I DID NOT KNOW, KAIAH.
The female roared, snapping at the air a few inches from Buruu’s face. Yukiko stepped between them, but Buruu simply backed away, wings pressed against his sides. No aggression in stance or thoughts—just a sorrow that filled Yukiko’s heart to breaking.
She’d glimpsed it before in his mind; a shadow swimming just beneath his surface. But she’d never touched it, never sought to learn more out of respect for her friend. If he wanted her to know, he’d have told her. But it was close now. So close she could almost see its shape.
Thunder rocked the skies, faint spatters of black rain falling. Kaiah’s tail was a whip, lashing side to side, hackles raised in jagged peaks down her spine.
- WHAT YOU THINK WOULD HAPPEN? -
I DID NOT THINK. THAT WAS MY FAILING.
- NOT THE FIRST. RAIJIN DAMN YOU, KINSLAYER. NOT THE FIRST BY FAR. -
YOU THINK I DO NOT KNOW THIS?
- THEN KNOW THIS ALSO. KNOW IF WORLD WERE FALLING, IF ALL THERE WAS AND EVER WOULD BE WEIGHED ON ME, I WOULD RATHER SEE IT END THAN FORGIVE YOU. YOU ARE COWARD. -
I AM MANY THINGS, BUT NOT THAT.
- THEN FIGHT ME. -
No, Kaiah. Stop this.
The female took another step forward, lightning cascading down her wings. Yukiko could feel the storm hung heavy in the air, ozone on her tongue, pulses racing.
- YOU KILLED THEM. AND IF YOU HAD COURAGE TO TAKE WHAT WAS YOURS, ALL THE DEATHS TO FOLLOW WOULD BE BUT A BAD DREAM. -
ARASHITORA DO NOT KILL OTHER ARASHITORA.
- A FOOL’S LAW! -
A KHAN’S LAW.
- THERE IS NO KHAN HERE, KINSLAYER. -
I WILL NOT FIGHT YOU.
- THEN DIE! -
Kaiah charged, ripping great clods of damp earth from the ground, eyes narrowed and gleaming like embers. Yukiko pulled back, terrified at the murderous rage inside the female’s head. Buruu’s roar shook the pillars of Kitsune-jō as the pair collided, crashing back into a twisted cedar and nearly tearing it from the ground. A resounding crunch, the tortured whine of Buruu’s false wings, one brilliant snow-white feather torn free and spinning earthward amidst a hail of dead leaves, its end ugly and flat from the kiss of a Shōgun’s blade.
Kaiah lashed out with her claws, a spray of bright red sailing into the darkness. Buruu roared again, furious, rearing up onto his hind legs, crashing breast to breast with the smaller female, locking her foreclaws in his own. She tumbled, the pair smashing an ancestor shrine to splinters as they rolled about in a roaring, screeching tangle.
Yukiko came to her senses, hands in fists by her sides.
“Stop it!”
Kaiah broke loose and lunged again, beak open and gleaming like a katana’s edge.
“STOP IT!”
Her scream echoed in the Kenning, bouncing across walls of ancient granite, rocking both arashitora back onto their hindquarters. Lightning chased the thunder across the skies, illuminating the ruins of the Daimyo’s garden. The two beasts glowered at each other, sodden and bleeding, flanks rising and falling with the fury of a blacksmith’s bellows.
For the love of the Gods, we’re on the same side!
APPARENTLY NOT.
- COWARD! -
Stop it, both of you!
“What the hells is going on?”
Hana stood on the verandah, night clothes and hair in disarray, surrounded by baffled guards and servants. She looked as if she’d been crying.
“It’s nothing, Hana.”
“Nothing?” The girl stepped down into the garden, put one protective arm around Kaiah’s neck. “Doesn’t look like nothing.”
- HE IS NOTHING. FOREVER AND ALWAYS. HEAR ME, KINSLAYER? -
Buruu made no reply, eyes downcast. Kaiah snorted in disgust, flaring her wings.
- IF YOU NOT HEAR, THEN YOU SEE. -
Yukiko put hand to brow as Kaiah’s mind flooded with images; faded memories bathed in bloody red. She saw two arashitora—one jet black, another white, clashing across storming skies. She saw the white arashitora smashed to pulp at the foot of a great black mountain, the seas around it boiling to steam. She saw a younger arashitora male, barely more than a cub, hit like a thunderbolt by a black shadow, sinking into the boiling ocean without a trace. And at the last, she saw that same shadow, dark and vast, looming like a nightmare over a nest of twisted branches and brambles. Beak open wide, talons descending.
Descending toward …
“Gods, no,” Yukiko whispered.
Two arashitora cubs with soft down and fur, eyes wide as they looked up into the face of darkness. Too young to comprehend. Too small to flee. Able only to wriggle, to burrow beneath the blanket of old feathers, squalling and tearing each other in their fear.
Plaintive cries as the shadow seized them in claws as sharp as death.
Little wings torn from trembling bodies.
Trembling bodies hurled from the nest.
Down and down and down, skies painted red, falling into ruin.
“Oh my gods,” Hana breathed, throwing her arms around Kaiah’s neck and pressing her face into the thunder tiger’s cheek. “Oh my gods…”