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But they didn’t have to win, they only had to make a racket.
“Good luck,” Kitay said. He would stay behind atop the Red Cliffs—close enough to witness everything through his spyglass, but far enough that he’d remain well out of harm’s way. He squeezed her wrist. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Stay safe,” Rin responded.
She forced her voice to remain casual. Brusque. No time to get emotional now. They already knew this might fail; they’d said their goodbyes last night.
Kitay gave her a mocking salute. “Give Nezha my regards.”
A round of cannon fire punctuated his words from across the channel. Venka’s smoke signals flared bright against the gray sky. The final invasion had begun. While Arlong erupted in explosions, Rin and her shamans descended the cliffside to finish things once and for all.
Rin had been worried that the grotto might be difficult to find. All she had to go on were fragments remembered from one of the most painful conversations she’d ever had, echoing through her mind in Nezha’s low, tortured voice. There’s a grotto about a mile out from the entrance to this channel, this underwater crystal cave.
But once she was down in the shadow of the Red Cliffs, wading through the same shallows where Nezha and his siblings had played so long ago, she realized the path to the Dragon was obvious. Only one side of the channel was lined with cave mouths. And if she wanted to find the Dragon’s lair, all she had to do was follow the jewels.
They lay embedded in the river floor, glinting and sparkling underneath the gentle waves. The treasures piled up higher the closer they drew to the caves—jade-studded goblets, gilded breastplates, sapphire necklaces, and golden circlets, littered against a dazzling array of silver ingots. Small wonder Nezha and his brother had once ventured foolhardily into the grotto. It wouldn’t have mattered how many times they’d been warned to stay away. What small child could resist this allure?
Rin could sense she was close. She could feel the power emanating from the grotto; the air felt thick with energy, laced with a constant, inaudible crackle, so very similar to the atmosphere she’d felt on Mount Tianshan.
The boundary between the mortals and the divine here was extraordinarily thin.
Rin paused for a moment, struck with the oddest sense that she’d been here before.
Right outside the grotto’s entrance, the jewels gave way to bones. They were startlingly pretty, lighting up the water with their own faintly green luminescence. This was no product of rot and erosion. Someone—something—had constructed this pathway, had lovingly peeled the flesh off its collected corpses and arranged the bones in a neat, glowing invitation.
“Great Tortoise,” Dulin muttered. “Let’s just blow this whole place out of the water.”
Rin shook her head. “We’re too far out.”
They hadn’t even seen the Dragon. They needed to draw much closer—if they lit their missiles now, they’d only alert Nezha’s sentries. “Hold your fire until we see it move.”
She strode boldly forward, trying to ignore the ridged bones beneath her boots. She opened her palm as she passed into the dark interior, but her flames only illuminated a few feet into the cave. The darkness beyond seemed to swallow it whole. Rin traced her fingers along the ridges in the wall for something to guide her, then yanked her hand back when she realized what they were. Her stomach churned.
The walls were lined with faces—beautiful, symmetrical faces of every size and shape; of grown men and little girls; faces without hair, without eyes, and without expression. Rot had not touched the pristine, bloodless skin. These heads hung in a space carved outside of time, now and forever.
Rin shuddered.
The ocean likes to keep its treasures. The ocean doesn’t destroy. The ocean collects.
Once upon a time, Nezha had walked hand-in-hand with his little brother toward this grotto. He’d ignored the countless warnings because Mingzha had begged so hard, and because Nezha could refuse Mingzha nothing. He hadn’t known the danger, and no one had stopped him. Of course no one had stopped him—because Vaisra had let him go, had deliberately sent him in, because he’d known that one day, he’d need the monster that Nezha would become.
Rin realized now why the grotto felt so familiar. This wasn’t like Mount Tianshan at all. The Heavenly Temple was a place of lightness, clarity, and air. This place bore a heavier history. This place was tainted with a mortal stain, was suffused with pain and sorrow, was a testament to what happened when mortals dared to wrestle with the gods.
She’d felt divinity like this only once before, an eternity ago, on the worst day of her life.
Right then, she could have been standing in the temple on Speer.
“General!”
A burst of shouts echoed from the cave mouth. Rin spun around. Her soldiers pointed across the river, where a small, sleek sampan flew over the water toward them. That speed couldn’t be achieved with sails or paddle wheels.
Nezha was on that boat.
“Now,” Rin ordered Dulin.
He knelt and pressed his hands against the grotto floor. Vibrations rolled under Rin’s feet, echoing down the cave’s unfathomable depths. Dust and water streamed from the cave roof, coating them all in dirt.
But the rumbling did not crescendo to an earth-shattering quake. The grotto’s interior did not collapse.
“What are you doing?” Rin hissed. “Bury that thing.”
A vein protruded from Dulin’s temple. “I can’t.”
The sampan was already halfway across the river; it’d reach them in seconds. Conventional means, then. Rin nodded to her troops.
“Fire.”
They obliged, hefting their rocket lances. They aimed; she sent a flame snaking out to light the fuses. Eight lances tipped with powerful explosives flew screeching into the cave mouth. She couldn’t see how far they went, but a moment later, she heard a muffled boom and, beneath that, a low, rumbling groan that sounded almost human.
Then the river surged, and Nezha was upon them.
Rin crouched, bracing for his opening strike. It didn’t come.
Nezha stepped off the side of the sampan, moving as casually as if he’d just arrived for teatime. He’d come alone. His feet didn’t sink when they touched the water, but trod flatly over the river’s surface as if it were marble.
He didn’t pull a shield around him as he drew closer. He didn’t need to. He was confident here in his domain, protected by endless water on all sides. He could ward off any attack she might attempt without trying.
She knew very well she remained standing only because he was curious.
“Hello, Rin,” he said. “What do you think you’re doing here?”
“Why don’t you ask yourself?” She nodded toward Arlong. “City’s burning.”
“I noticed. So why aren’t you there?”
“Thought they could manage without me.”
Her eyes flitted toward Pipaji, who stood hunched inconspicuously behind Dulin. Her eyes were closed, lips moving silently as she sank into a trance. A small black cloud formed around her ankles, gave a tentative pulse, then began to stretch toward Nezha like tendrils of smoke unfurling underwater.
Good girl. Rin just needed to buy her several seconds of time.
