Page 59 of Night of the Dragon

He flicked a tail, and blue-white flames erupted from Tatsumi’s body, engulfing him completely. The demonslayer screamed as he was consumed by foxfire, dropping his weapon and falling to his knees.

Just as the real Tatsumi lunged through the blazing illusion and slashed Kamigoroshi into the ninetail.

Blood and smoke erupted as the illusionary Tatsumi vanished in a cloud of smoke, a single strand of Dragon whisker fluttering away on the wind. Seigetsu stumbled backward, the front of his white haori exploding in a spray of crimson, a look of shock and rage on his face. His gaze flickered to me, a chilling understanding in his eyes, and I felt a shiver of fear as I saw the promise of retribution in the stare of the ninetail. He dropped from the Dragon’s head, hair and tails streaming behind him, and fell into the roiling clouds.

“Tatsumi!” I crawled toward the demonslayer on my knees, clutching at whiskers and mane and whatever I could, for the Dragon was falling now, its serpentine form spiraling almost lazily through the air. Tendrils of blue and green light rose from its body as it plummeted, fragments of spirit swirling into the clouds and vanishing in the dark. My hair and sleeves had turned into sails, the wind yanking at them savagely, trying to hurl me into open sky.

Fingers closed around my wrist, and Tatsumi pulled me to him, wrapping an arm tightly around my waist as we knelt on the spiraling head of the Dragon. Even in death, the Great Kami seemed to defy the laws of nature as its massive body fell like a paper streamer toward the earth. I clung to his haori, my stomach twisting at the gaping wound across his chest, the blood warm beneath my fingers. The ribbons of light from the Dragon’s body swirled around us, soaring like schools of fish toward the sky, beautiful and terrible at the same time. For a moment, I closed my eyes and leaned into Tatsumi, numb from the tragedy of the night, the failures upon failures, all the death, pain and destruction we hadn’t been able to prevent.

“I’m sorry,” Tatsumi whispered in my ear, his own voice coming out choked. “I tried to stop it.”

I swallowed hard, wanting to tell him it wasn’t his fault, that we couldn’t have known what Seigetsu was going to do. That the ninetail had been the cause of everything. Not Genno or Hanshou or even the Lord of Jigoku himself. Everyone had been a pawn in the kitsune’s game, which had finally come to its conclusion. And we had lost.

The Dragon’s body broke through the clouds, and the island was suddenly spread out below us, growing larger with every passing second. The gaping wound leading to the center of Jigoku still glowed against the dark, sullen and ominous, and we seemed to be falling directly toward it.

I shivered, weary and soul-sick, and pressed closer to Tatsumi. “I guess it doesn’t matter now,” I whispered, feeling cold inside and out. “If the fall doesn’t kill us, the demons will. No flying carriage will carry us away at the last second.”

“No,” Tatsumi agreed, and one hand slipped into his obi. “But we do have this.”

He held up his arm, a tiny green leaf pinned between two fingers. As I blinked in shock, he gave a faint, weary smile. “After meeting you, I always have a few on me now. Just in case.”

I stared at the leaf, hopeful, grateful, but also terrified. “Tatsumi, I...I don’t know if I can do anything now,” I told him. I could feel the gaping hollowness in my stomach where the hoshi no tama, the star ball, had once resided. “Seigetsu took his magic back. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do anything but simple illusions.”

“You are,” Tatsumi said. “You don’t need his magic. You’re his blood, Yumeko. You’re the daughter of Tsuki Kiyomi, and the protector of the Dragon scroll. You have all the strength you need.”

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I reached for the leaf, curling my fingers around his own. My hand shook, and Tatsumi bent his head to mine. “You can do this,” he murmured, as I took the leaf from him and closed my eyes. “You’re stronger than you know.”

I nodded, took a deep breath and searched within for my magic, hoping this idea would work.

For a moment, nothing happened. I could feel the hollowness inside me, like a hunger that would never go away. But then, something flickered to life, an ember caught in a sudden breeze. It pulsed, then expanded outward, searing and familiar: my own fox magic, the magic that had been suppressed by the power of the ninetail. It flared, bright and joyful, suffusing my whole body, eager to be used again. I held the image of what I wanted in my mind, then sent the magic into the leaf at my fingertips.

The tiny leaf shivered, and then began to grow. It swelled to twice its size, then five times, then ten. I set it down as it continued to grow, until the once tiny leaf was the size of a tatami mat, just big enough for two people to sit on.

Below us, the Dragon shuddered, continuing to tumble lazily from the sky. The ground and the gash to Jigoku were frighteningly close. I glanced at Tatsumi and gave a sickly, hopeful smile. “Let’s hope this works.”

We knelt on the now giant leaf, Tatsumi wrapping his arms tightly around my waist, as I raised my hands and foxfire flared to life in my palms. It spread to the leaf below us, outlining the whole platform with flickering blue fire. Swallowing my nerves, I lifted my arms as I had while controlling Seigetsu’s floating carriage, willing the same to happen here.

Instantly, the leaf floated upward, leaving the Harbinger’s skull. I bit my lip, feeling Tatsumi’s hold on me tighten as I maneuvered the leaf away from the dead Dragon into open air. My heart pounded, my hands shook and beads of sweat trickled down my neck as I pointed us toward a mountain peak. The leaf began to sway slightly, as if it were a real leaf caught in the wind, drifting closer and closer to the edge of a rocky shelf. I thought I heard Tatsumi whispering words of encouragement, but the magic roared in my ears, and I couldn’t discern what he was saying.

This is real. I didn’t know fox magic could do this. But...thisisreal. I think?I shook myself.No, don’t think, Yumeko. Just keep going. Think later.

I held on to the magic until we were at least a couple dozen yards above the ledge. Then I lost control, and the illusion popped in a cloud of white smoke. We plummeted to the rocky peak, but Tatsumi managed to sweep me into his arms and land on his feet with a soft but pained grunt that made my stomach clench. Gently, he set me down and waited as I got my feet under me, adjusting to solid ground again and not the pitching, rolling platform of a dead Kami.

I looked up, over Tatsumi’s shoulder, and everything inside me went cold.

The Dragon tumbled from the sky in a slow, almost lazy fashion, like it weighed no more than cloth. Tendrils of colored light still streamed from the huge Kami, spiraling back into the clouds, giving the impression that the Dragon was on fire. I lost sight of it as it dropped below the ledge, and then the whole world trembled as the Harbinger struck the earth.

Numb, I staggered to the edge of the peak and looked down, my stomach nearly crawling up my throat in despair. The Great Dragon, the Lord of Tides and the Harbinger of Change, lay dead in the center of the valley, his huge body coiled around the gaping scar to Jigoku. The hellish light reflected off the Dragon’s scales, and hordes of demons and spirits—those his great body hadn’t crushed—clustered around him, dancing and cavorting in apparent glee.

My legs shook, and I stumbled back from the edge, too dazed even for tears. “We...we have to get down there,” I whispered, turning from the devastation below. “Maybe there’s something we can do, some way to...bring the Dragon back. We have to try, don’t we?”

“Yumeko.” Tatsumi’s voice was bleak. I heard the impossibility in it and sank to my knees on the rock, trapped in a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. How had we failed so spectacularly? The Dragon was dead, the gate to Jigoku lay open and all my closest friends were gone. We had stopped Genno from using the Wish, but even that seemed trivial to the passing of a Great Kami and the loss of what Seigetsu had wanted all along. Not the Wish, but the jewel that would grant him the power and immortality of a god.

Tatsumi knelt and drew me to him, bowing his head as he pulled me close. “I’m sorry,” he murmured again, his voice sounding broken. One hand rose and cupped the back of my head, his fingers burrowing in my hair. “I wanted to give you a home to go back to.”

I took a shaky breath, feeling my eyes burn and hot tears start down my face. “What do we do now, Tatsumi?” I whispered. “The gate to Jigoku is open. The demons and spirits will keep coming out until they overrun everything. How do we close it?”

“I...don’t know.” Tatsumi himself seemed on the verge of breaking down. He trembled against me, then took a breath to compose himself. “Blood magic, perhaps. But a spell that powerful would need a lot of sacrifice, and that’s something neither of us are willing to do even if we could.”

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