Demon Beast (Path of the Thunderbird Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Summary

  Shadow Alley Press Mailing List

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Thanks, Reviews, and Free Stuff

  Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

  Books by Shadow Alley Press

  Books by Black Forge

  LitRPG on Facebook

  GameLit and Cultivation on Facebook

  Even more Cultivation on Facebook

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Summary

  TO DEFEAT A DEMON, one must first become a demon.

  Betrayed in this life and in his immortal past, Raijin is determined to escape this prison and return to the betrothed he left behind. Hordes of bloodthirsty demons and a corrupted immortal guardian stand ready to stop him. Raijin has always followed the path of self-control, but to emerge victorious, he’ll have to unleash the demon beast within himself.

  Back in the mortal world, Koida is searching desperately for the clandestine ritual that will cure her crippled lifeforce. But to overcome her weakness and save the man she loves, she will have to become the very thing she despises.

  Enemies new and old watch from the shadows as the warrior artist and the princess battle their way forward. . . because on the Immortal Path, victory is not always what it first appears.

  Demon Beast is the third book in the Path of the Thunderbird series and is perfect for fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Blade of the Immortal, xianxia, xuanhuan, and all styles of martial arts. Demon Beast is written by eden Hudson, enthusiastic but terrible martial arts student and rabid sumo fan. She’s also the best-selling sci-fantasy author of Rogue Dungeon and Jubal Van Zandt.

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  Chapter One

  MORTAL LANDS

  Youn Wha measured powdered bone into the glass flask of bog water, stirring slowly until it dissolved. Some ginger algae, a little nitre, then strain into the acid of the titan ewer plant, and she would have a potion strong enough to eat its way through burled steel. Of course, the chunk of ice in her son’s study had so far proved much stronger than burled steel, so perhaps an addition of fermented listher was in order.

  The listher pots were on one of the shelves that divided the room. Even at this early hour of the morning the alchemy tower was full of men and women crafting potions for the court, searching for elixirs that would advance or strengthen Ro, and experimenting with the properties of newly discovered or imported ingredients. They knew her as Sulyeon, the somewhat vain master alchemist who tried to hide her advancing age by darkening her hair and brows with charcoal. Not even the few who had been alive when she was Hao’s most beautiful and beloved harem girl had recognized her upon her return to the Sun Palace. Years of increasingly more powerful Water Lily rituals and an Aura of the Orchid Mantis had made certain of that.

  Like a grinning skull moth among the bees, the grandmaster of the Path of the Water Lily walked among them, and they had no idea. They even came to her seeking her expertise on healing. It was a wonderful irony.

  Youn Wha selected a nearly full listher pot, then pretended to check its contents for freshness while she paused to look through the gap between the wall of shelves. On the other side sat Yoichi’s study, a recent addition to the alchemy tower. His presence had convinced many of the alchemists that the bastard son of the emperor was taken with their pursuits and could therefore be maneuvered into procuring them special permissions and greater allowances. And Yoichi had in fact come through on a good many of their requests, convincing them that he’d battled with Emperor Hao for them and winning the lot of them over easily. Now that he had ascended to the throne, they guarded his study as viciously as loyal hounds, never setting foot in it themselves and never allowing others to set foot in it.

  In truth, she was quite proud of her son’s maneuvering. If only he could learn the endless patience of an ambush predator, he would make a formidable grandmaster. Then she could take on her final advancement and retire to the shadows like a fat old spider, drinking Ro from the heartcenters of all who danced and twisted on her strings.

  Everything remained the same in the study. The icy coffin rested against the wall, the body that once held the most overpowered life force she had ever sensed tantalizingly close and yet beyond reach. A Ro like the Ji Yu chieftain’s would send Yoichi over the edge into his Bloom of Malignant Beauty stage, perhaps even further.

  If her acid potion failed, perhaps a tincture of fire petals combined with her Lasting Tendrils. Youn Wha’s chosen Path was not one of instant physical strength, but of wearing down over time what couldn’t be consumed immediately. Eventually, she would find the correct combination of acids, poisons, and gentle pressures to break through the ice. Time was the ultimate poison, as the ancients said.

  As she turned to resume her work, a sound from within the study caught her attention.

  Drip.

  Her charcoal-smudged brows pulled low over her eyes, and she turned back to the gap between the shelves.

  Nothing was amiss in the study, but her sharp predator’s ears were never fooled. She held perfectly still, listening.

  Time passed around her, but the other alchemists paid her no mind. Eccentricity and occasional madness were common to the profession, and their own studies were far more important to them than whatever spell she might be experiencing.

  The sun began to lighten the sky outside the eastern tower’s windows before she heard it again.

  Drip.

  Her colorless eyes sparkled as she located the source of the sound.

  The coffin of ice was melting.

  With a twist of her lethal black Ro, Mortal Aura cloaked Youn Wha. She sent it radiating outward, clawing into the lungs and skin of the alchemists and even a courtier who had come to retrieve an elixir. They choked and wheezed and wept as their bodies deteriorated from the inside out.

  When the last sparkling cloud of ruby Ro had filtered into her heartcenter, Youn Wha retrieved her aura and went
to find a guard. The alchemy tower would have to be made off-limits until they discovered the source of the lethal pollution that had killed so many. Off-limits to everyone but her, of course. Master Alchemist Sulyeon would have some contraption or elixir that protected her from the poisoned fumes while she worked to make the eastern tower safe again.

  And when the Ji Yu chieftain’s ice finally melted away, Youn Wha would be there.

  Waiting.

  Chapter Two

  MORTAL LANDS

  Koida breathed deeply and focused on the pair of Ros sharing her heartcenter. Her rebellious life force hung to one side, its violet rings snapping occasionally with bright sparks around a core of denser amethyst. At the center, Raijin’s deep jade Ro shimmered with tongues of white lightning and misty shadow like a peaceful forest pond catching rays of the morning sun.

  Without the glass moon serpent’s pain-killing venom in her blood, Koida could not take hold of Raijin’s Ro outright. Even with the help of the little adder, doing so caused her eyes and nose to bleed, which Hush claimed was a symptom of the damage being done to her brain. Koida’s cultivation would have to grow much stronger before she could even touch Raijin’s life force without hurting herself.

  She couldn’t bring herself to just abandon it, however. The few times she had taken hold of the jade Ro, she had seen Raijin. Lysander, Hush, and even Cold Sun suspected that these visions were just a symptom of a bleeding brain, but Koida couldn’t stop thinking about them. Seeing Raijin had been a lightning strike to her heart, reviving what had felt irreparably broken. On their journey south from the Uktena’s encampment, she had already dreamed about him twice in that land of blue-gray smoke and incense.

  On the one hand, this seemed like a good thing. She had stopped having nightmares of her sister hacking nobles apart and slaughtering Batsai. On the other hand, Koida couldn’t help but feel she had traded one obsession for another. She wanted to see Raijin again so badly that she turned to meditation and cultivating whenever she could, trying to regain sight of him. She wanted to ask him how he had come to be there, whether he was truly alive or his body was dead and it was his spirit she saw. But she couldn’t do that if she avoided his Ro altogether.

  Cautiously, she approached the jade pool like a stable hand slipping up to the side of a wild horse. A chill crept over her. The hiss of heavy rainfall filled her ears, and she heard a distant roll of thunder.

  Still she saw only the shimmering depths of the jade Ro.

  Koida stole closer. Icy fingers wrapped around her bones, and the hiss of rain intensified into the drumming of hail. It pelted her head and shoulders, not large enough to injure her—yet—but large enough to sting.

  If she had been alone, she might have tried to bull her way through the injury and pain, but Hush and Cold Sun were both in resting meditation with her. Koida doubted Hush would put up with many more of her fits while cultivating, and if she wanted to advance, she couldn’t afford to lose the silent master’s training.

  She remained where she was for several long breaths, willing Raijin, with his unruly black hair and bright jade eyes, to appear. It felt as if an invisible hand were reaching out from her heartcenter, grabbing blindly for him, but he remained out of reach.

  Sharp knuckles rapped on Koida’s breastbone. She opened her eyes to find Hush staring at her. The silent woman’s dark almond eyes were unreadable over the linen wrappings masking the lower half of her face.

  “Are we finished meditating?” Koida asked.

  Hush nodded, then gestured to the hulking mass of Uktena warrior standing over them.

  Cold Sun gave the silent master a shallow dip of the head and shoulders, his tribe’s version of a bow, then turned to Koida.

  “Until Lysander returns from the port, let us focus on building a Stone Soul capable of controlling your lavaglass,” he rumbled.

  “Let’s hope I make some progress.” Koida stood, carefully holding out her left arm so she wouldn’t cut herself. From the elbow down, the appendage was a wickedly spurred moon broadsword so black that it appeared to absorb the rays of dawn sunshine that made it through the edge of the forest. The left side of her body was littered with cuts, scrapes, and punctures, all self-inflicted from her own incompetence with her new blade arm. “I think Master Physician Hush is growing tired of patching me back together.”

  Hush’s eyes crinkled above her facemask, hinting at the friendly smile hidden beneath. She gave both Koida and Cold Sun a bow, then left them for the opposite side of the clearing, beginning her own training. The slow, deliberate movements of the Path of Hidden Whispers hardly looked taxing, but Koida had seen Raijin practicing the same techniques once. The training had left his hair and sun-burnished skin soaked with sweat and his voice even rougher than usual, as if his throat had been scoured raw.

  A wide shadow filtered through the leaves, flickering over the grass and dirt. Koida glanced up to find the huge demon ray that had been following them since the battle at the boiling pools—possibly even longer, as it was almost certainly Raijin’s demon mount. The beast never swam in close enough for Koida to touch, perhaps wary of provoking Pernicious or Cold Sun’s strangely even-tempered war ram, but she often found the ray circling high above their encampments as if keeping watch for danger.

  “You were improving before you began using the glass moon serpent,” Cold Sun said, bringing her attention back to the earth, “and your Stone Soul did not abandon you during the trials, or you would have been judged unworthy of the lavaglass.”

  “But my unbreakable truth no longer works,” Koida said.

  She had built her first Stone Soul on the fact that her illegitimate half-brother, Yoichi, had murdered her family, a fact that Cold Sun’s father, the chief of the Uktena, had said her emotions were too deeply invested in. It had worked during the trials, but abandoned her shortly after, when she thought Lysander had killed Yoichi. Though she believed Hush and Lysander that a Water Lily master like Yoichi was probably not permanently dead, seeing how easily her chance at revenge could be stolen had shattered any effectiveness Koida’s hollow Stone Soul had once had.

  “Then you must find a new one.” Cold Sun moved to face her, towering over her as he did everyone else in their small traveling party. “A fact central to your life, which is true in all circumstances.”

  Koida searched her mind. At the moment, everything in her life seemed to revolve around her desire to see Raijin again, but a desire was not a fact.

  Yoichi’s crimes felt too brittle to base stone upon. Her father, sister, and Batsai were dead, but that fact seemed less central to her life and more like a glimpse of her own narrowly avoided death. Or perhaps not death, but fate. Yoichi had said he planned to revive her with an antidote and make her his empress while he taught her the Path of the Water Lily. If Raijin hadn’t drank the poison meant for her, she would likely be trapped in Yoichi’s clutches.

  Koida shuddered.

  “A fact that causes such a violent reaction is not an ideal foundation for your Stone Soul,” Cold Sun said.

  “It was a fate avoided, not a fact.”

  “You are supposed to be thinking of a fact on which you can base a powerful Stone Soul,” the huge warrior rumbled in his blunt way. Irritation crept into his voice, though it didn’t show on his face.

  She nodded and forced herself to focus. She couldn’t save Raijin’s body from a Sun Palace full of Living Blade masters and potential Water Lilies without mastering her lavaglass blade arm. She needed an unbreakable fact.

  Though she wanted it to be true, Koida couldn’t say for certain that Raijin being alive was a fact. Maybe especially because she wanted it to be true.

  She shot an accusatory glance at Cold Sun. His Uktena logic was rubbing off on her. He waited, face as stony as his father’s.

  One thing she could say for certain was that Raijin had saved her from Yoichi’s schemes.

  “Raijin saved me,” she said. It was the reason she was alive and free, and she liked
the symmetry in the idea that this fact could be the one that ultimately helped her save him. “That’s my unbreakable fact.”

  “This does sound like my brother.” Cold Sun raised his left arm, shifting it into an enormous lavaglass machete with a wavelike, undulating cutting edge. “Retreat into your unbreakable fact. Allow it to fortify you. Now cover it in layer after layer of stone.”

  Like an oyster growing a pearl, Koida surrounded her unbreakable fact with layers of conviction and certainty. As she did so, the ache in her heartcenter for her lost sister, father, and the father of her heart dulled. It hurt terribly, but it was no longer debilitating. A new strength surpassed the exhaustion from the predawn hours spent conditioning her body and training with Hush. She would go on training for however long it took—she could because Raijin had sacrificed himself for her, and that would give her the strength to save him. Even the constant nagging wish to see her betrothed again, to speak to him or hold his hand or just know he was alive, faded to a bearable level.

  Seeing the change in her face, Cold Sun continued. “Feel the lavaglass of your blade arm. Shift your focus into it, in the way you shift your focus into your heartcenter. Follow its contours, feel the sharpness of the lethal edge. Trace the curve of the spurs that culminate in deadly points. The lavaglass beneath the sacred boiling pools is alive, like your Ro. It chose to serve you and gave itself to you to do your bidding. Command it to retreat into your arm.”

  Retreat, Koida thought. Become an arm again.

  Nothing happened.

  She frowned. “It won’t listen to me.”

  “You must speak in its tongue,” Cold Sun said. “Living lavaglass does not communicate in words, but in sensations. You know when your blade is going to emerge by the feeling of motion and change in your arm, correct?”

  “And prickling,” Koida said. Though that was perhaps not the best description of the movement of lavaglass beneath her skin. It was almost as if her muscle and bone were melting away in a low, smoldering fire.