The Dream of Mizi

  The scent arrived first, which was how it always arrived in the dream. Warm rice stalks in late afternoon sun, the specific smell of a field that has been growing all summer and is close to harvest, the kind of smell that means safety in the body before the mind has confirmed it.

  He was a child. He was sitting in the field with Lycia on his left and Aji on his right, and the day had the quality of days that are entirely ordinary and will later be the ones you most clearly remember.

  He had been working on the hand for two weeks. It was small enough to fit in his palm, made from parts he had found and modified, and it moved. That was the thing he had been trying to get it to do for two weeks, and this morning it had moved, and he had been carrying the fact of it all day waiting for the right moment.

  "Lycia! Aji! Come here!"

  They came over with the immediate attention that children give to the person who has been working on something in secret and is ready to show it. The robotic hand hissed with steam and the fingers articulated at each joint with a precision that had no explanation in the skill level of the person who had built it.

  Their faces said everything Mizi had been hoping they would say.

  "One day," he said, with the particular certainty of children who have not yet learned to negotiate between ambition and probability, "I will be the greatest robot creator in the entire Astral!"

  They laughed. Not the laughter of people who don't believe you but the laughter of people who believe you and find the believing delightful. They played until the field's light went orange and the air cooled and the mothers' voices came across the rice stalks one by one calling children home.

  Lycia's mother. Aji's mother.

  Mizi walked back alone toward the small hut where his grandmother waited, which was not the same as a mother's voice but was the closest thing he had, and he walked without grief because he had not yet learned what he was missing, and the robotic hand was still in his pocket, and tomorrow they would play again.

  He was almost asleep when the first explosion came.

  The village's specific quiet, crickets and the distant sound of water, was replaced all at once by something that had no place in the previous sentence. He was at the window before he was fully awake. The shapes in the sky were metallic and moving with the specific trajectory of things that have arrived to do something rather than pass through, and the screaming below was the screaming of people who have understood what those shapes mean.

  He thought immediately of Lycia and Aji.

  He found Aji in the second street. Lycia was not with him. They moved together through the chaos, which was the specific chaos of an alien incursion, and found Lycia in the moment before one of the soldiers reached her, which was close enough that the timing lived in the memory afterward rather than the outcome.

  Her father appeared from the direction of nowhere, which fathers sometimes do. He took the soldier's attention with the specific ferocity of a parent, and in the space he created he tore something in the air, a portal, shimmering with the urgency of something opened quickly.

  "Take her!" he shouted. "Get out! Go!"

  Mizi grabbed Lycia's hand. Aji grabbed the other. They pulled her through the portal by force, because she was looking back at her father and her feet had stopped working in the way that feet stop working when they are trying to stay in a place they know they cannot stay, and the world behind them became fire.

  The Ancestral Plane

  Mizi opened his eyes and the brightness of the place he was in arrived before anything else.

  It was not the light of a room or a sky. It was the light of a realm that makes light the way other realms make weather, as a condition rather than a source. He was lying on something that was softer than anything he had slept on in the years that had come after the rice field, and monks in flowing robes were moving toward him with the specific urgency of people whose job has just changed from waiting to doing.

  "He is awake! Call Lady Inako!"

  He tried to remember how he had arrived here and found the Titan and Habas and the Rainbow Dagger and Syizl's face in the ruins, and before that Ruby, and before that everything he had done in the years that had accumulated between the bridge in Dusan and this ceiling.

  A woman appeared. She moved with the specific quality of someone who has been carrying authority for long enough that it has become posture rather than performance. She looked at Mizi with something that was not entirely pity and not entirely warmth but had both in it.

  "How are you?" she said. "Still in pain?" She sat beside the bed with the ease of someone who does not need the sitting to be formal. "You are confused. This is the Ancestral Plane. A realm that exists separated from your human world. Blessings are born here. Things that should not exist in the human world are sent here. Some people call it a heavenly realm, but it is not. It is simply elsewhere."

  Mizi sat up. The monks moved slightly and he held up a hand to tell them the sitting was not a crisis.

  "Why am I here," he said.

  "Because you almost destroyed your own world," Inako said. "The Golden Dragon Spirit that lived in you has withered. It is gone. The nature of what it was, the aggression, the absence of mercy, could not sustain itself once the vessel reasserted its humanity. It burned out." She paused. "You are alive. The Spirit is not."

  Mizi looked at his hands. He felt for the specific warmth that had lived behind his sternum for most of his adolescence and found nothing, which was not the same as nothing but was its own kind of quiet.

  "You are the Chosen One," Inako said. "You do not belong to this multiverse. We brought you here to give you what comes next."

  Mizi looked at her. "You speak like you know me."

  "I do." She folded her hands in her lap. "Before you woke, you were dreaming. Tell me what you saw."

  He told her. The rice field and the robotic hand and Lycia's laugh and the explosion and the portal and her father's face, which was the face of someone making the last choice they would ever have the luxury of making. He told her the way you tell a dream that you know was real, which is differently from the way you tell one that wasn't.

  When he finished, Inako's expression had changed.

  "The girl in the dream," she said. "The one you pulled through the portal." She looked at him steadily. "That was me."

  Mizi went still.

  "After the portal, I was separated from everyone. I survived alone in this realm until I understood what it was, and then I began to serve the Monks because serving was what was available. I defeated the Devil Fox of Betrayals, which is how I came to the attention of Aldrien, who adopted me as his sister." Her voice was measured, which was the voice of someone recounting facts they have found ways to carry. "My brother departed two years ago. I have ruled as Princess of the Ancestral Plane since. In two more years I will be Queen."

  Mizi looked at her face. He looked for Lycia in it the way you look for the child in the adult, searching the proportions, the specific quality of an expression. He found something. He found the laugh, which had survived the years in the set of her eyes.

  He reached forward and put his hand around hers, which was not a thing he did easily.

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  "I promise you," he said. "From today. I will take care of you. I will not let anyone separate us again."

  Inako's face did what faces do when someone says the exact thing that has needed to be said. The composure held for a moment and then it didn't, and she pulled Mizi into an embrace with the urgency of someone who has been waiting to do this for a long time and is not going to wait one more second.

  Mizi, who was not accustomed to being held, went still for a moment and then put his arms around her and held on.

  "I'll show you our civilization," she said, against his shoulder. "I'll introduce you to the human race of the Empera Universe." She pulled back and looked at him with the eyes of someone who has been alone in a very particular way and has just stopped being that. "There is much to do. But first you should eat something."

  Mizi, for the first time in years, laughed.

  The Outcast and the Law

  In the Human Kingdom of the Empera Universe, the peace between elves and humans was the kind of peace maintained by a rule rather than by genuine reconciliation, which is the most fragile kind because the rule can be enforced but the reasons for the peace cannot.

  A man ran through the city's upper streets with a young girl's hand in his, and the military forces behind him were gaining in the way that forces gain when they know the streets and the person running does not. His face was not the face of someone fleeing. It was the face of someone trying to arrive at a destination before he was stopped.

  The woman who blocked the street was armored in gold-plated construction and carried a Blade of Light from the mechanism in her gauntlet, and she stood in the middle of the road with the specific posture of someone who has already ended this kind of situation before and is about to do it again.

  "Let go of the girl," Nanako Pendragon I said. "King of Venom. Let go of her or you die here."

  "I'm not your enemy!" the man said. His breathing was controlled for someone who had been running, which suggested this was not his first sprint. "I'm not trying to start a war. I'm trying to tell you who is. You keep chasing the wrong person and the real problem gets worse."

  "You have the girl," Nanako said.

  "I'm trying to protect her!"

  Nanako tapped the device at her ear. The dragon-shaped helmet deployed over her face, which was not necessary for the combat that was about to happen but communicated that the conversation was over. "Your story ends here."

  She moved. The blade found his hand and the girl's hand was freed and the release of force sent the girl over the wall's edge.

  She fell.

  She screamed.

  She closed her eyes.

  She opened them.

  A young man was holding her, which had not been the case a moment ago, one arm under her legs and one behind her back, in the specific grip of someone who caught her at speed from a standing position, which should not have been possible from the angle.

  He smiled at her. It was an unhurried smile, the smile of someone who does not find this situation alarming.

  "Are you alright?" he asked.

  The girl looked at him. "Who are you?"

  "My name is Mizi." He set her down on the street's ledge with the care of someone handling something that has been through a lot. "I was talking with the townspeople up the road when I heard you. I'm not from here. Long story. What's yours?"

  She looked at her hands. She looked at the wall above them and then back at him.

  "Nana," she said. "My name is Nana." Her voice had the specific quality of someone who has been running for long enough that stillness feels unfamiliar. "The government is hunting me. My mother was an elf and my father was human. It's forbidden."

  Mizi's expression changed. Not with surprise, because he had seen enough rules made by people with power to recognise the shape of one. But with the particular quality that came over his face when something was wrong and he was in the vicinity of the wrongness.

  "Where are they now," he said. "Your parents."

  Nana looked at her hands again. "The government executed them. The Goddess of the Ancestral Plane forbade the marriage of humans and elves in the old days, to end the wars. A child from such a marriage is considered a cause of war. A misfortune." She said the last word with the flatness of someone who has been told they are a thing often enough to have separated themselves from the word. "They're going to kill me too."

  Mizi looked at her face. The skin was pale in the specific way of partial elven heritage, but the ears were human-length, and with the right disguise the parentage would not be immediately visible.

  "That is the stupidest rule I have ever heard," he said. He rubbed her head, which was not a formal gesture but was a genuine one. "Nana. You are not going to die. Alright? From today you're my adopted sister. That makes you family. Anyone who wants to do something to my family has to go through me first." He looked at her ears. "Your ears aren't long. We can work with this."

  She looked at him for a moment with the expression of someone checking whether to believe something.

  He looked back with the expression of someone who has already decided.

  She nodded.

  Syizl was waiting outside the lodging with the specific alertness of someone who has learned to watch for the specific kinds of trouble his master tends to bring back. When Mizi came around the corner with a girl whose complexion was the particular pale of partial elven blood, Syizl's expression cycled through several configurations before settling on controlled alarm.

  "Master. Why is she here. The government is actively—"

  Mizi walked up to him and looked at him with the specific gravity of someone asking for something rather than ordering it. He did not need to say much. The weight of it was in the approach.

  "She is my sister," Mizi said. "Syizl. Please. Help me."

  Syizl looked at the girl, who was watching him from behind Mizi's shoulder with the caution of someone who has not yet determined which adults in the room to trust.

  He looked at his master, who was the most dangerous person he had ever trained under, kneeling for a child.

  Syizl exhaled.

  He forged the letter of introduction that evening, which required skills he had not been asked to use in some time and produced something that would pass all standard inspection. He built the helmet from components in his workshop, designed to cover the facial features that the letter alone could not cover. He personally walked Nana to the Cathedral and registered her under the sword master who had trained him, which was a form of vouching that the sword master understood and accepted without requiring explanation.

  Nana stood in the Cathedral's entrance hall with the helmet and the letter and the new name on the registration and looked at Syizl.

  "Thank you," she said.

  Syizl adjusted the helmet's fit and said nothing, which was his way of acknowledging something without acknowledging it, and Mizi, watching from the street, recognised the specific posture of a man who has done the right thing and is pretending he hasn't.

  The Gathering Storm

  Nanako Pendragon I arrived at the Ancestral Plane in the manner of someone who has made the journey before and is not here for ceremony. She was still armored from the street engagement, and the Blade of Light on her gauntlet was powered down but not stored, which communicated her assessment of the current security situation.

  Inako received her in the main hall with Mizi present, because Inako had decided that Mizi would be in the room for this.

  "The Mirror Realm," Nanako said. She gave the report efficiently, which was how she gave all reports. "The King of Venom has taken it. Skull soldiers raised throughout the territory. The stone guardians that were supposed to protect the realm have been corrupted and are now assets under his command. My assessment is that he intends to use the Mirror Realm as a staging ground to incite the elf-human conflict again. The terrain and the guardians give him leverage on both populations simultaneously."

  Inako listened without interrupting, which was also how she did everything.

  "We do not know his full intention yet," Inako said. "But waiting to know it is not available as an option. The corruption will spread." She looked at Mizi. "I want you to go with Nanako. Her elite team will accompany you. Reclaim the Mirror Realm."

  Mizi looked at Nanako. She looked at him with the evaluation of someone who assesses combatants as a professional habit.

  "I am Nanako Pendragon I," she said. "Ruler of the Human Kingdom."

  "Mizi," he said. "I am from another universe. The specific name of the universe is not important for this introduction."

  Nanako looked at him for a moment. "Fair enough," she said.

  Inako dismissed Mizi from the room with the specific courtesy of someone who has something to say that requires the room to contain fewer people. He left without comment, which was the courtesy he extended in return.

  When the door closed, Nanako turned.

  "Who is he," she said. Not a question about the introduction. A question about the actual answer.

  Inako was quiet for a moment in the way of someone who has decided how much of the actual answer to give.

  "He is the Chosen One," she said. "In his universe, he came within a single weapon's reach of destroying everything. The power he carried was absolute. The Dragon Spirit that housed it is gone now, burned out, but the vessel it occupied does not empty cleanly." She paused. "His body retains the capacity. Infinite mana, in the form of residual structure. He does not know the full extent of it yet."

  Nanako was still.

  "We will use that capacity to defeat the King of Venom," Inako said. "And after that, we will use it for the Supreme Lord."

  Nanako turned to look at her fully. "The Supreme Lord. The Goddess of the Elves." She said it carefully, the way you say something that has weight. "She is immortal, Inako."

  Inako turned to the window, which looked out over the shining expanse of the Ancestral Plane, the realm she had built a life inside of while Mizi was building a different kind of life in a different universe, while the two of them moved separately toward the moment in a rice field that had split into decades.

  "Immortality," she said, "is a property of something that has never encountered the right force. Destiny has been moving toward this for a long time." She looked at the window. "The Chosen One is finally here. The right force is finally available."

  In the hall outside, Mizi was talking to one of the younger monks about the structural principles of the Ancestral Plane's architecture, asking questions that the monk could not fully answer, which was something Mizi had always done in new places, approaching the unfamiliar with the specific combination of curiosity and systematic analysis that had produced the robotic hand in the rice field when he was seven years old.

  Nanako stood in the room with Inako's words and thought about what it meant to be useful and what it meant to be used, and whether those two things were always as different as she had previously believed.