Fullepub 
Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Strongest Shape
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE STRONGEST SHAPE
Rage chars through me as my mind ascends into the Vermilion Bird. Burning, roaring rage.
I don’t land in Shimin’s horrific mind realm this time. My wrath collides directly with his, like oil smashing into fire, and a scream scours out of the Bird’s beak, luminous into the night. Rain clinks down over us like a thousand needles per second, lit ahead by the glow of the Bird’s eyes—one Metal-white, one Fire-red.
“Move out, Vermilion Bird, or you will be terminated for disobedience!” An Lushan’s voice grates through the new speakers they must’ve installed.
I—or maybe both of us—scream again through the Bird’s throat. The only solace is that I’ve been freed from my pain-filled body. The boundaries of my existence scatter out like mist, reaching into the Bird’s gargantuan wings. I fan them to life. I want to turn around and smash down the Great Wall itself, but there’s no doubt that the soldiers will splatter my brains across the cockpit the second I make a wrong move.
As Shimin and I pilot the Bird in clumsy sync, a haze of black and white persists in my consciousness like another layer to my mind. When I force it into focus, it sharpens into the yin-yang realm. Shimin’s spirit form kneels before mine, our knees touching at the border of black and white. I take his face in my hands. “Let’s throw the soldiers out like we did the speakers last time.”
He flinches, seeming shocked to see me, to be conscious of this realm. It occurs to me that this is the first time we’ve acted normally in here. No bloodlust on his part. That’s a good sign.
His eyes dart around before slowing down, searching mine. “Throw them out, and then what?”
My mouth hangs agape.
Yes, and then what? Deactivate the Bird and sit until the battle’s over, only to return to a death sentence anyway? Refuse to leave the cockpit, and die from my bullet wound? Try to escape into the Hundun wilds with the Bird, where they’ll swarm a Chrysalis our size anywhere we go?
As if. As if. As if.
Resist, get executed. Fight the Hunduns, possibly prove ourselves and live.
Impassiveness settles over Shimin’s face, and I reach a sudden clarity about his resignation earlier. He’s been trapped in far more of these battles than I have.
When I feel him making the Bird claw forward over the dark, riotous puddles littering the Hundun wilds, I fail to find the strength to counteract his momentum.
False hope. I swear the army is sustained on it.
However, our weariness, our half-charged qi, immediately take their toll. The Bird’s movements are sluggish, weighted, like a real bird blundering through a storm with drenched feathers. Camera drones whiz around us like taunting flies, red-eyed with hunger. I imagine Gao Qiu, the Sages, and strategists from both the Sui-Tang frontier and Central Command observing us through different drones, making judgments. Lightning streaks through the thick black clouds overhead, illuminating the plains in flashes.
The first Hunduns roil in from the horizon in less than five minutes, an unnervingly close battle distance to the Wall. First their tiny gleams of qi diffuse through rain and darkness, then their silhouetted bodies appear.
“Wow, the scouting drones are doing a terrible job!” I yelp in the yin-yang realm.
“Or they’ve told the others to deliberately not hold back the Hunduns that come for us.” Shimin’s fists clench over his knees. With our spirit forms both sitting in place, it feels like I’m looking at a comm screen of him in my head.
“Oh, they would.”
Hunduns aim to destroy Chrysalises, not the Wall itself. Whole streams must be breaking from the main battle to come after us, like insects to a sweetly rotting peach.
As our collision with the first wave becomes imminent, Shimin hurls back the Bird’s wings and snaps them forward. The gale force blows the common Hunduns off balance. Water mists and sprays everywhere. Three noble-class Hunduns, looking no bigger than cats but definitely larger in reality, charge through the wind and pounce at us.
I swing a claw toward one of them.
“No! Don’t!”
Shimin’s mental resistance slows the claw, but it’s too late. The talons skewer through the Hundun’s round body.
Instead of a satisfying killing crunch, it feels like I’ve stabbed chopsticks through rice. The Hundun’s spirit metal ripples around the talons, then binds them. I shake the claw but can’t get it off.
“Oh, of course! No visible glow—Water type!” I berate myself.
The other two noble Hunduns ram into the claw we have on the ground, trying to make us topple.
“They know they’re supposed to be a team.” Sima Yi’s words about Qieluo and Yang Jian’s battle prowess echo through my mind. “They do the parts they’re good at, then pull back when it’s necessary.”
Feeling no danger of losing my control of the Bird altogether if I yield, I momentarily stop trying to command it, trusting Shimin to handle this. With a few wet wing beats, he lurches the Bird off the ground. He charges a qi blast in its beak while flicking off the Hundun on its claw with the other claw. The Hundun tumbles to the ground, legs flailing like an overturned bug, the kind that would explode in a gush of guts if stepped on.
Shimin throws the Bird’s head back before releasing the qi blast in a wide stream at the herd, razing the flooded landscape. Hunduns crackle and pop under the Fire-red assault. I jump in, adding my own qi, turning the stream pink. The blast propels us farther into the air for a few seconds, then we can’t sustain it anymore. We sputter out and crash into the Hunduns’ smoking remains. The Bird’s wings flop down and go dim.
“What class were those nobles?” I say, winded. “I can’t tell. The perspective is messing with me.”
“Earl class. Maybe low Count class?”
A wave of terror and nausea and exhilaration sweeps through me at this reminder of the size we currently embody. Earl-class Hunduns are ten to fifteen meters tall, the size of three- or four-story buildings, yet they look no bigger than the average stray cat to us.
But none of this power means anything as long as I’m being held at gunpoint in the cockpit. I can feel the two soldiers shifting in their seats, recovering from our slump. It takes all my restraint to do nothing as they right themselves.
Shimin drags the Bird onto its claws again and keeps trampling across the muddy plains, toward the color-speckled mass of the next wave of Hunduns. Rain darts both white and red through our view. The Bird flounders even more than before.
“We shouldn’t use any more qi attacks,” I say, anxiety sprouting through my mind like mold.
“Too bad,” Shimin grunts. “The Bird doesn’t do anything better. It’s not a melee unit.”
“Then let’s go to a higher form. Channel my Metal qi to at least make our blasts more focused. How is that done?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never consciously triggered a transformation.”
“Right. You’re Fire on Fire.”
Spirit metal can’t be transformed with the same type of qi—which is why Hunduns can’t transform, since they’re always a single type. Pilots like Shimin would have to put in the extra effort of using the second most dominant qi in their bodies. In his case, Earth.
“It’s a miracle I’m this lucid during a battle at all.” Shimin wrings his spirit hands together. “And I have no idea if that’s making things better or worse.”
The next line of Hunduns storms close. We have no choice but to spew more qi blasts at them while advancing. I do my best to go along with Shimin’s momentum. Controlling one body with two minds is a delicate art. There’s no room for pride; I am the less experienced pilot.
Ahead, hints of the main battle become visible at last. Chrysalises and Hunduns struggle against each other as massive silhouettes, movements loud as the thunder in the background. Radiant qi lines burn through the sheets of wind-blown rain.
I can barely tell Hundun from Chrysalis, especially the Chrysalises with less-dramatic shapes. Now it’s clear how the army has been able to tribute pilots without the masses questioning it. It would be so easy for us to be killed by anything—anyone—in this pandemonium.
“How do you usually feel when you’re piloting?” I ask Shimin more frantically.
“Out of control.” His eyes pinch shut as the Bird battles on in the physical world. “Like there’s nothing left to my mind except the instinct to kill every Hundun I can sense. The strategists don’t even typically talk to me in the speakers. They know I won’t hear.”
“Can you channel that state now? I’ll shut up.”
“No, no point. Your mind is always there. Too loud. Even when you’re not speaking.”
I let out an exasperated cry. “Okay, then let’s try—”
Lightning flashes, revealing the Chrysalises tangled in the battle.
I freeze.
The Headless Warrior is among them.
“Oh, no. No, no, no, no.” I grasp my head in the yin-yang realm.
“What’s wrong?” Shimin grazes my shoulder.
There’s no need for air, yet I’m hyperventilating. Outside, thunder rumbles across the world. I flash back to the crushing weight of Xing Tian’s body over my hips and the grip of his hands around my neck.
There’s no way he’ll let me leave this battle alive. He’ll find some way to kill us, tributing us and avenging Yang Guang at the same time. We have no hope of surviving after all.
Then what’s the point of obeying orders?
Every restraint inside me snaps. I spring from my knees and throw my spiritual weight into Shimin, slamming him to the yin-yang ground and straddling him. My hands go around his throat, just like last time. His hands dart for mine, as well, but stop midway.
“Fight me, and we’ll both die a pointless death,” I breathe, thumbs on his throat but not pressing down. “Let me go, and it’ll at least mean something.”
He stares at me, stunned. There’s no actual pulse in my grasp; I don’t really know how our mutual strangulation worked last time when breathing is not an issue here. I guess it’s more about the violence of the act and how it tilts the balance of our mental strengths.
There’s no such struggle this time. Shimin simply closes his eyes.
I flood my control into every metal granule of the Bird. Shimin’s mind throbs in shock, but eases off.
They might die from the fall or get crushed by the battle.
I don’t care.
Just when I’m about to impale him through the cockpit, a chilling reminder pierces me. This isn’t just Xing Tian. It’s the Headless Warrior. There’s an innocent concubine in the cockpit with him, trapped in his arms.
I can’t kill him without killing her.
My split second of hesitation gives him the chance to push off the ground. With the Warrior’s bulky hand, he grabs the stem of the Bird’s raised claw. I bat him away, my thoughts racing and tangling into a single trembling speck. Such frustration fills me that I shriek toward the sky yet again.
Realization flashes across Shimin’s face. He sits up, forcing my spirit form back. My hands slip from his neck. “Wait, is this the guy who tried to kill you?”
“Yes.” I claw at my head. “It’s him.”
Shimin’s expression blanks out. At once, his eyes and meridians gleam into blazing scarlet life.
The Bird makes another lunge at the Warrior.
“Wait—!” I try to stop it, but Shimin’s fury is so overpowering, it’s like being blown back by the flock of screaming birds in his mind realm.
He throws his arms around me and crushes me against himself. Even in this imaginary realm, his heat is overwhelming. My heart skitters, and there’s a moment where I consider melting against him and letting him kill as he wishes.
But I can’t.
I can’t.
“Stop!” I gasp over his shoulder.
He makes the Bird leap, wings spreading like looming fire, claws angled at the Warrior.
“Stop!” I scream louder, shaking him. “Haven’t you killed enough girls?”
The Bird’s wings hitch and flicker. It collapses over the Warrior, talons shredding across its front but not puncturing through.
Shimin’s rage churns into a deadlocked frustration that matches mine, but with a grief that I don’t carry. Like boiling water with nowhere to go, a pressure expands to the Bird’s surface. A familiar pressure.
New growths pop and protrude from the Bird. I can feel the lumpy, diseased look it’s taking. Villainous Form.
And so be it.
I can’t kill Xing Tian, but I can make him suffer. And not only that, I will use him.
I clench one deforming claw around the Warrior’s hip and the other around its leg. Then I tug with all my strength.
The leg lacerates from its body. Xing Tian’s shining qi pours from the breakage. While I glean his qi into the Vermilion Bird, yellow light rippling under red metal feathers, Xing Tian screams from the Warrior’s belly mouth.
Sima Yi has warned me about taking sudden and brutal damage in a Chrysalis. Which is how I know it must hurt like someone has torn Xing Tian’s leg off in real life.
Another Chrysalis comes to his rescue, but I smack it aside with the Bird’s wing and rip off the Warrior’s other leg as well. Xing Tian’s scream sharpens in agony, then gurgles into silence. His qi fades out. The Warrior’s nipple eyes dim.
I hurl its leg onto its torso face.
This Chrysalis will never be used again. Common Hunduns scurry around it to go after other Chrysalises, pacified by the faux death.
Shimin is still holding me in our mind link, but his arms are slackened, defeated. I know he won’t object to what I’m doing next.
The Great Wall reels into view. I fly along the Wall toward the Kaihuang watchtower. Strategists shriek and scream, but I don’t chuck the speakers out.
I love hearing them panic.
I make the Bird soar on an upward arc when I approach the watchtower, then lurch down, beak pointed directly at it. So many of the people inside have either put me in this position or refused to help me. Since they want me gone so badly, I’ll go.
But they’re all coming with me.
I fold the Bird’s wings against its sides. It accelerates.
“Zetian! Shimin!”
Everything screeches to a halt inside me at that voice. Yizhi. I fan the Bird’s wings, ripping it out of its momentum. After the roaring gust, eerie silence falls. Rain patters off the Bird, echoing into the cockpit.
“Calm down,” Yizhi goes on through the speakers. “Please calm down.”
Guilt overwhelms me. I didn’t even think about the possibility that he might be in the watchtower.
“You came back for qi, right?” he says. “Wait for me.”
I touch the Bird down as gently as possible. It still rattles the watchtower’s windows, shattering a few. My line of sight settles over the Great Wall. The buildings of the training camp behind it look like toy models sold by Gao Enterprises.
There’s a lull, then elevator doors open at the back of the watchtower, spilling light over the short bridge that connects it to the Wall. A tiny figure hurries over the bridge. A figure that can’t be anyone but Yizhi.
Only he would be brave enough to face us now.
I look away, suddenly unable to bear the thought of him seeing me in this grotesque form.
“Zetian!” he shouts through the storm on top of the Wall, so faint, so tiny, so human.
Shimin makes the Bird turn back while I’m wallowing. Our vision zooms in on Yizhi, which surprises me; it must be an advanced technique I didn’t know about.
The rain plasters Yizhi’s half-up hair against his pale neck. His blue-gray robes become so quickly and utterly soaked that they look black as ink. The sight squeezes at my heart. I swing the Bird’s wings over him. It doesn’t shield him completely from the rain. I want to warm him up the way Shimin did for me in the shuttle, but that’s not what my qi does. Metal qi can only be cold.
I wouldn’t have enough to do it, anyway. I’m barely hanging on to the Bird.
“Take my qi!” Yizhi flashes a hand, points to it, then reaches toward us.
I’m not sure what he’s getting at, but Shimin and I make the simultaneous decision to bend toward him. Yizhi’s palm meets the Bird’s beak. A tiny point of contact, like a star in the night sky.
“You’re my polar star.” Yizhi’s voice echoes in my memories. “I’ll go wherever you guide me.”
The Bird’s wings shiver. How did Yizhi not realize it’s actually the inverse that is true?
Suddenly, like the bellowing wind, certain diagrams from his class notes come back to me, diagrams of qi meridians throughout the body and the enormous concentration of acupuncture points on the hands. And I know what to do before he explains further.
With my Metal precision, I concentrate on the tiny dot of his hand, then gently pierce it full of needles.
A yellow radiance switches on in his eyes, beaming through the stormy darkness. His meridians ignite like a network of molten gold across his skin.
Qi courses into the Bird. Earth yellow, streaked by a few electric-hot crackles of Wood green, far more alive than the stolen, detached surge from Xing Tian. A soothing force spreads and expands through the Bird. Yizhi is here with us. Not in mind, but in spirit.
In the yin-yang realm, ethereal tendrils like colored mist swirl around me and Shimin. We’ve both stood up at some point. We turn to each other. The golden swirls of qi wrap around our arms and lift them until our fingers touch. Shimin’s heartbeat pulsates against mine through our fingertips, both calming to a slower rhythm. A small white butterfly with dots of black on its wings breaks from his knuckles. A black one with dots of white quivers out of mine. I don’t know what’s making it happen: him, me, or something intrinsic in the Vermilion Bird. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
Instead of freaking out, I trust it, like I trust the currents of Yizhi’s qi. Outside, Yizhi touches his forehead to the Bird’s beak. My heart slows further. More and more butterflies flutter out of me and Shimin.
We are wholly the Vermilion Bird, commanding it in sync.
Our form shifts, becoming more humanoid. Claws stretch into legs. Arms detach from our wings, which flare even wider. Our torso lengthens, tightening. The lower half of a human face morphs out beneath our beak, so the beak becomes the tip of a bird mask. Everything grows closer to how our spirit armor looks. Metal-white and Earth-yellow highlights etch onto our native Fire red.
The storm rages on around Yizhi, tossing his hair and billowing his wet robes, but when lightning flashes again, his smile is brighter than ever.
“Yizhi…” My consciousness sways down to my mortal body. I think I spoke, but it might be just in my head. Dreamily, I see him approach through my flesh-and-blood eyes, swathed by the waves of red, white, and yellow gliding through the feathery cockpit walls.
“Zetian.” He takes my face into his hands. The white aura of my qi meridians lights him like a screen. “I’m here. I’ll see what I can do about your wound. Go fight.”
“Okay…”
My awareness ascends back into the Vermilion Bird before the pain catches up with me. Shimin and I roll the Bird upright. Metal skirts like long, wide feathers drape around our legs. The Great Wall only comes up to our breastplate.
When we turn around, a semicircle of Chrysalises is right behind us, stances unsure.
“Let’s go kill some Hunduns!” we shout, charging through them, giving them no time to question us.
On the way, we press a hand against our breastplate, feeling for a weapon we now have the hands to use. Our fingers sink into spirit metal, wrapping around a handle. We pull.
With a glimmer of sparks and the scrape of metal on metal, a longbow morphs out of our chest.
We crouch down, then spring into the air. Rainy wind whistles faster and louder across our wings. Once we approach the main battle again, we pull the glowing bowstring. An arrow of focused qi dithers to life against it, radiant. We aim at the biggest Hundun in the field before loosening it. In a clean, piercing shot, we silence the Hundun’s spark. The husk collapses, intact enough to stand a good chance of being salvaged.
No matter how the army will reprimand us for our actions in this battle, they cannot say no to salvageable husks of this size.
From the air, we take out any noble Hunduns in sight with our humongous bow. The other Chrysalises look up in alarm but don’t stop battling. Whenever a Wood- or Fire-type Hundun tries to direct a powerful qi blast our way, someone slashes it with a melee weapon.
After we strike down the final noble Hundun, it doesn’t take long for peace to descend over the field of misting metal husks. Finally, I’m sure of the potential Chief Strategist Zhuge and Strategist Sima saw in us.
Told you the triangle is the strongest shape, Strategist Sima, I want to say, knowing he would hear through the camera drones flitting around us.
But I can’t move the Bird’s jaw.
I can’t move anything anymore.
My mind hangs in suspension, growing fuzzy at the edges. As much as I hate pain, it’s important. It lets you know something is wrong. It makes you panic when you need to.
Not like now. When something is clearly wrong, yet all I can do is watch blankly as my Metal-white qi drains from the Bird’s body.
Multiple voices are calling my name, but it’s like I’m being carried off on a wave, into darkness.
It’s peaceful, at least. Just cold.
So cold…
