The drums pound through the rain, keeping pace with the stampeding of the cattle and the tearing of their canvas and the thrum of the night through Siyoung’s veins. Lightning splits the skies then splits itself, till the sparks dance across the sodden ground and around them and within them. They are fire, they are immortality itself.

Sungmin and Daewoong stir the herd, to feel the thunder of a hundred hooves against the earth and to hear the drums, louder than ever before. Their hair drips red with the beet that had been fresh that morning. Rivulets of dye tumble across their backs and where the mordant hasn’t set they turn to purple. By the time the sun rises the ground will be black and blue.

Siyoung grins when Sungmin turns to face him, face covered in dye, looking like a dog that’s just pulled its head from the belly of a kill. But even through the red, and the dark and the rain and the drums, Siyoung can see the stripes of blue that run from Sungmin’s nose to his feet, as was intended.

The city folk say it’s dangerous out here. It’s hard to feel threatened when you’re the worst thing anyone could run into; they have all the power, they have Changwoon, they have the drums.

Jihoon kneels before him; he hates to subserve but no one works the woad quite like Siyoung. The beet has already bled into his skin to frame his eyes with thick rings of red. Still, this is an easy fight. The beet can be shaken by the rains but the woad will be just as bright this time tomorrow regardless of the downpour. Siyoung rubs it between his fingers, a thick paste that can be used to turn the blank canvas of a body into the stuff of nightmares.

Tonight he will turn a man into a king, as he does every time he paints with the woad.

The drums double, Vasco has joined in. Vasco who has done so much and lived so long that he doesn’t need the woad any more than he needs his human name. He can’t fly his birds or run his dogs through a storm like this, so he sits himself down on at the point that lightning touches the earth and does his best to keep up with the spell. There’s no magic in his own bones beyond whatever wisdom makes an old soul but he can be a channel.

Tonight all the channels must be open if Changwoon is to become Nochang and bring this spell to completion. Nochang the master of air, the war god, Camulus; too bald for beet but the woad marks out indelible spirals on his scalp that crackle with electricity every time the lightning strikes the ground at his feet.

Those same spirals wind their way down Jihoon’s arms. Siyoung feels them forming a second before he touches the dye to the skin and chases the stain with mordant to set it. Jihoon’s eyes are closed, he seems at peace, though his skin burns against the pelting rain and the drums beat so loud it’s almost impossible to pick out his pulse.

Siyoung presses his thumb to the bottom of the bowl where the dye is thickest and the colour boldest. He smiles wide at Jihoon, in anticipation of things to come and reaches forward to draw a thick line of blue from his forehead, to the tip of his nose, down the swoop of his philitrum, across his lips to his chin.

The woad drips down Jihoon’s neck. Siyoung hears Sungmin and Daewoong howl as the herds thunder on and they give chase. Changwoong chants, off kilter with the drums but in time with the retreating hooves of the cattle, Vasco plays on.

Jihoon opens his eyes. King Swings rises. As his fingers close over the hilt of his longsword the thunder crashes above them and around them, loud enough to drown out the drums completely.

For a moment the night is bright white as the lightning descends to birth the god of skies. Where the rain hits Nochang’s skin it hisses and cracks, like gunpowder falling in flurries upon a match. He gets to his feet and follows Sungmin and Daewoong in their chase, without so much as hesitating to retrieve his drum. He vanishes as far as he might into the dark but where the woad has marked him he glows and there isn’t distance enough on all this earth to keep Siyoung from seeing that.

King Swings drags Siyoung to his feet and pushes him forwards, Vasco treading light through the mud at the rear. Tonight they will head out onto the planes and take whatever they should fancy. And perhaps, come morning, a legend will be born of a man who glowed like lightning and a king who fought with an army of stampeding cattle.

Siyoung presses the woad still clinging to his fingertips to his skin. Face, arms, chest, wherever he can reach. No matter what else the legends say, people will have to remember the blue.