Different looks had different weight.

From the strangers, they were lighter than feathers, but his mother's gaze rooted his feet to the ground. Minh's would have dropped him down if he did not lower his eyes.

Xi took a deep breath in, met their looks --except for Minh's who still studied his sandals-- one last time and marched off to the boat that the construction workers sat apart from the others. He insisted on skipping the send-off ceremony. Being rowed across the water on a float decorated with lotuses and dancing maidens, with a wreath of faery flowers on his head on top of becoming a dragon was too much to bear in one day.

The breeze had died down, and the surface of the lake went to the mirror stillness again reflecting with equanimity the beauty of nature and the construction mess. Xi broke the water-mirror with his oars, trying to row away from everything he had left ashore.

Jiang did not come to bid him farewell, nor Zijun. It could not be helped. Some links break off as the chain of one's life weaves on, even if it is not as long as that of a mage or a dragon.

The Radiant Forge loomed ahead.

Xi disembarked in solitude and checked the Forge for flaws, adjusted a coil that did not need it, then stood in the niche designed to hold the Ascendant.

Designed to hold me, he corrected himself pedantically and could not resist searching the shore for Minh's figure. His eyes found him next to his mother, waiting for the ritual to start.

This is good. But he ached from head to toe.

Xi closed his eyes and extended his understanding out of his alcove, floated it through the Forge.

The oiled parts moved, heating up, and more than a thousand needles pierced his body, connecting the energy points. He knew it was going to happen, and he still heard himself scream on the edges of his consciousness.

He also heard something he should not have been hearing: the splash of oars in the water.

What? Who?

The structure barely wobbled as the unknown perpetrator climbed it, but it shook violently when he landed an unexpected hit on the piping.

The metal rang, and the voice echoed. The familiar voice. "Xi, snap out of it! Whatever spell the faery put you under, please... Please!"

The assailant of the Forge was not a he, it was a she...

Another blow of metal on metal, and the hiss of the escaping steam.

Fighting nausea, still clinging to magic, Xi groaned, "Zijun, what... why? Stop."

She surged towards him along the platform, a hailstorm of light footfalls, each pushing the burning needles deeper into him. "No, no, it is you who must stop... don't you understand? They faery tricked you. This is madness, Xi, madness. I came to save you---"

An explosion rocked the world, forcing his eyelids opened.

He looked past Zijun's feverish eyes and flushed face to the shore, where the burning pieces of the workmen's boats rained into the lake. The bits that hit the water hissed louder than the damaged pipe, still burning with the unnatural flame. What remained on the ground turned into a bonfire.

The explosion made the Forge sway, though it miraculously withstood the blast. It still worked, sluggishly, but it worked.

"We are alone now," Zijun said happily, pushing the wild, coarse hair out of her face. "Nobody could come and mess with your head."

The gathering on the shore was scattered by the blast. Most wandered aimlessly, confused. Minh laid face down in the dirt.

Rustam bounded towards the red-headed sprite that stepped out the fire. She danced, taunting the black-clad mage with sinuous hands.

"Who?" Xi rasped squinting at the red dancer.

"A friend," Zijun said tenderly. "My dearest friend. She alone told me the truth about what they were doing to you, told me that if we are to beat the Horde all the seventeen mages must be in the fight. That dragon ruse is a political ploy by the Imperial family that talks clandestinely with the Blood... Xi, they are killing you for show, please, step away, come with me while they cannot see---"

Xi's hsin split in twine, one half staying with the forging, the other - desperately trying to make sense of Zijun's words. "Zijun, the Imperial family is my family. We had no contact with the demons."

On the shore, Rustam hurled a lightning bolt.

The dancing red-headed sprite clapped, and the bolt hit the ground, sparking another column of fire that surged into the sky. She taunted and danced, drawing the fire into a spiral around her like ribbons.

She pulled one, and tossed it, still twirling through the air, at the shore party. Then the next one and another. Showered with sparks or hit by fire ribbons the silk clothes caught on fire increasing the confusion.

Sayewa herded the faery together, starting up a song. The flames started to go out around them as if doused with water, but a fiery tadpole whistled through the air landing on the Emperor's back. His heavy robes took.

Xi groaned again, "A woman with red hair, she is like Yu. A spy, an enemy... Zijun, she lied---"

In the sky, Fenghuang read his thoughts. I am here, Beloved!

The huge shape of the Deserving Du bore the Emperor to the ground, leaving a trench in the mud as she dragged him to extinguish the flames. Her other hand extended, longer than it should be, black at its end, a gaping maw.

A red flashed - the sprite went down, but her flames kept roaring.

The rack holding Xi shook dangerously, buffeted.

No! Xi screamed at the magic bird through their bond. The Forge!

Fenghuang, her talons already extended to grab Zijun, heard the metal screech too. She wheeled away, her mighty wings not moving an inch, strained to stillness. Their tips almost brushed the lake's boiling water.

With a yelp, Fenghuang gained height again.

"Listen to me, Zijun... listen! The demons tricked you. I must become a dragon to defend---"

"No, no, Xi... they are killing you. I love you. I always did, I always will. And I will save you."

The fenghuang's frantic circling and cries alerted those on the shore.

Deserving Du stayed unmoving on the ground, unused to the potency of the Brother's Bequest, but his mother lifted the Gracious Judgment, and... her hand dropped. She must have recognized Zijun, must have recognized the desperate grasp of her hands on Xi...

Each shot is the final judgment.

Everyone was screaming now, pointing at the Forge.

Rustam paced, trying to find an angle at which he could hit Zijun without destroying the Forge and the Ascendant. Xi did not envy him the task.

Minh stirred to pick himself off the ground and lunged forward before he even fully straightened out. A few stumbling steps brought him to the water's edge, clothes ripped off and tossed away shakily. With a great splash, he leaped into the lake, to swim through the burning debris. His arm strokes looked far surer than his strides on the dry land.

Xi noticed blood streaking down his lover's face when it came up for a greedy breath, and renewed his pleas to Zijun.

"They've tricked you!"

Zijun creased her brows studying Minh's dive and progress. She was sane enough to realize that she was running out of time for her misguided rescue attempt.

"You'll snap out of it, Xi," she promised softly, smoothed the hair away out of his bulging eyes, and ran towards the main pipe, a hammer in hand.

Another blow shook the rig, but Minh grabbed at the quivering structure, pulling himself up like his old namesake, the viper.

Xi did not have a chance to cry out a warning.

Minh screamed and tumbled back into the lake burned by the metal hot with magic. His head bobbed up to the surface, and he climbed again, his full lips sealed into a thin dark line like a strike through his face. His mouth did not remain closed for long. As soon as he hopped onto the platform, it fell open in a frantic yell. "Back off!"

He crashed into Zijun.

Alerted by the scream she dodged just enough to not be catapulted into the lake but lost her footing. She kicked Minh with a cold, resentful fury, trying to free herself, trying to free the hand squeezing the hammer-handle from Minh's gripping fingers.

"Don't hurt my sister!" Xi squealed rewarded by the almost identical shouts from both fighters in response. He took his cue, and relaxed.

Or, rather, he relaxed as much as he could, for he was pinned to the Forge in a thousand places by steel. With his hsin directing it, the circulation of the magical currents resumed despite the leaking pipe. Some seeped away, twisting the ritual, escaping his control.

Minh roared, tore the struggling Zijun from the platform's floor like a sack of rice.

"They are killing him!" she sobbed, trying to bite his shoulder. "Killing him!"

The muscles contracted under Minh's skin as he tumbled Zijun over the edge. She smashed into water, and went under, sending a spray up at her opponent. He tossed the hammer in after her. For a moment Minh looked like he might fall in next, but instead, he went to all fours and crawled like that towards Xi.

"Was she telling the truth?"

"No." Xi willed Minh to believe, as he had no energy left to shout. There was no time to explain Zijun's motivation either. "I swear."

Rubbing water and blood away from his eyes with a back of one hand, Minh studied him for a moment. Xi sighed in relief when he saw trust win over love. Minh turned towards the mangled pipe.

"It's broken, Xi." He cradled his other hand, red with burns. Both shoulders slumped in surrender. "The crazy bitch broke your stupid Forge."

In a voice that sounded ethereal even to his own ears, Xi compelled his lover. "Hold it together and I will mend it."

Minh took one pained glance at his hand, nearly crippled by grabbing the heated metal, breaking Xi's resolve.

"We can wait. The workers can fix it, we'll restart—"

"No, you can't wait. You are held together by sinew and determination." Minh jutted his chin forward, breathed out hard to brace himself, then forced together the pitted ends of the pipe. He held them against the pressure of the steam and searing heat.

Xi felt the flow of magic intensify, and turned his hsin to mending the metal his lover held together with his bare hands.

"Fenghuang will carry you to the faeries, won't need to swim..." Xi mumbled and guessed rather than made out the words in Minh's slurred reply.

"One thing at a time. Magic or talk..."

Squeezing the eyelids shut through the pooling tears, Xi forced Minh out of his mind. The farther away Xi could push him, the faster it would be over, the lesser would be his suffering.

He barely perceived the pounding of Zijun's wet feet on the wooden platform, the whip whistling through the air. Where did she get a whip? Why?

Minh screamed.

One last clap of thunder, the voice of the Gracious Judgment.

They all went down.

Zijun, thrown back by the force of the kill-shot.

Minh, letting go of the pipe and consciousness.

Fenghuang, to catch the drowning man before he was boiled alive in the roiling water.

Xi, carried to the bottom of the lake by the fully functioning forge.

Heat no longer affected him. Once water closed over his head, the forge broke apart, releasing him. The muck sucked his body into the black depths just before his every bone shattered, every ligament snapped, his skin sloughed off...

Broken and shapeless, Xi writhed in the muck mixing water, air, rock, metal, blood, qi and magic in the overheating mess. He was growing, growing, and growing until he could grow no more.

No more! He coiled, drew everything into himself, then un-coiled into the azure sky on the twister of water and mud clinging to his surging body.

Make sure your scales are scarlet, it will uphold the morale, the reedy human voice echoed in his mind, the memory making him snort a whiff of smoke over his golden moustache.

Wingless, he soared above the clumsy humans, bringing all thirty feet of himself into the air.

The water rolled off his scales, raining down on them, and they sang praises as behooved them... Alas, the muddy lake would not reflect him in his glory. He needed a glacier for that or the entire Jade Sea.

"How do I look?"

"Like an emerald torrent, Beloved."

Another distant memory. Amused eyes, a quivering full lip... "Minh?"

"Safe and sound, Beloved."

"Ah, good."

He dashed after the golden temptress, the winged enigma he chased for so long through the labyrinths of slumber. No more. He was now awake.