Chapter 40
Yin
Illusionists.
For the past several hours, I’ve been unable to shake the sense that something was following us. Now, as my terror could not be greater, I realize what it is.
Those sorcerers I fought at the barracks.
Though I can’t see them, I know they’re there.
Then, before I can react, something coils out of the darkness and collects Yang hard on the chest, making him slam hard into the ground by my feet.
I shift to the side, intending to loop an arm around his and pull him to his feet, but he stares up into my eyes and screams, “no, get back.”
It’s too late. I feel something materialize beside me, and then a pair of black-clad, strong hands collapse around my neck.
With a grip stronger than steel, the hands try to strangle me.
I splutter, trying to draw in a breath as I flail with my arms and legs.
“Let her go,” Yang screams. But as he pushes to his own feet, I watch in horror as a knife slices out of nowhere, collecting him along the side of the chin. It slices open his cheek, blood splattering out in a great arc.
But rather than flinging him back, Yang somehow fights the force of the move and barrels forward. For a brief moment, I hear him connect to something. To armor of some description. But then he’s thrown backward as a foot materializes and collects him right on his cut chin.
I try to scream at him to watch out, but I can’t speak.
I can’t breathe. The hands keep pressing into my neck, robbing me of my energy and magic as blackness builds at the corner of my vision.
I fight it. I try to push my magic out, into my hands, up into my throat, and into whoever is strangling me. But it’s hard. Something’s blocking me. Pushing it back. Somehow disconnecting me from my Arak device and the power within.
The illusionist.
With its hands around my throat, it’s keeping my summoning at bay. As if it can not only hide itself, but can hide my true power from me too.
As unconsciousness threatens, I watch Yang stumble up and lurch toward me, his face a picture of pure fear. He screams my name, or at least I think he does.
I start to feel myself shutting down. I can no longer scrabble against the grip around my throat, and my hands just glance off, my arms collapsing beside me.
Then, Yang screams.
Such a deep, thundering move, it shakes the ground itself.
Out of nowhere, a jet of water comes slamming into me.
Somehow it rushes around my form, but it does not rush around the illusionist. I can feel his grip as it is yanked away from my throat and the man himself is pushed backward.
I stumble to my knees, gasping, drawing in as much air as I can.
Yang screams my name again, but just as he does, and he flings a hand forward to catch me, I watch as a fist appears beside him, and collects him against the side of his head.
There’s a sickening crunch, and he’s thrown sideways, more blood spilling from the wound along his chin.
It’s my turn to scream his name. I thrust forward, trying to catch him before he can hit the ground.
But somehow he manages to roll and stand, then he sends another jet of water forward.
Though his aim is good, and I can tell it should collect the illusionist right in the chest, somehow that man twists in midair, the water breaking all around him, but not forcing him back. I barely hear two feet hit the ground, then nothing.
Instinctively Yang and I back toward each other, until our shoulders press together.
He doesn’t say anything. Neither do I.
There is no reason to waste our breath.
There’s only reason to fight.
Yang sends a burst of water out of his hands, and it washes forward with incredible power.
Again I watch it slam against the invisible outline of a man. But again the illusionist just jumps into it, somehow absorbs the power and lands.
I try to punch forward with a fiery shot of my own. The illusionist is too quick, and by the time the magic spills from my hands, I have no idea where he is.
Then I hear something.
Two things, in fact. The unmistakable sound of knives being withdrawn from metal sheaths. I feel Yang jolt back into me as he realizes what’s about to happen.
The illusionists are going to kill us. Stab us.
They are not going to play around.
“Just attack,” Yang says, desperation making his voice barely recognizable.
I don’t hesitate. I send fireball after fireball bursting out of my hands.
But with nothing to direct them at, they confuse me further.
As fire and water dance around us, I stare into the chaos, searching for the illusionists.
Here and there, I hear their footfall and the slice of blades in the air.
But I can’t see them; I don’t know where they are.
Then, one dashes forward, and just as I jolt back into Yang, I feel something move beside me. So quick, so powerful, and so impossible to fight.
A knife slices half a centimeter from my face, pressing down into my left arm.
I try to defend myself against the blow, try to push magic into my body to bolster it, but I’m not quick enough, and I don’t have enough power to stop the knife from eating easily into my flesh.
I scream, thrusting back just as magic crackles down my injured limb.
“Yin,” I feel Yang turn, lurching toward me.
But as he does, I can sense one of the illusionists closing in on him.
With a knife to his back, they’re going to skewer him through the heart.
With as much force as I can, I push forward, ramming my shoulder into Yang and forcing him out of the way as a blade materializes out of thin air and is plunged deep into my already injured arm.
I can feel it go in, slicing between the muscle and grating against the bone. Pain shoots through me. Faster, harder, clearer than anything I have ever felt. It’s as if I’m drowning in the sensation.
Blood erupts from the injury, splattering out. For the briefest moment, one droplet lands on something. One of the illusionists. But just as quickly as I see it suspended there in the air, the man wipes it off and becomes completely invisible again.
Yang calls my name, over and over again.
I want to turn, want to reach out to him. Before I can, something latches onto my hair and pulls me roughly to the side. Without so much as a grunt, one of the illusionists throws me to the ground, and I can feel their foot press into my neck as they lock me in place.
“Yin, no,” Yang screams.
For me. He lurches forward, hand outstretched, to catch me.
The man I thought I could never trust, and now the last man I’ll ever see.
I can feel a blade being pressed into the back of my neck, and suddenly Yang stops, but I can see from the wide-eyed, terrified look he gives me that he can see the blade too. “Let her up,” he pleads.
Out of the air behind him, one of the illusionists appears. And in a swift, vicious blow, he curls his knuckles into a point and slams them into Yang’s coccyx.
Yang gasps and falls to his knees, teetering on the spot until he can balance himself no longer, and falls to the ground.
He faces me.
We stare at each other.
I watch the illusionist behind him pull out its knife and press it into the back of Yang’s neck.
It’s over….
This is the end. I’m the savior, but I’ll never get a chance to fulfill my sacred destiny. These illusionists will take that responsibility off my hands.
.…
Though it shouldn’t, that idea gives me a measure of relief. I’m about to die, and all I can think of is that I’m being let off the hook. That it’s easier to let the illusionist slice me through the back of the neck than it is to fight the Night and usher in a new age for man.
Then something happens.
Just as I prepare to surrende
r to that fate, I watch tears swell in Yang’s eyes as he looks at me.
He doesn’t look relieved. He looks as if he’s about to lose something.
I watch one of the illusionists lean down close to Yang and whisper in his ear, “the General can’t abide traitors.”
“The General is a monster,” Yang replies, tears flowing freely down his cheeks. “Let Yin go. You can kill me. But let her go.”
“We intend to. The General still has uses for her. You, however, Captain Yang, will now meet your inglorious end. Die knowing you are nothing more than a traitor.”
They’re going to kill him.
And all he can do is sadly look my way.
“You’ll be alright; you’ll get free,” he mouths to me.
Though he does not speak his words, I swear they shake my heart. They push right through the submission that has settled there. The desire to surrender to my fate.
I am the savior.
I endure then I fight.
Now, I will fight.
I do not hesitate further.
I draw on the sacred power within.
Just as the illusionist behind Yang tightens his arm muscles, and I can tell readies to plunge the knife down, I push out.
With everything I’ve got. With the very spirit of fire itself.
I make no movement, call upon no spell.
I just merge with the fire. Not in my Arak device, but in my heart, and I send it out in a great arc.
Castor taught me to fight. He trained me in the various arts of combat.
But try as he might, he was never able to teach me to feel. To develop within me the instincts of power. That connection that bypasses knowledge and training, and accesses the raw force within, undiluted and unconstrained by knowledge or tradition.
The true spirit of magic.
The true source of all power.
Gaea.
No, Yang taught me that, even though he doesn’t realize it.
Well, right now, I use it.
Without a movement, without a weapon, and without a word, I let the fire fight for me.
It does.
It surges out, in one great explosion of force.
The illusionists have no time to plunge the knives into our necks; the speed at which the fire slams out is beyond their comprehension. The force with which it hits them is beyond their ability to withstand.
Both of them are flung backward with so much force, they twist in the air until landing and tumbling uncontrollably, only coming to a rest far away in the dust and sand.
Though the fire burns around me in a great halo of power, it does not burn me, and it does not burn Yang.
With wide eyes, he looks into mine, staring at the flames like a man uncaring of how hot they may be.
Once the halo of fire around me dies, I push myself up, then I lean forward, stretching a hand out to Yang.
He doesn’t hesitate. He closes his palm around mine, and together we pull each other to our feet.
Without hesitating, he runs over to the illusionists, checking them as I stand ready in a defensive position to attack should they rise again.
They don’t, and with a terse, “they are down,” Yang strips them of their weaponry. Then he makes a fist and holds it out as he produces two sets of watery ropes and ties their hands and feet.
Then…
He turns to me.
He… stares. Just like he did when we first met.
So silent, so watchful.
But not cold.
The emotion cracks his brow and makes his cheeks flare with heat. “How did you do that?” he asks, his awe obvious.
I don’t answer. I don’t need to.
“Thank you,” he eventually says.
I look away, unable to hold his gaze.
I couldn’t let him die.
But if he hadn’t been there, I would have let myself die.
The prospect of losing him, however, was what made me fight.
“I can’t believe Garl sent them after us,” Yang says as he shakes his head. “Illusionist assassins. I should have thought of this. I should have…” Yang trails off, sighing morosely, blood dripping down his chin. He’s still holding one hand out, the fingers outstretched as he maintains the watery ropes keeping the illusionists in place. That doesn’t stop him from turning toward me. Nor does it stop his eyes from growing wide as he stares at my left arm. “You’re so injured. How are you standing? We need to—”
He cuts off. Not because the illusionists suddenly spring to their feet to continue the fight. But because I lurch down to my knees, clutching my arm as pain shoots through it.
“Yin,” Yang shouts desperately.
I… can feel it.
As I lean in the blood-soaked dust, that most dreaded of senses returns to me.
The dark.
I can feel it crawling toward me. Slipping up through the ground, its formless hands groping my way.
I can’t speak, I can’t breathe, all I can do is feel the dark clawing its way closer.
“Yin,” Yang scream, landing on his knees as he skids toward me, one hand still outstretched as he keeps the illusionists locked up, but all the rest of his attention locked on me. As his eyes desperately search mine, he begs, “just hold on.”
“Get me out of here, get me out of here,” I manage, using all the strength I have to speak.
“I will look after your injuries. Just hold on,” he begs again. Reaching forward and collapsing a hand tight over my wounded shoulder.
I shake my head fervently. “You have to get me out of here before they come. They’re coming, Yang, they’re coming,” I say before I collapse.
“Yin.”
I shake.
I wait. Feeling them draw nearer, but unable to do anything about it.
“Yin? Who are you talking about?” Yang questions.
I can’t answer.
I can’t answer.
Then, I scream.
He collapses one arm around me, trying to hold me against his chest, trying to comfort me.
But it’s too late.
I can feel him snap backward as a strange, hissing noise sounds out behind us. “What the hell?” he begins.
I see past him.
And what I see is the end of me.
Shifting up through the sand and dirt, darkness solidifies into forms.
Faceless, eyeless husks. With long arms and an exaggerated humanlike form, they reach forward.
It’s too late.
I can’t get away.
While I was ready to submit to death when it was at the hands of the illusionists, this is different.
The foot soldiers of the dark will draw me right down into their realm, and forever more I will be trapped inside chaos, punished for what I am.
I expect Yang to kneel there in terror, overcome by what he sees. Though he does for a few precious moments, he overcomes his fear.
He springs to his feet, standing before me, his arms spread wide.
He should be terrified beyond measure.
He should have no idea what those dark husks are.
He should be unable to move.
Yet he’s none of those things.
Ignoring his own injuries, he draws upon the water within, and sends several bursts out, pushing the husks back.
Despite how weak he should be, his blasts are stronger than they’ve ever been.
They collect into the center of those foul creatures, and push them back.
I would help, but I can’t.
The nearer the husks come, the more the injuries in my arms burn.
But it is not a burning I am familiar with.
It is not a fire that invigorates me.
It’s pure pain. Nothing but torture.
There’s nothing I can do but wait and hope.
Though the husks continue to push out of the ground, Yang doesn’t stop. When one nears him, he leaps up and launches toward it, sending a watery kick slamming into its face.
As another crawls toward me, stretching its hand out to my throat, Yang comes spinning around and forces it back with a wave of water.
The husks relentlessly attack, but Yang keeps them back.
He calls upon power I didn’t realize he had, the force of his waves vibrating the ground beneath us.
He keeps them back.
But they keep coming.
“We have to get out of here,” I manage.
We have to get out of here.
Yang hesitates for a moment, and I wonder if he’s ready to give up.
He isn’t. He closes his eyes for half a second, closes his fists together, and then spreads his arms out in the quickest move I’ve ever seen.
Water rushes out from every direction.
It’s as if the ocean itself has suddenly transported right to us. As if the air has transformed and there is nothing but Yang’s magic.
That enormous swell of water washes out, and collects every single husk, driving them all back.
Then Yang does not wait.
He rushes over to me, leans down, picks me up, and runs forward.
We reach the horse, he places me on top, clambers behind, and screams out.
The horse rushes forward, the sound of its hooves deafening.
I feel Yang lean backward, sending blasts of power out as the horse gallops onwards.
Onwards and onwards.
Until finally, finally it feels as if the Night is giving way to day.
The sun above feels warm again, and my eyes can see the color and light.
He did it. We escaped.
Yang just keeps spurring the horse forward, never letting up as we flee further and further from that destroyed coastal village.
It takes a long time before the horse begins to slow. Then, with the gentlest voice, he tells me, “I need to bandage your injuries.”
The horse stops, and I feel him get off. His heavy armor clanking around him.
Tenderly he places an arm on my shoulder.
I look up, right into his eyes.
I expect to see some mix of fear and surprise and shock.
What I see is… something I don’t understand.
“It’s okay,” he says in a calming tone.
Then he helps me off the horse.
Though my arm is undoubtedly injured, it doesn’t feel like it did when the husks attacked.
They managed to call pain into it. But now we have left them far behind, I can use my own magic to help heal it.
I’ll need more, though. Bandages, herbs, and rest.
Yang stands close to me as he helps me off the horse, offering his shoulder as I lean heavily into it.
There’s a moment when we are close enough to stare into each other’s eyes.
That moment drags on and on.
As it does, I feel lost in time. More than that, lost in the balance. It reminds me of that extended feeling I only glimpsed during the fan dance. That space beyond where I usually live. A space of pure flow.
He’s the first one to pull away.
As he does, he latches a hand on my shoulder and guides me gently into a seated position.
“We need to stop this from bleeding,” he says as he winces and palpates the injury on my shoulder.
I let him inspect the injury, and don’t even dream of pulling away, despite our proximity.
It takes a long time, but I whisper a barely audible, “thank you. Thank you for saving me from those… things.”
He looks up sharply.
At first I doubt he can speak, then he manages, “the Night. It’s called the Night.”
I jolt backward, surprised.
“It’s okay,” he anchors a hand on my shoulder. “There is… a lot I need to tell you. But the creatures back there, they belong to the Night. I know you probably believe it’s a myth, but it isn’t…. I know it’s very hard to believe, but just let me finish. The age is ending,” he says in a shaking voice. “As it ends, the Night is setting in.”
“You… how do you know that?”
“I,” he closes his eyes, and it’s clear he’s deciding whether to tell me, “have felt it before,” he answers.
I stare at him in disbelief.
“Just, trust me,” he suddenly says.
Trust him.
Trust Captain Yang.
Yes.
I trust him. Completely now.
In a short time, we have come so far together. But as the memory of those husks still burns brightly in my mind, I realize there is yet further to go.
If I’m lucky, he will stay by my side.
He’ll save me when no one else can.
He’ll guard me from the Night.
I may have lost Castor, but I have gained Yang.
Though he can’t possibly know it, he just saved the Savior.
He is my guardian.