Rowan → Ethan Nakamura ✔

Selfishness

Clouds. The world was clouds.

But it wasn't the world she was looking at. It was Heaven. Rowan felt a surge of familiarity so strong that she almost vomited. She had been here, standing on clouds, the Heavenly Palace not a place, but a realm. Not a court, but a sky.

And she had heard the ringing in her ears before. During the first time, when the same divine power that had been awakened now first flowed through her veins. When she was ordained, it was like taking off smudged glasses, like removing earplugs that had muffled her hearing all her life without knowing. She could see everything, hear everything.

Rowan realized the ringing was not, in fact, the sound of a bell. It was that of an army, and the clouds were full of monsters.

Mogwai soared through the air, snakes with faces and zombies dressed in court clothes. They bit and snarled and tore through green soldiers, powered by jade-colored tendrils that glowed so bright they almost hurt to look at. Rowan followed the tendrils, her eyes moving upwards, until she saw they were attached to one giant jade building that grew out of the clouds she stood on.

The building moved, and Rowan understood it was a finger. She understood the clouds beneath her feet – which were a slightly darker shade of green than other clouds far beyond, grouped in clusters where soldiers and mogwai fought – were not clouds. It was a hand.

The hand of the Jade Emperor.

A behemoth in the shape of a man, the Emperor was so large that his fierce eyes resembled the moon. He loomed over, his movement causing his forehead to bat aside a group of mogwai as if they were bugs. The impact passed through the green soldiers, who jumped to another cloud further away to continue the fight. Bushy brows and a long beard, strands of which soldiers and mogwai clung to, trying to knock each other off into oblivion or at least the Emperor's belt. It was enough distance to kill, for the Jade Emperor was taller than any skyscraper ever built. A tall nose and a regal crown that seemed to fade in between different styles, each a more intricate version of every one of China's dynasties. His battle armor was similar, the culmination of centuries of experience, of centuries of war. Every Chinese tribe, every soldier and general. The Jade Emperor was all of them and more.

"CHAMPION." The same voice she had heard at the well, and now his appearance finally matched it. "CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ARE DEITY AGAIN."

At the mention of deity, Rowan's entrancement at the sight before her snapped. She had friends who were the children of deities too – where were they?

"Rowan!"

It shouldn't have been possible to hear Ethan, never mind see him. But Rowan could do both. Miles away, she saw Ethan, Will, Nico and Billie on one of the larger clouds. This one resembled a platform, and they stood at the center, crowded by mogwai.

Without thinking, Rowan flexed her feet. Then blood on the end of her Guandao. She blinked. She didn't even remember grabbing her weapon, and suddenly she was staring into the red face of a monkey with matted fur but unnervingly bright eyes. It grinned as the light left it, but instead of crumpling to a heap, it dissipated into a gather of red dust. The dust zipped away, dropping down below the platform with a purpose.

"Gods," Billie shouted. She was a few steps away, thorns shooting from her fingers and piercing vines following her every move. As she grinned at Rowan, a venus flytrap the size of human head ate three monkeys. "That was quick!"

"About time!" It was Nico. His sword slashed through mogwai instead of monkeys, which seemed to know not to go near him. When he nicked the occasional one, Rowan noted how the red dust entered the Stygian Iron, unable to escape to whatever power source created them.