Chapter Forty-Five Kasu
“Come with me now, little ghosts.” General Shusa continued his approach, sword in hand. “You cannot escape your punishment.”
“Punishment for what you did.” Arun growled. “You can’t blame this on us! Even if the Celestial Empress covers this up, you’re still going to suffer as well!”
“Because you ruined everything!” the general screamed. “The plan was perfect! If only you hadn’t stopped the Celestial Empress from drinking the elixir!”
“I don’t understand,” said Kasu. “Why do you want the Celestial Empress dead? Why would someone like you do all this? You’re General Shusa!
You’re the guardian god of the south!” He had everything a person could possibly want – the strength and immortality of a god, the renown of a hero, the palace, and the servants and soldiers that would make even a king green with envy.
There was no hunger in General Shusa’s world, no daily slog, no back-breaking labour.
Why would he throw away everything he had?
“You stupid children.” General Shusa’s voice dropped like a hammer.
“I try to give you mercy, and still you throw it all back in my face. You don’t know how much you’ve ruined things for me.
Camellia was only able to make a single bottle of elixir, and then you had to go and kill her! That was my one shot!”
Kasu’s mouth flapped open and shut soundlessly, like a fish gasping for breath.
Lady Camellia? She remembered General Shusa saying he would send someone to retrieve her elixir and lock it away, but from the way he was speaking now it felt like they’d actually known one another.
General Shusa and Lady Camellia. A well-respected god and a demon lord.
Then again … didn’t Lady Camellia have a portrait of General Shusa in her chambers? It had been a strange picture, not of the general as he was now but much younger, when he had been a cowherd…
Little flower, dressed in red, left alone to wither and rot –
Lady Camellia always wore red flowers in her eye socket.
Roses. Spider lilies. Poppies. It had never occurred to Kasu that the red flower in the song was Lady Camellia, but when she thought of the plays about General Shusa, the stories matched.
No wonder Camellia hated the Pale Lady so much – those performances had been mocking her too.
General Shusa was a young cowherd who fell in love with a lowly weaver girl. When war struck, the local lord drafted all young men into the army. Shusa went to war, leaving the girl behind…
Lady Camellia had met a fate just like Kasu’s mother. Perhaps all cowherds were just heart-breaking cads looking to abandon their sweethearts when the going got rough.
Susha quickly distinguished himself from his peers through great feats in battle… Soon, the gods themselves offered him a place among their ranks.
General Shusa had admitted that he’d once had a lover. Someone who had done terrible things while they were separated by the war. Someone he had left behind when he had risen to the heavens.
“Lady Camellia was your lover. Even after you became a god, you remained in contact with her. She made that elixir for you. She loved you, even though you abandoned her. You knew how she felt, and yet you only strung her along so that you could use her!” Simply speaking those words felt blasphemous.
Kasu wondered if she could grab her voice and stuff it back down her throat.
“So what?” Shusa retorted. “She was happy to go along with my every request. Besides, why should I care about the feelings of a demon? When she was human, she committed such heinous acts. She stole and killed for food! Wicked people deserve everything they get. If she didn’t want to damn herself, why couldn’t she have just died?
It would have been nobler if she had just given up and died a virtuous death! ”
A virtuous death. How many times had Kasu thought the same thing about herself? If she had just accepted her fate without resentment, if she had just given up and died instead of resorting to selling her soul, things would have been better. She would be happier.
Maybe that was true, but it still tasted bitter going down.
Kasu felt a burning anger she had only ever felt when Ruo was born.
What right did someone like General Shusa have to judge them?
How dare he say they would have been better off dying?
He could only make that claim because he had never suffered a fraction of what they had.
Kasu thought of Lady Camellia, scorned and alone.
Starving, dying, and in pain. She imagined the rage that ran through her veins in place of blood.
She imagined her hatred twisting and warping her into a demon.
The Heavenly Principles would probably say that General Shusa was right and demons deserved to be treated terribly, but Kasu could not help but think he was wrong.
General Shusa swung his sword with all the strength of a god, pointing the sharp tip at Kasu’s neck.
Arun’s eyes blazed with a cold fury.
“If you hurt her, I’ll rip you apart.”
“With what? That little knife?” Shusa scoffed. “I’m the guardian god of the south. You don’t want to know how many ghosts and demons I’ve killed.”
Kasu knew. Tales of General Shusa’s heavenly exploits had reached even the under-realm. She had heard about the great demon of Bushian Bridge and the thousand fire spirits of Ture; Kasu didn’t need reminding of his impressive list of accomplishments, not when facing down the point of his sword.
Neither Kasu nor General Shusa noticed the blur of black fur hiding in the shadow of the shelves until it lunged at them. Ruo sank their fangs into General Shusa’s hand.
“You damn beasts! It’s the Celestial Empress you should be fighting.
Who do you think decided that demons could never reincarnate?
Who turns a blind eye to the suffering of ghosts?
The Celestial Empress decides what is right and wrong, and who is worthy of forgiveness.
” Shusa clutched his injured hand to his chest as he staggered back.
“Oh please, spare us your bleeding heart.” Arun snorted, his gaze flinty and unrelenting. “You don’t really care about the poor demons and ghosts of the under-realm. You just want to be in charge here.”
General Shusa bared his teeth at him. “You don’t know what it’s like having to bow and scrape to that old hag every day.
The humiliation! We gods toil away, keeping the wheels running, recording the deeds of humanity, vanquishing demons, while the Celestial Empress does nothing but sit on her throne all day!
I have fought calamities and battled monstrous beasts.
What great accomplishments has she performed?
What makes her more deserving of the throne than me? ”
With a look of burning fury, Shusa swung at him. His sword sang past Arun’s face, missing his ear by a hair’s breadth, and drawing a line of blood across his cheek.
“Arun!” Kasu grabbed a large pot from the shelf and hurled it at the general. The god raised an arm to block it and the pot shattered against his arm, soaking him in rice wine.
Arun leapt back, putting more distance between himself and Shusa.
“I’m fine.” He wiped the blood from his face. “You know, I’ve been thinking about the curse that killed the Pale Lady. Why did it seem in pain? When Ruo cursed their target, they knew who it was.”
“I did?” The cat cocked their head to one side.
“In Camellia House, when I was walking around listening to gossip, you said you knew you got the right target because you felt happy afterwards.”
Ruo’s eyes lit up at the memory. “It was the best feeling. Even better than the way eyeballs burst between your teeth,” they purred.
“But that wolf wasn’t happy. I think they got the wrong target. If my mother died in pain, why would she not curse Lady Camellia, the one torturing her? Why only the Pale Lady?” said Arun. “I think she was only targeting one person. General Shusa.”
The general glared. Wine dripped down his neck.
“That can’t…” Kasu wanted to protest, but the more she thought about Arun’s explanation the more the pieces clicked together.
The actors that the wolf targeted had all been dressed as General Shusa.
Someone had said that the curse was going after all the Shusa actors.
When the Pale Lady had died, she had been rehearsing for the play dressed as the general.
A young curse was a being of pure instinct. It could not reach the heavens to hurt General Shusa, so it had attacked anyone who looked like him.
“My mother didn’t steal the reincarnation wheel and run.” Arun brandished his knife and took a step closer to Shusa. “If she had, there would be no reason to curse you. So tell me, what did you do to her?”
Quicker than Kasu could blink, General Shusa charged at them. The only thing that stopped her head being separated from her shoulders was Ruo, who pounced on her just in time, throwing her to the floor as Shusa’s blade whistled through the air above her.
Arun blocked the general’s swing. Their blades glanced against one another, drawing sparks, before the two sprang apart. They exchanged blows, using the crates and shelves as cover as they danced around the storeroom.
“It was a necessary sacrifice. Sunan would have understood.” General Shusa closed in on Arun as he retreated beside the reincarnation wheel. Arun ducked and the sword hit its side with a clang that set Kasu’s teeth on edge.
“You tricked her, didn’t you? You knew she cared about giving ghosts and demons a second chance, so you pretended to secretly support her and sent her to the under-realm with an aura mask and a reincarnation wheel, when behind her back you were the one who told Lady Camellia to catch her and use her for the elixir! ” Arun threw himself at the general.
As the god stumbled back, Ruo coiled around Shusa and bit his leg, bringing him to his knees.
Their fangs sank deep enough to draw blood.
The general howled. Arun tackled him to the ground, but Shusa would not let himself be pinned down for long.
He rammed his knee into Arun’s stomach, pushing him away.
General Shusa struggled to his feet, his breathing ragged. “To make a powerful elixir, you need powerful ingredients. The kind you can’t find in the under-realm. I sent Lady Camellia what she needed, but Sunan… Instead of going to Camellia like I instructed, she went to the Pale Lady instead.”
“Because she knew!” Arun lunged at him. “She knew you were up to something. The Pale Lady used to be a god – my mother knew the Pale Lady would understand that the heavens could not be trusted. I wasn’t sure before, but now I’m certain that’s why my mother left the reincarnation wheel in the Pale Lady’s hands. ”
Everything was becoming clearer. Kasu had mistakenly believed that only the Pale Lady had known about Sunan’s arrival in the under-realm. She had been wrong. General Shusa had known too.
Kasu could only imagine what Sunan must have felt.
She had known that something was amiss with General Shusa, but she still wanted to deliver the reincarnation wheel to the under-realm, to give others another chance at rebirth.
After handing the ring to the Pale Lady, Sunan had left, to …
to what? Perhaps to return to the mortal realm, to the family that missed her.
To Arun. She had tried to leave, only to be caught thanks to the information General Shusa had passed on to Lady Camellia.
The last ingredient needed for Camellia’s elixir, delivered courtesy of the general himself.
“I liked Sunan. She was kind and hardworking, but this was the only way to make the elixir. Sacrifices had to be made.” Kasu could feel Shusa’s frustration in his every swing.
Ruo and Arun kept swiping at him then retreating around the shelves or behind the reincarnation wheel like a pair of incessant wasps.
“Just because you say it’s for the greater good doesn’t make it right.” Arun ducked beneath General Shusa’s sword arm and tackled him to the ground. The general’s blade fell, sliding across the floorboards where it came to a stop at Kasu’s feet.
General Shusa threw Arun off and hauled himself up.
His hair had come loose from the careful bun it had been tied up in, falling to frame his face in wild tresses.
With his breath escaping him in puffs like a dragon breathing fire, he spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor and wiped the rest from his lips.
“The heavens need me! Without me, nothing will change! I have a vision! I have the drive! I deserve to be in charge!”
Kasu snatched up the fallen sword at her feet. The god laughed. “Why are you looking at me like that? If not me, some other god would have used the elixir for their own ends.”
Steeling her courage, Kasu charged. The sword missed Shusa by an embarrassing margin and hit the wall behind him with a thunk, its tip buried in the stone.
With a sneer, General Shusa grabbed the sword by the hilt and pulled it free. Kasu backed away until she was standing in front of the reincarnation wheel.
“Kasu, look out!” Arun grunted as Shusa charged at her.
As Kasu retreated underneath the arc of the wheel, her foot caught on the inner circle, and she tumbled to the ground.
On the outer ring, she noticed several tiny buttons.
As Shusa lunged, Kasu scrambled towards them and slammed her palm against as many as she could.
The wheel glowed as it powered up. The rings began to move. Kasu saw Shusa’s eyes widen with horror and fear as he lunged forward, but it was too late to stop himself.
With a shout of rage, he fell through the wheel and disappeared like dust.
Kasu backed away, heart still pounding. Her gaze travelled up the rings. The pointers were currently set to a snowy mountain and some kind of animal.
“Did you just—” Arun stared at her, eyes wide.
“I–I think I did,” she whispered.
Shusa was gone.