The Bird and the Wyrm
Chapter 69

Chapter 69: 69

The buildings were was quiet and were it not for the unconscious Cheungyis lying on the floor, I would have thought that nothing was wrong.

Instead, Cheungyi (the one who had relayed Aunt Yeung’s message), Yidi and me walked briskly through the walkways and came to a intrepid stop right outside the closed doors to the temple.

Cheungyi raised a hand to the door, her other hand on the hilt of her sword. "Ready?"

I turned to Yidi. "Can you fight?" I asked.

"F-fight?" he stuttered. "You mean..." He made a chopping motion with his hands.

"Alright, stay here. Cheungyi and I will go in," I said. It felt strange to suddenly not be the most inexperienced fighter in a group.

"But I can support you two," said Yidi.

"You can support us from outside," said Cheungyi.

"Okay!"

I side-eyed Cheungyi. Did she often have to deal with all brains, no brawl type of people, people like Yidi?

"On three," she said, drawing her blade. "Yat... yee... sam!" I didn’t know much Cantonese at the time, but I was incredibly grateful my older relatives had at least drilled the numbers into my head.

Cheungyi pushed the door open and together we charged in.

The place was dark and quiet and almost exactly the same as the night before, though with fewer lit candles. Cheungyi flicked her fingers and the rest of the candles in the hall burst into flames, chasing away the shadows.

No one.

"The inner chamber," Chengyi said quietly then began to lead the way with me following. I’d chosen to remain a human for now to better sneak but the further in we went, the more I had to control myself not to transform.

There was something eerie and wrong about the place and... Bells. There were bells ringing.

"Cheungyi-" I began to say, raising a hand to stop her, but a blade of air swept across the room and I barely managed to dodge it. Cheungyi was not so lucky.

The puppet’s ball-jointed body with its chest shattered, clattered noisily to the floor like her strings had just been cut and I was glad that you’d told me ahead of time that she wasn’t a flesh-and-blood human. I don’t want to imagine what the scene would have looked like had she been flesh and blood...

Now certain of the ’who’ in the battle, I flattened myself against the wall and transformed, shooting myself up and forward as I blasted through the door of the inner sanctum.

I hadn’t been inside the inner sanctum before though from the name I knew it had to be on the impressive side of the scale.

I was not wrong.

The room was octagonal in shape and on a sunny day it would have been bright and airy with all the windows that lined slanted ceiling. In the center of the room was a large bronze or maybe iron censer. Thick smoke billowed out of it, making the room hazy though that did little to obscure the boy standing before the censer and the enormous dragon bearing down on him.

The sudden appearance of the dragon knocked me off guard and I swerved to take up a position next to the door.

The boy, Zhan, swung both his hands forward and in a sweeping motion and those same sharp winds that had cut Cheungyi to pieces rose again, slicing towards the dragon.

Had it been me, I would have immediately tried to dodge but this dragon was far larger than me and clearly much more powerful and it didn’t move a hair, taking the blow head on.

The blast of air cleared the censer’s smoke and I finally got to see the dragon’s glowing yellow eyes.

It opened its jaws and breathed in.

Zhan knew something was up and turned to escape.

Misha! Head him off!

I didn’t think and instead swung sideways and in front of the door, whipping around with sharp teeth bared and forcing Zhan to avoid me to avoid impalement. But it was too late.

For him.

Before he could change direction, the great maw of the dragon smashed down on the boy, throwing up broken bits of stone floor and cratering the ground.

There was a scream.

Then silence.

Then, a deep, guttural voice echoed in my head and a golden rope spun itself into existence and darted down into the crater and between the dragon’s teeth. After a few moments, the dragon lifted its head, revealing a neatly bound Zhan lying unconscious on the ground.

The dragon blinked then turned to me and I immediately started edging away.

Up till that point I’d thought I’d encountered powerful beings, thought I’d even fought against one or two, but in that moment I realised just how wrong I was. All those beings I’d fought against before? Nothing compared to the S-Rank Dragon standing in front of me right then.

Not bad, echoed that same voice in my head again.

I shook my head and looked around for the source of it. Stupid, I know, but you know me. I can be rather stupid sometimes.

The air warped, the dragon vanished, and Aunt Yeung appeared where it had stood, eyes still glowing yellow.

I made a rather embarrassing squeak sound out of surprise and sat back on my haunches.

Aunt Yeung chuckled and her eyes returned to normal. "Didn’t Bran tell you I’m of the same ilk as you?"

I dumbly shook my serpentine head and she gave me an odd look.

"Can you not speak in your true form?" she asked.

I knew it was a genuine question, but it made me feel so embarrassed. A few months ago if someone asked me why I can’t transform into a dragon, I’d have just laughed, but now, in my current situation, I felt genuinely inadequate. How many other things could I not do? Obviously, there was no point in blaming or getting annoyed at my parents, but the sense of shame was intense nonetheless.

"A curious case..." Aunt Yeung went on. "I suppose it makes sense, given what Bran told me." Then she looked around. "Where is Bran?"

At that very moment, the door to the inner sanctum swung open again, but it was not you who came in, but Yidi.

"Is... everything alright?" he asked. He had his tablet hugged to his chest with one hand and a pencil held menacingly in the other. Or at least, as menacingly as possible given that it was just a pencil.

"Yidi, where is Bran?"

"Bran? I don’t..." Yidi looked confusedly at Aunt Yeung then at me. "He’s not here."

Aunt Yeung’s brow furrowed, then she turned her fierce gaze back on me. "And you, why haven’t you transformed back? Don’t tell me you can’t do that on your own."

I made a short whine in protest and batted my paw at a bit of fabric on the ground that had once been a t-shirt of yours.

There was something else miraculous about your aunt’s transformation into a human: she was wearing clothes.

Fortunately, she took this lack of ability rather well and burst out laughing instead. "I was wondering why your clothes look so similar to Bran’s. Turns out they really are his."

"So this is your dragon form," said Yidi. He held his tablet up to me with the camera facing my direction. "Mmm, mm. I can see why Tuesday’s interested in studying you more."

Even now I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

On the floor, the poor Zhan gave a groan and tried to sit up.

"Stay down," said Aunt Yeung in a hard voice, placing a foot on his back to keep him in place. "I haven’t quite decided what to do with you, but you should have known the consequences would be harsh before you tried to steal from me."

Zhan muttered something and the foot on his back pressed down a little harder. I saw him try to wriggle his arm out from under him but the golden binding held right.

What had happened? From your aunt’s words I knew that Zhan had been trying to steal something, but the fact that she’d gotten Cheungyi to call me over made me think that she knew this would happen?

I was burning with questions but without a change of clothes I wasn’t going to be able to ask them, so I stood and started towards the door.

But before I could hook my claw around the doorknob, the door opened yet again and another Cheungyi came in. She stopped some steps away from Aunt Yeung and bowed.

"Report!"

Aunt Yeung raised her foot off of Zhan and stood with a hand on her hip. She flicked her long brain back over her should. "About time," she said. "Status?"

"A tally of the manor’s residents has been completed. No injuries or casualties," reported Cheungyi.

Aunt Yeung smiled.

"However..." Cheungyi glanced up at her master. "Both the Little Raven and Malcolm Best are currently unaccounted for."