By MMA
The first serpentine dragon of the night soared above young Wēi’s head, greeting the crowd below with thundering roars. It twisted through the sky like a snake swimming in shallow waters, twirling around the many ships and floats as if preparing to strike. Onlookers cheered its every flourish. Though they shielded their eyes from the neon lights reflected off its scales, the adoring mass couldn’t turn away from its fiery breath and the strange magical pull it seemed to exert on the air.
Wēi raced along her family yacht, tunneling past the arachnid legs of her servants and guests to better see the creature in the sky. But as it came into focus, wonder slowly turned mundane. She gripped the ship’s top deck to take a longer, more precise look. Her perfected eyes caught stray confetti bouncing off the dragon’s scales, shimmering like a screen contacting discourteous fingers. Had it not been for the permanent fog that covered the industrious planet, the truth would have been plain to see even for the peasants. Fortunately, for the dragon—or whoever controlled it—its glaring faults were hidden in the mist.
Wēi clicked her tongue in annoyance. “It is a fake. Hard light mimicking something far grander than a light show.” She explained to her brother, Weijun, who loomed over her like a tired tree. Using his own sublime movements, he had managed to keep pace with his erratic sister.
“This should not surprise you, little sister. There could be no other way. The Marquis knows not to wake the slumbering drake for a measly festival. Much like you, the creature has little patience.” Weijun spoke with the easy confidence that could inspire the lower born. Wēi merely found it exhausting. Every conversation with him turned into a lecture.
Wēi continued to lean over the yacht’s railing, admiring the scene. That her family’s ship dwarfed every other float in size and glamor brought her some pride. Her father had it constructed in her honor on the day of her birth. Able to go into low orbit if they so wished, and carry hundreds of servants to wait on dozens of guests hand and foot. Even if the Hou family did not have the power to command a real dragon, they still had other showings of strength, and Wēi took particular pleasure in flaunting this one. The lesser families should be reminded who ruled. Stability and order required it, for even the thought of rivaling your betters is enough to shake the foundations of the celestial realms.
Still unsatisfied, the young noble continued her argument. “That serpent is old and lazy. A sizable bribe would have been enough to appease his tantrums. Instead, the Marquis used the money to hire some cheap foreign circus.”
“It serves its purposes.” Weijun quickly replied. “Resources should be allocated where they are needed, not where they are wanted.”
Wēi scoffed.
“I do not know why I am more upset about this than you are. The festival was made for you. It is a dishonor on your name, the newest hero of the age.” She gripped her sword’s pommel hard enough for her knuckles to turn white.
Unnecessary anger over a trivial thing, Weijun noted in his organized mind. His sister’s temper had always worried him. She was heir to the most powerful family in the star system, and thanks to both extensive physical training and perfected genetic augmentation, her rampages were quite destructive. The last thing he wanted to do was provoke her. He allowed a pause in the conversation to cool her emotions before addressing her last statement
“It is not my departure that should be honored. That is too short-sighted. If I were to fail in my mission, this day would be remembered bitterly. On the contrary, we would come to rue it. But upon my return, I am sure the Marquis will exceed even your lofty expectations.” He smiled, a rare thing for him. It was too forced to be reassuring, but Wēi gave him credit for trying.
“Maybe.” She muttered. A sly smile crossed her face “Or maybe you will get your noggin blown off by a lucky peon.”
Weijun gave a disapproving look.
“Your speech is unbecoming of our noble rank.” He spat. “I have better things to do than exhort the virtue of wisdom to one who lacks sense.” He smacked her upside the head and stormed off.
Had it been anyone else who struck her, Wēi would have them rewarded with a station in the vanguard of some hopeless battle. Instead, she waited until her brother’s back was turned and stuck out her tongue.
Meanwhile, the people still cheered at the spectacle of a faux dragon. Wēi grew even more dejected by the state of things. By limiting the celebration, her father’s frugal actions hurt the Hou’s name. The peons would notice this humiliation. Given enough of them, perhaps they might even mistake weakness for opportunity.
Then again, her father always preached ruling with a padded iron hand. Perhaps the people would see his restraint as a kindness. He wanted them happy and proud of their new army. He valued their spirit. The young noblewomen had never understood his concern for such things. Why should power ever care for the weak?
She paced around the deck in search of some other joy to replace the one she had briefly held. As if on cue, a small limousine rose alongside the yacht and hovered near the deck.
“Wēi!” Mugen shouted from the repulsorcraft. Meet us down there!” Her two friends waved at her from inside the craft like the foolish children they were. Had the phony dragon not held the attention of all around them, she would have been too embarrassed to speak.
“In a moment!” she yelled back. She raced through the halls towards the elevator before anyone could ask where she was going. Despite being of respectable birth, Wēi still found her friends too embarrassing to openly admit to their close friendship. Not that she had many options; most of the other kids feared her.
She once overheard her mother, the Marchioness, lamenting her daughter’s loneliness to Weijun, and blaming her erratic and often violent behavior as the cause. Wēi never understood why that was such a bad thing. It was only natural for the meek to fear the great.
Still, her chest sometimes tightened thinking about that conversation.
She reached the elevator without so much as a drop of sweat. The large platform was magnetically linked to the yacht, which allowed her to land directly beneath the ship.
There, her two oldest—and only friends—waited for her, while their chaperones gossiped some distance away. Mugen was skinny for a noble, though Wēi supposed it was probably because he had not yet hit puberty. He wore an expensive suit dotted with stains, and his jet-black hair looked as if it had been combed with his fingers.
“Hey.” He said as he offered a sorry excuse for a bow.
Wēi struck his elbow with the flat end of her dull sword.
“Ow,” he cried as he held his arm tenderly.
“That was not necessary, Hou Wēi; he still tried his best.” Hiền said.
Even among the giants, Hiền was big for his age. Had he not been knucklewalking, he would easily have towered over the nearby humans. Orange fur covered much of his still underdeveloped frame. Like all Pitchci, he wore clothing only where the fur grew sparse, across his stomach and upper thighs. Where it grew long, it was braided into neat knots.
Unlike Mugen, Hiền gave a proper bow, trying to appease Wēi’s near temperamental nature. She accepted the gesture without further punishment, having more important matters on her mind. Wēi neatly slid her sword back in the scabbard, just as Weijun taught her, but with added flair in her prideful movements.
“Pain is a great teacher.”
“But you are not our teacher,” Hiền added.
“Yet it falls on me to educate you two.”
“Your teaching is obnoxious.”
Mugen put a decent amount of distance between himself and Wēi to ward off any physical response. Still, she glared at him for the insult.
“We’re wasting time,” Hiền said, stepping in between the two. “We need to find that fortune teller before our families call back for the speeches,”
“Yes, well, then I will lead the way.” Mugen declared, with a puffed-up chest and his dirty-sandaled foot planted on a rock.
“No,” Wēi shouted.
“Absolutely not,” Hiền added.
“I should lead. It is my right after all.” Wēi drew her sword and adopted her own dramatic stance, with one hand on her hip and her blade waving overhead.
Hiền nodded. “As long as it’s not Mugen.”
“Agreed!” one of the chaperones shouted from behind them. None of the children could tell which.
“Then can we go?” Hiền called back towards his own chaperone. She tilted her head in assent. Wēi needed no further invitation. She jumped into action, with her two friends racing close behind.
They began in the aristocratic section of the festival, reserved for the nobles and wealthy merchants. It was meant to offer cleaner streets, thinner crowds, and an unobstructed view of the festivities. But that intention did not match reality as the streets were flooded with workers, both organic and robotic, hurrying around crowds of people who had slipped past the lax security.
Still, the trio managed to find their way easily enough, propelled by their leader’s tenacity and pride. With the help of the festival maps posted throughout the streets, they soon reached their destination, though not before being forced to cross through the plebeian quarter.
It was there they found a large purple tent covered in many handwritten signs advertising the Great Knower of Knowledge: the Pythia of the Briarei. It looked jarring to see something so impossibly archaic in the center of a modern city. To a child, its strange colors and unfamiliar shape felt equal parts alien and daunting, and for those same reasons, irresistible.
“After me,” Wēi announced, grabbing the hilt of her sword. She pushed past the tent flaps with her friends close behind. Hiền was practically hiding behind her, while Mugen lingered in the back, more than willing to cover any retreat.
The room was dark, with only the thin light slipping through the flaps to give shape to the deceptively large space.
“Welcome, children, into the great house of stars,” a mechanical voice called from within the darkness. “It was wise for you to come to the greatest grandchild of the Kindly One for advice.”
“Reveal yourself,” Wēi demanded. “There is no honor in hiding from guests.”
Hiền placed his large hand on her shoulder, trying to prevent her from antagonizing their host any further.
“Indeed, there is not,” the voice replied.
At once, dozens of small floating orbs flared to life in every direction, illuminating all but the farthest and darkest corner of the room.
There stood Pythia in all her horror: a four-armed humanoid with a large oval head and dark, ashy skin.
“Are my guests satisfied?” she asked, baring sharp teeth in a wide grin that stretched nearly to the holes at the side of her head that served as ears. She was lanky and taller than most lowborn humans, though there was something deeply unnatural about her proportions—as if someone stretched a man and grafted two extra arms at the shoulders.
Wēi gripped her sword even tighter. Speaking on behalf of the three, she meekly replied, “We … are.”
“Then why not come closer,” Pythisa said, gently beckoning with one of her many hands, “so we may reconstruct the webs of destiny together?”
As they inched closer, the children began to see what the darkness contained. Large swaths of Pythia’s body were made of metal, and tubes snaked across the fortune teller connecting her to a host of machinery that surrounded her like a cage. Wires suspended her just above the floor. Her hands constantly moved, fingers tapping away at invisible keyboards, while her head twitched in strange little bursts. Only her eyes remained steady, and they glowed with a cold artificial light.
She was no ordinary Briarei. She was a cyborg, one of the greatest abominations in the eyes of the Celestial Empire, though grudgingly permitted by the three-nation treaties.
“Your future awaits you, if you can muster the courage to come forward.”
The children did not move.
After minutes of nothingness, Pythia slowed her erratic movements and the wires lowered her gently to the ground. This caused all three of her guests to step back.
When she spoke again, the mechanical edge had all but vanished from her voice.
“I appreciate how well you three reacted to my performance, but I cannot have you three staring at me like that while I am working. Do you want my services or not?”
Her voice carried a hint of resignation, far more casual than than the dramatic display that preceded it.
“Can you really see the future?” Mugen asked, struggling not to turn and run.
Pythia smiled, careful not to bare too many of her teeth. “No. Nothing can. But I’m a clairvoyant, and when you combine that with this very expensive machinery, I can approximate fate at a reliable rate.” She seemed pleased with her rhyme.
Mugen stepped an inch forward and puffed out his meager chest. “Then please begin with me.”
“As you wish.”
Pythia closed her eyes, allowing the near-invisible slit on her forehead to reveal a third eye that seemed to swallow both her face and the stars within its iris.
She began to sway as the computers around her lit up. The sound of their computations was like a swarm of insects. Beating their wings while heating the room to uncomfortable levels. Before long, all three visitors found themselves clutching one another’s hands, but only Wēi’s fascination outweighed her fear.
It was an uncomfortably long wait for the oracle to finish her strange ritual. By the time it ended, all three children were covered in sweat, caused in equal parts by the heat of the orbs and dread for what was to come.
Pythia opened her third eye but kept the other two shut. When she spoke, her voice was soft and without expression.
“A troublemaker. A schemer. An adventurer. Even a pirate. You could easily be all those things, on the run, from everyone and everything. Looking for the next opportunity to satisfy your thrills. Or perhaps drifting from world to world, in the hedonistic thralls that so often take you nobles for eternal ransom.”
“You are saying he will be good for nothing?” Wēi remarked, using the slight amusement she gained from hearing the prophecy to muster the power to speak.
“He has a good chance to be,” Pythia replied. “But I can just as easily see him leading an expedition into the Sea of Shattered Stars. An archaeologist, perhaps, delving into worlds forgotten even by your gods. Good and bad alike, that is the fate of most.”
“Lead an expedition,” Mugen murmured to himself. He clearly liked the prospect of that future. Gaining some self-assurance, he asked, “What will my crew be called?”
“Those little details I cannot tell.”
“Hiền, you’re next,” Wēi demanded, cutting the conversation short.
“What? Why me?”
“So that I may properly outshine you both when I go last.”
“Very well.”
The fortune teller returned to her work with the same enigmatic air as before.
The thought of her searching for his future terrified Hiền. No one was meant to see what was coming. Even the gods had lost that ability countless ages ago. The giant shivered, working his fingers and toes nervously against one another.
Wēi watched him with silent disappointment. Here stood a genetic paragon of the giant race reduced to the role of the coward. She wanted to despise him for it, but she could only ever feel pity instead.
“A coward,” Pythia began. “Forever a child trapped within a giant body. Hidden away in self-exile, afraid of a universe so vast it would shatter the mind of the weak who try to define it. Your fear will poison the water of your home, turning your land into a realm of paranoia and dread.”
“Oh.” The terror drained from Hiền’s face, leaving only disappointment behind.
“But there is another world in which you become a savior. A legend. A bearer of burdens so heavy it would break the back of a nation. You may become the wall that stops the crouching madness of the void from tearing your people’s will.
“Oh,” he said again, though this one carried none of the disappointment of the first. This time, he seemed to stand a little bit taller, while of course, keeping his knuckles firmly planted. Wēi felt a flicker of pride for her friend, and perhaps a little more respect for her father’s wisdom.
“See?” Wēi said. “All that trembling for nothing. There is hope for you after all.”
Pythia gave a faint smile. “That is the mercy of fate. For most, no future is entirely dark.” And keeping her eyes closed, she slowly looked towards young Wēi.
“Shall we finish with you?”
“Yes… begin.”
The ritual dragged on as Wēi’s heart hammered against her chest. For the first time, she regretted coming here. Everyone wanted to know their future, adults too, but having it laid before you is a terrifying burden.
The third round lasted longer than the first two combined. Initially, Wēi wondered whether fear was stretching the seconds in her mind. Then fumes began to curl from the computers, and the machinery strained and shrieked like an overburdened horse.
One by one, the various orbs that lit the room dropped from the air and shattered across the floor. Blood leaked from the Pythia’s third eye, and the heat from the fumes felt like an oppressing hand tightening its grip on the children.
“We need to leave,” Hiền said, trying to pull away his two friends with him.
Mugen offered little resistance, but Wēi held her ground.
“I need to know,” she muttered.
“Wēi please, let’s—”
Hiền’s pleas were swiftly cut off by Pythia, whose voice returned to that horrible fusion of organic speech and mechanical distortion.
“A thousand worlds burn in green fire. Not one of them will satisfy your desires.”
The monitors around Pythia shattered, and the wires that held her aloft pulled her even higher.
“Hatred as pure as gold will flow like rivers beneath your armada.”
That was enough for Hiền to act. He lifted Wēi off the ground and rushed to the exit only to find the flaps magnetically tied and hardened to stell.
Hiền tore at it with fang and fist. Mugen joined him to no avail.
Wēi hardly noticed. She continued to watch the prophecy unfold from atop her friend’s shoulder.
“Cruelty and malice will be your legacy. Built upon a pyre fueled by all who oppose you, and some who once loved you.”
“The monster, it’s going crazy!” The boys cried, though they could hear no response from the world outside, not even the slightest response. “HELP US!”
“Mercy and compassion will become alien to you. You will rampage like a wild lioness across the stars, with an army kept in line with fear and ransom, loyal to a house long bereft of honor. A carnage only ended by the slow hand of a senile emperor.”
Pythia stopped her speech only for a moment to reach for something behind her back.
“Unless.”
Hiền and Mugen renewed their cries.
“Please!”
Wēi remained transfixed.
“The cries of billions will go unanswered by your gods, but maybe that is why I am here. An agent of action sent by the Grandmother, to prevent… this demon child, this future war lord, before such evil is enacted.”
The briarei pulled out a handgun. It was an antique, one that used the oldest form of kinetic ammunition, and levied it against the young noble.
Wēi’s eyes widened as she stared down the barrel of a gun for the first time. She was told it was like looking into the eye of oblivion, and that the ensuing fear would last forever. They were wrong. The fear only lasted a heartbeat.
“A singular bloody act to save so many,” Pythia whispered as her finger tightened on the trigger.
But the blast never came. All before she managed to pull the trigger, the side of the tent exploded inward. Its destroyer tore through it and, continuing his path of destruction, crossed the room in a single blur. There was a flash of steel, and in one swift move, Pythia was cut in two.
Weijun stood behind her. The machinery that made up the oracle’s extended body crashed down around him.
He hurried to his sister, who fell to the ground as Hiền, too terrified to notice what had happened, renewed his attempts at escaping.
“Do not look back, all of you. I’ll cut us a new path.” Weijun said after helping his sister up and gathering Hiền to his senses. He unsheathed his sword, a single-edged blade with fire running along the surface. Aiming the sword low, he slashed the hardened tent door and helped the three children out, while keeping himself between them and what remained of Pythia’s mangled body.
“How?” Wēi asked, too exhausted to finish her question.
“Your calls for help. Everyone nearby heard it, but not many armed guards are stationed in the … plebian side of the festival.” It was only then that Wēi saw the small army of soldiers surrounding and rushing into the tent, alongside a smaller contingent of medics.
Weijun looked down at the children. “Why did you consort with that creature?”
“Later, please,” Mugen answered. “I just want to see my parents.” Hiền nodded in agreement. Weijun motioned with his hand, and several armed men rushed over.
“Take these two to their families, make no stops, even at their behest.”
The soldiers nodded as they led the boys away. Weijun turned towards his sister and knelt until they were eye to eye.
“Are you alright?”
Wēi looked at her brother, remembering how just moments ago he saved the lives of three people without expending any effort, taking a life to do so. One life for three. A fair trade.
Then another thought occurred to her. She had never heard the rest of her prophecy. Pythia had begun each of the others with their darkest futures before revealing something grander on the other side. Wēi wondered what hers would have been.
She tilted her head down to the dull sword hanging at her waist. Then, looking back at her brother, she softly spoke.
“I want a sword like yours.”
