“Amaya! Come and look at this!” The Archer reluctantly obliged Hideo’s beckoning. He had been tinkering in the depths of Darkfall’s alchemy chamber since they returned from Heartstring. He found the practice of mixing various dusts, chemicals, and rocks together to be somewhat soothing. A break from the cold brutality that troubled Arkovia so much. After months of work and sleepless nights of experimenting and swiping away accidental fires, and some admonishing, followed by advice from the Arch-Wizard, he had created something that he was most proud of.
“What is it, Hideo?” Amaya asked impatiently. Hideo had thought that she would have been more than grateful just to be out of Darkfall’s dungeon. The Empress had pardoned her since their return from Heartstring, yet the Archer appeared no less resentful.
He presented her with a small silver plate. A pile of cobalt blue dust sat atop it, thick and gleaming. She scowled, seemingly believing that he had lost his wits. “I know it doesn’t look like much,” he agreed. “Please bear with me.” He gathered a small handful of the cobalt dust in his hand. Grains seeped through his fingers like sandy blue waterfalls. He stood to the side and threw the substance onto the ground. There was a bang and sapphire dust clouded the alchemy chamber. When the dust started to disperse and settle, he silently approached from behind the Archer and tapped her on the shoulder. Amaya jumped back in freight and fell to the ground from the shock. Hideo burst out into laughter.
“Fool!” Amaya yelled as she pounced back and slapped him hard around the cheek.
It did not disrupt Hideo’s laughter. He had never seen her face so panicked. He could not remember the last time he had laughed like this. It was certainly the first time he had laughed since arriving in Arkovia. “It’s brilliant though, isn’t it?”
“What is?” Her voice was sharp. The prank had put her in a dark mood.
“The dust,” Hideo said with a smile. “Simply throw it into the ground and it blinds everyone around you.”
“What a wonderful inconvenience for everybody,” Amaya said venomously.
“Exactly,” he said proudly. “If an assassination isn’t going according to plan, you can use this to escape your pursuers.” The Archer’s snarl did seem to wane as she realised the chemical’s potential. Hideo grabbed a broom and began to clear the immense mess he had made in the alchemy chamber. Goro will be mad, but less so when he discovers what I’ve created.
A fang that Hideo did not recognise behind the dark fukumen and zukin appeared in the doorway and bowed. “Captain Takeda requests your company.” He addressed both Hideo and the Archer. They followed him without question. Hideo had not spoken to Takeda nor Xerxes since they returned from that unpleasant event back in Cold Crow. Sometimes he would awaken screaming, seeing Satake’s bloody face buried halfway into the snow, his lips curling into dissatisfaction.
They were escorted into a training chamber in the depths of the mountain. Padded wooden dummies were strewn about the square-shaped and windowless room. The walls were adorned with spears, katanas, death stars, and sai. Takeda was standing in the chamber’s centre. His chest was bare, and he was swinging a curved sword alone, gracefully, so as if in a peaceful trance. “Ah, the Craven Brother, and the Turncoat, as Xerxes calls you both.” His eyes remained closed as he greeted them. The Samurai turned and grinned playfully at them. His long hair was tied in a bun and Hideo noticed a bruise on the side of his cheek that he had acquired back at Heartstring.
“You don’t have to call us that,” Amaya suggested with a mask of a smile. Hideo could feel the heat of her anger as he stood next to her.
The Samurai chuckled heartily and twirled the blade above his head and around his body. The steel spined wildly and with a harsh flicking sound as it cut through the air. “He requests each of our presence all the same.”
“Hideo was the one who started the fight with the ronin,” Amaya immediately objected. Hideo did not blame her for the outburst. She had only just left the dungeons after her last disobedience.
Takeda chuckled. “I believe the matter is more in relation to our new friend that we picked up on our journey.”
Hideo knew exactly who Takeda was referring to. They had kept one Stone Ronin prisoner after Xerxes had hacked off his hand with those vicious tiger claw blades. Hideo had initially thought that the Thane meant to question and leave their captive out in the Tandra to freeze and die alone out in the snow. The further they rode, the more apparent it became to the assassins that he was to be brought back to Darkfall to answer to the Empress herself. He remembered Takeda had objected vehemently about allowing another rogue ronin to discover where Darkfall lay. “He won’t be leaving the temple,” Xerxes had whispered to him. The Thane’s words unnerved Hideo. There was a sadistic glee in his cadence that he did not like, but he thought better than to question the Thane’s decisions. It had been months since that dark day and Hideo had not heard anything of the captive. He had assumed that the ronin had already been executed. Instead, Hideo learned that he had been kept in the darkest bowels of the Monsoon Mountain, barely fed and without daylight. The thought of it all made Hideo’s skin crawl. It was a far worse fate than merely being killed on the day and spared it all.
The Captain of Samurai led them deeper down the sapphire spirals. It was a long venture into the lower bowels of the Monsoon Mountain. The stairways, corridors, and blue flames from the sconces that hanged across the stone walls went on for near two miles of descent. They arrived in a cavernous dungeon that lay deeper than the one Amaya had dwelled in. The Thane had the ronin prisoner tied to a chair in the centre. His clothes were ragged and torn; his face was scattered with purple bruising. Hideo saw the burnt and blackened stump at the end of the ronin’s arm. Most of the bandaging had fallen away naturally and not been reapplied. Xerxes stood over him, wearing his snarling lion helm. When the captive took sight of Hideo, he shrieked and began to weep.
Amaya started laughing. “Why is he more afraid of Hideo than you, most feared Thane?”
Xerxes’ snarling lion helm turned towards Hideo. The Thane paced towards the New Jader, pointing a dagger'd finger. “Because this Night Fang was the one who started the damned fight!”
Takeda audibly sniffed the air with a look of disgust. “Congratulations, Hideo. You made a Stone Ronin shit himself.”
Steel Lion’s voice boomed from within his helm. “I told you to wait until nightfall, Craven Brother. A Night Fang is a creature of the night. He does not attack his prey during the day-” Xerxes continued to chide Hideo with the same rhetoric he had given him ever since they left Heartstring until a soft commanding whisper came from the dark and told him to be silent.
Hideo had not noticed the Empress’ presence among them and was taken with great surprise when she emerged from a shadowy corner of the dungeon. The sapphire gem in her circlet pulsated a wave of luminous light. She tossed her blue hair aside as she placed her pale hands on the whimpering prisoner. “Dear Ronin,” she addressed softly, “would you kindly tell them what you told me regarding the Khan?”
When the captive ronin only whimpered and sobbed in response, Xerxes hit hard him around the head. It sounded like a stone brick being dashed against a bag of meat. “Answer the Empress!” he boomed.
The captive spat out blood and gazed directly at Hideo as he spoke. “Cold Crow was contributing little to the Arkovian Empire in terms of productivity.” He recounted the tale frantically. One wrong word and Xerxes could be tempted to bring out the tiger claws to take another limb. “We were to round up the villagers and bring them to Star Snow. The Khan paid us a great sum to do this.”
“And what was to happen to the residents of Cold Crow when they were brought before the great and wise Khan?” The Empress whispered the question from behind him. Her pale hands patted his ragged shoulders, and the ronin started to breathe heavily. He was sweating profusely, like a pig before the chopping block.
“We were to receive a cut of the profits made when Khan Sano sold them to the Crimsonarions.” The captive answered the question truthfully. Steel Lion punched him across the jaw, anyway. Red droplets splashed into the dungeon’s puddles.
“Crimson scum,” the Thane yelled. “The Khan consorts with slavers!”
“What of it?” questioned Amaya. “Arkovia has traded with worse in the past.”
“His own people!” Steel Lion exclaimed thunderously. He kicked the chair the captive was sitting on and the ronin toppled over and splashed. “Khan Sano, an Arkovian ruler, means to sell Arkovians to the empire! What kind of reprobate does that to his own!”
“Steel Lion,” the Empress’ voice was as soft as a ghost’s, “perhaps you should return to the mountain’s peak.” She phrased it as a concerned suggestion, but each Night Fang in the chamber knew it to be a command. “Some fresh air will do you good.”
The snarling lion helm turned to her. Hideo thought that Xerxes was about to object and yell. He could see the Thane’s eyes through the lion helm’s sockets. The emerald eyes flickered like green flames. The Thane bowed stiffly. “Yes, Your Sapphire Highness.” The words were respectful, but the tone was restrained. Xerxes slammed the iron dungeon door behind him as he left.
The Empress pulled the chair, along with her restrained captive, back up to a straight position. The ronin was sobbing incessantly. “I apologise for my Thane,” the Empress whispered to him as she knelt to his eye level. “He has an… unpleasant history with the red empire. It’s a sore wound for him.” The captive’s weeps began to simmer, and his muscles seemed to ease at the Empress’ soothing words. “You did well to tell us this information. I know it couldn’t have been easy.” She patted the captive on his bloody shoulders as she stood. She leaned behind his ear and said, “Now you will be well looked after.” A small, curved blade silently peeked from her drooping sleeve. She stuck a small pointed end under the ronin’s chin just as he was beginning to exhale in relief. Blood streamed out like a viciously leaking dyke. Red drops splashed into the puddles below the ronin’s feet as he gargled. The gargling was the worst part. It made Hideo wince. The Empress did not lose her smile. There was a delight in her eyes that he commonly saw in Amaya’s.
When his head slumped back, the Empress turned her gaze to the two fangs. “You did well in Cold Crow, both of you. I ordered you onto a simple assassination and you brought back a clandestine and most heinous plot. Khan Sano has always been a tyrant, but never to this magnitude.” She approached the two of them. Hideo felt his heart race. She leaned in and hugged Hideo and Amaya at the same time, pulling them both into the embrace. “I’m so proud of the two of you,” she said, as if she were a mother praising her children for catching their first fish. “I wanted you both to be the first to know before I discuss this with the others.”
Know what? Hideo thought. What could be a worse revelation than the Khan enslaving the poor and downtrodden? He was yet to know that the empress's response would frighten him further.
The Empress did not gather a large assembly of every fang into the throne room. The council she held was small, in her own quarters in Sabre’s Fort. Hideo knew that he was damn privileged to be a part of it. Perhaps I should take after Amaya and act on my impulses more often. A large hearth with blue wildfire cracked behind the large table that displayed a sprawling map of Arkovia, which was draped over every corner. Every fang that was invited was huddled around it. Xerxes had regained some composure, yet without his helm, Hideo could see that his hard-emerald eyes were still seething and bitter. Goro’s face gave nothing away, as it was hidden behind a zaffre hood and a black scarf. Pirate Prowler was twirling a thin sai between her fingers as she observed her blue bandanna wrapped tightly over her black and blue hair. Amaya stood the furthest from them, silent yet smirking at her own thoughts. Takeda was the only one not paying attention, seemingly transfixed by an oil painting of an Arkovian mountain landscape. “What you suggest is treason,” Goro cautioned coldly when the Empress had uttered a plan many had previously been executed for just considering.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“Treason is an understatement,” Pirate Prowler said.
“Treason is the act of betraying one’s country,” Xerxes opined with fire in his voice. “Tell me how Khan Sano is not doing exactly that? He is selling his own people to Crimsonarion bondage!” The Thane slammed his fist on the table.
The Empress raised a soft, pale hand. “Xerxes, we’ve discussed this.”
The Thane relented and stepped away from the table. Takeda instead took his place, tapping at the edges of the sprawling map. “You’re going to need more than one Night Fang to accomplish this.”
“At least a handful,” Pirate Prowler added. “The citadel is heavily guarded. It’s the sad reality as to why places like Heartstring are so vulnerable. Most of the empire’s security goes to Sano’s own abode.”
“Instead of attempting to end a Khan,” Goro suggested diplomatically, raising a sleeved arm. “Perhaps we should eye those more directly involved in the slave trading?”
“Cut off the head and the body will fall,” the Empress said. Hideo noticed how the Empress was most fond of that saying. “It was the Khan’s decision. The Khan’s orders were to enslave his own. Therefore, his light must end.”
“And who is to say Shino Sonoda will be any better when she takes the throne?” the Arch-Wizard questioned doubtfully.
“Khan Sano’s daughter is only eleven,” the Empress said with a pale smile. “Still at an age to be easily influenced by better persons than her father. We can nudge her down a brighter path from our dark corner.”
“And which one of us is to do the nudging?” Takeda asked. “I am not spending my finest years babysitting a soon-to-be orphaned urchin.”
“We shall implement a spy in the Khan’s citadel,” the Empress said confidently. It became apparent to Hideo that she had already made her plans and that this meeting was a debriefing, not a debate. “Spirits knows, we should have done it sooner. We have one for the Inferno in Magma Canyon in the south who is yet to be sussed by them. Surely implementing one in Star Snow will be no harder?” The Empress’ dark blue eyes veered towards the New Jader. “Hideo, you’ve served me well so far. You have apt intelligence, and your loyalty certainly seems stronger than Hiroko’s ever was.”
Hideo felt an overwhelming flush through his entire body. He had finally become settled in Darkfall. Faces were becoming familiar. To say friendships were formed would be a stretch, but he felt like he was getting damn close. Only now he was to be sent away to Star Snow to live as the Empress’ voice and ears. To be alone again. “If it is what Her Sapphire Highness commands.” He struggled to say the words. His body felt tense, but he was a fang. They were his family now and if leaving the family is what was required of him, then he would oblige.
“Then you shall have to ride with us,” Xerxes said with his usual cadence of agitation. “I will also take Pirate Prowler-”
“Take Amaya,” the Empress decided for him. Xerxes raised a hand to object, but the Empress’ voice was a frozen knife that cut his words away. “You will need an archer with you when infiltrating the citadel and she is unparalleled.
The Khan will have quite a few marksmen of his own. I need the rest of my fangs to form a hidden vanguard behind Mount Dunscale… in case fate does not bend to my will.
Amaya smiled sweetly at the Thane. Hideo knew it to be a mocking one and judging by Xerxes’ seething demeanour. He knew it too.
“Empress, this is a farce.” The Arch-Wizard spoke out without hesitation. His long, drooping zaffre sleeves draped over the corners of the table as he rested his hands against it. The eyes above his scarf beamed with grave concern. “The Night Fangs end corrupt men. Men whose curtailed existence does not affect the world around us. What you are suggesting is a coup that could have disastrous ramifications for Arkovia.”
“Yes, Goro,” agreed the Empress. “We do end corrupt men. It just so happens that this man is the Khan. Are you suggesting that we allow scum to live as long as they own a throne?”
“You could start a war with Crimsonaria!” the Arch-Wizard bellowed. Hideo had never seen anyone take such a strong tone with the Empress. “Then how many Arkovians will be pillaged and slaughtered?”
“Not if we do it right.” The Empress’ voice was unfazed, calm and collected. “We won’t be making a statement. If all goes to plan, the people of Star Snow will awaken to hear the tragic news of Khan Sano’s natural passing.”
“Naturally passing from a slice to the throat?” Goro suggested impudently.
“You’re meant to be a wizard, correct? Make a bloody poison.” She raised a pale hand that seemed to summon a frosty draft around the table. “Everyone except Hideo is dismissed.” Everyone left the quarters in silence. Hideo felt his heart palpitate as he heard the chamber doors thud shut from behind with an icy scrap. He was unsure of what to say or do. A chill went through his body and his legs felt faint. The Empress studied him with her cold blue eyes. The gem in her circlet shimmered and her hair seemed to waver like a ghost’s.
“I know what I request from you is not small,” she said in that soft voice that could turn hard as ice in an instant. “To spend a large slice of your life in Star Snow.”
Hideo gulped. “To influence a young girl with your own political ideology,” he said disdainfully. “A girl that we will have orphaned ourselves. This is not justice.” He did not know where those vitriolic words came from, but somehow, he said them. He felt fainter, his heart thumping out of his ribs.
The Empress merely rolled her eyes and chuckled. “I like you, Hideo, you’re the voice of reason. More rational than Xerxes, for a certainty. Perhaps you should be my Thane?”
By all the spirits, don’t tell him that if you value my skin. She stepped closer to the New Jader and placed her hands in his. They felt icy, like the surface of a glacier. “Things might not go according to plan,” she said candidly. “If this transition of power is not seamless, then each of my fangs will need all the power available to them.” She brushed his palms with her chilling fingertips. Her scars were wrapped around them. They stretched and spiralled around her knuckles and circled around her wrists. “For your sacrifice, and bravery back at Heartstring, I shall allow you and Amaya to depart with a fang’s greatest gift.”
Hideo did not expect to be graced with this offer so soon and after so much chaos since he joined the fraternity. The bloody battle in Heartstring, Khan Sano’s clandestine slave trade, the prospect of spending the rest of his life in Star Snow, and now the chance to obtain the power of a true Night Fang. It was too much to comprehend. “I’m not yet worthy of it,” he said shakily.
The Empress’ cold grip around his hands tightened and pinched at his skin. She lifted them up and shook them. “We have not the time for worthiness,” she hissed. “You’ll bathe in tiger blood, or I’ll consider you to just be another deserter like your sister.”
*
The Cave of Blood had an uneasy ambient sound, a continuous and deep hum as if the spirits of the Night Fang Tigers were still growling in the dark. The cavernous drafts embraced Hideo like a chilled blanket. It was a soothing cold. One that put him at ease and gave him some much-needed acceptance. Rows of blackened stalactites hanged above the pool of darkened water. It was like nothing the New Jader had ever seen. Blue sparks would erupt from the surface, causing sharp ripples to crash against the surrounding stalagmites and rocks. The lake was alive. It thrashed and spat out small bolts of thunder. It splashed, and sparks seemed to hiss as he and Amaya approached it. Goro was standing from an upper ledge with his drooping sleeves folded, watching with judging eyes. Xerxes was standing at another side with his Steel Lion helm donned. As they passed him, the Thane grasped Hideo’s arm. “Do not make us regret giving you this power, Craven Brother.”
It was a small ceremony. Only a handful of fangs were observing from the dark corners. The Empress was standing mere inches from the flaring oasis. Blue bolts were snapping at the loose ends of her robes and at her black boots. She appeared unfazed. “Who shall go first?” she asked, her commanding voice echoing across the sparking waters.
Amaya stepped forward without a moment’s hesitation. She looked back at Hideo and smirked before approaching the shrieking lake. The Empress nodded and gestured for the Archer to step to the edge. “Rest your hands into the water and do not resist,” Her Sapphire Highness called out. “No matter the pain.”
Amaya knelt to her knees by the lake’s edge. A wave brushed against the rocks and two blue streaks of bolts flashed and caused the cave to become alive with light. The next moment, it was dark again, the small blue bolts around the ripples acting as the only meek source of illumination. The Archer did not flinch. That would be showing unwelcome weakness. She rolled up her sleeves and rested her hands on her lap.
“You may only retract your hands when I deem the bonding complete,” Goro boomed from high up amongst the rocks.
Amaya took a deep breath and struck her hands and wrists into the black snapping ripples and waves. Light flashed frantically across the cave. Hideo could see everything so clearly. Every rock and grain across every stalactite, every fang present in the cave, every spot and speck on his hands that were soon to be disfigured.
He could only see the back of Amaya, knelt over the lake’s edge. He heard her shriek in pain. She screamed and grunted. Hideo stepped forward and was immediately blocked by Steel Lion’s large hand. “Don’t ruin this for her,” he said, unusually quiet. “The pain will pass, as it will for you.” Hideo turned up at Goro. The Arch-Wizard’s grey eyes gave nothing away. They were calm and collected, not remotely disturbed by Amaya’s cries of agony. He studiously observed the Archer as she was hunched over the lake, screaming as much as her lungs would allow. The wait was painful, both for seeing someone suffer for so long, but also because Hideo knew that he would be next.
The Arch-Wizard’s voice boomed across the cave. “RETRACT!”
Amaya snapped her hands back, and sparkling water splashed against the surrounding rocks. She tilted to her side and collapsed. Hideo and Xerxes ran to her. “This is normal, Craven Brother,” the Thane said pointedly as they lifted Amaya from the dark ground. She appeared to be dropping in and out of the waking world, her eyes rolling back and forth. Hideo glanced down at her hands and could not fight away his gasp. They were charred, her skin sallow with deep scarring spiralling around her fingers and down across her palms and wrists. “Return to the Empress!” Xerxes ordered, shoving Hideo away from Amaya’s disfigured hands.
“Hideo,” the Empress called out far more softly from the far side of the cave. “It is your time. We must be quick. We ride at first light.”
Hideo stepped towards the centre of the cave, to the lake’s edge, where Amaya had immersed her hands in the lightning blood. He knelt to his knees. Sometimes his reflection would appear as a wave splashed against a nearby rock. He saw a tired and forlorn man staring back. His eyes were dark and weary, his face bruised in the corners. The sparks snapped away and all he saw in the waters was darkness. “You may only retract your hands when I deem the bonding complete,” he heard the Arch-Wizard repeat from above. He felt the Empress’ cold hand rest on his shoulder. How she had appeared behind him so suddenly he could understand. Yet he was too distracted by his fear. It is a horrific thing, the wait for extreme pain. The inevitability of agony made the strongest of men weep from the inside, whether they wanted to admit it or not.
“Embrace the blood of the Night Fangs’ Hideo.” The Empress knelt beside him and whispered closely, “Just like your father once did.”
Hideo gazed up at her. “I’m doing this for Hiroko, no matter how the Fraternity sees her.” He could feel heat emanating from the waves below him. In what world did natural cave water feel hot? He slammed his hands and wrists into the lake without thinking further. His hands froze and burnt simultaneously. Blue bolts snapped and hissed at him from the dark depths. He felt the veins under his skin begin to vibrate, his skin crackle, and his fingers burned. The cave flashed with snaps of white light as the lake hissed and growled, waves crashing violently against the rocky edges. He could feel the skin around his fingers being torn and shredded below. He snapped his neck back, screaming at the flashing stalactites hanging above him. The lake’s waters started to thrash within itself, the blue bolts that zapped out of it growing longer. One bolt hit a stalactite, and it crashed into the thundering pool. He was in too much agony to hear the surrounding madness. He could hear Xerxes shouting behind, Goro calling out indistinct orders from afar. The voices were drowned out by the crashing waters. A wave of wet lightning splashed against his entire body. Everything went dark.
He emerged from a pool of glistening sapphire water, gasping in the chilled air. He did not know where he was or where he had come from. All that mattered was that he reached the shore that was draped in thick snows. The white sheets felt soft on his skin as he crawled away from the blue goo. His chest and legs were bare, yet he did not feel remotely cold.
He stood to his feet, admiring the clear blue sky and the bright sunlight that seeped through the grey, leafless pine trees that would obscure his vision in white flashes.
A thick growl echoed through the air and curtailed his reverie. Over the snow-covered hill’s peak at the far end of the lake of sapphire, it emerged. The Tiger’s paws prowled silently through the snows, leaving large, clawed prints in the creature’s wake. It stared at Hideo from the hill. His eyes were icy blue, his irises as dark as black coals. The Tiger moved majestically down the hill and walked across the side of the lake. Not like a beast stalking his prey. Like a regal king. The beast’s fur was white, with dark stripes spiralling around his limbs and sprawling across his snout. The feature that stood out to Hideo the most were the horns. They were grey and curved, protruding from the beast’s head like that of a ram. The Horned Tiger was approaching closer. As his icy eyes fixed on Hideo, the Tiger’s paws stopped in the snow. The Beast’s snout retracted back as it snarled, bearing long sabre fangs of crystallised sapphire. Blue sparks swarmed within the Tiger’s jaws as it roared, its sabres seemingly growing larger as the bolts sparked wildly.
Hideo remained as calm and light as a snowflake, ready to flee if or when the Tiger pounced. He crouched gingerly and slowly backed away, not taking his eyes away from the sapphire-fanged creature. He scraped his hand into the snow, desperately hoping to feel a stick sharp enough to act as a weapon. He did not find one in time. The Tiger pounced, leaving a small snowstorm in his trail as the Beast clasped his claws into him. The claws were made of hardened sapphire too, and they ripped the skin across Hideo’s arms apart. The Beast dug his sapphire fangs into Hideo’s chest. He felt waves of acidic lightning pulsating through his body. He shook and spasmed, kicking up snowflakes. The icy blue eyes stared deep into his soul as he struggled.
Everything was blurry. He felt dank rocks pressing into his back. Voices were muffled and submerged as if he were underwater. Through his blurry and unfocused vision, he could see a blue orb floating in the dark. Xerxes emerged from the blurry shattered world holding a torch with a cyan flame. “He’s alive,” he heard the Thane utter clearly. Hideo gazed at his arm that lay in front of him in a small grey puddle. Dark crimson scars spiralled around his fingers, crudely crossed around his palm, and around his wrist in circles. Hideo twitched his finger. A small blue spark fluttered from the edge of his fingernail.