The Poppy War

She was no victim of destiny. She was the last Speerly, commander of the Cike, and a shaman who called the gods to do her bidding.

And she would call the gods to do such terrible things.

“You are going to paint the world in Altan’s blood, aren’t you?”

“I’m going to find and kill everyone responsible,” said Rin. “You cannot stop me.”

Chaghan laughed a dry, cutting laugh. “Oh, I’m not going to stop you.”

He held out his hand.

I have become something wonderful, she thought. I have become something terrible.

Was she now a goddess or a monster?

Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.

“I don’t know what happened to you in that temple,” he said. “But you are not Fang Runin.”

She had destroyed an entire country with the power of her anger. She had done to Mugen what the Federation did to Speer.

“You’re okay,” she whispered.

“I made them take me along after you left with Altan,” Kitay said with a wry smile. “They took some convincing.”

She had not just altered the fabric of the universe, had not simply rewritten the script. She had torn it, ripped a great gaping hole in the cloth of reality, and set fire to it with the ravenous rage of an uncontrollable god.

Then Rin felt herself jerked back by a force infinitely greater than she was; her head flung back, arms stretched out to the sides. She had become a conduit. An open door without a gatekeeper. The power came not from her but from the terrible source on the other side; she was merely the portal that let it into this world.

“They aren’t people,” she whispered. “They’re animals. I want you to make them burn. Every last one.”

“And what will you give me in return?” inquired the Phoenix. “The price to alter the fabric of the world is steep.”

What did a god, especially the Phoenix, want? What did any god ever want?

“I can give you worship,” she promised. “I can give you an unending flow of blood.”

“Do it,” Rin whispered.

“Your will is mine,” said the Phoenix.