“This is growing tiresome, Empress. What could you possibly hope to achieve by trying my patience?”
Yoshika shrugged dismissively.
“Did you expect me to just roll over and die? I know you’ve spent millenia at the top of the world, but believe it or not, most people fight back when you say you’re going to kill them.”
“You must think yourself quite clever, but if you were truly wise, you would not have denied me in the first place.”
Again, she was ready to keep him talking, but before she could try to respond, time and space froze around her again, sealing her and the emperor into a timeless moment between moments. His voice slammed into her soul, no longer making any effort to hold back as he spoke into her mind.
“And yet you did, knowing full well what the result would be. You chose this path, and it is too late for regrets.”
She reeled slightly at the force of it, but her mind wasn’t eroded by the sheer titanic ocean of his power. Either he was still holding back, or he wasn’t as threatening as he wanted her to think.
“I regret nothing, Qin Yang. I knew how you might respond, but I have always dared to hope that people can be more than—”
Another blow to the barriers within her soul interrupted her retort, the wards that Chou had left behind cracking and buckling under the assault. Trapped as she was, she couldn’t even spit out the blood that welled up in her lungs from the backlash.
“Bastard! I expected you to be a coward, but you’re so much worse than I thought.”
He scoffed and shook his head.
“Your provocations mean nothing. Your attempt to spit in my eye by stealing from my garden of flowers means nothing. The outcome remains the same.”
Even knowing what she’d been doing to draw him out, it was revolting to hear how he referred to the imperial harem. As though her grandmother was nothing more than a pretty decoration, a trophy that she was trying to ‘steal’ from him.
Yoshika noted, however, that despite appearances to the contrary, the Emperor was as bound by his technique as she was. He could speak and pretend to move, but if he was truly unimpeded then he’d have destroyed her the first time, back in the wedding hall.
Experimentally, she reached inward with her domain, only for the tendrils of influence to be violently torn away from her by the mysterious timeless force entrapping her.
“Foolish! Did you believe that because you could escape me once, I would allow it to happen a second time? You should never have come here.”
Which meant that she had exactly what she wanted—his focus. His power was limitless, but his attention was not. Holding her true body outside of time and space couldn’t possibly have been easy, especially if he was exerting the extra effort to keep her from withdrawing into her soul realm.
Meanwhile, he was still presumably involved in the attack on her soul realm. Yoshika wasn’t arrogant enough to think that she was the only person who could operate in several places at once, but it was her specialty and if she had so much of Qin’s focus here, then...
Eui arrived at the great maelstrom where Chou’s realm had once been anchored. The endless storm had been fueled by tens of thousands of years worth of essence leaking from the Bloody Sovereign’s Tomb. For ages, it had been the locus of all power in the world, and it still held incredible significance in the flow of essence throughout the world. It was far from Qin’s influence, but she could sense the flow of power seeping into the earth at the bottom of the ocean—towards the core of the planet where the emperor’s true form rested.
Once the anchor formation began to take in the overflowing power around her, it would attract the attention of the great leviathans lurking in the depths—and perhaps worse.
In contrast, Jia stood in a barren, lifeless place, devoid of any essence that wasn’t already tainted by the overpowering aura of Qin’s domain. She suppressed her own aura as much as possible as she trudged through the endless windswept mounds of snow, her hair whipping in the wind. It was impossibly cold, Qin’s domain drawing away so much Yang essence that the entire concepts of warmth and change struggled to take hold on reality.
It was the most important, yet most dangerous anchor point for her formation. If she was to have any chance of undermining Emperor Qin’s stranglehold on the world, the formation had to touch this place—where his power was at its peak.
All the pieces were in place. It wasn’t ideal, having her true body trapped by Qin Yang while he and his allies wore down the sanctuary within her soul, but he was so focused on holding her there that he couldn’t afford to be distracted by anything else. Like her other bodies, preparing the grand formation right under his nose. Or the other person present with them—the decorative flower that he gave no more than a cursory thought as a thing that belonged to him.
Yoshika reached out to her grandmother, and Qin couldn’t stop her without relaxing his grip on the parts of her still trying to return to her soul realm.
“Grandmother, I’m sorry we had to meet like this, but I need to ask a favor of you.”
“Heed not the pretender’s lies!”
She winced as Qin’s voice crashed into her, forcing her to take the brunt of it to protect Long Qiuyue. Naturally, her attackers in the spirit realm took advantage of the lapse to launch another volley, nearly shattering her last line of defenses. Yoshika was skating on thin ice, but she refused to lose faith. A goddess could not falter—not even against a god.
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“We’ve only just met, young lady. I don’t doubt that we are related, but why should I throw my lot in with you? I would not be here if I thought it was possible to defy the God-Emperor.”
Qiuyue’s soul was awash with regret, resignation, and loss.
“I am the Goddess of Unity. Of cooperation, love, family, and friendship. I defy the god-emperor by my very existence. I do not yet know you, but I know that I love you. Part of you already lives within me, even if you turn away. But if you will just reach out, then part of me can also live within you, and together we can challenge anything.”
“And what if we fail?”
“Then we fail. But we cannot succeed if we do not strive. Take my hand, and I will show you that life can still have meaning.”
Her grandmother hesitated.
“Why me? Why place so much faith in someone you’ve never met? You said you came here to distract Him, but surely you could have done that without involving me.”
“Because trust has to be mutual. How can I expect faith from you without offering my own? I came here because I needed to direct Qin Yang’s attention, but I sought you out because we need each other. It is my nature to trust others, and if you return that trust, our strength will be immeasurable—especially by shortsighted fools like him.”
“How in the world did an inheritor of mine become such a being? Trust is not something our daughters are known for engendering.”
Yoshika smiled brightly. It had indeed been a challenge for Yue to learn how to trust and be trusted.
“Take our hand and find out.”
Qin raged as Long Qiuyue extended her hand, but his fury could not interfere with Yoshika’s core nature. She took her grandmother’s hand, and that momentary display of trust was enough to shake loose the emperor’s hold on them. It was just for an instant, but that instant was all she needed.
Yoshika and Long Qiuyue appeared back within her soul realm, and for the first time she got a good look at the forces arrayed against her. As expected, a projection of Qin Yang’s spirit form was joined by Sovereign Shen Yu, but it was the third figure that drew her up short. It was a shadowy figure—an avatar hastily drawn together, sacrificing form in favor of singular, driven purpose. Yet the domain was unmistakable.
“Longyan?! You’re teaming up with the fucking Demon Lord?!”
Even her carefully curated divine composure buckled in the face of the unmitigated display of hypocrisy from her enemies. She had no idea how he’d even managed to slither his way back into the world, with the Void actively trying to hold him back. It had warned her that it couldn’t hold him forever, but time was a difficult concept to discuss with the ageless entity at the end of everything.
“Who’s that? And where are we, exactly?”
Qiuyue’s question brought Yoshika back into the moment, and she shook her head. She shouldn’t have been surprised, and in the end it didn’t change anything.
“Nobody important. This is my soul realm—a place in the spirit world that exists within me.”
Her grandmother blinked.
“Oh. You really are a goddess, aren’t you?”
“Yes, and you have my eternal gratitude for helping us out of that situation, but as much as I want to make up for lost time, I have a lot to do right now.”
“Of course. You—really are my granddaughter? And her...wife? How do I know that?”
Rather than either ignore Qiuyue’s questions or lose valuable time, she brought her grandmother with her as she rushed over to the place where Dae and his team had hopefully finished their part.
“We were as one, just for a moment. Your soul compounded with mine so that we could shake free from Qin’s grasp. As I said, part of me lives within you now.”
“I thought that was metaphorical.”
“It is and it isn’t. The line gets blurry after a point. Emperor Qin and I define the world around us by our very presence, and our conflict is not...without consequence.”
Which was a gentle way of saying that the fabric of reality was stretching and straining in ways far beyond what her battle with Yan De had caused. That they hadn’t torn open spatial vortices as she had against Yan De was only a product of the fact that the burden of their conflict was balanced across the entire world. That gave them a higher threshold for failure, but said failure would be much more comprehensive if it happened.
“I won’t let it come to that.”
Qiuyue gave her a concerned look.
“Come to what?”
“Nevermind, we’re here. Dae, please tell me you have good news.”
The harrowed-looking mage had a pained expression on his face as she approached.
“It hasn’t been an hour yet!”
“I did my best. The anchors are in place. Most of them. Probably. Every second we delay puts them at greater risk.”
The world around them shook, and only her immediate presence and active resistance against the combined assault of three gods kept her barriers from crumbling once and for all.
“It’s now or never, Dae!”
He groaned and ran a hand through his already ruffled hair.
“The formation array works. None of the pieces will interfere with each other or tear themselves apart. But you have to understand, this is the most complex spell matrix that anybody has ever attempted. Even at his peak, Do Hye has never attempted anything close to this scale.”
“Can we activate it?”
“I—yes, but if even one piece is out of place, or interacts in an unexpected way, or doesn’t scale up properly, then you’ll—”
Yoshika reached forward and placed a hand gently on his cheek, smiling softly.
“Dae, I trust you. You can do this—no, we can do this. Together. You, me, and everyone who put their hearts, souls, and minds into this spell. This is our moment.”
She strode to the center of the main formation and drew out the Sovereign’s Tear from within her body, letting it hover between her hands before her. The small red teardrop-shaped jewel felt larger than it looked. As though its presence was drawing in the world around it, forcing all who perceived it to feel the weight of the moment.
“Let’s begin.”
!
Selkie Myth for their incredible shoutouts.
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