“You’re angry with me,” said Falling Leaf.
Sen glanced over at the ghost panther, noting the unusually intense look in her eyes. He’d known this conversation was coming. He just wished she’d picked a more convenient time for it. Waiting until he was three feet in the air and balancing on a shaft of hardened shadow no wider than a finger was not, in his opinion, the ideal moment. Not that balancing was particularly difficult or that the fall would mean anything to him. The challenge was that he’d just barely figured out how to make something out of pure shadow that was sturdy enough to support his weight and would last longer than a few seconds. It took nearly all of his concentration to maintain it. His slight glance and momentary loss of focus were enough to destabilize the whole thing. The construct burst into a puff of dispersing shadow qi, and Sen dropped lightly to the ground. He frowned down at a depression in the soil where the construct had been.
It had been a week since Laughing River had gone off to wherever it was that nine tail foxes lived. Sen never bothered to ask where mostly because he was sure the elder fox would provide either no answer or would simply lie. He wasn’t even sure he’d blame the fox for lying about it. Sen had something of an earned, if somewhat unfair, reputation for killing spirit beasts in truly staggering numbers. He couldn’t deny that he’d done such things, but he could say that he’d rarely gone looking for it. Laughing River couldn’t be sure about any of that, though, and his people had already suffered one mass slaughter. It would be foolish to risk even the possibility of a second such occurrence.
Sen turned his full attention toward Falling Leaf. Sen had worked hard to stay clear of the ghost panther since the elder fox’s departure, and she knew it. It was equally clear that she didn’t understand why he was staying away beyond the simple observation that he was angry.
“I am,” said Sen, “but I’m not. It’s complicated.”
“Then, explain it to me.”
“I didn’t know where you were.”
She shrugged. “You often don’t know where I am. It’s never been a problem before.”
That much was true. Sen had always possessed a lot of faith in her ability to take care of herself either by eliminating problems or escaping them. She’d often left for weeks at a time while he’d been feverishly trying to master pill refining. He’d never had so much as a moment of pause over that. This had been different. At least, it had felt different.
“Laughing River comes off as this nice old man, but he’s dangerous.”
“Yes,” agreed Falling Leaf with a definitive nod. “Of course, all nine tail are dangerous in their way. It has always been so.”
“But you aren’t always with a very old, very powerful, very dangerous nine tail when I don’t know where you are. Or where you went. Or when you’d be back. I’m angry because you didn’t leave me any way to know if you were overdue, or in trouble, or even which direction to search in if you disappeared.”
Falling Leaf studied Sen without saying anything for a long time. When she did finally speak, there was no malice or judgment in her words, but they landed like she’d kicked him in the stomach.
“You mean like when you went to have sex with that sect matriarch in the capital and didn’t bother to tell any of us where you were?”
Sen opened his mouth but discovered he didn’t have any words. He wanted to deny the comparison. He wanted to say that situation had been different. Except, he couldn’t deny it. It hadn’t been different. It felt different to him, but that was only because he’d known the whole time that he was safe. Falling Leaf, Lo Meifeng, and Shi Ping hadn’t known it. They’d all been under threat then, and he’d just up and vanished for days. He might have been dead, or captured, and they wouldn’t have known. Sen’s eyes narrowed. Had she set all of this up as some kind of lesson? Was this some bizarre, long-deferred act of petty revenge? That didn’t seem like something Falling Leaf would do, but her words made it hard to judge.
“Do you do this on purpose? Was this meant to show me what it was like?”
“No,” said Falling Leaf. “I was clear about my thoughts then. Trying to teach a lesson now would be pointless. There is a certain similarity, though.”
Sen cast about for some appropriate response and only came up with, “I see that.”
Falling Leaf waited to see if Sen had more to offer before she continued.
“I thought the nine tail sincere in his efforts. I didn’t see a reason to leave word. If I thought he was a danger to me, I never would have gone with him. Not willingly.”
Sen had known all of this if he was being honest with himself. Falling Leaf might have only been a human for a few years, but she had lived for centuries as a ghost panther without him looking over her shoulder. She’d survived the near-total destruction of her species. She had survived on Uncle Kho’s mountain, and that was before Master Feng had pacified the most dangerous spirit beasts on it. Sen could dress his reactions up any way he wanted, but the source of his anger wasn’t that mysterious. That only made him feel worse about how he’d treated Laughing River, who had taken the brunt of Sen’s misplaced emotions. It was just easier to be angry than to admit the facts to himself.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“I was afraid for you,” admitted Sen.
There it is, he thought. That unvarnished truth hung in the air between them, and Sen couldn’t decide if he should have just kept his mouth shut. He hated feeling so exposed, even in front of Falling Leaf who had watched him crawling toward death more than once. Someone who had seen him nearly collapse from exhaustion after training too hard and too long. Someone who had watched him take enough blows from his teachers to bring an entire mortal army to its knees. Hate it or not, she deserved the truth from him. She’d earned that a thousand times and more. Falling Leaf tilted her head a little to one side.
“Sometimes, I think you mad. Other times, I think that you are without fear. That you somehow seared your soul clean of it. The way you stand defiant before nascent soul cultivators, before tides of enemies, and even before death. Like nothing can truly touch you. Kill you, maybe, but never touch the things that define you,” said Falling Leaf. “But that’s only true when it comes to fear for yourself, isn’t it? That is something you can face without flinching. Fear for others? That is something you have not mastered.”
Something icy passed through Sen at her last words that made him shiver. He stared at her and felt translucent, like a pane of glass that she was peering through. His voice was quiet and tight when he finally mustered something to say.
“No,” he said. “No, I have not.”
“You can’t protect us all the time,” said Falling Leaf with affection and sympathy. “You want to. You think you can, even though this is foolishness. Danger will find us all.”
“I understand that,” said Sen. “You of all people know that I understand danger is an inescapable truth of life.”
“You understand this, but you refuse to accept it. Regardless of your wishes, the world isn’t made for the weak,” said Falling Leaf, before her voice went as hard stone, “and I am not weak.”
“I know that,” said Sen, finding a bit of fire inside himself.
“Do you?” asked Falling Leaf.
She was on him before Sen could say a word, and it was no friendly sparring match. He was so shocked that he didn’t even try to block her first blow. He discovered what a colossal error that was when her fist crashed into his chest. He felt like he’d been struck by a stone battering ram. The blow lifted him off his feet and sent him hurtling through the air. Just about the time he was getting his wits about him, he plowed into a rock that was jutting out of the ground. A few years earlier, that impact would have shattered bones and probably left him unconscious. Now, it was just miserably painful as the stone cracked beneath the impact. All of that training under the unyielding expectations of Master Feng kicked in. You can’t stay down, thought Sen. That way lies death. He pushed himself up to his feet, ignoring the pain, the shock of the attack, and his own wild emotions.
It seemed that Falling Leaf had not wasted time because she was there practically the moment he was upright. He had to lean out of the way as she swiped for his throat with claws made of shadow encasing the ends of her fingers. Those claws looked more solid and dense than anything Sen could currently make. Even as he felt a brief stab of envy at the sight of them, he also realized that she would have torn out his throat if he’d been a second slower. The distraction of that realization cost him again as she landed a brutal knee strike to his ribs that sent him stumbling away. He didn’t regain his feet. Instead, something wrapped around his ankle and jerked his leg out from beneath him. He landed facedown on the ground. Battle instincts started kicking in then, and Sen rolled to the side. Falling Leaf’s foot slammed into the ground where his head had been, so close he felt the air move. He cycled for wind and used a burst of it to send himself sliding away from the seemingly enraged Falling Leaf.
It wasn’t a lot of breathing room, but it gave him the chance to regain his feet and set a stance. Fine, thought Sen. If she doesn’t want to play nice, then we won’t play nice. Yet, he discovered that was easier said than done. As fast and experienced as Sen was, Falling Leaf seemed to have no trouble anticipating his blows. She moved like, well, like a ghost. Every time Sen thought that he had her, she slipped out of the way and punished his hubris with a blow of her own or by raking shadow claws across whatever was convenient. Before he knew it, Sen was covered in blood that was leaking from dozens of shallow and not-so-shallow cuts. He could feel genuine anger bubbling away inside him, rising closer and closer to the surface, and threatening to erupt. He wasn’t sure what he would do if that eruption arrived.
“Enough,” said Sen.
Falling Leaf paused for a moment to look at him. With an almost sad look on her face, she shook her head.
“Not yet.”
She resumed the assault instantly. Sen found himself paying less attention to the fight with Falling Leaf than to the fight going on inside of him. He fought to keep that anger pushed down. Yet, that split focus just meant that Falling Leaf savaged him even more brutally. When those shadow claws left five deep gouges across one of his cheeks, Sen lost the internal fight. A hundred restraints he’d imposed on himself without even realizing it fell away. He slapped away two fast strikes on her part without even thinking about it before he landed a blow to her chest that sent her bouncing and tumbling across the ground. Sen stormed after her. He saw her shake her head a little, spit out a mouthful of blood, and then fix her gaze on him. There was something feral in her eyes and her expression.
“There you are,” she snarled.
The dynamic of the fight changed after that. This time, it was Falling Leaf on the defensive, dodging, weaving, and occasionally diving out of the way of Sen’s unrestrained strikes. It wasn’t entirely one-sided either. With his anger largely unchecked, Sen made mistakes he wouldn’t normally make. Falling Leaf punished every one of them without mercy. When his anger started to die down again and the insanity of what they were doing finally started to sink in, Sen drew back.
“Enough!” he roared, unconsciously infusing the word with qi.
The world around them shuddered, and Falling Leaf stumbled back. She blinked several times and seemed to come back to herself from some other place. She spit out another mouthful of blood that landed on the ground with a bright red splash. She wiped her mouth with the back of a hand, winced, and then gave him an even look.
“I do not need your protection,” she said. “Do you understand?”
Sen nodded. He did understand.
“Good. Now, while I don’t need your protection, I do need one of your healing elixirs,” said Falling Leaf and pressed a hand to her ribs. “You hit very hard.”