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 38 : The Conflagration

I have eaten your bread and salt.
  I have drunk your water and wine.
The deaths ye died I have watched beside,
  And the lives ye led were mine.
  
Was there aught that I did not share
  In vigil or toil or ease,
One joy or woe that I did not know,
  Dear hearts across the seas?
-Rudyard Kipling    
     
     She was drowning.  Not in water - oh, what she would have
given now to drown in water - but in the dead.  They were
everywhere, rotting and yet horribly alive.  Bloated fingers and
bony claws grasped at her, raked savagely at her skin, dragged 
her under so that the carrion stench overwhelmed even the smoke of
the burning sky.  There seemed to be no end to the dead; each
time she tried desperately to find purchase, it was only upon the
body of a corpse.  All of them seemed to have a face she 
recognized:  her mother, a long-dead relative, a face she 
remembered passing on the street.  Their moaning had become a
terrible, manic laughter, and in between the pluckings and 
pinchings of their fingers they whispered to her that she 
belonged here with them.  Again and again her mother's decaying
arms wrapped around her neck in a mockery of an embrace, again
and again she struggled free only to be dragged down again as she
tried to desperately grab the stone ledge only a foot above her.
The few times her fingers brushed against it, the dead seized her
and dragged her back down.  What remained of her clothing was 
rags, and soon enough she would be naked, naked as the dead
themselves.  

     Occasionally she would catch a glimpse of Kuno, struggling
like her amongst the dead.  Nabiki knew that she was screaming,
but it couldn't be heard over the laughter of the dead.  She 
could feel with absolute certainty her mind closing off,
becoming numb to the sheer horror of this place so that it
wouldn't shatter completely.

     Had it been like this for Kasumi?  Had she fought at first,
struggled, and then descended down into the comforting numbness 
of not thinking of anything, of not fighting any more?  How Kuno
had the strength to fight all the time while she was climbing
down the spire of stone - and she had thought that hard, fool 
that she was - she could not even begin to imagine.  Soon she 
would give up, give in, and go down to the bottom, if there was a 
bottom to this place.

     A mindlessly flailing arm struck her on the side of the 
head, and for a moment unconsciousness threatened.  As she
struggled to regain her senses, she slipped deeper into the
mass, corpses piling atop her one after the other.  Frantic
fighting did nothing; there were too many, driving her down 
towards the bottom as though they were a solid wall.  Her arms 
and legs ached from pushing and kicking at them, but it did no 
good.  She hadn't seen the sky for a long time now; how long she 
didn't know.  It was true, though; you could get used to nearly 
anything, even the stench of the dead and the slickness of 
their cold blood and the feel of their flesh on yours and the
grasping hands and the body with your mother's face but she was 
still screaming all the same and the dead were screaming with her
and shouldn't she be at the bottom yet?
     
     A hand - a solid, warm, human hand - grabbed hers and pulled
with an inexorable strength.  Nabiki was drawn out of the pit, 
out from the dead.  Another hand grabbed her shoulder as her
upper body flopped onto the stone ledge and helped her fully up
onto it.  She was still screaming, though, couldn't seem to stop,
because she was still feeling the dead hands all over her body,
and still tasting blood and rot in her lungs.  Someone wrapped 
their arms around her and held her, tight as a mother holds a
child, and eventually the screaming stopped.

     Nabiki raised her head from her rescuer's shoulder, knowing
even before she saw the face who it was.  Kasumi looked back, and
smiled gently.  She was wearing the same ragged clothing she had 
worn in the garden, and her unbound hair framed her face like
tangled ivy.  In this place of burning sky and death, Nabiki's 
older sister seemed an island of calm.

     "Where were you, sis?" Nabiki whispered.  "I really could
have used your help.  Kuno--"  She started, and began to turn her
head back to look into the sea of the dead.  Kasumi stopped her
with one hand.

     "No.  Don't look back.  All of this is but maya."
     
     "What?"
     
     "Illusion."
     
     Around them, the world seemed to be becoming less distinct,
fuzzy around the edges and lines as though it were a blurred
photograph.  The sea of the dead seemed less a gathering of
distinct bodies than an ever-flowing mass of flesh, though Kuno
was still out of her sight.

     "Don't you think," Nabiki said slowly, "that you could have
told me that before I climbed down here and got dragged in by my
own mother?"

     Kasumi shook her head.  "It wasn't her."
     
     "But it looked like her."
     
     "Oh, it can look like anything it wants.  That's why it's so
strong.  It knows what you're afraid of, and what you hate, and
what you're tempted by."

     Nabiki frowned.  Everything but her and Kasumi seemed to be
fading away.  "But..."

     "It feels real.  I know.  But your body isn't here, and mine
isn't here, and neither is Tatewaki's."

     "Then what are we doing here?"
     
     "Your bodies made it through.  Your minds didn't.  He's in
too deep to come out without help, and you followed him into 
here."

     Nabiki nearly laughed, but she could still remember what it
was like to be down in the pit of the dead, even now, with the
world running around her like an abstract watercolour in fire and 
stone and flesh.  "Why would I do that?  If I did, I sure didn't 
mean to."

     Kasumi smiled, and waved her hand absently.  As the
landscape blurred and dissolved, her older sister seemed only to
become more solid and real.  "Oh, you might not have decided to
consciously.  But your heart knows what's right, Nabiki."

     "Heart?"  Now she did laugh, though there was a choked sound
like a sob almost audible in it.  "When did the heart know
anything useful?"

     "Just look at him," Kasumi said softly.  "You're free now,
but he's still trapped in here."  

     Without really wanting to, Nabiki turned her head.  The 
world around her was simply a blur of colour now, a rolling 
rainbow sea.  All that was solid was the ledge of stone upon
which she and her sister stood, and, off in the distance, Kuno.
He had the mask on again, and was sitting on another stone ledge, 
knees drawn up to his chest and arms wrapped around them.  
Slowly, he rocked back and forth on his heels.
     
     "I can't go to him, Nabiki.  You have to."
     
     Nabiki scoffed, though deep inside her there was something
that hurt very badly at the sight.  "Why?"

     "Because he knows that you've broken free, and he's coming
now."

     "Who's coming?"
     
     Kasumi pointed.  Off in the distance, a speck was visible, a 
searingly absolute darkness in the melting mural of the colours.  

     "What is that?"
     
     "Go, Nabiki."
     
     Nabiki turned, not even fully conscious of her movements,
and stepped off the solid safety of the stone and into the
shifting landscape of the colours.  Where her feet touched, the
colours solidified; red became dark volcanic stone, green dark
jade, white pale marble.  In seconds she was on the same ledge as
Kuno, kneeling down beside him.  "We have to go."

     He said nothing.  Kept on rocking.  Nabiki shook him by the
shoulders.  "Kuno, we've got to get out of here."

     His only answer was a low moan, wordless and absolutely 
bereft.  He seemed to huddle tighter into himself, as if by
becoming smaller he might disappear altogether.  Nabiki grabbed
two fistfuls of his tunic and tried to haul him to his feet, but
he was a dead weight, heavy as a stone, and she could do nothing
to budge him.  

     "Fine!" she snapped.  "Just stay here, then."  But she
looked back, and saw Kasumi, facing away from her and towards the
distant darkness in the air.  A heavy sigh broke from her.  "Come
on, Tatewaki.  Please."  She reached out and touched the cold, 
smooth leather of the mask.  "Let's get this off, and we can get 
out of here."  There had to be a zipper, or something; she ran 
her fingers around the back of the mask, frowning.  It seemed not 
to have any seams or catches at all; how was she supposed to get 
it off?

     Again she knelt down before him, cradling his head in her
hands as she searched for the zipper.  There had to be some way
to get it off, didn't there?  Kuno sighed and lowered his head
into her touch, but there wasn't any sign of how to get the damn
thing off him.

     "Come on," she growled.
     
     The mask cracked down the centre and fell apart like an 
eggshell, into wispy scraps of black leather that drifted away 
into the morass of the colours that swirled around them.

     And Nabiki looked into his eyes.  What was left of them.  
Gaping sockets, dried blood still clinging to the rims, and she 
thanked the shadows that kept her from seeing exactly what might 
be inside, what might be revealed by the empty spaces within the
sockets.
     
     Transfixed, Nabiki could not look away from the sight.  The
empty sockets seemed to swell, growing larger and larger, until 
they engulfed her completely, and she fell within

     (She hadn't been able to move.  They had held her down and
      cut her arm that they might catch the blood in a bowl of
      hammered silver.  They cut her and burned her and flayed
      her and threw her down into the pit where her mother and
      her sister clawed at her.  They locked her heart up in a
      box and put a stone in its place.  They danced her on
      strings like a puppet.  They made her kill for them, the
      animals, and the boy in the garden.  Then she was back in
      the pit, but someone came down to her - an angel perhaps,
      one who left the safety above to descend into the dead -
      but they were too deep, all too deep and there was no way
      out)
      
      and back out, to find herself holding Kuno's head in her
arms, as tears streamed out from his ruined eyes and rolled down
his face.  His sobs were choked and distorted, oddly throaty.  

     "It's okay," she heard herself whisper as she cradled his 
head against her breasts.  "It's okay.  It's over."  She could
still almost feel everything: the slicing of the knives and the
pain as her eyes and tongue were cut out.  But he was free; he 
was out of the pit.  The swirling colours of the landscape seemed
to have merged into a flat slate grey that rippled vaguely, as if
it were water that the wind blew slowly over.  The two of them 
were still on the stone ledge that hung without support in the
middle of it all.  Burning sky, the pit of the dead, the black
lightning and the blood-red clouds... all were gone.  

     "He'll only be coming faster now."
     
     Nabiki looked up.  Kasumi was standing near them now, arms
at her sides, hands clenched into fists.  Her face looked hard
and determined as she stared off towards the approaching black
speck.  It seemed, slowly, to be growing larger.  For some 
reason, she feared it with a dread that made her heart clench.
"What is that thing, Kasumi?"
     
     "Too strong," Kasumi murmured, as if she had not heard 
Nabiki at all.  "Too strong for only you and me alone.  Come,
little sister."
     
     "You know how to get out of here."
     
     "Just stand up.  Take his hand, make sure he stands up too.
Now, put your hand in mine... that's right.  Now close your 
eyes... we're going to step off.  And don't think about where
we're going."

     "What?"
     
     Before she could say anything more, Kasumi was stepping out
into the empty air, and Nabiki had no choice but to follow.  They
seemed to fall forever, tumbling slowly, air thickening around 
them until it was viscous as water.  It was water, Nabiki
realized; she couldn't breathe it, and panicked for a moment,
before her head broke the surface with a gasp.

     And she opened her eyes to find that she was in a different
place altogether.  A bed; she was lying in a bed, under a thin
sheet, and the room was filled with pale light.  Looking down
upon her was an exotically lovely girl dressed all in black, who 
didn't look entirely human, with long white hair and sharply 
pointed ears.
     
     "Welcome back," the girl said softly.  She smiled 
pleasantly.  "How do you feel?  Your mind was gone for a long
time."

     Nabiki tried to open her mouth to speak, but couldn't.  She
was too weary, feeling as if she'd climbed a mountain, or
possibly fallen down one.  Instead, she simply sank back into the
pillows.

     "I am Wiyeed, Highest One of the Lady."  If that was 
supposed to mean anything to Nabiki, it did not.  "Do not be
afraid.  You are safe here."

     "Kuno?" Nabiki finally managed.  
     
     "He's with his sister."
     
     "Sister," Nabiki murmured.  "No, his sister's dead..."
     
     Wiyeed shook her head.  "Rest.  You'll need it."
     
     And then, as if the words were a command, Nabiki sank down
into a dreamless sleep.

**********

     Nodoka watched, horrified, as her son fell to his knees,
tearing at his hair and screaming as if he were being burned
alive.  Filled with anger, she stepped forward, hands balled into
fists at her side.  "What have you done to him, you witch?"

     Kontogara's eyes, invisible behind the glasses, focused upon
Nodoka like twin beams.  Chills ran up and down her spine; why,
why could she not remember what the eyes looked like behind those
glasses?  "I have fulfilled his destiny."

     Suddenly, Ranma began to laugh, a terrible sound that cut at
her heart.  Soun went pale, and Yamiko chuckled wetly.  Nodoka
reached down and touched her son's shoulder.  "Ranma..."

     So quickly she never even saw it coming, his hand flashed
up in an open-handed slap that caught her across the jaw and
knocked her flying backwards with a cry that was more shock than
actual pain.  All the same, the impact of her body with the
ground drove the air from her lungs and made black explosions
burst before her eyes.  

     Soun's voice, crying out in rage.  "What are you doing, 
boy?"
          
     Nodoka raised her head, in time to see her son lift a hand
towards Soun and flick his fingers in a casual gesture.  Soun
screamed as if struck a terrible blow, and was lifted off the
ground and thrown a dozen feet back.  He didn't move after he
landed.
     
     Slowly, Ranma turned to look at her where she lay upon the
ground.  His face was filled with a terrible, malevolent glee 
that was utterly alien to him.  "Hello, Mother."  No affection in 
the way he said it; mocking, almost bitter.

     "Ranma," she said, forcing the words past the painful
tightness in her chest.  "Ranma, what's wrong?"

     Her son said nothing.  Instead, he simply lifted a hand,
palm up, fingers spread wide as they would go.  Tiny forks of
black lightning crackled between the tips of his fingers, and
Nodoka saw, horribly, her own death in her son's eyes.  Only for 
a moment, though, because then a towering figure interposed
itself between her son and her.  
     
     "There was a bargain, was there not?" a cold voice asked.  
The huge blond man held his sword loosely, but looked almost 
ready to use it.  "You were to let them go."

     Her son's voice answered back.  "Oh, Yan.  That deal was
with my dear servant Yoko here, not with me.  And the boy is no
longer."

     The man's grip tightened on his sword.  "You are not very 
good at fulfilling your promises anyway, are you, Baazel?"

     "But, Yan, all that was for your sake."  It was not her 
son's voice; the inflections were wrong, the tones too smooth.  
"If you had known he was sane, you could have thought of nothing 
but him, especially before you fully awakened into your new body.  
You could not have done the work that needed to be done."  
Despite the horror of what had happened to her son - some evil
spirit had surely possessed him to make him strike out at his own
mother like that - Nodoka could not help but wonder at the sheer
charisma in that voice.  "I did it all for you, old friend."

     The man called Yan obviously felt it too, because his sword
wavered, until the point nearly touched the ground.  So much did
his hand tremble that it seemed the sword might drop from his
fingers.

     "It's all right, Yan," the thing using her son's voice said
with gentle persuasion.  "Step aside."

     Kontangara raised her voice, but it was tremulous at best,
compared to the awesome weight of command in the other voice.
"Ritter, the vessel of our lord--"

     "Silence, woman."  The sword snapped again, pointed straight
at her son's heart.  "Baazel, if you touch his mother, or any of
them, then you will find out just what I have become in all these 
years of wandering."  The hate in his voice was so intense, so
cold, that the air seemed to chill at it.  Nodoka hoped with all
her soul that no one would ever hate her as much as Yan seemed to
hate whatever was speaking through her son in that moment.

     "You would jeopardize all of this?"  The smooth voice - 
Baazel - was still making a pretence of being amused, but there 
was a threat in it now.  "All these centuries, these millennia of 
work.  For what?  To prove a point?"
     
     "I would."
     
     Suddenly, Baazel laughed.  The threat was gone.  "Very well
then, Yan.  If it will make you happy."

     "It will not," Yan replied.  "But I will see it done all the
same."

     Nodoka finally struggled to her feet, still finding it hard
to draw breath.  "Ranma--"

     "Ranma's gone."  The voice of Baazel was alight with glee as
he looked at her past the imposing bulk of Yan.  "Now he can
learn what it feels like to be inside that prison.  To be able to
feel everything, see everything, but do nothing..."  Baazel 
trailed away into silence, his eyes narrowing.  He raised his 
fist, and a black flare of power shot upwards from it.  The dark 
mists that surrounded Jusenkyou poured into the sky to follow it 
as it arced higher and higher, and Nodoka turned her face away, 
unable to watch either that or the laughing figure of her son as 
he leapt into the air to fly away to the west.

     A massive hand fell upon her shoulder, surprisingly gently.
"Peace, mother," Yan said.  "Your child goes only to complete
what should have been finished four thousand years ago.  Now it
is the end, and I am tired."

     "Thank you," Nodoka murmured, not looking back.  "For what
you did."

     As if the words had woken something terrible, the grip of 
the hand tightened slightly on her shoulder, and Nodoka realized
that this man could have torn her apart as easily as a sheet of
paper if he wished.  "It had," he hissed, "nothing to do with
you."

     His hand dropped away, and Nodoka released the breath that
she hadn't realized until then she was holding.  Slowly she
turned around, catching only a glimpse into the horrible weight
of ages held within Yan's blue eyes before his back was to her
and he was walking away.  Yoko knelt by Soun, and Nodoka was
relieved to see his chest slowly rise and fall.  Akari was
staring blankly into space again, with Yamiko standing almost
protectively close to her.  The hunched, winged old man was the 
only one watching her, unblinking as a snake and with a slight 
smirk upon his face.  Nodoka looked back at him, until at last he 
turned away.  Of her son, her precious son, her only son, there
was no sign at all.

**********

     Akane sat with her back against the boulder and watched as
the Joketsuzoku set up camp for the night in the pass.  The sun 
was nearly down now, a pale and murky purple-violet glow in the 
western sky.  The War March was over; Fang's suicide had been as
good an admission of her guilt in the matter as anything else,
including Shampoo's story about what had really happened on
Watcher's Hill.  Amidst the tents going up and the flames of the
cooking fires, she could occasionally see Cologne or Shampoo or
Bai Ling walking.  Most of the Joketsuzoku were confused, and
when people were confused fear followed soon after.  Akane 
herself was in much the same state; Ranma had been gone for 
nearly two hours now, and all she could do was wait.  Like so
many other times.  Mousse was gone as well; whatever he had
become, he seemed to slip away when he wasn't being watched, with
alarming frequency.

     Ryoga came walking towards her out of the tents and fires.
His face was haggard, and he carried a jug in one hand and two 
clay cups in the other.  Akane nodded silently in greeting as he
sat down beside her.

     "They're going to cremate Fang Shi's body once the sun 
sets," he told her as he poured the water.  "That's the way they
do it.  Offering the body to the gods as soon as possible, so 
that the soul doesn't have to stay entombed within the flesh for
too long."  He sighed, and handed her the cup.  Akane drank; the
water was lukewarm, but still refreshing.  "Bai wants me to be
there.  It's sort of a private ceremony."

     "Don't forget about Akari."
     
     His face darkened, and she immediately regretted the words.
"I'm not going to forget about her.  It's only that she really
needs someone to be her friend right now.  Do you have any idea
how hard it must have been for her to go against her 
great-grandmother like that, and then have Fang kill herself in
front of her?"

     "I know, I know," Akane muttered apologetically.  "I didn't
think.  I'm sorry."

     Ryoga gulped his water down thirstily, and set his cup down
by the jug.  As if reading her thoughts, he smiled and put his
hand on her shoulder.  "Ranma should be back soon, Akane."

     "No."  Akane cradled her cup in her hands as she pressed
back against the stone, as if she'd sink within it if she pushed
hard enough.  "There was something wrong.  He was so panicked.
That's why he isn't back."

     "Even if there is something wrong, he'll handle it."  
Ryoga's expression was almost sour.  "He always does."

     Akane looked over at him warily.  "What's wrong?"
     
     "All that time I spent training so I could be as good as
him, so I could surpass him."  Ryoga clenched a fist.  "And 
now... now he flies around like a bird.  The sort of power that
must take... I'll never catch up."

     "But why do you need to?  What are you competing for?"
     
     Ryoga's sour expression transformed into contemplative,
passed from that into bitterness, and settled eventually upon a
sort of weary peace.  He looked quite suddenly like a man who had
followed a long trail in search of something, only to turn around
and see it had paced behind him all the while.  Slowly, he 
smiled.  "Nothing, anymore," he said.  "You're right, Akane."

     For some reason, Akane suddenly wished that she could share 
what Ranma had told her about why he'd left.  She didn't have the
right to do that, though.

     A shadow fell over them.  "May I join you?"
     
     Akane looked up.  It was Shampoo's strange companion, 
carrying what looked like a freshly-cut sapling under his arm as
easily as a twig.  Something was very odd about the bearded young
man, something that Akane could not entirely place.  "Sure."

     Lougui sat down, and began to quickly and efficiently strip
the bark from the sapling with a knife.  A pile of wood shavings
rapidly began to accumulate at his feet.  

     Akane waited for him to say something more.  When he didn't,
she hesitantly spoke.  "So... what are you doing?"

     "Work," he said shortly.
     
     "What sort of work?" Ryoga asked.
     
     The knife never stopped moving, even as he looked up to talk
to them.  "Arrows."
     
     Akane blinked.  "You're an archer?"
     
     He shook his head.  "My people do not fight."  The knife was
a blur.  "We are makers of weapons, not wielders."

     Ryoga cocked his head to one side.  "Where are you from?"
     
     "Pengrai."  The name was said wistfully, and then his voice
turned distant and bitter again.  "A world away from here."

     "You helped Shampoo, didn't you?" Akane inquired.
     
     He shook his head.  "My father did, and my mother.  I was
sent back for the battle here."  That, Akane noted, was something
he didn't seem very happy about.  She also noted that he held the
finished shaft of an arrow in his hand, perfectly straight.  He
passed his hands over it, and one end unfurled like a flower, 
into a reasonable wooden approximation of guiding feathers.  The
other end flattened and spread out into a thin triangular point
that looked as deadly as any metal one.  "This is what I can do
for now."

     Out of the gathering darkness, a slim white-cloaked figure 
came walking.  It stuck close to the shadows beneath the walls of 
the pass, and moved so as not to attract any attention.  
Something about the way it moved was oddly familiar to Akane, but
she couldn't say precisely why.  Next to her, Ryoga frowned, and
watched warily as it approached.  

     It came closer, and pulled down the hood, and Akane gasped
softly.  Her own face stared back from within the shadowy mantle;
for a moment, Akane looked with shock upon her own doppelganger,
and then the rational part of her mind put things together.  
"Kima."

     "I take it from the fact you are alive and not prisoners 
that you were successful?" Kima asked in a low voice as she sat
down.  

     "Yes," Akane replied stiffly.  Whatever Ranma might have
told her about being able to trust the Phoenix, she had not yet
been able to entirely put aside the past.  Seeing Kima wearing
her own face brought all the worst memories back.  Though there
already seemed to be differences between her face and the one
Kima wore; lines under the eyes she didn't have, or a certain
twist of the mouth.  "Where's Ranma?"

     Kima blinked, surprised.  That was an expression that seemed
familiar.  "Ranma?  Isn't he here?"

     "No," Ryoga said.  "He went back to Mount Phoenix a while
ago..."

     "Damn," Kima swore softly.  "The king is gone too.  And the
prisoner is dead."

     "Bi Shou?"
     
     Kima nodded.  "The cell door was ripped off its hinges.  
Whoever killed her pulled her throat out."  She sighed, looking
haggard and near exhaustion.  "Where's Cologne?"

     Ryoga pointed.  "Somewhere in there."
     
     All four of them turned their heads towards the encampment
of the Joketsuzoku, and at that moment, in the north, Baazel 
threw his declaration of war to the heavens.  The black mists 
swirled up into the air like a dark cape being unfurled across 
the heavens, and took the shape of a winged creature halfway 
between bird and reptile.  The thing spread wings and talons to 
the sides, spanning the empyrean from east to west.  Its great 
beaked maw of a mouth opened, and a bellowing cry of triumph
shook the mountains:

     *I return.*
     
     "King of Ashes," Kima whispered, eyes wide and fearful.
     
     In Lougui's hands, the arrow he'd been shaping split in 
half.  "Dear gods shelter and preserve us..."

     "Ranma," Akane said softly.  For below her conscious mind, a
part of her had recognized that voice, distorted though it was by
hate.

     For a time, the monstrous shape hung in the sky, and then it 
flexed its talons once as though in anticipation, before 
disappearing into a huddled mass of dark clouds that quickly 
dispersed.  By then, all in the Valley of the Waters had seen it, 
or heard tell of it, and all of them knew fear.

**********

     Night fell early over what had been Jusenkyou.  Beneath the
shadow of the menacing spectre in the sky, no light of the fading
sun could penetrate.  By the time it had vanished, the sun was
entirely set, and the stars had come out overhead.  They were
especially bright that night, bright enough to see clearly what
the black mists had done to Jusenkyou.  The land was cracked and
blighted; splinters of woods and scraps of withered flora were 
all that remained to mark the existence of life.  The darkness 
had devoured the land like a ravaging cancer, and only the island
surrounded by the lake gave testament to what it had once been.
Yet even the waters seemed dead as the land around them, 
reflecting only dimly the stars in the sky.

     Yoko sat on the banks and stared into the waters.
     
     "A child," she murmured softly.  Her legs were crossed, and
her hands rested upon her knees as though in meditation.  "Like a
little child that knows only hate."

     Next to her, Yamiko softly gurgled; a parody of human
speech.

     "Yes..." Yoko agreed sardonically.  "Yes, he most certainly
is a powerful child.  But... I had always thought that we served
something more than that.  Can that truly be..."  One hand came 
up and massaged her temples.  "It is no blasphemy to wonder, is
it?  I still believe..."

     Distantly, she could hear the sounds of the prisoners
talking to each other.  No more had been said of them after 
Ritter's inexplicable behaviour, but they were left alone.  He 
could deal with them now.

     Yamiko shrugged, and mewled out a question with the ruin of
her voice.     
     
     "Not yet," Yoko told her.  "A little while longer.  When I
am ready."

     Yamiko nodded, once, and sank down into the shadows near the
banks of the lake.

     "He is not the master.  It is only that he does his will, 
like you or I."

     "I did not even know you were there."

     Ritter's massive form settled down beside her.  "That is
because I did not want you to."  Huge though he was, there was
nothing hulking about him, and she knew well that he was faster
than her by a large degree.

     "He is the same voice, though.  The one that commands us..."
     
     "Baazel speaks with the will of the master, but he is not 
the master."

     "What is he going to do?"
     
     Ritter steepled his hands and stared off into the night.  
"Finish what he started.  Kill her, if that can be done."

     "And then?"
     
     "Then the master will be free."  He said it wistfully,
almost like a child speaking of a dream.

     Yoko said nothing.
     
     "You do not seem so enthusiastic as once you were for this
cause."  His eyes glittered in the darkness; they almost seemed
to glow, pale blue fires.
     
     Yoko stared back.  "Perhaps the same might be said for you."
     
     "But I am old," he corrected.  "I am old, and the old grow 
weary.  Next to me, you are young."

     Off near the banks of the black lake, the traitorous old
bird-man was standing in deep concentration.  She could feel him
reaching out; his power was clumsy but strong.  No birds would
answer his call, though; no animal would come within miles of
Jusenkyou now if it could avoid it, no matter how many sorceries
might coerce it.

     "An answer, Yoko."
     
     "It is merely something the eldest said to me, before I
killed her," she replied.  "That all this has gone before, and
that she and I have met in battle before, and we will meet again
and again after this."

     He laughed disdainfully; somehow, that eased her doubts.
"Oh, I have heard that before.  But all is not pointless in the
end.  As the water wears down the rock, or as many threads 
compose a tapestry, we are important.  The final battle is not
won or lost in and of itself, but by the accretion of many tiny
victories."

     "But what of us?" she asked softly.
     
     "Us?"  Now he laughed again, deeply bitter.  "We are 
nothing.  Mere pawns.  Our wishes will be fulfilled as 
convenient; otherwise, he will gladly cast us aside."

     "Then why?  Why serve him?"
     
     "Because he is the master of this world, and of all others,"
Ritter answered.  "There is no need beyond that.  Whatever we
receive in return is subsidiary."

     "Why did you save Saotome's mother, then?"
     
     His huge hands reached down and dipped into the waters.  
"Because in that, I defied Baazel.  Not the master.  He does not
care the time or manner of a death; he is not so impatient as we,
who are mortal."

     Yoko said, as she stood and smoothed her robes, "I think I
am ready now."

     Ritter said nothing.  He seemed to be gazing off at 
something no one else could see.  Finally, he spoke:  "The
Joketsuzoku are in the pass.  You will destroy them, and then 
march upon the Phoenix."

     "Yes."  Yoko nodded her head.  Her heart was clear now, no
longer so heavy.  Until the end of time, let the master's will be
done.  

     She raised her hand; young again, like the rest of her.  
That was a blessing, of sorts.  The waters stirred, though no
wind blew across them.  A single ripple cut the surface, and
rapidly became a slow movement of spreading rings across the
water.  The circles crossed over one another, intertwined into 
more complex patterns, and then finally died away into nothing.
     
     Yoko said, simply and gently, as a mother calls to a child, 
"Come."
     
**********

     The smoke rose in a thin plume against the stars, spread 
out, and vanished.  Up on the slopes, Shampoo could see the glow 
of fire against the rock.  Fang Shi's funeral pyre.  If anyone
did not deserve one, it was her; but there was no reason to wound
Bai Ling further.  Never would she have imagined her old rival
coming around like that, but Bai had.  In the process, she'd
somehow been defeated by Ryoga.  Without all the tragedy, the
situation would have been almost comical.

     The tents of the Joketsuzoku made it appear as though a 
small city had risen in the pass.  A few camp fires burned, but
most of her people were asleep now, exhausted from the long 
march.  In the morning... well, she would see what the morning
brought.  Though if the now-vanished spectre in the northern sky 
was any indication, there would be battle before long.  Sentries 
and guards had been positioned throughout the pass, and would be 
relieved in a few hours.  As for her... she wasn't tired at all.

     Suddenly cold, she rubbed her hands together and stamped her
feet.  Kuang Biao was a comforting weight against her thigh; the
sword was one of the finest weapons she'd ever handled, and a 
good weapon was always a blessing - most especially at a time 
like this.

     Of their own accord, her thoughts turned to the others.
Ryoga was with Bai, of course, and Ranma was wherever he had gone
to; whatever she might wish, she could not entirely dismiss the
thought that he had some connection to the monstrous form that 
had risen in the sky.  

     No doubt Akane was wandering like she herself, trying to put
structure to her own thoughts in the night.  Cologne... her
great-grandmother... hard, she realized, to think of her in 
either way with concreteness.  There ought to be forgiveness, if
Ranma had said it was all right; but there was a gulf between
them now, a wound that she did not believe would ever be entirely
healed.  Perhaps Cologne was still with Kima, somewhere off in
the mountains; that was as sour a thought as any.  But the gods
knew they would need their allies before this was done.

     And Mousse?  Who could know where he had gone?  He was the 
wind now, and had become something that she both mourned and
feared.  

     "<Well-met this night, Maiden.>"
     
     In the wanderings of her thoughts, she had let her walking 
go from entirely conscious control, and come to where Lougui sat
in the shadows of the mountains, a growing pile of arrows beside
him.  
     
     "<Are you tired?>"
     
     He shook his head, shaping an arrow in his hands as though
moulding clay.  "<I don't need a lot of sleep.>"

     After a moment of consideration, she sat down.  "<You seem
to be in a better mood than before.>"

     "<I'm reconciled to my fate,>" he replied.  The arrow
finished, he put it into the pile and began another.  "<If I'm
stuck here, I might as well do what I can.>"

     "<Stuck?>"
     
     Sullen bitterness crept into his voice again as he smoothed
the branch to straightness.  "<The way through which we came is
closed for at least a decade.  My father collapsed the one
beneath the Watcher's Hill as well, and I know of no others.>"

     And quite suddenly, it all made sense.  "<You can't go back
home, can you?>"

     He smirked at her.  "<You are a quick one, aren't you?>"
     
     "<Why?  Why did you come, then?>"
     
     "<Obligations,>" he murmured.  "<My people fulfil our
pacts.  And my father was too old to go.>"

     There wasn't really anything else to say.  Not that any of 
them wanted to be here, really, any more than he did... Watcher's 
Hill had rid her of any belief that battle could ever truly be 
glorious; necessary, perhaps, but always ugly.  But they were 
fighting for their homes, or at least their friends.  He wasn't.  
She had seen the beauty of Pengrai from the window, the green 
hills and the long rivers - to have to leave that and come here 
because of some ancestral pact would no doubt be a galling blow.

     "<Thank you,>" she said finally.  "<I can understand why
you're upset, now.>"

     He nodded once, and put down a second completed arrow into
the pile.  They sat in silence for a time, long enough for him to 
finish another arrow, and then she hesitantly spoke.

     "<When we came out of the tunnels and you saw Mousse,>" she
asked, "<why did you respond like that?>"

     "<It is not the sort of thing I expected to see here.>"
     
     "<What's happened to him?>"
     
     "<In all likelihood, he will be dead within a year.>"
     
     Stunned.  A moment where speech was not possible.  Finally, 
she found the way back, and asked in a faint voice:  "<What?>"
     
     "<It comes upon some of our own people from time to time,>"
he answered.  "<We call them the god-driven.  As if possessed by
some force beyond themselves, they work day and night, crafting
the most wondrous of weapons and artifacts.  They do not sleep,
and resist any attempts to make them stop.  Sometimes, it leaves
them; sometimes they simply fall from exhaustion.  Your friend 
has much the same look about him.>"

     "<But it sometimes leaves?>"
     
     He shook his head.  "<Not for him.  Not with that spear he
bears.  He is consecrated to the Shroud-Maiden now, and there 
shall be no coming back for him.>"

     With a shrug, he finished another arrow, his attention
turned away from her again.  Shampoo looked up at the night sky, 
in time to see something star-bright moving overhead, and somehow
she knew that it was neither star nor plane, nor any other thing
entirely of the earth or of the heavens.

**********

     Hoofbeats.  Uncomfortable, up and down movement.
     
     Wake up.  Open eyes.
     
     Sand.  Stars.  Mountains.  Images reconcile.  Riding through
a desert, at night.  Riders beside her.  Hooves hit the sand, 
muffled, hit again.  Like drums.

     Nabiki blinked, and nearly let go of the reins in surprise.
Her feet were thrust into the stirrups, and she was wearing a 
light, long-sleeved black dress.  The last time she'd been on
anything approaching a horse had been at a petting zoo, and her
panicked pull on the reins made her horse cry out and almost 
rear.  But it stopped, and the other riders stopped as well.

     "What's going on?  Where am I?"  All around her, faces 
looked back; Kasumi's, the half-remembered girl from before, a 
man with the same inhumanly fair features.  Others she didn't
recognize.  Kuno was there too, gripping the reins of his horse 
in white-knuckled hands, with a black cloth tied over his eyes.
     
     "You said we had to come."
     
     The voice was familiar, but calmer than she'd ever heard it.
Nabiki turned her head to see Kodachi Kuno, hooded, on a horse
beside her.  "You were screaming it.  That the Dark was coming.
Don't you remember?"

     "No..." Nabiki nearly stuttered.  "No, I don't remember at
all."

     Kasumi swung her horse around with the skill of an 
experienced rider, so that she and Kodachi flanked Nabiki.  "We
have ridden from Chenmo Shan," she said.  Her eyes were distant;
they might have been stars.  "Time itself has slowed for us, and
we have sent a messenger ahead."

     Close to panic, Nabiki looked from Kodachi to Kasumi.  "I
don't understand."

     "Do not understand, then," Kodachi said coolly.  "Only 
ride."
     
     They rode.
     
**********

     "You may raise your eyes, now."
     
     Nodoka looked up.  At Yoko's command, they had closed their
eyes and knelt to the ground.  She hadn't known what to expect, 
but there had only been a long silence, and then the soft sound 
of many feet marching.  Now the place was deserted except for her
and the other prisoners, and the man called Yan.

     The cigarette dangling from his thin lips was a bright 
point in the darkness, and his cold eyes looked down at her
dispassionately.  His sword was loose in one hand, with moonlight
and starlight gleaming on the blade.  "It's time for you to go 
now.  All of you."

     "Where?"
     
     He shrugged.  "Away from here.  Come.  Get on your feet."
     
     Slowly, they rose.  The Guide helped Soun, who could barely
walk under his own power.  Akari had the same distant look in her
eyes that she'd carried since Ryugenzawa; it seemed as though she 
was not entirely here, as if she looked if into some more distant
place.

     The lake that had surrounded them, the lake from which 
they'd been pulled after being thrown into the waters at
Ryugenzawa, was gone.  In its place was bare grey stone, smooth
and polished as glass.  Nodoka regretted that she had not even
dared to peek.  But then again, she had been too busy thinking of
her son.  What had they done to him?  Driven him mad, perhaps?  
No; he'd spoken as if he were literally someone else.  There was
no making sense of it for her.

     "Walk."  With his sword, Yan pointed to the north.  His eyes
were as cold and bright as the stars above.

     "Where are we going--"
     
     He didn't even seem to move.  Not even a blur, and he had 
her by the neck of her now-ragged kimono, powerful fingers 
twisted into the fabric.  Without any apparent effort, he lifted
her off the ground until she was staring straight into his eyes.

     It had been so quick, she barely had time to cry out.  Now
that was impossible, harder even than drawing breath.  
"Please..." she gasped.

     "I stopped Baazel from killing you," he snarled.  "I have no
objection to killing you myself.  Now walk."

     He hurled her away as if she were refuse.  Nodoka slowly
stood up, straightening her kimono and shaking her head at Soun,
who was looking as if he wanted to attack Yan - which would have,
she was absolutely certain, meant that he would have died.  
Something in Yan's eyes told her that he was wavering upon the 
edge of sanity, that he was very close to cracking.  Whether he'd 
be more or less dangerous after that, she couldn't say.

     They walked.  Over the slick, not-quite-slippery stone that
had filled in the moat, out of the desolation of the now-vanished
black mists.  Yan led them, never speaking, walking at a pace 
that they could just barely keep up with.  Down a gully that cut 
through the belly of a mountain, that rose up again into a pass 
between the towering peaks.  Nodoka watched Yan as they walked. 
He would finish one cigarette, grind it out beneath his heel, and 
light another.  He must have smoked almost a dozen before they 
stopped in a narrow section of the pass, between two boulders 
the size of small houses that served to let only two people 
walking abreast pass through.  

     "Here," he said, as if that were supposed to mean something.

     They stopped, and he turned around to face them.  "Baazel
wanted you dead," he said softly, and Nodoka knew that he was
speaking most of all to her.  "For that, and that alone, I have
let you live.  But it is only delaying the inevitable."

     He stubbed his cigarette out on the side of one of the
boulders, and let it fall as a dying spark to the bare earth.  
"Go through to the other side."

     They passed between the rocks, and emerged unscathed beyond.
Behind them, Yan lit another cigarette and watched them, his
sword thrust point-first into the ground and still trembling from
the impact.

     "Walk to the north," he said.  "You will find them soon."
     
     Having passed beyond the rocks, Nodoka somehow found herself
less afraid of him.  "Please," she asked, "will you not tell me
what has happened to my son?  Did you not have a mother once?"

     "I did."
     
     Nodoka waited, until finally he spoke again:
     
     "Your son is gone.  There is only Baazel now."
     
     She fell to her knees, and wept.
     
     Someone touched her shoulder.  "Miss, we go now."
     
     She shook her head.  "My son..." she murmured.  It could not
end like this, not after they'd had so little time...

     "Miss, not make that one angry."  The Guide's voice was 
soft, almost infinitely compassionate.  "He very dangerous.  We
go now."

     "Leave me," she muttered tearfully, and shook her head.
     
     The Guide was a small man, but his strength was surprising
as he took her arms and half-lifted her to her feet.  "We go now.
Think of what your son would want."

     "Come now, Nodoka."  Now Soun was there, limping and looking
as though he would collapse at any moment, but making a pathetic
attempt at smiling bravely.  "My girls are gone, to who knows
where, but I, I..."  Tears began to roll down his face, and he
turned away.

     She took a step, and then another.  The grieving wounded her
heart, a muted throb in time to the beatings.  They walked;
behind them, Yan watched in silence as they left.  Nodoka looked
back from time to time, seeing him become a mere shadow of a man,
and then a pale-eyed face lit only by the glowing tip of his 
cigarette, until that went out into the darkness, and there was
no more of him left to see.

     In time, they heard hoofbeats, and saw the flames of 
torches.  A great host of warriors came into view, riding down 
the pass on horses.  At their head was an aged man in a cloak of
eagle feathers, with a small boy dressed in the pelt of a wolf
riding behind him.  He reined in his horse, and looked down at
them; his gaze was hard and studying, but his face was not
without kindness.

     "You look as if you have been through much, travellers," he
said gently.  "Fear not.  We of the Musk shall not harm you.  
This is as good a place as any to wait for our king.  So we shall
wait, and you shall tell us what you know of what transpires to
the south."
     
**********

     Yan, or Ritter, or the Serpent, stood and waited until the
prisoners were out of sight.  With his free hand, he gently
caressed the sword pommel.  In his other, the cigarette burned,
and smoke rose from it to disappear into the night.  

     Perhaps the balance was restored, now.  Baazel had lied to
him, betrayed him for four thousand years, beguiled him with
images of his hated rival locked in the depths of insanity,
forgotten and sealed within the stone chambers where his brother
had bound him after the last battle.

     Now Xanovere was as he had been meant to be, and Baazel had
been defied in his wishes to slay the woman.  Her life was as
meaningless as any other, and useful only in that saving it had
been a means to deny Baazel.

     How he had worshipped him; they had all worshipped him, and
some had gone on worshipping him even after it became clear that
his beauty hid cruelty beyond comprehension.  Even with only his
mind in the comparatively weak body of Ranma Saotome, the honeyed
tones of Baazel's voice were still almost irresistible.  He had
wanted to give in and let Baazel kill the woman, but his will had
grown far stronger than before over so long a time alone.

     This pass was in the Dragon's Ribcage, near the territories
of the Musk.  He knew they would be coming, had seen it long ago.
Here, at the Teeth of the Dragon, in the main pass towards
Jusenkyou and the southern lands, a single warrior might stand
between the boulders and hold off an army for some time.  
Especially one such as he, who had no fear of death.

     And yet...
     
     "I am tired," he said, out loud, admitting it perhaps for 
the first time.  "How long, oh master, must I labour for you,
before it is finished?"

     Wind scuttled between the Teeth of the Dragon, keening in
the narrow passage.  There was no answer, not even the vaguest
urgings?  Had the master abandoned him for defying Baazel?

     "How long?"
     
     He let his humanity melt and flow away like wax, until he
stood in the pass in the new body he had been given, hairless and
scaled.  He cried out to the wind and stars, and heard no answer
back.

     Finally, he snatched up his sword and walked away to the
south.     

**********     
     
     The first refugees had stumbled into the camp of the
Joketsuzoku an hour before sunrise.  Exhausted and hollow-eyed,
they were the inhabitants of small villages between Jusenkyou and
the camp, or isolated farmers or herders who lived in the
mountains.

     They brought stories of the army that came, an army that was
not human.  It moved slowly down the passes like a devouring
swarm, burning and killing everything in its way.  They could 
give no numbers; they were more interested in fleeing for their
lives.

     Camp was struck.  The scouts were sent out, and came back
with scattered reports.  They were monsters, no doubt, twisted
things no longer human, steeds that were not quite horses and not
quite wolves, winged shapes that soared in the sky above the
seething mass.  The numbers?  Too hard to guess, the things
swarmed so.  A thousand, perhaps more.  All coming south, through 
the main pass.  Directly towards them.  Only a few hours to 
prepare.  Messengers went back and forth between the camp of the 
Joketsuzoku and Mount Phoenix, and as the sun rose, all the army 
of the Phoenix took wing to help in fortifying the pass.  It was
an uneasy alliance, barely held together by the efforts of 
Cologne and Kima.  But it held; the threat was too great, and the 
memory of the vast ashen shape in the sky too vivid, for it not 
to.  The Joketsuzoku too young or weak to fight were sent back 
towards the south, to the nearly impenetrable mountain fortress
of the Phoenix.

     At midmorning, the tide became visible, less individual 
beings than a great hive mind directed by a single will.  They 
had obviously been human once, but now they were mixed with the 
bodies of beasts, warped into parodies of humanity.  Some held 
weapons, and some had only their claws and fangs.  They came 
slowly, inexorably, filling the pass up completely from side to
side.  The marching tread of their feet - the ones that had feet,
or hooves - seemed to shake the air itself.  In the sky above 
the horde were the ones with wings, and a dozen creatures 
emaciated as corpses who licked their fangs in anticipation of 
the feasting to come.  

     Suddenly, from the walls of the pass, the hidden archers of
the Phoenix and the Joketsuzoku loosed a flight of arrows.  Some
fell short; others flew true, and the first line of the attackers
stumbled for a moment.  It had begun.

**********

     A single drop of water beaded at the end of one huge
stalactite.  It gathered until it grew too large to stay, and 
then fell down towards the cavern floor a thousand feet below.
A dozen feet above Baazel's head, it struck an invisible barrier
and fizzled into a tiny puff of steam.  

     He hated this body.  It was weak and fragile, barely 
adequate for the work that had to be done.  The last thing he
needed was for it to be more unfamiliar to him.

     The work lay before him, bound and suffering in her lake.
The waters spun like a wheel, stirred by the motion of the rivers
passing into and out of the cavern, and the golden dragon lay at
the centre like an axis.

     Again, as he had been doing for so many hours, Baazel 
touched the tip of the staff to the waters, and sent out a burst
of poisonous, corrupting power that soon ebbed into the flow of
water and blood.  The work was slow, but it was already showing
its effects:  slowly, the bright scales of the dragon were 
growing dull, a patina like oil seeping over them.  And he 
himself was growing stronger.

     In one corner of the cavern, the Warmother cooed and
caressed the brow of her new consort.  For the moment, she was
content to leave him to his work.  Once he was strong enough
again, she would be the first to die.  She was too dangerous and
unpredictable to allow in this world, even in the weak flesh of
her host.

     Yan would be the second.  Perhaps Shouzin after that - he
was not sure if the Traitor had grown too far from him in all the
long windings of the centuries.  He had new servants now, and
would raise a new army.  Through the filtered perceptions of
Kontongara and her ilk over the years, he had seen the changes
wrought upon the world, the new weapons of war.

     They would be as nothing before him and the master.
     
     He touched the staff to the waters again.  It was not 
Worldcleaver, no, but it was a focus for his power all the same.
The dragon writhed; blood flowed from the wounds upon her wings
and sides, and the waters darkened subtly.  Already the golden
glow was shot through with tendrils of black.

     There was a dull ache at the back of his head, a sign he
knew well; the boy's mind and spirit were still there, bound as
he had been, watching all, doing nothing.  He hoped it had pained
Ranma to see how close his body had come to killing his mother; 
over five years imprisoned within here, subtly working his hooks
into the boy's soul and watching the stupid antics of him and the
other imbeciles who surrounded him, had given him a deep and
abiding hatred for Saotome.

     The Warmother laughed, a sound that seemed to shake the
cavern.  Baazel ignored her, and tried to decide whether it would
be best to kill her or Xanovere first.  The Dragon had served his
purpose, drilling a hole with his power from the summit of 
Jusendo to the cavern of the dragon.  Not that Baazel couldn't
have done the same, but conservation of power was necessary.  For
now.

     "I know you can hear me, boy," he said.  "I heard 
everything, watched everything.  Sometimes I could even feel your
thoughts, your strongest ones..."  He sent another tide of his
power into the waters, and laughed softly.  "So many about Akane.
Won't she be surprised to see what you've become."

     Deep inside his head, Ranma howled.  Baazel thrust him back
down into unconsciousness with a mild effort of will.  

     Wings.  From above.
     
     His bolt flew wide of the black shape, and struck the cavern
ceiling.  Stone cracked and head-sized boulders fell like rain,
rattling off the ground, plunging into the water or striking the
body of the dragon with dull, metallic sounds.  The raven landed
in the silky golden hair of the dragon's mane.

     Baazel snarled, utmost hate in his voice.  "You.  Die."
     
     The blast shattered a foot from the head of the dragon.  He
cursed; the bird was within the sphere of the dragon's 
protection, and not even he could harm it.

     The Warmother strode across the cavern, Xanovere following
in her wake like a faithful dog.  His mind was entirely gone now,
little more than a shell obedient to the will of the Dark.  The
blade of the Gekkaja glinted in his hand.

     "An intruder," the Warmother hissed.  "You told me you could
handle this yourself."

     "Only a pest," Baazel replied.  "Get your lapdog to pluck 
him off.  I don't think you're any more anxious to come too close
to her than I am."

     The Warmother turned to Xanovere.  "My love..."
     
     On the dragon's head, the raven spread his wings and spoke 
a true name, launching himself into flight even as he did.  
Baazel's attack scorched him into a drifting cloud of black
feathers even as the last syllable left his beak, but it was too
late.

     The words echoed in the cavern like the fading peal of a
bell, and Xanovere's eyes cleared.  His face cracked with grief,
and tears rolled down his face.  "Light and lady and life," he
whispered.  "What have I done?"

     Baazel screamed, turning and throwing a blast that would
have annihilated both of them together.  The Warmother raised her
hand and it parted around her open palm.  "Kill him, fool!" he 
howled.  The idiot bitch hadn't realized what was going on, damn 
her!

     Xanovere looked around, and peace fell across his 
countenance.  "Lady of sacrifices," he whispered.  "At long last, 
I return myself to thee."

     The Gekkaja blade swept up, and he laid his own throat open
from ear to ear.  Even as he did that, he reached up and ripped
free the Dragon Crown that had been bound to his forehead for
four millennia.  He seemed to fall as slowly as if he were 
swimming through waters.  His knees crumpled, his body pitched
forward, and he fell face-first to the ground.  Blood hit the
stone floor of the cavern like rain.  The Warmother cried out, 
distracted for a moment, and in his rage Baazel flung her across 
the cavern and into a wall with a wave of his hand.  

     The brothers were dead now.  Both of them.  And that 
meant...

     Again my power is returned to me.  
     
     He turned, unable to resist.  The voice of the dragon spoke
like his own thoughts.  Her eyes were open, aching blue.  All 
the oceans were in there, swallowing him up, him and Ranma
Saotome both, down into the sea.

**********

     He was lost in a forest where the trees laughed at him, or
bound to a rock as the sun blazed overhead, or stranded on an
island in the middle of a surging sea, or trapped by a ring of
fire, or chained in prison, or down in a pit, or sealed in ice.

     The map to guide his way, or the knife to cut his ropes, or
the key that would open the door and the chains, was always just
out of reach.  

     He had no name that he could remember.  He was a man, and
sometimes a woman.  He wandered through desert, through plains,
through forest and sea, never resting.  Ravens followed him, the
carrion-birds; serpents slithered at his feet.  The wolves paced 
in the hills, baying and calling, and the lions lay down at his
feet.  He held a copper sword, an iron spear, a bow of oak, a set 
of ivory dice, a cup of ash wood, a book bound in leather, his 
own bare hands.  He wore armour, and kingly raiment, and the 
robes of a monk, and a beggar's rags.

     On the horizon, under the sea, atop the mountain, the
citadel, the fortress, the cave waited.  His horse grew weary, 
and he walked, and then flew with the wings of a bird.  He
travelled over water, under stone, through all lands and all the
cities of men.

     He couldn't remember his name, or what he was looking for.
     
     Sometimes he slept, and awoke again in other places.  And 
wherever he went, he was always alone.  Always lost.  Now he was
in the desert, and now he was naked in prison, weeping and bound 
in chains, crying out for release.

     How long he stayed there he could not say.  He prayed for
the desert or the forest, to hear the howling of the wolf or the
hissing of the serpent, or the hungry raven's cry.  But the stone
walls did not melt, the iron chains did not release.  No one came
to attend to his cries, not even whoever his jailor might be.  He
slept on filthy straw, fouled himself, drank stagnant water that
trickled from a crack in the wall to soothe his dry throat.

     After centuries, he heard the iron door creak, and looked up
into blinding brightness.  A shape stood in the doorway, cloaked
in fire and robed in light, beckoning to him.  His chains fell
away, the prison fell away, and he stood up and took its hand.

     They walked together through the desert.  They spoke of
nothing.  At last they stopped, and the figure - male or female,
he could not tell - kissed him on the brow.

     Now you belong to all of us, it said.  You shall see.  And
he too shall tempt you, and he knows well the ways of temptation.

     And he opened his eyes and saw.
     
**********

     The Joketsuzoku held the pass against the onrushing tide of
foes.  Her great-granddaughter was in the centre, Ryoga and Bai
Ling at her sides, Kuang Biao flashing in her hands like a blade
of wind.  The enemy died in droves, but there were so many of 
them, they were so outnumbered...

     And then she felt Samofere die, felt his power smash down
upon her like a wave, matched by her grief.  Dead, her soul cried
out, my love, my love is dead.  

     The archers launched another flurry of arrows.  Akane, she
knew, was among them; twisted monsters died, feathered with 
shafts.  

     Now.  They were in the right place, a huge mass of them
swarming along the one side pass that would let them hit the
defenders in the flank.  There had been too few to split the
forces.  There was only her, and she had prepared, but let it be
enough, gods, she prayed, let it be enough...

     Once, twice, three times she struck the mountainside with
her fingers.  She had done it before, strategically, weakening it
in the right places in the time she'd had.  And it worked; a few
pebbles at first, and then boulders, and then slabs the size of
houses, until the walls of the pass began to fall like rain upon
the monsters, burying them.  She ran away from the devastation,
barely escaping being swept along, weeping.

     My love, my love is dead
     
**********

     Dead.  She felt them die, nearly all instantly, crushed
beneath the weight of the stone.  More where they came from.  In
Ryugenzawa, nearly two thousand had given themselves to the lake,
that their spirits might be bound in the waters and reborn at
Jusenkyou as her army.  The twisted steed she rode, a mix of 
horse and serpent and wolf with a human face, had once been one 
of the Children.  Loyal until the end.

     She was at the centre of the mass, controlling the motions
of the army by her will.  Around her, a dozen elite mages of the 
Circle served as her guard.  Yamiko had long ago been lost to the 
combat, and Ritter had not yet returned from wherever he had
taken the prisoners.  They were outnumbered in the air, Xande and 
Shouzin leading the small force they had in sorties and 
skirmishes against the armies of Phoenix Mountain.  But on the
ground, they had the advantage in numbers, if not skill.

     Again, she thought of her children.  They would conquer 
here, annihilate the ancient foes of the master, and then sweep
over the world.  And it would be time for vengeance, to level the
cities of those who had murdered her children.  How little they
had been on her thoughts in these past few years, only to return
now... How close she had come to forgetting her own desires in 
the joy of service to the Dark...

     For the second time in less than a day, she wished that she
were still able to weep, but

**********

     But there were too many of them.  Too many for them to win,
it seemed.  She spun and slashed, each stroke cutting down a
monstrous foe that sometimes wore a disturbingly human face, but
there was always another to fill its place.  There were warriors
dying around her, and she heard their screams amidst the howlings
of the inhuman beasts.  Shadows of the Phoenix and the winged
monsters passed overhead, and arrows rained down all around them.

     Kuang Biao moved like lightning in her hands, feather-light,
razor-sharp, and she gave thanks again to the ones who had forged 
it, and the ones who had given it to her.  She bled from a 
half-dozen shallow wounds, and now a poorly-made parry forced her
to one knee, and a sword-wielding thing with the head of a goat
loomed over her...

     And died, as a spear burning white-hot ripped through its
chest.  Mousse came down seemingly from nowhere, riding upon a
steed translucent as water.  He seemed nearly translucent as 
well, sunlight shining through him as he rode and killed

**********

     Killed another, and watched the winged body fall towards the
ground.  The slim blade hidden in his cane was dark with blood, 
the blood of his former people.  He had left them behind, gone to
walk now with the Dark in the light rather than in the shadows.  
And what allies he fought with now!  The Souleaters, and the
Undying, most beloved of the King of Ashes.  Surely he would be
rewarded with youth again, as he'd been promised, when all this
was done.

     They were outnumbered in the air, but he was smarter,
leading his force of effective, albeit hideous, winged troops 
against the Phoenix.  He knew well the tactics of his people, and
they were killing more than they lost.  Somewhere in the chaos
was Kima; he had glimpsed her far away once, bearing the Kinjakan
as a symbol, perhaps - there was no way she could be using it as
a weapon.

     Then the razored ring flashed by him and tore through one of
the monsters he led, and he realized she was.  Effectively, too.
But she was right in front of him, now, and she would die.  

     He drew on his power, prepared a blast, and caught her eyes
with his.  She spotted him now, and her face twisted hatefully;
let her die with that hate on her face.  His wings snapped back,
and the darkness gathered about him...

     Agony.  The ring had not missed him this time, on the return
journey, and it had taken his right wing off nearly at the
shoulder - almost his right arm as well.  He was falling,
lopsided, instinctively and uselessly trying to keep himself in
the air with his one remaining wing.  He screamed out a word of
power, and the air tore apart around him again, as it had in the
Hall of Speaking, to carry him down into the darkness and away

**********

     Away from there, now.  Xande was dead, or dying - she would
not stay to see him hit the ground.  The Kinjakan sang in her
hands, and she thought of Saffron, of her dead king.  Let her be
worthy to bear this.  She turned in the air, leading her
contingent of troops towards a high section of the pass where a
beleaguered group of Joketsuzoku archers tried to fight off an
attack by some of the winged monsters.  The Souleaters were here
as well; she had seen them, had killed one with a lucky shot from
the ring of the Kinjakan.  But they were sticking to the fringes
of the battle.

     She and her troops struck from behind, with spear and sword
and bow, killing half of the Joketsuzoku's assailants in a single
pass.  They whirled, and came back, and she saw that Akane Tendo
was among the archers, her face hard and an arrow nocked to her
bow.  She swung the Kinjakan in a wide arc, and the ring killed
or disabled three more attackers.  A scream from behind - one of
her own troops.  And then the Souleaters were among them, fast
and deadly as lightning.  Their leader was there, Shouzin the
Undying, killing with barbed tail and jagged sword.  He spotted
her, and came on with a beat of his wings.  His fangs were 
stained with gore, and his red eyes glowed dimly.  One of her
warriors screamed and died, body dropping from the air as a
single stroke of Shouzin's sword nearly halved him.  
     
     She barely brought the Kinjakan up in time to parry, and
lashed back with the sword in her other hand.  The ringed staff
was light and strong, remarkably easy to wield.  Shouzin snarled
and slashed at her with his tail, and she turned sideways in the
air to avoid the blow.  A storm of arrows from the Joketsuzoku
ripped through the combat, killing a single Souleater and a
half-dozen of the... things; she could not think of them as human 
any longer.  Her troops began to rout the rest, but she and
Shouzin were on the fringes of the combat.  Still, it was too
crowded to use anything more than close attacks with her sword;
too much risk of hitting her own troops with the Kinjakan ring or
her wing attacks.  

     "TIEYIREN!"
     
     Shouzin, it seemed, had no such concerns about his own
allies.  The black blades flew from his wings in a diffuse arc,
tearing through friend and foe alike.  Seemingly of its own
volition, the Kinjakan rose up in her hands, and the blades
pattered off like rain.  Shouzin dove at her, and a flurry of
blows from his sword drove her back nearly against the cliff 
face.  He was in the grip of some sort of battle-madness,
uncaring of his own safety in his desire to inflict as much
damage as possible.  She struck back, and gave him a narrow wound
across the chest.  There was little blood, and he only laughed in
return and nearly battered through her defences.  They spun and
circled in the air, darting back and forth to engage each other.
She was faster, he was stronger; evenly-matched, it seemed almost
a stalemate.  Hundreds of feet below, the battling forces surged;
the Joketsuzoku held strong, but only barely, and were being
slowly worn down by the seemingly endless tide of foes.  

     As she spun back from another pass at Shouzin, she saw it
coming out of the corner of her eye.  It had the wings of a bat,
and the face of a dog, but its insane eyes were entirely human.  
She killed it with a blow of the Kinjakan, but the momentary
distraction gave Shouzin the advantage.  They were fighting too
near the cliffs for comfort, and a misplaced movement of her
wings could mean the end.  A cut over her eye - she could not
remember getting it - was slowly threatening to blind her with
the slow drip of blood.

     Shouzin howled like a beast and smashed his sword against
hers with the force of a hammer.  It spun from her hand and she
barely got the Kinjakan up in time to block his second strike.
The impact of his weapon on her parry seemed to shake her bones.
He pressed her back, trying to drive her against the jagged edge
of cliffs.  Desperately, she tried to keep calm; any panic would
only lessen her chances.  The cliffs were right behind her... no,
too close...  

     His foot smashed into her stomach, and her back hit solid
stone.  Air rushed out of her as she folded her wings against her
back to stop them from breaking; even with that, it hurt 
terribly.  There was barely time to flare her wings and drop to a
ledge below, and then Shouzin was there.  She flung the 
Kinjakan's ring at him, saw it miss him and arc high into the 
air, and then there was a hot pain in her side.  Shouzin had 
missed her heart by bare inches, and her next breath tasted of
blood.  The blade scraped against her ribs as he pulled it out, 
and she slammed the end of the Kinjakan like a staff into his 
chest.  He wavered, but did not fall, and prepared to ram the 
sword into her heart.

     Pathetic, she thought dimly.  She had seen dragons, stood
against the hound and the Ravager, and now she was going to die
alone here against this monstrous thing that had once been one of
her people, who had once been called the Fair, and...

     The ring of the Kinjakan returned to its place at the end of
the staff.  Which she was currently weakly pressing against
Shouzin's chest.  It was not especially pleasant in any way, but
it brought a smile to her face as the Traitor plunged screaming 
and dying from the ledge, dragging the Kinjakan from her hands as
he did.

     "I can't believe that worked twice," she murmured, and sank
down away from the blood and metal of the battle, into the cool 
comfort of the shadows

**********

     Shadows rose.  She leapt, and the half-dozen she killed in
her descent from the cliffs must have deeply regretted flying too
low.  Landing on her feet amidst the battle on the ground, she
threw a spinning ring of darkness that cleared the area around 
her and gave her a moment to orient herself, and then laid into
the Joketsuzoku with her hands.  They were like children before
her, and they died like children, screaming.  She mowed them down
like wheat.

     Then, at the forefront, she saw them.  A powerfully-built 
boy with a bandanna, a girl in blood-stained white clothing with
a sword.  The plan to decimate the Joketsuzoku from the rear was
forgotten instantly.  It was _them_ - the ones who shared some
responsibility for Denkoko's death.  Now she could kill them with
impunity, she could rip them apart

**********

     Apart.  He had tried to keep Shampoo and Bai close to him,
but in the madness of the combat, with so many warriors fighting 
all around him, it was impossible to do that.  Now he only caught
occasional glimpses of them, Shampoo with her sword flashing in
the sun, Bai swinging her polearm in circles to drive away the
enemy.  Mousse was out there somewhere as well, a ghostly figure
on a ghostly steed - he had no idea what had happened to his
friend, but he was worried.  They weren't having any trouble 
against the foe, and neither was he; there were many of the 
things, but they were poorly-skilled, and he was able to batter 
them into unconsciousness with his fists and feet easily enough.  
But the Joketsuzoku were dying; he'd seen a dozen women dragged 
down and killed, as many Phoenix crash to earth from the battle 
in the air, and it sickened him.  This wasn't the sort of battle 
he was used to.  

     A rat-faced thing gibbered and jabbed at him with a spear,
and he absently smashed it with his fist.  He felt bone break
under the blow, and the thing fell back to be trampled by its
comrades.  If he had to guess, Jusenkyou had been used in some
way to transform human beings into monsters.  But where had all
those transformed come from?  

     Think about that later.  For now, just fight.  He 
intercepted something between frog and wolf as it leapt for the
unprotected back of a young Joketsuzoku, and sent it spinning
back into the enemy horde with a snapped spine.  The warrior
smiled gratefully at him; she was no more than fifteen, short
dark hair slick with blood.  He didn't even know her name.

     Danger, his senses screamed.  To the left.  He dodged, felt
the passage of air as something whipped by too fast to see, and a
blur of black shot by him in a whirl of shadowy robes.

     Yamiko.
     
     Two Joketsuzoku died with a stroke of her hands, including
the one he'd saved moments earlier.  The shadows poured into 
their mouths and nostrils like oil, and they fell gasping and 
choking for a few seconds before lying still in the blood-slick 
dust of the pass.  He yelled and charged her, hammering at her 
again and again - punches, chops, kicks.  She tittered, eyes 
dancing merrily over her mask, and knocked them aside as if they 
were merely the descent of cherry blossoms.  The shadows were 
leaping like flames all around her, catching his eye, tearing his 
attention away from her--

     Four bright lines of pain cut across his chest.  Yamiko's
eyes were darker than the night, darker than the bottom of the
sea.  She hissed, slashed for his throat; he dodged, kicked for
her legs, and she leapt over his blow and nearly broke his jaw
with the side of her foot.  He reeled, momentarily stunned, and
saw Shampoo come out of the mass of combat to engage Yamiko.  
The sword was a blur in her hands, and he could see that Yamiko
was having difficulty dodging or blocking them all.  Metal rang
on metal and sparks filled the air as Yamiko parried with her
forearm guards, the black sleeves of her robe shredding beneath
the storm of sword blows.  Gradually, Yamiko turned it around,
until Shampoo was the one dodging frantically against the furious
attacks of the black-robed woman.  He came from behind, and
Yamiko threw a wave of shadow that he ducked under.  It tore
through both sides, knocking Joketsuzoku and monsters alike to
the ground.  A circle was gradually clearing around them, as the
monsters moved away from Yamiko and the Joketsuzoku followed with
them.  An impromptu arena was being created.

     The ground shook, and he heard a distant crash of rock from
up the pass, towards the rear of the enemy forces.  Cologne was 
at work again, it seemed

**********

     Seemed like his whole body was afire, oh the pain, the
bitch, the bitch, he would rip her to pieces, he would eat her
damned _heart_ in front of her eyes.  A mortal, even one of his 
kin, they would be dead now, but he was alive, he was the 
Undying--

     Gasping, lungs filling with blood, he dragged himself up 
onto the ledge that he'd caught as he fell.  As the sounds of
combat thundered in his ears, he wrenched the Kinjakan free from
his chest and collapsed with a wail of pain.  Thank the Queen he
did not bleed much, and through the wound hurt terribly, it would 
not kill him.  Flapping his wings would only tear it open 
further, maybe even kill him.  So he clambered up the sheer walls 
of the pass like a spider; she was on the ledge above him, 
wounded.  Oh, it hurt, he hadn't been hurt like this since the 
final battle...

     She stared at him, barely-conscious, crumpled against the
stone.  Her hands were pressed against the wound in her side, in
a futile attempt to stem the slow flow of blood.

     He tried to speak, to make some threat, but he only coughed
blood.  Maybe he _was_ going to die; the thought terrified him.
He did not want to face what might await him past this life.

     A shadow fell over him, some great shape approaching through
the air.  He turned, and thought: something this monstrous _has_ 
to be on our side, and then a fist big enough to engulf a 
full-grown man smashed him between itself and the sides of the 
pass.

**********

     Gasp for air, rise out of the ocean.  Images of war,
unknown names, unknown faces.  Only war, then?  Another face
floats from the darkness, crimson eyes, silver hair.  Melts,
dissolves, becomes his own.

     I am you, you are me.  Blood of my blood.
     
     Back beneath the sea.

**********

     The horses thundered down the pass.  Herb clung to his
saddle, and desperately wished that he'd taken more riding
lessons in his training.  He threw a glance back towards the 
centre of his men.  His debt to Ranma Saotome was even greater
now, and keeping his mother safe was the only way he had to repay 
that debt at the moment.

     Ahead, he could hear the sounds of fighting, see the 
battling winged shapes in the air.  Rogen had organized and
readied the troops from both the married and unmarried men, but
the Musk would not move without orders from their king.  Which 
was him, now.  The pain of losing both his parents within days
was an everpresent, dull ache now.  There would be time enough to
hear the full story of his father's death after they had smashed
the invaders, but he had already been told enough to guess that
his father's life had ended by his own hand.

     Guiding his horse closer to his sister, Herb asked over the
clatter of the hooves, "What manner of army is this?"

     "An army wrenched from Jusenkyou," Wiyeed answered.  "Mortal
men who gave their lives to their master, so as to be transformed
by the power that was now his.  Their individual will is gone;
they are in thrall to the one who commands them now, utterly and
completely."

     "The woman called Yoko?"
     
     Wiyeed nodded.  "Undoubtedly.  If she is slain, the army 
will collapse."  She smiled tightly.  "That will be no easy 
thing, however.  In destroying Ryugenzawa, she took much power
upon herself."

     They passed over the dip in the land, and saw the full 
weight of the enemy army.  Herb sucked in his gasp of awe, glad
that Kodachi - his Rose - was safe in the rearguard contingent
with the others.  A massive press of twisted creatures filled the
pass, so many that those they fought could barely be seen.  
Flights of arrows fell almost continually upon them from archers
upon the walls of the pass or flying in the air, yet it hardly
seemed to diminish them.

     "Have the vanguard ready the lances," Herb said softly.
Rogen, his feathered cape blowing in the speeding wind of their
passage, nodded and barked a harsh command.  The long spears of
the Musk were lowered into position, even as the foe began to
turn.  Herb dropped his hand and touched the golden hilt of the
Dragon's Blade; ancient symbol of his people, lost for four
thousand years.  It was cool, and he heard a faint whispering as
of many voices.  The sword rang as he drew it from the scabbard,
clearly as a bell, and the sunlight hit it so that it shone like 
fire.  

     "Onward!" Herb cried.  He raised his hand, and a blast of 
power smote the first of the enemy to fall to the Musk that day.  
"For the glory and honour of the Musk Clan, and the memory of 
the Tribe of the Dragon!"

     His heart surged with pride as they hit, a solid wedge of
pounding hooves and killing steel.  The Dragon's Blade whirled
like a scythe in his hands - he had no more training in swordplay
then he had in riding, but with the sword in his hands he felt a
master of both - and he used the power of his ki like a battering
ram, smashing down the enemy before him.  Next to him his sister
wielded her own slender blade and her own power.  His men fought
masterfully, the cavalry breaking away for charge after charge,
the infantry that had followed nearly as fast in their wake
holding the enemy like a wall.  He saw Mint, a darting shape 
moving through the foe; Lime, a towering giant wielding a tree
twice his height like a club.  They fought towards the centre,
knowing that was where the one who controlled the army would be.
As if knowing that, the enemy bunched around them, trying to drag
them from their horses, forcing them to slog through their 
twisted bodies and still-red blood.  

     Against normal men, who would be frightened and distracted 
by their hideous appearances, they might have been effective 
troops.  Against the discipline of the Musk and the combined 
might of Herb and his sister, they fell like wheat.  The hooves
of the horses churned over the bodies.  The Musk were amidst 
cavalry now - it must have been an honour guard, of sorts.  The 
steeds were monstrous as their riders; some were even single 
centaur-like creatures.  They were worthier foes, vicious and 
strong.  Marginally worthier.  His power cut them down easily 
enough, and the sword handled any who came too close.

     Now he saw her:  a pale woman, surprisingly small, riding 
one of the monstrous steeds.  There were others around her, all
clad in robes of many colours.  She herself was in a grey so dark 
it was nearly black.  Even at this distance, he could see the 
sweat beading her face.  She was obviously under a great deal of
concentration.

     One of the women - Yoko's guards, obviously - raised her 
hand and shouted a word that was lost in the clamour of the
combat.  Darkness shrouded her fingers and shot forth in a stream
of blades.  Wiyeed threw up her hands, and the blades broke
against her shielding.  The other guards were turning now, 
raising their own hands.  Sorceresses, then; easier to learn than
the manipulation of raw energy, but less powerful in the end.  A
wave of his hand scattered half of them as though they were dust 
before the wind.

     To the left.
     
     On pure instinct, he threw himself from the saddle, and only
his horse died, screaming and cleaved in half at the thickest 
part of its body.  He landed on his feet and came up with power
blazing, killing the one that loomed over him, and its steed.  The
killer of his horse was steps away, a towering man as big as 
Lime.  From head to toe he wore black, and a vest of black mail.
The sword in his hand seemed excessively long, but he wielded it
as though it weighed nothing.

     "Very well, then," the man said.  His eyes, a sharp, nearly 
electric blue, were narrowed and hateful.  "You send my death to
me at last, my lord?  Think you I shall flee like a dog before 
it?  I shall kill it, and wrest it away.  I have no master now."

     With a snarl, he rushed at Herb, sword raised, and the 
young prince raised his own blade to defend himself.  And even as 
the combat whirled around them, the two of them seemed to stand 
alone against each other.

**********

     "She's there."
     
     From their perch on the ridge, high above and to the south 
of the pass, Ukyou and Konatsu watched the battle, and tried to
come up with some plan of action.  Tarou was gone, lost in the 
fray of the aerial battle.  Happosai had said something rather 
cryptic about finding Cologne, and then disappeared as well.

     Ukyou tightened her grip on her spatula, licked her lips
nervously, and looked over at Konatsu.  "Who's there?"

     "Yoko," Konatsu said.  His lip curled back, exposing his
teeth, and his eyes glittered.

     "Who's Yoko?"
     
     He blinked, then shook his head.  "I don't know," he
whispered distantly.  A shudder wracked his body and he hung his
head, blood draining from his face.  "I can't go down there,
Ukyou.  I want to help, but I'm barely holding on.  Down there,
with the blood, with the killing, in the thick of it, she'll come
free, I know she'll will, and I'll be gone, gone..."

     "We don't have to go down there," Ukyou soothed, massaging
the back of his neck with one hand.  "It's safe here."

     "But we have to help," Konatsu said, half-choked.  "How can
we not?"

     He was right, of course.  Somewhere down there, she was sure
that Ryoga and Akane and Mousse and Shampoo, maybe even Ranma 
himself, were fighting.  

     "Your place is not there."
     
     Ukyou whirled, hefting her spatula.  There had been no sound
of any approach.  Mousse sat upon a pale horse, his own face pale 
as new-fallen snow and his eyes closed.  In one hand, he grasped 
a spear.  A flickering glow, barely visible in the sun, seemed to 
engulf both steed and rider.

     "You look like a ghost, Mousse," she said softly.  And he
did.

     Mousse spoke as if he hadn't heard her.  "Go north along the
ridge," he said.  "You'll see why soon enough."

     Then steed and rider were gone, racing across the air, again
towards the battle.

**********

     "COLOGNE!"
     
     Another torrent of rocks fell upon the mass of the enemy
below.  She drew back, looked for another vulnerable spot, 
another place where she could do damage...

     Someone grabbed her arms from behind.  With a snarl she
slipped sideways and made ready to hurl them over her shoulder,
over the side.  Whoever held her reversed it, somehow, and 
dropped her to her knees.

     "It's me, Cologne," Happosai panted.  His eyes looked into 
hers.  "Found you at last."  He blinked.  "Have you been crying?"

     "He's dead," she muttered.
     
     "Who's dead?"
     
     "No one you ever knew or cared about."
     
     He looked almost hurt at her words, but then looked over her
shoulder.  "Ahh.  Here comes the boy.  What's that he's got?"

     Cologne turned her head as Tarou's familiar shape, monstrous 
and shaggy, landed on the ground nearby.  In his arms, there was
a crumpled white body, small and childlike in appearance cradled 
as it was against his massive chest.  He lowered Kima's still 
form gently to the ground and lowed mournfully.

     "Give me space," Cologne snapped.  The wound was grave, and
the conditions were not good, but the child might live if she
worked quickly.  "You two will simply be in my way.  Go off and
find something useful to do."

**********

     Water everywhere, but he didn't drown, he could breathe in
here, somehow, and there was light above, dark below.  He 
floated, seeing things, almost remembering the names that went
with the faces, never quite grasping--

     Was it always to be war, though?  Never any end, only
intervals stretched between the next incidence of bloodshed?
Could he not see some other vision, whoever he was?  A warrior?
He was a warrior, wasn't he?  He couldn't be anything else.  A
killer, then.

     Yes, something whispered.  Arms cradled him.  My warrior, my
killer, my little sweet son.  You need no name.  They shall give
you many names, those who fear you, as they have given me many,
and until the end of time we shall slay and slay, slay all that
lives in the heavens above, or on the earth beneath, or in the
waters under the earth.  Together, you and I.  We are the lost
ones, the forsaken, those who are alone forever.  

     Choke, try to draw air.  Arms too strong.  Down beneath.
     
**********

     From the high vantage point of the ridge, they watched the
battle, guarded by a half-dozen soldiers of the Musk.  It was
safer here than anywhere else, though still not as safe as Nabiki 
would have liked to be.  The combination of not being entirely 
sure of her own safety and having very little idea of what was
going on was not one she liked.  

     Akari was simply staring off into space, not paying any
attention at all.  Kasumi and Kodachi seemed to have much the
same distance in them, standing together and talking quietly.
Nodoka appeared to be watching the battle, but she would
occasionally turn her eyes away, lost in thought - about Ranma,
no doubt.  He'd gotten them all involved in some dangerous
things before, but this, she thought with a sour humour, 
certainly was the winner of them all.  And he'd apparently gone
insane as well.  Wonderful.

     She sighed.  It worried her.  Her baby sister was out there
somewhere, and there were so many of the enemy compared to the
defenders.  The pit of the dead had left her numb to the sight of
the combat below, but she was vaguely aware that many people were
dying down there.

     And some, perhaps, had already gone through something worse
than death.  Kuno was sitting by himself, cross-legged, uncaring
about anything else.  Blinded and maimed, and all because he'd
come to help her.  She wanted to go to him, as she had in the
pit, but she couldn't.  It wasn't the same, there were too many
people around...

     Later, then.  So she stood by her grim, silent father and
watched the combat for a while.  He hadn't even spoken a word to
her since they'd met up again, and she hadn't dared to speak to
him.
     
     Finally, he spoke.
     
     "Nabiki."
     
     "Yes, daddy."
     
     "You are my daughter, and I should be able to forgive you.
But... what you did dishonours yourself and me.  I cannot."

     "Fine."
     
     The words were almost spat out, so bitter they tasted.  She
watched the battle, and tried not to cry.     

**********

     They were down at the bottom of the sea now, nearly at the
centre of the earth.  Water pressed upon them like a crushing
weight.  The arms were tight as iron bands, the darkly seductive
voice whispered in his ear, enticing him not to struggle, to give
in and come down to the bottom.

     He fought.  If only he could remember his name, or the names
of any of the faces he had seen.  The winged woman who lay so 
near death, or the younger woman with the ancient eyes who
tended her.  Or the blind woman who was so filled with pain, or
the one who was no longer human but once had been, who had lain
hate and evil over his heart like the tissue of a scar.  Perhaps
the lovely face with the silver hair; any of those, any names
would do, they would open the gates and set him free.

     But there was one face, one face, only vaguely glimpsed.  
That was... was...

     You are bound to this wheel, you and your makers.  To a
wheel that I have turned since time's beginning, that I shall
turn till time's end, until I am free to unmake all things again.
And you are _mine_, all of you are mine.  Do not resist me, I am
your lord, I am the oldest one of all, and you shall serve me...

     Who are you?  What is your name?
     
     Laughter, mad laughter.  I have no name, I need no name.
     
     A--
     
     NO!
     
     Eyes blazed red.
     
     They brought the baby, tiny and beautiful and with hair so
pale and silvery it was nearly white, and laid him down upon the
snow-covered slopes of the mountains.  The child was an 
abomination, and should never have been born - the two lines were
never to mix, that had been commanded.  His parents had already
been exiled, and would wander the earth until the end of days.  
Blood would not stain any of _their_ hands, however.  The winter 
would take the child, and the wolves his body.  So they left him
there to die, unnamed, unmourned by any, wailing out to the cold 
stars.  

     But he did not die; such was not his destiny.  After they 
had gone, the gate in the stones opened, and they came to take 
him.  They were beautiful and slender, with faces well-suited to 
laughter, and to cruelty.  They swaddled him and bore him down 
into the earth, and to the Queen.

     She named him Baazel.
     
     A name.  Others.  He grasped them, they slipped free...
     
     A--
     
     "So righteous they were.  But still they left me to die.  
They could not do the deed themselves, of course; too good were
they.  Beloved of the Ladies of Life and Death, who had given
them the two wise lines of their rulers."

     Ak--
     
     "Don't you see now?  It's all the same in the end.  Better
for them if they had killed me with their own hands.  Better
perhaps for me."

     A name.  
     
     Akane.
     
     And the others came in a tide.  
     
     His name, his name here, in this place, and--
     
     A desert.  A wasteland, where a child no older than eight
sat with his knees drawn to his chest.  The sky overhead was a
dark red, and the sun hung like a glistening orb of black.  The 
Queen, who was beautiful and loved him, had sent him out here and
told him to find his way back to her.  But he couldn't, he was
lost and hungry, his throat was parched, and the black sun beat
upon him like a hammer.  Why had she done this to him?  Didn't
she love him, as if he were her son?  She had said so.  Had she
lied?

     Ranma stood, and looked upon Baazel, who would become 
Ravager of Wurdsenlin.  Another illusion; he had seen the like
before.

     No.  No illusion.  Even the warp and weft of time is not 
beyond us now, the voices said; the dragons, all three of them.  
We have sent you back.  Slay him, and Wurdsenlin will never fall, 
Tang Jin will never die.  Slay him, champion, and you shall be as
we are, gods, beyond good and evil.

     His hand came up, and the power engulfed it.  It burned
white, black, all the colours that were and were not.  It would
not hurt the boy for more than a second, and then--

     The child looked up.  There were tears upon his face.
     
     Ranma let his hand fall.  He stepped forward, and reached
out with his other hand.  "Come on," he said gently.  "Come on,
I'm not going to hurt you.  I'm not going to leave you alone
here.  You aren't alone.  None of us are alone.  Not even you."

     Slowly, the boy took his hand.

     The cavern.  The dragon.  Stone and water.  Blood.  Samofere
lay dead, and he knew he had died without fear.     
     
     Barely time to register that, and then a bolt of power flung
his across the cavern and into a wall.  Almost at the end of his
strength, he lay on his back and stared up at the distant 
ceiling, and listened to the water droplets falling all around.

     "Idiot," something hissed.  It was the voice of a woman,
vaguely, so horribly distorted with echoes and different tones
that it was nearly inhuman.  Rouge's voice, originally, but
something was using her as a vessel now, as Baazel had been using
him.  "Can't you ever finish things correctly?"

     He had almost killed his mother.  Would have killed her, if
Yan, or Ritter, or whatever his name was, hadn't interfered.  
He'd been helpless, a prisoner in his own body, as Baazel 
threatened his mother and worked to kill the dragon and--

     Rouge kicked him.  Hard.  He flew through the air, hit the
ground, rolled, and ended up crumpled against a stalagmite with 
his body aching.  
     
     Did she still think he was Baazel?  He could hear her light
footsteps approaching.  With painful effort, he pushed himself up
to his knees.  Rouge - whatever she had become - stalked across
the cavern towards him, absolute menace in her posture, a cloak
of fire about her body.

     He looked without his eyes, and saw her as a shadow of fire,
or as a frail mortal body over which a vast and grasping darkness
hung, or as a single star surrounded by a web of night.

     "Rouge," he said, investing the name with all the weight of
power that he could.  

     She stopped walking.  Her eyes narrowed.  "Lord of Waters,"
she hissed.  And he struck, without moving a single muscle.  A
blade of light, perhaps, or a shining wind that would tear away
the corruption.

     Rouge's body spasmed, limbs flailing wildly as though she
had been struck by a bolt of lightning.  Beams of fire and
energy lashed from her body, and Ranma shielded his face with his
arms against the burning brightness of the light.  The cavern 
shook, but somehow none of them struck him.

     "Sooooo...."
     
     An echo made of echoes, or a thunderous ocean of many 
voices.  The sound was agony to listen to, scraping like a razor
against the hearing.  The stones seemed to hum in time to the
hate of it.

     He lowered his arms and looked.  Rouge stood as though 
frozen, and around her a vaguely human shape flickered.  Nearly
translucent, it seem composed of equal parts of fire and smoke.
Three heads shifted and rolled atop the hazy neck, each one with
two eyes filled with cold white light.

     "It is as it was said it would be," the shape moaned, and
then laughed.  It shifted, fading even further from view.  Rouge
raised her hand to her throat as though in a trance.  "But if I
must be driven from this world again..."

     He was on his feet and running, weakness forgotten, but it
was too late; it had been too late from the beginning.  There was
a blaze of light, like a star, and then a scream.  The stench of
burned flesh filled the air.  Rouge toppled back, with a 
finger-sized hole through her throat, and hit the cavern floor 
like a broken doll.  The presence faded into nothing, like smoke 
blown away on the wind.

     Ranma dropped to his knees and pressed his hand to the
gaping wound, but there was no life left to work with.  Rouge was
dead, and he had killed her as surely as if it had been his own
hand that had done the work.

     A terrible and familiar numbness fell upon him.  He arranged
her arms and legs so that she lay in some semblance of peaceful
rest, and then rose and walked across the cavern to where 
Samofere lay dead.  The Gekkaja had fallen from his grip and lay
on the stones nearby, crescent blade stained with blood.  

     "Go easy, old king," he said softly, as he laid Samofere on
his back upon the stone as he had done to Rouge.  "The long
journey is ended now."

     He picked up the Gekkaja and turned to the massive shape of
the dragon.  Her eyes were closed again, and even the slow and
tortured writhings of her body had stopped.  To anyone but him,
she would have seemed dead.  But he could see that the spark of
life still burned within her, despite all that Baazel had done to
slay her.  It was not too late.

     "Lady of sacrifices," he said gently.  "Lady of sufferings,
lady of wounds..."

     The eyes opened, slowly, filled with great weariness and
pain.

     Is it time? she asked.
     
     Yes, he replied, it is time.
     
     Only by my binding is he thus bound.
     
     I know.
     
     So, at last, it had come to this.  Perhaps this was the end
of his own long journey, the thing which he had been destined to
do.  He had seen the battles, and suffered with them all; not
only his friends, but his foes as well.  He had been Baazel, and
Baazel had been him.  There was no hate left in his heart any
longer; only grief for the sufferings of all things.  We are all 
of us wounded, he thought sadly, and raised the Gekkaja in his 
hands.  Now, he would do what must be done.     

**********

     The boy staggered at the force of his blow, and nearly 
dropped to one knee.  His white clothes were stained with blood 
from a dozen minor wounds.  With a triumphant howl, the Serpent 
hauled back his sword to strike the killing blow.

     The boy rolled, and came up swinging.  He was smart; he'd
only tried once to use his ki attacks, and upon seeing how they
dissolved without touching his foe, he had simply turned his
energies to enhancing his physical abilities.  The Musk king was
a blaze of speed now, incredibly strong, and with reflexes that
were almost instantaneous.

     The Serpent was still faster, and stronger.  He flicked the
blow aside and nearly spitted his foe.  The Dragon's Blade would
make the boy a master, but he still wouldn't be good enough.

     For hours, he had walked among the monstrous army that Yoko
had raised, silently crying out to the master, and hearing no
answers.  And then he had seen the boy come riding, bearing a
shaft of light in one hand that had resolved itself into a sword,
and he had known.  

     The blade of Light was drawn.  The Dragon's Blade, forged to
kill Baazel, the blade that had cost his former master his hand.  
His death was upon him now.  And he found he did not fear it; he 
would fight till the end, though all might have abandoned him.  
From the service of Tang Jin he had gone to Baazel, and then from 
death to the service of Dark, and now at his end he would serve 
no one but himself.

     The battle swirled around them.  The Circle mages matched
their power against the black-robed women.  He could sense the
lingering presence of the last and youngest upon them, but he had
no hate left in his heart for her or her sisters any longer.

     He would not be bound to fate.  He would _not_ die.  
     
     Sparks flew as blade met blade, and locked at the hilts.  
The boy-king kicked him, and looked startled when he did not even
flinch.  He thrust forward, driving his foe to one knee.

     "Die," he said softly.  The sword rose high in his hand,
instrument and embodiment of all his hate in that moment, and he
swung it down to kill, and deny his own role in the ancient
prophecies.
     
     And as the blade fell, there came a deep rumble from within
the belly of the earth, and far to the northwest, Jusendo 
erupted, so loud that all heard the sound.

**********

     It seemed at first to be the answer to the earlier vision of
the monstrous winged shape in the sky.  There was the 
shatteringly loud sound of an explosion, and then all combat
ceased for a moment, as both men and women, and what had so
recently been men and women, turned towards the sound, to see a
phoenix rising in the distance upon a column of light and wind.  
Her wings were tattered, but she flew, lifted by the immense 
power that had risen up from deep beneath the earth, passed 
through the mountain, and shot up so high into the sky that it
seemed it would be lost to the curvature of the horizon.  So
bright it was that it seemed a second sun had risen in the sky 
for a moment.

     Then the unthinkable happened.  The phoenix wavered in the
air, wings too torn to fly, and then the wind and light that had
borne her like a leaf died, and she fell towards the earth in
tattered glory.  A howl of triumph rose from every throat in the 
army of the Dark, and they fell upon the beleaguered defenders 
with new fury.

     High above the carnage of the battle, two sisters stood
watching.  They were not sisters to each other; not, at least, 
as most would reckon things.  One was eldest, and one was 
youngest.

     Eldest said, "It is done."
     
     Youngest said, "Are you afraid?"
     
     Eldest said, "Yes.  I am very afraid."
     
     Youngest said, "So am I."
     
     And so they held each other's hands, and waited.