Fullepub 
Chapter Seven: Into the Jungle
CHAPTER SEVEN
INTO THE JUNGLE
My eyes open to a thick, dripping canopy of leaves. The air is humid with pungent heat. It stuffs up my mind, making it sluggish and slow. When I shift my arms, slimy vines latch to them. Unseen wings bat through the foliage, rustling it. Wet croaks come faintly from the shadows.
What in the skies is this?
Where am I?
I shift harder against the vines. Warm slime gurgles around my limbs. Auntie Dou’s voice croons out of my foggy thoughts like a jungle spirit.
“Sometimes, you may find yourself in a mind realm, a dream-like manifestation of your pilot master’s subconscious.”
Dream? This feels way too real to be one.
My chest grows suffocatingly tight. I can barely breathe the jungle musk. Strange, flesh-colored fruits prod out between oozing bundles of vines. Gooseflesh crawls across my shoulders.
“Help,” a child’s voice pleads in the overgrown nightmare. “Help me.”
I lurch up so violently I finally tear one of the vines. “I’m coming—!”
The reassurance dies on my tongue.
“Follow your instincts to soothe the mind realm.”
That’s also something Auntie Dou said. Advice probably given to every concubine-pilot.
So it must not be the way to survive.
I have to do the opposite. I have to…
My train of thought derails, spinning and crashing. I try to hold on, but some kind of pulling force makes it impossible to concentrate.
I need to…
I…
Where am I?
What am I doing here?
“Help,” a child cries through the dense growth. “Please.”
Right. He needs my help!
A memory flashes in my head. One of a girl. One second, she’s smiling; the next, she’s whimpering.
My hand bounces away. I trip and collapse against the vines, yet the confusion makes me come to my senses.
That memory was not mine. I’m in Yang Guang’s mind realm. How did I forget that?
The flesh-colored fruit stares back at me like a pupil-less eye in the greenery.
Was that one of his concubines?
My awareness whips across the jungle of other fleshy fruits. I smack my hand on another.
It’s a memory of a different girl. When I press my hand harder against the fruit, more memories of her pour toward me like leaves slapping my face as I tumble through a forest.
“There’s something special about you. You see more than most girls.”
For a second, I think the sound is misplaced, jumbled in from Yang Guang’s memory of me. But the girl reacts to the words. She blushes, turning away. A hand from the memory’s point of view brushes a strand of stray hair behind her ear.
My body goes prickling cold. With tingling fingers, I go for another fruit. I go for all the ones I can reach.
“It can be pretty magical, don’t you think?”
“Are you sure about this, curious girl?”
“It’s going to be okay. Believe in me. Believe in us.”
The spirit metal flower appears over and over. Same lines, same moves, different girls.
Sickness overwhelms me. But I push further, for a definitive sign that this is far from the worst he’s capable of.
When I finally wrench out a memory of him grabbing a girl by her hair and smashing her face against a wall, I get my proof.
My existence goes hollow. I crumple down, huddling my head. My own memories lacerate through me, the moments where I doubted myself because of the warmth he stirred up in me. I double over and retch, though nothing comes out of whatever my body is right now.
“Help me,” the child pleads again, suddenly right next to me.
My head snaps up. It’s him, but much, much younger.
“Help me,” he says with vacant, haunted eyes. “I can’t get out of here.”
His voice is small, but it washes through me like a cleansing tide. It threatens to scatter my rationality again. The memories of the girls float away from me like stray lotus petals heading toward a waterfall.
But I must not let them go. I must remember them.
With a howl, I seize the boy’s neck and slam him down over the vines.
“This is your mind.” I crush his throat. “You’re the one who trapped yourself!”
That’s what’ll happen to me if I show any mercy.
As the light leaves his eyes, the realm destabilizes. Vines disintegrate, rotting to pools of foul muck. Fleshy fruits sink down and disappear.
I scream as I’m flayed apart as well, bones shattering, muscles snapping, skin peeling. My spirit, set free, rushes up and away.
I blink.
In the next instant, I’m standing in a far more abstract realm, face-to-face with Yang Guang at his proper age. There’s only black and white around us. Yin and yang. Me on the black yin side, him on the white yang side. Something solid like glass glistens beneath our feet. The sounds of battle, of clashing spirit metal, echo distantly, though I can’t see anything in the real world. The phantom sensation of moving in the Nine-Tailed Fox hovers around my mind, but a repressive force prevents me from influencing it.
“What—” Yang Guang gawks around at the realm, then at me. “You actually made it out.”
My mouth opens and closes. I gaze down at what seems to be a spirit form of myself, trying to make sense of this.
“But you came here to kill me.” His eyes narrow, fuming with black rage.
I bristle.
I went into his mind. Of course he could’ve also riffled through mine.
Well, then. No need to hide anymore.
“You murdered my sister!” I aim a fist at his face.
He recoils, but chains shoot up from the ground and wrap around my legs, my waist, my arms, my neck. Shock wavers on his face, then he makes a swatting motion with his hand. With a harsh tug, the chains crash me to my knees and curl me over so I’m prostrate before him, right where black meets white.
He breathes heavily, though a grin curls his mouth as I struggle against the chains. Cautiously, he drops to one knee, observing me.
“No wonder you were so eager to be with me.” His voice goes soft and low, almost a little sad. He lifts my chin with an armored hand. The chain around my neck jerks straight.
Fury scorches through me. Chain links burn into the back of my neck and strangle my limbs, seeming to get more solid the more I resist. But none of this is real, so how is he binding me?
And why is he wearing spirit armor while I’m not? My physical body is in the same setup, so that must have nothing to do with it. My eyes strain wide, tracing every contour of his spirit armor. If he can create stuff in here, why can’t I? As far as I can tell, this is his first time in this realm too.
What exactly is the difference between his mind and mine?
“There really is something different about you,” he murmurs, tilting his head. “I wish I could’ve had you. We would’ve made such a great pair.” He strokes my cheek. “It’s too bad you have to die.”
Slowly, I meet his eyes. It dawns on me that although this is nowhere close to any of my fantasies, this is the moment I’ve been waiting for since learning of Big Sister’s passing eighty-three days ago. I remember the way I dropped a basket of freshly collected eggs when the world-ending words speared through me, the way all strength left my body. The way my father grabbed my hair and ground my face into the shattered eggs out of his blinding anger over us not being eligible for a war death compensation. For the eighty-three days since then, this confrontation with Yang Guang has consistently occupied a portion of my consciousness, thrumming like a second heartbeat, playing out in ten thousand different ways.
All of that, just to die trapped in his arms, naked and bound and silenced?
Big Sister would not forgive me.
I clench my mind around this spirit form I’m taking. Then, with a scream I’ve wanted to let out for every smothering second of the past eighty-three days, I summon all the strength I believed I would have in this moment.
The same armor contours as his burst out of my skin.
He staggers back, mouth popping open.
I push off the ground. The chains strain against me, then shatter. The spirit armor flickers on my body—he’s trying to vanish it.
This must be a duel of minds, a realm manifested and maintained by both our imaginations across the battle link. All it takes to create anything is willpower.
Luckily for me, he’s sidetracked by Hunduns. I’m not.
Roaring a war cry as further distraction, I charge toward him.
“Stay back!” He yelps, hand flashing open. A clear barrier slams against me, stopping me from crossing to the white yang side. A frenzied smile of relief cracks across his face.
But if I can make anything I want…
I slap my breastplate, focus, and reach, the way I’ve seen Chrysalises pull weapons out of their chests, where the bulk of their spirit metal is.
Light fissures under my hand. White light, the color of Metal qi, which represents forces of firmness, persistence, precision, and control. This must be what’s dominant inside me. It’s perfect for sculpting razor-sharp weapons out of spirit metal. My fingers claw into my breastplate, grabbing hold of a hilt.
I rip a dagger out of my chest in a spray of white sparks.
With a vigorous swing, I drive the dagger into the barrier protecting Yang Guang from me. Cracks spiderweb across it, then it explodes into ten thousand brilliant shards. I dash through the crystalline downpour with a speed and stride I could never manage in real life.
“No! Don’t!” He backs away. Vaguely, like reliving a memory of a sensation, I feel the Nine-Tailed Fox stumble in its steps somewhere beyond this realm. “I’m in the middle of battle! You’ll kill us both!”
“Good!” I shriek, without losing momentum.
I slam him down by his throat, just like I did his child self. I plunge my dagger into his neck, the way I dreamed so long and so often of doing. His screams gurgle, though there’s no blood. Laughing uncontrollably, I keep stabbing. And stabbing. And stabbing.
Warmth fills me, unraveling me again. The sensations of the Nine-Tailed Fox press closer and sharper against me. Yang Guang’s mind falters in keeping me from reaching for it—
I have taken control of the Fox.
