After My Daughter's Feathers Were Torn Out, I Burned the Realms

I guarded the River of Oblivion for thirty thousand years, and at last my daughter's soul came to me.

She was dressed as a married woman, her eyes hollow and empty, shuffling forward a step at a time as if she could not see.

Blood ran down her back, and her tail feathers were gone without a trace.

My breath caught. I turned the Mirror of Reincarnation and saw the last thing she had seen before she died.

A man with a fine, handsome face tore her tail feathers out of her while she still lived, and pinned them into another woman's hair.

He looked down at her, disgust filling his face.

"In three days it is Julie's birthday. I only borrowed your feathers to dress her up. Who is this dying act of yours for?"

"That Julie thought your feathers worth wearing is a blessing they don't deserve. Get up now and go back to your room and reflect on yourself!"

"Oh, and one more thing. Every immortal lord across the Four Seas and Eight Realms will be at the birthday banquet. If you've nothing to do, don't come out and embarrass me."

Tail feathers are the mark of my Crimson Phoenix bloodline.

The year I left, I tore out my own tail feathers with my own hands.

Enduring a pain that bored down to the bone and ate at the marrow, I refined them into the most radiant feathers in all the world and gave them to my daughter.

How many lives did they think they had, to lay their hands on something that belonged to the Demon God?

Watching my daughter's hollow, sightless face, my heart felt as though a blade had cut it open.

I could not stop myself. I flew forward.

I wanted to gather her into my arms and love her the way she deserved, to hear every wrong she had swallowed over the years, but Zelda Butler seized me and held me fast.

"Have you lost your mind? She has already crossed the River of Oblivion. Everything from her past life is scattered to nothing. If you go to her now, you'll cost her her place in the cycle of rebirth!"

"I know how much you love her. Why else would you have agreed to the Emperor's terms and shut yourself willingly in this wretched place for thirty thousand years?"

The year I left, she was only three days old.

Because I carried the power of the Demon God, and only the malevolent energy of the River of Oblivion could hold it down.

So the Emperor used Ellie's life to force my hand, making me guard the River of Oblivion and seal the Demon God's power.

In exchange, he swore on his own life that he would make my daughter the most carefree woman in all the Four Seas and Eight Realms.

Day after day at the River of Oblivion I gave myself to my cultivation, thinking only of sealing the Demon God sooner, so I could be reunited with her sooner.

But I never dreamed that before I ever heard her call me Mother, she would already be a lonely, wandering ghost at the River of Oblivion.

The year she turned eight hundred and came of age, I once broke the seal and went in secret to look at her.

Back then her face was soft and innocent, and her round eyes were brighter than the stars of the galaxy.

At her coming-of-age rite she only had to cut her finger for a drop of blood, and even that left her eyes brimming with tears, sniffling for a long, long time.

I would go and ask them, ask them exactly what monstrous crime Ellie had committed.

To tear her tail feathers out of her while she lived, to make the girl who feared pain most of all die in agony!

And more than that, to weep her eyes blind while she still breathed.

I dared not imagine how much cruelty her short life had held.

My heart felt as though it were being crushed in a fist, the pain choking the breath out of me. I raised the Phoenixwood Sword and struck at the barrier.

Zelda cried out in panic.

"Stop! In ten more years the Demon God's power can be fully separated from you, and you can win back your freedom. Leave now and thirty thousand years of endurance are thrown away for nothing!"

"And besides if the Demon God's power comes back into the world, the whole of the Four Seas and Eight Realms will be dragged down with it! Will you truly abandon every living soul?"

The corner of my mouth curved up, and in my eyes was a madness that could ruin heaven and earth.

"For the sake of every living soul, I made my body the vessel, I carried the power of the Demon God, I was forced apart from my own daughter. I gave up all of that, and this is how they repaid me?"

"My only daughter, the child I labored ten days and ten nights in agony to lay as an egg, the precious daughter I tended for ten years until she hatched!"

"She's gone. So what is it to me whether the Four Seas and Eight Realms live or die?"

I wanted nothing more than to make the Eight Realms follow her into the grave.

The moment I reached the Nine Heavens, the sky and earth changed color.

I hadn't thought that after thirty thousand years, though the Demon God's power had been cut by more than half, it could still command such force.

I had only just begun to worry that an omen like this would draw unwanted trouble.

But behind me the celestial soldiers and generals cried out, their faces bright with delight.

"This must be an illusion conjured especially for Julia Pruitt's birthday. The Heavenly Sovereign truly dotes on that Julia."

"Compared to her, the Sovereign's Consort is too pitiful. They say Julia took a fancy to her tail feathers, and the Heavenly Sovereign tore them out without a word. She writhed on the floor in agony and was finally carried back to her room, and she never made a sound after."

The pain of it cut through me to the bone.

I flicked a spell from my fingers, and two burning red handprints bloomed on the soldiers' faces at once, their wails filling the air.

The whole path had been strewn with flowers of every color and red silk. I followed it, and it led me to Julia's palace.

Les Stewart stood with his arms around her, straightening the tail feathers in her hair.

"I have to say, this hairpin made from the tail feathers is truly dazzling. In all the world only you are worthy of it."

"Poor little Ellie, though. They say when the Crimson Phoenix tribe has its tail feathers plucked, the pain is like a blade to the heart."

"You're too kind and too soft-hearted. That was nothing but her excuse for not wanting to give them up. Look, when I pulled her feathers she didn't shed a single tear. Where's the agony in that?"

Yes, Ellie shed no tearsnot because there was no pain.

It was because her time was ending, and her tears had already turned to lifeblood.

The Crimson Phoenix's Weeping Blood.

My Ellie had been in agony past all bearing.

I could hold back no longer. I rushed forward and had just raised my hand to teach this shameless pair a lesson.

Les caught sight of me and frowned, his face full of displeasure.

"Elisa, what are you doing here again?"

"I already told you, I'll return it to you after tomorrow's birthday banquet. Why must you cross Julia at every turn?"

"Look at how petty you are. There's not an ounce of a Consort's dignity in you. You're an embarrassment. Get out of here at once."

I knew this man before me.

At Ellie's eight-hundredth birthday, he had stood at her side, watching her make her wish with eyes full of tenderness.

And it was also him who had torn out her tail feathers with his own hands and killed my Ellie.

Ellie looked like me, but in the fine details there were always differences.

He had shared Ellie's pillow for ten thousand years, and yet he couldn't even tell that much apart.

"Do you have any idea what the tail feathers of the Crimson Phoenix tribe truly mean?"

I forced down my fury and demanded it of him.

But his face held nothing but contempt.

"Here we go again. I'm sick of hearing it."

"Aren't they just something given to you by that mother you've never even met? I've said itI'm only borrowing them for a day, and I'll return them when I'm done."

"Your mother hasn't come looking for you in all these years. She's probably long dead. It's a stroke of luck for her that anything of hers is good enough to catch Julia's eye."

"So this is how you've treated Ellie all along?"

My fists clenched tight, my eyes fixed on Les, and I bit the question out through my teeth.

Les looked utterly lost, eyeing me up and down with suspicion.

"Elisa, what game are you playing now, talking such nonsense? How I've treated youdon't you know that yourself?"

Julia came toward me with a smile, her hand brushing carelessly over the hairpin in her hair.

"Since you've come, sister, there's actually a favor I'd like to ask of you"

"You're so noble, sister, the only blood of the Crimson Phoenix tribe left. Might I ask you to perform a Dance of a Hundred Birds for us"

She hadn't finished before a red handprint was already blooming on her face.

The tail feathers came to lie obediently back in my palm, and I stroked them slowly, as if I were stroking Ellie herself.

"You dared to raise your hand against Julia? Tomorrow the whole of the Four Seas and Eight Realms will be watching the birthday banquet. If she arrives with a handprint on her face, won't she be the laughingstock of them all?"

"You'd shame the honor of my Heaven itself!"

Les Stewart shielded Julia behind him and reached out to seize the tail feathers.

But the feathers might as well have grown roots. They lay motionless in my palm.

His face had been slighted, and he cleared his throat, sullen.

"Don't forget. That beast you always treasured so dearly. His life is still in my hands."

He meant Ellie's spirit-companion.

The fox I had left behind to look after her when I departed. Cyrus.

"What have you done to him?"

Seeing the tension in my face, Les smiled.

"Apologize to Julia. Return the Phoenix Feather Hairpin to her like a good girl. Do as Julia arranges tomorrow at the banquet, and I'll let him live."

So this was how he had held Ellie in his grip.

I had meant Cyrus to protect her, never dreaming he would become her weakness instead.

Fine. Let me see whether a lowborn Fledgling Fowl like Julia could bear the honor of the phoenix feather, and a dance with the matriarch of the Crimson Phoenix tribe.

I pressed down the fury in my heart and stepped forward slowly, sliding the Phoenix Feather Hairpin into Julia's hair.

Then I bent my knees and gave the required bow.

Just as I began to rise, Les's power pinned me down where I stood.

"Kneel here until tomorrow. Learn your place."

I don't know how long I knelt. When the spell he'd laid on me finally lifted, an attendant led me back to my chambers.

The moment I stepped through the door, I breathed in deep and greedy, trying to catch any trace of Ellie she might have left behind.

But everywhere I looked there were only children's clothes and dolls, little tiger-faced things sewn for an infant.

A thought flashed through my mind, and it nearly knocked me off my feet.

"Was there... was there once a child here?"

The attendant who had led me looked startled, then quickly curled her lip in contempt.

"Losing your mind again? Sewing these useless things all day. Can't even remember you gave birth to your own little monster?"

"What are you saying? Where is the child?"

I seized her arm and demanded it.

"I told you, it was a monster. The Sovereign could hardly allow it to live. Still, the thing had its uses. The Sovereign refined it into an elixir himself, to strengthen Julia's body, and it helped her ascend to godhood without trouble!"

Something roared in my head. My hand fell away, my soul stripped from me, and I sank to the floor.

For the Crimson Phoenix tribe, bearing children is a bitter, brutal thing.

Every phoenix chick born takes the better part of its mother's life.

Even I, back then, was tormented near to death by it.

And my poor Ellie, who had labored to bring a child into the world, only to have its own father refine it into an elixir that went down Julia's throat.

Cast aside by her husband. Torn from her own flesh and blood.

I could not bear to imagine how she had endured ten thousand years of this.

I scrambled up from the floor and ran to the table.

Inch by inch my fingers moved over the tiny garments she had sewn with her own hands.

Night after night of her suffering rose before my eyes, of her despair.

Those eyes of hers, brighter than any star, must have been wept blind exactly like this.

Forcing down the hatred in my chest, I followed the trace of him all the way to where Les had imprisoned Cyrus.

The guards recognized my face and stepped forward, cold, to block my path.

"Consort, the Sovereign has ordered it. You cannot come here"

One cold sweep of my eyes, and the guards dropped clutching their mouths, blood pouring out of them without end, able only to wail in their agony.

Once, in all the Four Seas and Eight Realms, there was no ground I could not walk.

Only thirty thousand years, and already these juniors had forgotten high from low.

Judging by how they behaved, they had surely bullied my Ellie more than once.

The little I had done was hardly more than a small correction.

In the deepest part of the celestial prison, Cyrus had reverted to his true form, lying on the ground with the breath barely left in him, his whole body a mass of wounds.

He had been the most outstanding youth of the White Fox tribe, and from the first time he saw me he had given me his heart.

But my mind was set on the realm and its people, so he folded away his love and named me his master.

When I left, I entrusted Ellie to him.

I had believed that with his power he would surely keep her safe.

I never imagined he too would be tortured to a state like this.

I walked to him and slowly crouched down.

As if he sensed something, he forced his eyes open.

The instant our gazes met, his eyes reddened, and he reached a trembling hand toward me, choking on the words.

"Master, I'm sorry. Cyrus failed to protect Ellie..."

"It's my fault, all my fault!"

"Les Stewart, that heartless, ungrateful thing, he toyed with Ellie's feelings, and the moment he took the Sovereign's throne he kicked her aside. Poor Ellie, she..."

Piece by piece, he told me everything that had happened in the thirty thousand years I was gone, every small moment of Ellie's life.

When he came to the worst of it, the blood rose in him and he nearly passed out more than once.

Only then did I understand. The Emperor had not broken his promise.

Before her eight hundredth year, Ellie truly had been the most treasured, most joyful girl in all the Four Seas and Eight Realms.

For her sake, for the matter of her marriage, he had even sent invitations to eligible young men from every realm.

He had gone so far as to declare that whoever Ellie chose for a husband would be named the next Heavenly Sovereign.

What came after was the most tired story of all.

Ellie went down to the mortal world on a whim, to test herself, and in a moment of danger Les Stewart saved her.

The rest followed as if it were only natural.

Up to that point, it might even have passed for a lovely tale.

A pity, then, that Les had long since set his heart on another woman: Julia Pruitt of the Fledgling Fowl tribe.

In the early days of the marriage Les still had the patience to play the devoted husband. But once the Emperor withdrew into seclusion, he showed his true face.

The lowest ash-fledgling of them all had climbed into the household and dared to set her foot on the neck of my Crimson Phoenix tribe.

Watching the guilt written across Cyrus's pale face, I felt the power of the Demon God stirring inside me, straining toward the surge.

"It isn't your fault. The fault is theirs."

"Rest easy. Tomorrow, at that vile woman's birthday banquet, every debt they owe my daughter, I will collect it, one by one."

Early the next morning, Les sent someone to deliver a dancing robe.

I gave it a single glance. Gaudy, cheap. I tossed it aside.

Without a trace of powder or paint on my face, I set out for the banquet.

When I arrived, the hall was warm with good cheer. Les stood with Julia Pruitt on his arm, receiving the congratulations of the Four Seas and Eight Realms.

Julia wore a gown of bright crimson feathers and sat in the seat of the sovereign's consort, the Phoenix Feather Hairpin in her hair blindingly bright.

That seat should have been Ellie's. And this ash-fledgling dared to soil it.

I forced down the power of the Demon God rioting in my chest and walked forward.

Around me the whispers came in fragments.

"So that's the consort no one favors? They say she's the last of the Crimson Phoenix bloodline. The Emperor used to treasure her beyond all reason, and look at her now, ground under the heel of the Fledgling Fowl tribe."

"To be consort and end up like that, it's pitiful. I heard the child she went through so much to bear was thrown into the Sovereign's cauldron and refined, alive, into an elixir."

"A useless little punching bag. All she does is hide in her rooms and weep day and night, until she's gone half blind."

"That's nothing. Look at the hairpin in Julia's hair. Those are the tail feathers only the Crimson Phoenix bloodline carries. The pain of having your feathers torn out, neither you nor I could bear it, but she had no choice but to bear it."

Every word fell into my ears like a needle, pricking, fine and deep, into my heart.

Les followed the crowd's gaze to me, and his brow furrowed.

"Why aren't you wearing the dancing robe Julia prepared for you with such care?"

"It's Julia's birthday today. You show up in white to curse whose luck?"

This white was worn for Ellie. It was worn for Les and Julia. And it was worn for every guest in this hall.

I did not answer him. I only said, mild and even,

"Didn't you want to see the Dance of a Hundred Birds?"

"I'll dance."

The words left me, and I sprang into the air.

The same people who had sneered at me a moment before drew sharp breaths, thrilled beyond themselves.

"The Dance of a Hundred Birds? They say it's the supreme secret art of the Crimson Phoenix tribe. When it's danced, the birds of the world gather as one, heaven and earth tremble, and spiritual energy pours out on every side."

"Thanks to Julia's good fortune, even the likes of us get to be bathed in that spiritual power."

"Look, such pure spiritual energy. Today, who knows, some of us might ascend to godhood on the spot."

Even Les could not keep his eyes from being drawn to me.

I looked down on their stupid, greedy faces from above, cold, and my feet moved faster and faster.

They still did not know how close they were to death.

And just as the whole hall was lost in the dance, a shrill voice cut through it.

"Ah! My face! My face!"