I howl again, louder and higher, praying that they can hear me. When I hear a thunderous, mighty roar from up above, I know they’ve found us. Something swoops in from overhead, barely visible through the smoke. I spot a tail. A serpentine body. Blue scales as pure as mountain water.
A water dragon. Just like the one my favorite brother, Jun, saw all those years ago when he was only a boy. Just like the one I painted onto a mask for Sooah to wear.
She roars again, diving down beneath the surface of the canals, emerging with such speed and force that water trails behind her in a stream. It slides off her iridescent blue scales, arcing over the burning buildings with a whip of her long tail. She showers Longhao in a storm of her own making, quenching the city like a blacksmith’s sword into ice cold water.
The Maskmaker, thoroughly drenched, can only manage the smallest of flames now. Steam rises off his body, droplets evaporating the moment they touch his skin.
“But how?” he asks, eyes narrowed.
“You lack imagination,” I reply. “Leave it to a god to shape the world in their image. All these years, you only ever painted human faces. Never once did it occur to you that you could transform into anything your heart saw fit.”
The Maskmaker clenches his fist. We’ve moved beyond words.
He deals the first blow, singing the fur on my arm with his iron-hot palms. Yue runs up behind him, sticking her tails out so that he accidentally trips. Not technically an attack—and therefore not a violation of her oath.
I bite his shoulder. The bitter taste of his blood coats my tongue. With a feral cry, the Maskmaker throws us off of him with immeasurable strength. He flings me into a nearby wall with such force that it crumbles, the structure weakened from fire and water damage.
The moment I’m back on my feet, I lunge for his throat. It won’t be a clean kill, or an easy one, but that hardly matters. All my life, I thought I knew what it was to look into the eyes of a monster. But there is nothing more horrendous than a spited god. The world cannot exist in harmony while he remains. The Legendary Archer did not balk when he set out to kill the stars, and I will not dishonor his memory by giving up now.
While Yue and I do our best to slow him down, Sooah soars overhead, diving down with alarming speed to crush approaching demons from the palace with the weight of her body. She’s as majestic as she is terrifying.
Our fight with the Maskmaker reaches a precipice. I can sense him tiring. He bats us away, throwing his fists and launching fire with fury, but his movements grow sluggish. He’s out of breath. He may be a fallen star god, but Yue and I are both seasoned hunters. He can never hope to match our stamina.
I tear the first chunk off of him—more fingers from his otherhand. Then patches of his face, his torso. All the while, Yue serves as a distraction, swooping in only to dash away, the swish of her tails leaving the Maskmaker disoriented. Before long, he looks like a decaying corpse.
“Enough!” he screams, snatching me by the throat. He violently tears off my mask and crushes my windpipe, lifting me off of the ground.
“Don’t you dare touch him!” Yue shrieks. She runs, trying to remove me from his hold, but the Maskmaker drives his fist forward and sends her crashing into the building beside us. Its foundation can no longer support the weight of the roof, which comes crashing down over her head.
“Yue!” I try to call out, struggling against the Maskmaker’s grip. I can’t breathe. Black spots blot my vision. This can’t be how I die.
The Maskmaker pulls me close and spits in my face. “I’m going to melt that blessing right off your bones.”
“Do your worst,” I rasp, spitting back. “You don’t scare me.”
“As you wish.”
The hand he has wrapped around my throat bursts into flames. The fire climbs up the side of my face as though it has a mind of its own, searing into my flesh without remorse. I scream until my throat is bloody and raw. No matter how much I fight, I can’t escape. He brands his hatred onto my skin, the pain so intense it knocks the air from my lungs and sends sharpened knives scraping across my nerves.
I should be dead. No mortal man could survive such a horrendous attack. And yet I remain to feel every torturous moment of it, the sickening smell of my own charred flesh filling my nose.
Something massive sweeps in from behind. I was too focused on staying conscious to realize the approach of the hulking creature.With one giant hand made of bricks and wooden planks and terra-cotta tile, the beast knocks the Maskmaker to the side. I fall to the ground, finally free from his brutality, but I’m too weak to stand. I can only lie there, straining my neck to see what’s going on.
It’s Wen, masked as the Sleeping City itself. This mask was the most difficult to paint, but I’m glad to see the transformation suit him so well. He towers over all of us. Over Longhao, even. We stand eclipsed in his shadow as he drags himself forward, crushing demons too foolish or too slow to get out of the way.
Wen raises his monstrous fist of broken shanty huts and mangled roads and brings it down upon the Maskmaker with a mighty bellow. The star god narrowly escapes, fleeing for his life as he sends fire crawling up Wen’s arm. Thankfully, he’s drenched in the rain Sooah summoned. The flames don’t catch as easily. We may stand a chance.
I try to lift my head, eager to return to the fight, but I can’t feel anything on the right side of my body. My ears ring loudly. I can barely see out of my right eye. It’s frankly a miracle I survived the Maskmaker’s maiming at all.
The sound of shuffling rubble. Heavy panting. Claws clicking against broken cobblestone. Is that my name I hear? It isn’t until I feel soft fur grazing my cheek and a wet nose near my ear that I am sure.
“Sonam,” she croaks. “Sonam, look at me.”
I do my best, but my eyes are swelling shut. I must look atrocious, judging by the horror in her six obsidian eyes.
“It’s going to be okay,” she says, though she can’t suppress her whimper. “We’re going to be okay.”
I have just enough strength left to reach for something attached to my belt. A single needle—the very last one I have coated in Zhenniao poison. I held on to it all through Hell just in case, butnow feels as good a time as any to use it. All it will take is a small pin prick, and the Maskmaker will fall. The problem is that I can’t move anymore; my mind is too tired and my body too strained.
