That tuneless song, scratching at the back of her mind.
So hard to breathe, let alone think. Blood and murder all around. The heartbeats of a dozen arashitora, the roar of Yoshi’s iron-thrower, the growling screech of Hana’s chainblades. Beak and talon and claw, Buruu diving and spinning, the screams of dying soldiers, sky-ship engines growling beneath Raijin’s drums.
… Only that he and his arashitora charged into the hellgate and sealed it closed …
Lightning bright across the sky, burning in her mind’s eye. The answer was there, she knew it. Hand in hand with the death Izanami promised. All she needed was one second’s clarity.
… he and his arashitora charged into the hellgate …
The wail of tortured metal from the Earthcrusher. Roared commands to retreat from the gaijin soldiers. It was falling apart. She had no time. Think, godsdammit, think. What did she say? What did she mean?
… charged into the hellgate …
“Gods,” she breathed.
… charged into …
“That’s it…”
… into …
Elation and dread, her right hand at her belly, her left slipping beneath the plates of Buruu’s armor and finding the feathers beneath. A wash of fear, breath too fast to catch, heart pounding in her chest like a steamhammer. All of it. Everything. Every word, every deed, every moment leading to this, poised on the brink, staring into blackness below. The blood raining from the sky. The blood in her veins, the blood of yōkai, the blood the Inquisition had tried to exterminate from Shima entirely. And why? Unless it held some power, some strength in the spilling that would close the breech, end the song that would otherwise end the world?
Buruu …
She pressed her hand against him. Her foundation. Her mountain. The stone she’d set her back against. The one certainty in this world of quakes and fires and storms. All this time.
“Oh, my dear. Oh my dear, precious girl. You do not know, do you?”
“I know,” she breathed.
Buruu.
YES?
Brother, I know what we have to do. Tora Takehiko didn’t fly into the hellgate. He flew INTO it. Collided with it. There was no battle in the dark of Yomi. No wrestling with the Endsinger to seal it closed. There was nothing beyond the charge itself. It was his blood, his sacrifice that sealed the rift.
She looked down into the dark below, the rolling, ink-black chill.
I know what I have to do …
Sorrow in his chest, bleeding and raw, reaching out and filling her own.
You don’t have to carry me all the way, brother. No one does. Just take me to the heart of it and let me fall.
THE SKY IS FULL OF DEATH. IT WILL CATCH YOU BEFORE YOU LAND.
It doesn’t have to be you.
I PROMISED, REMEMBER?
Until the end …
THIS THEN IS THE END?
She looked around her, the raging storm, the dark beneath, the island stretching away in every direction to press its lips to the sky.
I think so …
SO BE IT.
He nodded, spread his wings wide, slowing their pace. It seemed for a moment all the world hushed, gravity pulling her down, momentum pushing her forward. The pair of them, hanging still, like a single, perfect raindrop in the second before it began to fall.
I LOVE YOU, SISTER. NEVER FORGET. BUT AS YOU SAY, THERE IS NO NEED FOR BOTH OF US TO DIE THIS DAY.
A blindside from above.
An impact from behind.
Buruu dipped his wing, twisted his body. The blow knocked her loose, senseless, tumbling from his shoulders and out into the void. A gale roaring all around her, gravity seizing hold as she plummeted toward the dark. Toward the maws of a hundred deadthings, roaring up from below on rotten wings.
FORGIVE ME, YUKIKO.
She closed her eyes, trying and failing to swallow her fear, her heart shattering into a million pieces.
FORGIVE ME.
And toward the gate she fell.
Alone.
*
Kin could hear bodies slamming against the shoulder-level entry, the tortured screech of buckling iron, the engine’s rising tempo as he pushed them into the redline. Turning the Earthcrusher’s head, he could see his brethren speeding away, flightless False-Lifers or wounded soldiers cradled in their arms. Soldiers were fleeing across the black snow, blood and gore and bodies in their wake. Hundreds had been cut down as they fled, but the monstrosities seemed incapable of straying more than a few hundred feet from the pit’s edge, howling in frustration as the army pulled back. And when they’d emptied their lungs in rage at being denied their prey, they turned toward the Earthcrusher, lips splitting beneath the press of jagged fangs beneath.