So, I wasn’t the only one who’d anticipated a need to up our timetable. Good thing I was here to answer that blowhard’s boastful challenge. He scoffed as I revealed myself, and blew a torrent of water right through me. I’d be quite dead if I hadn’t redirected it, but if he was surprised at my control of his attack, he didn’t show it.
I sensed Kaoru running full-tilt for the border, utterly terrified. Good. She’d reinforce our units and I wouldn’t have to worry about her being in the crossfire. Water’s disturbingly powerful, if you know how to wield it.
And I now stood before a raging storm god.
“Do you think you can save those abominations you debase yourself with, northerner? Your lands will drown in my fury!”
“Debase myself? With the fox? No, she’s my wife’s best friend. The ‘abomination’ I’m debasing myself with is in position to handle the Tiger King when we’re done trading pointers.”
I cupped my fist and bowed, an old monastery tradition that had long been forgotten in most lands. But if Xiang had beaten anything into me over the years, it was good etiquette.
My bow was answered with another torrent.
“Really, that is quite disrespectful. I am aware of your belief that strength is the only measure of value, but have you ever considered the-” Another torrent, this one stronger. I sighed. “Very well.”
And he went flying with a single punch, hitting the wall behind him. He’d tried to take me out as I charged him, of course, but I simply wasn’t where he thought I was. Not by the time he got there, at any rate.
The Dragon King used whatever spell he favored to broadcast his little slaughterfest, then ordered his army to advance on the wall. I let him, I trusted Kaoru and the front line to hold.
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“You will regret this, boy. Nothing withstands the fury of a storm.”
High kick, high punch, torrent from the left, slide under his second attack, wheel along his back for a bit. Pitifully predictable, even if the power could do me serious harm yet.
Hm. Something about that quip… a storm? Oh, of course.
“What do you think of the ocean, Dragon King?”
He jumped away from me. “Vast, unending. Empty.”
“The way you run things, sure. I have hope to fix that when I’m done with you and the qi in this nexus is allowed to flow freely again. But something I note is that the storm cannot touch the ocean.” I was moving faster now, my thoughts accelerating as the power started finding me. “You say nothing can withstand the fury of a storm? Yet I am the ocean, and without me the storm has no teeth to bite. No wind to cut. You seek ultimate control over water… and I see now what my wife and her friend did when they killed the others. It’s impossible to control qi… you must become it.”
A flash, and another torrent, disintegrating my clothes. I didn’t even try to dodge now. The Dragon King could no longer hurt me. I had the power of the tide, the strength of the deepest ocean depths, the mobility of the gentlest stream.
I wasn’t just controlling water, I was water. And like could not harm like.
But the Dragon King was too busy trying to control our element to truly connect to it. This, I realized, was why Xiang and Kaoru could beat the Tortoise and Vermilion Kings with their own element. And it was how I moved the Dragon King now, controlling his every move through the water within his own body. He barely even noticed me doing it, just that every attack he made was weaker and even more telegraphed than it’d been before. A centuries-old man, so proud of his own strength that he would respect nothing else, was forced to submit to the power of a man one-tenth his age.
The collar around his neck glowed, and I knew our time was up. A stroke of pressurized water across his neck, and the Dragon King was dead.
I briefly considered checking on the former border when I heard the roar. Huh. That took us all afternoon? I didn’t realize I’d been playing with him so long. Well, it was Xiang’s turn now, and I prayed my little rabbit would be alright.