The shields of Mai's ship held during their entry into Hogar's upper atmosphere, protecting the passengers from being incinerated. The ship crash-landed at the base of a forest-covered mountain. Inside, Goji, Kyou, and Mai were strapped into safety harnesses in the emergency room at the core of the ship.
Mai was the first to unstrap herself. Her young, lithe body seemed too rubbery to take injuries, or if it did, her bronzed skin tone effectively masked them. She removed a tablet-style computer from a console on the wall and connected it to the ship's main server.
Kyou coughed violently. The crash didn't fully agree with her. Mineshi, the owlfaced housecat, poked his head out of the locker where he had hidden himself and examined Kyou from a distance. She had two broken ribs, bruises on both arms, and her left ankle was broken in two places. Easy enough for him to heal, but to do so would break Mineshi's cover. He leaped down from his hiding place and came up to Kyou's foot, caressing it with his feline body. He discreetly healed her ankle while the other two were distracted.
"Good boy, Mineshi." Kyou cooed. "That's enough for now." It was agonizing trying to undo the harness that held her chest in place. Once she was out, she turned to Mai. "Report? Where are we?"
"Hogar. Second planet. Exact latitude and longitude unknown. Mai will have to go outside to get bearings."
"And the ship?"
"Navigation, functional. Communications, functional. Propulsion, reparable. Life Support, functional. Shields, reparable. Weapons systems, inoperable. We won't survive another attack like this."
"Can you get us back into space?"
"Yes. Four days, maybe six. Assuming we have parts. But crippled. Best hope, Anahata. Ship be fixed there."
"A week here, then to Anahata for complete repairs, then finally to Sagesse, my world. This was supposed to be a three-hour trip; now we're looking at three weeks." Kyou removed her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
Goji had been struggling with his own harness and collapsed to the floor once unrestrained. "Ow," he said, his tone was sarcastic, but his pain was quite real. The injuries from the tournament had not only not healed, but had managed to worsen. He was bleeding through the bandages over his shoulder and around his head. He got to his feet and walked with a limp.
"Mai, fetch a first-aid kit."
Mai rushed out of the room, tablet still in hand.
Kyou turned to Goji. "Here, lie down." She helped him to a bed in a wall alcove nearby.
"Why are you taking me to your world?" Goji asked,
"It is the safest place I can think of where I can protect you."
"Protect me? From what?"
"For starters, my best friend."
Satori's ship screamed through the sky as it descended. She had some control—just enough for reentry. But she had far too little oxygen to sustain her through a controlled descent. She caught a glimpse of where Kyou's ship had crashed. In the brief moments before her suboptimal landing, she tried to get her bearings and identify landmarks between where she would crash and where her prey was before she would ultimately crash through the canopy of a forest many miles away.
A combination of parachutes and retrorockets helped slow her descent to survivable speeds, but only just barely. Satori braced herself and prepared for the worst. Fauna, hearing the roar of her engines, wisely vacated the area. Her ship ripped through the trees and cratered the ground. Her ship activated external fire suppression systems to prevent the forest from catching fire.
Once the smoke cleared enough to see, Satori ejected her ship's cockpit canopy with her boot, gasped for air, and coughed. She took a moment to center herself meditatively, then checked herself for injuries. She brushed off the handful of minor scrapes and bruises from the landing, gathered her supplies and glaive, and then headed into the forest straight for Goji.
Mai witnessed Satori's crash landing while standing atop the tailfin of her crashed ship. She was attempting to connect her tablet computer to the navigational satellite system her people put around every planet in their solar system to aid with interplanetary travel. But for some reason, it wouldn't connect.
Ultimately, she ended up pulling up a pre-rendered topographical map of Hogar and guessed at their location based on the position of the sun, local landmarks, and the Great Tree off in the horizon. She also guessed at Satori's location based on her crash and estimated the distance. She didn't like her calculation and decided to report it to Kyou.
Meanwhile, Kyou was actively cleaning up Goji's wounds and rebandaging them while struggling with her own injuries.
"Bad news, boss," Mai said as she walked in on them. "Crazy lady, about two hours away."
"How do you figure?" Kyou inquired, "And don't call her 'crazy lady'."
"Satnav is down, but looks like she crashed about 5 miles north. With the forest, Mai estimates six miles per hour…"
"Satori is from Tapferkeit, the jungle planet. She'll be here much sooner than you think. Let me see that map."
Mai hands Kyou the tablet. She swipes and zooms around the map looking for civilization. "Here, there's a town. We can resupply. Pack us up some provisions. I'm going out there to face Satori. Stay here until I return."
"You're no match for her," Goji complained.
"You really don't know, do you?" Kyou glanced over her shoulder at him. "I won the last 9 tournaments against her. I was an honorary judge this time because I reached the limit and can't compete anymore." She walked as stoically as she could out of the room and waited until she was out of sight before collapsing against the wall and gasping for breath.
"You're in no condition to fight her," Mineshi whispered. "Let me-"
"There's no time," Kyou whispered back, then she limped out of the ship and stood in the clearing.
Goji and Mai packed up supplies into napsacks. Goji handed a half-finished pack to Mai and told her, "You finish up. Your boss is more injured than she lets on. Besides, it's me the crazy one is looking for."
Mai intended to protest, but he was already gone by the time she came up with a response. Instead, she sighed to herself. "This calls for muffins."
Kyou stood with her eyes closed. Her long elf ears twitched as she sought the sound from all around her. She sensed Satori was nearby. Mai's two-hour estimate was closer to 15 minutes for this hunter. Kyou caught the faintest whistle as something fast approached her. She didn't move a muscle as Satori's glave buried itself half a foot into the ground mere inches away from Kyou's foot. Kyou opened her eyes.
"I could have killed you then and there," Satori growled, emerging from the shadows of the forest and into the light of the clearing.
"Yes, you could have. I trusted you wouldn't." Kyou smiled at her old friend. "I'm glad my trust wasn't misplaced."
"Yet you deliberately stand between me and my quarry." Satori towered over Kyou and pulled her glaive from the ground.
"I do." Kyou's tone was mournful. "I'm sorry he dishonored you. I'm sorry for my part in it. But I cannot allow him to die."
"Why?" Satori's rage increased. "Why defend him? Why choose him over me? Have all our years, our history together meant nothing?"
"It means everything. It is the hardest thing I've been asked to sacrifice for this quest."
"You have your own commandment to follow? Protecting this boy?"
"Not a commandment, no."
"Then let me have him."
"I can't."
Satori whipped her glaive about and struck at Kyou's side with the poll end. Kyou's cracked ribs kept her from completely dodging Satori's attack, and she was thrown to the side. "You leave me no choice." Satori stood over Kyou and prepared to drive the blade of her glaive through her best friend's heart.
"Coward." Goji taunted.
"What?" Satori and Kyou asked in unison.
"Look at her. She beat you in combat nine times, I hear, yet you bested her with one strike. You would kill your best friend while she's wounded and helpless just to get to me. You're a coward."
Satori let Kyou live and turned to face Goji.
"You, who are without honor, have no business calling anyone a coward. I challenge you, here and now, to honorable combat. One of us must die."
Goji limped out of the ship and out into the open to face her.
"What trickery is this? You expect me to believe the crash rendered you thus?"
"What are you talking about? I still haven't recovered from the tournament."
Satori couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Kyou, did you do this? Did you take him from the hospital before his healing blessing? Just so I couldn't fight him?"
Kyou struggled to sit up and leaned against a nearby tree trunk. "He can't be blessed."
"What?" Both Goji and Satori turned to face Kyou.
"He is what your faith calls The Unbound. The people of Vechnost call him The Empty. On Sagesse, the ancient lore refers to one called The Harbringer."
"The Unbound?" Satori couldn't believe what she was hearing. "You are certain that it's this one? Not the other?"
Goji realized Satori was referring to Naroki.
"I am." Kyou nodded. "I believe I have stumbled upon a mystery. There are pieces of a prophecy hidden in the Seven Doctrines. I have three of the pieces. Either he will bring about the end of times, or he's the only one who can stop it. And until I know which, I need him alive."
"You bring upon yourself countless hosts who would see him dead," Satori muttered. "You sought to go into hiding, knowing this. You couldn't trust telling me?"
"There are ears everywhere on Vechnost, and broadcasting over an insecure channel, I couldn't tell you."
"I understand you now, and I'm sorry." Satori spun around and stopped her glaive against Goji's neck. "Listen to me, boy." Goji nodded and listened, his hands out and apart in a gesture of surrender. "I have been commissioned by Shiratakemaru, Avatar of Victory for Yukito, the God of Courage, to end your life. I have sworn an oath to obey. I will be the one who kills you."
Kyou tried to stand up and stop Satori, but the pain in her side caused her to stumble back into the tree trunk.
"Peace, Kyou. Be still." Satori reached behind her towards Kyou with a stop gesture. "Goji of Solaris, until such time as your wounds are completely healed, I will see to it that no one takes your life from me."
"Gee, thanks." Goji rolled his eyes. Now he had to find a way to escape both of them. He just wanted to go home.
"Watch yourself," Satori warned as she pulled the glaive away from Goji's neck.
Kyou breathed a sigh of relief. Satori's word was her bond. Satori helped Kyou stand and hobble back to her ship.
"Cracked ribs?" Satori asked.
"From the crash," Kyou coughed. "And you?"
"Let's get you inside."
As Satori attempted to help Kyou limp into the ship, twenty-six misshapen men, all standing about two and a half feet tall, armed with swords and spears fashioned from shrapnel and twisted bits of metal, surrounded them. "Halt," a voice commanded, trying to sound intimidating, but it was too childish to be taken seriously.
"We seem to be surrounded." Kyou mused.
"What are they?" Satori wondered.
"Mai's Muffin Millitia!" Came the reply from within the ship.
"This is going too far." Goji couldn't accept the ridiculousness of it all.
"Stand down, Mai," Kyou commanded.
The Muffin Men held their ground until the command was repeated from Mai in the ship, at which point they complied and stood at ease, glancing back and forth at one another.
Goji got a closer look at them. Sure enough, they were walking baked goods, shaped like little men with muffin top hats.
"This is my accomplice, Mai. She's a prodigy from one of the moons of Insular." Kyou introduced her.
"A Museling. That explains the eccentricities." Satori admitted.
"Mai's Muffin Men get this ship ship-shape," she proudly announced, then threw the packed duffel bags at Goji and Satori. "Get supplies."
"In a moment. First things first." Satori laughed. It was the first time Goji had ever seen her genuinely amused. In fact, it was the first time Goji had seen any emotion not related to the thought of killing him. "My friend needs medical attention."