Her fingers dripped red as she stalked across the floor toward me. Her eyes were empty black voids, utterly at odds with the faint warm smile on her lips.
“Come with me, Brother,” she said. “You’re free now.”
The Prisoner
THE WOMAN TILTED HER head from side to side as she approached me, as if I wasn’t at all what she’d expected to see. Her black eyes burrowed into mine and her brows bunched up with concern.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Something about this woman called to me in a way I didn’t understand. My Eclipse nature wasn’t sure whether it wanted to kill her or kiss her. There was something so familiar and yet so completely alien about the woman who’d just killed two, maybe three, people..
“What did you do?” I asked, peering past her at the dead bodies on the floor.
“Come with me.” She extended her bloodstained right hand to me as if it was a foregone conclusion that I’d take it. “We can talk about this away from your captors. They will send more jailers. We should be gone before then.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I barked. I still couldn’t move, but I didn’t want her to know that. “I don’t know you. You killed the members of my clan. You killed my friend.”
The pale woman frowned deeply, and wrinkles blacker than night creased her brow. She took my limp hand, her fingers still warm and sticky with the blood of her victims. She gasped when her skin touched mine.
Something flashed in my skull. A fragment of thought that flickered through my mind so quickly I couldn’t capture it. My core roared, suddenly frantic. I wasn’t sure if it was terrified or furious.
Maybe both.
“Don’t fight it,” she whispered. “You will only hurt yourself.”
“What are you doing to me?” I shouted. “Let go!”
“We’ve waited so long for you.” Her grip tightened around my hand. I couldn’t have pulled free without breaking at least a few fingers. “Come with me and everything will be made clear to you.”
“Who are you?” I asked again.
“Lost,” she said, her voice a faint whisper. “We have returned to take what is owed us. You will have the reward you so richly deserve for the invaluable part you have played.”
The Lost. My mind reeled at that name.
“You’re one of the Eclipse Warriors who ran from the Far Horizon at the end of the Utter War.” Saying it aloud didn’t make it seem any less insane.
“That is one name that they used for us,” she confirmed. “For the ones who escaped their betrayal. It’s a pity for them, really. Now that you’ve shown us the way back, they’ll pay for what they did. They’ll all pay.”
Her fingers tightened around mine as she spoke. Her words took on a hard, brutal edge. I didn’t need any visions to read her intent as clear as day.
Revenge.
“You can’t fight them all,” I said. “Even as strong as you are, you can’t win that battle.”
Her smile widened into a feral snarl.
“We can,” she said. “Because of you. When you realized your birthright, you opened the doorway for us to return. You shone a light into our dark exile, and we followed it to you. But you also did something much more important.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I protested. This was not what I’d wanted. I’d only tried to heal my core.
To become whole.
“Oh, but you did.” She stroked my cheek with her bloody fingers. “And, in doing so, you have gathered our enemies together for us. For the first time since the great war, our foes are all in the same place.”
The trial in Kyoto.
All five of the sacred sages would be there, four of them to judge, one of them to be judged for his crimes. The elders of every clan would be there, too, as witnesses to this dark moment in history.
The Lost couldn’t destroy all of Imperial Society. But, thanks to me, they wouldn’t have to.
They’d cut the head off the Empyrean Flame’s forces in one dire swoop.
“You can’t do this,” I said. “There has to be another way.”
“Don’t fight us,” she pleaded. “We want to bring you into our fold so you may rule the world as one of us. When we finish with those who betrayed us, the rest will fall in line. We will break the clans and shatter the society they have created. We will claim our rightful place as the masters of this world. And then, when we have replenished our numbers, we will finish what we started. We will destroy the Locust Court. We will scourge the worlds beyond the Far. We will ensure that what happened to us never happens to anyone else, ever again. This is the beginning of the end for the old world, and the end of the beginning for a new one.”
My Eclipse nature responded to her words with a horrifying thrill of exultation. That’s what it wanted. To conquer our enemies. To destroy our foes. To crush any who would stand before us. To annihilate any possibility of a threat for all time.
For the first time in my life, I felt like I truly understood another person and they understood me.
And it terrified me.
“You can’t,” I said. “I can’t let you.”
“Enough,” she snarled. “Return with me, now, or be destroyed. The opportunity to sow the seeds of our dominion and reap the harvest of our revenge will not be squandered.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” I dropped my voice to a near whisper. I closed my fingers tighter around hers. “I guess we’re fighting.”
In the split second before the Lost could react, I triggered the Thief’s Shield technique that I’d started to fuel when the Death Weaver struck. Strange aspects I couldn’t identify poured out of her aura and lodged in mine. The raw, wild jinsei in her core transferred to mine in a heady rush, and I pushed the feral sacred energy deep into the channels in my arms
