The Long Road to Freedom 2: Fire on the Water

Avail

1478, mid-Muromachi Period, Autumn, Shanghai

The murky shallows of Lake Tai were quiet.

Unbearably hot, the creatures that had once resided here were gone; the various plants withered away. Over the years, the water had slowly evaporated; even the downpours of Spring were unable to quench the land's growing thirst. Eventually, even the bed was exposed, along with a large almost crystalline formation. It was little more than a jagged glob of glass, but something stirred inside, giving a great pulse as it awoke.

Weak, but alive, it pressed its clawed hands against the outer shell, melting it back into the flicker of shimmering white flames it had once been. It drank in the hot, but fresh, air as the flames died away, no longer needed, and lay on the dry lake bed until finally, around nightfall, it had the energy to move.

***

Musashi

Three and a half decades; Sesshoumaru'd had three and a half decades of quiet and focus. Now, as he flicked the blood of yet another foolish youkai seeking the prestige it would gain from his defeat from his claws, he felt it again. It started in his belly, ghostly, coiling, then it tingled behind his eyes and danced just beyond his fingertips.

As Jaken once more sang his praises and berated the corpse, Sesshoumaru almost frowned. It was stronger than he could remember it being, this great pulsing sensation, but it, like usual, faded soon enough, leaving him to run his crimson fingertips together to wonder if he'd truly felt it at all.

He tried to remember what he'd decided it meant, but couldn't quite put his finger on it, not exactly. Still, it excited something within him, made his inner demon growl with...was it pride? Strange, for he never felt pride in anything other than himself, and he knew this thing to be a separate entity.

"Interesting..." he mused.

He felt the questioning from Jaken's mind and blinked down at the imp, who was waiting for his direction. Tossing the corpse out of his way, Sesshoumaru continued along his chosen path without another word.

***

Shanghai

Kintsuke couldn't remember how she'd managed to drag herself up the slope of the island, but here she was, resting against the steps of the dead fortress of fire. One look at the place had told her it was abandoned, and she felt and smelled no hints of life within, only decay. Particularly, she could not smell Zheng of that Bifang creature. She was safe; for the moment...

The moon rose overhead in a narrow crescent, the air here quickly cooling and kicking up the wind as the temperatures bartered an equilibrium.

How long had it been? All she could remember was the fight against the Bifang, Zheng's cocky smile as he tripped her—the bastard had tripped her!— to fall prey to it. She remembered seeing Rekkonji behead it, then everything had gone red. Where was Zheng now? Where were Shu-Ting and the rest? Where was Rekkonji?

'How long has it been?'

She'd tried assessing the passing of time from the growth of the trees, but all that was left of them were rotted husks. In fact, nothing for as far as she could see was alive. Even the exposed bed and slopes of the lake were littered with corpses and bones. Just what had happened here?

She could ponder the mysteries more later. Right now, she needed to feed.

There was nothing edible left in the fortress, however, not even any dried and salted meats; no water, no sake, everything had dried up or rotted away. Even the supplies in her former manor were similarly lacking. She would have to climb down and back up to the other shore to find something to hunt. For now, however, she needed rest. The threadbare blanket on her old bed did its job well enough.

***

Kintsuke had to travel quite a way to find an area that hadn't been affected by whatever had destroyed the lake. She'd eaten her kill raw. Its bloody flesh was the most delicious thing she could ever remember tasting at the moment, and it filled her with enough energy to find more. Stomach full, she risked a quick dip in the river, the cool crisp water refreshing. Her reflection, however, was anything but familiar. Cheeks hollowed, skin stretched tautly, she looked like death warmed over.

It would take time to recover her strength and former luster, and in the meantime, she set about understanding what had transpired. She holed up in the old fortress, combing through the scrolls she found in Zheng's room which recorded much of the information he had, if not all of it, on their black flames and the effects of the different hues.

As she devoured the one concerning the white healing flames, she discovered what had gone wrong.

She'd had the right idea after being impaled by the Bifang, but it hadn't gone quite the way it was supposed to. Properly trained, the crystal cocoon the flames could form would stabilize and hold the wielder in a sort of protective stasis until its body was usable again. This required a tremendous amount of energy, however, feeding off the user's own potent youki first before drawing on the feebler life energies around it. Kintsuke's had not been trained well enough, clearly, and had instead fed too much on her own life force first before turning to outside sources. The heat that had led to the lake's evaporation had also been from her lack of training, where hints of her green flames had seeped into the white.

'I did this... Every tree and fish and everything else; I killed them.'

'But you're alive, that's what matters,' her inner demon purred.

She frowned at herself but knew that, in the end, it was correct. She was alive, that was all that mattered. It was unfortunate it had required all of...this, but now she knew, and she could work to avoid such a travesty in the future. She gave it not another thought, focusing, instead, on her own recovery. Nearly four centuries of skill and strength had been sapped away.

She had years of training ahead of her.