What is righteousness? How do we define honor? Is cowardice so easily measured in terms of black and white? Who was it who declared lightning artists as the moral height to aspire to? Does the Lightning really dictate what is right? Or are there times when the will of the heavens cannot encompass the truly honorable path?

  -From a debate in the Mind Bender’s court between Philosopher Kan Shiyou and Beauty Takya Hanako.

  “Time’s up.” Erisa’s declaration could not have come soon enough for Xinya.

  In a flash, the chieftess was on her feet, glaive in hand, and out the door of the safehouse in which her group of Chikara waited. Shion was right behind her, his weapon already sparking into an inferno.

  “Remember your footwork,” he called to her as they walked through the dark streets on the south side of the Domain of Blood.

  Xinya laughed. “My footwork is fine. Watch the angle of your blade.”

  “Speaking of, I take it Grandmaster Kaishin won’t be joining us?”

  Both she and her subordinate paused, sadness halting their steps for a moment. The tip of her glaive dropped ever so slightly as she remembered the conversation between her and her adopted oni uncle.

  “No, Uncle Satoro had other things to do,” she answered simply. Lightning roiled inside her, reacting to the lie. Xinya fought it back, wrangling it down like a feral beast.

  The truth was far too demoralizing. Shion and the other Chikara behind him didn’t need to know the real reason why their idol, the Demon of Tragedy, wasn’t attending their mission.

  As far as Xinya was concerned, he was free. At this very moment, Satoro was at his table in Half-Moon Harbor, reading that damned book. She couldn’t understand why he was so attached to it. The Love That Time Forgot might have been one of her favorite titles, and one of the first she’d actually read cover to cover as part of learning her characters, but the implications of it were not lost on her.

  It was the tale of the Princess of Ren, a beautiful fairy who was widely rumored as the kindest spirit in all the land. She lived millennia ago, in a time when yokai ruled the land. Despite the horrible conditions of her kingdom, which was one of the many states under the iron thumb of the wicked Oni Prince, the Princess of Ren strove to care for every one of her citizens. According to legend, she was on the hunt one day, seeking prey to feed a nearby town, when she came across a man wandering the woods.

  Being a smart woman in a world where yokai freely walked the land, she didn’t give him the time of day, swiftly turning to continue her hunt elsewhere. However, the strange man followed her, watching as she swiftly slew a kyodai boar and brought it back to feed the whole village. The man revealed himself, praising her excellent fighting skills, and provided a second boar for her own feast, which she refused, stating that he should give it to the people, who could make better use than she.

  That single act of devotion to her people was the first thing that endeared her to the Oni Prince, who continued to attempt courting her, though he never revealed who he truly was. In time, his persistence won her heart, and her good heart softened his iron rule. Until the day that one of the Prince’s subordinates, a vile, cunning kitsune saw an opportunity to usurp the prince’s throne. He lured the two into a trap, and tricked his master into killing the Princess of Ren. The Oni Prince was so heartbroken that he killed the fox, then slit his own throat to be with his love.

  That’s what the book said, anyway. Xinya knew that wasn’t true. Her uncle Satoro foreswore his kingdom, his rule, everything except his own cultivation, which would keep him alive through any injury. Then, he buried himself under a mountain, so that the pressure of the rock and the weight of his own misery would torture him for all eternity.

  Though he was freed by Yi Mingyue, who then enslaved his will for nearly ten years, he still craved suffering. That was why he loved that book so much. The constant reminder of his own villainy stopped any chance that he could heal. Rather than help with a mission that could help the Chikara, his people, he chose to reinforce his own suffering. That was something Xinya could not understand.

  Shion turned to the rest of the Chikara. “Take your positions, strike on the chieftess’s signal!”

  They scattered, darting away in pairs before disappearing into side streets and back alleyways. Shion stepped forward, putting a hand on Xinya’s shoulder.

  “Chieftess, everything alright?”

  “Yes, Shion. Thank you,” she lied.

  He smirked. “Well, for what it’s worth, we could always try to get him a girlfriend. Maybe that would get him over it.”

  Leave it to Shion to know my mind, Xinya thought, a bittersweet laugh bubbling up in her throat.

  “Are you forgetting what happened the last time someone tried that?”

  He winced dramatically. “Maybe we better not. I like my head attached to my shoulders.”

  “In that case, maybe we should get to our job, lest our other local demon decide that the headless look is in season,” she teased.

  “Yes, ma’am. On your signal.” Shion took position behind her as they walked to their final destination.

  The back wall of the Domain of Blood was just as gaudy and ugly as the front. Here, they’d decided that it would be delightful to hang red string from the eaves of the roof.

  Or, at least, Xinya hoped it was red string. Based on the smell, she doubted it very much.

  “Let’s light this-” She was cut off as a series of violent coughs shook her shoulders. Within her core, the void writhed like a dark serpent striking at the brilliant light of her cultivation. Lightning sparked at her command, driving the void back into the shadows of her veins.

  “Are you alright?” Shion asked softly.

  Normally, Xinya took medicine to suppress the cough and ease the void within her. Miss Ishida, Xiaolong, and Uncle Yoru had worked for months to adapt the cure for Void fever to better tame the affects of a rogue bloodline, but she’d just run out of the herbal mix she usually mixed with her morning and evening tea. It would take a day to brew, seeing as it required the dried blood of a powerful void spirit to make. Rather than delay the mission, Xinya chose to push onward and fight it back with sheer force of will.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m perfectly fine. Let’s light this place.”

  Xinya lowered her blade to the ground. In one swift motion, she drew the metal across the stones, sending sparks into the air. They hung, shimmering like stars in the air as dark black clouds formed overhead, barely visible against the eternal night sky. She focused her qi on the terrible wall with its horrible décor. This sect was wicked. They were an abomination and an insult against the good name of both yokai and cultivators everywhere. They needed to be punished by the heavens, and that was exactly what Xinya was best at.

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  With a spin, she hurled her glaive into the air before leaping after it. She caught the glaive in the same breath as lightning surged downward from the brewing storm above. It filled her, and together, she and the lightning raced towards the earth.

  An enormous BOOM rang through the air, echoing straight through the city, from East Gate to West Gate and all the way to Half-Moon Manor on its lofty cliffs. Dust and debris flew in every direction. When it cleared, Xinya stood at the center of a gaping hole in the wall.

  “Hey, blood-soaked morons!” she shouted into the compound. “The Chikara Oni have come calling! Be good hosts and come out to greet us!”

  Shion was at her side, blade ablaze, before the first disciple staggered through the rubble. The crimson-skinned oni twisted his blade, hurling a ball of flame at the disciple, who had enough sense left after the explosion to duck. That was fine, though. Shion’s blast slammed into the building behind him, and flames began to catch.

  “All the better to get their attention, I suppose,” Xinya mused, desperately swallowing back another wave of coughs before they could ruin her intimidating display.

  “Here come the rats,” Shion said, pointing at four more disciples appearing from the smoke.

  “I hope they like our maze, then.”

  Xinya raced along the rooftop’s crest, Shion right behind her. Blood Stalking Demon disciples crawled through the streets below, shouting to one another as they searched for any Chikara they could find.

  Unfortunately for them, the oni clan had very specific orders: strike only from the shadows. Should any of them be caught, there would be no opportunity for rescue. They would be tortured and killed if they were lucky, and if they weren’t…

  The image of what might be done to her people if the blood suckers got their way was exactly what kept Xinya’s lightning focused on the task at hand. It was the only thing keeping it focused, and even that was a grudging compromise. It roiled and churned inside her, but at least it was cooperative.

  I shouldn’t need its cooperation, she complained silently. It’s my qi! It should bow to me without question!

  Yet, it didn’t.

  “Over there!” Shion pointed to a pair of disciples dressed in red robes. They stood at the mouth of an alleyway, and based on the crimson strands of qi emanating from the dark, they were in the middle of a ritual.

  Xinya altered course, leaping from one side of the street to the other with lightning-charged steps. Below, the disciples shouted, pointing upward before leaping onto the rooftop themselves. Two more disciples appeared from the alleyway, and Xinya caught sight of Shion grinning from the corner of her eye.

  The first two landed on the roof on either side of Shion and Xinya. The one before her lowered his hood, revealing a cat’s face with hungry malice shining in its gleaming red eyes.

  “Nekomata,” Shion growled. “My favorite.”

  “Don’t pull your punches, cat boy,” Xinya shot back.

  “I told you! I don’t have a cat!”

  “That’s not what Erisa said.”

  Shion grumbled. “Maneki is precious. Nothing like these monsters.”

  They seemed to take offense to that. One of the cat yokai yowled in anger, his crimson qi swirling around him. Xinya darted forward, glaive bared. Her foot splashed through forming blood only moments before plunging her weapon into the nekomata’s chest. Lightning coursed down the metal and into its body. It fell limp, and Xinya turned.

  Shion wasn’t as fast as she was, but he was strong. The nekomata on his side was able to finish its technique, forming a hulking blood beast on the rooftop. It lunged at Shion, but he sidestepped it, letting his feet slide down the rooftiles before springing off a support beam and leaping straight at the summoner. Fire blazed around him, and he sliced a bloody gash clean across his enemy’s chest. The nekomata was dead before it hit the ground, its blood monster dying with it. The two cultivators regrouped to face the next two nekomata just as they landed on the roof.

  “They look like good practice, don’t you think?” Shion said, nodding to their position between the two cat yokai.

  “Maybe we can brighten Uncle Satoro’s day, after all.”

  Xinya dropped the end of her glaive low and angled it behind her until it tapped against Shion’s similarly lowered blade. Fire met lightning and the two surged together.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Ready!”

  Both cultivators rocked back on their heels until their backs touched and their weapon hands barely brushed against one another. As soon as they did, they lunged forward, dragging both glaives against each other to create sparks that catalyzed and fused their qi together long enough for both weapons to be coated in a deadly mix of fire and lightning.

  Xinya whipped the blade end of her glaive forward, releasing her qi with a fearsome battle cry. Lightning-infused fire shot across the rooftop towards her enemy who yowled in fear before being engulfed in the inferno. Behind her, Shion’s target screamed before both nekomata thudded to the ground.

  Immediately, the two young cultivators turned and clapped one another’s hands. They’d been working for months on that technique, all under the Oni Prince’s watchful tutelage. He’d be pleased to hear that they’d pulled it off so well in a real combat.

  However, before they could celebrate, a scream pierced their ears. Xinya and Shion leapt into action, racing along the rooftop toward the sound. As the leaders of the distraction operation, it was their job to determine if the scream belonged to a friend in need of saving or a foe in need of smiting.

  “There!” Xinya shouted, pointing to an altercation under a raised and covered walkway.

  “Erisa!” Shion shouted.

  Below, Chikara Erisa battled valiantly against a massive boar yokai with thick tusks protruding from his snout. He was covered in bloody runes cut deep into his skin which Xinya recognized as one of the Blood Stalking Demon Sect’s parasitic enhancement techniques. The runes tied him and his qi to a Chikara oni laying in a heap nearby, the life being slowly drained from him.

  Xinya’s fury sparked. This monster was feasting on one of her men. That was simply unacceptable. She was responsible for the Chikara, and that duty was one she took extremely seriously.

  Before she could think of any sort of plan, she’d landed on the ground and was rushing to join the fight. Erisa noticed her approach and reacted accordingly, angling the boar yokai just enough that his back was to Xinya.

  There was a clean shot. One stroke was all it would take to stab, cut, and end him. Xinya called on her lightning, ready to finish the deed and save both her level-headed advisor and the poor oni whose life depended on the success of this battle.

  Only the lightning didn’t answer. Qi vanished from her feet, slowing her to the speed of a normal Silver-ranked cultivator.

  Stupid lightning. Just smite the wicked. That’s what you’re good for.

  But it refused. A mix of emotions flooded Xinya, ranging from frustration to desperation and fear. How could this not be aligned with the will of heaven?! She was trying to save someone from a wicked monster who was twice her size and enhanced with the draining life force of one of her own people! How could this be a dishonorable act in the eyes of the lightning?!

  It didn’t answer, nor did she expect it to. She called upon it again, only for it to retreat farther from her call.

  “Fine,” she growled, switching instead to the moonlight within her.

  Moon qi understood that things weren’t always black and white. It answered her call, flaring with brilliant light along her glaive until it resembled the brilliant shine of one of Yoru’s arrows.

  Xinya lunged upward, thrusting her weapon deep into her enemy and dragging it upward. The boar yokai roared in fury before falling to a knee. The wound sparkled with qi, but it wasn’t as potent as she would have hoped. Her specialty wasn’t in pure moonlight, after all.

  Erisa lunged with her sword. “Chieftess! Your timing is excellent!”

  “I try to-”

  Coughing ripped through the chieftess, more violent than ever. The cunning serpents of her Void bloodline struck deep, but when she called upon her Lightning to fight it off, it didn’t answer.

  Oh, come on! Now is not the time to sulk! She wanted to scream, but her voice was stolen away.

  As her shoulders continued to shudder and she tried desperately to draw in even one ragged breath, the boar slammed its staff into Erisa’s shoulder and turned to Xinya. She held her glaive firmly, trying to force the Void back. She couldn’t breathe. All she could do was silently complain about the unfairness of her situation.

  Yoru was right, she realized. I don’t know my own path. If this is all I can muster.

  Xinya fell to a knee just as a spark ignited within her core again. She latched onto it, pulling forth the power that could drive the Void away.

  The boar loomed over her, and she forced herself back to her feet. Fighting battles on multiple fronts wasn’t ideal, but it was all she could do. She raised her glaive to block the coming strike, only for a scorching meteor to strike the boar down in one final blast.

  Shion walked calmly from the flames a moment later. “Care to explain what that was about, Xinya?”