My fingertip hovers over the message. Everything tunneling onto the display as my mind ignites with possibilities of what it could be. An accident? Should I wait for Thane? No. It’s intentional. Sent on purpose to this earring-thing, whatever it is. Holy shit. Jolie did find a way to reach me.

  As if the world itself wants to remind me that I’ve been staring at the screen for too long, a blunted pain smacks into the back of my head before bouncing away.

  “Ow!”

  I jerk up and twist around, cursing in village slang. There. An arms-length away, an overripe apple rolls to a stop on the shallow shore of the meditation pool; a tiled cove styled in the fashion of a zen circle. The placid surface glistens in the morning sun. I look up.

  The flowering branches of a full-bodied tree with a gnarled, twisting trunk of pure silver stretch above me. A Lungracian- a tree of silver leaves, the oldest in the garden. My eyes trail down to where its roots still clutch tight to an old katana scabbard made of white stone. A tassel of crimson thread sways from the blade’s ornamental hilt, brushed by the eddies of my aura. Petals of pink and gold hues are scattered across the garden floor. More overripe apples float in the shallows nearby.

  Normally, the legendary trees bear no fruit; only silver leaves and flower buds colored like the sunrise. They’re extraordinarily rare to see growing anywhere but the mountain crags they’re naturally found in, as the roots need a source or vein of true metal to feed from. Dad had been tending to this one since before I was born.

  Scowling up at the tree, I take a seat in its shade and put my back against its trunk, resting against the silver bark. The holoprojection is still wavering in front of me; Jolie’s message waiting to be read. Casting one more wary glance up in search of threatening apples, I tap the message and sit back as a recording of a black screen fills the holoprojection.

  A rough-edged sound crackles from the speakers.

  Video flickers to life next, rendering my aunt’s face in stark blue tones. She’s exhausted is the first thought through my head. Her crimson hair is let down to her shoulders, and her buttoned shirt- the same one I last saw her wearing in the Vents- is rumpled and smeared with automotive grease up to the elbows. Her glasses hang unused at her chest while she rubs at screen-wearied eyes. Pale cyan light of whatever JOY she used to record makes her sun-deprived skin seem almost translucent; glimmering faintly off a sheen of oil and sweat. The cramped, throttle-riddled confines of a cockpit encircle her.

  On the outside, my aunt looks little different from the stern woman she was in her early thirties, an accidental byproduct of having spent her adult life in point-blank proximity to some of the best ki fighters on the planet. It’s her eyes that tell her true age. Not a quantity measured in years, but lifetimes outlived. A painful echo of the same old-young grimness I see in my own reflection.

  “Hello, Tetsuka,” Jolie says. “I can only hope that you or Cal will find a way to see this message, as you both know well enough to lose your JOYs. I’ve spread this recording through as many untraceable avenues as I can. I apologize I can’t deliver it in person. But you already knew we wouldn’t be seeing each other for some time when you went to confront Thane. Didn’t you?”

  My fingers brush through the pixels of her shirt.

  “I don’t know what condition you are in, if Cal is still there with you, or if the situation has changed in a way I cannot even predict. I hope that she is- heavens know you need someone like her in your life. I’m getting a little too old to keep up with you.”

  I see her again when I blink. Another body coiled protectively around mine in the darkness. Her black hair mixing with my white. Soft eyes like sunken gold. Like a knife to the gut before I open my eyes to the garden again.

  “Still, even if you were separated, you are your father’s daughter. You’re a survivor. Three years ago, I made the mistake of thinking you- and all my hope- was lost. I will not make that mistake again. So listen well.

  “All is not lost, Tetsuka. Our fight is not done yet. I know you may be tired. You may be wounded and desperate and wishing it could stop. But this is not where your story ends. Your father’s life was war. You deserve to live for more.” Jolie’s eyes fall briefly away from the camera. An unintentional, political expression of emotion. “I cannot honestly say I can give that life to you, because my work is not done yet either. My brother, your father, did not die so a tyrant could stand in his place. Gami is a scourge. As long as he rules, our people will suffer and they will die at his whim. You’ve seen for yourself the kind of monster he is.”

  I’ve watched Gami wring the life out of a helpless girl like scrap paper. Felt the gore slapping into my cheek. Listened to the unmistakable sound of lifeless meat hitting the ground with a wet thump. Monster doesn’t even come close to what he is. He’s the natural, inhuman end of a gladiocracy. Dread, cold calculation, and concentrated power.

  “If Gami continues to reign, everything your father fought for will be undone. More will die. More will suffer the fate you are suffering now. I cannot stand by and let that happen while I can still fight against it in some way. For our future, there is only one way this ends. Gami must fall.”

  She lets the weight of it simmer for a long moment.

  “It is true,” she eventually continues, “if we waited and let the world work, there are warriors- a few- who might some day kill Gami in single combat. But he will never let that kind of combat will never happen in the first place. His power is not just martial. It is political, social, and tyrannical. He has a Section’s resources, an entire league at his beck and call, and he is feared. These are forms of strength that he has cultivated just like his classes, and he will not hesitate to use them. To challenge him will take a coalition of a kind that you alone are in a position to inspire, Tetsuka. There is a strength in you unlike any other. Your light draws even the most disparate allies together in the shadow it casts. And you are your father’s daughter- which might be the most important factor of all.

  My lips press into a hard line.

  “You may not, or may not wish, to take on that responsibility. Your father’s fight is a burden heavier than any other, and it’s already taken so much from you. More than anyone should ever have to bear. I understand if you want to leave it all behind, wash your hands of it all, and try to find happiness elsewhere, even if it comes with the price of always sleeping with one eye open. Believe me when I say that I understand.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  She sighs deeply; so tired and human in that moment. I see her myriad pains all over again. The people she’s laid to rest. The eulogies she’s given.

  “I understand, wanting to leave,” Jolie repeats. “But even if these burdens are heavy…”

  “…those who are blessed with strength, have the duty to shoulder them for those who are not,” I finish in a whisper.

  Already having trailed off, Jolie’s lips curve in a ghost of emotion, as if knowing the answer my heart would give. Knowing, just as I do, that I cannot leave this fight either. Cal is counting on me. Whatever it takes, I can’t stop until I get to her. Even if it means fighting a Champion.

  She deserves that much.

  “I cannot afford to wait for a response from you- I can only hope you can forgive me for assuming your answer and going on ahead. There are many old friends of your father’s waiting to answer the call of whoever takes up his mantle, and I intend to lay the foundations with them on Olympus. If you are ready, join me as fast as you’re able, and bring Ajax’s sword. I’ll be leaving a friend of yours at the gates of Olympus to help escort you.”

  “That means me, Ghost.”

  My ears perk up as the aristocratic voice of a blond-haired Dynasty duelist emanates from somewhere outside the cockpit. Jolie shoots a look back before continuing.

  “I still don’t want to force this on you, Tetsuka. You should not have to fight this fight, and if you choose to anyways, know that there will be no second chances. Until you catch up, endure, honey. Endure. I will see you soon, and I’ll make you all the curry you could ever want. I love you. Jolie out.” The volume cuts as she starts to power down the recording JOY. “It’s done. Go get my niece, Lionhart.”

  Then the recording winks out, and I’m back in the garden. Beneath the Lungracian.

  I run a hand through my hair. Taking it all in.

  Gami. Then, after a long moment of remembering how my last faceoff with him ended,

  Olympus.

  I know of Olympus, of course. There’s not a person on the planet who doesn’t. Olympus is the birthplace of the JOYs. The final bastion of the Creators. A floating realm rooted in myth and martial legend older than the Sections themselves. It’s the stuff of bedtime stories and fantasy tales. But knowing the name and grasping what Jolie intends is another thing entirely.

  A coalition, an alliance to oppose Gami. It’s something that could finally, permanently turn the tides on the desperate situation I’ve been stuck in for three years. Yet it also means turning my back on the person who helped me out of that darkness in the first place.

  Olympus is a world away from the capital. From Cal.

  Pursuing allies there means abandoning her here. It means putting tomorrow over today. It means compromising. Taking the first step down the same path that took Dad away from me year after year. Making the correct choice, not the right one, even though it sacrifices one for more. But what other options do I have?

  Even knowing that, I can’t shake the guilt that comes with thinking about leaving. Cal sacrificed everything for me. The only reason I know I have to take this chance is because I know she’d berate me for even thinking of staying for her. She wouldn’t want me to throw this away. She wouldn’t want me to rush back to the capital to try and free her like a star-crossed lover.

  She’d want me to put my logic over my heart. And she’d tell me to hurry the fuck up, farmgirl, because the bad guys aren’t going to be waiting for me to make up my mind. I can save her once I actually have a shot in hell of reaching her.

  Until then, I’m gonna have to carry that weight. Bear the burden that Dad did before me.

  Someone has to.

  I tilt my head back to lay against a familiar knot in the Lungracian’s trunk.

  “I’m starting to get why he did it,” I murmur up at the branches. “‘s a lot more complicated than it looks.”

  Wind gusts through the garden, tugging at my hair. The ornamental blade rattles faintly beside me. Calm water laps against the edge of the meditation pool. The canopy sways. Leaves rustle. If I close my eyes, I can still perfectly send myself back to one of those endless days of summer that’s locked in my memory. Sun beating on my shoulders, Dad’s watchful eye out at the porch, his hands teaching me to swim, his voice guiding me through a Ki Fighter’s mantra, or watching him cook over a campfire on tents we set up atop the marble square, or gaping at how strong he was as he cut lumber without a JOY. The pride, the love, the unquestioning everything that I felt for him every single moment of every single day he spent with me. For so long, he was my entire world. Now that I’m older and I know that I was just a small part of his, a little moon in orbit of his gravity, it still doesn’t change a thing. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. The time we had wasn’t all I wanted, but it was enough. I just wish…

  “I just wish…” I choke on the words at first, not even sure how to say them. “...I just wish I could see him again. Just one last time. Is that so much to ask?”

  I crane back, tracing the clouds with my eyes.

  “…is that so much to ask for?”

  The tree says nothing. Cicadas chirp in the brush.

  “God. Talking to a tree. I really haven’t changed.” I paw at my nose, laughing under my breath. “I spent three years looking back and wishing I could make everything like it used to be, you know? But it’s never going to be like that again.”

  The Lungracian answers with a rustle of its leaves. I crack a chagrined smile.

  “Mah. Not like you care. You’d be proud of me now though, Mr. Ajax. The real you, I mean. Not the tree. I went off to the big city and made some friends just like you did.” I glance back at the house. “I met one of your… cousins? Nephews? In the capital. He’s fun. And Thane’s back with me too. I’m sure he’ll come out to say hi.”

  I draw one knee to my chest and rest my elbow on it, looking over the garden walls.

  “I finally met Thane’s sister. Her name is Cal. She’s… she’s really cool. And short.” I draw my thumb over my lips. “I think I love her. It’s, I mean, it’s scary to think about liking someone that much twice. I’ve got so much baggage,” I rap my knuckles against my skull, “so much hurt up here that I worry I’ll never be as good to her as she’s been to me. But I want to. She’s the kind of person worth fighting for. You’d like her.”

  I reach out to pat a wide root with my right hand, metal against metal.

  “I’m taking your sword with me. It’s going to a good cause. I know you won’t mind,” I say. “I’m not coming back for a long time, so you gotta hold things down here until I come back, okay? Keep an eye on the other plants ‘n stuff. Keep ‘em in line. And keep an eye out for Dad, too. I’m sure he’ll be looking for you. Wherever you are.”

  Another gust sweeps over the pool. As if stirred from its decades old post, the white sword slips from the Lungracian’s roots and falls to the garden floor with a stony clatter. I collect it reverently as I stand.

  Hesitantly, I lay my real palm on the Lungracian’s trunk, extending my kinetic sense to brush against the murky spark of life energy within it. A piece of my scarred soul flows against it. And to my shock, right as I start to pull away, something reaches back. A primordial echo that wraps its boughs around my heart with a feeling like sunrays through flowering branches.

  For a moment, a ghost of a sensation shivers through the kinetic connection. Strong arms gathering me in an embrace against a man’s chest. I sag into the feeling for the briefest moment. Then my fingertips break contact and the garden rushes back, sunlight sweeping across my vision, the echo of the spectral touch still tingling my shoulders.

  My fingers clench tight around the scabbard. Skin afire with light, I bow low to the Lungracian.

  “[I’ll be back]. I promise.”