In another place, an otherworldly aura clung to the air. Five individuals stood next to an obsidian table in front of a massive stone throne. Six smaller chairs waited around the table for their owners. The five bowed their heads as their leader entered the room, before taking their seats before the throne. Their leader’s face, obscured by a large hood, couldn’t be read by their subordinates. But the tense atmosphere emanated from the cloaked figure as they took their place on the massive throne. 

“Xie Jie… has failed.” Their leader’s cold, deep voice boomed out over the room, chilling the others to the bone. 

“I told you we shouldn’t trust a freelancer.” spoke a man with a shaved head, his body was dark skinned and his body was covered in white tattoos. And even while seated, he dwarfed the size of the others at the table. “So unreliable, those mercenary types.”

“I take it the Platinum Knight is still an insurmountable wall, my lord?” asked a younger man, his long black hair tied back in a single braid. His eyes were glazed over and it was clear to anyone who looked at him… he couldn’t see.

“Indeed, Xuefeng.” their leader addressed the blind man directly, his invisible gaze shifting towards him. “The Goddess of the Sword is as sharp as ever…”

“Hrrph, the lot of you, sitting and whining about one middle aged woman? Pathetic.” A young woman laughed in the shadows, walking into view from the back of the room. Clad in full plate, the small amount of light in the cavernous throne room shone off her golden armor. Her light brown, almost blonde hair was tied back in a loose ponytail that started near the top of her head, and her bangs hung loosely in front of her face. 

“You have something you’d like to add, Meixian?” another woman replied from her chair. She was older but still somewhat young, her short bobbed hair a pure white in shade. “Yet you won’t even humor us by sitting with your comrades, so why should we listen to you?”

The teenage girl Meixian laughed, covering her face with one hand. 

“I don’t see trash like you as my friends, and I have no need for weak comrades.” she walked past the empty chair at the table and looked up at their mysterious leader. “I’ll remove the Platinum Blade from our path, I swear this to you… father.”

“Sit down, insolent child! I do not take orders from you… you’ll do no such thing, your skills aren’t ready for the task.”

“I’m not a little girl anymore, I’ll take her down and bring you the Crimson Dragon Emperor and the Dividing Queen!” the young knight drew the sword at her hip and pointed it to the ceiling. “With father’s gift to me, it should be an easy task.”

A pure silver colored blade, the color of dragon steel. A deep blue cloth wrapped the hilt, ending on a brilliant aquamarine gemstone pommel. Along the left side of the flat of the blade, an inscription in ancient text of the land was etched.

Marine Dragon Empress.

“Xinyi!” My eyes shot open and I practically leapt to my feet, but a sharp pain assaulted me and I fell back down, clutching my right arm. “Gyaahh!” 

That’s right, I broke my arm pretty badly in that fight. It didn’t seem like I was still on the palace grounds anymore, but my memory was pretty spotty from that point on. I looked around my surroundings, and I was now in a bed in building I vaguely recalled from a long time ago… that’s right, it was the imperial hospital. 

My arm had been set and wrapped, and the rest of my wounds had been bandaged. I felt like I had been crushed flat, every part of my body hurt.

I was in a private room, no doubt the work of my mother, and no hospital staff were in sight. I tried to move, but my body was too heavy. I definitely overdid it, but I’m sure the alternative was death. More than the damage to my own body, I was concerned for Xinyi, and I once again tried to stand up. 

I nearly fell to the floor as soon as I escaped the bed, my legs feeling like they were about to give way under my weight at the first chance they got. But dammit, what was all of that training for if I couldn’t even handle being a little injured? Maybe I should have worked harder.

I inhaled strongly, activating the chi center of my body as I was trained to, and pumped my chi through my body. Instantly, I began to feel more energized, and the soreness in my muscles lessened significantly. 

I felt like I could walk around a little now, so I set out to find Xinyi. I opened the door to leave my room and ran right into a young nurse. She looked at me first with surprise, then annoyance.

“Sir, you’re still recovering, please don’t wander around too much.” she scolded me and forced me back into my bed. 

I tried to escape, but her glare was quite powerful, almost as bad as mom’s.

“I-I feel fine, I’m a Hero Swordsman, this is nothi-gyaaa!” she poked me in the ribs lightly, and I collapsed on the bed, convulsing in pain. 

“Just because you can ignore your body’s limits doesn’t mean you should, if you got injured again, you might not properly heal that time!” the nurse puffed out her cheeks at me and wagged her finger in my face. 

“I’m sorry, I just wanted to find my friend… she should have been brought here at the same time as me.” I decided to ask her, since I wasn’t going to be able to find her myself. “Is… she ok, she was hurt a lot worse than I was!”

“Yes yes, she’s fine.” the nurse replied, adjusting the bed sheet while I was on the bed for some reason. “It was a close call, but the doctor managed to save her… she hasn’t woken up yet, but she should be fine.”

The tension I felt in my body finally began to relax at her words, and I reluctantly went back to sleep. Though, now that I was awake, the pain I felt was making it quite difficult.

Since I couldn’t sleep, and I was confined to bed, I decided to think over what the assassin had said to me. It wasn’t much, but maybe I could piece together what he had been after, and why. The first thing was the Crimson Dragon Emperor.

Sure, it was a well made sword that needed no maintenance, but I didn’t see what was so important about it. If you were going to sell it, sure, but to go out of your way to hire an assassin to kill the sword’s owner and bring it to you… why? It isn’t like this sword had any special abilities aside from its durability… and the sword was famous enough that I’m sure walking around with it would be suicide. 

In short, who would want this damn thing? The only answer I could think of was the original owner, but that was my father… he wouldn’t pay to have his own son assassinated over a sword… wait, hold on.

Why do I have this sword at all, if he disappeared on a mission for the Emperor? Would he have not brought his personal blade along with him for something so important? And yet, here I am, in possession of the legendary sword. 

I had the strong feeling I was missing a big piece of information, and since my mother didn’t like to talk about my father since he disappeared I had no real way of getting it either. 

I didn’t have much time to ponder the implications of that however, as outside of my room the hall became quite loud. It sounded like the staff were struggling to restrain someone, and I quickly learned the cause… as my mother burst into the room with tears in her eyes.

“Yi Zen! Are you alright, does it hurt anywhere?!” she crashed into me, pulling me against her chest. An intense spike of pain from my cracked ribs shot through my body, and I felt like I was about to pass out.

“Wait, Ma’am, he’s still recovering from some serious injuries!” the young nurse from before rushed in, and my mother’s eyes turned violent and scary at the word ‘ma’am.” the nurse shrieked a bit and slowly walked away from her, leaving me to my fate.

“Let go already mom, it kinda hurts.”

“Oh my gosh I’m so sorry sweetie… mommy just got a bit too excited when she heard you had woken up!” she released her hold of me, and the pain started to ebb away. 

“I-I’m fine, mom… so can you give me a bit of space?” I look up at the ceiling, trying not to think about… anything to do with the previous morning. But instead of listening to me, she pulled my face closer to hers, touching our foreheads together.

I’m sure she was just checking my temperature, but she was still way too close. Memories of her sleepwalking assault in my bed flooded my active thoughts. My body was blazing hot, but not from any fever.

“Good, your not too hot, you seem to be recovering just fine...  mommy will leave now and let you get some rest.” she separated from me and began to stand up, which I couldn’t be more grateful for. 

As she rose up from the side of my bed, she reached out to adjust the sheets she had messed up, but in her hurry to leave her hand made contact with me and not the bedsheet. A certain part of my body that was currently sticking out like a weak point on a powerful monster. For a second, she looked confused and closed her fingers around it.

I don’t think I’d ever seen my mother be embarrassed before, but there was a slight pink tinge on her cheeks now. I however, was completely red. She had frozen, unsure what to do now. Her brain had ceased functioning upon realizing what she had done. 

“Y-You really are p-perfectly healthy already… aren’t you?” her voice shaking, she stared off into the distance. But she didn’t let go, was she afraid if she did she’d have to acknowledge having done it in the first place?

I want to die more than I ever have before, please just put me out of my misery.

“Could you… please leave now?” I asked, hiding my face under my hospital bed sheets. 

“Huh?! Ah, yes, I was leaving wasn’t I… I-If you’ll excuse me…” she finally unfroze and quickly escaped the room, averting her eyes from me the whole way out.

After my mother left, the nurse returned to the room. She took a look at my blushing face and the unfortunate tent in the sheets, then gave me a worrying smile.

“Would you like me to take care of that for you?” she asked me, and I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not, I really hope she was.

“I wanna die…”

Rakushi

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