~YU~

Finally, they were riding. It looked more than a raiding party, not quite an army in numbers. Yu barely paid attention to his comrades in arms or his own outlandish serpent-skin armour. He scanned the horizon with a mixture of thrill and anxiety until he finally saw the Waverunner's silhouette. Yu whistled to his mount, and the serpent surged forward until he dangled right above the ship's deck staring down at the crew.

"Finch! I was starting to think you'd forgotten about us!"

"I go by Rustam now," the mage replied with a shadow of a smile, but shook his head to stay polite inquiries. "I made sure that the enemy fleet is on its way to launch a 'surprise' counter-attack. We must hurry to catch them."

***

The Imperial fleet took a position at the Laughing Men archipelago, but the demon party blazed past them in full daylight, whooping, cursing and bearing in on Port Sutao. The flotilla took off in pursuit of the brazen raiders, with both castle ships leading the formation. Jung Hwa left the smaller vessels in the channels between the islands to guard the homeland.

Yu looked back and for a moment all he could see instead of the sea and sky was the metal-plated hull of the castle ship towering far above them.

Ancestors, but we might as well be shrimp next to it!

The air behind the flotilla shimmered, like heated air over the desert sands. Yu reigned in the serpent. Around him the demons did the same, forming a swarm. The hull got even larger as the castle ships bore on them.

The first flight of bolts fell on their group. Yu healed instinctively from a few lucky hits. They were just within shooting distance. But their cross-bows would be useless against the floating tower of metal and wood. Even their serpents were too small to cause much damage to the castle ships.

The shimmer behind Jung Hwa's ships grew more noticeable.

The light of the rising sun reflected off the metal hulls to make the castle ships shine like its two smaller copies of it. Yu squinted against the glare right in his eyes.

The metal reddened and started flowing down the ships' sides to hit the sea in long hissing tongues. For a few heartbeats it was not liquified metal any longer, but something entirely different, hotter, more vicious, all-consuming. Wherever it touched seawater, steam jetted up in the air, whistling.

Finch's voice echoed in Yu's head. "There are four elements besides qi, Yu. Solid, liquid, gas and heat." He had never seen the heat in its purest form before, and he was no exception, apparently. Rustam the Unsworn has just outdone himself.

But the exertion of the spell must have exhausted the mage's faculties, because the heat shimmer dispersed rapidly, revealing the Waverunner and the rearguard of the demon troops.

Alarm gongs, already beating on Jung Hwa's ships, rose to the frenzied tempo once the lookouts realized they were surrounded. The smaller vessels churned up the steaming water, trying to turn around, looking like dumplings in boiling broth.

The metal thickened into slower rivulets and drops, like the candle wax. The wood in their wake smouldered.

"Up, up, up!" Yu screamed, forgetting to whistle, but his serpent followed the command from the more experienced riders. It shot out of the water to its nearly full length.

He knew he had only a split moment before the serpent collapsed back into the sea, and leaped onto the castle-ship. He caught the burning boards, sunk his bleeding fingers deeper into whatever grooves he could find, and started climbing through flames and acrid smoke.

Gao was somewhere in this mayhem. Fighting his way to the man who killed Chong Ho hardened Yu's rage into something more manageable but deadly. He saw his target beat back a powerful demon, charge after charge, claws and qi blasts against a curved sword.

He took a deep breath in to steady his nerves. He must not miss. Just as the sword rang against the blocking gauntlet, Yu shattered Gao's defences and scooped the man's qi out of his body like an egg yolk.

"He was my kill!" the demon shrieked.

Yu growled back at him. "I don't think so."

A she-demon stepped between them, licking blood off her claws with darting movements of the pointy pink tongue. The sight was hypnotic. She extended one shiny claw to point past her chin. "The Hunt is not over, my bravos."

They looked where she was pointing. Jung Hwa's flagship and a few lesser vessels broke through, fleeing towards Sutao.

Yu forgot about his rival, and dashed for the foredeck, whistling as he ran. The sea serpent came to his call. The she-demon caught up to him with ease, and yelled over the waves: "You won't be lonely after we return."

His face burned from more than spray and sun. Ancestors, was this my mother's doing? Now they want me to stay?!

***

Jung Hwa led her main ship towards Sutao rather than to her native Islands for a reason. The demon raid destroyed two stragglers, but they were unable to catch up with the rest of the naval convoy. Once they'd hit the harbour, a faery shield blocked the way for the demons. They could not see it, but it repelled them as surely as a stone wall.

"This is as far as we go then?" the Blood-leader yelled to the Waverunner. "Or do you have another miracle up your sleeve, Mage?"

Rustam slowly straightened from the meditation position he maintained every time Yu caught a glimpse of him.

"Maybe," he said stretching his shoulders. "Wait till nightfall."

The demon scowled. "Make that happen. I have no use for 'maybe'."

A small rowboat was lowered for Rustam, as the demons swarmed around it, but let it pass. Yu could see and hear desperate fighting in the city.

There was nothing else to do but watch the gulls circling overhead and think. Yu imagined going back to the black towers, the waterfalls and the Blood as he weaved in and out of the demons' band. The success changed things, and their insults started to sound like the others were just ribbing him. Yu sensed the hint of growing camaraderie and more promises from the laughing she-demon. Their customs were easier to adopt than those of humans.

Yu twisted his head looking from the expanse of the sea behind him to the city's walls in front of him, and thought some more.

***

At nightfall, a fireball exploded at the sea-facing wall of Sutao. Burning people fell through the darkness like the shooting stars. Two more fireballs landed amidst the ships starting a fire.

The faery shield finally split open, and the demons poured into the breach. The harbour water turned scarlet by the reflections of the burning ships.

The smell of hatred, blood and charred flesh gave Yu a different kind of euphoria. He did not crave to heal the hurts, he wanted qi. He saw Jung Hwa fall overwhelmed by his brethren, but he no longer cared whose kill it was. As long as she was dead, and as long as every other of Laughing Men would soon be, the Blood was growing stronger. The qi was there for the taking, and he took it. He belonged with the Blood.

A mad gull fell out of the sky to beat against his face with its wings. Yu hit it, and it screamed in a familiar voice. He looked around again, out of his human eyes, out of the healer's eyes and nearly passed out with the horror of what he was a part of.

Yu threw himself into the sea.

Cold and sober, he came up for air, and was terrified again, this time by the mayhem of crushing and burning hulls around him. But Celestials love fools, so his serpent found him. He grabbed the faithful creature's poisonous neck, oblivious of the quills, and let it carry him to the shore. He considered tossing the bone whistle into the sea, but he could not yet let go of the idea that he should never ride through the waves again. "Soon," he promised the serpent before it slithered into the surf.

He cut through the fighting, pressing his palms to his ears to drown out the calls for help. He had to find the woman whose voice he'd recognized in the bird's cry.

The moon came up. In its faint light, following the ebbs of qi flow, Yu managed to find Zha Yao's camp. He thought someone would stop him because of his outlandish armour, but the night was ripe for the final assault, so the camp was in a disarray.

Yu started to worry that he'd never find Tien Lyn in the confusion.

And if I did, would she know me? He looked down at his changed body and bit his lip till it bled.

He sensed Tien Lyn a mere heartbeat before he saw her running towards him. She threw her arms around his neck. "Yu!"

"I am back," he whispered into her hair.

Instead of reporting Gao's and Jung Hwa's death, Yu kissed her. This time he did not have to pretend it served any purpose but to kiss and be kissed by her. It was neither shy, nor awkward, except that Tien Lyn had not closed her eyes.

"I've lost so many I loved, that I am afraid to lose you too if I blink," her breath tickled his neck and he giggled.

He scooped her up and searched for a place where they could willfully ignore the moral complexities they were aiming to create. Whose tent it was, he did not care.

Trembling fingers were slow in dealing with fasteners and laces, particularly in the dim lamplight.

"Your armour..." she murmured stroking the scales armouring his chest in wonder.

"Your dress..." he whispered untangling the gossamer silk from the embroidered something.

She blushed. "Those are just old serpent skins, Yu. The real you and I are underneath."

"I've changed," Yu confessed.

Tien Lyn pushed the still damp strands of hair out of his face, and then stroked his now naked shoulders. "No, no. You've grown up, like we, humans, do."

He caught her hands, his will to talk evaporating faster than the puddles by his black waterfall at noon. Ancestors, let's attend one sinful pursuit at a time. He decided to limit his mouth to kissing everything he'd longed to kiss, and his wants - to his lover's body. Luckily, it was getting easier with her arms running the length of his back, and her thighs clinging to his. He did breathe out her name over the warm skin, before bringing her as close to him as he dared.

Tomorrow I will tell you how wrong you are. Tomorrow....

AN: Thank you for reading and commenting. The Epilogues are next. :)