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Ruoye is born breathless and abysmal.
The first thing she can ever recall is the acrid stench of vomit as it burns in her nostrils. With it, she can smell the sweatsalt of an agitated human and the iron tang of blood. When she opens her eyes she sees a small cottage, dimly lit by smudged windows. There is a body on the floor.
Oh, she thinks, mine.
The body does not move towards her and so she moves towards it. Her own body is a new, fumbling thing. She scrabbles her claws against the wooden floorboards until she can crouch her slight weight over her own six paws, wobbling precariously against gravity. Her belly brushes the floor as she crawls forward.
The body is big, and wrapped in white cloth, and motionless. It is curled up, wrapped around itself, mindless of her. She makes baby noises at it, pleading—chirps and chirrups and chirrs to garner its attention. Its shoulder twitches. Encouraged, she presses her snout to the back of its neck, and it—
It shouts, and whirls around, and strikes her face so hard her vision cuts out.
When she opens her eyes again, she is sprawled against the far wall. The body in white is sitting up now, its back plastered against the wall opposite her. It is breathing very hard. There are chafed red marks around its throat, patches of drying vomit on the collar of its robe, and blood trickling from its nostrils.
She wobbles to her feet, again, and feels blood drip from her own nostril.
“Ruoye,” it calls her, its voice thick with loathing. “Evil.”
When it leaves, she goes with it—though she takes care not to touch it again. They travel many li together. At first, it is hard for Ruoye to keep up with the white-clothed god. Her paws are still soft, her muscles still new, her balance awkward and ungainly. She trips many times. The god never stops to wait for her.
Fortunately, Ruoye is a dragon and not a dog.
In a matter of days she has learned to walk and run. The rough roads harden her the pads of her paws and strengthen her talons. The sunlight dries her silky newborn scales. She scarfs down the remnants of the god’s meals, and her body grows quickly. She learns to use her wings and tail for balance, leaping from rock to rock and hissing in annoyance when the wind catches her the wrong way.
Their journey ends in a field of the dead. Ruoye cannot use spiritual energy yet, but she can feel it around her—thick in the humid air, dense in the churned mud below her. The smell of death is rank in her mouth. She prowls closely behind her god, her tail twitching nervously behind her heels. She can see bones on either side of their path. Some are bleached white. Some still have rotting flesh in their grooves.
A ghost meets them there.
Ruoye darts forward, twining herself around her god’s ankles and baring her teeth. The ghost smells like black, cloying death—like blood and burning and bitter hate. It is a familiar scent for reasons she cannot begin to understand. When he drops to one knee and reaches for her god, she lunges forward and she bites him.
For the very first time, her god makes a noise of approval.
Giddy with it, Ruoye drives her fangs in even harder. The ghost’s blood is cold and thick between her jaws. She breathes in short, sharp jolts through her nose to avoid tasting it. She is small, still, but bright with energy and purpose. If the ghost tries to throw her off then she will—!
“Dianxia,” the ghost says, and it is not looking at her.
Her god sneers.
Her god, she realizes, is named Dianxia.
The ghost’s spiritual energy flares suddenly, startling her, and it hooks its fingers into the delicate roof of her mouth. She yanks backwards, spitting angrily, and bristles her spines. Ghostblood trickles between her teeth and pools under her tongue. She expects the ghost to strike her, but it doesn’t—it regards her quietly, solemnly, and draws its bleeding hand away.
“Ruoye,” Dianxia says, his voice cold. “Enough.”
Ruoye subsides at once, lest she be struck by him, and coils between his feet. The god and the ghost talk above her for several long minutes before Dianxia kicks her out of the way so he can walk forward again. She scrambles after him and realizes, with some dismay, that the ghost is following along. She glares at it, shortly, over her shoulder. This does not dissuade it.
The ghost is something of a servant, she realizes over the next few days—certainly no more highly regarded than she herself is, which makes her feel better. She would have been really jealous otherwise. For the most part, the ghost does not bother her. It entertains itself with Dianxia alone and ignores her when it can. Occasionally, she catches it sneaking glances at her over the firepit, but it is always quick to look away when their eyes meet. Ruoye really has no attachment to it, so—
So when it disperses under the weight of a thousand souls, she can’t understand why she is sad.
Dianxia is sad, though. Dianxia is very sad.
They travel many more li that year. Dianxia spends his days hunting and fishing for them both, largely silent and brooding. He gives her larger meals, now, instead of his scraps. When he does speak his voice is softer. He does not strike her anymore. When he walks, he looks down to see that she is not tangled around his feet before he steps. In winter he even allows her to sleep next to him, leeching off of his body warmth.
“Ruoye,” he sighs, his breath pluming like clouds. “My dear Ruoye. What are we going to do?”
Ruoye does not know, but Ruoye makes tiny baby noises and tucks herself into his lap and that seems to help. He hesitates before touching her, resting the palm of his hand against her back like she is glass. It is a safe weight there. The sadness has changed something in him and Ruoye cannot say that she regrets that. She does, however, regret the tired lines around his eyes.
Ruoye tries her best to cheer him up in the aftermath of the ghost’s dispersion. She hunts small mice and colorful birds and brings them to him. She digs up smooth rocks and pretty gems to feston his bedroll. She drags back the biggest branches for their campfire. She darts after the brightest scraps when they are exploring in the cities. Most importantly, she pays her best attention when he starts to teach her.
Sit is easy, and so are lie down and place and come here. A little harder are stay, hide, and settle. As she grows older, Dianxia expands her vocabulary. He points to things and tells her their names. He talks to her consistently throughout their days. He even reads her stories at night. She wishes she could talk back, but her vocal chords are more suited to rattles and roars than delicate human words.
It is lucky that Dianxia doesn’t seem to mind.
By her second year, Ruoye is the size of a large deer—albeit much, much longer. From nose to tailtip she spans twelve feet. Admittedly, most of that is tail. She is hardly more than (as Dianxia proclaims) a very stringy rice noodle. Her horns begin to grow in, as do her whiskers. The mane of fur running down her neck and back becomes thicker and coarser. It hides the wicked, needle-like spicules that lay flattened against her spine. After her first shed, her scales are harder and sharper than ever.
It is not so easy to hide her anymore.
“Ruoye,” Dianxia says, coaxing, cradling her chin in his hands, “you have to stay in the forest today. If the villagers see you there will be too many questions.”
Stay is one of Ruoye’s least favorite words.
Grudgingly, she wraps herself around a tree trunk and rests until Dianxia returns to her that evening. It isn’t fair. She used to go scrap-hunting with him all the time—hiding in his pockets or his sleeves or his large canvas bags. She wishes she hadn’t gotten so big. What’s going to happen if she gets bigger? What’s going to happen when Dianxia can’t hide her anymore?
And what’s so dangerous about people seeing her, anyway?
By her third year, Ruoye is the size of large horse, and she’s almost tripled in length. It’s impossible to stretch her wings fully in the forest, and so the two of them travel to the distant mountains. It is there that Ruoye learns to fly. She bruises herself more than once in the endeavor, and even chips a tooth or two. Dianxia watches fretfully from the sidelines, wringing his hands as she snatches clumsily at air currents.
By her fourth year, Ruoye’s wings are strong enough to carry her.
“Wonderful, Ruoye!” Dianxia calls to her, laughing as she swoops and circles in the brisk blue sky above their mountain home. “Do a loop!”
Ruoye does a loop.
Ruoye would do anything to hear Dianxia laugh like that.
A little clumsily, Ruoye touches down on the cliff their home clings to—her landings could still use a little work, she thinks. She shakes her wings out with a leathery snap and folds them along her spine, chuffing merrily at Dianxia as he approaches. She lowers her head, allowing him to stroke her muzzle, before extending a wing to him.
It isn’t the first time she’s asked.
“Ah.” Dianxia steps back, looking uncertainly at her. “I don’t know, Ruoye. Are you really big enough?”
Ruoye huffs. It’s true that she’s not the largest of dragons—she’s seen others, if only from a distance, much taller than herself—but she’s tall as any draught horse now. If such a horse can carry a human, why can’t she? She flutters her wing a little more insistently, crouching low to the ground. If she can carry Dianxia, they can go anywhere.
“I don’t want to burden you,” Dianxia says fretfully. “If I damage your growth, I’ll—”
Ruoye snatches him by the scruff of his robes, tosses him onto her shoulders, and leaps.
Dianxia is a very noisy passenger for the first few minutes. He shouts up to her as he digs his fingers into her mane, clinging so tightly it stings. Mostly he shouts her name but sometimes he shouts words she has not ever heard before, like shit and fuck and shitshitshit. It is a harder to fly with him aboard. She’s small enough that his weight unbalances her if he moves too quickly, and so their flight is wobbly and uneven until he finally settles some minutes in.
“Ruoye,” he pants, “sometimes I regret how I named you.”
Ruoye chirps curiously.
“This,” he says, and here pauses for effect, “is not one of those times.”
She chuffs with amusement and banks gently, sweeping over the sullen gray crags of their mountain home. Dianxia’s legs tremble where they squeeze her shoulders, so she decides that she will keep this flight short. She only wanted to show him that she could—that they could. If he really does not want to fly after this then she will not make him.
But she’s not going to let him stay grounded because of something as silly as being a burden.
Ruoye has carried burdens far less worthy.
She lands outside of their cottage and crouches to let him stumble off. His hair is whipped and tangled by the wind, his cheeks flushed red with the cold and his robes layered in a fine mist. He is smiling. Ruoye rubs her head against his chest, rumbling in satisfaction, and he hugs her muzzle.
“Ridiculous,” he whispers against her mane. Then, “We’ll fly again tomorrow morning. We need practice.”
That year and the next pass quickly. Ruoye eats voraciously of the mountain beasts and the fish in the clear cold rivers nearby. While her growth is more in breadth and length than it is in height now, she still reaches a satisfactory middleweight size. She is very nicely proportional, she thinks, admiring herself in the still lake water. While her withers are only a few feet above Dianxia’s head, her body is long and elegant and her wings are lofty. She is not too big to fit in their cottage or walk in the village, but she is not so small as to be silly.
They become masterful fliers, too, she and Dianxia. They can soar for hours with nary a wingbeat, if the thermals are kind enough to them, and they have learned to attune their movements to each other in flight. Dianxia has made for her a simple harness of rope and leather, and he hooks himself to this on the odd chance that he tumbles off in the air. She would catch him, of course, but it’s better not to take the chance. He can also load his things into the under-rigging of the harness, and so make transport to and from the village easier. Ruoye still does not enter the villages—Dianxia worries about her so—but she waits in the forest outside while he sells and gathers scraps.
She should have known better than to expect such a life would satisfy Dianxia for any span of time.
Dianxia is, at heart, a martial god—and though Ruoye did not know him as a prince, it is easy to see glimpses of that gold-hearted hero. It bores him to sit and idle in a forest while the world falls apart in the distance. He would do it forever for her sake, she knows, but she does not want to ask that of him. They deserve to be happy. If happy means going out and battering a few villains, then Ruoye is ready for it. It seems only her duty.
Fortunately, Dianxia seems a little more amendable to the idea now that she’s reached her full growth. He lingers long outside, looking wistfully towards the sunset. Ruoye sits beside him, nudging his shoulder and then angling her muzzle outwards. Their cottage here is comfortable, but impermanent.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Dianxia muses.
Gods, this would be so much easier if she could speak.
Groaning, Ruoye nudges him forward. She spreads her wings and flaps them. Go, she thinks earnestly, and hopes the message will come across through her eyes. Go Dianxia we’ll go.
“What?” Dianxia asks. “You’re hungry?”
Oh he is so dense. Ruoye returns to the cottage, dragging her tail along the ground, and grips one of Dianxia’s canvas bags in her teeth. She shakes it vigorously to get his attention, and he runs around for several minutes trying to snatch it from her. It is entertaining, like tug-of-war. She momentarily forgets that they aren’t playing.
“Ruoye, don’t tear it,” Dianxia pleads. “I just made that one.”
Ruoye spits the canvas bag out, looks at their things, and then looks back at the bag. She grips one of their blankets and drags it outside, setting it down on the bag and chirping. She grabs her harness for good measure, laying it out alongside the bag and looking west.
“You want to go to town?” Dianxia guesses.
Ruoye croons softly, then points a talon out over the horizon.
“Farther?”
She nods, curling up around him. It takes some days for him to warm to the idea, but when he does so he does so with gusto. He adds more straps to her harness, and pads the buckles and the dip of her neck the way he does for long flights; she stands impatiently to allow him to fit it. Her tail twitches with excitement when he begins to load luggage under her belly and across her haunches. They’re leaving. They’re really leaving!
It’s a little sad, abandoning their cottage, but Ruoye comforts herself with the knowledge that they can always come back. When Dianxia climbs onto her back and hooks himself to the harness, her sadness is almost immediately overrun by joy. She has been to so few places in her short life. What else is out there, anyway?
Ruoye takes a running leap off of the cliff, spreading her wings to catch herself with a roar of delight. The ground disappears beneath her shadow. She’s a quick flier, even by her estimate, and the miles fall away. Dianxia touches her neck to guide her directions, and she is content to let him lead the way. He’s older, after all, and has seen more of the world.
They spend centuries wandering, and Ruoye could not be happier.
It is not the most glamorous of lives, she supposes. She is no palace pet the way she would have been had she been born a few years earlier. She does not have jewels to wear or gems to hoard or armor to polish. There are some years when she barely has enough food to eat, despite Dianxia’s best efforts. She is become a lean, sturdy traveler and some days she feels no more than a pack animal. But she wouldn’t complain—she knows what it is to be a snake in Dianxia’s eyes, and anything is better than that.
Some years are spent as heroes, vanquishing ghosts and shepherding villagers from destruction.
Some years are spent as farmers, pulling wagons and planting rice for the famine.
Some years are spent as circus performers, selling shed scales and giving children ridealongs.
Some years are spent as villains.
One particularly bad year, some foul man tries to bury her Dianxia alive. She guts him for the audacity. Dianxia cries over the gore staining her jaws, but she cannot bring herself to feel bad for it. Anyone willing to damn a man to so cruel a death deserved to be put down—if not only for Dianxia’s sake, than for the sake of anyone else unfortunate enough to cross him.
The whispers she hears behind her—maneater, maneater— only sting the first few times.
Ruoye would eat a thousand men for Dianxia, and then some. Dianxia is a terribly unlucky person, after all, and it is only through much care that Ruoye shepherds him from disaster after disaster. But there is one disaster, as it turns out, she cannot avoid.
Its name is E-ming.
E-ming is a horrible, awful, nasty little beast.
It is barely the size of a small dog and crawls, chirping, all over her Dianxia’s boots. He tolerates this with as much patience as he ever has, though in this case Ruoye wishes he would have a little less. E-ming is quite a perfectly kickable size. It bears no harness and no jewels, and if it weren’t for its obedience to San Lang she would think it a feral thing.
San Lang, to her relief, is a little better than his dragon. He treats her Dianxia politely, with the upmost respect, and grabs E-ming by its tail when it begins to climb up her master’s legs. He flings it away from them carelessly, and it squalls as it tumbles head over heels in the dirt. Ruoye snorts with satisfaction.
Spitting in irritation, E-ming creeps towards them again. Ruoye puts herself between it and their masters, lowering her head and mantling her wings in warning. It listens, this once, and obediently flattens itself to the ground without another step. She is not convinced that its submission will last any length of time. It is undisciplined despite San Lang’s best efforts.
Some dragons, she supposes, simply aren’t meant to be tamed.
Ruoye surmises, through San Lang’s conversations with Dianxia, that E-ming is not a spirit dragon and was instead hatched to wild parents—hardly more than a wild animal itself, which explains its rude behavior. San Lang only took it in because it was injured and abandoned. It was a noble conquest for the young man, to be sure, but also one that hasn’t rewarded him at all. E-ming is more of a burden than anything. The only time it makes itself useful is in battle, when it will lunge at the enemy and harry them with tiny sharp teeth much as a dog might.
It is not even particularly pretty, though she supposes she might not have any right to speak—she is the color of ill luck through and through, though her golden eyes and the iridescence to her white scales give her some reprieve. E-ming is dull black, without a single colorful marking, and its eyes are so dark as to be near pupiless when seen from a distance. It takes no pride in its appearance and rarely grooms itself, only splashing in rivers and lakes when it will irritate its master. Its claws are often crusted with mud, and its scales lathered with sweat.
Ruoye tries to lead by example, and fastidiously cleans herself each morning and night. Dianxia helps, when he has time, and brushes her mane with an ebony comb. Her harness is not a fanciful affair by any means, but still he takes care to clean and polish the leather before he ever puts it on her. San Lang comes to help with this chore, and shortly she allows him to rub the sweat and dirt from her scales after long flights or wagon pulls.
It is this attention, she thinks later, that causes E-ming’s abrupt change of behavior. It is motivated by jealousy, if nothing else. Whenever it sees San Lang grooming her, it will dart over and make a nuisance of itself until San Lang contents to dump a bucket of cold water over its head. Dianxia will come over shortly after, clucking in disapproval, and rub the little lizard dry while it preens and presses into his hands. Ruoye hisses in discontent, but subsides at once when Dianxia scolds her.
“Don’t be jealous, Ruoye,” he chastises, cupping her muzzle in his warm palms. “E-ming is so little. It doesn’t take any time at all to clean it; besides, it has been good to us. You can’t begrudge it a little care now and then, especially when San Lang won’t—ah, well, but you understand. You’re a good girl.”
Ruoye huffs, her breath stirring his hair, but lays reluctantly quiet whenever E-ming is groomed from then on.
It is harder for the two of them to keep clean in the Gobi, when the sand seems determined to work its way underneath every scale. Ruoye would fly them across the desert if she could, but four humans is a little too many for her to carry comfortably—and anyway the winds are unpredictable, and the sandstorms deadly in air. Dianxia insists that she stays grounded, and so instead she is put under harness to pull a covered wagon over the dunes. Dianxia, San Lang, and those two god-servants all ride inside while E-ming nestles between her shoulders and snoozes.
The wagon is not heavy, but the wheels are prone to lodge into loose sand and so it is strenuous work. She is always exhausted by the day’s end, with barely enough energy to shiver her hide and skitter the white sand off. Dianxia fusses over her greatly, picking stones out from her claws and allowing her to take great gulps of cool water from the barrels they brought with them. She is too tired to snap at E-ming, even, and allows it to sleep under her wings like a hatchling. It returns her favor by nibbling the knots from her mane, its small teeth and talons well-suited to the task.
But it is not until the scorpion-tailed snakes attack that E-ming proves its real mettle. It launches itself at the sinuous creatures with claws spread and teeth bared, mauling them viciously into strips. Their fangs and stingers alike bounce off of its dark scales, and when one gets a little too close E-ming whips around and breathes a wash of white fire over its head. It crisps immediately. Even Ruoye draws her head back in surprise: she has not a met a fire-breather in many decades, and never before one so small.
The battle is won easily, between the two of them, but not without injury—Dianxia is stung and tainted by the scorpion-tailed snake’s venom, and Ruoye is at once agitated. She circles him, rumbling anxiously and lashing her tail, while E-ming clacks its jaws and paws at Dianxia’s legs. It is decided, between the humans, that they will travel to the Banyue Kingdom for a cure. Ruoye crouches at once, inviting Xie Lian onto her back; there is no faster way to travel, and indeed he needs little convincing.
“Ruoye,” Dianxia croons, stroking her muzzle in comfort, “my dear Ruoye, can you carry two?”
Nan Feng and Fu Yao protest at once, but Ruoye whisks Dianxia and San Lang away before they can argue too much. The flight is a quick one, though little E-ming struggles to keep pace with her and so must ride along in San Lang’s arms. The weight is not more than she is used to, without the burden of tack and luggage additional, and she lands in the centermost portion of the kingdom some two hours later.
Finding the Shanyue fern and curing Dianxia’s illness is easy.
Escaping the Kingdom afterwards is not so much.
The Banyue soldiers throw great, heavy chains over her wings and neck to keep her grounded—as though she ever would have considered retreating, with her god shackled alongside her. Dianxia is more distraught to see her bound than he is to be bound himself. He frets over her thrashing, coaxing her to lie still lest she break the thin bones of her wings or the spicules across her spine. She settles herself into great, heaving breaths and she hisses through bared teeth whenever one of the soldiers approaches her.
E-ming itself is much easier to bind: the soldiers toss it into a birdcage, and it shrieks in fury as it batters itself against the bars. It looks desperately to its own master, and Ruoye swears she sees some silent communication pass between them. E-ming makes a rattling, frustrated noise before sitting down and clamping its wings tightly to its back.
Then, San Lang throws himself into the Sinner’s Pit.
Ruoye bellows and flings herself fresh against the chains: scared not only for Dianxia’s sake, but for San Lang himself. She has grown attached to the young noble over their journey. He is unnecessarily vague and riddle-tongued, she thinks, and rather more condescending of his dragon than he ought be—but he is also brave and kind and adoring of her Dianxia, and he never speaks to her with anything but the upmost respect.
When she hits the air above the Pit, her wings are still pinioned to her sides by the chains. She falls dreadfully for several hundred feet, plummeting into the eerie black below with Dianxia’s screams ringing behind her. She gouges the chains with her claws and teeth, tearing them off and letting them fall to the bottom with a hideous ringing clang. Even once they are gone from her, she keeps her wings pinned flat to her sides—the faster to fall, and the faster to catch San Lang.
Ruoye does not see San Lang, on the fall down. She does not see anything. Her eyes are not made for this pitch, lightless world; she is no nocturnal beast. She can only rely on her hearing, and on the shifts of the warm air currents—the lashes out with her paws and mouth, feeling blindly for her friend. She catches his hand in her mouth and tastes his blood. It is a lucky catch. She tosses him up, onto her back, and flails desperately with her wings to slow their fall.
They hit the bottom of the Pit hard, despite her best efforts, and she tumbles over herself. Dry bones crunch beneath her weight. The metallic stink of blood floods her nose and settles into the hollow spaces of her skull. Her own bones ache, but she does not think anything is broken: she is able to stand and shake off with only a little pain.
“Ruoye!” San Lang calls, and sounds afraid. “Ruoye!”
Ruoye turns her head to the sound of his voice, pressing her muzzle to his chest. He smells different. He feels different. His blood, slick on her tongue, is the only thing familiar.
She’s tasted it before, hasn’t she?
“Are you hurt?” San Lang asks fretfully, and she shakes her head. “Good. Please, stand back and let me handle this.”
Ruoye does not protest. She knows San Lang, now. She knows him from a long time ago. She knows how terrible he can be, and to have lived on his own for so long—yes, he is certainly able to handle this on his own. She hears the noise of battle around her, but has only attention for Dianxia’s voice ringing over the shouts. She rears onto her hind feet and cries for him, the sound sharp and piercing against the walls of the Pit.
Dianxia hits the ground running, and collides with her chest. She wraps him in her forearms, holding him close to her chest and crooning over his head. He feels over her for injury and, finding none, turns his attention quickly to San Lang—but the fight is over already, and San Lang can only offer them some meager words of comfort before the Head Priestess arrives.
It is a series of strange events, after that.
By early dawn, the soldiers of Banyue have all been killed and the Head Priestess has been caught and contained in a little ceramic jar that Dianxia holds closely to himself. Ruoye flies back out of the Sinner’s Pit with San Lang and Dianxia on her back, and they find E-ming curled lazily in the shattered shards of its cage. Ruoye snorts in disdain at it. Little enough help it would have been, down there, but to not even have tried…?
E-ming yawns, displaying its small sharp fangs, and looks over.
Ruoye jerks her head up in surprise, and Dianxia slides off of her shoulder quickly to greet the gods assembled beside the Pit. He stumbles when he bows, and San Lang catches him gently by the elbow. The gods are wholly unfamiliar to Ruoye, and she regards them and their dragons both with suspicion.
The first god, she learns, is called Shi Qingxuan—the Lady Wind Master. She is dressed in whites and greens, soft-spoken colors that speak nothing of her exuberant personality. Her dragon, a sinuous middleweight beast called Feng Shi Shan, has roped itself into a mass of glittering jade coils behind her. It lifts its head when it is introduced, its eyes clear and calm, and nods politely towards Ruoye and E-ming.
The second god introduces herself as Ming Yi—the Lady Earth Master. She wears black robes in contrast to her pallid face, and she speaks coldly to counter Shi Qingxuan’s innate warmth. Her own dragon is Yi Bing Yueya Chan: a stout, short-winged lightweight creature with blunt purple-streaked scales and a wholly uninterested gaze. It snorts its own laidadaisal greeting towards them before setting its head back down to rest.
What follows is a series of political discussions Ruoye could not care less about, and so she lays down to nap off the last arduous days. When she wakes again she and Dianxia are alone, next to a campfire that stinks of E-ming’s breath. San Lang returns shortly after, his little dragon perched on his shoulder, and begins to cook over the fire.
The next day sees them back to the travelers in the Gobi, and they hand out several dried Shanyue ferns. Nan Feng and Fu Yao greet them grumbling, and only after much placatation do they begin to repack the wagon. Ruoye allows herself to be put back under harness while E-ming flits around her head, harrying her for its own entertainment until she snaps its tail between her teeth. Thus chastised, it flees back into the shelter of the wagon.
It is not until they return to their shrine in Puqi that Xie Lian confronts San Lang.
Hua Cheng, he calls their friend, and Ruoye cocks her head. They had known him by another name, hadn’t they? Hadn’t it been Wu Ming? She warbles softly, looking between them in confusion. Why doesn’t San Lang correct him? Why hasn’t he introduced himself properly, after all this time?
“This is Hua Cheng,” Dianxia explains, stroking Ruoye’s long neck. “He is Crimson Rain Sought Flower. The calamity, remember?”
Hua Cheng bows formally to her, and she snorts. “My apologies for the deception,” he says, wry. “I wasn’t sure how such a name would be received.”
Wu Ming, she thinks, annoyed, and flicks her tail-tip. Idiot.
When Hua Cheng still refuses to correct Dianxia, she sighs. Oh, well. They’ll have to figure it out at some point, won’t they? Surely Dianxia can’t be that dense.
Hua Cheng’s true form is easy to accept.
E-ming’s is not.
Ruoye squawks in outrage the first time she sees it: it towers over her even lying down and must weigh upwards of fifty tons. A heavyweight by any measure, and nothing like the small rattish creature who’s been pestering her for weeks! Its scales are no longer the dull shades of a feral, but a bright simmering red befitting of any spiritual dragon. It rumbles when it sees her, and the sound travels up through her paws and into her chest.
Horrible! Really horrible!
It has been put under harness since the last time she saw it, back in Puqi. Its harness is made of thick leather, worn thin around the shoulders and crusted black with blood and soot. It lays in a nest of old embers, still glowing with heat, which is ensconced within a massive pavilion behind Paradise Manor. At this size, it moves much less, and much less quickly. Its scales are greasy, its talons crusted with blood and its breath foul with decay. Its nostrils flare like firepits when it bows its head to sniff her. It has only one grimy red eye.
This, she thinks, is the dragon that people write stories about slaying.
This, she thinks, is E-ming.
E-ming breath stirs her mane, and she leaps up with a hiss. Big or not, she is still better than it by far, and not afraid in the least! She lashes out, her talons catching the delicate tip of its snout, and it recoils with a bemused huff. Thus assured of herself, Ruoye harrumphs and walks primly after Dianxia with her tail lashing over the ground.
It is not until later that she really sees the full extent of E-ming and his crew. When he mobilizes, it takes a small army. Half-a-hundred ghosts swarm on and over his harness, latching themselves on with carabiners as he climbs arduously to his feet. Hua Cheng himself sits at the base of E-ming neck, spinning a dagger around his knuckles with a bored expression. E-ming rises onto its hind legs and flaps mightily: the force creates a gale that flattens Ruoye’s mane and would have sent her staggering had her wings been any less tightly folded.
It is a massive effort for E-ming to leave the ground. Small wonder that it should be such a bad flier! It glides lazily after her, unable to follow her acrobatics by any measure. Its power is in strength only, and in the roasting fire that licks between its jaws and pours down on their enemies. But there are no enemies, today: there is only the ocean.
Both of them land in the cool water and splash, sluicing dirt and sweat off of their scales while their crews recline on the shore. Dianxia tends to Ruoye himself, scrubbing between her talons and behind her wings where it is difficult to reach. Hua Cheng makes no such efforts for E-ming, but flicks a hand to signal his crew forward. They swarm over E-ming, scrubbing its harness and scales both, and it chuffs in obvious pleasure.
Despite E-ming’s size, however, it is not even the largest dragon Ruoye knows. That honor goes to He Xuan’s beast Leng Tao—a snake of some one thousand feet, made of dark purpling scales and sharp fins. It lurks in water only, and never takes flight, to Ruoye’s relief. Such a creature in the sky would really be too much!
Such a creature in the ocean shallows is very nearly too much, too, she thinks as Leng Tao swims circles around them. When he lifts his head, water streams from the ruff of fins around his somber face. E-ming bellows joyfully at him, and the two begin to play-wrestle. Ruoye evacuates herself, and Dianxia, before she can be submerged by the resultant tsunami.
She settles some ways back from the shore and lays on her side, tucking Dianxia and Hua Cheng into the curve of her stomach. She watches through half-lidded eyes as Leng Tao winds itself, python-like, around E-ming. Furious smoke pours from E-ming nostrils, and it wails childishly at its loss.
“Tell your beast not to break my harness,” Hua Cheng calls over to He Xuan, who neatly flips him off. “If he does, it’ll be another hundred thousand on top of your debt, you shark. You know how much leather it takes to repair that thing? Twelve leatherworkers, He Xuan! Twelve!”
The sun begins to set, streaming red across the waves, as He Xuan hurriedly wades into the water calling for Leng Tao. Dianxia laughs, leaning against Hua Cheng’s shoulder. It’s good to hear him laugh again. It’s happening more and more often, with Hua Cheng around, and Ruoye chirps her approval.
“Tomorrow, then?” Dianxia asks. “We’ll go to fight him tomorrow?”
Hua Cheng nods.
Ruoye knows, without doubt, who they’re talking about: Jun Wu, so recently exposed for his millenia-long treachery, and his intolerable dragon Zhu Xin. Any beast willing to let its master fall so far must be fallen itself, Ruoye thinks, or nearly enough that it doesn’t matter. She would never let Dianxia sink so far.
(Then she thinks of a time long, long ago when all she knew was his hate, and she wonders.)
But the morals of it are not for her to question. Zhu Xin might be a pitiful thing, bound as she is to such a cruel master, but is no unthinking and unquestioning pet. She is a dragon. She chose to allow Jun Wu down this path, despite all its inherent risks, and so Ruoye knows her job well. She will kill Zhu Xin, just as Dianxia will kill Jun Wu.
Ruoye flexes her claws into the sand and readies.
“Yes,” Hua Cheng says, softly. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to stay in Ghost City?”
Dianxia shakes his head, and Ruoye growls, too. How could he think that? Jun Wu was their enemy, first: this is their war. Hua Cheng, chagrined, slumps a little against Dianxia. Dianxia leans their heads together, and they watch in silence as the sun sinks below the shore. E-ming clambers out of the lake, squalling and shaking its wings, while Leng Tao braces his short forepaws against the sand and rumbles in amusement.
Tomorrow there will be a war.
Tonight, there are only her friends, and Ruoye is more than happy to forget the rest.