Page 17

The Prophecy

I exhale a plume of halji, leaning against an old tree in the Wyusan Wilderness as Daeyang escorts my wounded to the realm of Jeoseung. There, they will recuperate where no Dokkaebi fireswords can reach them. There, they will heal.

Imugi medicine, I have observed, involves using both the fast healing of the serpents and a variety of strange herbs that Daeyang has been collecting through our journey. The Imugi chews these herbs up in his mouth and then spits them onto the wound. It is disgusting, but if it works, I am not one to judge the healing practices of my serpents.

The battle dwindled my forces. At least two more of my Imugi fell, and seven more will recuperate in Jeoseung. Their scales are sloughing off their bodies, courtesy of the Dokkaebi fire.

But we will still continue forth without them. My numbers are still high. Just three hours ago, a black bird swooped down before Bomin and gave him the latest correspondence regarding Wyusan. The Dokkaebi have drawn both their and the dead empress’ forces back to the capital of Sanyeongto, where they are frantically preparing for a siege and evacuating humans to Gyeulcheon. An emissary has been sent to Bonseyo to inquire after the reticent Jeon family.

And most importantly, perhaps, Iseul is still alive. She is imprisoned, but alive. No doubt she has become their bargaining piece.

“Bomin,” I say, watching the halji smoke spiral upward into the dark canopy of leaves, “what exactly do you have on this Wyusan general?” How scared does a man have to be to sell out his kingdom?

Next to me, the halji dealer adjusts his ridiculous top hat. “He bought from me, which was his first mistake,” Bomin says. “I like to dig up my clients’ secrets. This one likes to do some, ah, unsavory things with younger women. I told him, look, I’ll keep your secret and sell you the halji, but your price is the money plus favors. If he doesn’t do as I ask, I tell his wife.” Bomin shrugs, tapping some of his roll’s halji flakes onto the damp earth below us. “Never underestimate a bad man’s fear of his wife.”

“Hm,” I say, satisfied, but my mind is no longer on our inside intelligence. It is on the capital city of Sanyeongto. It is not directly before us. Once we emerge from the wilderness, we will face a smattering of villages—all small, of course, and generally easy to overlook. But Haneul’s army will not have left them unprotected.

Perhaps we will skip over them, lessen any more causalities from the fireswords that we might take. The capital is my main priority. If I take it, I take Wyusan. And the faster I reach Sanyeongto, the faster I can reclaim my favorite weapon. As much as I hate to admit it, Haneul’s forces have something they can very well use as leverage against me.

Scales susurrate in the fallen autumn leaves as Sonagi circles the tree against which Bomin and I lean. “You are thinking of ssstrategy, Child of Venom. I sssense it. Tell me, what is our next move?”

“We take Sanyeongto.” I pause, taking another drag of the drug. It curls in the back of my throat, bitter yet sweet all at once. “I am sorry about the fallen, Sonagi.”

“Don’t be,” she replies, golden eyes luminous in the dark. She sways slightly and dips her head so I can rest a hand against the cold snakeskin. “It is an honor to die for you, Daughter. We will reach Fulfillment soon enough and take to the skiesss. But the swordsss, they are a problem. These weapons were…unforeseen by us.”

“We need another advantage,” I agree. Moon is dead, but her army is angry. With the fireswords, they feel confident enough to take another stand. “What if,” I murmur slowly, “we tried something…different?”

“What do you mean?”

My words have caught the attention of my other Imugi. They slither toward us. Bomin is sweating profusely, puffing nervously on his cigarette. Uloe, looking lost without his rider, pins hopeful golden eyes onto me.

I’ve reached the end of the halji roll. I crush it into the ground and impatiently motion to Bomin for another one. “Since crossing Habaek’s River, we’ve been travelling on land. It’s easy for Haneul’s forces to mobilize attacks when they can estimate from which direction we are coming. The route to Sanyeongto, from here, is simple to predict.” The new cigarette dangling from the corner of my mouth, I grab a stick and begin to draw the Eastern Continent in the dirt. At the very bottom is Sunpo, divided from the icy Yaepak Mountain Range by a stretch of Habaek’s River that winds all the way up through Wyusan and toward Bonseyo. The Wyusan Wilderness, where we are, is marked by a precise X as I continue to draw. I grab small stones and place them where the villages are—at least five small stones place haphazardly before I mark Sanyeongto with a circle, representing their Beast Wall. Bonseyo is at the tip of the Continent, just after another stretch of Habaek’s River, but I don’t bother marking it yet. The focus is on Sanyeongto.

“They are expecting to see us before we see them. According to Bomin, they have a vantage point on the wall extending up to hundreds of feet. So they are sure that in order to enter Sanyeongto, we will need to breach their wall, coming up through around here” —I drag my finger on a route from where we are to the wall— “toward here. Judging from where we’re situated now, that would be the quickest road to take, and they know how eager we are. But what if we don’t travel by land? What if we travel by sea? The Yongwangguk Sea surrounds this entire continent. If we travel west, from where we are now, we could reach the ocean quickly enough. From there, we can ride the tides upward toward the Beast Wall, which has a western edge right on the sand of the shore. It would take longer, but it would be worth it. The fortification extends to where the ocean begins… We would be there before they ever saw us.”

“Interesssting,” muses Sonagi. “Yess, Daughter, I think this could work. But they will grow suspicious when there is neither hide nor hair of us, and their gaze will turn toward the sssea. Haneul remembers our waysss.”

I cock my head. Exhale a ring of halji. It dissipates as it encounters Sonagi’s smiling maw. “What do you propose instead?”

“I liked what you did with the first wave of human mercenaries,” Sonagi replies with a wicked glint in her eyes. “Your diversion was clever. I like that sort of deceit. Sssome of our forcess should take the route they expect us to take. The ressst of us will travel by ocean. While they are focused on the havoc the othersss reap in the villagesss, we will approach with them none the wiser.”

“Sssmart,” Uloe hisses, nodding. “We will force them to give back Iseul. I miss her,” the young Imugi adds, looking to his mother for comfort. Sonagi blinks slowly at him, her sympathy apparent through that singular gesture. Beongae slithers closer to his brother and winds around him, the Imugi equivalent of an embrace. The others in the forest wait, with bated breaths, for my agreement.

I take a long, long drag of halji. The plan is good. Brilliant, even. The Mother of Imugi is in no uncertain terms a mastermind. But there is one thing that could foil this plan. One damned red thread that could easily alert Haneul to my schemes. If Haneul is to seek me out, he will find me. And he will know what this strategy of ours is.

I suppose that I could go with the diversion before regrouping with those who traveled by sea. They could break the fortifications for me, allowing me entry. But it is not in my nature as the Child of Venom, as the Goddess of Wrath, to stray from where the true fight is. I want to travel by sea and be the one to tear down the Beast Wall.

This fucking thread. There is no way to block Haneul out. I know. I have tried. Gritting my teeth, I will it into view, the swirling red ribbon that connects me to the Dokkaebi currently in Sanyeongto. I want to yank it apart, but here in the physical world, it is incorporeal.

Seething, I furiously suck in more halji smoke.

“Daughter?” Sonagi asks in concern. “Isss everything all right?”

“He will be able to find me,” I mutter, loathe to admit it. “Our soul-stitching could expose the plot. I cannot travel by sea, as much as I might wish to. I must be with the diversion. With half of the forces, I will travel through the expected route, through the villages. Sonagi, I want you to take your strongest to travel by water. We will let Haneul’s army think that you, and the serpents with you, perished. They won’t suspect anything, until you take the Beast Wall.”

The Mother of Imugi’s hood flares. “If you do not travel by sssea, I will not, either. I will come with you on land. My strongest children will take the ocean route. Meanwhile, Daughter…” Her tongue, forked and dark like my own, snakes into the air as if to taste the approaching carnage. “We have villages to burn.”

…

That night, as I seek to torment Haneul with nightmares, he is not there to suffer through the droves of horror I wish to haunt him with.

He is not anywhere that I can see.

The red thread that I follow does not lead to his dreaming mind. But it does not lead to his waking self, either. Instead, the scarlet string extends deeper and deeper into the darkness. Yet even as I walk and walk and walk, Haneul never comes into view.

This is most unusual.

And I am not pleased by it in the slightest.

I open my eyes in the Wyusan Wilderness, curled against Sonagi’s flank. Cold suspicion hardens the edges of my thoughts as I sit up, glaring at the ruby-red bond between us.

Where, exactly, has the emperor of the Dokkaebi gone?