Iron-gray claws.
Snatching them from the air, gentle as mountain streams, strong as the stone beneath, swooping low and slowly up, past the ruined corvettes, falling from the skies like rain. The air filled with beautiful, savage cries, Daichi’s fading eyes filling with tears of wonder, a half-dozen arashitora cutting through the air and the Guild ships like katana. Sleek and sharp, smaller than Buruu, somehow more graceful, a peerless verse penned by the Thunder God’s hands.
Females …
No strength to lift his head, warmth fleeing his body. Kaori was screaming to hold on, don’t let go, Father, please. But hadn’t they fallen already? Were they falling still?
He wanted to sleep. Close his eyes and rest. So tired. Years of war, of blazing lotus fields, of striving with every breath to make this a world in which she might bloom rather than rot. And all for nothing. All had come to pass, exactly as Tojo promised.
So tired.
Wood beneath him, the smell of exhaust smoke and rumble of engines. A woman with silver razors at her back, pressing the wounds in his chest and belly. Coughing black, distant pain, hands and feet already numb.
“Father.”
Kaori’s plea, desperate and tear-stained.
“Father, hold on.”
“Tojo’s ending … was just as he said.” He looked down at her hand, wrapping his like a bloody bow. “Everything we did … brought all this to pass. We helped them…”
“Father, don’t talk. Hush now…”
“No, you must listen.”
“Please—”
“No!” Fear bubbled on his lips. Despair. Weightlessness. “There is no escaping fate. No defeating an enemy … who knows the shape of things to come. Shima will die … The Endsinger comes. What will be, will be…”
“The Endsinger?”
“I am sorry, Daughter. I sought—” A cough, tearing his chest; bloodied, broken glass. “I sought to give you … a future. But I … I only ensured their future came to pass…”
Kaori turned to the others, tears in her eyes. “Help me with him. Get him up.”
The woman with the silver arms spoke. “We should not—”
“Get him up!”
“All for nothing…” he breathed.
He felt hands on the edge of his numbness, pulling him to his feet. He had no strength to stand, but they held him, Kaori by his side, keeping the cold at bay. Blood on his tongue amidst ashen paste, staring over the railing at First House; a yellow stain amidst a deadlands sea.
“You have given us a future, Father. The Guild can’t see all things. This I promise you.”
Her face was wet with tears. But in her voice, he heard a fire to match the one he’d lost.
“If they could foresee all, they’d have foreseen this…”
She pointed to First House, the sky between filled with Guild ships and shrieking thunder tigers. The edges of his vision darkening, closing like slow curtains; the onset of night after a long, cold day. But as he watched, a tiny spark bloomed—just a match-flare at first, burning in his growing gloom. The spark became a blossom, a sun-harsh flare, lighting the sky like summer days, a series of concussive blasts arriving seconds behind. The bricks, mortar, glass and stone of First House disintegrated in the light, blown away like dust in a winter wind. A blast of heat hit his face, banishing the awful chill, melting the fear. The certainty. The seed of fatalism threatening to steal all he was, here at the last.
“Do you see, Father?” she cried over the growing thunder.
“… I see…”
“We decide! Not gods! Not fate! We choose!”
The explosion was impossible, splitting the Tōnan mountains asunder, the clouds now made of boulders and dust. Their ship shuddered through a trembling sky, cries of alarm spilling across the deck. He sank to his knees, daughter holding him tight. Concussion after concussion, mushroom-shaped, the pair lost in all but each other’s arms as the Seeker was tossed like a paper kite in a burning wind.
Years passed? Moments? He couldn’t tell which. Only that there was no pain now. Kaori laid him down on the deck as the air finally fell still, skies bruised with dirt, debris like rain.
“We choose…” he rasped.
Kaori looked down on him, face streaked with blood, tears, steel-gray eyes shining bright in a mask of ash and grit. So like her mother. A smile that stole his breath, if only she allowed it to bloom. With all the strength he had left, he reached up, cupped her cheek, running his thumb down the scar on her face. The wound on her soul never fully healed.
“Choose, then,” he breathed. “To be free … of him.”
“Father…”
“Choose … to be happy.”
She closed her eyes, weeping, her whole body wracked with the sobs.
“Promise me, Kaori.”
Her arms around his neck, cheek pressed against his, his daughter in his arms.
“Promise me.”
“I do.”
A gentle sigh.
A smile on his lips.
The skies about him raining the ruins of all that would have been.
“I promise.”