Waters Under Earth

A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum 
-harnums@thekeep.org
-harnums@hotmail.com (old/backup)

All Ranma characters are the property of Rumiko Takahashi, first
published by Shogakukan in Japan and brought over to North
America by Viz Communications.

Waters Under Earth at Transpacific Fanfiction:  
http://www.humbug.org.au/~wendigo/transp.html
http://users.ev1.net/~adina/shrines2/fanfics.html

Chapter 36 : And Let the Dark Come Down

     "<Now this is going to sting, so yell if you want.>"

     "<A warrior does not show pain.>"

     "<As you like it.>"

     She yelled anyway.

     "<A valuable lesson here, child.  Hiding pain in the 
presence of one's enemy is generally prudent; in the presence of 
friends, it isn't always so clear-cut a decision.>"

     "<Yes, Great-grandmother.>"

     A voice, fading away into the darkness.

     "<Time to get up, child.  The customers will be here soon.>"
     
     "<Yes, Great-grandmother.>"        

     And again, away into the dark.
     
     Firelight.  A gentle glow suffusing the warm, wood-panelled 
room from the dancing flames in the fireplace.  Oddly pale, their
movements were languid and gentle, repetitive like the rolling of
the waves rather than chaotic like true flames.  There was, 
Shampoo noted as she sat up in bed, no wood within the fireplace.

     The bed was very comfortable, but there was something odd 
about the construction.  The headboard and footboard were
extremely tall, with fanciful shapes of animals and birds carved 
into them.  There were also, she noted with a glance to either
side, bars.  The blanket had a bunny sewn on it in brown thread.

     She was in a crib.  A crib large enough for a full-grown 
man, but a crib all the same.  The bookshelf in one corner of the
room held extremely large and brightly-coloured volumes, and an
assortment of bedraggled and also extremely large stuffed 
animals.  Everything in the room - crib, bookshelf, fireplace, 
the single door - was built to a scale roughly twice what it
should have been.  She was naked, and the wounds upon her side
and shoulder were pleasantly numb.  White bandages covered them,
spotted in a few places with red.  

     The door opened, and a woman stepped in.  She had obviously
been very beautiful in her youth, and the beauty was still there,
though the lines showed in her flesh and her hair was white as
snow.  She wore plain brown robes, and a thin circlet of copper
held her hair back.  She was also well over ten feet tall.

     "<Well-met, Maiden,>" she said, in a sweet and surprisingly
high voice.  "<I only wish it were under fairer circumstance.>"
She raised her hands, in which Shampoo's bundled clothes looked
like those of a child.  "<If you feel strong enough, please dress
and come with me.>"

     Shampoo nodded mutely and got to her feet in the gigantic
crib.  The giant woman seemed friendly, and was probably related
to the one from the tunnels, but they were both unknown 
quantities at this point.  It was hard to conceal her inward 
desperation; she had to get back to the village and stop Fang
Shi.  But unless she figured out where she'd ended up, that 
wasn't likely to happen.

     Weak and weary as she was, it took little effort to vault
over the side of the crib and drop to her feet on the floor.  The
mild shock of her landing made her side throb, but it soon went
numb again.  

     The woman stepped forward and stooped to present Shampoo's
clothing.  It had obviously been washed, and the tears that the
battle of Watcher's Hill had left had been mended so perfectly 
that they were invisible.  "<I am Mengyua.  My husband, 
Shengxyan, guarded you from He of Names, and brought you here
that I might tend your wounds.>"

     An involuntary wince of pain escaped Shampoo as she pulled 
on her pants.  Asakazu - lies, all lies.  "<What is he?>"

     "<He is very old,>" Mengyua replied.  "<Perhaps the greatest
power of the Dark upon your world today.  We call him He of Names
because he has had so many; his first was Yan.>"  She seemed
about to say more, then stopped.  "<We can talk of this later.
Right now, you must come.  Shengxyan awaits in his workshop.>"

     The shift of bandages as she did up the ties of her shirt
made Shampoo wince again.  Mengyua walked to the door and opened
it, then stepped into the hallway beyond.  Shampoo followed,
feeling tiny and insignificant against the large scale of the
construction.  The hallway stretched both ways for a short
distance, then turned.  Mengyua led her down the green-carpeted
tile floor around one corner, then stopped at a heavy iron door.
From behind it, Shampoo could hear the sound of a hammer ringing 
on metal.  

     When Mengyua gripped the ring that served as a handle and
pulled the door open, a wave of heat washed into the corridor and 
stung Shampoo's eyes.  The sound of hammering continued for a
moment, then stopped.  The room beyond looked like a combination
of a forge, a carpenter's shop, and a jeweler's.  Giant-sized 
tools rested against the stones of a huge forge, across the room
from a scarred wooden workbench.  Shelves held a seemingly 
infinitely varied assortment of objects, from human-sized weapons
to delicately carved statues, to tiny rings and bracelets.  The 
massive form of the black-bearded giant from the tunnels stood by 
an enormous anvil, a hammer gripped in one hand.  In the other, 
he plucked the red-glowing shape of an iron from the anvil with
tongs, and plunged it into the nearby cooling trough.  A hiss
and a cloud of steam filled the air, and he extracted it moments
later and laid it down on the ground.

     Only after he had finished that did he turn.  Though the
room was hot and he wore a gold- and silver-trimmed robe of heavy
brown cloth, there was not a bead of sweat upon his brow, nor any
other sign he felt the heat.  "<Well-met, Maiden, though under
dark circumstance.  It is good to see that you are awake.">

     Still not entirely sure what was going on, Shampoo cast a
hesitant gaze around the room before answering.  "<How long did I
sleep?>"

     "<A little more than a day,>" Mengyua said quietly from at
Shampoo's shoulder.  "<I will go and prepare refreshments.  We
can talk in the sitting room.>"

     Shampoo let out a soft moan of despair, as Mengyua slipped
away down the corridor, and slumped back against one wall.  "<No.
By now...>"

     Shengxyan leaned his hammer against the anvil.  "<Time flows
differently here.  Do not fear that you are too late.>"

     "<Where am I?>"
     
     The giant said nothing, but pointed to a high window in one
wall, beside the shelves.  Shampoo had to scramble up atop the
huge chair underneath to look out, but when she did, the view
beyond left her without speech for a long time.  

     The slopes of the mountain fell stark and grey a good
thousand feet, down to a fertile valley filled with green hills 
and towering forests.  Rivers wound through it, sparklingly blue.
Villages, tiny from this distance, sent minute streamers of 
smoke from their chimneys into the air.  In the distance, another
rise of mountains could be seen, the slopes covered in glistening 
cloaks of snow.  The sky was an impossibly deep blue, a thin 
cloudscape stretched like a blanket over the horizon.

     "<What is this place?>" she whispered, when she found her
voice again, somewhere beneath the long, stunned silence of that
beauty.

     "<Pengrai,>" Shengxyan said.  His voice was distant as the
mountains that she could see from the window, as if he looked
back to some impossibly long-ago time.  "<We named it for the
first home of our tribe.  When the Unmaker, the Great Tempter,
walked among us, fully half our people turned to him.  Pengrai
was destroyed when the waters rose.  As was everything else.>"

     It took a long time to form the next question.  "<Where?>"
     
     "<It does not lie upon your world,>" the giant replied.
"<My home is both of your world and of this one.  It is a
bridging-point, as was the place from which He of Names brought
the Ironwing Clan into your world again.>"

     Shampoo turned away from the view and stepped off the chair.
The beauty of the sight beyond the window took away from her
ability to focus upon what was really important.  "<I need to go
back.>"

     Shengxyan nodded, and looked pensive.  "<There are old pacts
between my people and those who are now the Joketsuzoku.  Blood 
upon the stone opened the ways between.  It will be necessary to 
do so again.>"

     Silently, Shampoo held out her arm, and rolled the sleeve of
her shirt up past her elbow.  The eyes of the giant were old and
sad, suddenly.  "<Not yet, Maiden.  We will join my wife in the
sitting room, and await the arrival of our son.  He has agreed to
return with you to aid in the battle.>"  He took a single long
step across the room to the shelves, and took down a 
straight-bladed sword that was little more than a knife in his
massive grip.  "<This blade is Kuang Biao.  I forged it myself.
Let it be my gift to you.>"

     Shampoo accepted it, and tested the balance lightly.  It was
perfect, and the edge on the blade glistened like a razor's.  
"<Thank you.>"

     "<In the old times, my ancestors made many great things for 
your people and others, when the ways lay open easier,>" the 
giant said wistfully.  He searched for a moment longer, and found 
a plain leather scabbard that he also gave to her.    "<They 
still tell tales of when the king of Pengrai himself forged in a 
single night the weapons of the Brothers Bright and Dark.>"  

     Uncomfortable, Shampoo looked away as she slipped Kuang Biao
into the sheath.  So little of this made any sense to her, but 
there wasn't the time for explanations.  If Shengxyan noticed her 
discomfort, he gave no acknowledgement, and simply kept on 
talking.  "<Stars turned, and the places between shifted.  You 
are the first of the people of your tribe to come to us for aid
since the World's Doom walked in your land.  As per the old 
compacts, this is now yours to bear as well.>"

     From the shelf he took now a slender staff of plain wood,
taller than Shampoo.  "<This was old when the World's Doom 
walked.  It is said Pan Qu carved it himself from a branch of the
first tree in the world.>"

     This time, Shampoo did not take it immediately.  The staff
seemed impossibly old, but it was smooth and straight as if 
newly-made.  "<I've never used a staff.>"

     "<You don't need to,>" the giant answered.  "<Only to bear
it for the one who is to wield it.>"

     Now she did take it with one hand, and tucked the sword in
its sheath carefully into her belt.  "<I don't understand.>"

     Shengxyan's laughter was surprisingly soft.  "<Do you think
that I do?  Come with me, and we will both learn from each 
other.>"

     The staff made dull taps on the carpet as they made their
way back down the hallway.  As they passed the door of the room 
Shampoo had woken up in, Shengxyan gave it a slight nod of his 
head.  "<Our son's room when he was young.>"

     They turned the corner, and passed through an open door into
a plainly-appointed but comfortable sitting room.  Mengyua was
seated in a massive wooden armchair that stood with two others 
and a human-sized chair, on a circular rug whose design was one 
of interlocking rings of green, gold and black.  Also on the 
carpet was a low - at least for a giant-sized - table.  On its 
polished oak top a large but delicately-shaped teapot sent a slow 
curl of steam into the air, and next to it a strange apparatus of 
silver wires and bright stones disturbed the eye with the odd 
curvatures of its form.  The flames of the fireplace in the wall 
opposite the door burned the same pale colour as the ones in the 
child's room, and without wood.  The other two walls alternated 
between shelves of books and tapestries of a somewhat faded 
appearance.  One tapestry in particular caught Shampoo's eye; a 
lone figure, too indistinct to tell its gender, stood atop the 
pinnacle of a mountain.  With its hands raised, it appeared to 
be calling up the fire-crested waves of waters that swirled 
around the peak.

     Her attention was drawn away by Mengyua's voice.  "<We have
always kept a chair sized for your people.  Please sit and be
welcome.>"

     Shampoo drew the sword out of her belt and laid it down on
the floor beside the small chair, then rested the staff across
her knees as she sat.  The wood was warm under her hands.  
Shengxyan eased himself into his own chair with a sigh.  Both of
the giants seemed incredibly old, though strong and vital all the
same.

     Closer to the table, Shampoo was able to better examine the 
device of silver wires.  It had an appearance rather like as 
though someone had made a great spider's web of silver, and then 
tangled it endlessly.  Three polished triangular stones of green 
jade, yellow topaz and black onyx were placed within the 
labyrinth shape of the wires, seeming to hang without support.  
Flashes that did not seem like only the reflection of light upon 
the metal passed continuously along the wires.  There was somehow 
an ineffable sadness to the device, and Shampoo knew without 
knowing how that it was older than any other constructed thing 
she had ever seen.

     The attention of the giants seemed fixed upon it too.  With     
no words at all being spoken now, the three of them stared at it.
Eyes traced the tangle of wires, to find where it ended and where
it began, but there was no success.  In time, Shampoo began to 
realize that the heart of the jade stone was cracking.  Soon, it 
seemed it would shatter completely.

     "<Who are you?>" she managed to ask at last.  "<Are you
gods?>"  It seemed a possibility; they were ancient, and 
Shengxyan had used the name of Pan Qu as though he had really
existed.  

     Mengyua laughed softly, but her gaze remained fixed upon the
silver tangle of wires.  Almost automatically, she began to pour
tea.  "<We are not gods.  We are of the Tribe of Pan Qu, of the
First Ones.  When the world was young, we walked upon it, and
lived in the lands created for us.  There was no death, no pain
of any kind.  A golden age, but one borne of ignorance.  When the
Unmaker came, we could not understand the nature of the gifts he 
brought, and many accepted them gladly.>"

     Shengxyan picked up as his wife stopped speaking, with
hardly even a break between them.  "<War he brought, and death.
Our people, and the people of the other tribes, tore at
ourselves as a dying beast rakes its own entrails.  The Unmaker
laughed, until his greatest weapon turned upon him, and he was
bound.  By then, the world lay barren and filled with the poisons
of the powers used.  The Sisters Three shaped new realms for us,
as the Unmaker had shaped realms for those of our people who had
followed him.  And so we both departed from this world.>"

     The proffered teacup was warm as Shampoo took it between
both her hands.  "<And the waters rose upon the earth, and swept
away all that remained.  Good and evil, light and dark, until the
world was flat and smooth, that it might be begun again.>"  She
sipped; the tea had an odd sweetness to it, something between 
sugar and honey, and a tart berry flavour.  "<We have stories 
like that among my tribe.  Legends.>"

     "<Tell us about your tribe, then,>" Mengyua said gently.
"<Shengxyan told me what happened on the hill.  They had great
bravery.  We know little of the world outside these days.>"

     A hard pain, just as quickly suppressed.  You ran, the
voices of the dead seemed to whisper.  You ran, and left us.  No
matter how necessary it had been, she had run from battle.  There
was not supposed to be shame in that - a retreat in the face of a
superior foe was intelligent, not cowardly.  But she could not
escape the fact; she had lived while the rest had died.
     
     But the words came from her all the same - the pride of her
life as Joketsuzoku.  Days earlier, she had told much of the same
to the false thing that had called itself Asakazu; again, pain.  
In the telling, though, she passed the time to await the coming 
of the son, and the tiny cracks spread deeper within the heart of
the stone of jade.

**********

     "Are we almost there, Kasumi?"
     
     A squeeze of hands in darkness.  "Yes.  Almost."
     
     The descent into the night of the caverns had been a slow 
and gradual slope downwards.  Kasumi had led the way, as if she
could see down here.  Perhaps she could, Nabiki realized.  After
what had happened in the forest, such a thing as sight within the
dark was not so strange.  

     Down here the air was thick and moist, and there was the
endless sound of water dripping.  In places, the floor grew 
slick, and only her sister's hand kept her from falling when she
stumbled.  Kasumi never stumbled once.  She made turns that she
should never have seen in the darkness.  They were going down, so
deep it seemed there might be no coming back to the light at all.

     It was too strange, all of it.  The last day had blossomed
into a series of events that she simply was not - it hurt to
admit her own limitations, but she wasn't stupid enough not to do
so now - equipped to deal with.  They had taken them from the
house, and done something to Kuno, and there had been mist and a
dragon and...

     Kasumi squeezed her hand gently again.  "It's nearly over,
Nabiki.  We'll be at the end soon.  You don't need to be afraid;
I'm here.  Mother's here."

     Again, Nabiki wondered how far Kasumi had gone into the
comfort of this madness.  Better, she thought sadly, than how she
had been before.  Kasumi spoke now, at least, even if it was only 
to assure her that their mother - their long-dead mother - was
waiting for them.  

     They walked a little further, and Nabiki almost stumbled
again.  Kasumi caught her arm and kept her from falling.  Water
trickled in the distance.  The moisture in the air was 
oppressive, and Nabiki's clothing clung stickily to her body.  
She wiped her free hand across her forehead, pushing away the
damp bangs plastered there.

     Kasumi paused, the first time she had actually stopped
leading the way through the darkness since they'd entered.  
"There's water ahead, Nabiki.  We're going to have to pass
through it.  Don't let go of my hand."

     "Okay," Nabiki replied.  Her own voice sounded thin and 
small to her, childish.  The water must have been a pool, and not 
an underground river or stream, for there was no sound of 
rushing.  She heard the splash as Kasumi's feet entered, and then 
she too stepped into ankle-deep water.  It was cold, but not 
painfully so.  The bottom of the pool was smooth, unlike the 
rough floor of the caverns, and surprisingly unslippery.

     "Kasumi," she asked as the water rose to knee height, "what
do you think is going to happen to Dad and the others?"

     It took Kasumi a long time to answer.  The water was at the
level of their waists when she did.  "I don't know.  Maybe they
got away.  I don't think they're going to hurt them."  She 
sounded more like the sister Nabiki was used to than she had in a
long time.  "But wasn't Father brave, doing what he did?"

     "Yeah," Nabiki said quietly, feeling a telling and unwanted
itch at the corners of her eyes.  "Yeah, he was really brave."  
None of them - or at least not Kasumi - would have gotten away if
her father hadn't attacked Tofu.  

     Both of them fell silent.  The buoyancy of the water, up 
almost to her breasts now, was making it hard to walk.  A few 
more steps, and it was up to her chin.  Kasumi's hand was tight 
in hers beneath the surface of the pool as she half-pulled Nabiki 
along.  
     
     The water grew at last too deep to touch the bottom, and the
two of them floated on the surface now.  It must be a very large
pool, Nabiki realized.  A small lake, even.  She didn't have any
sense anymore that the cavern walls were close in the darkness.  
They might well have floated in an underground ocean, and she
would not have known.

     The sense that she and Kasumi were the only people in the     
world became almost overpoweringly strong.  They swam together,
hand in hand, with tiny dog-paddling motions.  It was the kind of
thing they'd done when they were very young, on family vacations,
when Mother was still alive.  The only thing missing was Akane's 
hand in her other one, though Akane had never been very 
comfortable in the water, even with the two of them to keep her
afloat.  Kasumi had always led the way then, too.

     It was hard to remember the kind of person her older sister
had been before their mother died, and Tofu moved into the
neighbourhood.  Those two events became almost synonymous with 
one another in Nabiki's mind; both had changed Kasumi in ways 
that had never been fully visible to her until now.  What would
Kasumi have been like if it hadn't gone that way?

     The bottom of the pool seemed almost infinitely far below
their feet now.  Now that they had stopped speaking, the only
sound was that of their swimming strokes breaking the surface of
the water.  Nabiki had become used to the cold of the water by
now, and was even beginning to feel calmed by the swimming in the
darkness.  It was such a strange thing; blind, led by the hand,
with the water bearing her.  

     "The ceiling here is low," Kasumi warned, a soft voice that
broke the quietude.  "Be careful."

     Cautioned now, Nabiki could again feel the weight of the
caverns pressing down in the darkness.  The sense of the water's
infinitude was gone entirely, and she knew with certainty that a
rough roof of jagged stone lay inches overhead.  Maybe there were
stalactites, she thought, hanging down, sharp, ready to catch her
if she made a single misplaced movement--

     Kasumi wouldn't let that happen.  She was leading the way.

     Now, at last, there came again the sound of water flowing.
Up ahead, she began to see a thin horizontal bar of light, enough
to let her see the vague shape of the cavern ceiling.  Beyond
that, there was the faint reflection of light upon water, a 
vaguely green tinge to it.  Even that tiniest of lights was 
enough to allow her to see the shadowy form of Kasumi swimming
ahead of her.  
     
     Their feet touched bottom, and they were forced to duck 
their heads under the water for a few seconds to leave the
tunnel and step into the light.  Soaked from head to toe, Nabiki 
stood upright, hand in hand with Kasumi in a deep pond.  A tiny 
waterfall, no taller than six feet, fell from the rocks above to 
splash gently upon the surface.  The pond lay at the base of what 
appeared to be a small mountain, from beneath which they had 
emerged.  Spray from the waterfall, misty and filled with 
sparkling motes of light, clung to Nabiki's hands and face.  It 
was warm and bright here, surrounded by tall trees and lush 
fields of grass and flowers.  The air was crisp and sharp, with a 
mild, fresh scent to it reminiscent of a day in early winter 
despite the warmth.

     Nabiki looked up, and realized then that they were inside,
impossible as that seemed.  A vast dome of green crystal
stretched overhead.  The ocean appeared to be above it; flitting 
dark shapes of fish soared by beyond the emerald barrier.  
Nervously, she saw that there were cracks in the dome, as though 
the weight of the water was growing too great for it to hold.

     "Where are we?" she asked, slipping her hand from Kasumi's.

     Kasumi looked around, and smiled.  Her eyes were bright, 
almost too bright.  "I don't know.  But it's beautiful, isn't 
it?"

     Tall grass squished damply as Nabiki made her way to the
shallow end of the pond and stepped out onto the bank.  Not even
caring if there was anyone around to see, she slipped off her
shoes, then took off her damp shirt and jeans to wring them out 
into the pool.  "Yeah.  Real nice.  I just wish I knew where the 
hell we were, or how the hell you got us here."  Out of the 
darkness, some of the old feelings were coming back.

     "Don't be angry, Nabiki," Kasumi said as she joined her on
the bank and pulled her dress overhead to do the same as Nabiki.  
"We'll see Mother soon."

     On Kasumi's back, Nabiki could see the obvious marks of
fingernail scores.  Not everything had been healed by whatever
had happened after the dragon's coming, she realized.  "I'm not
angry, Kasumi.  I just..."  She trailed away, not knowing what
she could say.  This fantasy of Mother seemed about the only
thing keeping her sister from slipping back into catatonia.  
The truth, perhaps?  "I'm just scared, Kasumi.  I'm really 
scared."

     Kasumi's arm came around Nabiki's bare shoulders, and she
edged closer on the bank of the pond.  "It's okay, Nabiki.  I'm
afraid too.  As long as we don't give in to it, it's all right."
     
     Nabiki slipped away, and tugged on her wrinkled and
still-damp shirt, pausing to adjust the whistle Shinnosuke had
given her until it hung comfortably.  "Yeah.  I guess."  She 
stood up, and stepped into her jeans one leg at a time.  "So 
where do we go now?"

     Kasumi laid her dress down on the bank and began to smooth
it out with her hands.  "It's not far."  She finished, and stood
up to put it on.  "We have to hurry, though."  

     Nabiki glanced upward at the cracking dome.  "Yeah.  I bet."
     
     Dress back on, Kasumi knelt and took off her shoes.  She
looked at them for a moment, and then tossed them away onto the
grass, where they lay amidst a scattering of yellow flowers.
She laughed, quite suddenly.

     Nabiki looked down at her own damp shoes, resting neatly 
near the bank.  Then, on impulse, she reached down, picked them
up, and hurled them as far as she could.  "Beat you for distance,
sis."

     Laughing, the two of them walked away from the splashings of
the waterfall.  Without the knowledge of the green crystal dome
overhead, Nabiki would have thought they walked through some
pleasant summer land.  There were birds flitting through the air,
quick bright shapes that occasionally lifted their voices in
song.  Kasumi took them a short distance, into a densely-wooded
section of the garden where paths of rich earth wound between the
spreading branches of pine trees.  From the underbrush, the 
sounds of small animals moving about could be heard.  

     A small brown squirrel chittered at them from within the
boughs of one tree, then leapt to the branches of another and
disappeared from sight.  A soft, tuneful humming began to be
heard, a song without words.  They turned down another path, and
up ahead the trees thinned out into a clearing.  

     And Mother was there.  Just for a moment, but Nabiki
realized instantly that somehow, a part of what Kasumi had said
was true.  For a fleeting second the woman seated in the centre
of the clearing, upon the lush carpet of the grass, was their
mother.  Not a ghost, Nabiki realized; not anything like that, 
no more than the image in a mirror is the reality of what is 
reflected.

     An ache broke through that last barrier to grief at the
sight.  Sun shone on her mother's hair.  Her smile was radiant.
She was surrounded by animals, predators and prey, birds upon her
shoulders.  Wolf, tiger, deer.  A squirrel at her feet.  She wore
a kimono of patterned leaves and vines, green on brown, brown on
green, colour blending into colour.

     "Mother," she whispered.
     
     Then the image shifted.  It wasn't Mother.  The hair was
wrong, and the face was no more her mother than the face of any
other beautiful woman might have been.  "Come, children."  She
beckoned.  The animals crowded about her moved to open a path.

     Kasumi stepped forward.  Nabiki grabbed her arm.  "That's
not Mother," she snapped.  There was a lump in her throat.  A
dark-furred wolf growled as she stepped in front of Kasumi.  "I
don't know what you are, but you can't steal my mother's face.  I
won't let you."

     The woman stood, long sleeves of her kimono waving as though 
in a wind.  Her hair was green, traced with patches of dark gold 
and fiery red.  "I stole nothing.  You placed upon me the image 
that came easiest to your mind of what I am."

     "You," Nabiki said coldly, "are not my mother.  My mother is
dead."

     "What is dead?" the woman mused.  She took a few steps
forward, the animals following her like an entourage.

     "Dead is dead," Nabiki said.  She was on the verge of
breaking down, and the rage was coming fierce and strong.  

     "Rain falls from heaven," the woman said.  Her voice was
calm, almost hypnotically beautiful.  It was hard to stay angry
at the sound of that voice, but Nabiki clung to the rage as well 
as she could.  "Rain returns to heaven.  Rain falls again."
     
     From behind, Kasumi's hand fell on Nabiki's shoulder.  "It's
all right, Nabiki."

     Nabiki whirled, voice rising into almost a shout.  "It's not
all right!  Don't you understand?  This thing, whatever it is, is
just pretending to be Mom.  I don't know what you see, but it
isn't what I see!"

     Kasumi's calm face showed no response to Nabiki's anger.
After a moment, she smiled.  Her eyes were distant, but clear and 
sharp; as if she looked at Nabiki, but from some place very far 
away.  "I see now, Nabiki.  You didn't understand.  I never said 
we were going to see our mother."

     For a moment, it was beyond Nabiki even to speak.  
     
     "Well, what did you mean, then?" she managed at last.  

     Kasumi seemed to look back at her from somewhere far beyond.
She reached out a hand, and Nabiki shied back as if her sister's 
touch would burn her.

     The voice of the woman in green came from behind, a sound of
almost unbearable beauty.  "In many places, many shapes, I am
Mother."

     Slowly, almost incapable of movement, Nabiki turned.  And 
saw again the face of her mother.  It was too much to bear at the
last; anger flowed away.  "Please stop," she said, hanging her
head.  "Just stop it."

     "I cannot," the woman said.  "This form is only a shadow.
Your mind and will are strong, nearly strong enough to see
through it to what lies deeper.  That glimpse is but a step
beyond, and so you project upon me a shape easier for you to
understand."

     It was not fair to have to face this, after all that had 
gone by.  To stand before this thing with her mother's face and a
voice that broke the heart.  

     "Look at me, Nabiki."
     
     Incapable of resisting, Nabiki raised her head.  As though
turned away from some blinding light, the animals in the grove 
had all bowed their eyes towards the ground.  When she met the
green eyes of the woman, it was like some immense collision.  A
shrouding curtain drew back from everything.

     And she saw.     
     
     An infinitude of form--
     
     Blinding brightness, the heart of a star--
     
     A force of pure will, crafting shapes from the murk of chaos 
     like a human hand shaping vessels from clay--
     
     Beginnings and endings.  It was beyond her to grasp the
sight; human eyes cannot stare long at the sun.  She seemed to
fall, down into a pit of infinite blackness, spinning as she
dropped through endless space.  Kasumi's hands upon her 
shoulders, helping her to her feet, brought her back.  Every inch
of her body felt achingly, painfully alive.  A feeling like
electricity made her all her hair stand on end.  

     The woman in green no longer had her mother's face.  Not a
trace of it.  She looked weary and tired, and there were lines at
the corners of her eyes.  The emerald in her hair was almost
entirely gone, and parts of the gold and red had turned nearly 
black.  The animals in the grove had raised their heads to look
at her again, with love and sorrow in both the liquid eyes of
deer and the sharp gazes of wolves.  

     She opened her mouth to say something, and then from far off
there came the sound of some vast explosion; the ground shook, 
and cracks ran crazily through the green dome that held out the
ocean.

     A voice boomed out, amplified to an almost deafening level.
The trees seemed to shudder at the sound of it.  "I'm here, 
traitor."  A woman's laughter tore through the air.  "I am Yoko,
and I have come to end you."

     "Too soon, too soon," the woman in green murmured, whatever 
she might have otherwise spoken lost forever.  She looked around
the grove, at the adoring animals, and a vast grief passed across
her face.  "Go, children.  Forgive me."

     Precise and ordered as a military formation, the animals
coursed from the grove and into the surrounding woods.  From
above there was the sound of splintering, and a tiny, tumbling
chip of emerald crystal came falling down from above.  Slow as a
feather it fell, glinting in the sea-filtered sunlight, to land
at Kasumi's feet.  
     
     Kasumi knelt and picked it up, studying it with seeming
fascination.  Nabiki stood stock-still, not knowing what, if
anything, to do.  From the woods, there came the scream of 
animals dying.
     
     Tears ran down the face of the woman in green.  She turned
and gestured with her hand.  Twenty feet away, the earth 
depressed, and water came bubbling in from the cracks to create a
small pool.  "I will send you through.  Give warning.  The Dark
comes again to the Valley of the Waters."

     Nabiki stared numbly at the hair of the woman.  It was 
changing as she watched; green to gold, gold to black.  Turning
back and taking a hand each from Kasumi and Nabiki, the woman 
raised them to her lips, kissed them each once.

     "Mother," Nabiki heard herself say.  
     
     Most of the trees caught fire, exploding into torches.  In 
seconds, they were ash.  Striding through the destruction came 
the woman in grey, the air around her hazy as if some vast heat 
burned from her.  Kuno paced beside her, swords out and covered 
in blood, his face a blank expanse of black leather.  In the 
distance, men wielded swords and spears against the snarling 
forms of wolf and tiger, as deer fell screaming and dying from 
hurled bolts of power from the women in the patchwork robes.  
There were too many of the enemy; the animals were being 
slaughtered.  Their bravery hurt to watch.

     "Go," the woman in green said.  "Into the pool."  She let go
of their hands and stepped in front of them.  "Leave this place,"
she said, addressing Yoko.  Her voice was cold as ice.

     Yoko said nothing in reply.  She raised her hands, and
something nearly invisible sliced through the air, so fast it 
left a trail of ripples behind it.  The woman in green shifted 
her stance, and the blast dissipated before it touched her.
     
     "Go," she said again.  Nabiki moved first, grabbing the arm
of her sister and running for the pond.  Five steps from it, 
there was a blurred movement from the side, and Kuno intersected
their path.  They skidded to a halt.  Kuno snapped his swords out
to the sides, the points nearly brushing the grass, and a low, 
rattling breath came from within the black hood that covered his 
head.

     "Kuno--"
     
     Kuno paced forward on the balls of his feet.  His swords
came up overhead.  Nabiki's eyes widened, and her words were cut
off by a low sound of fear.

     The swords came down, and rang on wood.  Shinnosuke had come
from seemingly out of nowhere.  "GO!" he shouted, throwing his
weight forward and driving Kuno back.  The twin swords blurred 
into flashes of steel; Shinnosuke barely managed to parry them on 
the shaft of his broom.

     Kasumi made the pool first.  More specifically, Nabiki
looked back at the last minute, to see Kuno slide one blade up 
the shaft of the broom and into Shinnosuke's heart.  The boy's 
mouth opened in a soft gasp, and then he toppled off, sliding 
from the impaling sword with a wet sound.  Nabiki heard the 
splash of Kasumi hitting the water, and then Kuno was coming at 
her.  He had dropped his swords upon the grass, and his hands 
were open as if to grapple.  Changed orders, obviously; they 
wanted her alive.  The battle between Yoko and the woman in
green was obscured by a dense and boiling cloud of mist, and a
terrible silence emanated from within it.

     The pool was a step behind her, Kuno a step in front of her.  
Whatever had been done to him was partly her fault; it was an 
irrational thought, but it was there all the same.  She wasn't 
Ranma; hell, she wasn't even Akane.  But she'd learned a little
from the few lessons her father had given her.  

     She threw a palm-blow at his face.  As she'd expected, he
shot a hand up and grabbed her wrist.  The slight lunge forward
as he did so let her use his weight and momentum against him.  It
was no trouble, no trouble at all, to send them both down into 
the pool together.  The last sight she saw before the water took
them was the dome crack open, with a sound like a mountain
breaking, to let the sea come pouring in.

*********     
     
     Jusenkyou, though beautiful in the early morning as the sun
struck the pools and made them glow and the mist dispersed and
rose into the air, did not compare to Tang Jin.  Nothing did; 
despite what he had become, the Serpent was still quite capable
of understanding human concepts of beauty, and no place would
ever compare to Tang Jin.  The golden lake had shone with light
like the sun, still and calm within the cradling banks of green
rushes.  In the centre, the tiny temple had stood upon its 
island, and in the basin in the centre of the four pillars of
red-gold wood, the power of the waters had been concentrated to
the point where a sip of them was said to cure all ailments of
mind and body, and make the drinker young again.  The warden of 
Tang Jin, who he had once been in a time so long gone that it 
might as well have been another world, had been their guardian.

     Now he stood looking down at Jusenkyou, with the morning 
wind in his hair, and dew clinging to the grass at his feet.  In
one hand, he loosely held his sword.  Old memories threatened, as
they always did.  Small birds flitted from sparse tree to sparse
tree, singing in high voices to the sun; a swallow was engaged in 
industriously building a nest in one tree.

     Suddenly, the birds went dead silent.  The Serpent felt the
presence of Shouzin before anything else, a foul metallic taste 
in the back of his mouth.  He turned to see the Traitor standing
with a dozen of his kin.  Their mouths and sharp teeth were
covered in sticky blood.  "I didn't ask you to come here."

     Shouzin shrugged; the light swam slickly on his black wings.
"We've heard from a higher force than you.  You didn't kill the
girl, did you?  She got away."

     The Serpent raised his eyebrow slightly.  "The Queen?"
     
     Shouzin nodded.  "The Queen."
     
     Inwardly, The Serpent seethed.  He knew very little about
the realities of the world to which Shouzin and his kin had fled 
after the final battle, but if the one they called the Queen was 
able to talk to her servants through the barriers, it could 
become problematic.  Shouzin was already too cocky as it was; if 
he believed that he was acting on some other orders, he might 
become uncontrollable.

     He suppressed a sigh, and quite casually decapitated the
nearest one of Shouzin's kin with a backhand stroke of his sword.
There wasn't much blood; the Ironwing Clan didn't have much in
them, even after feeding.

     "There is no higher power of the Dark on this world but I,"
he said casually, kicking the head down the hill towards the
pools.  "Please remember that."

     Shouzin nodded, keeping his composure.  "Yes."  His forked
tongue darted out and licked at the blood on his lips.  "The
Joketsuzoku left quite a lot of food in their houses.  Also many
animals in their pastures.  We aren't so hungry any longer."

     "Good," the Serpent said shortly.  He pointed with his sword
to the small hut on the other side of the pools.  "Take half of
your kin and bring the man in that hut and his daughter to me.  
They are not to be harmed.  The rest of you..."  He paused.  Two
of Shouzin's kin were kneeling down over the body of their dead
comrade, anticipatory gleams in their red-edged eyes.  "I thought
you weren't hungry."

     Shouzin shrugged again.  "You eat when you can.  Never know
when your next meal will come."

     Disgusted, the Serpent turned and walked away.  "Just do
what you're told.  Half of you to the hut, half of you keep watch     
from the air.  This won't take long."

     He threaded his way along the earthen pathways that divided
the pools from each other.  Hazy reflections swam in dozens of
the pools as he passed them by.  The earth was soft, and yielded
beneath his feet.  In the air above him, the dark shapes of the
Ironwing Clan soared.  He saw that most of them had a small chunk
of their dead kin to chew on.  Horrible things, but necessary for
his purposes at this point.  

     The waters whispered to him.  Come, they said.  Come back 
to me.  The siren-song was strongest here, but he'd gone four
thousand years resisting it, and would not give in now.  Not when 
he was so close to his heart's desire.

     Shrieks of laughter came from two of the Ironwing above him,
as they fought over what looked like an arm.  Little more than
beasts now; Shouzin, who had been so fair, was worse than any of
them.  The long, slow grinding of the Dark had rid them of 
everything but hunger.  He had gone longer, and would go longer
still, but would not let himself forget any of what he had been;
that was what let him remain what he was.

     It was a small, unremarkable pool that he came to at last.
Two small bamboo poles stuck out of it, one of them broken off.
The flows of power, however, revealed that no one had fallen into
this pool, or come near it in all the years of Jusenkyou's 
existence.  The sleeping guardian kept them all away.  Not him;
he was beyond such things, now and forever.

     He drove his sword into the spongy earth near the pool,
amidst a clump of dark reeds.  Then, he knelt and plunged his
head and upper body into the water.  The pool was not deep;
stretching out a long arm, he searched through the silty tangle
of weeds at the bottom until his hand closed over a spherical
shape.  Gripping it tight, he rose up out of the pool.

     At last.  Had he not gone so far from what he had once been,
tears would have sprang to his eyes at the joy that rushed 
through him.  The master howled inside his head, and it was then
that he knew.  Yoko had done it.  Laughter filled his mind, and
came coursing out through his mouth.  Overhead, the Ironwing Clan
joined him.  Fools, he thought, still laughing.  You know 
nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

     Water dripped off his hand like rain as he raised the 
fist-sized golden pearl from the depths it had lain in for four 
thousand years, and longer even than that in different form.  
The surface was mottled with swirls of pale and dark gold, and
had a glowing lustre to it.  Sold, its worth would have been 
almost incalculable.  He cleaned the clinging bits of weed from 
it, and walked on.  The next pool had been fallen into, and 
quite recently.  He could see the connection stretching off to 
the south.  
     
     This time, he had to dive into the pool and dig around at
the bottom before he found what he was looking for.  When he came
out of the pool, water shining on his golden hair, he studied it.
It was an almost featureless lump of stone, squat and rough.  
Three crude lumps atop it might have been meant to represent
heads; another two in the middle were likely breasts.  The 
story of the pool had been all wrong, of course.  Tales twisted 
over four thousand years.  What so few realized in the end was 
that form was unimportant; power was everything, in the end.

     A voice began to interrupt the laughter of the master inside 
his head, as he cradled the primal statue in his arms.  
Describing it as insane was not adequate; it had never even 
been sane to begin with.  The master retreated back from him,
letting the screaming howl fill his mind.

     His fingers stroked the smooth, water-weathered stone of the
statue.  "How many names do you have, my lady?" he whispered
almost respectfully.  "Morrigan?  Inanna?  Athena?  Ashura?"  The
voice calmed slightly.  "I know a part of you was in all those, 
as was a part of them."  The Ironwing soared overhead; he 
wondered what was taking Shouzin so long to bring the Guide and 
his daughter.  "They don't understand either.  You cannot escape
what you are.  It will all return to him in the end.  
Everything."

     Her names came then, and her titles.  He reached down and 
grabbed the golden pearl.  There were no words to scream.  Words 
were not necessary.  Will and hate were enough.

     A low moan, barely a whisper, came involuntarily from him.
With all his strength, all the rage and hate and pain of four
thousand years of walking completely and utterly alone upon the
world, the Serpent - who had been Yan once, but no more - brought
the golden pearl and the crude stone statue slamming together
over his head, so that both of them shattered into a thousand
pieces, and so he brought the Dark down upon the Valley of the 
Waters.
     
**********

     Ryoga heard Rouge scream, and looked up for only an instant
from Akane cradled in his arms.  The arrow had gone all the way
through her left forearm.  Blood was everywhere, and her face was
sickeningly pale.  

     There was a searing light, and the two Joketsuzoku standing
next to Rouge caught fire.  They screamed and fell, writhing and
burning.  The air around Rouge was filled with licking tongues of
red fire.  She was still screaming; the Joketsuzoku joined her
now.

     Bows twanged from the women on the upper slopes of the
mountains enfolding the pass, and arrows arced through sky.  
They caught fire and turned to ash before they came within five 
feet of Rouge.  

     Bi Shou shouted something in Chinese, half in rage and half
in terror.  Rouge raised her hands.  She stopped screaming, and
started to laugh.  It was twisted beyond all recognition of
humanity; dozens of female voices, deep and high, all laughing
together and all completely insane; laden with hate, so much
that it seemed to drip from the sound like poison.

     Jets of fire lashed from Rouge like whips.  They raked the
Joketsuzoku in the mountains with burning talons, and the women
cried out and died.  The sickening smell of scorched flesh filled
the air.

     "It begins," Mousse said to Bi Shou.  "Look north.  Look 
and see the truth of what you have allied yourself with."
     
     As he had before, Ryoga picked up Akane, and ran down the
pass the same way they'd been heading before the ambush.  Bi 
Shou and Bai Ling, the only Joketsuzoku still alive, did the 
same.  

     "Mousse!"  Ryoga called back over his shoulder as he ran,
trying as hard as he could to keep Akane still.  The other boy 
stood unmoving by where his spear had been thrust into the
ground.  A sea of fire blazed around Rouge; the body of the two
Joketsuzoku that had been holding her had been entirely consumed.
She was still laughing, head thrown back and hair streaming
wildly in the waves of heat created by the flames.  She looked 
both stunningly beautiful and impossibly terrible.  To the north, 
a spot of utter blackness hung in the sky, but it was too far to
make out any details other than that.
     
     Mousse plucked the spear from the earth, and held it out
point-first towards Rouge.  "You and I might battle each other
here," he intoned.  A white flare of power burned to life on the
barbed head of the spear.  "I speak this truth in the name of my
lady, as she is known as Lady of Ends.  Only one of us will leave
here alive if we fight.  Are you confident enough that it will be
you?"

     Rouge had stopped laughing.  Ryoga paused in his running, 
and looked back to watch the confrontation a hundred feet back up
the pass.  Somehow, he didn't care that he was turning his back 
on Bi Shou and Bai Ling.  As far as he could tell, they just kept 
on running.
     
     The fire blazing around Rouge shrank inward, until it was
only an aureole of white-hot light that hung around her body like
a cloak.  Her eyes were searing pits of flame, pale as snow and
edged with red.  When she spoke, the triple echo of her voice 
sliced at the senses.  Hearing it, Ryoga's mind filled with an
inexplicable terror, a desperate and primal need to flee.  "I am
so much older than your little bauble.  I am the tongue of war 
and the mouth of hell."  A ball of lightning crackled in one hand 
as she raised it to the sky; in the other, red flames leapt and 
danced.

     "Ryoga?" Akane asked softly, her head resting against his
shoulder.  Her eyes were closed, but she did not look as pale as
moments ago.  "What's happening to Rouge?"

     "I don't know, Akane," Ryoga replied truthfully.  "It 
reminds me of when she was Ashura but..."  But she had been cured
at Jusenkyou.  Ashura was no more, as his own curse was no more.
All evidence, he noted ruefully, appeared to point to the 
contrary.  

     Lightning and fire leapt from Rouge's hands, to strike and
shatter the ground where Mousse had stood a moment before.  At 
the apex of the leap that had carried him out of harm's way, he
hurled his spear like a javelin.  It shot through the air at a 
blinding speed, and bit deep into Rouge's shoulder.  White light
exploded like a tiny sun; the thousand-voiced scream was full of 
pain.  

     Mousse landed lightly on his feet and held up his hand.  
The spear, burning as it flew, shot back into his grip.  "This 
was forged far from here, both in time and place.  It can hurt 
the body you have taken in a way that other weapons cannot."

     Ryoga stared with sick fascination at the scene.  Rouge had
a gaping, bloody hole in one shoulder, but it seemed already to
be closing.  Her lips were pulled back into a rictus snarl.  
"Later, then."

     "Later," Mousse replied quietly.  
     
     Again, Ryoga's eyes found their way to the north.  The hole 
in the sky was growing.  Rouge - or whatever she had become - 
cried out, half in triumph and half in rage, and leapt into the
sky in a rush of flames.  She hung suspended for a moment a
hundred feet above their heads, then soared away to the 
north, became in seconds a speck, and seconds later was lost 
entirely from sight.

     A glance to his shoulder showed him that Akane had opened
her eyes.  "How do you feel?" he asked softly.  The shadow of the
mountains turned her pale face into a patchwork of light and
dark.

     "Look out!" she cried weakly, eyes suddenly wide.
     
     Ryoga leapt aside, as a wave of daggers studded the earth at
his feet.  Senses screaming danger from the left side, he spun,
desperately trying not to drop Akane, and kicked Bai Ling's
polearm from her hands as it sliced down in a diagonal cut that
would have taken him in half at the shoulder.  Bai Ling was slow
compared to him, not even as fast as Shampoo.  Even encumbered
with Akane, he wouldn't have any trouble with her.

     Something sharp hit his side.  Another knife sliced into his
shoulder.  There was a moment's panic before the calm of battle
came down upon him, and he realized the wounds were minor.  Bai
Ling seemed to realize she was outmatched, and backed away from
him; out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bi Shou dart behind
the cover of a boulder, more knives glinting in her hands.

     Akane was the most important thing, he reminded himself.
There was still an arrow through her arm to worry about.  Bai
Ling faked an attack to the side, then came at him in a series of
snapping high kicks.  He turned his body to protect Akane, took a
hard blow to the small of his back for it, and then knocked Bai
Ling's legs out from under her.  She landed hard, but his need to
dodge a wave of knives from Bi Shou gave her time to recover.  
Bai Ling came up fighting, using her hands to thrust off the
ground into a two-footed kick that nearly connected with Ryoga's
head.  Graceful and acrobatic, she spun as she passed over him 
and landed easily on her feet.

     Ryoga cursed inside his head.  If he didn't have to hold
Akane like this, even if he didn't have to worry about not making
the wound of her arm any worse, he would have taken Bai Ling down
in seconds.  He realized vaguely that one of Bi Shou's knives was
stuck in his side, and was making his breathing hard and fiery.

     Then everything changed, because Mousse's spear flew from
out of nowhere and struck the rock Bi Shou was hiding behind.  It
split in half with a boom and a detonation of light, and Bi Shou
cried out as she was slammed back against the mountainside from 
the force of the impact.  Bai Ling hesitated only for a second, 
but it was too much.  This time, Ryoga's awkward kick caught her 
full in the stomach, and she crumpled to the ground with a gasp.

     Cradling Akane in his arms - she seemed to have passed out
again, no surprise in the frenetic ride she'd undergone in the
short fight - Ryoga stared down at the Joketsuzoku as she
struggled to draw breath.  There was still a hard core of rage in
him over Akane's injury; they had shot her simply because Mousse
hadn't put his spear down fast enough.  

     But that had been at Bi Shou's order, and Bai Ling had no
part in it.  She was a comparative innocent in this, though she
certainly hadn't hesitated to try and take his head off.  Fang
Shi's great-granddaughter all the way.

     "You're beaten," he said, trying to take as much sting out
of the words as he could.  "Don't make it any worse on yourself."

     Bai Ling struggled to her knees.  Her long dark hair hid her
face from him as she clutched her stomach and tried desperately
to breathe.  Ryoga felt a twinge of sympathy; he knew quite well 
how much a hard hit to the gut like that could hurt.

     Like a shadow, Mousse appeared at his right hand.  "The main
body of the Joketsuzoku are perhaps three hours away.  We need to
move."

     "We've got time," Ryoga answered as he knelt and carefully
laid Akane down on the ground.  "We have to take care of this
wound."  

     "Looks that you need yours taken care of as well," Mousse
said.  He gestured with his spear at the dagger in Ryoga's side.
     
     Ryoga grinned and grasped the hilt with a gasp.  "It didn't
hit anything vital."  He could feel the blade grate on his ribs
as he shifted it; even for someone as used to pain as he was, it 
was quite unpleasant.  With a sudden movement of his arm, he 
wrenched the bloodied blade free and tossed it away, stifling a 
yell.  "That hurts."  He clamped his hand over the shallow wound 
to stifle the blood flow.  It didn't take long; he healed fast.  
As long as he didn't move too much in the next few hours, he'd be
fine.    

     Mousse, despite his closed eyes, seemed to be staring at Bai
Ling.  "Ganging up on someone who's burdened with carrying a 
wounded friend.  Hardly fair."  He grinned; there was a flash of 
the old Mousse in it, the comrade Ryoga had known, and then it 
vanished.  Ryoga hoped Ranma - if... no, when they found him - 
would have come through this whole long journey less changed 
than Mousse had.

     Bai Ling looked up, face slightly green.  "You know how to
treat arrow wound?"  Her Japanese was understandable, but even
more heavily-accented than Shampoo's.

     Ryoga glared at her suspiciously.  "Maybe.  We have to get 
it out first."

     "You lucky we not use barbed arrows," Bai Ling said
brusquely moving over to where Mousse and Ryoga knelt by Akane.  
"Break feathers off and draw it all the way through.  Tear wound 
less that way."
     
     Ryoga frowned, unhappily confused.  "Why are you so helpful
all of a sudden?"

     "Law requires," Bai Ling said.  Her tone was that of someone
resigned to doing something because they had no other choice.

     "Law requires what?"
     
     "Law requires that wife help husband."
     
     For a moment, Ryoga was too stunned to say anything at all.
Next to him, Mousse let out a soft, breathy sound that was 
almost a laugh.  

     "But I didn't knock you out," he said at last.
     
     Bai Ling grimaced, and then scowled deeply.  "Not matter.
Could have killed.  Didn't.  I like it a lot less than you do."

     "I don't like it at all!"
     
     "You man.  You think different.  With groin, not with head."
     
     Ryoga groaned.  He had no way of dealing with this right
now, so simply decided not to.  "Can we discuss this after we 
pull the arrow?"

     Mousse looked up from where he was slowly and carefully
pulling the broken shaft of the arrow out of Akane's arm.  There
was a lot of blood.  "Don't worry about it.  I'll handle it."
Akane groaned, and her eyes flitted open.  Mousse touched her
forehead with the fingers of one hand, and they closed.

     Ryoga hesitated for a moment, and then stood up.  "Come with
me, please?" he asked Bai Ling with a sigh.  She nodded 
grudgingly, and followed him a short distance away to a shady
stand of twisted trees that had somehow thrived in the almost 
bare rock of the path.  

     Bai Ling watched him impassively, arms folded over her
chest.  She was quite tall, nearly as tall as he was.  "You not
like somewhere more private, husband?"  The tone was bitter.  
"Or you rather do it right here?"

     Ryoga gasped and fought to stop himself from blushing.  
"Just what kind of man do you think I am?"
     
     She snorted.  "A man."
     
     Shaking his head, Ryoga turned away.  "Just get out of here.
Go back to your great-grandmother and kill some more prisoners."

     A cold, palpable silence from Bai Ling made him glance back.
Head bowed, fists clenched at her sides, she suddenly did not 
look so much defiant as miserable.  "I can't.  You not understand
anything.  I lose; great-grandmother never let me come back now
when she find out."

     Ryoga hesitated again, unsure of what to do, and then at
last stepped next to her, so that they stood side to side rather
than face to face.  "You see that?"  He pointed to the north,
where the black hole was growing slowly but surely in the sky.
"Do you have any idea what that is?"

     Bai Ling looked up, and moved her hand to brush back hair
from her eyes.  "No."

     Mouth twitching into a frown, Ryoga shaded his hand with his
eyes against the sun and stared.  The wound in his side throbbed
painfully.  "I don't either.  But it isn't good."

     There was a silence for a time.  At last, Bai Ling spoke,
and her voice was distant and small.  "I think..."  She trailed
off.

     Ryoga looked over.  "What?"
     
     "I think that great-grandmother has done a terrible thing."
     
     Mousse's voice interrupted any response Ryoga could have
made.  It was very quiet, the softest possible level of speech
that would still reach them.  "Come in close," he said.  "Move
slowly.  They're all around us."

     And then there was the sound of wings.
     
**********     
     
     "<One, two, three.>"
     
     A chair creaked as someone sat down on it.  Plum opened one
sleepy eye from where she lay on her pallet in a corner of the
tiny hut, and yawned.  "<Father?>"

     Her father glanced over at her.  "<I was about to wake you.
Get dressed.>"  At the table in front of him, three half-full
glasses of water stood.

     Something in Father's tone made Plum obey immediately, 
without taking the few pleasurable minutes of lying in bed while 
half-awake that she sometimes did.  "<What's wrong, father?>"

     "<Visitors,>" her father said shortly.

     Plum tugged her shoes on quickly.  The morning fire had
already been lit in the stove, making the entire hut almost
uncomfortably warm.  "<Are you expecting them?>"

     "<I am now,>" the Guide said.  His eyes watched the front
door, the only way in or out of the dwelling, with an almost
frightening intensity.

     Plum walked over and put her hand on his knee.  <Father...>"
     
     One, two, three.  Three knocks upon the door.
     
     "<Open up,>" someone said from the other side.  It sounded
as though they were speaking with their mouth full.

     Father reached down with one hand and moved Plum back from
the table with one hand.  His chair scraped back as he stood, one
glass of water held tremblingly in his grip.

     "<It's open,>" he said.
     
     The hinges of the door creaked, and then something smashed
through the ceiling in a shower of splintered wood.  It landed on
the balls of its feet and surveyed the tiny interior with a hiss.
Plum's blood ran cold; the Phoenix had been frightening at times,
but recognizably human in ancestry.  This bore the same 
resemblance to them that a walking corpse might to a human; it 
seemed to have no flesh, only tight-stretched skin and hard 
muscle over its bones.  The face was the exception, round and 
red-cheeked, and with a mouth full of jagged teeth.

     Father threw the water on it.  A tiny swallow blinked with
surprise on the floor where the monster had been, and then the
door crashed off its hinges, and three more of them loomed 
beyond it.  

     "<Run, Plum.>"
     
     Before she even heard her father, she was in motion, not
even giving the monsters time to react.  One made a grab for her,
and she saw that it had human hands, long-fingered and thin as
the rest of it.  Plum darted aside and kept on running, as she
heard behind her the splash of water and an inhuman cry of rage.
Down the slope, she saw more of the black-winged monsters perched
upon the bamboo poles of the pools, or flying in the sky above
them.  A single human figure stood at almost the exact centre of
Jusenkyou; his arms were raised to the sky, and directly over 
him, high above the pools, a maw of absolute blackness was 
opening.  Plum's gaze was drawn into it like a tiny ship into a
whirlpool, and the only thing that broke it away was the flash of
movement from the sky above her.

     The winged shape struck the turf where she'd been, the 
ground almost shaking beneath the force of its impact.  It was
towering, red-eyed, and a barbed tail lashed around its legs.  

     Plum ran, not caring of direction.  There was a feeling in
the air that reminded her of the nights when the lights came to
Jusenkyou, and the voices could be heard crying out that Father
said might be the souls of those who drowned.  But there was a
keening edge to it, a sense of something that could only be
called fear.  

     And a howling.  She heard it now, a definite sound.  There 
was a blaze of light overhead, a red glow as if a ball of fire
were passing above her; she involuntarily looked up as she ran,
and saw that the monster with the tail had stopped pursuing her
to do the same.

     It looked like a woman wrapped in flame and light.  She was
high overhead, on the same level as the rip in the sky - though 
it was rather difficult to judge the dimensions or even exact
location of what looked for all purposes like a tear in the air
itself.  Laughing and screaming at the same time, she whirled in
a dance around the black hole, and it seemed to grow larger and
move ravenous as she did.

     Plum decided to ignore all of this, interesting as it was,      
in favour of simply surviving.  She fled, not towards Jusenkyou,
but away from it, down the slope of the hill that the hut was on 
towards the west.  As her feet passed a certain point, she felt
the tingling, indescribable feeling that somehow let her know 
that she had passed beyond the borders of Jusenkyou itself.

     The wild hope of escape vanished as the tailed one dropped
soundlessly from the sky to land in front of her.  Plum almost
ran back the way she had come, but she knew - somehow, she knew -
that she must not pass back over that line into the confines of
Jusenkyou.

     To each side of her, two more of the things dropped.  A low
sob of fear and terror escaped her; the things were red-eyed and
snarled like beasts through their fanged mouths, faces twisted by
the size of their fangs.  

     "<It looks so tender,>" one of them said.  
     
     "<Tasty,>" the other agreed.  Both of them looked almost
pleadingly to the tall one with the tail, who made a sound like a 
sigh and shook his head.

     "<No,> he answered.  "<Even a tasty meal isn't worth losing
your head for.>"

     They moved in closer, perfectly synchronized as machines.
There was no escape.  The winged beasts were lean and hungry, and
Plum saw now that their teeth were stained with blood.

     From above, someone spoke.  Female, and - frightening and 
familiar as it was to hear it again - it was blessedly more
pleasant to hear than the growling, murky voices of the winged
monsters.  "<Hold, in the king's name.>"

**********

     Yoko almost cried out as the dome broke and the sea fell -
even filled as she was with so much power that she felt well able
to crack the core of the earth if she wanted.  Thousands of tons
of water coming down at you had a frightening power in it as
well, however.

     They were evenly matched, she and the last remnant of the
force that had ruled Ryugenzawa.  In the ruins of the garden, the
animals were being slaughtered by the warriors of the Children
and the mages of the Circle, though she could only hear the
sounds of the animals dying.  The mist had obscured all but the
figure of the thing that looked like a woman in a green kimono.
It might easily have looked like a dragon, or anything else it
wanted; power defined the form it desired at that level.

     Their battle, short as it was, had been fought on the
highest level of power possible, past the point where it ceased
to be a definable physical force in the world.  It had become a 
striving of will against will, force against force.  The Lady of 
Life was ancient and more experienced than Yoko could ever hope 
to be, but she was weakened and disoriented by the death of her 
avatar, and Yoko was filled with her own hate and power, backed 
by that of the master.

     It had been even.  Until the sea came in, and the Lady of
Life raised her hands and turned it away from both of them,
letting it fall to either side as though broken upon rocks.  The 
sea swept through the garden in an endless tide, pouring through 
the huge hole in the dome, drowning men and women and animals, 
splintering the trees and ripping plants out by the roots.  The
body of Shinnosuke was whirled away from where it lay nearby,
lost forever to the waters.

     It took Yoko only a second to weave a patch, a shimmering
spiderweb of black strands that bulged but held the water out.
The Lady of Life cast her hands down, and the seas swirled about
them.  There was nothing to be seen of life within the waters;
all dragged down to the bottom.  Yoko clenched her fist, and the
ground beneath them shifted with a cracking of stone to rise like 
a spire above the surging waters.

     "It is over, traitor," she crowed.  The hate of the master
filled her like fire or a lover, triumphantly pleased.       
     
     The Lady of Life dropped her hands to her sides, letting the     
seas calm.  The garden was entirely filled with water now, except
for the precarious tower upon which the two combatants stood.

     "No," she refuted.  "It is never over.  We two have played
this out an infinitude of times before, and an infinitude of
times after, and all of this has already taken place in all
places."

     Yoko laughed.  "So it is said by some that we are but a cog
in the spinning wheel of fate, weaving the cloth of stars and
time.  But I am here, and you are here, and now you are ended,
Lady of Life.  My lord sends his greetings, and his hate, and 
tells you to remember that all in the end will be his again."

     "It was never his to begin with."  The waters were calm and
flat as glass now.  With a swift motion, the green kimono was
gone, and the Lady of Life was naked before her with her garment
at her feet.  "Strike me down, Yoko.  Strike down this flesh, 
strike down the sun from the sky, tumble down the mountains.  It 
will not bring your children back to life."

     Yoko raised her hand.  A black line of light, thin as her
finger, shot forth.  It struck the Lady of Life directly through
the heart, and flung her back into the sea.  She hit with a
splash, bobbed once, and sank down within.  The kimono slipped
with a rustle of silk off the edge after its wearer.

     At that, at victory, the strength seemed to go from Yoko.
She crumpled to her knees, and tore her glasses from her face
with such force that they nearly slipped from her hands to fall
into the water.  There were no tears; there never could be, not
from these eyes.  "My children," she murmured.  "My children, my
children."  And her husband, her long-dead husband dead on a 
cruiser in the South Pacific.  They had used light, the power of
the sun itself, to kill children.  How many nights had she spent
praying for it to end, until the solace of this service had found
her?

     When she had regained control again, come back out of the
pit, she stood up and looked around at the calm waters.  Their
placidity seemed to mock her.  For a moment, she nearly cast the 
black glasses in her hand into the sea, but then she slipped 
them back on and pushed them up her nose to position them 
correctly.

     From a pocket of her robes, she withdrew the talisman that
bound her to Tatewaki Kuno and reached out for him.  There was
nothing; she frowned, and put it away.  From another pocket, she
drew out a silver watch upon a chain and glanced at the hands.

     "Ritter," she said softly.  "I am ready.  I hope that you
are as well."

**********
     
     There were perhaps forty of them, winged soldiers in the
garb of Mount Phoenix with spears and bows.  They came down from
the mountains, wings open to let them glide gently to the ground.

     "Well," Ryoga said to Mousse with a wry grin.  "Looks like
we found what we wanted."

     Mousse said nothing as the Phoenix landed in a circle around
them.  They looked wary, but not openly hostile; most seemed far
more nervous about the hole opening in the sky to the north than 
about the small group of humans they'd surrounded.  

     Bai Ling's expression was odd, almost relieved.  Ryoga
didn't understand that; her great-grandmother had been the one to
tell the entire village that the Phoenix had ambushed and
slaughtered the Council.  There was more going on here than Ryoga
understood, something he didn't like at all.  Bad enough that 
he'd defeated her, like a total idiot; of course, the alternative
had probably been worse.

     "You are all right?" one of the Phoenix asked.  Hulking and
middle-aged, he wore black and grey, and carried a hammer rather
than the spear the rest of his comrades did.  His voice was
cautious.

     Mousse didn't speak, so Ryoga was forced to.  "We've got one
with an arrow wound."  He paused, and thought of what to say
about Bi Shou.  "And an unconscious enemy."

     Before there was any response, one more winged man dropped
from the sky; he was all in black and gold, more richly-dressed 
than any member of the Phoenix Ryoga had seen except for Saffron.  
In his arms he held a woman with long dark hair, and she had her 
hands twined around the back of his neck for support.  Ryoga's 
throat went dry; he could not have spoken for anything.

     "You," he finally managed, when the shock went away enough 
to let him speak.  He was totally unprepared for this, for     
any kind of response.

     "So it comes full circle," Cologne said, almost amused.  
She swung down lightly from the arms of the winged man and
smoothed out her tight-fitting dress.  Her eyes flicked to Bai
Ling, and the mild amusement vanished instantly.  "What are you
doing here?  And where's Shampoo?"

     Bai Ling simply looked confused.  "Who are you?"
     
     "Who am I?" Cologne snapped.  "What are you, blind?"
     
     "Cologne," the winged man standing beside her said, "you
probably look quite different from when she last saw you."

     "The Joketsuzoku are on a War March against Phoenix 
Mountain," Ryoga blurted.  It probably wasn't the most tactful
way to tell them, but it was quick, and he was too surprised to
think much.

     Cologne's mouth opened and closed a few times.  "I knew I
shouldn't have gone away for so long," she said at last.  Behind
her, the richly-robed winged man had gone pale.  Bai Ling
flinched, and silently brooded as she looked at the ground.

     "All of this is bound together," the winged man said, 
pointing at the hole in the sky.  "I felt something awaken in 
this place, which is why we came."

     "Rouge," Ryoga said.  At the blank look from Cologne and the
winged man, who seemed to be somehow important from the 
respectful glances of the other Phoenix, he continued.  "A friend 
of ours.  She had a curse from the Ashura pool--"
     
     "Damn!" the winged man said, cutting him off.  
     
     "The tongue of war is woken," Mousse said, breaking his
silence.  He was leaning on his spear like a staff, and his voice
was grim.  "Wolf and phoenix are fallen, dragon and serpent walk
again.  The Dark comes down."

     Cologne started, and so did everyone else.  Ryoga had begun
to think Mousse had become hard to notice if he didn't want to be
noticed.

     "Gods of the heavens, boy.  What's happened to you?" Cologne
asked.  She took a step forward.

     Mousse smiled, almost imperceptibly.  "I'm strong, old
ghoul.  Strong like I always wanted to be."

     Ryoga at last managed to gain some control over his 
thoughts.  "Where's Ranma?"

     "Ranma?  With Kima," Cologne said offhandedly.  "That's not
important right now.  What I want to know is--"

     "Kima!"
     
     Ryoga looked down.  Akane had struggled up to a sitting
position, and was now trying to clamber to her feet.  There was a
rage that Ryoga would have called murderous from anyone else in
her eyes as she looked at Cologne.  "Kima!" she said again, and
finally managed to get upright.  She was pale, almost white, and
every step she took towards Cologne looked as though it would be 
her last.  "You took him away from me, and now he's with Kima?  
What the hell have you done, you old hag?  What was this all 
for?"

     She didn't make it another step.  Ryoga caught her and
lowered her to the ground.  Akane looked like she was on the
verge of breaking down completely.  "Just rest," Ryoga told her.
"Ranma's okay.  He's okay, Akane."  The relief in him was almost
unbearable; Ranma was alive, and, from all signs, well.

     "I want to see him!" she snarled.  "Ryoga, let me back up. I 
have to kill Cologne for doing this to me!"

     "There are more pressing things going on right now than your
inability to keep your emotions in check, Akane Tendo," Cologne 
said icily.

     Ryoga turned, and jabbed a finger at her.  "You shut up," he 
said.  "I don't know why you did it, and I don't care right now.  
You can explain it all later.  You hurt a lot of people, Cologne, 
and you put them in danger too.  All because of some stupid 
scheme you couldn't bother to tell any of us about.  So shut up."

     Cologne fell silent.  Ryoga was gratified to see that his
words had obviously struck home.  His eyes fell to the winged man
standing beside Cologne; he was familiar, somehow.  It sent a
cold chill down Ryoga's back when he realized the man was 
Saffron's physical twin, though his colouring was entirely
different.

     The winged man noticed his surprise, obviously.  "I am
Samofere, the king of Phoenix Mountain."  The rest of the
Phoenix suddenly dropped to their knees on the ground.  Samofere
looked embarrassed.  "Cologne is right, though her tone needs a
little work."  Cologne sniffed beside him and punched him on the
arm, but there was a tiny smile on her face as she did it.  
"Events are in motion.  I recognize the mark of the Spearbearer,
and I know that he speaks true.  For now, we must--"  He stopped,
his expression suddenly going distant.  Suddenly not paying any
attention to anything at all, he turned his head to look north.

     Then, of all things, he laughed.  A sharp, high giggle.
     
     "Pierce earth, pierce sky," he recited.  "Pierce heaven to
its core.  Hell answer to mine call, send down thy legions on 
pinions of iron.  Cold winds blow, let water and sky be joined,
pour down thy bowl of night upon the earth."

     Ryoga looked to the north, towards the tear in the sky, and 
for the second time in space of a few minutes, his throat went 
dry.
     
**********

     Before she even got close enough to recognize them, Kima was
shouting at them to stop.  Gods only knew what they were up to,
or what connection they had to the man standing in the centre of
Jusenkyou, or to the black distortion that was tearing apart the
sky.  More traitors, probably, she thought sourly.  Ranma was
beside her in the air, the wind that bore him making his pigtail
flap madly and swirling his grey cloak all about his body.  They
had taken off in silence from the spire of Jusendo, as if there
had been no need to communicate between them at all.

     When she saw that they had surrounded the Guide's daughter 
on the cusp of the downwards slope that led towards the pools, a
cold anger began to grow as she realized that someone had gone
over her head.  She did not believe it could be Samofere.

     Then, when one of them turned its head at her shout, she
realized it was even worse than she had expected.  The face was 
one out of a nightmare, an almost exact match for one she'd seen
before in the faded drawings of old books.  They called them the
Souleaters, bound into the depths of the earth by Saffron in the
ages past.  
     
     This time, Ranma did not hesitate.  Perhaps it was that the
things were so clearly monstrous, or perhaps it was that - as 
she'd heard it said - it grew easier to kill the more one did it.

     The first, she told herself, as the Souleater nearest Plum
fell with a hole the size of a fist through its chest.  The blast
of white fire from Ranma's hand had been almost too fast to see.
     
     Kima had thought before that the Guide's daughter was an 
unusually smart child for her age, and she proved it then by not
standing in the middle of the combat.  Quick on her feet, she
darted away from the two Souleaters that still lived.

     One, a moment later.  It was rising into the air with its
jagged sword drawn and black wings spread when Ranma clenched his
fists and dropped from the sky on top of it.  The thing never
even had a chance; even before Ranma's feet touched the ground it
was fallen beneath a flurry of shatteringly hard blows that 
either killed it or came close.

     The last one sprang into the air with a single leap.  He had
a tail, barbed and hideous; she remembered that the prints of the
wars between the Souleaters and Saffron had always depicted their
leader with a tail.  They called him The Undying.  

     "Lord of Waters, he said, his voice driven beyond human by
a forked tongue and fangs.  "Little sister.  I would stay, but I
fear that you two together are more than a match for me alone."

     His wings blurred, as he performed an aerial maneuver that
would have been impossible even for her, a straight backwards
motion.  "TIEYIREN!"

     The air filled with dark blades.  It looked like her own
attack might have, if she'd had twice the strength and ten times
the practice of using it.  They weren't vacuum blades, though;
too solid-looking.  A frantic dive and twist nearly avoided all 
of them, but a glancing hit slashed fire along her ribs.  Ranma
grabbed Plum and shielded her with his body; she saw the impact 
of a half-dozen blades flip him heels over head as he hugged Plum 
protectively to his chest, and tear long slashes in his cloak.

     In the centre of Jusenkyou, a half-dozen or more of the
Souleaters knelt at the feet of the wingless figure.  There was a
sound like laughter coming from the tear in the sky, and the air
before her eyes seemed to blurring.  All around the valley that
held Jusenkyou, in fact, there was a shimmering to the air, like
motes of light in a colour just beyond the human range of vision
dancing.

     The Undying had his back to her, and was flying with broad
strokes of his wings towards the centre of Jusenkyou.  The hole
in the sky stretched and yawned, and a hum like thousands of
voices rose into the air.

     Suddenly, like a dam bursting, the hole in the sky swelled
until it lay over all of Jusenkyou.  Kima stared up into the void
that loomed overhead, a thin and unconscious wail rising from her
throat.  It was like looking into eternity, to the end of time,
and the shriek that came from within it was the death-cry of 
worlds.

     From it, the darkness poured down in a pillar, striking
Jusenkyou in a cascade of endless night.  From one end of the
valley to another it came down, a hammer to drive the final nail.
The impact through the air as it hit was like a blow; it knocked
her into an awkward spin in her flight, and she came within five 
feet of falling within that absolute blackness before she 
regained control.

     It stretched from the ground to a point beyond her vision in
the sky.  Perhaps it went on forever, towering up past the
atmosphere, up to the stars, up to the sun--

     She stopped herself before she touched it.  The absolute
blackness drew her towards it, enticing as water in a desert.  In
the perfect smooth solidity of it there was a cold and seductive
beauty.  

     "If you touch it, you'll die," Ranma said.  He was on his
feet, the grey cloak a crumped shape of slashed cloth next to
him.  Plum was on her knees, ashen-faced as she stared at what
had befallen Jusenkyou.  He grimaced, and she saw there was blood
all over him from the shallow wounds that the attack had left.  
"Eventually, that is."

     "You're hurt," she said softly as she walked over to him.
     
     He shook his head, and spat blood onto the ground.  "It's
nothing.  Cut me up a little.  You're bleeding a bit yourself."

     She looked down at the red-stain spreading slowly on one
side of her uniform.  "It's nothing."

     Ranma laughed softly, and reached out.  His fingers traced
lightly along the wound, and all the pain vanished.  Then he went
into a coughing spasm, so severe that she had to grab his 
shoulders to keep him from falling.

     "Don't waste your energy on me," she snapped.  "Use it on
yourself."

     "I can't," Ranma said, straightening with a shake of his
head and a long breath.  "You think it comes out of nowhere?  
Using it on myself is pointless."

     "It wasn't a serious wound.  You didn't need to do that.
And did I ask you to?"

     "I was just trying to--"
     
     "Father's in there."
     
     The two of them looked to Plum.  She was shaking, and looked
on the verge of tears.  Ranma knelt down and put his hand on her
shoulder.  "It's gonna be okay."

     The lies we tell children, Kima thought dully.  There was
nothing she could do; the child was probably as frightened of her
as she was of anything else.  Better to turn away and stare at
whatever it was that had engulfed Jusenkyou.

     "Why are you with _her_?"
     
     "She's a friend now.  Don't be afraid."

     A pause.  The whole area was unnaturally still; the 
background noises of birds in trees, wind through grass, and
small animals moving through the brush were gone completely.
When a scattering of pebbles clattered down a nearby slope, it
nearly made her jump.  Ranma was still speaking softly to Plum, 
too softly for her to hear.

     Finally, she couldn't stand it any more.  "What now?"
     
     Ranma looked up.  His arm was around Plum's shoulders.  "Get
help, I guess."

     "And you can't do anything about that?"
     
     Ranma stood and rubbed his hands together.  "Think of a
tapestry, okay?  Everything is woven out of... something.  I 
don't know how to describe it.  Ki is just a name.  There's 
lines, colours, shapes... It's hard to..."  He gestured 
helplessly at the towering blackness that filled Jusenkyou and 
stretched into the sky.  "I always used to be able to manipulate 
it, but I never understood why.  Now I do, but I can't explain 
it.  It's just a matter of pulling on the threads, changing the 
colours..."

     "And your point is?"
     
     "That thing _isn't there_," Ranma said, a weary tone
entering his voice.  "It's just blank, and I can't see what's
behind it.  I don't know what it is, but I know enough to know 
that touching it will likely kill you."

     "It's still alive."
     
     Plum was tugging on Ranma's sleeve.  He turned away and
strode over to where the second Souleater lay on the ground.  
Kima saw that it was still weakly moving, although it looked as
if Ranma had broken its neck.  

     Kima watched as he looked down.  His eyes were hard and
flinty as he raised his hand.  She hesitated, for a moment, and
then stepped forward to move his hand away.  "Let me."

     He looked as though he would deny her for a moment, and then 
he moved aside, his hand flat on Plum's back to move her with 
him.  She was staring at Kima with a mix of fascination and fear.  
For some reason, Kima could not meet the wide-eyed gaze of the 
child, so the only alternative was to look into the red-tinged 
black of the Souleater's pupils.

     "I understand now," she said softly, drawing out her sword.  
"You were the ones who followed Shouzin the Traitor out of Chenmo 
Shan.  You all are undying, aren't you?  That was the curse she 
put upon you."

     The Souleater laughed, barely louder than a whisper.  
"Hungry..." it hissed.  "So hungry..."  Its tongue lolled out,
and it thrashed weakly.

     Kima stabbed it through the heart, and wiped her sword upon
the grass.  Slowly, she stood up.  Ranma was nearby; he stood
behind Plum, both hands on her shoulders.  She couldn't describe
the intermingling of expressions upon his face.

     "Let's go," she said finally.  "Let's get out of here."
     
**********

     The darkness flowed down through the gateway, shrouding
Jusenkyou like a cloak.  The Guide groaned and looked up from
where two of the Ironwing held him down upon the ground before
the Serpent.  "<What have you done?>"

     "<I have completed it,>" the Serpent said, as the walls
fell, dead black.  They stretched up infinitively high, piercing
the heavens themselves; or perhaps not that high, for it was
still light as day within here.  Jusenkyou's own protection would 
stop any outside notice beyond the borders of the Valley of the
Waters.  Like a cancer devouring the inside of a body, the Dark
would begin at the centre and spread outward.

     The Warmother was up there somewhere, fueling the bridging
with her own power.  He could hear her laughing, and it made him
uncomfortable.  His nagging suspicion that she was as strong as
he was, though in a different manner, was becoming more and more
plausible as he felt her work.  He could not have done this
without her strength, however; like the Hound, the Warmother was
a power from beyond this world, released at the last battle and
bound when it ended.  She had been necessary.

     "<Why?>" the Guide sputtered.  His eyes were wide with fear.
     
     The Serpent leaned down and smiled thinly.  "<I am bound by
duty to restore this land, and this world, to its rightful 
master.  When that is done, he will give me what I want.>"

     "<What do you want?>"
     
     With a wave of his hand, he gestured to the two Ironwing.
"<Go.>"  They left eagerly, flapping away into the sky to join 
their laughing brothers.  

     He let the Guide get to his feet and brush himself off.  
This was what was left of the position of Warden of Tang Jin, he 
realized: a ridiculous, chubby little man in a ratty Maoist 
uniform.  It almost made him laugh.

     "<Jusenkyou has faced worse than you,>" the Guide said,
defiantly, with only a slight tremble to his voice.  There was a 
little courage in the man, apparently.     

     Now the Serpent did laugh.  "<No it hasn't, you fool.>"  He
raised his sword and gestured at the darkness.  "<You wish to
know what I want?  I will tell you.>"  No one who would matter
would believe the man, at least not until it was too late.  The
Serpent dropped his voice to a quiet whisper, filled with a 
desperate longing and undercurrents of hate.  "<I want it to die.
All of it.>"
     
     The Guide looked blank.  
     
     "<You don't understand,>" the Serpent growled.  "<None of
them do either.  I will see this world die; I will see it cracked
and broken, and every living thing that walks or flies or crawls
or swims perish, every city thrown down, all that lives or is 
made by that which lives or has the potential to bring forth life
destroyed.  He will make them rulers of men while it suits him,
but in the end his promise is to me.>"

     Slowly, the Guide shook his head.  "<You're insane.>"
     
     "<No,>" the Serpent replied softly, knowing that he was not.
Then the conversation ended, because there was the gentlest 
movement of the earth, in mirror of a vast shifting far below, 
and the waters of the pools began to rise to flood the land.
     
**********
     
     When the stone of jade finally cracked in half and fell in
two pieces, Shampoo had not finished telling them all she could,
but it was enough.  The giants were almost childlike in their
curiosity about the outside world, and seemed surprised by much
of what she told them.  

     The breaking put an end to speech, quiet as it was.  The
divided stone still hung suspended amidst the wires like the 
others, but all the brightness had gone out of it.  

     Mengyua softly sighed and bowed her head.  Her husband put
his hand on her shoulder as he stared with a deep, ancient
sadness at the device.

     Shampoo couldn't help but feel grief herself, even though
she understood nothing of the functioning of the apparatus, or
what it might represent.  It would be too easy to become caught
up in this, and forget about what was taking place in her own
world; she thought harshly of the slaughter at Watcher's Hill, to
remind herself of what was truly important.

     From somewhere out beyond the door, there came a knocking.
     
     "<Our son is here,>" Mengyua said.  She rose from her chair
and left the room, leaving Shampoo alone with Shengxyan.  The old
giant leaned forward and ran his finger along a length of wire in
the apparatus, frowning as he did so.

     "<What is that?>"
     
     Shengyxan looked up from his examinations.  "<A measuring
device, of sorts.>"

     Before Shampoo could ask anything more, the door opened
again, and Mengyua walked in next to a human-sized figure dressed
in a black tunic and red pants.  His dark hair was short, and his
beard was neatly-trimmed to a point.  Despite the size 
difference, he closely resembled his father.  In one hand, he
held a slim walking staff.  
          
     "<Our son, Lougui,>" Mengyua said.  Lougui raised his hand
and half-heartedly waved.  He didn't look very happy.

     "<Son?>" Shampoo said.
     
     "<All of us receive certain gifts at birth,>" Shengxyan 
said.  "<Lougui is a changeling.  That is why we thought it the
best thing for him to accompany you.>"

     From Lougui's expression, he didn't seem to think that this
was the best thing at all.  Not exactly sullen, but something
close.  His eyes had anger in them, a thing that she'd seen
nothing of in his parents.  He looked around, at her and then at
his mother and father.  "<Is she ready to go?>"

     Shampoo got up and picked up the sword from beside her.  
"<I'm ready.  I'll wait in the hall.>"  There was an underlying
tension in the room, and she wanted to give the three of them the
privacy they obviously wanted.  Even as she closed the massive
door behind her - with some effort - she heard Lougui begin
speaking, though it was not in Chinese, or any other language she
recognized.  Mengyua answered calmly, in the same language - the
syllables seemed to flow naturally into one another, and it was
soothing to the ear.  Hesitant, and then judging that it wasn't
really eavesdropping if she couldn't understand what they were
saying, Shampoo stood outside and listened to the sound of the
voices that she could barely hear through the door.  It went on
for a few minutes; Lougui got angrier, and his parents stayed
calm.  She barely heard his footsteps in time to move away from
the door as it swung out into the hallway.  

     Lougui regarded her reservedly as he stepped out of the
sitting room.  "<You were listening.>"

     "<I-->"
     
     "<You were listening,>" he said again, and walked away down
the hallway.  Mengyua and Shengxyan came into the hallway just as
he disappeared around the corner.  

     Shengxyan sighed.  Mengyua looked down at Shampoo, eyes red
as if from crying.  "<Be patient with him.  He is young still, 
but his heart is good.  He will help you as much as he can,
though he may not be always pleasant to be around.>"

     Shampoo stared down the way Lougui had gone.  "<You've
already given enough help.  Without you, I would have died.  He
doesn't need to come.>"  
     
     "<Part of the pacts,>" Shengxyan said wearily.  "<Two come
through, two go back.>"

     "<Light shine on you, Maiden,>" Mengyua said.  She reached
out and lightly touched Shampoo's brow with one massive but
delicate hand.  "<And darkness touch you not.>"

     It had the air of ceremony to it, and thus Shampoo returned
it.  The old Joketsuzoku words of parting were reserved these
days for friends one did not expect to see for a long time; she
suspected that this was true here.  "<May your roads be flat, 
your weapons sharp, and your enemies stupid for all your days.>"

     She turned and walked away down the green carpet.  The lamps
high upon the walls were in the shape of women holding balls of 
flame above their heads.  Lougui was waiting by a tall doorway at
the end of the hall.  The heavy iron door was swung open, 
exposing a long earthen tunnel.  

     "<After you,>" he said with grudging courtesy.  Shampoo
walked by him without a word, and heard his footsteps follow her.
Behind them, the door slammed closed, and they walked in silence
through the dark.  

**********     
     
     Fang Shi stalked down the trail, an honour guard of twenty
of the finest Joketsuzoku warriors surrounding her.  From the
last runner Bi Shou had sent back - well over an hour ago - the
outsiders hadn't even been smart enough to take the shortest
route between the Joketsuzoku village and Phoenix Mountain.  It
wouldn't be hard to find; the servant from the Circle had given
her a number of landmarks by which to locate it, all of which she 
recognized.

     Behind her on the trail, the Joketsuzoku walked in a long
line beneath the shadows of the mountains.  Travel had slowed
since the hole had opened in the sky a few minutes ago; she had
sent a scouting group back to Jusenkyou to see what was going on.
Vaguely, she realized that she had probably sent them to their
deaths.

     Next to her, Gao Chao walked sullenly.  There had been no
actual evidence to implicate him in the escape of the prisoners,
but she wasn't intending to let him out of her sight, even if she
couldn't legitimately punish him as a traitor.

     "<How long do you think you can keep control?>" he asked
suddenly.  "<Our people aren't stupid, Fang Shi.  How long before
they start questioning, and you don't have any answers?>"

     Fang Shi frowned.  After all those years of being about the
closest a man could come to being perfect, Gao Chao had grown a
spine.  He was also coming close, dangerously close, to her own
fears.

     "<Shut up,>" she said finally.  "<Idiot male.>"  It was a
worthless retort, the kind used when she had no useful reply, and 
she knew it.  
     
     Gao Chao shook his head.  "<I'd like to believe you merely
misguided, but I don't even know any more.  I don't know what
happened to my daughter, but I don't think you're telling
everything.>"

     The women around them were beginning to take an interest
now, though they were trying to conceal it.  Fang Shi gripped
the haft of her weapon tightly and tried to think.  "<I mourn for
the death of your daughter as well, Gao Chao,>" she said in her
most conciliatory tones.  "<But what is done is done.  We will
avenge her, and Lang Bei, and all the rest of our dead.>"

     Gao Chao stiffened with rage.  Accuse me, she silently urged
him.  Give me an excuse.  A part of her was disgusted; how low
she had sunk, using the memory of the man's own daughter to do 
this to him.  But that was nothing, she realized, compared to 
what she had done before.  There was no going back from this.  No
climb out from the pit.  But he didn't say anything in the end, 
and so they kept on walking silently beside each other, as the 
Joketsuzoku marched to war.     

**********

     The first conscious sense after the long fall through
darkness and cold was the smell of smoke.  Nabiki opened her eyes
a crack, and looked up into a nightmare.  The sky was an endless
smoky haze, shot through with licking tongues of fire.  Clouds
the colour of blood boiled thickly above her, forks of black
lightning occasionally shooting from one to another with
thunderous sounds.

     There was a continual moaning, and a sound of flesh sliding
over flesh.  Propping herself up on her elbows, Nabiki looked
around.  She was on what appeared to be an elevated plateau, 
rubbled and cracked in places; there was no vegetation of any
kind to be seen upon the barren rock, and it did not look as 
though there had ever been any.  In the distance, black mountains 
jagged as knives clawed at the scarlet horizon.

     "I'm in hell," she said softly, and laughed hysterically.
She stood up and took a few steps towards the edge of the 
plateau before turning her gaze up at the burning sky.  "What
next?" she shouted, filled with a suddenly foolish bravery.
"What are you going to do to me next?"

     Then she looked down, and words left her.  Below was the sea 
of the dead; hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands.  They 
writhed endlessly, nakedly, over one another, and each lifted 
its voice in a wordless dirge.  Bloated and pale as worms, they 
swarmed like maggots, tatters of skin sloughing off as they 
rubbed against each other so that raw red muscle showed beneath.  
Men, women, children, so many that they filled up all of this 
place, stretched to the mountains that bounded the wasteland on 
all sides.

     Nabiki staggered back, fell to her knees, and vomited.  Or
tried; she hadn't eaten in a long time.  But she brought up what
she could.  It was too much, and she had no more strength left.
Now she would lie down here, and give it up.  No more fighting.
No more anything.

     She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and walked
back over to the edge.  The rock was hot, and stung her bare 
feet.  The plateau she stood on was atop a narrow spire of stone
that rose high above the seething dead.  In the distance she
could see a scattered number of formations like the one she was
on, but all of them appeared to be unoccupied.

     Kasumi and Kuno.  Where were they?
     
     Her gaze went down towards the sea of corpses, and she
received one answer.  Near the base of the rocky spire, a single
face she recognized occasionally emerged from the sliding dead
like a swimmer drawing desperate gasps of air.  Kuno's mouth was
open, but any sound he was making was lost amidst the moaning of
the dead.  His hands tried desperately to grasp the rough surface
of the stone, but whenever he got even a tentative hold he would
be drawn back beneath the writhing mass of the bodies, who seemed
to thwart his efforts with a mindless malice.  

     Horror and sickness almost overwhelmed her.  What in God's
name _was_ this place?  But she'd already answered that, hadn't
she?  It was hell.  Or something so like it that any difference
was one of semantics.

     After a long time, Nabiki managed to draw a shuddered 
breath.  The air tasted of smoke.  She looked down again, and saw
for the first time the handholds carved into the stone.  And the
tiny ledges, barely a foot wide, that interrupted them at odd
intervals.  One was so close to the sea of the dead that if 
someone were to climb down there, and stretch out their hand...

     She couldn't do it; yet another thing that she should do 
that was beyond her.  Even though she was in good enough shape, 
the handholds were tiny.  She'd slip and fall, into the sea of 
the dead.  Better to stay here, she told herself.  Leave him.  
Leave it all.

     Cursing Kuno, this place, and everything else she could
think of that had any connection to her current situation, she     
turned around and stretched her leg down to find a hold for her
foot.  And so she began the descent into the pit of the dead.

**********

     "There."
     
     Akane examined the bandage wrapped around her arm and nodded
a grudging thanks.  Cologne sat back, legs crossed, and stared up
at the sky.  Nearby, Ryoga talked to the king of the Phoenix,
telling him what he could of what had happened.  Bai Ling and Bi
Shou were both under a heavy guard; both looked sullen and angry,
though Bai Ling was shooting the occasional glance to Ryoga with
a strange expression on her face.  Mousse was nowhere to be seen,
or maybe he had just faded from being easily noticeable; he
seemed to have a tendency to do that lately.

     "That will be numb for a few hours.  You're lucky it was a
clean wound."

     "Wonderful."

     "Why isn't Shampoo with you, Akane?"
     
     Akane looked up.  Despite all the anger she felt for
Cologne, she suddenly felt a terrible sorrow for the woman.  
"They said the Phoenix ambushed the Council.  They said Shampoo
died in the fighting."

     Cologne bowed her head.  There were no tears.  A long,
full-body shudder broke across her.  "Why was she there?"

     "She was the Maiden," Akane said.  "They chose her.  Because
of what happened at Jusenkyou; she fell in, and was cured."

     "Oh, child," Cologne whispered.  "Oh my darling child."  
There was an intermingling of love and pride and pain in her
voice that hurt to hear.

     "We don't know that she's gone," Akane said after a moment.
"Fang Shi must have been lying.  There's a chance--"

     "If I had been there, none of this would have happened."
     
     "But you weren't."  
     
     Cologne looked suddenly tired, ancient even in that young
body.  She folded her hands in her lap and drew a deep breath.
"What is done is done, and cannot be undone."
          
     Off in the distance, the black pillar stretched from earth
to sky like a malignant sore, a cancer in reality itself.  Akane
wondered what it was, and if Ranma had anything to do with it.

     "I thought it was the only way, you know."
     
     Cologne's voice was calm, detached.  Controlled, in a way
that made Akane think of something hard but brittle.  She looked 
at the other woman levelly.  "Do you think that makes any 
difference at all to me?" she asked.  "Any difference at  all?"

     "No, and I don't expect it to.  I can't justify what I did
to you.  But I'm not going to go out of my way to apologize,
Akane Tendo.  It was what I thought was the right thing to do at
the time."

     The question rose, against her will.  She didn't want to
talk to Cologne right now, or to anyone.  But there was no
holding it back; she had to have an answer.  "Why?  Why did you
take him?"

     "I didn't take him," Cologne said.  "He chose to come with
me."

     Akane closed her eyes.  It was all that she'd feared, all
that she'd wanted not to believe.  "To get away from me and
everything else, then."

     "No."  Cologne's voice was surprisingly compassionate.  "No,
child.  Have you spent all this time believing that?"

     Akane laughed; softly, bitterly.  "I've spent most of the 
time blaming you.  But I couldn't help but wonder if... if it was
more than that."

     "It was," Cologne said.  "But not in the way you think.  It
isn't my story to tell, Akane.  Ranma had his reasons, which I'm
sure he'll tell you."

     "Why would he do that?" Akane murmured as she stared at the
ground.  The wind was softly blowing through the pass, making the
leaves in the trees rustle and stirring up dust from the trail.
"Why would he tell me anything?"

     "Because he loves you, idiot girl."  It was said with so 
complete a certainty that for a moment it left Akane speechless.  
Cologne smiled benignly and shook her head.  "The young are so
clueless about the most obvious things."

     Coming from Cologne, who now looked slightly older than her,
it made Akane laugh.  It was true, she realized; everything she'd
hoped for.  The doubt, the worry, had somehow all been banished
by Cologne's affirmation of what she'd known in her heart for the
longest time.

     Suddenly, she heard Ryoga let out a great shout of joy, a
sound of almost pure happiness.  Looking up, she saw three 
figures, two tall, one short, walking up the trail from the 
north.  A child, a man, and a winged woman.  The way the sun
struck them as it poured down from above the mountains, it took a 
moment for her to recognize all three.  Longest to recognize the 
man; he looked to have lost a lot of weight, and some change
deeper even than that had taken place.

     Ryoga caught Ranma up in an embrace, still shouting as he
lifted him from his feet.  Ranma yelled and smacked Ryoga on the
shoulders.

     "Put me down, you idiot!  You're crushing me!"
     
     Ryoga was laughing, tears running down his face.  Akane
stood up, on shaky legs that didn't seem capable of supporting
her.  Her heart beat like a drum as she walked slowly towards
them.

     Kima came to meet her, stepping past Ranma, who was still
beating ineffectually at Ryoga's embrace but had fallen into
laughter himself.  The winged woman looked poised and elegant as
she walked, the gorgeous white wings folded like a cloak about
her body.

     Akane could think of nothing appropriate to say.  For a 
moment, she was on the verge of letting angry words burst out; 
that was easy, and familiar.  But a look into the blue eyes of 
the older woman stopped her; she realized that there was the same 
thing there, that Kima had no words either that were correct.

     They stared at each other for a long time, stock-still, as
Ryoga and Ranma's laughter continued in the background.  Kima was
the first to look away; only for a moment, to throw a glance to
Ranma.  She looked so sad as she did that for a brief second, 
Akane's heart went out to her.

     When Kima turned her head back, there still wasn't anything
to say.  Words seemed to have fallen away, until there was only
in the end the meeting of their eyes.

     "Ryoga, put me down, damn it!  I wanna see Akane!"
     
     Those words broke the spell; perhaps only the sound of her
name from his lips would have been enough.  Kima slowly smiled,
and took a step forward until the two of them stood facing each
other with a tiny distance between them.

     "So," she said, with the lyrical accent that Akane 
remembered, "we meet again, Akane."

     "I saw you," Akane said.  "I dreamed.  You and him.  Except
that you were me."
     
     Kima looked back again at Ranma.  "No.  I had your form at
times."  Her voice was wistful, matching the sad smile on her
face.  "I wasn't ever you."  Slowly, she nodded her head almost
respectfully, and walked by Akane.

     Akane didn't watch her go.  Ryoga had let Ranma go, and was
talking to Plum.  Ranma stood a few steps away from her; he must
have moved up silently while she was speaking to Kima.

     His shirt was ripped and bloody.  Her original thoughts
about his weight looked to be correct; he didn't look exactly
thin, but there was a noticeable sharpness to his features that
hadn't been there before.  His eyes looked the most different;
even though they were bright to match his smile, back behind that
brightness was something terribly weary and sad.

     She wanted to shout at him for leaving like that.  That
would have been the easiest way to deal with the emotions running
through her right now.  She wanted to yell at him, and have him
insult her, and have everything go back to the way it had been in
the beginning, when there had been none of this danger, none of
this fear and death and black tears in the sky.

     Mostly, though, she simply wanted him to hold her like he
had those few times before he'd gone away.  Wanted him to hold
her, to let her hold him back.  

     Ranma looked down at her bandaged arm, and frowned.  "What
happened?"

     "Arrow wound," she replied. 
     
     "How?"  He sounded angry, concerned.  
     
     "Long story.  What's that?"  She pointed to the north, to 
the blackness arcing straight up across the horizon.     
     
     He shrugged.  "Kinda a long story too."
     
     Then, against her expectations, he stepped forward and put
his arms on her shoulders, and drew her into a hug.  Only for a
moment, she hesitated, and then she wrapped her arms around him,
holding tight as she could to him, as if she would never let him
go, even though it made her wounded arm throb with pain.  She was 
crying, he was too.  His hands were clasped together on her back; 
she could hear his heart beating as she rested her head against 
his chest.  It didn't matter that there were other people around, 
that there was darkness seething in the sky, that there was a 
cold wind starting to blow across them.  They were a world apart 
in that moment from everything.

     And at last, again, after so long a time, after division and
parting, beyond the passage through darkness and light, under 
stone and under sky, beneath sun and stars, rivers join again, 
into a single river, into Oceanus, into the ocean river, flowing
down into the depths of the sea.