Chapter 12
“No.” It’s Eraya who responds. “The sage needs to come with us.”
There’s no trace of uncertainty in her gaze now.
Of course not; she believes she’s helping. Her Compassion takes strength from that.
“Whatever you may think of us, it’s for his own good, and the good of everyone around him,” she says firmly.
“No,” I echo her. “It is not. He is also free to make his own choices, as all of us should be, and is not a danger to anyone.”
As long as I keep working with him.
As long as I hold that space, because he can’t yet.
That’s the problem with being a sage, isn’t it? It’s never just about me.
I don’t particularly want to sacrifice my peace for the sake of someone else.
But I also won’t know real peace, knowing I didn’t defend someone when I had the power to.
I don’t know what freedom looks like.
But it’s definitely not standing idle while someone else’s is taken away, hoping I won’t be next.
If I have to become their bogeyman after all...
So be it.
“And Eraya,” I say. “Learned Mujin. I let the priests go because I didn’t want to return to the mass murder I was trained to commit. But that doesn’t mean I’m not willing and able to kill you all if that’s what it takes to ensure our freedom.”
I’m tired from flying this morning, from the work I did to make that happen, and working the ice.
But my wrath burns strongly.
I may be in a bad way after this.
But I can dig deep enough to defeat every last one of them if I have to.
Even if it feels like losing.
The priests take their cue, moving into an attack formation with Mujin directing them from the back.
Coward.
Meanwhile Eraya strides back to the front without hesitation and assumes her own form.
I don’t wait to find out what it is.
She believes she’s right, that she is helping all of us. Her Compassion will be strong.
But not as strong as if she were using it herself.
Not as strong as my Wrath, even tired as I am.
My wrath at what they’ve become.
That my choice five hundred years ago changed so little.
That they are going to force me back into the patterns I wanted to leave behind.
And these priests—they are not motivated by Compassion.
They want to fight. To dominate.
And that, I can use against them.
That’s what a sage does, after all. We are, in some sense, a focus, giving feeling form with our katas to magnify them and changing the world with them.
Being a focus means we can also magnify the emotion in others that is our domain.
In theory, making the people I am fighting against angrier might not be the best move, except:
They are not using Compassion.
They are trying to use power divorced from emotion, and that will always, always be weaker.
That’s part of why the Order taught me to manage my wrath, to punish unapproved expressions of it: because then I was easier to control.
But I’m not going to simply make them angry.
I can do worse than that.
The priests are ready before I am, which is fine—it will hurt, but I can take their hit, so I ignore the pallid yellow ball of power shooting toward me.
But Zan doesn’t let me, stepping in front of me and releasing a jet of fire from his fingertips that disperses the priests’ initial salvo.
Gods damn it, he’s spending his magic on me again!
But I don’t waste the opportunity.
Before the priests’ next attack is ready, I finish my kata, and release my power.
A magenta aura manifests around us.
Wrath from myself.
And Wrath from them.
It eats away at the yellow aura protecting them.
Because now that I’ve seen Eraya’s kata, I know enough to read it: She isn’t magnifying the priests’ Compassion. She’s simply powering their own spells.
And that means they’re not safe from me.
Petty grievances, beliefs that they should be the ones in charge—the priests’ unity erodes before my eyes.
Not every one of them.
But priests’ strength is in their numbers, and the loss of even one weakens them.
“Focus!” Learned Mujin snaps. “Don’t let her win!”
Bizarrely, I want to laugh, or maybe to cry.
Can’t he see that I’m losing?
Or maybe this was always part of his plan, and I am simply playing my part.
This is who I am, after all, isn’t it? Inescapably everyone’s nightmare.
Everyone except for Zan, who stands in front of me, and that also makes me want to cry—and rage, at the injustice, that standing with me only endangers the one person who cares about me and sees me as more than a monster.
Fueled by my wrath, my next kata is faster; with the priests’ unity itself under assault, they cannot work as quickly or as powerfully.
This time, I step around Zan to blast Eraya directly, a stream of magenta erupting from my hand.
It crashes into her and physically blows her backward, toppling the priests behind her.
Not the most powerful working I’m capable of, not by a long shot.
But against a group this small, using stolen power they don’t understand, it doesn’t need to be.
Because even though I’ve already lost, some part of me can’t bring myself to give up what I now realize I secretly, ridiculously hoped for.
A chance to be just a monster.
A chance to be more.
Am I simply in denial? Probably. Maybe I am only making myself smaller, by not embracing the full violence I’m capable of.
But maybe I am desperately hanging onto a dream that I can barely even recognize the shape of yet.
The priests don’t help Eraya up. I don’t expect them to, of course; I understand full well that they don’t consider her a person, merely a body to absorb damage, to grant them the power they believe they deserve.
Eraya no doubt believes this is how she can serve best.
But maybe someday she’ll think about what it means that a dragon defended me, but none of her caretakers defended her.
The priests ready another attack nonetheless, but I don’t wait for them.
“Keep them from destroying the cottage?” I ask Zan quietly.
“Done,” he says.
Because this is what it means for someone to have my back. To be able to trust them to trust me, and respect my goals and abilities.
That is worth fighting for; making space for.
And it enables me to move.
I dash right past the priests, who shift rapidly into defense.
Past Mujin who tries to bodily block me, but after only a few traded blows I’m past him.
Although I deliberately—and probably foolishly—don’t disable him, leaving him to bark orders in my wake; leaving the priests to see that I didn’t disable him, and maybe, if I am luckier than I believe, to think about what that means.
Past Eraya who has gotten to her feet and tries to beat me to Teren, except that she’s not trained for self-defense because she depends on others for that—because she has outsourced care of herself to people who don’t care to protect her.
Her, I leave back in the dirt with nothing but my body, my movement, the barest of what she too could be capable of; my Wrath the wind beneath my wings.
I reach a wide-eyed Teren and Nomi and order them, “Stay behind me!”
Then I whirl, not waiting to see if they’ve obeyed, to unleash the kata I’ve mentally prepared with a quick movement shortcut to trigger it—a wall that’s more like a shove.
Defense is not really my strength.
But if I have any chance to avoid making this worse than it already is, for Teren’s sake even if my own is already lost, in feeding into Mujin’s narrative, then I can’t simply murder them all.
I have to find something else to do with my wrath.
The wall does what it needs to, taking the brunt of the blast before dissipating, as I slowly maneuver our trio around the priests’ formation, back toward Zan.
The priests don’t let up.
Eraya, back on her feet, is feeding them power again, decreasing the effectiveness of the Wrath I deployed to break their unity but not negating it entirely.
It’s not enough, and my frustration mounts.
What are my centuries of meditation good for, if not this?
Where is the space for me to imagine more for what I can be?
All I can do is muddle through.
Like a person, perhaps.
The thought is unexpectedly bitter.
Because I am a person, but I’m not just a person, am I? A sage ought to do better.
Then again: maybe no one is just a person.
Maybe that’s the point.
Maybe we all can only do our best.
But despite the fact that my katas are merely fending the priests’ attacks off, not accomplishing anything higher or better, we get back to Zan without further incident, the priests’ offensive slowing at the end.
Almost there.
I recognize the forms they’re executing: This will be a big one, if I let them finish it.
If I let them shoot not just at me, but at Zan, who’s held the line; at Nomi, who’s only ever helped people; at Teren, who was simply born this way.
Instead I spin into my own form, holding back my scream to pour that energy into my magic.
They want to take me out in one final blow?
Fuck it all.
I’ll show them a final blow.
These priests’ training on how to fight sages is weaker. They’re too used to their power not being contested.
Well I am fucking contesting it.
I am faster.
I am stronger.
And I may not on my own be a match for the whole army of priests that will no doubt follow, but today, this battle, I can win.
Even if ultimately, winning it means losing more.
That thought only makes me angrier.
Pouring all my rage into a more powerful wall of magenta, I slam it against the priests and Mujin and Eraya, pushing them back to the trailhead.
Pushing them down the mountain, where they will tumble and fall and be in no condition to come back against me. They will have to retreat.
And maybe, just maybe, the fact that I didn’t kill any of them when I clearly could have will penetrate the minds of one or two.
Maybe they will decide it is not worth the trouble of dealing with me, when all I wanted was to eat blackberries.
I know better, though.
I protected Teren today. Made them leave.
But I’ve also shown them that a monster lives here.
A monster that they can’t contain, who will work against them.
Exactly what I didn’t want, but I was maneuvered into anyway.
With all my power, all my knowledge, I still couldn’t avoid it.
I didn’t kill anyone, and it didn’t matter.
I still proved to them that Wrath is to be feared, with uninspired defenses that won’t actually change anything and won’t ward them off.
And that means they’ll turn their attention to destroying me, no matter what it takes.
My sense of their magic continues fading, and fading, and doesn’t return.
Finally, I sag to the ground.
All I wanted was to eat ice cream.
What have I done?