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“Hello there,” she murmured. “You’re welcome.”
Then she extinguished her flames and ran, just as every dirigible in the sky turned its cannons toward the mountain and fired.
Booms split the sky. They didn’t fade. They rolled on like endless thunder, growing louder and louder until Rin couldn’t hear her own thoughts. She couldn’t tell if she’d been knocked off the ground; she moved her legs but couldn’t feel anything below her knees except deep reverberations in her bones. She moved like she was floating, buoyed by a numbing shock that muted all pain.
Something pulsed in the air. Not a noise, but a sensation—she could feel it, thick like congealed porridge, a crackling stillness that by now was all too familiar.
She hazarded a glance behind her. Beasts poured out of the pagoda—not the malformed, shadowy entities that Rin had seen Jiang summon before, but solid creatures, infinite in number, color, size, and shape, as if Jiang had really opened the gates to the Emperor’s Menagerie and let every single one of those clawed, fanged, winged, and screeching creatures into the mortal world.
They shifted endlessly between forms. Rin watched as a phoenix became a kirin became a lion became some winged thing that shot toward the dirigible fleet like an arrow, accompanied by the screeching cacophony of its brothers and sisters.
The Hesperians fired back. The rumbling grew so loud that the mountain itself seemed to shake.
Good, Rin thought. Hit them with everything you have.
Let this be the ultimate test. Let this prove that even the most legendary shamans in Nikara history could not stand up to the machines of the Divine Architect.
Can you see this, Sister Petra? Is this vindicating?
She wanted to stand still and watch, to marvel at destruction that for once was not her own doing. She wanted to see, the same way little children ripped down birds’ nests with glee, just how great a scar the two self-proclaimed great powers on this earth could rip into the fabric of the world.
A missile exploded overhead. Rin flung herself forward just as a boulder crashed into the dirt behind her. Shards of debris, still red-hot from impact, splattered the backs of her legs.
Get a fucking grip, said Altan’s voice as she clambered upright, heart slamming against her ribs. And get the fuck off this mountain.
She needed a quicker way down. The missiles hadn’t hit her yet, but they inevitably would; when dirigibles fired en masse they were not discriminate.
She paused, considering the fleet.
The airships weren’t going to land. That would be stupid. But they had to get in close. They couldn’t aim properly at the pagoda from too far away; they had to dip down to get a good shot at the Trifecta.
Which gave Rin a single, obvious way out.
She exhaled sharply. Ah, fuck.
She saw only one dirigible in jumping range, and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to make that leap. In top fighting condition, she’d have taken it with confidence. But she was exhausted. Every part of her body was battered and hurting. Her legs felt weighed down with anchors, and her lungs burned for breath.
The closest dirigible was veering upward. If it scaled too high she’d never catch it—she couldn’t jump at that trajectory.
No more time to think. It was now or never. She crouched low, pushed her feet against the dirt, and summoned every last ounce of her strength as she took a running leap off the cliff.
Her fingers just snagged an iron rod at the bottom of the carriage. The dirigible tilted dangerously to one side, jerked down by her sudden weight. Rin curled her fingers tighter as her other wrist flailed uselessly in the air. The dirigible readjusted its balance. Its pilot must have known she was there—he swerved back and forth, trying to shake her off. The thin metal rod dug into her flesh, nearly slicing through her joints. She screamed in pain.
Something—one of Jiang’s beasts, a misfired missile, or flying debris; Rin couldn’t see—struck the opposite side of the carriage. The dirigible lurched, flipping her upward. She strained to maintain her grip. They weren’t anywhere near solid ground yet—if she let go now she’d fall to her death.
She made the mistake of looking down. The chasm loomed. Her heart skipped a beat, and she squeezed her eyes shut.
The dirigible kept rising. She felt it turn away from the mountain, retreating to safer skies. The lurching had stopped.
The pilot had figured out who she was. He wanted to take her alive.
No. Oh, no no no . . .
Something shrieked above her head. Rin glanced up. Something had punctured the side of the dirigible—the balloon deflated as air escaped the hole with a deafening whistle.
The dirigible’s movements grew erratic, dipping toward the mountain one moment and twisting away the next. Rin fought to keep a hold but her fingers were slick with sweat; her thumb slipped off the iron bar, numb, and then it was just four fingers between her and the chasm.
The pilot had lost all control. The dirigible was starting to nosedive.
But—thank the gods—it was careening toward the mountain.
Rin eyed the craggy surface, fighting to stay calm. She had to jump as soon as she was close enough, just before the airship crushed her in its wreckage.
The rock face loomed closer and closer.
She took a deep breath.
Three, two, one. She exhaled and let go.
Am I dead?
The world was black. Her body was on fire, and she could not see.
But death would not hurt so much. Death was easy; she’d come close so many times now that she knew dying was like falling backward into a black pit of comforting nothingness. Death made the pain go away. But hers only intensified.
Ah, Rin. Altan’s voice rang in her temples—amused, teasing. Ever the surprise.
For once she did not recoil from his presence. She was grateful for the company. She needed him to filter through the horror.
Something wrong?
“I’m the only one now,” she said. “They . . . they’re not . . . I’m the only one.”
It’s nice to be the only one.
“But I wanted allies.”
He just laughed. Shouldn’t you know better by now?
And he was right—she should have known better than to put her fate in the hands of people more powerful than she. She should have learned, many times over, that everyone she pledged her faith to would inevitably use and abuse her.
But she’d wanted to follow the Trifecta. She wanted someone else to fight her battles for her, because she was so, so exhausted. She wanted Jiang back, and she wanted to believe Daji was the woman she hoped she’d be. She’d wanted to believe she could foist this war onto someone else. And she’d always clung far too hard to her illusions.
Forget those assholes, Altan said. We can do this on our own.
She snorted, tasting blood. “Yeah.”
After a long time, the explosions stopped. By then, Rin’s vision was fully restored. At first she’d seen only blotches of color—great patches of red against the white sky, flaring with every boom. Then her vision clarified, differentiated between billows of smoke and the fires that created them.
She lay flat on her back, head tilted to the sky, and laughed.
She’d done it.
She’d fucking done it.
In one blow, she’d rid herself of the Trifecta and the Hesperian fleet. Two of the greatest forces the Empire had ever seen—gone, wiped off the face of the earth with no monument but ash. The entire balance of the world had just changed. She saw the forces reversing in her mind.
