AllFreeNovel
Share Us
With a smooth, expert motion the man drew a sword from the scabbard on his hip. The handle glittered with jewels, but the blade he brandished at me was definitely not ceremonial. It looked sharp enough to cut the prow off a battleship.
“Respectfully, this matter cannot wait,” he said.
11
I looked at the sword, glinting in the light of the street lamps. So it was going to be like that, huh? I was supremely grateful for the threat. The Universe had detected my imminent meltdown and sent me a gift-wrapped jerk to beat the daylights out of.
But before I could complete my ritual pre-fight knuckle cracking, the man did something unexpected.
“Shouhushen!” he cried. He twirled the sword around so that the tip pointed toward his unprotected throat, holding part of the blade with his bare hand to do so. Rivulets of blood dripped from the edge where it bit his skin. “You must listen to my plea!”
The mood flipped like a crashing car. “No!” I shouted, waving frantically. “No no no! Don’t do that. Easy now. Let’s talk. Let’s talk, okay? Start with telling me your name.”
Big fat tears began to roll down his face, though his sword never wavered. “I am Dragon Ao Guang, Guardian of the Eastern Sea.”
“Wait, Ao Guang? Used-to-own-the-Ruyi-Jingu-Bang Ao Guang? Ao Guang who’s supposed to be hunting down a gigantic extradimensional menace right now?”
“Yes,” he said, trembling. “I was entrusted by Heaven to seek and destroy the source of demonic qi that threatened the harmony of the cosmos.”
Oh no. Oh hell. There was only one reason why the dragon general would have appeared before me, right here and right now.
“I failed,” Ao Guang whispered. “I failed Heaven, and I failed the spirits under my command. My army lies in ruins and now every plane faces devastation!” The blade sank deeper into his skin, as if leaning on it was only thing keeping him steady.
My worst fears were confirmed. First thing first, though. I had to stop him from doing what old Chinese generals in history often did after a humiliating defeat.
“Drop the weapon, soldier!” I roared, doing my best Sarah Connor impression. “I want a full debrief, and I’m not going to get it from a dead dragon!”
I wasn’t sure if Shouhushen outranked General of Heaven, but Ao Guang relented and shakily lowered his sword. He stumbled across the surface of the pool until he reached the concrete edge and sat down on a bench, his armor pieces jangling against each other. His sword clattered to the ground, and he slumped forward, staring at the space in front of his feet.
I entered the pool area, breaking the padlock on the gate. It was as much of an impediment to me as a Cheeto. I gingerly sat down on the bench next to Ao Guang and waited for his chest to stop heaving in and out. I hadn’t noticed at a distance, but he was bleeding from a wound across his back that had slashed clean through a section of his armor.
“Tell me what happened,” I said, gently this time.
“We were ambushed in a Blissful Plane not far from Earth,” he said. “The enemy . . . we couldn’t see it. My soldiers started dying like flies. It was as if we were being cut open by invisible blades. There was no one around us, no spells being cast. There was no one to strike back against! We simply perished where we stood!”
&
nbsp; Ao Guang was deeply traumatized by the rules of battle being violated. “We couldn’t see it,” he repeated with a shudder. “It was like a . . . a Yin Mo.”
Yin Mo. An invisible monster, an unseen devil. I had to stop myself from demanding more details. The guy had just said he had none to give.
“It was a massacre,” Ao Guang went on. “I managed to form up the survivors and lead a retreat. We had to get off that plane of existence entirely. In my haste, I opened a gateway to Earth, using the largest, most familiar concentration of spiritual energy as a beacon.”
“My aura,” I said. Back when supernatural hijinks first started happening in my hometown, the explanation was that as the Ruyi Jingu Bang, I was basically a gravity well for this sort of thing, pulling ambient weirdness into my orbit.
Ao Guang nodded. “Shouhushen, I am deeply sorry. I had to get my remaining men out of there. I would have gladly faced death on my own, but I couldn’t throw their lives away so carelessly. I beg your understanding and forgiveness.”
I reached across his shoulders and patted them reassuringly. “You did well.” I could have learned a lesson or two about command and sacrifice from the old coot.
He froze at such informal contact and then broke out weeping again. “Thank you,” he whispered. “From one Guardian to another, thank you.”
Ao Guang suddenly leaped off the bench, picked up and sheathed his sword, and stood at attention. “The Shouhushen is as magnanimous as she is powerful!” he bellowed. “I swear my unyielding loyalty to her in life! In death, may my liver grace her table alongside the marrow of phoenix and juice of jade!”
“Uh . . . Thanks? I guess?” I’d never been offered someone’s viscera to eat, but from context I took it as a nice gesture. “We can take care of you and your men in a few days. I just have to find a place that’s big enough and far away from humans that—”
Ao Guang’s attention was elsewhere. He spoke to the deep end of the water. “Emerge! Crab generals! Shrimp lieutenants! Fish soldiers!”
The surface of the pool began roiling. As if the area under the diving board had transformed into stairs, the vanguard of an army marched upward onto the deck, rippling into existence while water spilled from their shoulders. Soldiers dressed in less fancy versions of Ao Guang’s armor tromped in unison, filing to the left and right and forming into ranks over the lounging areas.
