“I am blessed with two daughters, and a son barely walking,” her father replied, his voice even and strong. “I will do my duty and report as ordered.”
No. He can’t go to war. He can’t!
Mulan’s body tensed, and she clenched her fists at her sides. Contrasting her fury, a touch from her mother imparted the tranquility she needed to loosen both hands.
“You are expected in camp before the next moon cycle.”
When the messenger left, he did not continue up the path to the governor’s manor houses. The governor’s wife waited for him at the inlet to the road and passed a bulging purse to him. He bowed in the saddle then trotted down the mountain, proving money mattered more than honor.
3
Blasting powder ignited, and an alchemical light show exploded across the star-strewn sky in a series of powerful pops and cracks each time a barrel combusted midair. Flaming debris rained from the heavens toward the border dividing Cairn Ocland from Liang, and fire caught the tangle of thorns stretching between the two kingdoms. There, bundles of explosive chemicals mixed with the plant matter and became smaller fireballs streaming through the growth. This had been a beautiful example of Liangese ingenuity, developed by their best alchemists and finally put to the test.
Too long had passed since the treacherous Oclander Witch-Queen raised the near-impregnable border and separated the Liangese from their own northern forests. Ever since, their hunters had been forced to creep in the shadows, to wiggle between thorny vines and crawl over poisonous leaves to harvest the rare herbs and alchemical reagents. By land, Cairn Ocland was inaccessible from the east, where the mountains stretched toward the clouds and formed seaside cliffs. No man could venture there with impunity from the griffins who nested in the steppes. If their powerful wings didn’t create gusts that blew the men from the mountains, they stirred the clouds into lethal lightning storms.
A western mountain range formed a natural barrier and divided Cairn Ocland from their former neighbors in Dalborough. That kingdom had long ago fallen into ruin, conquered and shamed, its land divided. Da-Wio had been pleased to accept a portion of their territory. Then the betrayal struck, and those ingrates from Cairn Ocland had dared to tell him what his people could no longer harvest from the forests of their ancestors.
The Emperor of Liang would not bow to animals, whether they dared to walk as men or on four legs. Da-Wio watched the progress of the battle from a distance as thousands of his men clashed with the feral northmen.
The beastmen. Prior to the outbreak of a true war, the two nations’ hatred of one another had been only a bloodless rivalry, a fiercely bitter stalemate that resulted in neither side taking action. Sometimes Liangese hunters vanished in their forests. Sometimes their men returned home with a werewolf pelt.
Occasional squabbles between their citizens had been of no concern to Da-Wio, who viewed it as an equal loss of minor life in honorable combat. When the King and Queen of Cairn Ocland had dared to send missives forbidding them the collection of Liang’s most lucrative resources from the forest, he’d laughed. Then their witch had erected the wall.
It was no longer a laughing matter then. Liang needed the medicinal plants for their alchemy as much as their hunters relied on profits from the pet trade to improve their farms. A pixie from the Forest of Melodies fetched a fair price on the open market overseas, each one bringing in thousands of gold coins.
While Liang had the greater numbers, and Cairn Ocland was still reeling from their own internal war, the latter still proved to be a strong adversary. The thorn wall could not be cut, and when the vines were penetrated, they grew back fuller and stronger than ever.
At that very moment, Queen Anastasia flew overhead upon the back of her weredragon husband. Her powerful voice echoed across the sky and whipped the heavens into a furious storm. The beautiful starlit horizons became dark and murky as cloud cover rolled in. Lightning flashed, divided into multiple streaks of light, and hurtled toward the ground.
Their sorcerers fought her magic with spellcraft of their own, but dozens of them weren’t powerful enough to combat the ferocity of a storm powered by a creature with fae blood. Their fireballs scorched through the air in a desperate bid to take her down, but the dragon evaded them in a series of barrel rolls. He roared, and thunder cracked in response. More lightning flashed, illuminating the silhouettes of griffins in the cloud banks.
This was not the first battle in which the king and queen themselves had taken to the field.
But it had certainly been the first time the tide of battle had been in Liang’s favor. That ended with the next flash of light.
The skies tore open and the flood released from the clouds. Water came down in a pounding flood, then lightning sizzled with the next thunderous boom from a dozen points in the sky, each one a griffin participating in the storm event.
No matter how many times the Liangese soldiers armed their catapults, they were not fast enough to take down their opponents. The rain quenched the flames scorching the thorn wall, and their armored soldiers slogged through water.
Da-Wio ground his teeth. Until King Alistair and his fae queen were slain, Liang would remain on the losing side of every battle. Fuming, he left the fort’s balcony to escape the rain and the site of yet another dishonorable defeat. Water dripped from his saturated silk robes until he tossed them back from his shoulders for a servant to retrieve.
Rage grew inside him with every step. He breezed past a pair of heavily armored personal guards standing outside his private chamber. Da-Wio paused just beyond the threshold and bit out, “Fetch General Fei Bin. He and I must talk.”
Watching the aerial combat between Liang and Cairn Ocland had brought a revelation to Da-Wio. If they were to conquer their northern enemy, he could not rely upon his army alone. He would need to complete the transition and fully assume the mantle of the Jade Emperor.
“It is time, my nephew,” he spoke to the jade statuette that traveled with him across the Liangese Empire from fortress to fortress, palace to palace. The small figurine representing the soul of his living relative rested atop a small pedestal. Once, it had been solid green, but age had sent veins and swirls of lavender streaking through it.
This thing held the soul of a nephew he’d loved immensely. He’d seen tremendous promise in the young man he’d trained for some of the greatest years of his life.
But his refusal to lead Liang into a position of supremacy in the gulf had quickly shown him the young man could not be trusted with the welfare of their empire. Too idealistic. Too young.
“I should have done this years ago, yet…” Da-Wio stroked the side of the dragon’s face with his thumb. In it, despite the draconic features and artfully chiseled scales, he saw his late brother’s child.
He’d loved this child.
He still loved this child. Cheng may have been a man at the age of early adulthood, but that would never change the years, time, and affection that Da-Wio had devoted to him.
“What I do now, I do for our empire. You have always been my blood, but we are far too close to our goals. How I wish there were another way.”
Da-Wio returned the figurine to the pedestal then removed a handful of tokens from the nearby rune-covered box. These, he set down in a circular array and connected with ink glittering from a combination of crushed sapphire and onyx for power.