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They’re almost to the television station for the debate when Blade falters in his steps and stumbles.
“Blade?” Dan Heng asks, reaching his hands out to stabilize Blade but flinching back at the sight of glowing red eyes. “What’s going…”
All around them, random citizens of Planarcadia — the members of the Research Society of Happy Smiles, no doubt — twist and scream and cackle, their limbs turning corpse gray and neon pink as grotesque grins spread across their faces. Dan Heng no longer needs to finish asking his question; he can see, plainly in front of him, that the debate has been a ruse all along.
Still, with the newly transformed Abundance monsters prowling the streets, it is now more important than ever to get to the station.
But first…
“Blade?” Dan Heng repeats himself, one hand at the ready to summon Cloud-Piercer if needed. “Blade. Can you understand me? Do you hear me?”
“Dan Heng,” Blade growls, one hand clutching at his head and the other physically shaking as it holds his Shard Sword. “I can’t… Shuhu…”
“What can I do?” Dan Heng hasn’t felt panic like this before; before this, he has only dealt with Blade’s episodes of mara by killing him. Yet, now, even though he promised to the Astral Express that he was following Blade around so that he could keep him calm, he can’t bring himself to do the one thing he knows will help return Blade’s sanity. “How can I help?”
Hoping to catch the two of them unaware, an Abundance monster charges at them, their glowing staff pointed directly at Dan Heng. Instinctively, Dan Heng summons Cloud-Piercer, but he is just a hair too slow to defend himself — but Blade, having leapt up nearly faster than Dan Heng could see him, slashes the abomination to smithereens before it can even come close to touching a hair on Dan Heng’s head.
Blade cackles, the sound low and tinged with a manic energy that had been completely absent the entire morning and afternoon Dan Heng just finished spending with him. Chills run down Dan Heng’s spine as he remembers fleeing from ship to ship, leaving behind trails of red from the tip of his spear and stepping over scattered corpses in his haste and cursing Dan Feng’s legacy for leaving him with an inheritance worse than exile.
“You filth — you dare attack Yinyue-jun?” Blade pulls Shard Sword out of the monster’s head just in time to decapitate another one that comes flying from the terrified crowd. The bloodlust in his eyes tells Dan Heng that it is too late to stop the mara from overtaking his senses. “You cretins do not deserve to collect the price he must pay!”
There’s no time to think about Blade’s words. The chaos that has descended makes the streets of Planarcadia look like a victim of the Swarm Disaster: the scared citizens run in frenzied directions, stampeding every which way to avoid the monsters that have been born in their midst, and the cacophony of shrill screaming and frantic phone calls mixes to create a buzzing drone of panic.
Dan Heng stabs cleanly through an abomination coming to ambush Blade at his back. Avoiding the mass of innocent people trying their best to escape is difficult, especially with how indiscriminately the monsters themselves launch at the two of them, but Dan Heng does his best to cut down the hordes of enemies while keeping them away from the defenseless.
Blade’s vicious swordsmanship and utter disregard for his own safety is an asset. Every time a monster comes even remotely close to Dan Heng, Blade jumps in to shield him, uncaring of the burn marks and wounds leaving blackened holes and bloody slashes that decorate his body.
Sweat trickles down Dan Heng’s hairline as he fends off yet another wave of enemies, Cloud-Piercer slashing and stabbing in a blur of jade green; despite the collection of gray-pink flesh that litters the ground, it feels as if the members of the Research Society of Happy Smiles keep multiplying with how much they keep popping up.
Truly, the Abundance lives up to its name.
Even as Dan Heng tires, fighting side by side with Blade feels natural. Ignoring the countless battles that Dan Feng likely fought with Yingxing at his back, Dan Heng remembers how effortlessly Blade fought alongside him on the Xianzhou, back when Yanqing thought it would be a good idea to chase after two highly wanted criminals on his own.
Dan Heng’s cloudhymn beckons to him now, the ever-constant pull of the Permanence humming beneath his skin. It would be so easy to unleash his inner dragon, to call upon the ancient waters and flood the streets and drown the abominations that dare terrorize the planet. Still, Dan Heng only wants to use those powers only sparingly, and it is not like he will be defeated without them, so he could realistically keep fighting in his human form. But if they want to get to the television station without much more delay…
“Save your strength, Yinyue-jun,” Blade says, and then he’s shoving Dan Heng to the side and throwing himself directly into the fray.
The bloodshed is immense. Whether the blood flows from the Abundance abominations crumpling to the floor or from Blade’s own body, the ground below them grows slick with gold-tinged red. Even knowing that Blade is immortal and has died countless times — several of those times at Dan Heng’s hands — it tugs at something deep within Dan Heng’s chest to hear Blade’s grunts of pain and see more wounds bloom across Blade’s torso and arms.
In spite of the pain — or perhaps because of it — Blade is unstoppable. The gifts of Abundance, ironically, are no match for a man who treats Yaoshi’s touch and Shuhu’s gift as a curse.
Still, even with the incredible tidal wave of violence and death that is Blade, one monster manages to squeeze through the crowd, flying over them all and aiming its attack directly at Dan Heng. Dan Heng is ashamed that he has let his guard down, but with Blade handling the bulk of the advancing monsters, he thought he had time to catch his breath. Though Dan Heng has gotten better and better at calling upon his true form and shedding his human skin, it still leaves him vulnerable for a moment; if he transforms now to counter the attack, it may be too late.
But once again, before Dan Heng can even consider bracing himself for impact, Blade shields him from the blast.
Within Dan Heng, a warped tangle of emotions rises: a surge of relief at having been protected, a claw of worry that Blade’s first instinct in battle seems to just be jump in front of danger, an echoing roar of misplaced despair that carries from beyond time.
The blast, though not fatal to Blade, has left his most of his skin bubbling and charred, the burns healing but not quickly enough to disguise the all-encompassing agony that must be tearing from Blade’s nerves.
The pain ignites Blade into a frenzy. If the monsters were no match from him before, they are slaughtered without any chance of revival now. If any manage to get through the iron-clad wall of destruction that is Blade, Dan Heng greets them with the pointed tip of Cloud-Piercer.
It’s terrifying. It’s exhilarating. The monsters fall, never to stand again, and the waves finally dwindle down to nothing.
The last abomination crumples to the ground. When Blade turns to Dan Heng, the manic grip of mara shining clearly in his eyes, Dan Heng thinks, I don’t want to kill him, too, and grows ill at the thought of Blade’s body joining the masses of mindless Abundance corpses scattered at their feet.
Killing Blade would temporarily abate the mara’s hold on him. But after knowing what Blade has gone through, after knowing what Yingxing meant to Dan Feng (after acknowledging and accepting what Blade means to him), the prospect of cutting Blade down just as those who willingly accepted Shuhu’s gift were…
Blade launches himself at Dan Heng, and Dan Heng no longer has any time to grieve.
On all those IPC ships across the cosmos, Dan Heng would always defeat Blade, his self-preservation instinct always winning out against a man who actively chased death. (And, privately, now, seeing as how Blade thoroughly overpowered him on the Xianzhou and how Blade completely thrashed his opponents… Dan Heng thinks — no, he knows — that Blade’s sentimentality must have played a part in the outcome of their battles, too.)
Here, though, Dan Heng’s desire to live is outweighed by his desire to stop seeing Blade bleed. He blocks and dodges, parrying each maddened strike of Blade’s Shard Sword, but Blade advances on him with crazed laughter that still occasionally haunts Dan Heng’s nights.
“Dan Heng. Over here!”
Taking his eyes off of Blade for even a second is a risk, but Dan Heng glances over to the side where General Yao Guang has appeared.
“I don’t have much time here,” Yao Guang says, “I’m sure to disappear at any moment. But the prophecy seems to be coming to fruition, doesn’t it?”
“If you’re not going to help me calm him down, then it’s not worth discussing,” Dan Heng snaps, whirling around and ducking beneath the wide swing of Shard Sword.
“Yinyue-jun,” Blade snarls, bringing Shard Sword down in another devastating strike. “Still running away, even when you’ve promised otherwise?”
“I’m not running away,” Dan Heng says, struggling as he holds off the strike with Cloud-Piercer. “Blade, snap out of it!”
Dan Heng has almost completely forgotten about Yao Guang’s mysterious appearance, but she decides now is the perfect time to speak up again.
“A master will always recognize their own craftsmanship,” Yao Guang calls out, still from a safe distance away. “Show him one of the many treasures he once gifted you, and he should return to his senses.”
“He’s already seeing Cloud-Piercer!” Dan Heng replies, but when he’s met with silence for a touch too long, he looks to the side and sees that Yao Guang has already vanished.
Of all the Xianzhou generals that he has met, Dan Heng finds that Yao Guang is among the most difficult to work with. Her tendency to speak cryptically is frustrating, even as someone who prefers reticence to lengthy conversations.
As Blade continues to fight him in an erratic way too reminiscent of their original encounters in this life, Dan Heng struggles to understand what Yao Guang could be talking about. Of the objects he has, Cloud-Piercer is the most obvious of Yingxing’s works; the Roaming Dragon Bracer is a part of a matching set, and it, too, is very clearly seen on Dan Heng’s arm. The only thing left is…
Dan Heng glances down at the same time he jumps backward. Yingxing was a blacksmith; he forged weapons, and Dan Heng has never been able to find record of Yingxing of him making jewelry. With how secretive Dan Feng and Yingxing tried to make their relationship, though, and with how much the Preceptors erased of the High Cloud Quintet’s history… Could it be?
A gust of wind blows by Dan Heng’s ear, and he drops to the ground and rolls, just narrowly avoiding a would-be fatal hit to the neck by Shard Sword. Blade’s mara-driven mania is clearly growing worse; Dan Heng has little time to hesitate.
Swiftly, Dan Heng rips off the jade pendant attached to Blade’s belt and thrusts Cloud-Piercer straight up into where Shard Sword’s hilt meets its blade.
Shard Sword is no match for Cloud-Piercer. The weapon so lovingly crafted for Dan Feng is sharp enough to pierce dragon scales, after all, and Shard Sword has already shattered many times before.
With his weapon shattered on the ground, Blade has no choice but to surrender. Of course, that would be the rational option — but rationality has been forcibly removed from his mind, and all that remains is centuries of resentment and the outside, unwelcome influence of Shuhu — so he launches himself, bare hands and all, at Dan Heng.
Dan Heng clutches Blade’s half of the jade pendant and does his best to brace himself, choking and coughing at the hard smack of his back against the ground. Blade’s holding him down with bandaged hands against his shoulders and snarling above him, sharp teeth and crazed eyes and an intent to kill that Dan Heng knows isn’t his. If Yao Guang led him astray, if Dan Heng has made the wrong choice, then perhaps the prophecy will play out as it was ordained: Blade succumbing to the violence corrupting his veins will bring about an end to all.
With a brief, silent prayer to Akivili, Dan Heng slots the two halves of jade together, places it atop his mouth, and cranes his neck up to press the pendant against Blade’s lips.
You secretly put a jade pendant in your mouth so that you and your lover can recognize each other in the next life.
It’s rough, and it’s gross, and it’s desperate, but Dan Heng has nothing on his mind except for saving Blade. If the Vidyadhara customs are true, if these pieces of jade — if the piece that Dan Heng once woke up next to and the piece that Blade, even now, still carries on his person — are truly two halves of a whole, then… then perhaps…
Blade’s hands move from Dan Heng’s shoulders, encircling his neck with rough, unsteady hands. Dan Heng closes his eyes, not willing to witness the horror that will no doubt color Blade’s eyes once he’s realized who lies dead beneath him.
Blade’s hands slide up from Dan Heng’s neck to grasp at his chin roughly, and the reunited jade pendants slide off Dan Heng’s lips as Blade brings him up for a searing kiss.
Kissing, Dan Heng thinks, is much more pleasant without a piece of cold stone in the way — even if said piece of stone is physical proof of a lover’s devotion to their other half across lifetimes.
It’s exhilarating, feeling Blade’s lips against his, soft and insistent and eager. Centuries of emotion pour out between them: a cup of resentment now poured until empty, a love long lost and found again.
Although Dan Heng knows that it has taken a long time to get to this point, he can’t help but wonder what has taken them so long to finally reconcile. No wonder Dan Feng committed sins and slaughtered dissidents for Yingxing — to love and tame a man as loyal and powerful as this is a blessing not even the heavens can replicate.
Dan Heng, nearly breathless, is the first to pull away. “The battle is over… Have you… regained your sanity?”
“Hahaha…” Blade’s laughter sends puffs of air against Dan Heng’s lips. It’s the most beautiful feeling in the world. “Thank you.”
Blade sits back on his heels, his gaze on Dan Heng warm. Dan Heng can’t even find it in himself to feel embarrassed that he and Blade just shared their first kiss on the ground, surrounded by the bodies of felled Abundance abominations; considering their fraught history, it only seems fitting that their collection of firsts be less than perfect.
The moment is broken, though, when Blade grimaces and clutches at his head, agony written across every one of his facial features.
“But doing just this…” Blade pants, the red-violence of mara flooding into his eyes once more, “isn’t enough!”
Dan Heng scrambles to his feet, but just as he has been for the entirety of his day, just as he has been for the entirety of this life and his past one, he is too late; Dan Heng can do nothing but watch as Blade gathers the shattered remains of Shard Sword and plunges each one into his flesh.
“Why…” Dan Heng crumples to his knees, kneeling before Blade in a mockery of prayer and reverence. “Why are you plunging the fragments of the Shard Sword into your own body?”
Blood flows freely from Blade’s wounds, and though fatigue shines from the heavy slump of his shoulders and the labored cadence to his breathing, Blade’s eyes are growing clearer. “I… hate. Shuhu is right before my eyes… Only this way… can I remain lucid… and remember those mistakes…”
In his mind’s eye, Dan Heng recalls Yingxing toiling night and day in the forge, hammering away at weapons that would one day serve the Xianzhou armies well — that would one day be his torture and salvation.
“If the weapons I craft can defeat even just one Abundance abomination,” Yingxing’s voice echoes in Dan Heng’s memories, “then they will have served their purpose.”
It’s too painful to watch, almost too heartbreaking to stand, but Dan Heng steels himself to pick up the pieces once every last shadow of mara flees from Blade’s gaze, and forces himself to bear witness anyway: for Yingxing, for Blade, for a man who has gone through countless deaths and forced through hell and thinks himself a monster — yet continues to fight, every single day, to save his humanity in spite of it all.
Blade can take care of himself, Dan Heng knows. Blade has been taking care of himself since the beginning.
But still, seeing Blade stand there, trying to defend his sanity and his identity against a group of people who do not truly know him, a group of people who look at him and see him as not much different from the mountain of abomination corpses he now stands upon…
“Let me handle this. Maybe...” Sunday raises his hand, the power of Xipe lingering at the edges of his words, and Dan Heng knows that it is now time to intervene. Isn’t the point of reuniting with your lover to support them, no matter what?
“No need.” Dan Heng steps in, and the next part, he says with the conviction of two lifetimes: “We can trust him.”