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The Dragon surged. To the troops’ great credit, they never faltered. They held their weapons high and useless until the very end.
It was over in seconds. There was a flash of movement, a split second of screams, and then a rapid retreat. Rin didn’t see its jaws move. All she saw were discarded weapons, red streaks spreading over the surface, and scraps of armor floating on the bobbing waves.
The Dragon reared back, its head cocked to the side, examining its remaining prey.
Nezha swept his arms up. The river surged into a barrier between him and the Dragon, a blue wall stretching nearly twenty feet into the sky. The Dragon moved like a flicking whip. Something huge and dark crashed through the water. The barrier dissolved, ripped through like a flimsy sheet of paper.
Let me, urged the Phoenix. Its voice rang louder in her mind than she’d ever heard it, momentarily drowning her own thoughts. Give me control.
Rin hesitated. An objection half formed. Kitay—
The boy will be no barrier, said the Phoenix. If you will it.
Rin’s eyes flickered toward the Dragon. What choice did she have?
I will it.
The Phoenix took full rein. Flames poured from her eyes, nose, and mouth. The world exploded into red; she could perceive nothing else. She couldn’t tell if Nezha was safe, or if he’d been burned alive by their mere proximity. She couldn’t have stopped it if he was. She had no agency now, no control—she was not calling the fire; she was merely its conduit—a ragged, unresisting gate through which it roared into the material realm.
The Phoenix, racing free, howled.
She reeled, overwhelmed by the double vision of the spiritual plane layered onto the material world. She saw pulsing divine energies, vermilion red against cerulean blue. The river bubbled and steamed. Scalded fish bobbed to the surface. Something flashed in her mind, then the river and grottoes disappeared from her sight.
All she could see now was a vast black plain, and two forces darting and dueling within it.
She couldn’t feel Kitay. In that moment, he seemed so distant that they might not have been anchored at all.
Hello again, little bird. The Dragon’s voice was a rumbling groan, deep, yawning, and suffocating. It sounded how drowning felt. You are persistent.
The Phoenix lunged. The Dragon reared back.
Rin struggled to make sense of the colliding gods. She couldn’t follow their duel; this battle was happening on planes far too complex for her mind to process. She could see only hints of it; great explosions of sound and color in unimaginable shades and registers as forces of fire and water tangled, two forces strong enough to bring down the world, each balanced only by the other.
How can you win? she thought frantically. The gods were not personalities; they were fundamental forces of creation, constituent elements of existence itself. What did it mean for one to conquer another?
Over the din, she thought she heard Nezha screaming.
Then the heat inside her crescendoed, burning so white-hot she was afraid she’d evaporated. The Phoenix seemed to have gained the upper hand—bursts of crimson dominated the spirit plane now, and Rin could vaguely make out a great funnel of fire surrounding the Dragon’s dark form.
Had they done it? Had they won? Surely nothing, no man or god, could survive that onslaught. But when it was over—when her flames died away, when the material world reappeared in her vision, when her body became hers and she staggered and tripped in the shallow water, struggling to breathe, she saw that she was still in the great beast’s shadow.
Her fire had done nothing to the Dragon at all.
The Phoenix was silent. Rin felt the god recede from her mind, a spot of heat fleeing like a dying star, growing colder and more distant until it was gone.
Then she was alone. Helpless.
The Dragon cocked its head, as if to ask, What now?
Rin tried to stand and failed. Her legs were logs in the water; they would not obey. She scooted back, numb fingers fighting to keep hold of her sword. But it was such a tiny, fragile thing. What scrap of metal could even scratch that creature?
The Dragon drew itself to its full height, darkening the entire river with its shadow. When it surged forth, all she could do was close her eyes.
She felt the impact later, an earth-shaking crash that left her ears ringing. But she wasn’t dead. She wasn’t even hurt. She opened her eyes, confused, then glanced up. A great shield of water stood above her. Beside her stood Nezha, hands stretched to the sky.
His mouth was moving. Several seconds passed before his shouts became audible through her ringing ears.
“—you fucking idiot—what were you—”
“I thought I could kill it,” she murmured, still dazed. “I thought . . . I really thought—”
“Do you know what you’ve done?”
He nodded toward the city. Rin followed his gaze. Then she understood that the only reason that either of them was still alive was because the Dragon was preoccupied with a far greater prize.
Massive waves rose ponderously from the river and surged, unnaturally high and unnaturally slowly, down the channel. The gray clouds darkened, thickening within seconds into an impending storm. From this distance, Arlong looked so flimsy. A tiny sand castle, so fragile, so temporary, in the shadow of the risen depths.
“Help me up,” Rin whispered. “I almost did it, I can try again—”
“You can’t. You’re too weak.” Nezha spoke without inflection or spite. It wasn’t an insult, it was simple fact. As he watched the dark form moving beneath the surface toward the city, his scarred face set in resolve. He dropped the water barrier—it was hardly necessary now—and began striding toward the Dragon.
Rin reached instinctively for his hand, then drew back, confused by herself. “What are you—”
“Keep down,” he said. “And when you get the chance, run.”
She was too stunned to do anything but nod. She couldn’t get past how bizarre this was; how they had suddenly stopped trying to kill each other; how they were, of all things, fighting again on the same side. She couldn’t fathom why Nezha had saved her. Nor could she understand the way her heart twisted as she watched him walk forth, arms spread and vulnerable, offering himself to the beast.
She remembered that stance. She remembered watching a long time ago as Altan walked toward a frothing Suni, unafraid and unarmed, speaking calmly as if chatting with an old friend. As if the god in Suni’s mind, strange and capricious, would not dare to break his neck.
Nezha wasn’t trying to fight the Dragon. He was trying to tame it.
“Mingzha.” He shouted the word over and over, waving his arms to get the Dragon’s attention.
It took Rin a moment to remember what that meant—Yin Mingzha, Nezha’s little brother, the fourth heir to the House of Yin, and the first of Vaisra’s sons to die.
The Dragon paused, then rose up out of the water, its head cocked back toward Nezha.
“Do you remember?” Nezha shouted. “You ate Mingzha. You were so hungry, you didn’t keep him for your cave. But you wanted me. You’ve always wanted me, haven’t you?”
Astonishingly, the Dragon lowered its head, dipping low until its eyes were level with Nezha’s. Nezha reached out as if to stroke its nose. The Dragon did not stir. Rin clamped her hand over her mouth, terrified beyond words.
