Chapter 2

The sun’s eye opened and the Unconquered, the Chosen, the Breaker of Chains, the One Who Casts Down Thrones, the End and the Beginning, remained sprawled on his back, snoring loudly while his friend, June, stood up and watched him. She put her hands on her hips and thought to herself about everything she had read of the previous Cycles. According to all the legends, the last nine Unconquered had each been stricken with what the record tellers referred to as ‘the fire of a second breath’ or ‘fire fever.’

A human, granted the powers of a primordial titan and the mandate of heaven, could be forgiven for becoming rather excited about the prospect. The legends of the Second Unconquered said that she had drunk two rivers dry, arm wrestled the Mountain of Horses in a three day match, and finally, fucked silly half the women of the Summer Vale and the Flying Island. Similar tales of excess surrounded the other Unconquered – even Good King Bahul’s first banquet had stripped a forest bare as he had hunted, cooked, and ate until he had filled his belly.

June nodded. Any second now, Ember would spring up and she would have to at least try and restrain him. A little.

Ember kept snoring.

The sun continued to hang overhead, glaring down at them, while Pearl and Ruby rose over the horizon, gleaming and pure. The light was broken slightly by the waving of the trees, and by the sharp line of the Temple of the Third Unconquered.

June waited another two minutes before, at last, walking off, finding a stick, and prodding Ember in the cheek with it. He sprang to his feet, his whole body wreathed in a golden flame as he snapped his head around, punching wildly at the air. June pursed her lips as she stepped away from blows that could have shattered sunsteel, the wind of the blows disturbing a single strand of her bangs. She twitched her tail once as Ember stopped his wild punching, blinking as he saw her.

“Oh. Hey June,” he said, careless of the roiling flames of his anima. His hand cupped the back of his neck as he grinned at her. “Just. Stretching my, uh, my punch muscles.”

“You’re still naked, you know?” June asked, turning away from him to begin to strike the camp. Ember screamed – and by the time she had rolled up her bedroll and slung it over her shoulders, he had managed to get dressed once more, his hair ruffled and his eyes wild. He leaned against the massive stone toe of the Temple and tried to look as casual as he could.

“So, what’s the plan now, June?” he asked.

“Well,” June said, turning away from him as she grabbed the solar dagger she had liberated from Rataka village’s storehouse. “We need to go from here...” She pointed at the ground. “To...” Her arm swung upwards, taking in the massive stone foot, the knee, the muscular stone thigh, the carved belly, the swell of stone breasts, the stone shoulder, and, at last, the snarling face of the Third Unconquered, carved in epic scale at the top of the immense temple. “There!”

Ember rubbed his chin. “Do you have a flying potion?” he asked.

“Nope,” June said, picking up the coiled rope of her grappling hook. She began to twirl it.

“Climbing potion?” Ember asked, still craning his head back. “Spider arm potion? Potion of teleportation? Potion of-”

The grappling hook crunched into stone above them, the rope jerking taut as June tugged on it. She planted her feet against the statue’s shin, then began to climb upwards, grunting with every hand over hand motion. “Nope,” she said.

“We’re going to climb a statue that’s...” Ember chewed his lip. “One thousand one hundred and eleven yards high? With rope?”

June paused in her climbing – she had already ascended ten feet in the time it took Ember to do the mental math. And considering how fast his math was, she was really fast. She craned her head back, her hair dangling behind her, like a second tail. “You know how tall the statue is?”

“It’s obvious, June,” he said, shaking his head.

“Right, your weird math powers,” June muttered. “I wonder if being Unconquered made you any better at it...” She shook her head. “Come on, get to climbing, sun-boy.”

“But I don’t have a grappling hook!” Ember called up after her as June got herself to the top of the massive shin in ludicrous time. “Or ropes. Or anything. I can barely climb trees, June!”

“You’re the Unconquered!” June’s voice sounded distant. “Figure it out.”

She went back to climbing and Ember frowned. He rubbed his palms together, frowning as he did so. He was the Unconquered. He had the power of the Sun behind him and the mandate of Heaven. He could do this. He jogged on the spot, rubbed his palms together, then stepped backwards. He stretched out his legs, stretched out his arms. He twisted himself so his back popped, then groaned and leaned forward to touch his toes. He rubbed his palms together a third time, clapped his hands, then breathed in a slow, slow sigh. He let it out, hissing between his teeth.

June, who had reached the bent knee of the Third Unconquered, leaned over the side. She looked shockingly small. “Is this laziness or cowardice?”

“Both!” Ember said, putting his hands to his face. “That statue is unreasonably high!”

“The Third Unconquered liked big things,” June called down. “Big castles. Big battles. Big drinks. Big...” She paused. “Well, you know.”

Ember glanced down at his newly endowed bulge.

“No, not that,” June called down.

“What, she also liked to...” Ember tried to remember how June had put it. “Worship at ... the ... she liked ladies?”

“Yeah,” June said.

“Does every lady like other ladies or am I just lucky?” Ember murmured to himself.

“You’ve only met one sapphic, Ember,” June sounded tired, even from this distance. Ember snapped his head up – wondering how she had heard him. “Being under her statue doesn’t count as meeting the Third Unconquered.”

“Well, I am her latest incarnation...” Ember paused. “Am I going to remember the past lives of the previous Unconquered?”

There was a long pause – and then the grappling hook sailed up to the belly button of the statue, hooking home in a way that made him wince. Ember scowled to himself. Okay. June wasn’t going to answer his questions until he got to the top of the statue. All he had to do was just trust in the power of the Unconquered. He could do this. He rubbed his palms together – and then sprinted towards the shin. Time seemed to slow. His reflexes honed as the world shone brightly, as if the whole statue had been lit up by the luster of first love. He saw, clearly, where the rocky smoothness had tiny hand holds – small enough that it would take the full force of his arm, transmitted through the very tips of his fingers, to grip hold.

Ember leaped.

And he sailed upwards – landing on the knee with a gasp. His arms flailed and he looked back down at the distance he had cleared.

June, who was only a few yards above him now, glared over her shoulder at him.

Ember grinned fiercely. He sprang upwards – and snatched June as he flew past her. His feet slapped against stone as June clung to him, her tail wrapping around his waist, her claws digging into him with terror. But Ember could only focus on the running: His feet slapped against the stone as he used his momentum to run a curving, upwards arc. He reached out with the arm that was not holding June, grabbing the tiniest crack, then heaving himself upwards. He sailed to the out-thrust arm of the temple and landed in the crook of the elbow joint.

“Fhew!” Ember wiped his arm across his forehead – and felt the heavy gemstone that was set there, thrusting out from the space right above his nose. He yelped and leaped backwards in alarm. This, as he was standing in the crook of a statue’s elbow almost seven hundred yards off the ground, with nothing but a sheer drop between him and a remarkably hard forest floor, proved to be a bad idea. Ember scrabbled at the open air while June, who had detached herself from his grip with a quick twist of her hips, remained standing. After a heart stopping moment, Ember’s fingers caught just barely onto a fissure in the stone that was nearly invisible. He clung by his fingernails, his arms roiling with golden flames as his muscles knotted and his shoulders clamped.

“June!” He yelped.

“Yeah, I’m getting to it, hold your horses,” June said, looping her grappling hook down and securing it to the stone. Only once she was rooted did she reach down and grab onto Ember’s wrists. She hauled upwards and Ember found himself planted, face first, against the stone forearm of the statue, his cheek mashing close, his arms wrapped around as much of the stone as he could, clinging tightly, his eyes closed. June, sighing loudly, released his back and said: “Just for future references, if you’re going to jump, go up. Not back.”

“Right!” Ember screwed his eyes shut. “Why do I have a gem stuck in my forehead?”

June shook her head. “Sometimes, I forget how provincial you are.”

“Thanks?” Ember pushed himself away from the arm and turned, leaning backwards against the stone. The wind brushed at his shift and he felt his hair tugging in the breeze. Now that he was aware of the gemstone, he couldn’t stop feeling the faint pressure of it against his skin. Except it wasn’t stuck to his skin like a pebble stuck to him with pressure and sweat. It was like it had grown out of him – rooted solid as his teeth.

“It’s not a compliment,” June said, then reached up to her forehead. She flicked her finger against her pale forehead, smudging ink that he hadn’t even seen. A shimmer came and went, like the heat haze off a dark roof during the height of summer. Once it was gone, a small opal was set on her forehead, in the same place, the color of inky blackness. “This is a soulgem. All Unconquered have them, as do their Lunar Wives. However, they’re so useful that the Regency mass produced them and affixed them to all citizens.”

“Oh.” Ember reached up, then tapped at his gemstone. “What does it do?” He asked, his finger feeling out the edges gently. He noticed, firstly, that his gemstone was more angular than the curved, smoothed opal of June’s. This one had segments. Vertices. He was able, fairly quickly, to chart out the dimensions: It was a diamond in shape, though he had no idea what the hue was. He frowned as he lowered his hand, looking at the golden flames that still flicked along his fingers. “Also, why am I constantly bursting into flames?”

June pinched the bridge of her nose. “The purposes of a soulgem are many – there’s a reason they’re mandatory. We can deal with them later. You’re not on fire. That’s excess mana being discharged through your anima – a human does not channel the amount of power a primordial being like the Sun can put out at full efficiency. To prevent the ludicrous amounts of magical power coursing through your every chakra and dragon line from cooking you alive, it is shunted harmlessly into your anima. Got it?”

“Right, got it,” Ember said. “What’s an anima?”

“Uuuugh!” June pointed at the still fairly distant seeming head of the Third Unconquered, glaring off into the middle distance. “There! Jump! Now!”

Ember scowled, then slung June effortlessly over his shoulder. He knelt down and leaped as hard as he could. The stone under his feet cracked and he sailed upwards. Vast nothingness yawned beneath him as his legs wheeled at the air. Then he landed on the carved head of the Third Unconquered, skidding a few feet to his stop. Endless blue stretched outwards in every direction: The sky, dotted with a few puffy white clouds. Below it, the endless forest. He could see, very distantly, the tall swords that marked Rataka village.

June brushed herself off as she stepped away from Ember. “An anima is the invisible field of ... it...” She scowled. “You know how houses have blueprints that lay out their design, so we know what they look like before we build them?”

“No,” Ember said.

“They’re like that,” June said, waving her hand as she walked towards the center of the huge head. Ember frowned, then started to walk forward after her. They came to the very center of the Third Unconquered’s head, where a detail was carved that didn’t look as if it was entirely accurate to that ancient heroine. Unless she had had a pillar, maybe three feet tall, thrusting out of the center of her scalp, with a depression in the center of it. Of course, considering the size of the statue, the pillar would have been only the size of a pimple. But then it’d also be hidden by the hair, not growing out of it ... June drew the sunsteel dagger that she had snapped from Rataka’s prize spear.

“Lets see if this works,” she said.

Ember grinned and rubbed his palms together. “It’s like a key!”

“Yes, that is the idea,” June said, then slid the knife into the socket on the pillar. She twisted it to the right and the entire statue began to shudder. The pillar glowed with the same golden light that Ember did when he flared up. But rather than being wild and chaotic flames, the light solidified into a disk, about three feet wide. The disk was partitioned into three rings, each one nested one inside the other. On each ring was a set of symbols and colors.

“Uuuuuuugh!” June scowled. “Of course the paranoid bitch locked it. Nevermind it’s at the top of a one thousand yard high statue in the middle of nowhere, with a key that only one in a million people might actually have. Still gotta fucking lock the Temple.” Her tail lashed viciously, nearly cracking Ember in the head. Ember laughed as he stepped away from the twitching tail, lifting up his hands.

“Listen, June, there’s only ... twenty symbols on the outer ring, ten symbols on the middle, and eight on the three,” he said, nodding. “Assuming that this-” he pointed at a large white line that thrust out from the center of the three, like a spoke. “-indicates what is selected, then that means that we only need three of the symbols. That means that there are only eight thousand four hundred and thirty six permutations!”

June frowned at him. “Only?”

“I ... I ... thought ... the number would be smaller when I started that sentence,” Ember admitted.

June sighed. “All right ... let me think.”

“I can help-”

June lifted her hand, in the age old gesture that June used to mean ‘let me think, be silent.’ Ember opened his mouth – but she waved her hand dismissively. The message was clear: Let the smart one think. Ember started to walk away, crossing his arms over his chest. He sighed, slightly as he looked out at the vast forests – trying to play through the images in his head. Well, the twenty symbols ... he had recognized at least one. It was the symbol for good. And there had been its mirror inverse. The symbol for evil. Those were the symbols used to indicate gods, under the twenty purviews that sages had devised to describe each god and their position in the world. And he was pretty sure that the ten symbols had been the moons – two per moon, indicating their ascending and descending. Moons slept only when they were out of sight, as they wished to keep their naked bodies invisible from their own children.

And those four symbols had been clear: An open eye, a half shut eye, a closed eye, and an eye with a diamond cover in the center. The Sun had four ways of being. Full zenith, shutting, closed, or eclipsed by one of the moons paying him a ... visit.

Ember grinned. “If you know what I mean.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Heh. They’re doin it.”

He rubbed his chin. “Well, the Third Unconquered was a craftswoman. She made artifacts. So, the gods of crafting. She was bright and blazing, like the sun at his full glory. And ... she loved fucking hot ladies and Ruby is the hot moon!” He turned and sprinted towards the pillar, beaming. June was still looking down at the hologram. “I’ve got it, June! It’s Crafts, Ruby Ascending and the Full Sun!” He pointed at the symbols in question.

June frowned at him. “Do you really think that the Third Unconquered would password lock her temple with the most obvious password in the universe.” She rubbed her chin slightly, her brow furrowing. Her tail had slowed in its lashing. “But you are her latest incarnation...”

“I could meditate and remember my past lives,” Ember said, slapping his palms together, trying to assume the pose he had seen a traveling mendicant take: Palms together, fingers clasped, one leg lifted up to press the flat of his foot against his other knee, said leg having the foot pointed, so that he balanced on a single large toe. This had been shortly before some of the more unruly kids had thrown mud at him. June gently reached out, then flicked his forehead. Ember yelped, cartwheeled his arms, and collapsed onto his rump.

“I rest my case,” June said. “Now, if we had access to the Third Unconquered’s writing...” She slung her backpack off her shoulder, flipping it open. “I do have some third hand documents-”

“Well, gee!” Ember snapped. “I’ll just pull that out of my ass.”

A sudden heat and light blazed from his forehead and a thin scroll of velum shot from his forehead. Ember’s hand reacted faster than his conscious mind. He grabbed it from the air and unfurled it. His eyes widened. “Aha!” he said.

“What is it?” June asked.

“I cannot read this,” Ember said, rolling the scroll shut with a rasp and clack.

June snatched it from his hands and began to read it with a focused intensity.

“Also, what the fuck?” Ember sprang to his feet. “A scroll just came flying out of my head!”

“Soulgems can store items and possessions,” June said, her voice growing clipped and distracted as her eyes swept up and down the scroll, reading the long columns of letters. “Via shunting it into your Otherspace using a metamagical construction, shaped and controlled by imagination inputs and shinamatnic fluctuations, mostly modulated by mana expenditure.”

Ember nodded, his hands on his hips.

“Okay, I have some questions...” He said.

June snapped the scroll shut, her lips twisting into a scowl. She glared daggers at him.

“What?” Ember asked. “Listen. I can’t help that I was raised in Rataka village. We don’t have soulgems or ... or ... whatever in the brass we’re going to run into. For all I know, every day is going to get me a whole new load of bizarre weirdness dumped onto my head. All I can say is that I will try and fucking follow it if ... if...”

June grabbed onto the solid light of the disks, swinging the symbol of the Crafter Gods up to the white spoke. Then she slipped Ascending Ruby home. Then the large zenith sun symbol. The whole ring system glowed once, folded shut like a fan, and then the Temple began to shudder and quake – stone heaving and moving as the head of the Third Unconquered began to open up like a puzzle box, revealing a flight of marble stairs leading into glorious, golden light.

“ ... I was right,” Ember whispered.

“Not. One. Word.” June’s jaw was tight.

Ember strutted all the way down the stairs.

The interior of the Temple was as enigmatic as the exterior was obvious. The first chamber they entered was made of ornately carved marble. Unpainted scenes from what looked like ancient legend covered every wall. The first that he saw, immediately to the left of the entrance, was of the Third Unconquered, her body wreathed in artfully designed flames. She held aloft a hammer, her palm held out before a truly hideous array of monsters. The message was clear: The Unconquered stands against villainy!

The next few were a smooth, flowing cavalcade of amazing achievements. Ember walked, slowly, past each one, taking in the marble details. He saw the Third Unconquered, standing above a twisting snake with hundreds of heads. She held a sword in one hand and carved droplets of blood flew into the air, arcing upwards, then landing – and more snakes grew from where they landed. He saw the Third Unconquered standing on what looked like a sailing ship, cutting through the waves. But the sails looked rather ... odd. He wasn’t sure how or why, but they did.

He saw the Third Unconquered...

Wow.

“Uh...” Ember flushed as he looked at the image of the Unconquered, her hands midway through tearing off her tunic, standing in the center of what looked to be almost a hundred incredibly naked, fox tailed, fox eared women. Some had large breasts. Some had small. Some looked older and more motherly. Some looked as if they had only just reached eighteen. All of them looked upon the Unconquered with love and devotion, but one of them, sitting off to the side, had a gemstone set on her forehead and looked haughty. The next carving showed, in graphic detail, the Third Unconquered kissing the fox woman with the gemstone in her forehead, thrusting into her with, well, it looked like June’s pleasurer, but affixed to a set of straps around her thighs and hips.

“And I do mean graphic,” Ember whispered, leaning in close to look at the artful detailing of the fox girl’s stone cunt. He turned away, his cheeks flushing as he realized that oggling another girl’s carved harem of gorgeous fox girls might have been rude. Or at least pissed June off. But then he realized that this was his previous incarnation. In a past life, eight Cycles before, this had been ... him. Or at least, a part of him. Right? He rubbed his chin, frowning. Then he pressed his palms together, focusing. “Meditate, meditate, meditate, come on, meditate!”

A soft giggle echoed in the air.

“I wasn’t trying to remember my past life lesbian foxgirl orgy!” Ember yelped.

June, who looked as unsmiling as ever, glanced back over her shoulder at him. She was standing before a statue carved into the wall, which had four outstretched arms, each one containing a small blue gemstone in it. Each gemstone projected a different glowing string of letters, which flowed past like water out of the eyes of a goddess. “What?” she asked.

“Nothing!” Ember said. “I didn’t say anything.”

June nodded, her tail stilling as she looked back at her screens.

A long, awkward silence filled the air. June only moved to reach out and touch the occasional letter, which glowed, floated away from the scrolling lists, and hovered about her head like a friendly hive of butterflies.

“Kitsune, by the way,” June said. “They weren’t foxgirls. They were kitsune.” She smirked over her shoulder at him. “The orgy, they say, lasted sixty nine days.”

“Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuh-” Ember felt his entire face going red. Redder.

Then...

Something hit him.

“June doesn’t giggle,” he whispered. “She smirks, looks wry, scowls, shakes her head, sniffs, sighs, scoffs, but she doesn’t really giggle.”

“What are you talking about?” June asked, touching another glowing letter. It floated away from the rest, joining them in the haze around her head – which all strobed gold, then silver, then slapped into the wall beside the statue. Stone opened with a quiet hiss, revealing another corridor beyond.

“I heard a giggle!” Ember said.

“You might have just been giggling to yourself thinking about the kitsune harem orgy,” June said, her voice dry.

“I don’t giggle like a girl!” Ember said, thrusting his thumb against his chest.

June arched an eyebrow, slowly.

“It wasn’t me!” Ember shouted.

“Right. Well, this corridor will lead to the security center, so we can check on the Starshrike.” June stepped through the door. “While there, I’ll scan for any giggles.”

“The what what?” Ember asked, following hurriedly after her.

“It’s a ship,” June said.

“Uh, June. We’re in the middle of a forest. What the fuck good is a ship going to do for us?” Ember asked, glancing back over his shoulder. He didn’t see anyone following them. The door shut behind them with a soft rasp – leaving them alone in the corridor, which was decorated with yet more of the Third Unconquered’s exploits. There she was, seated upon a throne, listening to kneeling dignitaries. There, she was chained up with a wicked smirk, watching as a beast advanced towards her. There she was, making love to a woman in a wedding gown, while a shocked man stood nearby. Ember tore his eyes from that, looking after June. “I mean, we’re not on an ocean. Ships need oceans. Right?”

June ... smirked.

The security chamber – whatever security meant – was closed and cramped. It had a curved, black pane of obsidian set in the far wall, a sweeping desk that reminded Ember of all the world of the desk that the apothecary used to do his figures and his sums. But rather than being bedecked with papers and scrolls and styluses and slates, it had more of those glowing gemstones. A pair of stools thrust from the ground before the consoles. One of them contained a skeleton. Skull hung back over the rear of the stool, barely attached by gristle and cartilage to the spine, and the sightless eye sockets gaped at Ember. A small green gemstone was set in their forehead – but it lacked the luster and shine of June’s. Ember yelped.

“W-Who was that?” He whispered.

“One of the Third Unconquered’s servants,” June said, casually shoving the pile of bones off the stool with a clattering crash. Dust exploded into the air.

“June!” Ember squalled, then coughed in horror. “His ghost! You- we have to bury him properly, right? Or ... he’ll ... come back and haunt this place?” He started to look around wildly – if the man was mad about being left behind, he might have still been there...

“The Second Unconquered beat up the gods of death and reincarnation and forced them, in the submission contracts, to guarantee that all of their servants, across all incarnations, would be reincarnated into beautiful bodies, with pleasant lives and wealthy futures. But only if they died, loyally, in their service.” June sat down on the stool, then started to press down the gemstones. Each time she did, the gemstone flared. “This guy wanted that guarantee. So he sat here until he starved. Or dehydrated. Which would have been faster, actually.”

“That’s horrible!” Ember said. “I ... he just sat here and died?”

“Yeah, so he could be reincarnated into a better life,” June said, sounding a tiny bit exasperated. “If the chance comes, I’m throwing myself between you and a knife.”

Ember grabbed onto her arm and swung her around. “No!” He said, his voice fierce. His eyes flared and he spoke at lightning speed, practically shouting. “No! I won’t ever let anyone hurt you, June. You’re my best friend and have been since ... since forever! You are going to die of old age in bed, surrounded by your fifty wives, and then, and only then, will you get to reincarnate into a better life, but the gods of the underworld are going to throw up their hands in frustration, because there will be no way that it’ll ever be better.”

He panted.

June blinked at him. For just a moment, Ember swore he saw her eyes glisten. Then she jerked her arm out of his grip, turning back to the console. “You dummy,” she muttered. But her tail was twisting in a way that Ember had only seen once before – when she had gotten a kiss from Korrine. Ember grinned. Then he looked at the pile of bones. The soulgem had popped free and was rolling slowly along the ground, coming to a rest against the far wall. He picked it up, then sighed.

“What about everyone else?” he asked. “It ... I mean, shouldn’t everyone get a happy reincarnation?”

June snorted. “What kind of incentive would that be to serve you loyally?” she asked, her voice dry – and holding a very faint edge of bitterness.

Ember frowned at the gemstone, then slipped it into his pocket. “Maybe it’s time we renegotiate some contracts...” June shrugged – not responding. Instead, she pushed a trio of gems along thin tracks. Once each reached the top of their track, the obsidian pane turned transparent. And all worries about reincarnations and futures and even where they were going to find food faded from Ember’s mind as he slowly started to walk forward, to stand near the window and looked through it at the Starshrike – for that was the only thing that it could have been. The only name it could have born.

He could see why June called it a ship. It had the curved, cutting prow of one of the faster ships in Rataka. But rather than paddles or even sails, it had a series of fluted wings, extending outwards like a raptor’s. The articulates were all done in bronze and metal, and they connected to a silvery hull that looked more polished than any suit of armor that he had ever seen. He could see that the prow had a pair of narrow tubes thrust from the front, while the belly (which would be underwater) had a pair of glass beads the size of houses stuck to them. Tubes thrust from those, in the same parallel pattern. The rear of the ship rose upwards, into a kind of smoothed, castle. He could see windows set into the front and the sides, making it look more like a manor house than a part of a ship.

“Behold the Starshrike...” June whispered, her voice as awed as Ember had ever heard it. “The finest weapon crafted by the Third Unconquered. She took ten years and nearly half the treasury of the Kingdom, but she built the damn thing ... just in time to be assassinated. But still!” She started to push more gemstones down. “It has been waiting here for someone to claim it ever since.”