The Ghost Tiger's Lament

Chapter Twenty-Two

Until then she had not yet comprehended that flesh and blood were meaningless existences in this watery prison. Her body, or what she perceived as her body, pulsed with pain as Kitzon slowly drew out his hand. She dropped to the ground like a discarded rag, mind emptied, blank.

A knot of red light flared and throbbed in his grasp, struggling like a captured hare.

“How much trouble one little misjudgment has caused me,” he muttered. “I should not have wielded Hazsam that night. If I had known things would come to this then —”

She knew instantly which night he spoke of. Remembered, still, his wild, infectious laughter. Her heart ablaze with righteous fury and yet bound with unspeakable regret.

None of that remained now.

“What do you say, Ashne? Shall we not finish what we began?”

They should have both died that night.

“Stop this,” she said. “Please, stop this. What are you trying to accomplish? What do you think this will...” Her voice broke. “You can’t bring her back. It’s too late. Too late.”

“Says who?”

“Kitzon —”

With his free hand he seized her collar and lifted her up again. “If I let you stop me now, then this will all have been for nothing!”

Behind him, Braksya grimaced as he received a particularly nasty gash from spiky urchin-like creature.

But Ashne did not move, did not struggle. She was tired of fighting the inevitable. Tired of trying and trying and trying for something she no longer understood, had never understood, would never understand.

She closed her eyes.

Kitzon made a strangled noise. Tossed her aside.

Shocked, she opened her eyes as she landed, only to see him crushing the red light in his grasp. With a great cry he raised his other hand and ripped it in two. The light sparked and bulged. Exploded into strands flying and trailing through the air, as if seeking something.

The gate trembled. Widened. Braksya fell through, lost amid a mass of writhing creatures.

Further beyond them, the waves rose and crashed, sweeping away another, different swarm of spirits. In the distance, the Tiger had freed itself from the snake’s coils; both weaved and lunged about in the water, two white beasts amid a churning storm of foam and blood.

“Damn it,” said Kitzon. “I don’t want to fight you. I don’t want to — she would never forgive me —”

“What is it that you want? What is it that you’ve been trying to accomplish all this time?” she asked again, urgently.

He took one look at her and laughed. But this time, it sounded more like he was weeping.

“To change the flow of fate! To seize the reins of history itself!”

“All this... just for that?”

He laughed again. “Just for that. Just for that!” His arm swept through the air, gesturing at everything and nothing. “Don’t you see? Your queen meant to sacrifice you all from the start. It took the blood of thousands to forge Hazsam. She knew it would take as many, if not more, to break it!”

“Break it?”

“Did you not realize? No, of course not. She told you nothing, after all.”

“But it is impossible. Hazsam is indestructible.” But even as she spoke, she remembered the princess’s words. In flame it may be destroyed again.