Page 88 of The Wind Dancer
“You have excellent knowledge of ancient texts.”
“I haven’t always been the local mistress, but that’s not our current topic. So, you made a deal with the Empire to avenge Feng Shen?”
“Not quite, they had me in a tight grip, and I had to find a way to work with them.”
“The new doctor is one of them,” she concluded, and I could only nod. “That explains a few things... I’ll help, but what do I get in exchange?”
“As I already said, everything you find is yours, and you get full cover from the Chancellery.”
“That’s not enough.”
“How much do you want?”
“Five gold liang. And I’m only giving you this price in memory of Shen.”
“Agreed. But I have a condition.”
“Condition?”
“No exemplary executions. Work quickly and quietly. Have everything look like a takeover. Just like the good old days. My mentor told me what you are capable of and how convincing you can be.”
She bit her lip, as if tasting the thought, and then got up and walked over to me.
“You’ve become very dangerous, Feng Lao. And that makes me happy. I prefer a brandished dagger instead of one in the back. Tell the Chancellery that the deal has been accepted. But we do it our way. The streets need to see who’s the boss here.” She whispered the last sentence in my ear.
I nodded.
“So be it. But you’ll need to strike at the same time as us.”
“Don’t worry, I was in charge of skirmishes before you were even a thought. We have a deal shadow.”
“We have a deal, mistress.”
I bowed low to show my respect. This woman had just changed the balance of power, and now Fouche was mine.
Interlude
The sunset was painting the horizon red in messy strokes, as if the sky itself was full of fear and anticipation. The stones of the Heavenly platform, polished by time, held the silence of antiquity within. Here, at the highest point of Cloud City, something different was beginning. Something that had no name in the language of mortals.
Fouche stood in the very center of a ritual circle carved into the stone. Its otherworldly symbols could neither be read nor memorized. The air was trembling. Above the altar, where the gray stone, blood, and breath of worlds merged, the Distortion accumulated energy. It was whispering. It was breathing. It was thirsty.
“...and the flesh will become the vessel, and the will the key...”
Fouche muttered the mantra of the Mother of Change, carving the words into his consciousness as if etching them into bone. His voice was quiet, yet every word within the ritual circle rang out like a bell. With each repetition, his will became sharper. Cleaner. Closer to the divine.
Creatures slithered behind him.
They were once human, cultists. The feeble-minded fanatics who believed that shedding blood would bring blessings. They were fools. They didn’t understand. True change wasn’t brought on by killing, but by transformation.
Now their bodies were different. Chains were embedded in their skin, coiled into snake-like muscles in place of bone. Their rotting flesh smoked, reacting to the air as if it were poison. Their eyes had long since boiled away, leaving empty sockets that poured blackness like waterfalls. Their minds were gone. All that remained was blind, reverent devotion.
The scorching pain of the Distortion’s essence coursed through their veins. The cursed warriors of the broken chains were its shield, its blades. Its victims.
Behind them stood a statue of a goddess made of mother-of-pearl, gold, blood, and bones. She breathed. And she changed. A woman with a waxy face and a thousand pupils, then a baby crowned with tentacles. A twisted beast whose paws were human hands, its back splitting into a massive maw. The Mother of Change had no form. Her essence was change. Distortion. True evolution.
Today was the day.
Today, he would become what he should have been since birth.
