Chapter Forty-Six Kasu
Kasu thought she might be going into shock. Her chest heaved. They had just… Shusa was the guardian god of the south, one of the most well-known and worshipped gods in the heavens, and they had just…
She wasn’t sure how to describe it. Tricked him into reincarnating?
Forced his soul to be reborn? Either way, he was gone, and it was unlikely anyone would find him again.
When you stepped through the reincarnation wheel, your memory was wiped and you were reborn.
It was like throwing a needle into a haystack, except by walking through the wheel that needle was transformed back into a piece of hay. It was a complete reset.
“What do we do now?” Kasu asked.
“We need to get out of here. We can’t trust any of the gods, not even the Celestial Empress.
She wanted to pin all the blame on us, just so she could preserve the heavens’ reputation.
If she catches us, I don’t think we’ll be rewarded for getting rid of General Shusa.
” Arun picked himself up, wincing as he pressed a hand against his bruised stomach.
“But … how do we leave?” Kasu glanced around the room. Even if they managed to escape from Shusa’s palace, they would never be able to sneak out of the heavens.
“Well, I can only see one way out.” Arun turned to the reincarnation wheel.
“Are you insane? We can’t use that!”
“Because you think you don’t deserve it?”
Kasu shook her head. Perhaps a few weeks ago she would have felt that way, but that was before she had regained the memories of her death, before she had fought her demon mistress, before she had come to the heavens. Before the heavens proved to be just as corrupt as the under-realm.
“Your mother wanted to bring the reincarnation wheel to the under-realm. She was willing to risk her life to do so.” Even if most ghosts and demons were uninterested in redemption, they should at least have the chance to try and be better.
“I know what my mother wanted, but if we stay here we’re dead.”
“But…”
That was not the only thing bothering her. She turned to Arun. Everyone leaves, he had said to her. Kasu wanted to be different. When he said everyone, she didn’t want him to count her among that number too.
“If we go through the wheel, we’ll be reborn,” Kasu said.
“I thought you wanted to stay together. Even if we can set the basic parameters so that at the very least we’re both human, there’s still an element of randomness.
There’s no knowing where we’ll be born or what our lives will be like.
We could be born in completely different kingdoms far across the sea from one another.
We could be born in the middle of a war and die before our first birthdays.
We might be enemies. We might never see each other again. ”
Arun smiled. “We will.”
Kasu’s brow furrowed in confusion. “You can’t know that for sure. Once you go through the wheel, you forget everything about your previous life. Even if we did meet again, we wouldn’t even know who we were!”
What we meant to one another. She might not like the under-realm, but at least she would still be herself. At least she would still be able to remember Arun.
Arun smiled at her with infuriating confidence. “All right, so I don’t know for sure, and I can’t guarantee anything, but why not have a little faith? You believed in the Heavenly Principles for so long, why not believe in this? I’ll know. I will always know who you are, Kasu.”
“You’re speaking nonsense,” she muttered.
“But it’s true.” Arun took her hand, lacing their fingers together. “Even if I don’t remember your name or why you’re important to me, I will know you. You’re imprinted on my very soul.”
There were fishhooks in her heart, pulling her towards this inevitable conclusion.
Behind them, the reincarnation wheel stood to attention, waiting for them to step through.
When she looked at it, she was looking at years of dreaming and quiet longing.
Her heart trembled, though whether with fear or hope she could not tell.
A noise echoed from the hallway. Kasu jumped. The longer they lingered, the greater their chance of being discovered.
“I’ll find you,” said Ruo. “I can teleport to any open space I have visited before. If I can get to the courtyard here, I can warp back to the under-realm. I’ll lie low for a bit, maybe enjoy the chaos of the city, and then head to the mortal realm.
I found you when you were a ghost, even though I didn’t know who you were.
I can find you again when you’re a human.
Then I can tell you about your previous life. ”
“And you think I’d believe you?”
Ruo was a curse. There was a greater chance Kasu would run away screaming. What if, in her ignorance, she ended up hurting Ruo? Just because they were a curse didn’t mean they were invincible.
Ruo grinned. “I can be persuasive.”
Running a hand through Ruo’s fur, Kasu wrapped her arms around the cat.
“Thank you.” She did not know what would await her when she stepped through the wheel – perhaps it would be a life just as bad as her last – but she knew she could handle things with the cat by her side again.
With a grin, Ruo slunk out of the room and bounded away.
Arun ran his hands over the outer ring of the wheel, touching the outer buttons. The reincarnation wheel began to move again. Stone slid against stone, grinding as the wheel spun faster and faster.
Then, just as abruptly as it had started, the spinning stopped and the rings began to glow.
At the top the indicators pointed to dense forest and a group of humans.
The empty space within the wheel shimmered like a soap bubble.
Kasu wondered if stepping through it would make it pop, or if it would envelop them in a pearlescent rainbow.
Arun took the first step towards it, gently leading her to its mouth.
“Who gave you permission to use the wheel?”
A cold, unsympathetic voice.
The Celestial Empress stood in the doorway to the storeroom. Not a single hair fell out of place, but the hem of her golden dress was splattered with blood.
“What happened to General Shusa?”
Kasu glanced at Arun before plucking up the courage to speak. “He has been reborn.”
“I see. So he has been dealt with.” What she thought of the outcome, it was impossible to tell.
The Empress sounded as indifferent as she had when some of the gods had started going mad.
“You should not have come to the heavens. It was a mistake for General Shusa to try and use you for his own ends.”
He brought us here so that he could blame us for spiking the wine with Lady Camellia’s elixir! Kasu wanted to snap, but she doubted the Empress would care either way.
“Ghosts belong in the under-realm. That is where they must dwell, and that is where they will stay.” The goddess spread her arms wide as if to embrace them, though in her bloodstained dress the gesture was more threatening than welcoming.
“Then return us to the under-realm,” said Kasu.
For the first time since they had met, the Celestial Empress’s expression shifted. Her brow furrowed and her eyes narrowed. The pearls on her dress seemed to jangle like chains.
“You think you can cause chaos in the heavens and go unpunished? Filthy ghosts, know your place.” Her voice was the cold fall of snow.
“Us? Chaos? We’re victims in this situation too!” Arun snapped.
The Empress shook her head.
Kasu levelled her with an unimpressed stare of her own. “You can’t let us go, can you? You need someone to take the blame. Someone that you can conveniently parade about and punish in front of everyone. Can’t let the precious reputation of the heavens get tarnished now, can we?”
The goddess continued shaking her head. Her pearls clacked together. “If the heavens cannot be relied on to be good and noble, think of the chaos it would cause. The heavens represent order. The gods are noble and kind and good because they must be. Because they are gods!”
As the goddess moved forward, Kasu took a step back, closer and closer to the shining mouth of the reincarnation wheel.
“Whether they descend into demon-hood or rise to become gods, people are still the same flawed beings they’ve always been.”
The Pale Lady had said something similar to Kasu. At the time, she had not wanted to listen, had not wanted to believe, but now she was beginning to understand what the Pale Lady meant. Why the Pale Lady had left in favour of the under-realm.
“If you step through that wheel, you will make an enemy of the heavens!” the Celestial Empress snarled. “You think that you can escape punishment, that we won’t be able to find you, but there are only so many souls flowing through the wheel, and we have eternity on our side! We shall—”
Something hard struck the back of the goddess’s head. Kasu jumped as the Celestial Empress suddenly crumpled to the ground in front of her.
“O–Orro?”
Kasu stared in disbelief at the stern-faced servant. His clothes were rumpled and blood-splattered too. In his hand, he held a thick metal tray. The one he had been using to serve wine all evening.
Arun stepped in front of her, ready for another fight.
“Oh, please, don’t be so vulgar,” Orro said. “I didn’t come here to battle you like a barbarian. She’s not dead, by the way. Simply … out of the picture for the time being.”
Kasu stared, mouth agape, from the Celestial Empress’s unconscious form to General Shusa’s servant and back again.
Familiar… There was something about his face that was so familiar…
“Lord Onyx?”
Orro – Onyx – smiled.
“They said you were missing! That you had left the under-realm!” Kasu had heard the rumours. The fighting pits in the northern quarter were abandoned because he was gone.
“I had.” Lord Onyx brought a hand to his face and pulled.
An aura mask came free.