They prepare their bows, swords, and spears. When the red and green dragons swoop down, their furious roars tearing through the air, the army rises to meet them.
Carnage, pointlessly bloody and horrifyingly vicious.
Many good men lose their lives, their dying thoughts spent struggling to understand what could have outraged these dragons so. But they fight on, sporting the emperor’s colors with pride, slowly but surely beating the red and green dragons back toward the mountain pass.
It is there that the dragons are lured into a trap. The soldiers have hidden cannons beneath the underbrush, set to fire at a moment’s notice. Fire rains down upon the dragons, burning them alive. They fall to the ground, and an entire army rushes them with swords drawn and spears tipped in poison.
Like an army of ants, they swarm—slicing, piercing, hacking.
One of their tails is torn off, their tongue sliced clean through.
It is not long before the land turns crimson, soaked with the blood of dragons.
41
The emperor doesn’t visit thenext morning, nor the morning thereafter. I lose track of how many days pass. Weeks, maybe. Or perhaps a whole moon? It doesn’t matter anymore. They blend together into one inescapable nightmare.
I’m parched despite all the water, and starved within an inch of my life. I no longer have the strength to lift a single finger. The guards come to feed me, but only enough to keep me alive. Sometimes, when they’re feeling particularly cruel, they’ll eat their own meals right beside me, or worse—spill what little there is of my food on the floor.
I want to bite their damn heads off.
Dreams and waking thoughts have become indistinguishable from one another. I see things as plain as day up in the sky, though I can’t tell if they’re real or machinations of my fracturing mind.
Sometimes I see him, my little prince. Bluer and more brilliant than all the glistening seas. He flies overhead in loops, chasing his own tail with a gleeful heart. The snow doesn’t even faze him as he glides through the clouds. Every now and then, my son looks at me, something familiar in his sapphire eyes. A hint of pity, I think, for his withering A-Ba.
Where is your fight, dear Father?he asks.You must not give up now. You must save yourself and Mother.
Memories from past, present, and even future lives play out in real time. In every single one, I’m without my Fated One. I’m incomplete without her: totally, irredeemably alone.
Is there really no hope for us? Are we truly doomed to tragedy in every new life?
I know that I’m not the only one suffering, not the only one who has questioned whether this is worth the torment of losing each other a thousand different ways in a thousand different lifetimes.
Jyn deserves better. She deserves to be free.
Maybe this time when I find myself at the Steps of Heaven, I will choose not to return. Maybe I will choose to let my weary soul rest, and in doing so give Jyn the chance to live without the burden of me. At this point, it would be a mercy for us both. I can choose not to subject her to another missed lifetime.
Something cold licks at my little finger. I don’t notice it at first, too numb and too broken. But then the cold begins to eat away at my flesh, starts to singe my muscles. I strain my eyes down to look at my thread of fate and am alarmed at what I find there.
The end of my fraying gray thread is starting to turn black.
I think I hear Jyn screaming for me, but I can’t make sense of sound nor sight. I’m an empty husk, my mind breaking into tinier and tinier pieces. My hunger pangs reverberate through my thin bones, every part of me aching. This is by far the cruelest way I have ever died, but at least the pain will be over soon. At least this time, my soul will finally know peace.
For her sake, as well as mine… I don’t think I’ll come back. I will release her from this torturous cycle.
“Sai!”
The sound of my name snaps me back to reality. What was Ithinking just now? I really must be losing my mind. My hope was nearly snuffed out. So long as I yet breathe, have the chance to make my way to her, I could never willingly leave her. There must be a way out of this, buthow?
A fearsome roar shakes the air, the mountains, the seas. I detect movement, though I’m unsure whether it’s real or merely a strong breeze whipping over my body. My eyes can’t focus, though I’m able to make out the blurry movements of the guards, the flick of a winding green tail. There’s yelling, and though I don’t know what they’re saying, their tone suggests rising alarm.
Drip, drip, drip.
Soldiers scream as they charge her with swords and spears and arrows. It’s not until I smell the heavy scent of iron that I realize it’s not water tapping me on the forehead. It’s far too warm, too thick, toored.
I catch the whiff of jasmine before I see her, Jyn’s shaking hands desperately trying to unlock my restraints. Her own wrists are badly bruised, and several deep cuts to her arms and her side are soaking her silk robes with blood. She must have wrenched herself from her restraints with what little strength she still had, but in doing so, has grievously injured herself.
“Stay with me,” she wheezes. “Stay with me, Sai!”
