Ten minutes later, I had on a clean, bullet-hole-less suit, and the tuktuk driver Warcry had ordered was waiting for us out in front of my building. Warcry and I squeezed into the back with Kest crammed between us. Those things were the main form of public transport in the big cities on Ryu, but they weren’t exactly made for groups.

  The driver hit the gas, and hot wind tore at our hair and clothes. Hoshirong blurred past on either side. The city surrounding Dragon Soulhome was a mix of ancient pagodas, futuristic skyscrapers, pallet-and-corrugated tin shacks, and monolithic high rises. At the far edges of the light pollution, dense jungle loomed.

  We zoomed around a corner on two wheels and practically ramped the rickety bridge over the river. The Great Snake River cut through the middle of the city alongside a sprawling ancient monastery. With it being so close to sunup, the foot traffic had slowed to a trickle, but funerals were always going on along the riverfront. Pyres filled the air with smoke and Miasma, while mourners wailed and monks swept bones and ash into the water. Huge spiked fins sliced through the brown swirl to eat what was left of the bodies.

  The tuktuk’s engine screamed as it climbed the hill toward the Soulchamber. It sounded relieved when we made it to level ground. I paid the guy, and we headed through the gates.

  The Soulchamber looked like one of those British colonial mansions in India. A few of the highest ranked Eight-Legged Dragons lived there along with Emperor Takeshi, and visiting dignitaries stayed in the luxurious pagoda at the corner of the grounds, but for the most part it served as a sort of universal head office for the gang. There were Shoguns running Heartchambers on every planet the Dragons had a foothold on, but they took their ultimate directions from Emperor Takeshi-ketsu in the Soulchamber.

  The three of us didn’t talk as we wound our way along the flagstone path through the landscaped lawns, sections of jungle, and fountains up to the front steps. Kest had built a silencer into my and Warcry’s HUDs, but within fifty miles of somebody who had advanced to Ketsu, you were never really safe from eavesdropping.

  An indentured servant met us on the portico and escorted us inside, through carpeted, mazelike corridors, to the Emperor’s study.

  The study door was made of dark wood, inlaid with a literal ton of spirit stone in the shape of an eight-legged dragon, its claws clutching a throne. Kest and Warcry braced themselves as they crossed the threshold, both managing to get through without anything more than a wince and a stutter in their step.

  To protect the Emperor—or maybe just to make sure you felt as powerless as possible in his presence—the door’s inlay emptied the Spirit seas of anyone who passed through. You got your Spirit back when you left, but that initial drain verged on debilitating if you weren’t ready for it. I was in and out a lot nowadays, so I’d gotten pretty good at pretending like it didn’t affect me even though it felt like every good thing I’d ever felt was swirling away and I could never get it back.

  I wondered if it was worse the more Spirit you had. Probably not. I’d never seen a 00-Rank keel over from the drain.

  Inside, the study was lined with shelves covered in antiquities, weapons, Spirit apparatuses, and scrolls. A dark wood desk loomed over the space, with an imposing Varanusko lounging behind it like a bodybuilding, bipedal, space-lizard version of Vito Corleone.

  Incredible pressure filled the room, like being underneath the liner in an Olympic-sized swimming pool with all that water pushing down on you. The air felt almost unbreathable.

  All part of the aura of a ketsu-level cultivator.

  Warcry, Kest, and I knelt on the thick carpet in front of the desk and pressed our faces to the floor.

  “Sit up,” Takeshi said in his not-quite Russian accent.

  He stood, came around to the front of his desk, and shoved a handful of jade books out of the way so he could sit on the corner. That was his standard power-stance for summons. His tongue slithered out and tasted the air while he stared down his muzzle at me. I stared at the fibers in his suit jacket and waited.

  “Much better, Death cultivator. Takeshi’s tailor makes you look less like prison planet escapee, more like strong, respectable Eight-Legged Dragon.”

  “Thanks for the referral, Almighty Emperor,” I said, trying not to sound grudging about it.

  He turned to Warcry. “Takeshi hears Burning Hatred cultivator’s sentence was paid off by anonymous source. Very fortunate, yes?”

  Warcry nodded and gave a seated bow. “Thank you, Almighty Emperor.”

  “Now you put clean slate to good use to repay mysterious benefactor,” Takeshi said. “Miss Selken, tell smash-em-up brothers what year this is on your ancestor’s planet.”

  Kest’s lacy eyes went even wider than usual and her mouth dropped open.

  “It’s the Year of the Opal,” she said like somebody who’d forgotten her own birthday. “Election year.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Exactly so. The one hundred eighty-ninth year of previous monarch’s reign is coming to a close. Time to return to ancestral planet and take back what your family lost three generations ago.”

  For the benefit of the non-Selkens in the room, Takeshi explained.

  “Selk considers itself most civilized inner planet, much better than other inner planets. They are ruled by a monarch for the lifetime of one Selken—one hundred eighty-nine years. But to show universe that they are more civilized than planets such as Ham or Cathep-2, netskins hold electoral tournament to elect new monarch. Each candidate chooses a champion to demonstrate military might, while behind the scenes, they assassinate one another and champions without getting caught to demonstrate cunning. Rest of process is complicated, voting is distraction to entertain citizens, tournament is broadcast for major revenue, but this is essence of the thing, yes?”

  “Yes, Emperor Takeshi-ketsu.” Kest still sort of looked like the victim from a hit and run, but she was starting to come out of it. “To clarify—you want me to go to Selk and submit myself as a candidate?”

  “Did Iye Skals not formerly hold seat of power?”

  “Back in my nona’s nona’s time. Trying to retake it from a corrupt monarch was what got her and Pop-pop exiled until the third generation.” Frowning, Kest talked through Takeshi’s reasoning. “With the Heartblood Crown, I can’t be killed, so I’m the ideal candidate to avoid the risk of a messy assassination. Home-planet comeback story, that will be good for the sympathy vote. With my family name and the crest of the Traitor nets the dissident vote. You cleared Warcry’s record so that I could submit him as my champion. He’s already famous from his IFC days, so he’s guaranteed to come with a built-in fanbase. And when I take the throne, I assume the Dragons will be there to helpfully guide my rule?”

  Takeshi grinned, showing rows of yellow lizard teeth. “Despite eight legs, Dragons have yet to gain a foothold on Selk. Until now, Technols bar us from entry at every turn, but they cannot stop a third-generation Selken who holds the Crest of the Traitor from returning during the Year of the Opal to join electoral tournament.”

  The Dragons and the Technols were ancient enemies. Taking an inner planet out from underneath the Technols would be a major blow and knock them off-balance for the impending gang war.

  “I live to serve the Eight-Legged Dragons,” Kest said automatically. “But to win over Selk, I’ll need to stop on Van Diemann first. The Dragons’ prison planet recruiter has my Crest.”

  “Is easily arranged,” Takeshi said.

  “Thank you, Almighty Emperor.” Kest gave a seated bow. “So I’m the candidate, Warcry’s the champion… How does Hake fit into this?”

  “You cannot be killed, but Burning Hatred meat roach can. Death cultivator will serve as bodyguard to your champion while on Selk.” Takeshi-ketsu turned to me. “If Mr. Champion dies before he secures throne for Miss Metalhead, Eight-Legged Dragons hold new 019-Rank personally responsible.”

  “I’ll win it, and the grav’ll have me back while I do,” Warcry said. “He always has before.”

  Takeshi raised a hairless brow ridge. That wasn’t one of the acceptable responses to an order from the Emperor.

  “I live to serve the Eight-Legged Dragons,” Warcry corrected himself, bowing apologetically.

  “Is good!” The Komodo Emperor slapped his scaly hands together. “Transport leaves space port in one hour with Future Monarch of Selk and meat roaches on board.”

  The spirit stone door swung open behind us, and the indentured servant bowed from the hall, waiting to escort us out. Dismissed.

  We pressed our foreheads to the floor one more time, then stood to leave.

  “Not you, Death cultivator. You have one more order of business to discuss.”

  I hung back while Kest and Warcry sidled out into the hallway without putting their backs to the Emperor. Their Spirit returned on their way past the stone dragon, and the door swung shut behind them.

  “How else may I serve the Eight-Legged Dragons, Almighty Emperor?” I read from the unwritten script for these summons.

  “Selk is home to major CPA hub,” Takeshi said. “Is very corrupt. Dragons cannot in good conscience allow this to continue.”

  The Confederated Planetary Authority served as the police force for the universe. Everybody knew they took bribes and payoffs from the Big Five. If Takeshi was calling them corrupt, that just meant the CPA on Selk was in the Technols’ pocket, not the Dragons’.

  “Is Death cultivator listening to Takeshi?”

  He asked because I was studying a vase on the shelf behind him instead of looking him in the eyes. Usually these days I tried not to, especially when we were alone together. It was too dangerous. Sometimes, though, I couldn’t avoid it without making it awkward. Like right then.

  I met his cold lizard gaze. “Yes, Almighty Emperor.”

  Murders, torture, extortions, full-scale destruction of peoples and places, played across Takeshi’s eyes. All done in the name of justice. In Takeshi’s case, “justice” meant wiping out the Technols for what they had done centuries ago, back when they were still the Technological Edge Mining Corporation and the Eight-Legged Dragons were eight little villages standing in their way.

  Vicious black fury surged through me, ready to strike, a combination of righteous anger and excitement to be the one who slayed the dragon. I was the ultimate answer, the eternal payback, not just for the guys out there doing evil for fun like Zheytarr, but for guys who thought the ends justified any means they came up with, even if that meant the innocent became collateral damage. Guys like Takeshi.

  Guys like me.

  The thought stopped that striking blacksnake cold. Takeshi hadn’t started out killing his friends or the innocent family members of Technols, but his drive for Relentless Justice eventually got too powerful to ignore targets like that that would get the job done. Nowadays he didn’t think twice about it.

  I hadn’t thought twice about it two months ago when I wiped out a quarter of the population of Sarca, good and bad alike, to get revenge on the Bailiff. Rali had thought the devil corruption was to blame, that it was changing me into the villain of the story who the hero was going to have to kill.

  Maybe it was. Or maybe this wasn’t a sword legend. Maybe this was real life.

  Whatever the reason was, recognizing that I was walking the same line as Takeshi stopped me from reaching for his life point long enough to remember that I wasn’t ready to take on a Ketsu-ranked cultivator yet. If I even looked at him wrong, he was within his legal rights in this universe to vaporize me.

  And that was why it was dangerous for me to look Takeshi-ketsu in the eyes.

  “When Death cultivator arrives on Selk, agent of CPA will meet you,” the Emperor went on with no idea how close he’d been standing to an assassination attempt. “He shows you the corrupt agents to remove, you eliminate them. When these agents are no more, you instate him as new Head of CPA. End this injustice and bring forth new era of right.” He thumped his chest. “Dragons save Selk, and from there, we spread and save rest of Confederated Planets.”

  I bowed and gave him the response he wanted.

  “I live to serve the Eight-Legged Dragons.”

  my Patreon is 12 chapters ahead. We've already splashed down on Selk, and Warcry and Kest are cranking away at the electoral tournament while the Cursed Death cultivator goes about his secret mission his own way. Does he really live to serve?

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