Regan blew through the Rake like a gale, scarring the land, triggering avalanches. Valleys and mountains disappeared, and her passing left an unnatural line gouged into the earth. She ignored the damage and flew on. Inside the cockpit, light bloomed around her, white and green mixing with amber, some from the mah-kai’s controls, the rest from the nimbus surrounding her body. Both seeped into the armor, adding and magnifying its ambient power.
She thought back to the times she noticed certain oddities – an aura around her hands, a whisper of energy coursing through her. The changes came when she was in danger, or when instinct took command of her body. While she could argue she’d been under duress each time, the Nan-jii’s words – Takeshi Akiko’s words – proved it was more than that. The change was real; her power was real. She could touch it, wield it even. Higo called to her through rock and tree, mountain, and forest. Countless souls blazed across the planet’s surface.
Two burned brighter than the rest. One was behind her, the other ahead. Yohshin’s consciousness snapped open while its body remained docked. Regan let it go and turned her attention to Zuishin.
Pain and confusion tortured its spirit. It lashed out like a cornered and injured animal, first blasting Tsurmak to pieces, then hurling sand against Haven’s towering walls.
It shouldn’t be able to do that. It can’t command inorganic material. The thought startled Regan. How did she know? The same way she knew Yohshin was the opposite. She shook her head, chuckling lightly. Information without experience. That was new. A soldier relied on training to stay alive, and she’d trained harder than most. Her instincts had changed, and she didn’t know how or why or what she was supposed to do. Fight a mah-zhin? How? She’d never win with Seraph, not even on her best day. She sighed, wishing Takeshi had told her how to use her power. She was a warrior armed with a missile launcher and no activation key.
Had she ever sent a recruit into a fight unprepared? Not that she remembered. That only happened in training, when she wanted the junior officers to make mistakes and learn from them. Suddenly, she understood. Instead of telling her how to wake her power, Takeshi let her do it on her own.
She sent her thoughts back into the Yadokai. Tsurmak was still dark, the damage greater than she imagined. Toppled spires lay across the city, unrecognizable structures slid into newly opened fissures, and green fuzz appeared on every surface. Regan concentrated, and the view zoomed closer. From here, the sand looked more like fine golden powder. The damage she attributed to wind-thrown grit came instead from inside the buildings’ stone facings. Dark lines suffused them. They grew and twisted, splitting both the buildings and their foundations. Delicate blossoms of varying shapes and colors appeared along the tendrils. They darkened and lengthened as she watched, filling out into thick green leaves and multi-hued vegetation.
Not sand, Regan realized. Pollen. Her inner gaze shifted to Tsurmak’s ruined base. There, great yellow clouds vented from the fallen tower. They spread into the Yadokai, carrying seeds and spores into the desert. Before long, seedlings painted the soil, while water rushed up from below to nourish them.
Water? Here? Apart from the Yadokai’s rain forests, this part of Higo had always been desert. A thought sent her mind into the planet, past Tsurmak’s foundation, and into a newly formed tunnel. The trail continued through soil and rock and into a vast cavern where it plunged into a subterranean sea. From there, it resurfaced in a far cavern before disappearing into a high ceiling.
Regan hit the Rake’s East-West Passage – a wide but winding valley through the towering mountains – and accelerated. Haven’s transports followed the route on their way to the capital while travelers from Sahqui-Mittama reversed the path to reach Haven. This time, Zuishin raced in from the west, while Regan pushed Seraph from the east. The Rake made the passage difficult.
Four thousand miles long and fifteen hundred wide, the range cut across the continent like spikes on a dragon. Tens of thousands of peaks and just as many valleys. Inside, steep gorges zigzagged through a forbidding landscape of avalanche-prone cliffs and the Ridderroque’s solitary peak.
A fitting place to end this, Regan thought. On Higo’s holiest soil. Too bad she wouldn’t be there. She jammed the controls forward. A burst of speed halved the distance to Zuishin, another put her within striking distance. Ahead, earth exploded upward. Valleys collapsed, their walls filling in the space behind, closing off pursuit. A haze of pollen and dirt built along the horizon, and the area where a small mountain once stood became a pile of rubble and strewn rocks.
Regan felt the mah-zhin’s pain grow as the distance diminished. She put a hand to her head, but that only made it worse.
Help me! The words were soft but anguished, and Regan was shocked to hear them in her head.
Zuishin? she called into the Rake. Is that you?
The voice, Zuishin replied. It soothes. Do you hear it, Miko?
Yes, Miko said dreamily. I hear her. Do you think she can help?
Two voices answered, two minds. Miko was the dominant, Zuishin the submissive. We are two parts of a whole separated long ago, they said. We want to be one again. We are incomplete, part shell, part spirit. You are our kami; make us whole so we can serve you.
“Serve you.” The words threw open a door in Regan’s mind. She looked at her hands, saw the silver aura streaked with the green and gold. Two colors. Two powers – one for her mother and one for her father. Her breath quickened. Two powers – two mah-zhin. She swallowed. Are you my… guardian?
Guardian. Yes. That is what we are. The voices came together as they spoke. We… I am your guardian. You summoned me and I have come. I, Miko, guardian of flora. One of my kami’s guardians.
Regan’s head spun. Miko. A guardian, and not just any guardian, but her guardian. One of them anyway. Two mah-zhin, two guardians. Inhaling, she brought Seraph in from the southeast, through a cross canyon that bisected the main ravine before it broke from the Rake. Shadows darkened the far side, sunlight painting the near. She slowed to a stop between the two and held her position as the world around her trembled. Getting used to this wouldn’t be easy. Not easy, her heart told her, but right.
I’m sorry Miko, Regan said softly. I need you to do something you won’t want to do. I think it’s the only way to bring both of my guardians home. First, you will continue to use the name Zuishin until I formally summon you.
I will do as you say, my lady. What else do you need?
The rest was more complicated, but to Regan’s surprise, Miko didn’t argue. She sent the instructions a second time to make sure Miko understood, and received the same reply. Satisfied, she turned her attention to her mah-kai. “Seraph,” she said, her voice tight, if controlled. “Open a channel to Sahqui-Mittama. Baiyren needs to see what’s about to happen. And Seraph… I’m sorry.”