticky sea of sound, varying only when the boom of bombs too close to the shelter caused it to swell. The sea consumed Misaki. Fire and acid seemed to leach into her lungs, reawakening the stabbing in her chest. The pain immobilized her like a spear through the torso, pinning her back against the bunker wall.

She needed someone to speak to her, a calm voice to ground her in reality before everything merged into this soup of blood and sound, but Setsuko was still unconscious, Hyori had crumpled to the floor, seemingly too deep in her own agony to register anything around her, and Takeru... well, Takeru, of course, didn’t even turn to look at his wife. He stood with his back to the other villagers, facing the bunker door, an immovable stone figure in the dark.

Misaki had the strange feeling then that he was the key. If she could reach out and grab onto him, he might stabilize her. His rigid form was the only thing that seemed to be motionless in the writhing, weeping crawl of human flesh. But he was as distant as he was still, and Misaki knew from years of experience that reaching out and calling to him wouldn’t make a difference.

He was untouchable.

She was alone, drowning in screams.