The blaze dropped away behind her in a rush of freezing wind, flaring bright as the Child plowed into the mountainside. The barrels of chi lashed in the bow split and ignited like fireworks at Lord Izanagi’s feast: a damp, thunderous explosion that sent burning timbers spinning off into the darkness. They plummeted out of the smoke toward the ground, burning embers falling bright between the raindrops. One flared blue-white, spiraling down into the yawning black below them.
The arashitora shrieked, pounding the air with its ruined wings. Yukiko was almost thrown from its shoulders, entwining her fingers in its feather mane and gripping tight with her thighs. Exhilaration and terror fought for her attention. The beast’s muscles seethed beneath her as its wings tore at the air, futile, furious. Sharp spires of rock rose out of the storm around them, rushing toward them as a blur, rain hissing across the stone in freezing squalls. The beast spread its wings to their full breadth and managed to bank away from the fangs of black granite, spiraling into a clumsy glide. It rolled from side to side, trying to maintain equilibrium without the use of its primaries. Yukiko could feel a grim determination rise up and engulf the fear inside it: a refusal to fail, to lie down or roll over. It screamed in the face of death, defiant and proud as a king upon a wind-tossed throne.
They wheeled away in their broken glide, green treetops rising out of the rain curtain ahead. The beast was unable to maintain altitude; every flap of its wings simply sent them falling faster. The green fingers of giant cedars and maidenhead trees clutched at the beast’s belly, pulling them down toward ruin.
GET OFF ME.
The arashitora bucked, trying to throw Yukiko from its back.
What?
GET OFF, INSECT.
You can’t throw me off. I’ll break my neck!
OFF. NOW.
The beast rolled from side to side, twisting through the air. Yukiko shrieked, daring a glance down through the treetops to the ground rushing away fifty feet below them. She clung to the tiger’s shoulders, teeth gritted, knowing a fall from this height and speed would mean her death.
I just saved your life!
WOULD NOT NEED SAVING IF NOT FOR YOU. GET OFF ME NOW.
I wasn’t the one who maimed you. You’d be a smear on the mountainside right now if it weren’t for me. You want to kill me?
MY WINGS CANNOT HOLD US BOTH ALOFT. YOUR PACK SAW TO THAT.
I’ll die!
BETTER ONE THAN TWO.
They descended below the canopy in a flurry of severed leaves, branches whipping at her face and snapping beneath the impact of the arashitora’s wings. It banked sharply between two tightly spaced maples. Her stomach lurched up into her throat, and a thick bough caught her full in the chest. Yukiko’s breath spewed from her lungs. The branch whipped her backward, she lost her grip on the arashitora’s neck and sailed off between the raindrops. She screamed, spinning down through the branches, skin torn, tumbling toward her death. The world spun over and over itself before her eyes.
She shrieked as a branch snagged in her obi, ripping a long gash up her back. The green wood split but held, arresting her fall and leaving her suspended twenty feet above the ground, dangling like fresh meat outside the abandoned slaughter mills of Kigen city.
She gasped, white pain rushing up and spilling wet from the gouge in her back. The branch swayed, making ominous noises as she looked down at the stone below. Reaching up, wincing, she tried to pull herself off the snag, and with a sound of splintering wood and a despairing shriek, the branch snapped and sent her plummeting down into the black.
Lightning arced across the skies, illuminating the smoldering ruin of the cloudwalkers’ vessel, strewn upon the mountainside in a thousand flaming fragments. Long streaks of burning chi were scored across the mountain’s face—a halo of blue-white illuminating the swirling mists of rain, running through to orange as the foliage around it caught and burned.
The girl hit the stone hard. The thunder echoed across the trees like booming laughter.
Raijin was pleased.
She pawed away the darkness some time later, hours slipping by like shadows between sleep and the slow opening of her eyes. One was sealed shut by a scum of blood and dirt; she had to prise her lids apart with trembling fingers. The pain in her back was a dull ache. Merciful numbness had spread through her body, spurred on by the falling rain and bitter, brittle cold of altitude. It urged her back to sleep, to simply close her eyes and drift away, to worry no more.
She shook her head, forcing the thought back into the gloom where it had been born. Time enough to sleep when she was dead.
Yukiko pushed herself up on her elbows, wincing at the bruises all over her body. The forest floor was covered in a thick blanket of dead leaves and lush green moss; even the stones were bearded with great growths of it. She ran her fingertips across the spongy surface and touched her fox tattoo in thanks: a fall onto bare rock would have broken her bones, possibly killed her outright.
Kitsune looks after his own.