Chapter Forty-One In the Name of the People

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

IN THE NAME OF THE PEOPLE

Liu Che, Wei Zifu, and a row of other Han pilots appear with Zhuge Liang on Sima Yi’s screen, standing on the Great Wall with the Azure Dragon behind them. A camera drone’s harsh floodlight blanches them out of the night.

Hugging my chest and pinching my mouth, I watch the video in the dark throne room, robbed of electricity after insurrectionists captured the Red Cliff Dam.

“Citizens of Huaxia, enough is enough with this tyranny we’re living under!” Liu Che raises the rebel White Lotus Flag. It flutters and snaps in the camera drone’s rotor winds. “Look at the world around you—who truly holds the power? How come we have not seen His Majesty out in battle since his return? Something is wrong, and we are being deceived! Clearly, he is not the same emperor of our legends! That emperor would never have let himself get bewitched by a wicked vixen out to ruin all men! He would never have let Huaxia descend into this backwards chaos where degenerates are free to take from honest citizens! Innocents are being tortured into confessing to non-existent crimes, barbarians are infesting civilized spaces, women are destroying men with false accusations, and family values are falling apart! On behalf of all pilots of the Han province, I declare that we will no longer stand by these injustices! The Han shall not coexist with evil! Tonight, in the name of the people, we take back the real Huaxia!”

When the video ends, Sima Yi turns his tablet back toward himself. “We’re trying to reestablish communication lines to receive updates, but so far, we can confirm that a significant portion of the army in Chengdu has defected. They killed the Han governor, opened the prisons, and armed the prisoners. There’s all-out war in the streets of Chengdu and an ongoing firefight over control of the Red Cliff Dam.”

“So the Gewei Bu’s intelligence was partially correct.” Qin Zheng massages his temples. “Have the troops from other provinces that I’ve been diverting near Han’s inner borders been deployed?”

“They’re on their way in,” Yizhi says. “But our current defense plans don’t account for the pilots joining the insurrection.”

“Your Majesty must prepare to meet them in battle,” Sima Yi pleads. “Only you can take down the Azure Dragon.”

Qin Zheng’s hand stops moving. His gaze remains on the shadow-shrouded floor for a long while.

There’s a reason he’s hesitating. A reason worth exploiting.

“All right, let’s get right on that!” I raise my scythe, aiming its tip at his quarantine glass.

“Oi!” He backs away, arms raised in defense.

Sima Yi grabs my elbow. “What in the skies do you think you’re doing?”

“You are not allowed to touch me!” I smack Sima Yi away while not taking my eyes off Qin Zheng. “What is Your Majesty afraid of? You coming out to battle would carry the same dangers as me breaking this glass. Are you ready to die for Huaxia? Tonight ? Or do you have something more important to do?”

Yizhi and Sima Yi gawk at us in bafflement, but I know what must be playing through Qin Zheng’s mind: “If there is one thing I was brought back to do, it is to liberate this world from the gods.”

His jaw clenches. His hands ball into fists. “You want me to trust you with commanding the Yellow Dragon.”

“I want to defeat the reactionaries . Do you honestly think I have any sympathy for them, after everything they’ve said about me? If you don’t trust me, what did you train me for?”

Qin Zheng’s face remains impassive in the cold light from Yizhi’s and Sima Yi’s screens, yet his chest heaves rapidly. “So you understand who the most dire enemies are?”

“I do. Have you forgotten who really started this revolution? If I wanted you gone, I could just bring down this scythe. But no. There are those I love who are waiting for me.”

Our stare-down pierces across the glass as if electric-charged. The image of the horrific way the gods are holding Shimin captive wedges into my mind. I wouldn’t be able to reach him if Qin Zheng were gone. He knows this as well as I do.

I thump my scythe back on the ground. “If you insist on not trusting me to get the job done, then…” I do a raised-fist salute. “Huaxia thanks Your Majesty for your service. Don’t forget to leave a will.”

He shuts his eyes. “Take Di Renjie and go.”

“Your Majesty!” Sima Yi cries. “This is not the time to put personal caution before the security of Huaxia itself!”

“Chairman Sima, do not question my judgment. I am better off here, in overall command of the war fronts.”

“Her Highness just came back from battle less than a week ago!”

“That was in the Fox,” I point out. “The Dragon is fully charged.”

“And I can give her some qì.” Qin Zheng teases out the thread of spirit metal on his spinal brace that connects us for dream training. His eyes meet mine. “Consider it reimbursement for what you used to bring me back to life.”

For the almost six months since my first battle with the Azure Dragon, the Yellow Dragon has stayed wound up around Mount Ziwei, where the Palace of Sages remains in ruins as a warning to those wishing to bring back the old order.

Guess that warning’s not working anymore.

Yizhi lends his qì to Di Renjie while Taiping drives us to the Dragon in a carriage. I’d rather not be dragging Di Renjie into this when he’s also qì-exhausted from our recent battle, but I didn’t bring my other eunuch-pilot, Feng Xiaobao, to Chang’an. I couldn’t have foreseen that I could actually seize command of the Yellow Dragon. Qin Zheng even gave his armor to Di Renjie. For a male pilot, that’s on par with sharing a toothbrush.

Technically, I could grab someone else to pilot with, but it’s too risky to let anyone outside our inner circle know it’s not really Qin Zheng who’s in the Dragon. And of our inner circle, Di Renjie’s high spirit pressure still makes him the least likely to perish. My brief, mad idea of asking Qieluo to take his place fizzled out when Qin Zheng and Sima Yi decided to send Qieluo and Yang Jian straight to the Han frontier in a hovercraft with reinforcement troops, so they can figure out what’s going on there and fight in the White Tiger if necessary. Aside from Wei Zifu, there were no female pilots in Liu Che’s broadcast. We don’t know what happened to Liang Yuhuan, Guo Anle, and the other Iron Widows. I can’t imagine they were willing to join the insurrection when their families gained so much from the revolution. I hope they’re alive.

Halfway up Mount Ziwei’s curving roads, the Yellow Dragon’s head appears in the carriage’s front lights like a massive boulder. With a grimace, Yizhi peels his hand off the thin needles Qin Zheng conjured on Di Renjie’s gauntlet palm. Taiping slows the carriage to a stop. We rush out. Beneath the mountain, eerie darkness smothers Chang’an. Only the occasional sparkle flares up as backup generators kick in for essential buildings like hospitals.

The Dragon’s chin alone is nearly twice my height. For a moment, the memory of my disastrous last battle in it stops me dead. But I’ve trained for this, strived for this, honed myself on the battlefield in hopes of gaining the skills to wield this vessel of ultimate power. I’m not the same pilot as I was all those months ago. I touch my gauntlet to it to compel its long snout to open.

“Your Highness!” Yizhi calls out.

I peer over my shoulder. His mouth moves again, yet closes without making a sound. Beside him, Taiping gives me a haunted look.

I wonder if she would like me to turn the Dragon around on a government once again.

“Don’t worry about me,” I say.

“Right.” Yizhi sounds short of breath, nodding many times. “Right, Your Highness will be fine. Power to the laboring class.” He raises his left fist.

I don’t know what else I expected from him. What else he could have said in front of other people.

“In solidarity we rise,” I mutter, before climbing up the Dragon’s chin by attaching and detaching my gauntlets and knees one at a time like magnets.

Taiping and Yizhi help hoist Di Renjie up, and I pull him into the cockpit after me.

“How tragic civil war is, when kin slaughter kin,” Di Renjie says, softly, while we take our pilot seats. “Perhaps we could have driven fewer ordinary folk to the other side if we’d executed fewer innocents.”

“I know,” is all I say.

“Is Your Highness finally willing to open your eyes?”

I don’t respond. I swallow through a lump in my throat before pulling our consciousnesses into the battle link.

The world tips away, the transition much more disorienting than in the Fox. I scatter like a spirit in the oblivion beyond death before finding rebirth as the Yellow Dragon.

Yizhi, Taiping, and the carriage come into view before me, no bigger than ants. Once I get used to the vastly grander scale of the Dragon’s senses, I brace its claws against the mountainside and then launch into the sky, unwinding its hollow length. It feels impressively close to Qin Zheng’s simulations of our strike on the Heavenly Court, meant to happen in less than five months.

I convinced him that, for the sake of the mission, I wouldn’t betray him, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy with him. He’s not as irreplaceable as he thinks he is. Give me over a decade of experience as well, and my skills could reach his level.

People on Chang’an’s dead streets swing their flashlights up at the tremendous whoosh of the Dragon’s flight. I find and follow the wide highway that leads south to Chengdu. Armored military vehicles come along the same way, speeding between transport trucks that have pulled over between extinguished streetlights.

After I reach the Bashu Mountains south of Chang’an, the highway becomes much harder to see in the moonless night, meandering around peaks and vanishing into tunnels. I keep myself oriented using the stars, thinking back on those nights when Big Sister and I sat in our backyard, pinpointing constellations with a star chart ripped from an old calendar. Like spotting a childhood friend, I recognize the big constellation that points south—the Vermilion Bird, inspiration for Shimin’s Chrysalis. I imagine him gazing skyward on the same nights Big Sister and I did, finding some peace in the twinkling cosmos after a long day of school and work, with no idea he’d be snatched up there one day.

The gods must be watching me at this very moment. Are they entertained? I’m not counting on them to help take down the reactionaries when they’ve made no move so far. Maybe unless Liu Che does something that rivals me at my worst, like crushing the palace with Qin Zheng inside.

The imagery makes me undulate the Dragon faster. But it also keeps me hyper-aware that at any moment, I could turn around and kill him myself. I imagine him sitting at his desk in the dark, hands steepled under his chin, no armor and no Chrysalis, wondering if he just made the worst decision in his life.

Every few minutes, I flare my spirit sense, on alert for a Prince-class signature. I don’t know where the Azure Dragon is, but logically it’ll intercept me before I reach Chengdu, where I could destroy the insurrection with ease.

Mountains roll on and on in the thick shadows below, so deceptively peaceful in an empire that just shattered in two. My grasp of time scatters on the wind—I could be flying in an infinite loop through an infinite moment—until I sense a massive spirit signature speeding my way.

No, two of them .

I nose-dive in the Yellow Dragon and coil it around a mountain with a slow, gargantuan effort, snapping trees and flattening foliage. No point expending more qì to meet my opponents when they’re coming for me so eagerly. They’re not in visible range yet, but I’d bet my whole empress budget that the second signature is the Whale Bird, the other big, flight-capable Chrysalis in Han. So much for that battle we fought together.

I picture the Dragon’s smaller Ascended Form, having a contour similar to its spirit armor except with vast wings and an antlered dragon head. I’ll need it, to keep up with two Chrysalises at once. But it doesn’t exist within the Yellow Dragon like a pre-made puzzle piece. Qin Zheng morphed it out on the spot with his ridiculous ability to liquefy spirit metal. Since I’ve yet to come close to that, I’ll have to do this much more gradually.

I channel Water qì as if I’m wetting clay for sculpting. Very, very hard clay—

No, can’t think that way. I push past the idea that Earth-type spirit metal must be stiff and unyielding. Instead, I ruminate down to the level of its primal particles, imagining the cold flow of my Water qì wedging into their dense formation, loosening them. I compel layer after layer of particles from the Dragon’s head to push toward its front claws, extending them into arms. Using them, I press against the mountain and arch up to form shoulders. I’ll have to find the balance between giving the subunit effectual proportions and leaving the Dragon’s head thick enough to protect its cockpit.

The spirit signatures race closer. Two winged, bobbing silhouettes enlarge in the distance.

Right, can’t forget the wings. The subunit won’t be able to fly by undulation. I funnel more particles to sprout wings from its shoulders while stretching its second pair of claws into legs. Skies, why is there so much to craft? No time to replicate Qin Zheng’s intricacy. My Ascended Form won’t look like a warrior in armor but a beast that pulled itself out of mud. I hope the darkness will keep the pilots from getting suspicious.

As I strain toward a form my mind can comfortably embody, a memory not my own flashes through my head. Qin Zheng, struggling to manipulate spirit metal while hooked up to electrodes zapping him with pain. He wasn’t born with his abilities. He also had to work tirelessly, fail countless times under threat of agony, to reach his level. I am not doing something impossible.

It’s just unfortunate that I have no room to fail at all.

Wing beats crack above the mountains as the Azure Dragon closes in. With a roaring cry, it transforms to Heroic Form. Red and yellow rays split through its skeletal body and illuminate the mountaintops in a combined orange. Farther behind, what I can now confirm as the Whale Bird goes to Ascended Form in a burst of green.

This is it. I have to fight using what I sculpted so far.

As if I’m detaching from an oversized umbilical cord, I break the subunit off the Yellow Dragon. A hefty weight lifts from my mind, yet the subunit tips sideways. Its head is still out of proportion, and its joints grate like rusted machine parts.

With its four skeletal arms, the Azure Dragon snaps off four of its ribs and sharpens them into blades while lunging at me. I stagger into a wide stance and raise a sword I attempted to construct, which looks more like a paddle. The clang of metal meeting metal echoes across the mountains. Tremors travel down the subunit and into the earth. More strikes follow in a dizzying whirlwind of blades and arms and luminous qì. I reel backwards, hearing Qin Zheng’s voice from our training sessions, yelling at me never to linger within my opponent’s reach. The reaction times and battle instincts I’ve honed kick in, however clumsily.

“ The first order of close combat is to read your opponent’s style. Identify their weaknesses and openings! ”

Liu Che and Wei Zifu clearly never trained in actual sword fighting. Their slashes are too wide, meant to look flashy against Hunduns rather than to attack and defend with efficiency. I keep my sad, blunt sword firmly in front of the subunit’s head, deflecting their blows with movements as tight as possible, while channeling Metal qì to sharpen my blade edge. If we were fighting as humans, I would’ve had so many openings to stab their organs already. But Chrysalises don’t have organs, which is both a blessing and a curse. While I don’t have to worry about protecting my core, they don’t either. I’ll have to get past four moving arms to strike their cockpit and win.

I continuously back away, shedding spirit metal beneath every step as I compress the subunit closer to the Azure Dragon’s size and adjust its head-to-body ratio. While stretching my wings wider and thinner, I fan them for balance so I don’t tumble down the mountainside. If that happened, there’s no way I could keep passing myself off as Qin Zheng. Though this subunit is so rough, I’m pretty sure anyone watching already has suspicions.

I think of what he said about Chrysalises being limited only by assumptions. Does the same apply to the voice that comes out of a unit?

“You insolent children!” I do my best Qin Zheng impression, repelling one blade slash while ducking from two more. “You dare rise against me?”

My voice does come out deeper, but I’m not sure how convincing it is. I really should’ve done more Qin Zheng impression contests with Wan’er and Taiping.

“Your Majesty, wake up to the truth! You must set Huaxia free again!” Blazing Fire red, the Azure Dragon’s swords slice across the subunit’s forearms when I raise them in defense. Psychic pain streaks across my mind. I try to will it away, but it’s hard to fight the innate notion that a wound must hurt.

“Free to do what?” I keep up my Qin Zheng impression. “Free to starve? Free to sleep on the streets?” I flap the subunit’s wings more vigorously, feeling them grow closer to flight capability. Each swing gets less stiff. “Free to bind girls’ feet and sell them as brides? To make children work in factories and mines? To cut corners on safety because human lives matter less than profits ?”

Finally, the wings propel me off the ground.

“ Human lives? ” The Azure Dragon chases after me in an unhinged dance of blades, the clashes of metal punctuating our argument. “The revolution kills people every day!”

I pump my wings through the night, rising and dipping and swiveling to stay out of stabbing range while continuing to sharpen my sword with Metal qì. It’s a while before I manage to say what I need to: “Most of those we execute killed far more innocents in their years of holding power, and they would have kept killing if not for the revolution!”

“No, plenty of ordinary people have been tortured and killed just for saying the wrong thing, or because of something their neighbor did! People can’t trust their own families anymore!”

“Yes, I know! I know that!” I break character in sheer exasperation. “Many have suffered and died! So many things have gone wrong! It’s a mess!” I dodge and parry the Azure Dragon’s erratic strikes from its four swords. “There’ve been false accusations, arbitrary imprisonments, and people who’ve come to power only to abuse it!”

The Azure Dragon falters in the air, making a confused noise. Probably it’s wondering why we’re fighting if I agree. I imagine stopping this battle, revealing my identity, and fighting alongside the Azure Dragon to take over Chang’an and undo the revolution. All of it.

…As if the reactionaries would ever work with me.

“But you know what also had all of those things, except worse?” I snap the subunit’s wings back to pounce toward the Azure Dragon. “The old order! The fact that the revolution hasn’t gone perfectly means we need to do better, not that it’s not worth pursuing at all!”

I was about to summon a rally of Phoenix Ladies to protest extended punishment, but that’s very different from wanting the revolution reversed altogether. In fact, extended punishment is in place because of the reactionaries’ vicious sabotage. I won’t find liberation with these people. Defeating them is the real key to freeing Wan’er.

“But the revolution clearly doesn’t work!” The Azure Dragon deflects my sharpened sword. “Everything’s falling apart!”

I flick my sword right back for more strikes, looking for an opening through its four swords. “It’s only been half a year! Do you think paradise can be built with the press of a button? It’s you reactionaries who’ve been sabotaging crops and blowing up bridges and roads! You’re trying to claim a baby isn’t capable of breathing while actively smothering it in its cradle!”

“Sorry that we can’t stand by as innocents get killed!”

“Your comrades have killed so many people in the countryside! And they’re killing more in Chengdu as we speak!”

“That’s different! The rebellion is trying to save Huaxia!”

“So is the revolution!”

Our swords cross with a particularly loud resonance.

“You—” the Azure Dragon starts to hiss.

I twist my sword free and drive the now razor-sharp point toward its head.

The Azure Dragon drops through the air just in time to avoid the strike. My sword nicks off one of its antlers instead.

It lets out an indignant growl. “You are not my emperor!”

I’m not sure if Liu Che and Wei Zifu mean they see through my admittedly flimsy ruse, or if they’re just being dramatic, but it doesn’t make a difference. There’s no talking this out. We could list each other’s atrocities all day and not produce any change of mind, because this was never really about the morality of who deserves to live or die. This is a showdown between two classes of people with opposing interests. Whoever wins gets to tell the story.

So focused on keeping track of the Azure Dragon’s four swords, I almost miss the Whale Bird soaring up behind me. It swings its twin maces at my subunit’s head.

I don’t duck fast enough. The blow catches me, sending me tumbling out of the sky. I crash-land and roll down the mountainside, instinctively letting go of my sword, before I collide with the Yellow Dragon’s colossal husk. How did I ever pilot all of it?

The Azure Dragon and the Whale Bird dive toward me. Grasping the husk, I compel a length of it to split off. Then I channel Fire qì for strength and swing the detached section at the duo.

The Azure Dragon swoops out of the way, but the Whale Bird takes the full force of the blow. It smashes into another mountain, raising a cloud of debris like smoke in the night.

I lunge to retrieve my sword, ready to guard against the Azure Dragon’s next strikes. Yet it doesn’t go for the subunit’s head. Upon reaching me, it banks sharply to my side. The instant I parry its swords, it releases three of them. The sudden lack of resistance makes me spin off balance. Its fourth sword slashes into one of my wing roots. Pain erupts through the subunit’s shoulder. I whirl to reorient myself.

Dropping its last sword, the Azure Dragon grabs the wing with all four hands and works with my momentum to tear it right off.

I scream and slash out with my sword, but the Azure Dragon veers directly behind me. Its top pair of arms pinions the subunit’s shoulders. Its bottom two arms lock around the subunit’s waist. As I wrestle against the double hold, the Azure Dragon hoists me skyward with a blast of qì from its wings.

The world blurs into dark streaks. Wind bears down on us. The blast from the Azure Dragon’s wings goes on and on, sounding like a simmering kettle. It’s an incredibly wasteful way of flying, but it gets us higher at a concerning speed.

“ Whoever is piloting the Yellow Dragon doesn’t seem capable of instantaneous mending .” Zhuge Liang’s voice crackles inside the Azure Dragon’s cockpit, faintly audible behind me as we soar higher and higher. Is he watching through a camera somewhere? “ On my signal, drop it! ”

I imagine the subunit plummeting from the heavens, unable to fly with a single wing and unable to sprout another before hitting the ground in an impact that kills me and Di Renjie.

Fire qì roars through me in a last-ditch effort to break the Azure Dragon’s hold. I wrench at its arms as best as I can. I sap qì from everywhere its surface touches mine.

It doesn’t budge.

When we reach a height I’m no longer sure I can survive, my goal switches to preventing it from letting go. Concentrating Fire, Metal, and Earth qì in one arm, I stab my sword through the subunit and into the Azure Dragon. The tip ruptures all the way out of its back. I split the exposed blade and flatten the halves to lock us together.

Cussing, the Azure Dragon sputters in its flight, switching to beating its wings to keep afloat rather than blasting qì out of them. Its bottom hands grope for my sword hilt. This is far from a solution. While squirming to drop us lower, I start mentally carving a wing shape along the subunit’s back and side. It should be easier to peel the shape off and shift it into a proper wing than to morph one out from scratch. Though with the Azure Dragon’s bottom arms around my waist, I won’t be able to test it until the moment I plummet.

When I make the mistake of looking down, dread seizes me, stiffening the subunit’s limbs. The mountains await beneath thousands and thousands of stretches of nothingness, the fall too far to survive yet not far enough to give much time for wing adjustments. Maybe if I shed the subunit’s whole lower half on the way down…

I almost burst into irrational laughter. Even if I survive in that way, the Azure Dragon won’t be gone. It’ll come right back for me and my broken subunit. Maybe the Whale Bird will, too, if its pilots are still alive. Over and over, I see my bones breaking and my flesh bursting through my skin, like the images of Shimin and Xiuying and my family that pervade my nightmares. What was all that for? Slaughter leading to slaughter leading to slaughter…

Memories jolt me like electric shocks. The new Iron Widows standing together, the delighted women of North Gate, my Phoenix Ladies parading through the streets.

No, everything I’ve done was not for nothing.

I will not let it be for nothing .

I turn the subunit’s head over its shoulder, open its mouth, and disconnect from the battle link.

My mind crashes back into my human body. The worst dis-orientation I’ve ever felt hits me like a violent tide. I retch bile over the side of my pilot seat.

“End the tyranny, Your Highness,” I think I hear Di Renjie say.

“Yes, yes, come on!” I wipe my mouth and push to my feet. Spots swarm my vision. I wobble to the cockpit wall, slam my back against it, and carve a pair of wings for my armor, as expansive as my mind can handle. Praying they’ll work, I leave a second set loose for Di Renjie and stumble ahead through the subunit’s open mouth. Wind flutters in my face as I approach the edge. Holding my breath, I flip over the side of its jaw.

There’s a stomach-lurching weightlessness, then its shoulder smacks into me. The bobbing from the Azure Dragon’s wing beats nearly jostles me down the curve, but I fuse the hands and knees of my armor to the spirit metal. Detaching two at a time, I crawl toward the subunit’s neck. I don’t want to put my wings to the test unless I have to.

My eyes water in the shrill wind. The Azure Dragon’s head is right behind the subunit, one eye shining red through the night and the other shining yellow. Once I reach the blended orange glow they cast on the subunit’s nape, I detach my sword from my hip and leap .

I hit the Azure Dragon sword-first, my blade ripping through its brittle Wood-type spirit metal. I flap my wings and grapple for purchase.

“ What the fuck? ” The Azure Dragon shakes its head.

Pain singes my shoulder as I endeavor to twist my sword. An extended cry shreds out of my throat, rising to rival the wind keening in my ears. I yank the sword sideways until it opens a flap big enough to squeeze through.

I tumble into the Azure Dragon’s cockpit, joints smarting. Liu Che and Wei Zifu’s human bodies sit in unnatural peace in their pilot seats, bathed in muted waves of red and yellow from the walls. Pushing through the throbbing aches all over my body, I clamber behind the yáng seat and hold my sword near Liu Che’s throat, though not close enough to slit it by accident.

“Get us back to the ground, or I’m killing your human body!” I yell.

“ What the actual fuck? ” The Azure Dragon’s voice shoots up in pitch, the sound ringing through the cockpit.

“Azure Dragon, do as she says,” Zhuge Liang commands shakily through the speakers above. “There are other ways to win this. Restrain her once you get to safety, but try not to hurt the baby!”

I roll my eyes, though my focus quickly goes to Wei Zifu, out of easy reach of my sword in the yīn seat. Even if I kill Liu Che the instant we land, I’ll have to contend with her. I won’t make the same mistake I did with Xiuying and assume she’s not here willingly.

“Fuck that!” the Azure Dragon bellows.

The lights in the cockpit walls fade out.

We plunge.

Sword narrowly missing Liu Che’s jaw, I’m thrown against the ceiling, limbs pinned by an unforgiving force.

“Che, don’t do this!” Wei Zifu’s natural human voice warps through the tumultuous darkness.

They disconnected ?

Before I can figure out what’s going on, Earth-yellow light returns through the cockpit walls. The Azure Dragon lurches in its fall with a hard heave of its wings, then another, then another, then more in a frantic effort to wrest itself out of its descent. I bounce around the ceiling with every forceful swing in angle until I land hard on the ground on my free arm.

Liu Che dashes toward me, sword raised above his head as if that accomplishes anything except exposing his core. Wei Zifu grips her seat with quivering force, the cockpit light streaming from her gauntlets.

Skies . She’s keeping the wings beating by herself, moving them manually.

“Are you trying to kill us all?” I shriek while deflecting Liu Che’s downward slash, the sound pinging off the cockpit walls. I should’ve immediately followed up with a thrust of blade to his eye, but I waver as I stare at this fourteen-year-old boy’s true face.

“No, just you!” he yells. “What have you done with His Majesty?”

“Nothing he didn’t want me to do! Get it through your head that he’s a grown man making his own decisions, and he really believes everything he says!”

“Stop making excuses!”

“That wasn’t an excu—!”

“Che…” Wei Zifu’s voice fades.

Her light dims, receding from her pilot seat.

We pitch into free fall again. This time, I twist to hit the ceiling face up so I can pierce the cockpit with my sword. Straining against the unforgiving force of nature pressing me there, my cheek against the metal, I wiggle my sword to enlarge the cut. It widens at an excruciating pace until, all of a sudden, I slice past a threshold that gets me torn out of the cockpit.

I flash back to Shimin throwing me out of the Vermilion Bird. Just as then, I scream in a tunnel of wind while wrenching my wings against gravity’s merciless pull. As I steady myself, bright static popping in my vision, I see that Liu Che shot out of the opening as well. He fights to buoy himself the same way I’m doing, but he then goes into a dive while screeching Wei Zifu’s name.

Too late, I realize Di Renjie never followed me to the Azure Dragon.

I join Liu Che in reaching for our falling Chrysalises. Our pleas rend the air.

It’s no use.

Our Chrysalises crash into the mountains with our co-pilots inside.