Erlang Shen pulled a protective layer of water over himself like a fire blanket, right before the demon exploded with enough force to finally knock me out.
23
I came to on the cold, hard ground. I couldn’t tell which way was up. The dirt pressing into my back could have been a wall, not a floor. Maybe a ceiling.
I peeled myself off the surface and waddled around, trying to get my bearings in the haze cloaking my vision. I felt groggy, nauseous, but worst of all, hideously vulnerable. I had never lost consciousness like this before. Certainly not since embracing my identity as the Ruyi Jingu Bang. My knees were wobbly, my ankles twisty.
A big gray shape congealed in front of me. I didn’t understand why it was so big until enough time passed for my brain to process that it was part of the geography. It was a mountain. I was wandering around the slope of a frigging mountain. That was why I couldn’t get level and stable.
I looked up and saw the irregularities of the rocks and switchbacks converge over the distance into a forty-five-degree slope so perfect I couldn’t judge how far away the peak was. The sky had switched from pink to an electric blue, like someone had highlighted it in a web browser.
Looking down gave me nothing, either. A solid carpet of marshmallow-y white clouds blocked any view of the ground. The vapor stretched into the horizon. I couldn’t see any other peaks poking through the cloud cover other than the one I was standing on.
There had been no clouds and no mountain in the desert where we’d started. I was getting supremely fed up with how the rules of plate tectonics worked outside Earth. I had geological standards.
A groan coming from behind a nearby boulder told me I wasn’t alone. I picked my way around the house-sized chunk of granite and found the only person who could have made this situation even better.
Erlang Shen lay on his back with his arm draped over his eyes like an artist’s model waiting to be sketched. He appeared to be unconscious. I hadn’t been the closest to him when Princess Iron Fan self-destructed, but the cocktail shaker of the explosion had mixed us together and dumped us in the same spot.
A wave of sheer despair took hold of me. I dropped to my knees and gripped my own elbows to stop from shaking. I couldn’t handle what this implied.
We’d lost. Princess Iron Fan was the Yin Mo, and Erlang Shen had been the one to land the killing blow on her. By the rules of the Mandate Challenge, he was the new King of Heaven.
I felt dead inside—gutted and scraped of my vitals—as I realized this. The scales of the cosmos did not tilt toward justice. The good and the decent did not prevail. The Universe would throw chance after chance at the unworthy until they capitalized on it and stole everything from the rest of us.
I didn’t know if Quentin and Guanyin were alive in the wake of Princess Iron Fan’s explosion, but fate had decided Erlang Shen should be saved with absolute certainty. The circumstances that were required to get here—each precarious moment of stupidity and bad luck balanced on top of each other—made me want to weep.
You can do something about this, a voice whispered inside my head. I tried blocking it out, but it forced two small words through the cracks in my brain.
Kill him.
Erlang Shen was out cold and vulnerable. The Great White Planet was nowhere in sight. Whatever coronation or recognition that went along with declaring a new ruler of Heaven hadn’t happened yet.
Kill him. Before he wakes up.
The natural forces of the Universe were corrupt. I saw that now. I couldn’t reweave the fabric of events into an outcome that made sense. But I could lash out. Cut the cloth in defiance of the pattern.
I stared at Erlang Shen, trying to muster the will to murder him in cold blood. I knew he’d do it to me if our situations were reversed. He needed to die for the good of Heaven and Earth. He deserved to die.
And yet I couldn’t do it. Minutes passed while I struggled against my skin to move forward, my teeth grinding in an attempt to kickstart my body into action. My resolve failed an infinite number of times.
I slammed my hands against the ground over and over and cursed myself. I was weak, too weak to do what was necessary.
? ? ?
Erlang Shen woke up to see me sitting off to the side, my head buried between my knees.
He scrambled away, conking his head into the nearby boulder. Like me, he realized how vulnerable he’d been. He glanced at his limbs, incredulous that I hadn’t broken them.
It took him a few halting tries to sit up, like someone who’d planked too long the day before and now had the sorest of abs. “Well,” Erlang Shen said as he planted one foot on the ground and leaned on his knee. “I’m waiting.”
I found I could talk to him normally now. My grudges didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. “For what?”
He frowned. “For you to thank me. I saved your life.”
He would have to wait a very long time for that. “What is this place?” I said. My voice was dull. I was asking on autopilot.
He prodded the back of his head and looked at his hand like he’d been expecting blood. “I think it’s a different Blessed Plane entirely. If I had to guess, with her last moments Princess Iron Fan hurled us through the boundaries of existence into a reality even farther from Earth.”