In the first sequel, the great sequel to that day, the empire fell apart. Three fourths of it rose in rebellion as the emperor lay in repose due to his wounds, and great civil wars in which many thousands of cultivators died erupted. Whole cities were destroyed, and some of the landscapes upon the continent were made uninhabitable.

When after a three-year, the emperor — though weakened from what he had been in his full glory — rose again in battle, he was able to regain control over much during the following twenty years. But still, a third of the lands that had once called him liege yet maintained their wary independence. And the two expeditions he had sent against Yatamo, to burn the island for its crimes, had been turned back in ignominy.

In a second sequel, a smaller sequel to that day, the orphaned Sesako had been brought forward before the matriarch of the Great Ones, as the only surviving family of the man who had saved them all by attacking the emperor.

And she had looked into his mind.

And she had blessed him with a touch of her power.

And she had proclaimed ‘this one shall do great things, and his soul is pure and burning bright. He is bold, and true, though I fear he is doomed to much unhappiness. He shall be great amongst my friends.’

And following that he had often been given the chance to fly with the dragon and had in some small sense become her apprentice. And also, those amongst the great, amongst the profound souls of the island, had chosen him as one their apprentices or their proteges.

Thus, Sesako developed in skill and power quickly, devoting his every minute, and his every thought to advancement, to becoming sufficiently great that he might do as his father had done, and protect the Great Ones from the emperor when he chose to return.

For in his deepest parts, heart, soul, Sesako had always known that the emperor would return.

And despite his century of effort, the focus he had placed upon this goal, now, now when the test had come — he saw no hope of success.

The world had presented a test for him, and he had failed.

That the test was unfair, and impossible was no excuse for failure. The world had no obligation to be fair.

And so, he flew into the mountains, to see the Great One — one who was not only the symbol of his land, and the goddess who blessed them, but one who he saw as a friend, and as a dear person.

And he came to tell her that enemies who intended to kill her and her remaining family would descend upon them, and that neither he, nor any of her other defenders could stop them.

The Great One rested, curled up upon the mountainside, the ground beneath her depressed by her great weight.

She was a great-souled creature. And Sesako knew that they had all sworn long, long ago — when they first met others who also thought and who were conscious, to never kill, not even to save their own lives.

It was up to Sesako and the others who loved the Great Ones to defend them.

Sesako flew to a polite distance from her head, and then he spoke, “Wake my friend, you must wake.”

The head rose, giant unblinking yellow gold eyes looking at him.

“You have returned to the mountains sooner than I expected.”

“I have come to bring a warning.” Sesako’s voice was firm, though he was wracked with overweening grief. “The celestial emperor comes to attack the island. To defeat him is unlikely. He will come, and he will seek to kill you and your remaining children once more.”

The giant head connected to the long sinuous neck. She was silvery blue, and beautiful. The enormous spirit creature was nearly a thousand feet long, from head to tail tip, and her wings were even more massive.

The scales were gleaming gems, hard yet pliable, and those she freely left behind for the use of the artisans were, once suitably enchanted, amongst the most valuable exports of the Yatamo.

“You two have made no plans, prepared no intentions then for how you might fight?”

Uhhhhh.

“The council and the seven have met, and we plan to —”

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“No.” The voice boomed out, rolling. “Not the council. Not the seven. The two of you standing before me.”

Sesako looked around. There was no one else.

He had a sinking feeling that he knew what the Great One meant to refer to.

“The two of you standing within one body —” and then a touch of the dragon’s mind pressed against Sesako’s essence, infusing him, and allowing them to communicate in a way that was deeper than language, and far more suited to the dragon’s mind, within which the use of words and symbols was hardly a fundamental thing, but simply an addition learned, late, late, late in her nearly eternal life after the coming of humans to the land.

And he was infused with a sense of disappointment from her.

Fragments, like concepts.

Violence, the one against the other.

An image of two great bucks fighting desperately while a lion snuck from behind to leap upon their spotted fawns.

“You shall not — you cannot live. Sesako, you cannot live without him. No longer, and if you do not —”

A flash of anger.

Never towards the Great One, but towards how she did not understand.

“He is a worthless parasite. A coward and a —”

Silence!

All the sound was gone.

Even the birds twittering about the dragon who fed from the leavings of her great meals ceased to sing.

A giant hourglass, the sand trickling out and almost empty. The image was Sesako’s mind interpreting the idea that the dragon wished to convey, and not directly from her.

And then another image. This one directly from the Great One’s memories.

A flash of power.

The dragon awakening. Flying up high, and then seeing him seated on the greatest peak, surrounded by the endless twisting circles of inscribed runes and spell work, with the piles of exhausted stores of power waiting dust like for a first wind to blow them apart.

It was a body. Dead, no heartbeat. The dantian ripped open and the red power flooded out to consume him.

The dragon’s eyes saw the streams of power themselves, wrapping around, endlessly, endlessly, blue, red, purple, gold.

And she did something.

She stretched forth her own celestial power to manipulate that celestial power which now flowed through the open dantian of the already dead human before her, tying it, preventing it from consuming all of the flesh.

And then…

It was beyond the limits of Sesako’s mind to follow. Fragments of reaching, things occurring in space that somehow had infinite spaces embodied within every point of space. Thrumming strings, a tone of music, like a poem, the music of the eternal universe.

And then a searching… searching for one who was Sesako, but yet who was not Sesako. A one from some unimaginably vast and multifaceted elsewhere.

Rejections. A sense of wrongness of possibility.

And then satisfaction.

An essence.

A soul, a spirit.

And it was grasped from its place in infinite stillness where there was no time by the dragon, and she pulled upon him.

And then this new essence was tied to Sesako, and it was somehow Sesako itself.

And the power was twisted with the red streams of power from the open fourth dantian, closing the whole that yet leaked, replacing the work of the dragon, and filling some part of his essence that had been destroyed by the opening ritual, and that must be there for life to continue.

And then the body took one breath. And the heartbeat once. And it beat for a second time. And then yet a third time.

The body that had been dead lived.

With a satisfied tilting of her claws the sleepy dragon floated off, to return to her snowy peak, and to curl up in the early sunlight of dawn to continue her long summer’s nap, for she knew that if the fates were contrary, this might be the last sleep she would achieve in her long, long life, and the possibility neither scared her nor grieved her — but she hoped for a better, a greater future.

This memory played through Sesako’s mind for a few seconds, and then he returned to himself. He looked up at her.

“Then you used him to keep me alive… but he is…”

“He is a form of you. And you must learn — neither of you can succeed without the other. His aims must be blent with your aims, and you both shall succeed and do great things together, or you both shall die, and sink into ignominy together.”

“But I have controlled him, and he cannot —”

“You are no fool Sesako.”

The admonishment made him flush like a lad of fifteen criticized by one of his mentors who he’d thought to impress.

He felt a brush of affection pressed into his mind, titanic in the size and power of the mind. But with kindness, like a human mother to her child.

“But how can we have any partnership — his goals are pointless, small… he is a coward. And —”

The memory was pressed on him once more, of that twisted space that a human mind could not comprehend, seven layers of existence inside each point in space. And Her reaching through. And Her seeking, rejecting, choosing, understanding, knowing!

The matching.

Sesako inclined his head, though part of his soul rebelled at the gesture. If the great one was certain she had made no mistake, she had made no mistake.

He felt a sort of sickness.

He was no longer himself. He was what she had said: There are two of you.

He didn't want to be two, he wanted to be himself, he did not wish to be in part a worthless coward who served a god of his own imagination rather than the Great Ones.

“Do not fear.” The Great One said. “You made this choice, you chose this sacrifice, but the choice shall not be beyond your ability to bear — Ah, I see now what you fear.”

And another memory, one she had shown him before.

Of a young boy, fifteen years of age being presented to her. A boy whose entire life had been taken from him, father, sister, brother, mother dead.

And of the Great One looking upon him with pity; pity and respect.

“Do not fear that I shall love you less, now that there is another who inhabits your dwelling.”

Sesako shuddered.

And then she said, “I must speak with that other soul — though his time for control is not yet here, I shall speak with him.”

And then there was a touch on Sesako’s mind, a touch against that place where the growing itch that represented the other dwelt.

And when she touched, that itch grew horribly more powerful in an instant, and though in his fear he struggled for an instant, it was of no use.

Suddenly Sesako was once more an observer in his own body.