At last - at very, very long last - Heishe felt hope. When the Elder left this world, Heishe and her adoptive siblings had promised him that they would maintain the balance, and so they had. For millennia, they watched, only occasionally having to step in. The mere knowledge of their existence was usually enough to prevent those who would otherwise have gone astray from doing so.

And then, just over a thousand years ago, everything went wrong. First, Rabbit disappeared. That wasn’t unusual. Rabbits were flighty and tended to wander away. Sometimes they would vanish for centuries before a new one would appear. Frankly, there had been so many that Heishe wasn’t even certain what name the last one used. It had simply been Rabbit.

But this time Rabbit’s disappearance was followed by Goat, then Pig, and Rat. These four were the weakest, and the ones who tended to settle down among their charges, pretending to be no more than the beasts from which they sprang. Heishe hadn’t paid any attention to their loss. She hadn’t paid attention to anything she didn’t have to for many, many years.

It was Fengji who called for them to gather, and when they did, it was Fengji who told them he’d gone to look for Rabbit and found instead a wasteland, burned and empty of all life. To her shame, Heishe ignored him. This Rabbit wouldn’t be the first to have simply allowed itself to die when something happened to those it protected. That was the danger of tying oneself too closely to the world, and especially of building a family.

Fengji insisted something was wrong, however, and continued on his hunt for their other missing members. He found Goat’s home, buried beneath an avalanche. The herd with whom Goat had been living were all dead, crushed beneath tons of snow, but there was no sign of Goat herself. Heishe was sad that Anning was gone. She had been Goat for longer than most, and was a pleasant companion in those rare times Heishe felt like spending time with someone else.

Pig’s sounder was missing, and the area where he’d lived with them was now a small but thriving human town. Rat- Well, Rats were intelligent and sly, making them difficult to find at the best of times. Heishe didn’t even know if she’d ever met the Rat who had, almost certainly, died at that time.

Only when Monkey and Tiger became involved did Heishe bother to take notice. Tiger had apparently been friends with this Rabbit - though how that came about, Heishe didn’t know - and the great feline was very worried. He insisted that Rabbit would have told him if she had grown tired of their task, and while it did happen that something killed one of the Twelve unexpectedly, it was rare.

And then the Incursions started. The Gate was always there, but it began to grow. It was small at first, no larger than any star in the sky. Small things came through, too weak to be a real challenge even for normal humans, much less those trained in battle. For a while, they were even perceived as a boon, since they almost always yielded a core, which the humans used to make themselves even stronger.

But year by year the Gate opened wider, and more powerful creatures passed into the world Heishe was supposed to keep safe. Balanced. Eventually even she was forced to help fight, but by then Ox was gone, as was Horse. How many years had it been since Fengji gave his warning? How many of Heishe’s siblings could she have saved if only she had listened?

But no, she was too busy. Too busy listening to the water. She burrowed beneath the earth, wrapping herself in the dark ki of the deepest aquifer. She watched through the waves and the currents and the eyes of the serpents, and thought she knew everything. Everything she needed to know. Everything worth knowing.

Until Dog was killed almost before her very eyes, or at least what served as her eyes at the moment. She had always had a soft spot for her canine brethren, respecting their loyalty and determination, which were much like her own. There had only been eight Dogs since the Elder left, and only one Snake. Only Heishe.

She had been watching for Incursions, ready to intercede if something powerful emerged, when she saw a small cluster of human homes under assault. An enormous bird flung lightning down on them, setting them afire. This forced out the inhabitants, who were protected by a single massive hound.

Heishe recognized the Dog, Zhong, so she hadn’t bothered to rise to the surface. She could see that Zhong would win the battle, and he did, though he was battered and weak by the end. The lightning bird was stronger than she’d thought, and she’d almost regretted her choice, but the humans had rushed to Zhong’s side, supporting and healing him, which she knew would please him. Dogs always liked humans too much.

So her focus drifted, only to be drawn back when Zhong’s blood entered her water. Had he gone to the river to bathe and drink? But no, there was his body, lying open and empty, surrounded by the humans he had struggled to save. They, too, were dead, their homes still burning, and as Heishe watched in horror, shadowy figures grasped Dog and human alike, tossing them into the blaze. Heishe began to rise, but she was too late. Whatever had killed her - Friend? Her sibling, at the least - had gone.

What was it? What could evade her senses in such a way? It should be impossible. Heishe was one of the Twelve, linked to every part of this world, able to see anything, anywhere she cared to turn her attention. And yet this being, or beings, were nothing but shadows to her. When she reached the surface, she could taste it, a mixture of things that shouldn’t have been possible, but her eyes told her nothing more than that.

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This remained true as both Rooster - Fengji - and Monkey vanished. They had been working together to find out what had happened to their missing brethren, and why new ones hadn’t been born. By now it was more than a hundred years since Rabbit went missing, but no new Rabbit had appeared, nor had any of the others, even Rat, and Rat was usually one of the fastest to develop. All it took was a rodent of some kind to be born with at least three elements. If that rodent was exposed to the right catalysts, a new Rat would spring up, just as it was meant to.

Now the Gate was obvious every time the moon was dark. Without the reflected power of the sun to block it, even humans could see it, and when the barrier between this world and the next grew too thin, or something strong enough pushed against that Gate, it opened, allowing those things passage. The balance had been broken. Heishe had failed the Elder.

Beside her, Fengji twitched, making a soft squawking sound in his sleep. In spite of the frivolous fowl’s claims that he was as strong as ever, Heishe could tell his long captivity had scarred him, both in body and soul. His core was intact, it had to be, but he had nightmares he couldn’t wake from on his own, and his endurance was…lacking.

Without knowing for certain what had happened to the rest of their siblings, Heishe didn’t dare leave him alone, and so she remained with him, or at least near him, at all times. She would feel better if she could see the creatures called kobolds and their reptilian kin, but they remained a fog to anything but her physical eyes.

She had learned to recognize that fog, know they were there, as she had when the one called Kaz had fallen into her water, but she still couldn’t see them. Worse, she had learned from listening to Kaz and his friends that there was still another type, and she had never seen that kind at all, so she had no way to identify their particular form of absence.

Fengji thrashed, some of his feathers bursting into flame. Her water soothed the heat, preventing it from starting a fire, but she decided that it was time to wake him. Truthfully, one of the Twelve as old as he was shouldn’t have needed to sleep at all. The fact that he did was yet another way she knew he was still weak.

With deliberate brusqueness, she wrapped a coil around the bird’s leg and tugged. she told him.

Fengji’s dark eyes flashed open, and his neck twisted as he looked around. Taking in the quiet glade in which they rested, he breathed a sigh of relief, though he was quick to hide it with a great flapping of his wings. Several bent and broken feathers drifted away, burning to ash before they reached the ground.

he muttered, preening a feather into submission.

Perhaps it was. Perhaps it was time for there to be a second Snake, and for Heishe to allow her ki to rejoin the world at last. It was just so hard to think that when she was gone, there would be no one left who remembered the Elder. No one who had felt his hand rest on their head, his ki touching their own. She could pass on her memories, as the others had, but she would have to relinquish self to do so. Could she?

she told him. There was no heat behind it, especially since he might well be right. She had missed the obvious for centuries, after all.

He stood, gazing to the east, where the sun was just beginning to touch the edge of the world with an argent glow. Soon pinks and oranges would tinge it with fire, but for now it was an ethereal radiance that marked the end of night.

Lifting his head, Fengji began to crow. The sound rolled out, rippling through the darkness with a power held only by the Rooster. The creatures that inhabited the shadows hurried toward their homes, while those who only came out when dusk and dawn settled over the land began to poke inquisitive noses from nests and burrows. Day could come without the call of the Rooster, but it was better for his presence.

How long had it been since she wasn’t alone? Since she heard the voice of one of her siblings? The Rooster was always the noisiest, but each of them laid their own touch upon the world, giving it a depth and strength that it would otherwise lack. How many more birds would bear cores now that Fengji was awake and wandering again? How much more Fire would there be in the world?

Only when the sun was fully risen did Fengji cease his call. All around them, birds sang back, crying, “Here! Here! See me, Rooster!” A particularly plump partridge paraded into the glade, followed by his hen and three young, each still retaining a bit of fluff mixed in with their adult feathers.

Fengji shrank, becoming no larger than a normal rooster, and strutted over to the little family. Bending his head, he touched his beak to the middle offspring, where they could both sense a small core. Power surged, and the little bird flapped, cheeping loudly as its core grew stronger.

Heishe nodded in satisfaction. One by one, little by little, they would return the world to balance. With two of them, it was possible, but five would be even better. At least one for each element, and more to bear the burden of watching over all the natural creatures of this world.

She was Water, while Fengji bore Fire. Earth, Metal, and Wood still needed representatives, and it would be better still to have a full Twelve; two for each element, and two more to support the weakest, ever changing as the world did.

At last - at very, very long last - Heishe felt hope. Now, she simply had to be patient. There was a Way to this, a right and a wrong. The Twelve must choose a difficult path, and she could only hope that the right choice was made. Fortunately, Heishe was very, very patient.

Unfortunately, Fengji was not. Done with the pheasants, he looked at Heishe, who basked on a stone warmed by the first rays of the sun. Unlike her more mortal brethren, she didn’t require heat to survive, but it was pleasant nonetheless.

he demanded, as if she would know.

Hissing softly, Heishe slithered in a circle, turning to expose her other side to the sun. she said, pretending she didn’t care. If. If he ever was. But she finally dared to hope.