Panic. Pain. Fear.

Jian’s thoughts bubbled around in circles, hazy and indistinct.

No brain. No eyes. No time.

Jian couldn’t see, but she could still feel the large soul standing next to her.

Danger. Need to leave.

Jian started sinking down the sides of the crater the Hero had made, blood seeping and pooling at its center.

Movement. Urgency.

The Hero lifted his hammer again, his breathing heavy and wet as he struggled to pull air into his damaged lung.

Move.

Jian threw a piece of herself into the air, half the blood in the crater vibrating for an instant before leaping up as a single sheet. The shadow it cast was cool and inviting. The rest of the blood poured into the shadow quickly, joining the reservoir and expanding through it.

The Hero’s hammer shattered the thin dome, shards of crystallized blood scattering through the air and letting in the sun’s dying light.

There was nothing left, but a single leg, cut off to speed her escape.

“Fuck.”

***

Jian swirled through her shadow like a cloud of blood in dark water. Already, she could think more clearly, better able to focus. She was still rebuilding her brain, but with more of her to spread the load, her soul was doing most of the heavy lifting. She was healing.

She was still dying.

That was unacceptable. She wanted someone to do something about that.

Her brain had just informed her that someone was herself.

She moved from shadow to shadow, afraid the Hero would find her. She didn’t know how he would hurt her, but he could. Fire and light or qi channeled through a bronze edge. She had to assume he could.

He was dying too. His own poison in his veins.

Not fast enough though. Needed something more. Needed time. Needed to heal. Needed to not die.

She smelled something delicious, and twisted towards it, like a leviathan catching the scent of blood. She needed it so badly, it hurt. A clawing, desperate hunger hollowing her out. She had thought she had it under control, but it had always been there, waiting for a moment of weakness. She would’ve howled if she’d had a mouth yet.

She made one, and the shadows reverberated with her pain.

She smelled warm wind, burdens chosen, a specific breed of freedom. It was so bright, but it was still just a candle. Small. Frail. Easy to blow out.

Large enough to make a difference? Maybe.

‘Maybe’ was good enough. She just needed time, more time.

Jian burst from the shadow in a spray of blood. Clawed hands cleaved through the air and dug into the marble floor, pulling her the rest of the way out. She wove blood into ragged wet flesh as quickly as she could, still building her body as she dragged it onto the surface. Pale skin wrapped itself around her face and neck, stretching over her shoulders and running down her arms.

There was a scream.

Her claws wrapped around a thin neck, pushing the food down on the floor. Her teeth gnashed, growing longer. One back foot scratched and slipped over the floor, still red and slick with blood, the other hadn’t finished forming. Unbalanced her.

Not a priority. Could wait.

She leaned towards the warmth.

Something pressed back against her neck.

Danger?

Jian paused, forcing her brain to work. To assess. To think. To be more than a beast.

She was in a kitchen, cold and unused ovens lining a wall and light filtering through high-placed windows.

A brown feather was trying to dig into her neck, the edge honed until it was as sharp as steel, but it couldn’t break her freshly grown skin. Her body had already surpassed mortal steel.

She looked into Alceste’s eyes. Furious, desperate, resolved.

She turned, looked around more, noticed a smaller source of qi. There, under the table. Striga huddled over her father’s corpse. Her eyes were red, but she wasn’t crying anymore. She wasn’t looking at them, wasn’t reacting at all to the struggle next to her. She just looked down at her father’s face.

Striga had carried him, but there was still a faint streak of red across the marble floors where she’d pushed him under the table. The hair on the back of his head was clumped together, sticky and red.

Jian leaned back, away from Alceste.

The pressure from the feather didn’t let up.

“I’m sorry.” She said. She meant it, but she didn’t loosen her grip. This was only going to end one way. She licked her lips nervously. “I’m dying.” She tried to explain.

“Good.” Alceste snarled. “Then hurry up.”

She tried to saw at Jian’s neck, but the blade still did nothing but indent her skin.

“I’m sorry, I can’t let that happen.”

“I wish we’d never found you.”

“I wish the same,” she looked at Striga and Nikkos, “but I’m not the only one at fault.”

“Does it matter?” Alceste yelled. “Will assigning blame bring my husband back?”

She had tears in her eyes. She was hiding them well, trying to cover it up with anger, but her soul was too gentle for the anger to blot it out.

“No, but I’ll kill him. I’ll kill Erichthonius.”

“It won’t bring him back.”

“No. It won’t.”

Jian knew she should stop talking. The more time she wasted, the quicker the Hero would find them, but she couldn’t. Not yet.

She could give her more time.

Alceste’s hand was trembling. She looked towards her daughter.

“She gets out of this alive.”

“Yes.”

“She walks away from here, damn it.”

“Yes.”

“Take her to Lothica. I have family there.”

“Yes.”

“Promise! Damn it!”

She was crying freely now, so thickly she could probably barely see. Her hand was trembling, but she still held the feather to Jian’s throat.

Jian marveled.

Alceste was weak, fragile. She could end this with a flick of her wrist. Yet, she still pushed at Jian. She didn’t stop struggling. She didn’t give up on her daughter. She still made demands. Neither of them should have a choice here, the outcome was predetermined, but she was making a choice anyway, and forcing one on Jian too. She had a strength Jian didn’t. It was admirable.

Yet, it amounted to nothing.

No. Not nothing. She could make sure it meant something, as little as it was.

“I promise.” She said.

Alceste ignored her, looking directly at her daughter.

“I’m sorry honey.” She cried. “You deserved better.”

Jian dipped her head closer, placing her teeth against Alceste’s neck, felt the beat of her heart.

“I love you.”

Jian bit down.

Flavor exploded over her tongue. Cold air and warm clothes. A wide open sky. Bouncing a child on her knee. Light. Joy.

Alceste’s last thoughts were of her daughter.

Blood was the conduit of life itself, and Jian pulled at that conduit, guzzling down everything she could and adding it to herself. Alceste’s body shook, the shock too much, as her soul started to slide free from her heart. It melted, pouring through her veins with the current.

It was so much more than the candlemaker’s had been.

Still small, still frail, but more substantial. More real.

It slid down her throat and circled her chest once before being swept down the drain into the void where her own heart had once rested. It poured down that tunnel, showering her inner Domain with a fresh shade of red.

For a moment, Jian was standing there again, looking up at the featureless white pillar enshrining her heart.

It shuddered, black roots snaking up from the sea of blood to climb up its length. They didn’t make it far, barely a fifth of its height, but across the length of her soul she could see black shapes shift just under the surface, spreading.

She blinked and found herself back in the kitchen.

She picked up the frail body and walked over to the table. She placed Alceste by her husband’s side, opposite Striga.

The child didn’t react.

Jian grabbed a mortar and pestle from the table, likely used to crush herbs for their meal earlier. She scoured it clean with a wave of blood and kneeled near the girl, placing the bowl in front of herself. She pulled one of the Lavinda cores from her shadow, dropping the jade into the bowl. While drained of qi, it was no stronger than most rocks.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

She pushed some of her qi into the mortar and pestle, feeling it slosh and spill out of the shoddy material. Still, it was good enough, and she quickly pounded the jade into a fine dust. She tossed the pestle away and scooped up the jade dust, pouring qi into it.

The jade drank it up greedily, the perfect battery. She felt it deepen and harden as it sucked up more and more qi, until each individual grain became as tough as diamond.

That would do.

She stood up just as the wall behind her exploded.

Vines of blood burst from Jian’s shadow and swatted rubble and shrapnel from the air. A fragment of stone bounced off her face, but it didn’t matter. Nothing got past her.

She turned as Erichthonius walked in.

He was leaning on the haft of his hammer, using it like a walking staff with the head resting against the ground. It already had cracks running over it, glowing with a red heat.

A vine whipped over Jian’s head and smashed the light above them.

Shadows stretched away from the hole in the wall as the light of the setting sun asserted itself, spilling into the kitchen and framing the Hero in orange. He was tired, had lost his spinning halo of flames, but his eyes still burned with divine fire, banishing every shadow between him and Jian.

Three Lavindas followed him in, bronze gears clicking in their joints as they carried their own heavy shields. They knelt around him, placing their shields like mirrors to bounce light further into the room.

None of them looked up.

Shadows pooled above the rim of the hole the Hero has blown in the wall, unnaturally dark in comparison to the rays of light shining past them.

Everything was in its place.

She was still weak, still had poison creeping through her veins, but she had enough energy for this. And, when she was done, she would feast.

A bead of blood began to form in Jian’s palm, sweeping the jade dust up into itself. It was much smaller than the sphere she had used earlier, but that was fine.

Erichthonius lifted his gleaming shield in front of his chest.

Jian pulled her hand back, holding it to her side, palm facing away.

Blood was a conduit of life, a perfect conductor of qi, matched only by gold and its alloys. More than that, blood was her flesh, her body. If she could move herself from one shadow to another, there was no reason she couldn’t push her blood through the same way.

“Be careful, false Hero.” She said calmly. “It looks like the venom is getting close to your heart.”

He spit a glob of blood to the side.

“Surrender and I’ll make it-”

“No.”

A line of blood shot through her shadow and out the shadow behind and above the Hero’s head. Pressurized blood, and the jade dust it carried, cut through bronze and flesh like air, punching through the marble floor in front of him. She whipped the beam to the side, carving a deep gouge in the floor as it tore through his waist.

Jian relished the look of surprise as his torso toppled forward, falling face first onto the marble floor. His legs stood still for a moment before they tipped back and collapsed.

The fire in his eyes winked out.

Jian was glad, adding a particulate to the stream had worked flawlessly.

Two of the Lavindas dashed towards her, fire building in their mouths and their shields held up like battering rams.

Blood vines whipped out from behind table legs and chunks of rubble, wrapping around the automatons and holding them in place to the sound of twisting metal. Vines wrapped around their jaws, slamming them shut and yanking their heads up. Fire spilled around and through their teeth, venting harmlessly into the air.

The third Lavinda dropped her shield and leapt towards her Hero, hand outstretched as she reached for him.

A dozen spears of blood erupted from underneath her, lifting her into the air from her own shadow and pinning her in place.

Liquid blood slithered and split off from the vines and spears, soaking into the Lavindas’ joints. All three automatons began to stutter, their gears clicking slower and slower, until the blood finally reached their cores.

Jian breathed in the small jolt of qi from each one before letting them collapse, dead.

She bent down and picked up Erichthonius, her claws digging into the flesh of his shoulder to get a good grip.

He looked at her through dazed eyes, blood dribbling down his chin and the perfect curls of his hair slightly matted with sweat.

She grabbed his head, twisting it to the side to expose his neck, and pulled him towards her.

She bit down, in time with the sound of a hammer striking an anvil.

She ignored the sword buried in her gut.

The Hero had transformed his prosthetic into a gleaming sword of Celestial Bronze. Fire ignited on its hilt. Qi gathered, swelling like a tsunami.

Pointless.

Jian breathed in.

Blood and qi were sucked down her gullet, the vacuum quickly latching onto the qi gathering in the sword and yanking it back into the Hero’s veins. It traveled up to his neck and poured into her mouth.

He screamed.

He fought.

He yanked his sword through her guts, trying to tear her in half, but the wake of the blade healed behind it faster than he could cut her, fueled by his own qi. His other hand pushed futilely at her face.

It did him no good.

His soul quivered in his chest, flickering and wavering, until it slipped over the edge and spilled into her. So rich, so full of qi and vitality and life.

The soul of a Hero dwarfed anything she’d ever had before.

Jian shook with ecstasy, the hunger that had been hanging from her back finally sated for the first time since she’d woken up on the Deicide’s table.

She took more, wanted more, needed more.

Memories began to trickle past. The bang of a hammer. Pumping bellows as his father worked hot steel fresh from the forge. The scent of burning coals coating the roof of his mouth. The feel of a hammer in his hands as he copied his father’s movements. A young woman by the side of a lake, a smile on her face. His father again, hammer held tight in his hands, staring down a Citizen. Water pulled from a well, dyed black, inciting panic. A dark forge, empty. An empty chair by the hearth. Repairing the window of a mansion that wasn’t his own. The same Citizen again, eating a meal he hadn’t known was poisoned. Chaos. Howling. The familiar scent of fire, but tainted by blood and flesh, made uncanny and sickening. A walking corpse, surrounded by dozens of still bodies. Standing under a shadow of looming death, but standing in nonetheless. The hand of something immense, reaching into his heart and leaving behind a spark. A flame to be nurtured, to empower him.

To make him a Hero.

Jian stood in the Domain of her soul, staring up at the pillar again. The vines climbed higher, wrapping fully around it and growing thorns to hold themselves in place. Blood poured in sheets as the shapes beneath the sea’s surface rose in huge arcs, new vines twisting through the empty air and casting new shadows.

A flower grew near the base of the pillar, bright white and molten from the heat of its bloom. As it cooled, the light faded through orange and red, until it gleamed with the shine of Celestial Bronze. Threads of gold added contrast and detail to the finely wrought flower.

A beautiful forgery.

Jian dropped the Hero’s corpse to the ground with a dull splat.

She’d gotten more from eating him than she’d expected, but she could wait to figure it out. She tore the sword from her gut and dropped it into her shadow, wiping the blood off her stomach as it immediately healed.

She walked around the kitchen, picking up the dropped shields and chucking them into her shadow. She wasn’t sure if they would retain the reflective properties he’d given them, but Celestial Bronze was still valuable. She passed by the oversized hammer, letting her shadow overlap with it before letting it drop straight down into her vault.

She glanced at Striga while she started cracking open the dead Lavindas to pull out their cores. The girl had moved at some point, now sitting in between her parents, a fist gripping each one’s clothes. Her knuckles were white.

She paused, holding the last jade core up to the light. Maybe she had time for one experiment.

She reached in and tore off a piece of bronze from inside the Lavinda, one of its many gears. She put it in her hand with the core and wrapped both in thin threads of blood, feeling the flow of qi passing over them.

She clenched her fist to the sound of a hammer striking metal.

She took a deep breath and then slammed her qi down on it again, and again.

When she opened her hand, she was holding a knife, a familiar one.

She reached into her shadow and pulled out her oldest knife, the same pitted iron shiv she’d carried as a child past the veils.

They were almost identical.

She almost snorted in amusement. Of course the first thing she would make would be that sentimental piece of trash. Still, that proved proof of concept.

She flipped the forged knife in her hand, running her qi through it. It was actually made of jade and bronze, with one edge made of each material, and it had kept both their properties. She could feel the qi looping through it, holding a moderate charge.

She could experiment more later, but it was interesting that she could technically forge something greater than its original. Next time, she’d try using just her own blood. That was a renewable resource at least.

She flipped the blade in her hand again, pulling the qi back into herself, and glanced back at where Striga knelt.

Was she really going to take the kid? If her face was marked by the Deicide, there probably wasn’t a single place in all of Seirei that was safe for her. She was glad she’d saved the kid’s life, but it had been too close. Up until she’d been poisoned, she’d been ready to run if it looked like she would lose, but she’d been taken by surprise. She hadn’t expected it, and it had almost gotten her killed.

She could still feel the poison rattling around inside her, but it was dying. Bolstered by the Hero’s addition to her soul, her blood had finally started to overpower and erode it, eating it, bit by bit.

She sighed.

No, after taking such a big risk, she wasn’t going to just leave the kid here to die.

She pulled out one of the bronze shields, holding it up to use as a mirror. There, on her cheek, was a splash of jade ink in the vague shape of an ink brush. Even after completely rebuilding her face, it was still there. Marked onto her soul? There was no telling how it worked, just that it did.

She wove a veil of shadows and draped it over her face. It didn’t somehow shine through the veil, so that proved she could at least cover it.

Unless one of the local gods could smell it or something, but there was no real planning for that. She’d try to avoid population centers as a precaution. She could leave Striga on the outskirts of a city, maybe find someone for her to hitchhike once they were within sight of Lothica, wherever that was.

Fuck, this would be difficult, but she would do it. She owed Alceste that much.

She looked at Striga again. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. She’d just been wondering what to do with herself now that she had an eternity stretching out before her. Maybe taking care of the kid would help her find an answer, a way to start filling an infinite number of days. She didn’t have any use for a child herself, a legacy was meaningless if you were planning to outlive it anyway, but she had always liked teaching. Whether it was Wei, Elijah, or curious children.

She missed being called Elder Sister.

Yes, that was it. She’d take the kid where she needed to go, and then she’d try to find some way to check on Elijah. That is, if he’d managed to avoid the Deicide’s clutches. Somehow.

Maybe she’d just focus on one thing at a time.

First, Striga.

She walked over to the Hero’s corpse and leaned down, letting a vine of blood slither out of her sleeve and into the ruined mess at the base of his severed torso. It snaked up through his body and wrapped itself around his heart.

She clenched her hand and the vine clenched too, forcing the fallen Hero’s heart to start beating again. She dropped just a dollop of qi into him, watching his eyes flicker.

He was still dead, or at least brain dead. You couldn’t be a person without a soul, but as long as his heart was beating, that was good enough.

She picked up the torso and walked over to where Striga knelt.

She dropped it and the girl’s knees, between her parents’ bodies.

“I left some for you.”

Striga finally looked up at her, a smidgen of horror and anger finally peaking through the shock.

Jian knelt down, holding out the jade knife.

“This guy killed your dad, it’s his fault your mom’s dead, and his heart is still beating.”

She gently pried Striga’s hand off of her father’s shirt.

“It’s alright to be angry, as long as you don’t let it blind you.”

She wrapped the child’s hand around the knife.

“Sometimes, people like that will be too strong for you to do anything about. Sometimes, you’ll have to bide your time, but when they’re vulnerable, when they’re weak, this is what you do.”

She guided Striga’s hands firmly, pressing the knife down until it slid through the Hero’s skin. Without the Hero’s soul to strengthen it, his flesh was only mortal, and the blade slipped easily between his ribs, piercing his heart. Blood welled up, pushed by the artificially pumping heart.

It smeared both their hands red.

Shaking, Striga ripped her hands away, taking the knife with her.

Jian let her, thinking they were done, but the girl brought it back down again, violently. She stabbed down, again and again, without a sound. Tears were flowing freely from her eyes, silent sobs wracking her body.

Jian let her keep going for a few more seconds, until it was clear she’d tired herself out, her hands slowing to a crawl and her arms shaking with exertion.

She gently picked the kid up. Hopefully, that had provided some catharsis. Not enough, she was sure, but some.

“Alright, Striga, we can’t stay here too long. For all we know, that guy’s god will come by and take issue with us killing his little servant. We’re accomplices now. We got revenge for your dad together, so now we’re going to travel together for a bit. We just have to do one more thing before we go.”

She walked past the couple’s bodies, letting them shift and slide down into her shadow as it drifted over them.

“We’ll give your parents a proper burial first.”