Chapter Text
Rin was never one to enjoy silence, and this doesn’t change now. Instead of being stuck in her room, with nothing but her own mind to listen to, she explores the Seagrim everyday. At the boar, she watches the waves crash and dissolve into water again, following their own rhythm. She thought she wouldn’t like it, but she actually doesn’t mind being surrounded by the ocean.
She likes to notice it, the science and art behind a tide.
The Phoenix hates it, however.
“Everywhere you look,” her Tutor had said to her once, in her very first week being his apprentice, “there’s a pattern nature is forced to oblige." No wonder everybody at Tikany thought he was addicted to opium. But this wasn’t the ramblings of a madman or a stoned one, but simply a sensible look on the world only musicians could have. Being a retired Erhu player , he made a living out of being a craftsman, fixing and creating instruments everyday. His world was his workshop.
This was the philosophy she still lived by, though weaker. At every single melody she noticed in nature, the roar of violence ringed louder in her mind, attempting to drown it.
“I figured I’d found you here.” Nezha’s voice, taking her out of her trance. She turns to look at him. Even if she’d never admit out loud, her breath always betrays her when he’s around, catching every time. “My father is calling for you,” he says, “it’s time.” Her gaze flicked to the silver mask he always wore in meetings. The sky isn’t fully dark yet, and its orange, pale yellow and pink tones seem to complement his skin in a different way it does under the full moonlight. She leaves with him, following him to the meeting room. The same one she stood two weeks ago when she first arrived here with the Cike.
His father hasn’t called for a meeting since.
Instead, he’s been stuck in the war room, planning with the very few allies he has in the warlord system. Whatever plan they came up with, it seems to involve her. She knew this would happen, so this isn’t what’s worrying her. The Phoenix seems too happy all of sudden; this worries her.
After Altan’s death, they spent a couple weeks in hiding, gathering courage to find a new purpose to live by. Daji betrayed them; they tried to work for Moag but quickly realised she’d sell them for the highest buyer, and it turns out no one else was looking for a group of highly trained and slightly higher on insanity assassins to work for them. They were a group of nine people, plus the screaming gods in their heads (Ramsa and Erik were so lucky the others joked they’d kill to switch places with them all the time), completely jobless and packed in a small hut when Vaisra’s men found them and brought them to the ship.
It has been two weeks since Nezha’s father gave them a new purpose: remove Daji’s throne and avenge Altan. Well, they wanted revenge for their commander, Vaisra wanted to be president. Today is the day they find out how it will be done.
Rin doesn’t mind these long strategy meetings either, having a liking in any activity that took her to sit still and use her brain for a long period of time. She really enjoyed Strategy with Master Irjah at the academy and just didn’t accept his bid because she thought she’d find a way to understand the new tune playing in her head with Master Jiang. It was different from the thousands of melodies she heard before, and she needed to know why it resonated with her more than anything.
He tried to teach her. She tried to learn.
But memories of a stone mountain and tired, almost lifeless eyes begging her not to follow Altan show her that maybe she needed to help her master in the same way he attempted to help her.
“Then Runin kills her.”
Why is he saying this in front of everybody? Why didn’t he tell her his plans in private?
That didn’t matter. She was so happy she could combust. This is what she wanted. This is her chance to avenge Altan. Altan, who burst into flames in front of her. Altan, who sacrificed himself, raising the Mugen lab into ashes. Altan, who never had a childhood. Altan, who lost himself. “A bloodless war,” Vaisra continues, although his deep voice has now become more and more tuned out of Rin’s hearing, “with only one victim.”
She is shaking, she realises, first from excitement, now with fear. What would it be, to actually kill her? To raise her flames at her, turning flesh into ashes? She somehow knew this would be different from any other time she has killed people with her fire.
This isn’t new to Rin. Two different contexts, same question: what would it be like to allow flames to consume her, like they once had done? Rin had a method that worked even at the academy. She had a routine: observe, spot the problem, think how to fix it.
The problem was clear; Altan, who lost himself. Daji, who sold Altan. But the way to fix it was becoming even clearer to her, and it wasn’t this. Her head hurt, the same way it had before, when she made her mind and decided to go against the Phoenix wishes. Vaisra’s voice comes back into focus. “A tale of wrath and fire ended the Third Poppy War, and it’s about to end the civil one before it truly begins."
Wrong. Observe, spot the problem, fix it.
All the broken pieces were in front of her. A reckless plan that would never work. Daji, who’s still loved by the nation. She just needed to craft something useful, something that would actually work.
Everybody present shares apprehensive looks as the dragon warlord finishes his speech. He ignored them, looking at her expectantly. Rin can’t agree to this.
And she has a better idea on how to actually fix the problem.
“We shouldn’t kill her.” She stated, as all eyes turned into her direction. “We kill what she represents.”
“Daji is a symbol, no?” Rin starts to explain, ignoring the way all eyes burn into her, “She blurred the lines between reality and myth, taking advantage of the people’s imagination and crafting for herself an image of someone who’s more legend than human.” The Phoenix was still shriekering, but she was holding her tools now, molding her thoughts into the shape she wanted. “Killing her, especially alone, wouldn’t be as efficient as we hope. We should just find a way to demoralize her among the warlords on her side.” No matter how much I want to kill her, she thought, or was it the god in her head?
Rin looked at Kitay, her only hope. He was still mad at her, but even through his anger she knew he could see her reasoning. She could see his engrenagens turning while she explained her idea, and the exact moment he decided it wasn’t a bad choice, “I say we go with her plan.” He says, although he still couldn’t look in her eyes.
Vairsa seems to consider this for a moment. “Very well,” he said, after scrutinizing seconds of silence, “we’ll go with your plan.” Nezha, Jingzha and the three warlords at the table all seemed to be suppressing a sigh of relief. Rin didn’t fail to notice this, like it didn’t escape Vaisra’s attentive gaze. “But careful, Runin,” he warned her, his tone suddenly colder, “we know things don’t always go as planned.” The veiled threat didn’t escape her either, hidden behind his pretended tranquility.
A shiver went through her spine.
This isn’t the fire shaman he’s talking to right now. Just like two weeks ago, he now stands before Fang Runin, second year apprentice, who never got to finish her learning period. He’s doing the same thing, using her past, but now he mentions it in a way only her can understand.
Of course he knows what happened.
He knows. And he’ll use it. Your sorrow. Your loss. When she was younger, she was eager to earn her hammer privileges, thirteen year old Rin still not trusted to not drop it in her foot. Now, she feels like her god is hammering pregos in her head, over and over again. She can’t escape this. She needs to leave this place before something happens. A tale of wrath and fire. He has no idea. None of them knows what really happened that day, what could’ve happened if she fully lost herself to the Phoenix.
Altan, who lost himself.
She wants to break everything. It hurts her, her lungs are burning with the fire she should release at everyone in this boat and at Daji. He sees you as a tool, she hears in her head, don’t you love those so much? He’s controlling you. She runs to the exit, ignoring the confused glances and Vairas’ glare. Her head is pounding. Her chest is burning. She accepts her punishment for going against her god. You’re a thing to him. You’re not human.
She manages to run to her room, the sound of her loud steps blending with her god’s roar until she can’t hear the difference.
Rin slides through the wall facing her door, her hands on her head. This would be the time to run around this stupid boat and look for some opium. But she couldn’t. She remembers the first and only time she used Altan’s pipe, how her mind slid from herself, every single noise suddenly silenced. She had started to hallucinate with him, those fiery red eyes telling her that was all her fault. They disappeared when she used it. At first Rin was relieved, memories of the death of her commander and the weight of being the last one of her kind simply gone. But the silence became too much. She couldn’t hear it: the faint musical notes in the mind. She couldn’t see it: how the wood around her could be carved to be shaped into a erhu or a guzheng. And she never felt more terrified, facing the perspective to lose the only part of herself that was truly hers.
Rin decided to accept her fate. It’s better to hear screams than to hear nothing at all. She’s sitting there on the floor, her head between her legs, when she hears footsteps approaching her. Without looking up, she knows exactly who’s at her door.
“You can come in if you want.” She tells Nezha, still looking pointedly at her feet. She expects anything, from a lecture on how you shouldn’t flee a meeting like that to one on how you should never disrespect the dragon warlord like she did. Anything. What she doesn’t expect is this:
Nezha sits right beside her, on her left, his legs crossed like a child. He looks at her, but when her gaze meets his, it’s not reprehension or worse, pity, that she sees.
Nezha just looks at her, studying her face carefully.
He’s scared of me, she afraidly realises. He thinks I’m going mad, just like every other shaman.
“What’s wrong?” He asks, startling her.
What’s wrong? Everything. She’s in a boat, surrounded by people who think she’s inhuman. She’s not competent enough to command her division. They want her to be the face of another war. Kitay’s mad at her. Altan is dead. “Kitay’s still mad at me,” is what she settles with.
“He’ll come around,” Nezha replies, not commenting on how there’s definitely more than that. He doesn’t let the silence stretch much, though. “I get why he’s mad. He’s being thrown around in a war he didn’t want to be a part of.” Rin scoffs, flinching slightly with the pain of that. “He didn’t even want to be a part of the first one.” She remembers that. He wanted to be a scholar at Yuelu.
“It’s so unfair,” she murmurs, “no one should need to be a soldier if you don't want to.”
Nezha shifts around her, positioning his elbows on his legs and supporting his head on his fists.“Did you want that?”
No, is the first answer that comes to mind. But she hesitates. She loved her life at Tikany, the workshop a welcome escape from the terrors at the Fang’s household. But that is no longer. And she was good at that, no? Being a soldier. Being a vessel of the gods.
“I used to have another life,” she starts, and she sees Nezha slowly nodding, they both know what she’s talking about, “but that is gone. And I’m really good at this.”
She’s a good soldier. An excellent one, even.
But she was the best of her town, losing only to her own Tutor. “I’ll never be what I used to be.” She adds an afterthought. Nezha turns to fully look at her now, his gaze piercing into her skin. “Do you miss it?” He asks quietly. “Everyday,” she confesses, because she doesn’t want to lie to him. He nods again.
Silence settles in again, but not the one to make her uncomfortable. Nezha’s silence may just be the only one she can enjoy.