The tower's head, the orange-antlered house, becomes distant as we plummet. Entangled with her, legs locked around her waist, I raise my lightning-swathed fists and rain them down. My sparking knuckles crunch into her face, her chest. She takes the blows—wincing and coughing bloody phlegm.
The ground nears.
She finally acts, framing me off of her with one hand and knocking the hilt of her Nodachi against my head.
Stars flash in my brain. My legs go wobbly. The impact deafens sound. I disentangle, falling away from her.
Then, I place a hand on my chest and, with a pulse of self-inflicted lightning, my body resets. The angel dust runs thinner. My clock to kill her ticks away.
Just before hitting the ground, I lasso a thick bolt of lightning and shoot it up at the farthest gray cloud. It sticks. Just as a single drop of water in the sea issues forth a rippling wave, upon impact, the lightning sends shivering sparks through the wisps of cloud, making it contract and harden. It becomes the anchor of my arc.
With that, I swing forth, the bolt going taut, heels grazing the ground, body flying parabolically into the air. I let go and soar up. My eyes hunt Hui Long.
Of course, she saves herself too. Just before impact with the bare rockface, she extends her hand outward and from it, the Dragon of Wind emerges, wispy and wild. It swirls around her, whiskers long, eyes flitting, its form that of the wind taking a serpentine bodice in the sky. It has no wings like the dragons of the West, neither does it have a bulky body—rather it is long and fierce. And she rides it now, its tail hypnotically swaying through the air, circling me.
The wind howls.
A storm approaches, hailing an army of clouds and the thrum of distant thunder.
I lasso one of those encroaching clouds, swinging towards her. She meets me in the air, sword held outwards, arms shaking.
"We don't have to fight!" she yells. But surely, she must know this is futile. I coil lightning into a ball and lob it towards her as I pass by. She makes the mistake of trying to slice through it, only to cleave it in two. Both balls expand and explode. The lightning envelops her and the wind dragon; the two of them scream something fierce.
The wind dragon dissipates. I don't take this for much: it is well known the wind dragon is the weakest of the Eastern dragon spirits, meant for speed and travel.
She plummets once more, spinning midair. I pursue, diving for her, punching three bolts her way.
This time, she flattens her body in the air and from each of her limbs comes forth a dragon. The Dragon of Flame from her right arm, the Dragon of Ice from her sword arm. Wood from her right leg, Darkness from her left. They coalesce now, two of them interweaving: the serpentine forms of fire and ice coil around her sword, molding themselves to the shape of the blade, enhancing its power.
The wood dragon takes the bolts of lightning I issued in stride, protecting Hui Long before it completes its formation below her, saving her from a mighty fall. The dark dragon of smoke magicks becomes one with the wood dragon, forming its armor. And thus Hui Long raises a sword of ice and flame, riding a dragon of wood seeped in the darkness of ages.
She looks to me with some measured determination now. Even still, I see her constitution shake. She does not want this.
But I crave it.
"Finally," I mutter as I swing to another cloud. I summon that sword of lightning once more and a trickle of rain patters upon us—the first weepings of the storm.
And we battle.
I sling lightning of all forms, all shapes. She circles and wades, blocks and evades, sometimes hazarding a strike only for me to swing away. It is a game of tag. I run. She chases. Long's blade reeks of energy. When I conjure up a particularly mighty bolt and send it shimmering her way, she blocks with her sword, yelling as fire and ice explode against the lightning, creating a cloud of dust and sending sprinkles of ash and cold blue ice shards into the air. She emerges, her wooden dragon snapping after my form.
It nearly snatches my leg before I swing to another cloud, slashing it away with my blade. The lightning rakes against the darkness and wood, yet the dragon flies on, unfazed. We clash midair a few times when we get too close. Our impacts send shivers through the storm. I notice, from the corner of my eye, cloud spirits gazing down upon our battle. It must be quite the spectacle for them.
I am running out of time and energy. The angel dust is nearly gone. Something needs to change—the paradigm must shift.
As much as I hate to admit it, she still goes easy on me. She has not deigned to summon her other four dragons for instance. Yet, that works to my advantage.
So, I enact my ultimate strategy: swinging to the highest cloud, I arc up, above the mortal plane, above the gray sea of clouds, into the sky of color and light and purest freedom. The sun shines with golden splendor, illuminating the cream-colored topside of the clouds as if they are the landfall of heaven. She emerges from the storm, following me into that higher plane.
There are no clouds above me. No chances to dodge nor swing away.
Yet, I have one advantage now: I can build the lightning strike as I fall. So I aim my body down, blanketing my whole form in sparkling crimson. Flame etches on the outskirts of my body, dancing with the lightning as I break through the world. Momentum. Lightning. All of it matters now—I'll give every single piece of myself to end her.
It's been ten years, sure. But some traits are ingrained so deeply in our natures that they can never really change. So, I know her well enough to understand she won't dodge.
It's simply not in Hui Long's nature.
My sword of lightning is raised.
She rides up, the dragon diligently meeting me head-on. She raises the Scaled Nodachi.
I slash down.
She cuts up.
Surprisingly, once again, she hesitates. I know she can hit faster, but her sword pauses before slicing into me.
Mine doesn't.
My sword passes through her shoulder, leaving a deep black-scorched scar and she screams out in pain, falling from the dragon. I crash into the dual dragons, my lighting-imbued body breaking through the dark dragon's armor and tearing a hole in the body of the wood dragon. I shoot, quite like a bolt of lightning myself, through the spirits and crash into Hui Long once more. The impacts don't register—all is speed. All is momentum.
All is rage.
We break through the plane of sun and splendor, back into the weeping storm, my speed increasing.
From being drenched in orange light to falling with the rain—we must look like ants from afar, falling in the midst of a raging storm, lighting illuminating our wet backs, the sloping rock face edging closer and closer.
I bury my knee into her stomach.
Our impact against the ground is like that of a meteor strike. A crater forms around us, stones and lightning shards exploding outward and upward. She lands first, her back breaking into the ground, my kneecap stabbing into her belly.
The dust swirls. Then settles.
I kneel panting atop Hui Long, lightning slowly dissipating. My sword still remains though, one last crackling whisper of energy.
She whimpers beneath. I should be shocked, yet it makes sense that she still lives, even after such an impact. Because of course she does. Because she's a hero.
Her face is marred by a scar from our battle, a red line of blood streaking down her pale cheek, now getting washed away by the rain. Hui's gray eyes stare up at me. She coughs.
"Your mistake," I begin, "was not going all out. You shouldn't have underestimated me." She shouldn't have tried not to fight. It was foolish. Had she used the Dragon of Light, she might have even struck before me in our last clash.
Her sword lies scattered across the crater's edge. She looks at it for a moment before focusing her attention on me.
My time is ticking. I have seconds left to end this if I want to do it using the angel dust. The sword will dissipate otherwise.
Yet, for some reason, my body is rigid. I hesitate.
"What are you waiting for?" She coughs. Her eyes are pleading. And there I see it. The guilt. It sickens me. How dare she feel guilty? How dare she not be the villain I envisioned her for? How dare she be… the very same Hui I once knew.
She didn't even finish the swing.
The lightning sword disappears. I stare at my hand dumbly. My body is out of red lightning. I am simply a powerless slave once more.
I think for a moment about doing it with my hands. Squeezing the life out of her.
It would be so… easy.
The seconds last years.
But, in the end, I roll over and lay on my back.
She has a hacking fit of coughs. I stare blankly at the sky as the storm slowly clears and sunlight reigns once more.
I sigh. The anger is gone. Cold. I have missed that crucial window of opportunity.
"Kill me Raiten. I deserve it," she says. But surely, she must not believe that. In the time since our friendship, she has made lovers. Friends. Allies and comrades. Her own little family. They would be sad to see her go.
Her guilt is overcoming her senses.
And even though I hate her still…
I'm just too damn tired.
I shake my head. "No, Hui. Killing you would just be a foolish indulgence."
I turn towards her, staring at her battered form. Tears are streaking down her eyes. She weeps like a babe.
"Live with it," I say.
Her crying intensifies. There's a certain grief building up within me now—spurned from the image before me. I have brought a great hero low enough to weep and beg. It feels wrong. There are others who deserve this more than her—bastards who live high and mighty in the clan. The Elders. They will not get the mercy I show today.
But that is a trite, useless sentiment; a desire that I've clung to for years, knowing its impossibility.
Slowly, I take a stand, turning away, face blank, eyes fluttering from fatigue. I muster enough strength to make it back to the tower—I could not have gone far from it anyway, thanks to my curse. My dominion is limited to this accursed rockface, barren and cold.
So I begin to climb my old orange tower.
A voice calls from behind me, crying from afar: "I'll fix it Raiten," she says, her voice cracking when saying my name. "I promise! I will fix it. I swear it."
I do not care.
Not anymore.
In fact, for the first time in a long while, I feel nothing. It is a sickening blankness. And, for the first time in my ten years at the tower, when I enter my now broken watchpoint, what with its snuffed-out fire and cold kimchi broth and half-burnt futon in the corner, it…
It feels like home.