Bo was practically flying through the forest at the speed he was running. The coiling roots on the ground, the little shrubs, the fallen branches and logs, all of them were barely a hinderance as he ran. He jumped over a trunk that had sunken into the ground and his foot thudded against a lumpen remnant of something covered in rotting cloth. But he kept running, as fast as his legs could carry him. Rui Yifu's voice echoed somewhere in the distance, growing fainter every second.

Zhu'er was in danger and Bo had no intention of stopping. That was his little sister and Liu Xie's daughter! Whatever Ji Ying was intending, he was going to stop... and kick her in the face too. The trees began to thin out, pulling away until he had finally broken past the tree line and had a strong hand grip the back of his shirt, tearing him off his feet briefly and knocking the wind from his chest. Bo coughed and flailed until he felt solid ground under his feet again, then he looked around.

Tirunesh had somehow managed to cross the entire forest before him, wearing her strange armor, while atop something that was possibly a horse at some point. The withered skinless creature had one eye in the center of its head that it had turned towards him. "Are you planning to run all the way after her?" She asked.

"He probably is," Rui Yifu sighed. Bo then realized Rui Yifu was also riding on the horse, clinging to Tirunesh's waist and looking rather green.

"Even if you run as fast as you can, you will still tire. The one you're pursuing, according to Rui, does not tire," Tirunesh said flatly, her face was obscured by her helmet but Bo could feel the frown behind it. "If you want a chance to catch up, horseback would be better."

"Alright! Whatever works!" Bo agreed, the worming feeling of impatience in his limbs violently spreading through his heart and mind. How far away did Ji Ying get now?

Branches cracked and grass crumpled, another 'horse' emerging from the forest line, swathed in dirt covered rotting cloth and maple leaves melding into the hints of flesh beneath. Rui Yifu slipped off the back of the horse he was currently on and quickly moved to mount the beast, holding out his hand to Bo. Bo glanced at the hand, then at the obscured face of the 'horse'. He could see wet drool oozing from where he thought the mouth should be.

"The horses are safe," Tirunesh added in a slightly conciliatory tone.

Bo was not quite sure he could believe Tirunesh but did not have any time to argue or ask for a horse that looked like an actual horse. He took Rui Yifu's offered hand and was hauled onto the horse's back with him. "There's no saddle so you'll need to hold onto my waist," Rui Yifu said. Bo did so, wrapping his arms so tightly around Rui Yifu's chest he heard the other man wheeze. "My waist is lower." Before Bo could finish adjusting his arms that he found were actually shaking for some reason, Tirunesh's horse was already galloping ahead. The horse-thing they were on broke into its own gallop, Rui Yifu leaning down and Bo nearly slipping off as the horse-cloth-thing charged forward after Tirunesh.

Bo quickly realized that he did not particularly enjoy riding on a horse's back, and even his fear for Zhu'er was only numbing the thumping pain. "Ru-Rui, Ji Ying-she..."

"You think she took Zhu'er-"

"YEAH! Because she wasn't our friend from the start! Sh-she's been working with Baichan!" Bo sputtered, the words hot on his tongue while he tried pulling together what he had learned from Shuang Que and his own thoughts. "Th-this guy, Shuang Que, he's Zhu'er's friend and he said that Ji Ying had been working with Baichan this entire time."

Rui Yifu was silent for a bit, holding onto the decayed reigns of the horse-thing as it followed swiftly after Tirunesh. Then he let out a long sigh.

"Listen I know it sounds like I made it all up, but I'm telling the truth!" Bo said, glancing back to the ground where the small meadow of wildflowers and the bend in the river flew beneath the beating hooves of the horse-thing. "But doesn't it all make sense? She's never been nice to any of us! She was always rude!"

"Ji Ying isn't a human," Rui Yifu said slowly, "she's a celestial servant. They aren't made to have wills of their own usually."

Bo vaguely recalled Shuang Que saying something about Ji Ying being a celestial-something, but his mind could not recall everything said at the moment. Instead it kept bringing up images of a child's corpse, bleeding into the ground, red hair soaked with blood.

"Ji Ying is a servant of the Amber Emperor and was likely flawed in her creation," Rui Yifu continued. The horse was running alongside the familiar river now. Bo thought he could even glance the grass-eaten ruined foundations of the town they had passed days earlier up ahead. "... I don't know what happened, but if she was working with Baichan the entire time, it is unlikely she had a choice, whether she thought so or not." Tirunesh's steed was still galloping at full tilt, its hooves leaving small sparks in its wake. Bo spotted rustling forms in the tall grasses and reeds, the broken twisted bodies of the lost soldiers from days earlier rising slowly. Some were notably missing limbs, chopped up in such a way that the remaining body looked mismatched. Another 'horse' whinnied with the voice of a dying man, calling out a name as they went by.

"Uh, Yifu?"

"What?"

Bo gestured to one of the risen figures, his body tensing as he remembered it being one of those terrible mutterers that threw globs of fire. This one was standing still. Its head looked like it had been crushed at one point only to be poorly put back together with a wad of sticky red goo. It was facing Tirunesh as she rode by. "Those things!"

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"They aren't bothering us," Rui Yifu replied, "even if they were, we don't have time."

Bo squeezed himself closer against Rui Yifu's back anyway, warily glaring at the whip-thin bodies they rushed past. When he looked over Rui Yifu's shoulder he could see in the distance towers floating in the cloudy air, fragmented walls speckling the air like cast about seeds. Other structures that were in the air broke apart in showers of flame only to be forcefully put back together, greenery growing over them only to rot away and for the cycle to repeat.

He had not realized it when walking or perhaps it was simply because they had passed the area originally through the portal of blood Rui Yifu had made, but the ground was rising very gently into a small hill. As they got to the top Bo found it to be far steeper going down, the river having turned its course away from the hill, and at the bottom of the hill was Tirunesh who had brought her horse to a stop.

The First Palace was in the distance, it looked somehow more twisted and decayed than Bo recalled it being. Its grand walls bore the age of millennia and deep scars from ancient battles looked more akin to infected wounds. The palace structure itself, with half of it spinning in the sky in various stages of destruction, had grown a matting of white flowers all over it. A smell of ash came with the wind but Bo could see no smoke. The unnatural fires still burned, casting wicked lights and shadows across the sagging face of the palace that he could see even from his current distance. Squirming strange creatures of flesh were running out from the ruined gate, their roars echoing. The horse-thing whinnied and reared upwards suddenly, and Bo found himself abruptly on the ground with a painful ache in his head. He got to his feet quickly and ignored how uneven the ground had become as his eyes caught sight of a massive spark of light near the walls of the First Palace. It was like an amber colored sun had risen on the horizon, growing in intensity, so that even so far away he could feel a strange heat batter his bones.

Rui Yifu struggling to keep hold of the horse's reigns beside him, was quiet and gazing out to that brilliant sun.

The miniature sun grew, then collapsed upon itself with the sound of thunder, leaving behind dozens of blackened splotches in its radius.

"...Look!" Rui Yifu pointed downwards, wincing slightly.

A small tangle of red hair and small beating limbs was rushing towards them. It then stopped for a moment, and Zhu'er looked up to them and then down to Tirunesh, then back up to them. Bo bolted forward by foot, rushing down the steep slope so fast that he nearly fell over his own feet and only just barely kept himself upright as he dashed past Tirunesh. "Wait!" She called out to him. But Bo had no time to listen. He had to get to Zhu'er as fast as he could. Their eyes met and the little girl went back to running, her arms outwards as she rushed for him as fast as her little legs would carry her.

Bo crumpled to his knees right before her and grabbed his sister up into his arms, squeezing tightly as her tears sank into his clothes and he started sniffing as well, his nose beginning to feel stuffy. He hiccuped as his face became wet. A shadow loomed over them and he looked up just in time to get sticky syrup-like blood splattered on his face. Tirunesh stood in front of him, her sword gleamed in the sun's dimming light and oozed with the blood of the creature that now laid in half on the ground.

"I told you to wait," she said with an irritated yet somehow still stoic voice. "Look," she used her sword to point towards the other creatures coming towards them. There were dozens that were crawling over the blackened splotches or even each other. They ran on two legs, four legs, too many legs. Some had human faces still that gaped and gasped, others only had vestigial bits and pieces of a face stretched over a framework of twitching muscle and writhing vines that jutted out at random places on their bodies. More were coming through the broken gate. Standing at the gate was a pale figure, its hand pressed against the air, cracks forming around it. Bo's heart climbed into his mouth as he got back up while still holding Zhu'er. "Your hunt is over, now run." Tirunesh commanded.

"You don't need to die for us," Rui Yifu said, "come with us, we can go back to the forest and then split up."

Tirunesh shook her head, then lopped off the head of a much smaller flesh puppet that Bo refused to look into the childish face of. "I am only going to buy you time. Once you are far enough, I will go back home."

"Are you staying here alone?" Bo asked, the sound of hooves in the distance rumbling through his bones. "Rui-" he turned around to the other man, who helped him pull Zhu'er's trembling form onto the horse-thing.

"No," Tirunesh said, "my men will always come to me, no matter how monstrous we have all become." She turned her face to them, an eerie dim yellow glow coming from the eye slits of her helmet. "Save yourselves and run down to the marsh, from there you will find your mountain."

Surmounting the hill top now came the twisted forms that Bo now realized were Tirunesh's men. The horse-with-a-horn icon that still dimly clung to them had only hinted at what they once were...

Then he saw it.

For a brief moment it felt like frost had covered his eyes and melted to reveal hundreds of men in similar armor to Tirunesh on horseback. The armor gleamed in the high noon sun, and they bore banners that showed the horse-with-a-horn, now in the beautiful colors of red, purple, and ivory. At the head of it was Tirunesh upon a grey steed, her helmet off to reveal a far-less world weary looking woman with the blazing eyes of a hero and beside her was Zhou Feng on a white horse, unarmored and yet brimming with his own power hidden behind a gentle smile he had never lost.

The frost returned and the image vanished, and Bo was left breathless as he struggled to pull himself up onto the horse-thing.

He looked back towards Tirunesh.

She was standing straight backed, her hand wreathed with flickering glowing light that took the vague shape of maple leaves as she faced down another creature with the same well trained efficiency she had shown before. Hoofbeats filled the air along with the rustling and clanging of rusting metal as the remnants of Tirunesh's men charged to join their lady in her battle.

"We're going," Rui Yifu announced, spurring the horse-thing into a gallop.

Bo clung to Rui Yifu's waist again, while Zhu'er was pressed between the horse-thing's neck and Rui Yifu. Yet Bo could not make himself look forward. Instead he looked back towards the battle of monsters behind him. Rusting swords bit into the flesh of screaming beasts with human voices, fires consumed skin and revealed the ash and roots inside. Decaying armor was rent by blades of bone and shriveled guts coated in congealed blood splashed on the ground. In the center of the maelstrom, only Tirunesh still stood tall. The maple leaves swirled around her form and she drew a golden starry shape from the air which rained down lightning upon the beasts, her sword cutting down any that got too close. Two thoughts came into Bo's head as he watched.

She had fought this battle ten thousand times before.

She will fight this battle ten thousand times again.