Yu Di shut his eyes and stood in front of Vimala’s shield. She sat inside with the little girl. He would be damned if he was going to let those two die. He couldn’t pull his Demigod powers to save them, but he still had a Demigod body. That wasn’t in question.

  With no Qi to reinforce it.

  Yu Di laughed. He might as well be a mortal at this point.

  The blasts didn’t come. A white shimmering hand projected into the air and wiped the blasts from existence. A minor explosion erupted from the wall where Kutan had fired at them.

  “What happened?” Yu Di asked. “Did you do that?”

  Vimala shook her head.

  “I can’t believe my eyes,” a woman said. She floated down from the sky in flowing gray robes. Her hood covered her hair and a white mask covered her face. Only her blue eyes showed, looking over Vimala and completely ignoring Yu Di.

  “She’s the high priestess you talked about,” Yu Di said.

  Vimala nodded. “But not the one I was hoping for,” she whispered.

  “My Goddess.” The floating woman’s feet touched the ground. An aura of calm spread out from her, covering everyone in a feeling of warmth like a hug from their mother.

  “Faouzia,” Vimala said.

  The woman clasped her arm against her chest and bowed. “Peace and serenity.”

  Vimala passed the girl to Yu Di and mirrored the gesture. “For ten thousand years.”

  “We must move before they get here,” Faouzia said.

  Yu Di followed without complaint. He could tell from the roof that the city’s defenses weren’t holding against the swarming Shah’s army. Those cannons would eventually run out of Qi whereas the Shah seemed to have an ample supply of bodies to throw at the city.

  Faouzia led them to a fortified bunker in the marketplace. It was a former bank built with reinforced walls. They didn’t just withstand the barrages, but they shed the blast energy into the ground.

  Yu Di watched in amazement. His shield technique earlier did something similar, but there was no way he could build something like that on a scale that could withstand strikes like these without actively pushing Qi into it. If he had time, he would love to study it and see if he could replicate it.

  His inventive enthusiasm drained away when he entered the bunker. The bunker stretched to cover an entire city block and inside huddled a mass of people, mostly children. They groaned whenever a blast struck the bank.

  “Everyone, we must leave before the invaders swarm this structure,” Faouzia said. “Reis, gather everyone and bring them into the tunnels.”

  A familiar face bowed before the high priestess. Reis froze when he saw Yu Di.

  “You are a dead man,” Reis yelled. He charged at Yu Di.

  Yu Di tensed, but couldn’t do anything. He had no Qi at all and this man was a cultivator. Reis was going to kill him.

  Faouzia waved her right hand and a white glowing hand mimicked the gesture, picking up the shirtless muscle man. “We will have none of that. We have to go now.”

  “But this is the man I told you about. We were about to bring you the Goddess when he got in the way.”

  “You mean her?” Yu Di pointed at Vimala. “You looked like you were about to beat her up or do unspeakable things to her.”

  Reis’s eyes widened. “No, that’s a lie. I would never do that to the Goddess.”

  Faouzia dropped the man to the ground. “Don’t lie to the Goddess or to me. You didn’t know who she was until I told you.”

  Reis looked away toward his men. They all looked away. He spat on the floor and walked away, presumably to carry out the high priestess’ order.

  “Where are we going?” Yu Di asked.

  “We’re taking everyone here to the underground tunnels where another of my associates has been living,” Faouzia said.

  “Arzu?”

  Faouzia nodded.

  “I can’t go back there. She wants me dead.”

  Faouzia looked from Yu Di to Vimala. “So it’s true. You were down below.”

  Vimala nodded like a girl being reprimanded.

  What was going on? The former Goddess of Miryana was fiery with Yu Di, but a mouse with this high priestess. The last he checked, her rank outstripped Faouzia’s.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Hopefully, whatever trouble you caused won’t make them turn us away,” Faouzia said. “I loathe to think what I would have to do if I had to force my way into the middle city. That abbot has perverted all our ways and none of the priestesses are left.”

  The Qi blasts from the city intensified outside. Very few of them hit their bunker. They focused their strikes on the ground east of their bunker, most likely on the Shah’s approaching men.

  “Let’s move,” Faouzia said. She waved her hand in the air. Two large glowing white hands created a shield above them as they walked out of the bunker. This caught a few stray blasts from the city wall.

  “Why are they attacking a Goddess technique?” Yu Di asked, glad he didn’t have to use any more of his own Qi to protect anyone. Not that he had any yet.

  “Abbot Lokenatha has made priestesses the enemy as well,” Faouzia said. She walked forward with slow, graceful steps. “Where his soldiers are concerned, we are the symbol that would return them back to powerlessness.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “They think women suppress the men in the city,” Vimala said.

  It finally dawned on Yu Di why there were no more priestesses or even female soldiers. He knew about the abbot killing the priestesses for their power, but the whole dynamic in the city had changed since he was last here. It’s not just an external war, but an internal revolution.

  “This is ridiculous,” Yu Di said.

  “It is?” Faouzia asked. “You come from a country that prizes male power and the male way of thinking. What would you know of the delicate balance we have to undertake as the wardens of Miryana?”

  Yu Di wanted to respond, but Vimala stopped him. She gripped his arm so hard that he couldn’t ignore it.

  “I apologize for assuming anything,” Yu Di said.

  Faouzia didn’t acknowledge his words and looked back toward Reis and his men. “How is everything back there? Do we have everyone?”

  Reis did a quick count of everyone following the high priestess. He raised two thumbs up.

  Faouzia continued walking at the same pace south westward now. She was leading them away from the middle ring of the city toward the mountains. That was the same place Yu Di and Vimala had entered Arzu’s domain.

  Vimala held Yu Di back a few steps, out of earshot of Faouzia. She whispered, “Don’t contradict her. Most importantly, don’t let her know who you are.”

  “But what about…”

  Vimala shook her head.

  Yu Di biting his tongue? That was laughable. This child might be afraid of this high priestess, but Yu Di was a Demigod. Besides, why would he listen to a foolish girl who was so stuck in her ways that she’d abandon the prince? Yet Yu Di wasn’t an idiot. He would disagree with the high priestess with as much respect as he could.

  “High priestess Faouzia, might I ask a question?” Yu Di caught up with Faouzia at the front.

  Faouzia gave him a curt nod. “It better not be about gender politics within the city.”

  That stopped the question he was going to ask, but he had a better one, anyway. “You know who Vimala is. Why aren’t you helping her regain her powers so that she can save the city?”

  Faouzia gave Vimala a glare that would have made flowers wither. “Because she is not worthy.”

  “What do you mean? She was the Goddess before.”

  Faouzia paused. Three powerful blasts slammed into the two white hands above them, shaking the ground they stood on. She pointed a finger at Vimala. “She didn’t do her duty.”

  If Vimala could shrink even more, she would. Her shoulders were already hunched in, back bent, head down, eyes staring at anything else. Her hands rubbed her arms in a shallow attempt to soothe herself.

  That was the same look Yu Lin had whenever she did something truly heinous. But Yu Di had a feeling that what Vimala did would overtake anything a four-year-old could ever do.

  “I’m sorry, High Priestess Faouzia,” Vimala said.

  “I had hoped that after you disappeared you did your duty and that the Menace of Miryana cursed our city somehow,” Faouzia said. “But seeing you alive, standing before me, makes me sick.” The high priestess turned and continued her plodding pace.

  “What is she talking about?” Yu Di was confused. Shouldn’t the high priestess be happy that Vimala was still alive? She served Vimala and not the other way around, right?

  “You should have killed yourself and returned the power to its origin,” Faouzia said in a low voice.

  Yu Di paused. He looked to Vimala for confirmation. The woman looked torn.

  “I tried,” Vimala said. “Right after I realized I was cursed, I tried every way possible. But someone stopped me.”

  “Ying Fusu,” Yu Di said.

  Vimala nodded.

  “Then you should have tried harder,” Faouzia said. “You are the reason this city has suffered. You are the reason so many have died over the years. The Goddess has forsaken us because you couldn’t do your duty and allow a new Goddess to take your place. To make matters worse, you have fallen in love with that prince. You swore your life to protect this city, not your happiness.”

  Vimala dug her foot into the ground.

  Two blasts struck the shield, taking out a finger from the white hand above them.

  Faouzia snarled. She swung her hand in an arc, as if she were chopping the air. A strong white pulse shot out and destroyed five of the cannons.

  “The worst part about this was that I was supposed to be the Goddess,” Faouzia continued. “Not this child with the heart of gold. All she wants to do is to protect and defend. I would have torn that Menace into shreds the moment he dared challenge the sanctity of Miryana.”

  Faouzia’s Qi fluctuated wildly with her emotions. The shield of white hands flickered.

  “Please calm down, high priestess,” Yu Di said. “If you don’t maintain the shield, we’ll all die.”

  Faouzia glared at Yu Di. “I don’t need a man to tell me what to do.” She punched a fist to the sky, and the white hands above became solid.

  Yu Di gulped. He was glad that Faouzia wasn’t the Goddess that he fought all those years ago. There was an intensity from her that must have been developed over years. While she looked young, he knew she was probably older than he was. And if she wasn’t? It didn’t matter. He was cowed like a younger brother to an older sister.

  “Please, High Priestess Faouzia, please end my life,” Vimala said. “I can’t stand doing it anymore.”

  Faouzia snorted. “Have you enjoyed the delights of these mortals so much that you can’t let them go? Either way, it’s too late for that now, Goddess. I’m sure you and I both know who has control over the next Goddess. That fat bastard would ruin not only Miryana but force her to give up the power of the Goddess to him.”

  “Wait, so you’re telling me that even if Vimala dies and returns the power of the Goddess back to its origin, Abbot Lokenatha can force the next Goddess to give up the power to him?” Yu Di asked.

  Faouzia narrowed her eyes. “For a foreigner, you are very perceptive. You also look very familiar. Where have I seen you before?”

  Yu Di grinned as much as a weasel as possible. “I doubt you’ve ever seen me before. You know how we all look alike from the Celestial Jade Empire. Sometimes even I can’t tell us apart.”

  Faouzia snorted and looked away. “It doesn’t matter if you know the secret. It’s not like you could ever take Vimala down into the secret vault and force her to give up her power to you. She is a spineless woman who’s fallen in love, but not with you.”

  Yu Di wanted to add that Vimala wouldn’t give it up to the Prince either, this foolish, inflexible woman.

  “Which is a shame,” Faouzia said. “Since that’s why you came all those years ago, wasn’t it, Menace of Miryana?”

  Yu Di froze.