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It wasn’t exactly difficult, for Edward to figure out how to use the strange dark magic he’d found himself saddled with in this body. Mo Xuanyu had left notes lying around, and for all that they were essentially a madman’s scribbles, there was enough for him to put together a working idea of how to use this sort of magic. The thought of bringing back the dead was a little off-putting, but—needs must, and all that. He didn’t even have a hidden blade to help him against the corpses.
He did steal a blade from the Mo Manor on his way out, but then again, it wasn’t like the family was going to need it anymore. The biggest issue at hand was getting his bearings and figuring out where the hell he was—China, almost certainly, but where in China?
“And maybe when, too,” Edward muttered sourly to himself, urging the donkey forward. He didn’t miss all the little hints that he wasn’t in his own time anymore.
He reviewed the last day or so in his memory. He’d remembered the sword sinking in, Haytham’s horrified face, cold oblivion rushing up to greet him as he fell, then—waking up again, but nowhere in England. Now that the shock had passed and the adrenaline wasn’t coursing through his veins anymore, he could look back on those confused seconds with more clarity than before.
He’d woken up on top of a ritualistic circle—an array, the notes had called it. They’d also been very specific about it being meant to call back a terrible, evil soul, a devil to the very depths. They’d even named it: Wei Wuxian, Yiling Patriarch, the Grandmaster and Founder of Demonic Cultivation.
And instead here was Edward, riding a donkey away from white-clad magicians (or cultivators, they called themselves), reeling both from that and from catching sight of himself reflected back: the dark hair, the powdered face, the clothes he’d seen a long time ago, around Macau. The only commonality this body had with the one he’d died in was the blue eyes, and Edward half-thought that perhaps that was a side effect of the ritual.
He held up his hand, made a little gesture. Shadows swirled around his fingers, tinged with blood-red.
And then there was Mo Xuanyu’s legacy, and the rest of his notes, stowed away so deeply that not even his cousin or the little simpering thug who’d followed Mo Ziyuan around could find it. Some more had been tucked away in those bastards’ rooms, as though they thought it might come in useful someday for their own purposes. But Edward was an Assassin, and the Eagle’s Gift had stayed with him, and so he found them all. And when the first corpse had risen up to try and kill him, he’d tapped into it just a touch to keep it off its guard.
He had no real weapons, and there were no Assassins around. Just this strange magic. He’d done what he had to, in order to make it out alive.
That Lan Wangji had watched him leave with narrowed eyes. The man had marked him, which meant Edward would have to keep away from him.
—there was someone watching him. He could feel it, a prickle down his neck. They weren’t dangerous, not yet, but he glanced up and around, and in those precious seconds felt something snag.
He pushed off the donkey, rolled to his feet, and watched as the poor creature went up, squealing in fury and kicking uselessly as it was caught in a net.
A boy dressed in gold stumbled out of the woods, his bow in hand. “What the hell,” he huffed. “You idiot! You ruined one of my nets! I haven’t caught anything worthwhile in ages because of you and all the other cultivators running around stumbling into my nets!”
“Maybe you’re just shite at hunting, lad,” said Edward. “Can I get my donkey back now?”
“I’m not your lad!” the boy thundered, in the way only teenagers were really capable of. Edward felt his heart ache, at the thought of Jenny. Was she all right? God, he hoped so. He didn’t know if she was all right, if Haytham was fine, if Tessa’d managed to get the children out before anything else went horribly wrong. “Over four hundred immortal-binding nets and they’re all ruined thanks to you!”
Edward blinked. Four hundred? “Oh, mate, that’s a little excessive,” he said.
“Shut up, I’m not your mate,” the boy snapped. “I don’t have to talk to you! You got kicked out and thrown back into Mo Manor!”
Ah. Okay. So the boy knew Mo Xuanyu. “About that,” Edward said. “I’m leaving. And I’d be doing that rather faster,” he glanced upward, “if you could let me have the donkey back.”
“First apologize,” said the boy. “And maybe I’ll remember to cut it down after I kill the beast haunting this mountain.”
“For—what?” Oh, the nerve of this kid. “Lad, I just need the donkey.”
“You can have it back later!” the boy huffed, and stepped quickly back as Edward stepped closer. “Get away from me, you lunatic!”
“Fuck’s sake, I’m not going to hurt you, I’m just going to cut my donkey down,” said Edward. “And for that I need to borrow your sword, mine’s a half-rusted piece of shite.”
“You can’t have my sword!” the boy blustered.
“Well, maybe,” started Edward, losing his already frayed patience, “if you and whoever’s watching your spoiled arse hadn’t strung up nets all around the bloody path I wouldn’t be in this fucking mess.” He laid a hand on the hilt of his knife, intending to start hacking at the stupid net even if it took all night.
The kid drew his own sword first and yelled, “Don’t you dare, I still need that net! My jiujiu will be furious if I don’t catch anything!” He swung at Edward, and for someone who looked as young as he did, maybe fifteen or so, his footwork was impressive. Spoke of training, really, with the way he balanced himself.
But Edward had been a fighter and a killer for longer than the kid was alive, and it was easy to duck out of the way of that blow, and the next one, and the next one. “We could’ve bloody well avoided this,” he complained.
“Stay still!” the boy snapped, and swung the sword again. This one was a close one, scoring a hit on a tree as Edward nimbly stepped away, pulling the Mo manor blade. It was also an opening, and Edward took it, dancing closer and slamming the pommel of his own blade onto the boy’s head, just hard enough to knock him down. Brat that he was, he was still a kid, and Edward wasn’t about to hurt him more than he really had to.
The kid went sprawling out. Edward sighed, picked up the sword that had fallen down, and threw it at the rope, watching his donkey land and get back up again, apparently no worse for the wear. Durable little bastard. “Who taught you manners, huh, lad?” he asked the boy, who gave a little groan. “Your mother? I ought to talk with her, she should’ve done a better job.”
“My mother’s dead!” the boy roared at him, stumbling a bit as he struggled to get up.
Edward blinked as he caught the sword on its return, sticking the sword in the ground next to him. “Ah,” he said, dumbstruck.
“You can’t talk to me like that,” the boy continued, and he sounded so frustrated that he was nearing a breaking point. “Not after you left. Not after what they said you did to my uncle.”
Mo Xuanyu, what did you do? Edward didn’t get an answer back, but then he hadn’t expected one. “I didn’t know about your mother,” he said, quietly. “I’m sorry, lad.” He turned to walk back to the donkey, and—
“What,” came a deadly calm voice from behind him, accompanied by a crackling noise like lightning building up in a blackened stormcloud, “did you do to my nephew?”
Edward thought very longingly about the sweet embrace of oblivion, then turned around to see perhaps one of the prettiest men he had ever met, even glaring at him as though he thought Edward would keel over from the sheer heat of the glare. He was clad in purple clothes, which said something about his wealth and his position already, and in his hand was a whip that crackled with purple lightning. His eyes burned like twin flames, and Edward had the thought that he rather wanted to pick this man up and bring him home. Maybe Tessa would like him? Certainly Edward himself wouldn’t kick the fellow out of bed. He had such nice arms…
“Answer fast,” said the man, “or else.”
Ah. Right. The whip. Edward coughed. “Your nephew needs to learn better footwork,” he said, “and you ought to not give him so many nets. Bloody wasteful, and you won’t catch what you need to. Better to lay one or two traps with bait.”
“So,” said the man, still calm in a way that Edward was rapidly recognizing as covering for a deep, deep well of bitter fury at almost everything in his path but especially for Edward, “a demonic cultivator is presuming to tell me, a sect leader, and my nephew, a sect heir, how to do our duties on a night hunt?”
Edward stared at him. Calculated just how fast this body was and how high the trees around him were. Smiled, a little mean, a little dangerous. This was going to be fun. “Aye,” he said. “I’m presuming to tell you that you’re doing it wrong.”
“Arrogant fool, as you always were,” said the man, nodding to the men now melting out of the trees. “Take him. I’ll interrogate him when we get to Lotus Pier.”
Edward kept smiling as the first man approached. Then, once he got close enough, he lashed out with a hard kick to the face, followed up with a quick slash of his knife and caught silk on the blade, tore it away. “Well, now!” he laughed. “If you want me to come with you, it’s a little unfair, and rather rude, to send your men to catch me! Why not ask nicely, mate?”
“I’m not your mate,” the man snapped out, cracking the whip. Edward stepped out of the way, fending off another attack from another fellow in purple. He whistled, calling on the ghosts of the forest to lend him a touch of strength, then kicked out and sent his new opponent flying into a tree.
He heard the tree crack. The man moaned.
“Might’ve been a bit much,” he muttered, then dodged another crack of the whip. “I’m serious, there are easier ways to get a man to come with you!” he yelled. “You could at least buy me some dinner!”
“How dare you, Wei Wuxian?!” yelled the man wielding the whip. It was honestly rather unfair that even in the throes of fury, he looked incredibly attractive.
“Who the hell are you talking about,” said Edward, “my name’s Edward,” and he had to jump away from another strike of the whip. In the midst of the fighting, he caught sight of one of the man’s lackeys suddenly stiffening up, lagging behind, and then a dark shadow darting out of the bush to drag him inside it.
All right, so something was up here.
That moment of distraction was enough for the whip to finally catch him, striking him across the front and sending him sprawling with a pained yelp. It hadn’t just been the lash, it had been the shock that followed, a jolt of lightning coursing through him that made the world go white for a few moments. He shook his head, groaned, and said, “Bloody fucking hell, what’s that whip made out of? Jupiter’s lightning?”
“Zidian didn’t work?” the kid in gold said.
Edward flicked his wrist, half-expecting to hear the shnick of a hidden blade. All he heard was the crackle of electricity, and the man saying, “I don’t care. I’ll beat the information I need out of him if I have to.”
“I have,” said Edward, annoyed, “no fucking idea what you want from me, and no information you could possibly wish for.” Well, save for the Observatory’s location, and the locations of a few other Pieces of Eden, but fuck if Edward was willing to tell some whip-happy stranger that. No matter how pretty the fellow was. He grabbed for a sword to pair with his knife.
“This from a demonic cultivator,” said the man, beginning to advance on him, his hand drawing a sword slowly out of its sheath. The kid, his sword already out, was faster, all but charging at him, and Edward put his own blades up to block the coming blow as best as he could.
And then—a streak of blue flashed just out of the corner of his eye, before another sword slammed down in between them, kicking up the dirt. Then someone stepped in between them, white robes resplendent in the moonlight.
“Did you lot follow me from the village,” said Edward.
“Lan-er-gongzi,” said the man in purple, in a flat tone that said he was having a very, very bad time and was this close to simply biting someone’s head off. Honestly, Edward could sympathize.
Lan Wangji glanced back at Edward, then at the man whose whip had—disappeared, somehow, but now there was a ring on his finger that sparked with electricity. “Sect Leader Jiang,” he coolly replied, returning Jiang’s glare with his own flat, calm look.
Edward rifled through his memory of Mo Xuanyu’s notes, trying to remember if there was anything that could possibly help him get out of this whole mess. Then the two apprentices from before bumped into him, the loud one saying, “Oh, shit, is that the Young Mistress!”
“Jingyi,” said his quiet friend, as the boy in gold bristled at the sight of them.
“I should’ve known that the great Hanguang-jun,” and Jiang said the words with such sarcasm that it could only be personal, whatever animosity was there between the two of them, “would appear where the chaos is. What brings you here to the deep mountains?”
“You’re in the deep mountains too,” huffed Jingyi.
Edward stepped back, glancing around and keeping half an ear on the conversation as his vision went teal-blue, the vibrant colors of the world around him leaking out and leaving behind only red, gold, blue. The boys in white and their mentor Wangji were in blue—they meant him no harm. Jiang was blood-red, and his nephew (Jin Ling, Edward overheard) was a less vivid shade of red.
Oh, that was funny, Jin Ling was being shut up with some kind of sorcery. Seemed to piss Jiang off something fierce, but then that was his nephew, after all.
Edward let the conversation wash over him, then glanced up, up, up. Caught a glimpse of blood-red.
Then he said: “Someone’s in the trees.”
A high-pitched trill echoed through the forest, breaking Edward’s concentration, but he’d seen the shape of who was doing it. Lan Wangji’s head snapped up toward the branches, and he breathed, just low enough for Edward to hear, “Wei Ying.”
“That’s Chenqing,” Jiang said, shocked, before his eyes flicked back toward Edward. “How did you know?” he hissed.
“What, that someone’s in the trees?” Edward huffed. “Mate, I just look up.”
The earth cracked and groaned below them. Edward took the sensible road and went up, clambering up the nearest tree as sure as ever, as though it was the Jackdaw’s rigging and the swaying of the ground beneath them was the ship on the rolling waves. For a second, as the corpses burst upward and Lan Wangji went after the source of the trilling notes, Edward half-thought he might take advantage of the chaos and run. Certainly these people could take care of themselves, right?
Jin Ling jumped back from a grasping hand. The fear in his eyes…
He looked so much like Haytham.
“Damn it,” Edward said to himself, then jumped down, knife flashing in the light, and crashed on the first corpse to emerge from the ground. The blade damn near severed its spine, and it struggled to get up as Edward ripped his blade out sideways. “Get away while you can!” he barked at the kids, at Jiang. “I’ll hold ‘em off!”
“You can’t give me orders!” Jin Ling started, but Jiang had grabbed hold of his shoulder already and was pulling him back.
“I bloody well can!” Edward yelled back. “Now run!”
--
Wei Wuxian would ask, weeks and weeks later, what had possessed Edward to do something as utterly insane as hold off fierce corpses under the command of the Yiling Patriarch himself on his own. Sure, Wei Wuxian was also being commanded at the time, and was holding back to some degree because even with a spelled collar digging its claws into his brain and ripping out chunks of memory, no part of him wanted to bring harm to Jiang Yanli’s son, but. Edward hadn’t known that. Edward was new.
Edward would laugh and call it a fun challenge, then. He’d never fought fierce corpses before, and mostly he was going off Mo Xuanyu’s notes and spare talismans that night. But on the night itself, all that he thought of was this:
He was a father, and an Assassin. Those were teenagers, younger than his girl Jenny, only a few years older than little Haytham. Those were innocents. He couldn’t let them get hurt, even if Jin Ling was being a little shit not ten minutes ago.
So—the chaos. So the corpses. So telling the kids and Jiang to run and hide.
So whistling up a sea shanty and channeling his own anger at the entire situation, imposing his will and trying to—not quite wrest control, no, whoever was playing the flute (and they were doing it well even though Edward could see flashes of red and white in the tree branches) was too good at this for Edward to have a hope in hell of fully yanking away control, but. He pictured a hurricane at sea, how it ran roughshod over any ship no matter how large and well-armed it was. How it could throw any unlucky ship far off their course, if they weren’t careful.
The point wasn’t control. The point was to knock things briefly off-course.
The corpses froze, the melodies out of harmony with each other. Edward chopped the head off one corpse, then the other, and nicked his thumb on his own sword as the rest swarmed out. Xuanyu’s notes had mentioned blood could make for a perfectly fine ink substitute, so he wrote a few hurried characters on spare paper, meant to block, keep away, stay away, making a note to himself to thank Zhang for the lessons. If ever he ran into him again, anyway.
The nets, the nets, the nets. There were more than one, weren’t there? They couldn’t have all been triggered. He flung out a few papers, watched them block off the way the kids had gone, then whistled: lowlands, lowlands away.
“This way!” he called, and turned and ran like hell.
Jin Ling had better be grateful, he’d be getting such a bounty soon.
Net after net went up, corpses getting caught up as Edward dashed around. The flute trilled, kept trilling, kept calling up ghosts and corpses and whatever else to keep Edward on his toes and keep Lan Wangji on the back foot—well, two could play at that game, and Edward had the eagle’s gift, he knew where the fucker was.
He didn’t have ghosts, he couldn’t raise the dead, this man was a lot better than he was in a straight fight. But Edward had a blade and had very good aim.
He chucked one blade at the man’s shoulder. It hit, and the song cut off for just long enough for Lan Wangji to get the upper hand. Edward couldn’t tell from his vantage point how the battle was turning out, but the kids were away, so his job was done, and he needed to get back to the donkey and he needed out, so—he turned on his heel and ran like hell.
(And above him, a sword flashed, cut through the ribbon that held a mask in place. Hands scrabbled for the mask, but it fell to the forest floor. Fearful eyes snapped to meet golden eyes.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji called, his heart breaking to see the terror in Wei Ying’s crimson-silver eyes. Reached for him, caught the spelled collar around his neck, and gritted his teeth against the pain that sparked through him, lanced up his arm, like an arrow through the gut, like a broken bone. But this was Wei Ying and he’d suffer any injury to bring him back to himself.
He yanked hard, channeling spiritual energy into his hand. The collar snapped with an all-too-human shriek.
Wei Ying leapt away, a hand darting to his now bare neck. He was still, still bleeding from the knife that other demonic cultivator had thrown at his shoulder—and Lan Wangji thought, uneasily, that the man below had meant that blow to interrupt, not to kill. “What,” he started, his voice rusty. “Who—What did you do?”
And then he jumped away, disappearing into the tree branches before Lan Wangji could even so much as respond.)