Tao had practiced the face for an hour in the stream that morning.
By the time he reached the paddies he had it perfect: brows down, jaw out, lip curled.
It was the face of a man who took what he wanted.
An old farmer was working the nearest plot.
A round, white-bearded grandfather, bent over his rice with the care of a man tending his children.
Tao kicked up some dirt on the road beside him and put the face on.
“Move aside!
Make way for the Great Tao, if you want to keep your head!”
The farmer straightened and shaded his eyes.
He studied the patched hides, the grime, the hungry cheeks, the face.
Then he started laughing.
He laughed until he had to put his hands on his knees.
Until he was coughing.
Until tears ran into his beard.
When Tao ducked his head and walked on, he laughed harder.
Something went out of Tao then, like a pot cracking in the fire.
Master was watching, and Master had trusted him with the most important part, and he couldn’t even frighten a grandfather.
The guard at the gate took one look at him and wrinkled his nose.
He waved him through, like he wanted the smell past quicker.
Inside there were people everywhere, far more than there’d seemed from the ridge.
Tao’s feet carried him to the square before his head caught up.
A woman with a basket glanced his way.
He did the only thing he could think of.
He stepped behind the big tree in the middle of the square and stood very still.
He put his hand in his pouch and closed it around his lucky rock.
It had never failed him.
“Son, are you lost?” A portly man with a magnificent beard was coming toward the tree, slow and gentle.
“Do you need directions somewhere?”
Tao drew his sword. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
His hands were so wet it jumped straight out of them and rang on the flagstones.
He snatched it up, nearly dropped it again, and held it out in front of him with both hands.
Somewhere behind the bearded man a small boy tugged his mother’s sleeve.
“Mama, why’s that man holding his sword backwards?”
A mile away, Hunter lay in the grass and felt the whole square turn toward that tree.
Tao’s heart was racing, and nobody else’s was.
[SYSTEM] HEY.
IF THIS MISSION FAILS, YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS
“Now,” Hunter said, already on his feet.
“Tao’s in trouble, go!”
He had never used the new body in earnest.
He had walked in it and bathed in it and eaten pig in it.
Now he put everything he had into his legs and pushed off.
The ground went out from under him with a bang.
The road came at him in a smear.
The gate was a dot, then a doorway.
In the doorway stood the old guard, up off his bucket, planted square in the gap with one palm out and his spear in the other.
Something was coming at his village, and he was not the kind of man who ran.
There was a half-second, no more, when Hunter saw him clearly and saw the paddies to the left, soft and wide.
He could throw himself sideways into the mud and lose the run, and lose Tao with it.
He didn’t.
He braced.
Then he threw his weight back and dug his heels in.
His heels plowed two trenches in the road.
It was nowhere near enough.
The sound was the worst of it.
It was short and heavy and wet, and then there was nothing where the old man had been standing except what was left of him, spread across the gateway and the stones.
Hunter was on his knees in it before he knew he’d moved. This story is hosted at g.com.
“No, no, I’m sorry, hold on, I’ll—” His hands went out to help and found nothing that could be helped.
There was no pulse to find, and nothing to press on, and nobody to call.
The smell came next, copper and worse.
He should have moved, some small, cold part of him said.
He should have got out of the way.
He hated that voice more than anything he’d ever heard.
[SYSTEM] RESISTANCE ELIMINATED: 1
He looked back up the road.
On the rise where he’d been lying, a mile off, the earth was torn open in a raw brown crater five feet across.
Two furrows ran down the road toward him where he’d tried to brake, and they ended here.
He hadn’t meant to kill anyone.
He’d pushed with everything, and nobody had told him how much everything was.
He got up, and his clothes clung to him, soaked through.
In the square, the villagers had come together around the tree, packed shoulder to shoulder, and they were silent.
Every one of them was looking at him.
Mothers had their children’s faces pressed into their skirts.
Two younger men had stepped in front of the others with nothing in their hands.
Lex and Xuan came panting through the gate behind him, and stopped dead at what was on the stones.
Then, far too late, they remembered themselves, raised their weapons, and stepped up on either side of him.
Hunter stopped in front of the crowd.
He had no idea what to say.
The bearded man lifted both hands, slowly.
“Please,” he said, and his voice shook.
“Whatever you want, it’s yours.
Just don’t hurt anyone else.”
Hunter’s mouth had gone completely dry.
Shit, he thought.
I think I am a villain—