Land of Immortals

Raijin had trained to exhaustion before, continuing on when his body screamed at him to stop, forcing himself to persist while his fellow students dropped to the ground around him. It had always been possible for him to put one foot in front of the other, complete one more strike or kick or block, hold the stance for one more moment, then another, then another. He had never before reached a point where his determination couldn’t carry him one step farther.

Until now.

He collapsed on the rain-soaked ground, unable to take another step or even lift his head out of the mud. He needed to roll off his arm, which had been tucked against his broken ribs and was aggravating their splintery pain, but he couldn’t. The fatigue was pulling him under like a man trying to carry a millstone through sinking sand.

Misuru’s pale feet appeared in his blurring vision. Was it his imagination, or had her flesh taken on an almost human tone? Was the grass turning green? His eyes refused to remain open long enough to check.

“Misuru must have pushed the Thunderer past the point a lowly Tier 0 could handle.” As she spoke, the immortal woman’s voice seemed to be moving farther and farther away. “I suppose we could stop for…”

Raijin never heard the rest. Between one word and the next, the forest floor and Misuru disappeared. He was in the bedchamber of the guest apartment he had been given in the Sun Palace. The room was as he remembered it, crowded with thick seating cushions, an enormous platform bed piled high with luxurious demon beast hides, and a handsomely crafted wardrobe so large that it made his single set of sturdy robes look silly when he hung them in it. The palace was by far the most lavish place he had stayed in his lifetime, though draftier than he had always imagined a royal residence would be.

He stood on the balcony, looking into his bedchamber. The hammered brass brazier in the corner had burned low, but in the dim light, he could see Koida’s silhouette. She was drenched, rainwater dripping from her long hair, but then so was he. She must have been out in the downpour as well.

There was none of the bizarre sense of vertigo he had felt looking at her on his first night in the Sun Palace, that feeling of infinite familiarity that had battled with his curiosity at who she would actually be in this life. In the dream, when Raijin caught sight of the curve of her pale moon cheek and the glint of purple in her wide eyes, the pit of his stomach tumbled over itself. He grinned.

“You’re all right.” He strode across the room and grabbed her hands, reminding himself at the last moment to take care not to crush the delicate bones there. He pushed a strand of wet hair away from her face. “I didn’t know if I had done enough. Are Hush and Lysander with you?”

Koida’s lips moved, but Raijin couldn’t hear what she was saying. He leaned in closer, but she pushed him away.

Under normal circumstances, it would have been a simple matter of shifting his feet to catch himself, but in the dream, he landed flat on his back on the bed. Koida climbed into his lap. His heart thundered, trying to burst through the wall of his chest. He reached for her, but she batted his hands aside easily.

“Are you here to kill me?” he asked her, though the dream had digressed so far from the first time they had spoken that the question no longer made sense.

Rather than answer, Koida grabbed the side of his head, her nails digging into his neck and jaw. She reached for his face with her free hand, each fingertip gleaming with sharp black talons. He tried to twist away, but she bore down, holding his head in place.

“Hold still.” That voice did not belong to Koida.

Raijin tried to fight, but he was pinned in place by a strength far greater than that of any opponent he had ever faced before. The claws plunged into his right eye, scraping the bone around the socket as they rotated.

He screamed and thrashed, now fully awake. Through his remaining eye, he saw Misuru’s face hovering over his, pulling back a hand tipped with claws and covered in wet red gore. In her palm, she cradled a small blood-splashed ball attached to dripping strings of meat.

“What are you doing?” Raijin shouted, his voice ragged with pain.

“Taking these.” Misuru stuck the ball into the empty hole where her right eye should have been. When she blinked, a bright jade iris stared down at Raijin. “Good. But it could be better.”

Raijin tried to twist his hips and throw her off. When that failed, he tried to wrap his leg around hers and jerk, unbalancing her. He even tried to bite the arm holding his face down, but none of the Ro-less grappling or dirty fighting Lysander had taught him worked. The force holding him in place seemed to triple, and the claws securing his head dug into his jaw bone like daggers.

Misuru’s gore-splattered fingers darted in again. Raijin’s one-sided vision went completely black as she dug out his left eye, ripping another scream up from the bottom of his stomach.

“There,” she said. “That is better.”

Raijin could just barely hear her over the agony in his eyes, his own harsh breathing, and the blood pounding in his head. Misuru’s claws released his face, and the weight holding him down disappeared.

He lurched onto his hands and knees, grasping blindly for her but finding nothing but clumps of wet grass and fistfuls of mud. Hot wetness oozed down his cheeks.

Misuru chuckled, the sound coming from behind him.

He spun around, then slipped in the mud and landed flat on his stomach. He didn’t hear her footsteps, but again the sound of her delighted laughter rang out behind him. He pushed up onto shaking arms and turned toward it.

“Why?” he demanded. His reeling mind could spit out nothing else that made sense.

“Do you have any idea how long I’ve been blind?” It sounded as if Misuru was standing to his right, but when he turned that way, her voice shifted to another point on his left. “I could take everything else from her, but I could never get my eyes back. All’s well, however. Yours suit me just fine.”

Raijin struggled to his feet, sliding a little in the muck, and forced his heaving lungs to calm so he could listen for her.

“Over here, Thunderer,” Misuru said, her voice alight with glee. “Follow my voice.”

She sounded as if she were off to his side, but Raijin didn’t move. He heard the slightest squelch behind him, like a foot being pulled from the mud. He shifted his weight and redirected his stance, turning himself to face her without lifting his feet from the treacherously slippery ground.

The air whispered as something cut through it toward his right side. Raijin twisted his torso away and thrust his arms out in a Ro-less cross block, one fist low and the other high to cover as much of his body as possible.

A muddy heel slammed into his opposite ear, rocking him nearly off his feet. His skull rang with the impact as he tried to regain his balance.

“Close,” Misuru said from behind him, “but not good enough.”

Her foot bashed into Raijin’s chest. He stepped backward to catch himself, but his foot dropped through empty air. He tried to throw his weight forward onto solid ground, but an elbow smashed into his face, making his ragged eye sockets scream with agony.

A final muddy kick to the broken ribs sent Raijin tumbling backward into nothingness. His stomach lurched into his throat as he fell. He wheeled his arms, grabbing blindly, but caught nothing.

Moments or eons later, he crashed into solid rock, the impact taking him by surprise and knocking the air from his lungs. Lightning flickered inside his head, and he curled in on himself like a crushed wool worm.

“Not a very graceful landing for a thunderbird.” Misuru’s voice drifted down from high above. “But I imagine you’re not very happy to be back in your cage.”

Raijin couldn’t draw enough breath to shout at her.

“Maybe you’ll fly away again someday,” Misuru called. “It only took you ten thousand years to escape last time. Of course, that was with your eyes.” Her voice began to fade as she retreated. “I’ll give your greetings to the Dark Dragon when I see her.”

Raijin rolled onto his side and slammed a fist into the rock. High above, thunder cracked the sky and rain poured like a waterfall.