~YU~

There is no shortage of basalt in the Demon-land, Yu thought, craning his neck to see the top rows of the black stone seats rising in a semicircle above the arena's floor. The grandiose scale of the amphitheatre was emphasized by the many empty seats way above him. Despite that, he had more audience crowding the lower tiers than he had wanted. Yu had never been good at talking, let alone making public addresses to the demons. He wished Shan Jiang was here. He'd known what to say.

But Yu did not have Jiang's glib tongue at his service. His assets consisted of Deji's dubious support, his blood, and a few words he picked up from the demons so far.

He found the familiar scowling face in the first row to address himself to. "Blood-leaders!" he cried out and cringed. His voice carried far more than he expected thanks to the master-builders of this place, and he sounded childishly high.

Celestials! After today I will leave speaking to others, I swear. Just favour me today, please.

"I am Yu, descended from Daji, and I owe a blood debt for my birth-qi!"

The amphitheatre amplified the demons' howling laughter threefold.

Yu suppressed a shudder and pulled in a lung full of air. He was screaming to drown out both their mockery and his own fear. "I bring you the way to crush your ancient enemies as my payment."

They stopped laughing, but the demons in the first row exchanged glances that spoke volumes. They judged him a lunatic.

He did not expect anything else. "For my debt and Daji's, I offer you the dominion over the Laughing Men Islands."

He gave Daji a sideways glance. His mother looked like she wanted the rock to open up and swallow her whole already. He smiled despite his precarious position.

"It is not yours to give, O Youngest," said the Blood-leader with a polite smile that made his skin crawl.

Yu hurried to explain. "I am invested to treat with you by those who can give it. Lord Zha Yao offers you an alliance. Between us, we can crush the Laughing Men."

The grand words did not sound right coming from a skinny youth like him, but a human, even a great hero, would have never made it this far. Yu straightened his shoulders until his shoulder blades creaked.

"And how does that pay down your debt?" The demon mocked.

"Thank you for asking!" for a moment he felt like he was a merchant crying his wares in the market

When he took a slender scroll-case off his shoulder, he was copying Jiang's mannerisms.

Finally, he paused the way Zha Yao did. "Without me, these scrolls will fall into dust."

Their undivided attention weighed on him, making him shy. He emptied the container with shaking hands, before unrolling the scrolls one by one in front of the Blood. "The treaty. The strategy. The designs for the castle ships."

The demons leaned forward. He steeled himself for more talking. "I am also authorized to arrange a rendezvous with an ally who can melt off armour from the castle ships."

He was done now, and they no longer laughed. His old acquaintance, the Blood-leader, left the bench and picked up the scrolls, skimming through their content. Yu felt a momentary pang of sheer terror. For all he knew, they said 'consume the messenger upon receipt'. Or they'd been spoiled by water despite Finch's assurances that they would not.

"The Mage in black wrote those?" the Blood-leader asked.

"Yes," lying felt easy in this company, and what was the point of clarifying that Finch was a mere Senior Apprentice? If it mattered to him, he could have tagged along.

"We will deliberate, O Youngest," The Blood-leader said.

"The window of opportunity is closing fast," Yu warned him.

The demon flashed his teeth, and Yu saw that they were filed to sharp points. "Blood's ways are swift, O Youngest."

Yu went to sit out of the earshot with Daji. They did their best to ignore one another until the rest of the demons yelled as one: "BLOOD!"

The chilling scream shook the foundations of the arena. It sounded sweeter to Yu's ears than anything since he'd last heard Tien Lyn's voice. The Blood-leader passed the scroll around and brought him a treaty signed in a script as ornamental as he had ever seen in the shrines. It was sealed with a large imprint of a coiled sea-serpent, rings within rings, and a toothy gaping maw.

Yu took the brush offered to him, bit the tip of his tongue, and carefully penned a single sign, his own name. It looked correct if crude, and he did not smear the ink or blotted the precious scroll. Then he noticed Daji staring daggers at him, despite his success delivering her from the danger as well, and felt really smug. He would not have added her name as a part of his, customary or not, even if he had had the faintest clue how to write 'Daji'.

***

The demons might have reached consensus faster than the Imperial bureaucrats, but the assembling of their troops took time just like with any other people. Yu was fed fish wrapped in seaweed with a thousand pickled roots, and housed in a black tower with a view on a misty waterfall, but he felt lonely.

Whenever he left his cell, the younger demons accosted him, offering him 'a bit of fun', a friendly arena match to test his mettle before the real fighting. Their secretive grins and knowing that his role was too important for him to die stupidly, made him refuse. 'Coward,' they'd hiss behind his back. As the days passed, Yu grew as sick of their hissing as he was of the lewd tunes of whatever far-away land that the 'Waverunner' had hailed from.

Finally, he could stand staring at the waterfall and counting days no more.

"Lead on!" he told the next challenger.

It could not be worse than training with Finch.

The wiry demon's jaw fell open in a mock surprise. He whistled excitedly and shouted for his comrades. Who, in turn, waved to theirs. Yu arrived at the stone-bordered circle on the black-sand beach in a company of at least ten eager spectators.

Eager to see me beaten up.

The ringmaster ordered the two of them to strip to the waist and searched them for hidden weapons. Naturally, he did not send his opponent for an emergency manicure session to even out the odds. Yu winced at the sight of the demon's wicked claws.

The demon lunged for Yu as soon as the ringmaster finished a blessing for the combatants. It was a feint, and while Yu was busy dodging the slashing claws, he felt the greedy spirit latch on to the core of his being to siphon his qi. He severed and blocked, but paid for his spiritual defence by an ugly cut through his shoulder. Luckily, his legs were fine, so Yu ran to create some distance between himself and his opponent, and just healed up.

"Coward," the demon hissed, and Yu picked up on the impatient throb in his opponent's private parts. He had no time to marvel at the creature's sensual response to violence and created a divergence the same way he'd once made Finch retch. As the demon soiled himself to the hoots of the crowd, Yu did what the rules told him to do. He latched on and took a long swig of the enemy's qi.

The hilarity around the arena died down. They all felt what he did and how much he took in. His opponent was reduced to shivering mess on the sand.

Yu turned to the ringmaster: "Can I return it?"

"No," the ringmaster said bleakly, "You may not."

"Cheater!" the beaten demon howled. "Coward!"

The verdict was unanimous, but instead of chasing him away dishonoured, they challenged him again and again. Yu soon became quite fleet of foot. Teasing apart the demons' raw emotions was trivial compared to blank Finch's, so he won far more bouts than he lost.

The first time it was him panting face-down, plastered with blood and sand, Yu thought they'd end him. But the ringmaster enforced the rules, however grouchy. No kills. With the fear of dying for the sake of vanity gone, Yu relaxed a little and started to take grim satisfaction in their taunts whenever he won, and their cheers whenever he lost.

Then came the day when the ringmaster had to sever him from his opponent with a blow that it broke his nose. Yu scowled at the man through pain and rainbows: "Holler next time, friend."

The ringmaster guffawed: "You could not hear, friend."

Yu stumbled away to watch his waterfall and heal his nose.

"Cheater!" they yelled behind his back. "Coward!"

He did not care.

Daji invited herself in and twisted his face left and right. "Your nose looks fine, son. I have never seen anyone regenerate so fast."

"How did you know?" Yu leaned away, because her talons scratched his cheek, and because he did not want her to touch him.

"I was watching," she said. "Stay with us after we are through with the Laughing Men. It's your only chance to live longer than a blink of an eye."

Tien Lyn's bracelet felt tight on his wrist again, so he busied himself with untying the string and re-wrapping it with fewer coils. He'd had to do it twice already since he started fighting. And his wrists weren't the only part of him growing thicker. He felt muscles building on his neck and shoulders, and on his thighs. Sometimes he was afraid to look at or touch his changing anatomy, sometimes it pleased him.

"Mother," he said after he was done with the string. "I do not want a longer lifetime of being called a coward."

Daji laughed. "Yu, don't you understand? Winning is all that counts. Let them blather! Every one of them is trying to heal like you, and cannot. So they curse you, and you beat them. Have the Kneeling Men changed so much since my last sojourn that you have never run across this before?"

"I have never competed with humans," Yu muttered.

"Think about what I have offered you," Daji said almost warmly.

Despite everything, a small part of him still craved her approval. He nodded. "I will."

She slipped a claw of her little finger under his bracelet: "As for this, you will find better among us."

"No," Yu said, freeing his hand from her talons. "I won't."

Daji gave him a knowing smile that made her climb another rung on the ladder of his hatred.

AN: Yu still has one more bit of his story to tell on Friday. Thank you so much for reading!