Chapter Text
“Skies, this is boring,” I grouse. “I thought you said we would get some action soon.”
“And I would have thought,” says Qin Zheng, gritting his teeth, “that regardless of the fact that you seem barely literate on occasion, that you understood the difference between ‘soon’ and ‘now.’” I huff.
“You said soon two hours ago! Soon is now at this point!” He has nothing to say to that, so he just leaves.
It’s been a week since Shimin first woke up, and we’re still in the abandoned residence we came across when escaping from the laboratory he was trapped in. A whole seven days of watching and waiting and doing nothing. I feel like a caged bird, with no room to fly free. No sooner do I think this than I am dragged into the past, all the way back to the Zhou frontier.
What feels like a thousand swords slice through us, shaved out from the Emperor’s body. But we were ready for it.
Back to the counterattack we thought would erase the Hunduns for the rest of eternity.
A war cry bellows from our throat. Frost and fog evaporate around us, revealing a carnage of crushed trees. They erupt into real flames under our extreme heat.
Until we were betrayed. For the final time.
The Tortoise catches us, supporting us.
And then.
With a snaking grip around us and a violent tug, the Tortoise rips one of our wings straight off.
Even now, ghost pain shears through my body, eating at my throat, nearly making me double over. It’s not just the pain of seeing the Vermillion Bird so emaciated. It’s the sheer agony of my helplessness when I watched Shimin forge on alone, until his heart stopped.
I need to see him. Even after a week, I need concrete proof that he’s still here with me. But when I turn around, my blood turns to ice. The room is empty. Without thinking, I rush to it, just as it opens to admit Qin Zheng holding pieces of his spirit armor.
His presence stops me in my tracks, leaving me floundering. He frowns at me.
“Whatever is the matter with you now?” I cannot muster the sense to come up with a coherent response, let alone a clever one. Fortunately, I’m saved from having to do so when Shimin walks in right behind him.
Instantly, my paranoia dispels, breath whooshing from my lungs as I exhale with relief. Pushing past Qin Zheng, I cup Shimin’s face, thumbing his cheeks and mouth to make sure I’m not dreaming him up. He gently covers my hand with his own.
“Mei-Niang?” He asks. “Are you all right?” For a second, I can only stare at him.
“Yes,” I reply eventually. “I’m okay.” He leans into my palm.
“Are you sure?”
No.
“Yes,” I insist. “I’m sure.” As soon as I finish, Yizhi walks up, eyes widening at the scene before him. He turns to me.
“Zetian, are you—”
“For the last time, I am fine.” I take my hand out of Shimin’s.
“But are you certain?” calls a new voice from behind Yizhi. It’s Zhenyue, the former tribute turned jailer turned rebel that we allied with to break Shimin out of prison. I scoff incredulously before I catch the corners of her mouth tilting up and realize she’s messing with me. My shoulders sag.
“I hate all of you.” Qin Zheng’s eyebrow lifts, Zhenyue’s smile widens, and Shimin and Yizhi exchange bemused looks. I scowl deeply and turn away to sit back on my bed. But I can’t ignore them for long. I’m too anxious to get a move on with screwing over the gods.
“I hope you’ve come with updates,” I say to Zhenyue. She tilts her head in acknowledgement of my peace offering and then nods.
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
When Qin Zheng and I came here with the goal of freeing Shimin and upending the space station that housed the Heavenly Court, we found things in a different state than we expected to, to say the least. Upon our arrival at the divine palace, we saw the gods. And how resplendent they were, arrayed like they were uniquely born to rule the world. Except for one.
From the legends, the Jade Emperor had been a revered figure, a mortal man who reached godhood through countless good deeds in service to humanity. When he ascended the throne of Heaven, peace and prosperity were supposed to have reigned.
But that day in the throne room, of the nine gods present, the Yudi was not one of them. Instead, at the center of it all, sat a figure more beast than man, more demon than god. Chiyou, deity of war, had usurped the throne and deposed his predecessor. And now he ruled the Court and Huaxia with his six iron fists.
For at least the past two hundred twenty-one years, it must have been this way. The Huaxia of Qin Zheng and Zhenyue’s lifetime saw the same futile power struggle against the gods because Chiyou, the Heavenly Court’s new Emperor, saw that he could take advantage of us while the war with the Hunduns sucked the marrow from our bones. And we, distracted by the thought of our civilization ending only a couple thousand years after we escaped whatever hell ensnared us on our previous home planet, had no choice but to comply.
Money. Young girls. Hundun husks. They asked and asked. We gave and gave. Briefly I wonder. I’m certain all of Huaxia knows by now that its Empress and Emperor are missing. Do they know where we’ve gone? Have they stopped trying to appease the gods, suspecting that we are trying to free ourselves from their clutches?
Yizhi told me in prison that the gods needed spirit metal because it was an indicator of power. That ever since the Jade Emperor had gone missing, the Court was in a constant state of turmoil as the gods, major and minor, rammed their horns together to get more, more, more of it for their own benefit. To think capitalism plagues even the divine.
Bile rises to my throat, and I press my hand to my mouth to keep from retching. I take a deep breath in. A deep breath out. In. Out. Inhale. Exhale. I only look up at Zhenyue once I am sure my heart has ceased its galloping. Although, no one looks particularly impatient with me, so perhaps I have not been in my head for that long. Zhenyue senses something off with my expression, and her lips part, as if to express her concern. But then she stops. I’m relieved. I don’t know what I would have said had she asked again after my well-being.
“Tell us,” I say. “What updates have you got?” She nods.
“I hadn’t planned anything like this originally, but it happened to work out this way,” she begins. “I wasn’t the only servant who worked in the palace prisons. I could manage you both from the security feeds and in person because there were only three of you, and the prisons are basically impenetrable without outside help. But ordinarily, there would be more people like me on duty. That is, if the prisons weren’t mostly empty.” My eyebrows shoot up.
“Now that I think about it, what need do the gods have for jails anyway? Who could they possibly need to lock up?”
“Offered girls like me, at least initially,” she answers, her voice tight. “And any and all gods who got in Chiyou’s way.” A grim silence follows the statement.
“So?” Qin Zheng eventually asks. “Why is this important?” Zhenyue appears to measure her words before replying.
“One of the girls that worked with me noticed that I disappeared at the same time you did, and put two and two together. I am not entirely sure how she found us, and she is only willing to give us so much aid, but at the very least we can trust her not to rat us out, even if she won’t explicitly help us.”
“And what is she willing to give us?” She nods at me.
“She came to me today while I was getting supplies to tell me that she may have a clue about the Jade Emperor’s whereabouts.”