Without warning, it surged.
Erascius shouted as qì slammed against his metal armor in a discordant clash. He flung his arms over his head just in time. Metalwork magic rippled from his cuffs, blocking the attack. When the magician looked up again, his expression was one of fury—and of something else, something indescribable. As though he was seeing the ghosts of his past.
Lan’s song unfurled from her like an unstoppable tide, felling the raised swords of the Angels, whipping dents into their armor and cutting the skin of their faces. They stumbled back, running for the doors—and for several blissful moments, Lan felt as though she were in control. As though she could win.
“Stop, or he dies.”
Erascius’s voice cut through the whirlwind of qì, ofmagic,spilling from her. The last few notes of her song faded as she turned to the magician, who now stood by Zen. The fleet of needles had disappeared, replaced by a single sharpened blade—pointed at Zen’s chest.
“Put the instrument down,” Erascius said.
The qì inside Lan had built to a crescendo, pounding behind her temples. She lowered the ocarina from her lips, silence swirling in to fill the spaces where her song had rung.
Then she jammed the ocarina to her mouth and blew.
Qì exploded from her in a burst of song, ramming into the Angels who stood at the door. Erascius grunted as he crashed into the wall at the opposite end of the chamber.
A rush of triumph filled Lan. Gripping the ocarina, she turned to Zen—and her world tilted.
He was doubled over in his chair, hands straining against his bindings. A long silver blade protruded from his chest, red covering the pale skin of his hands.
Lan stumbled to him. With one riff of chords, her music broke through his cuffs; he fell forward and she caught him, careful not to touch the blade in his chest.
“Zen,Zen,”she whispered.
He coughed, and blood spilled crimson down his chin. He swayed against her hold, then slumped over onto the ground. With a final shudder, he went still.
Across the chamber, Erascius straightened. He drew his sword from his scabbard, the whisper of metal against leather repeated as the rest of the remaining Angels drew their weapons.
“You little—” Erascius hissed a word Lan knew to be the most demeaning of insults in his language. He stepped toward her and raised his sword. “Now that I have seen the maps to the Demon Gods with my own eyes, you have served your purpose. Here is the fate that awaited you twelve cycles ago.”
His sword arced in a curve promising death.
It never made contact.
A blast of qì ripped upward, knocking the hilt from Erascius’s hands and flinging the magician and his squadron of guards back once more. Lan stumbled as her knees gave way beneath her.
She found herself facing Zen.
He’d pushed himself into a crouching position, one hand on the ground and the other clutching his chest. The bloodrunning from his wound had turned dark and was drifting upward like smoke.
“Lan,” he choked out. She barely recognized his voice. His hair clung to his face, wet with sweat and blood. “Lan,run.”
“What? No!” She reached for him, but he jerked away. “Zen, what are you—”
“Run,” he growled. The black smoke spilling from his chest grew stronger, the energies around them rippling as it flowed out. “Whatever happens next…I will have…no control over…”
“What are you talking about?” she cried. The qì around Zen had grown so thick, so suffused in the stench of something horribly corrupt, that she nearly gagged. Clutching her ocarina, she reached for him. Her fingers snagged on the fabric of his páo. “Zen,look at me.”
He tilted his head up and the curtain of his black hair parted to reveal his face. She drew back, so feral was his expression: teeth bared and lips curling. Eyes—she had seen eyes like that once back in Haak’gong, black spreading from the irises to the sclera, with only a sliver of white left.
“Because,” Zen managed to gasp as the black filled his eyes, “there is a demon bound inside me, and Erascius has just cut it loose.”
The person who follows the harmony of the mean is on a path of duty and must never leave it.
—Doctrine of the Mean,Kontenci
Thirteen cycles ago, Qing Dynasty of the Luminous Dragon Emperor (Shuò’lóng)
