“Well…waste not, want not,” she murmured before retracing her path to the camp. Her attackers certainly weren’t going to enjoy the meal.
The fish over the fire were horribly charred, but a hot meal after a battle was all the motivation she needed to linger at the bandit camp. She devoured every blackened morsel while Fusan grazed nearby, until, with her hunger sated, she took a good look at the gear stacked around her.
The group appeared to have done well for themselves. She found a sack filled with coins and a variety of weapons. Most were basic blades, chipped on their edges, but she also found a well-made shortbow with a full quiver.
“I don’t think the dead will mind, do you, Fusan?”
The horse snorted and nosed a nearby crate. The box rattled and buzzed, startling Mulan. She waited until the noise stopped then slowly approached. The box rattled again, but despite her uncertainty, she lifted the lid.
Four cages sat nestled inside, each one holding tiny creatures that appeared as vibrant lights. She lifted one, counting three separate colors inside. Pixies. She’d heard of the magical creatures, of course, but she had never seen one before, as they originated from the kingdom to the north. Lanfen had once told her pixie wings made a potent powder for many alchemical mixtures, but she never used them.
“You’re very far from where you belong,” she murmured. The bandits must have brought them down the river from the forests bordering Cairn Ocland. “I can’t take you home, but I can give you a chance to make it back on your own.”
Holding her breath and hoping they would go without hassle, she opened the cage. Three pixies burst out and circled around her head. Their voices sounded like chiming bells. She remained very still and waited, until the creatures swooped to their imprisoned friends. Mulan took it as a sign of faith and lifted the next cage, repeating the process until every pixie had been freed. The colorful swarm danced over her head and drifted upward into the trees, until they finally vanished from her view.
“Safe journeys,” she whispered.
Only one other item remained in the crate, a wrapped bundle nestled in a pile of smelly rags. Once she unrolled it, she discovered a jade dragon statuette. It was a beautiful piece, slightly longer than the length of her palm and carved with remarkably realistic detail. The stone felt warm in her hand. It was the perfect gift to bring home to her mother.
Help me!
Mulan fumbled the statuette, dropping it on the soft soil. Thankfully, a patch of clover cushioned it. Tension filled her shoulders and straightened her spine, tightening every muscle and preparing her to spring away. Her hand lingered on the hilt of her sword.
Nothing happened.
Her trembling fingers lowered from the hilt, and she reluctantly crouched to reclaim the statuette. Nothing happened when she scooped it up again.
“Did you…speak with me?” she asked, feeling increasingly insane by the second. Probably her imagination.
Able to laugh at her own paranoia, she wrapped the figurine in a clean towel and stuffed it into her travel bag. Tomorrow was the start of a new day.
Sometimes, a noise penetrated the gloom. A familiar voice, muffled, but present, reminded him that he lived. Hours became days and weeks stretched into months. Decades. Centuries. Time lost meaning.
Life itself lost meaning.
Did he have a name?
Darkness. Eternal black. He floated in a shadowed womb without sensation or awareness. Disembodied. Lost, save for intermittent moments of sheer agony breaking through the void without rhythm to their frequency.
He wondered if this was hell.
Light flashed. Brilliant and magnificent life-giving light engulfed him and the world turned upside down, inside-out, twisting and warping and glowing all around him.
Time passed, and a gradual sense of awareness expanded and grew. Though he couldn’t move, he perceived clear skies of blue above him, and sensed, as well as heard, the movement of the wind through verdant leaves in the trees.
Several nightfalls came and went, the sun rising overhead and casting its gilded light that touched him without warming his jade skin.
“Guys. I think I found something expensive! Look at this lyin’ in the dirt.”
“Think a merchant dropped it off his wagon?”
“Maybe. Wrap the shit in some rags. It’s no good to us if it breaks during our travel.”
A grease-darkened rag wrapped around his petrified body, and darkness swam over him once more.
Gradual awareness emerged from the fog, but the name to accompany his conscious mind remained lost in a centuries-old abyss.
Did he have a name? Was he even a person at all?
The girl certainly was. He knew not when he had come into her possession, only that wherever she traveled, she hurried to the aid of others. In a village, she drove away a wild beast preying on livestock. In another town, she rallied the militia to fend off bandits hoping to capitalize on all the men away at war.
Her voice comforted him in the darkest hours as she traveled across familiar lands he had seen in his dreams. So green. So warm.
Though no one else the female encountered appeared to see through the masculine facade, he felt it. Did that mean something?
It may have been days or weeks before some understanding returned and a name emerged from the nebulous fog of his memories.
Cheng. He was once a prince.
More than a prince. He’d been an emperor long ago, and fleeting moments of recollection returned to him on the tide of his awareness. He remembered his mother’s eternal, unchanging beauty, and he recalled his father’s wrinkled smile as the years caught up to him and he faced death with courage.
And he remembered…an uncle whom he had loved dearly. Nothing else surfaced.
Yet on the darkest days when he loathed the imprisonment of his consciousness within a statue, she was there, a stalwart champion who hid her true self beneath the armor and uniform of an imperial soldier. It made him feel less alone.
He listened to her prayers every night before bed and each day prior to battle, either from a pouch she wore beside her sword sheath for luck, or from the altar beside the cot in her small tent. From Yüying, she prayed for her parents’ safety as much as she pleaded for the chance to bring them honor.
One day, Cheng hoped his memories would return. But more than he wanted to remember the life he had lost, he wanted her to survive—he wanted to help.
So he found a way.
5
5 years later
Snarls and growls traveled through the air, the eeriness of each feral noise amplified by the unnatural blanket of fog billowing from the opposite side of the enchanted wall. Mulan continued forward with her small company of handpicked men, their footsteps muffled with thick cloth and leather.
They had been tasked with the most difficult mission of all: breaching the enchanted thorn wall and destroying the witches who maintained it. None of the aerial scouts had seen the king and queen in days, otherwise the chance of success in their task would have plummeted.
It was already a suicide mission.
And it was also the point that would turn the war in Liang’s favor, if they could pull it off.
The precious scrolls and charms in her pack were a physical as well as an emotional burden, but as the detachment commander, their safety was her priority. Above all else, the objects couldn’t fall into enemy hands. Their placement mattered more than anything else.
If she perished in enemy lands after accomplishing her mission, her family name would be doubly honored forever in the Imperial City. Failure meant she’d be forgotten, and one day, should the war still rage by the time her little brother came of age, they would take him next. The youngest soldiers of the Imperial Army were no older than sixteen.
During an earlier scouting mission, she had discovered a single weakness in the strange barrier that separated their two kingdoms. Every man in her detachment had been picked for their slighter build, a necessity for naviga
ting a path through the maze of thorns and stalks dividing the two nations.
While the army kept their enemy distracted farther east, she led her men through the wall. They crawled, climbed, and squeezed their way through. It took hours, and they lost one man to the poisonous thorns, but eventually they emerged on the other side. She took a moment to get her bearings, sweeping her gaze across the moonlit meadow. None of the beastmen were anywhere in sight.
Maintaining stealth, they worked their way west along the mountains and hiked for miles. Halfway to their destination, they cracked open ampoules filled with a golden mist, inhaled deeply, and pressed on with magical stamina.
They crossed twice the distance in a fraction of the time. Their bodies would pay for it in the end. Last time Mulan had used such an alchemical concoction, she’d spent days rehydrating her body and stuffing her face with food.
“We’re here. This is where we must recreate the pillars according to Shang Chi’s instructions.” She spoke of the emperor’s chief inventor. Mulan dropped to one knee and removed her pack, flipping up the magic-enhanced leather to reveal the precious items inside. No matter how many objects she placed within it, it always expanded hold more without additional weight. She issued scrolls to each of the men, then they fanned out as they’d practiced dozens of times before embarking on the journey.
Has to be perfect.
She and Fan Wen each climbed trees that would be the linchpin of the entire ritual. The little sorcerer had the face of a weasel, but the whipcord musculature that made him ideal for their operation. Of all the men in their group, he was the smallest next to Mulan.
They moved in unison, smoothing enchanted scrolls against bark, ink glimmering in the night. Below them, the rest of the men in the unit hammered a flawless circle into the ground.
They had mere minutes, no doubt, until they were found. None of their amphibious scouts had ever returned across the border, instead relying upon trained animals to bring their notes and findings.
By the end, she was exhausted. Her limbs screamed for rest, and her cheeks were scratched by branches. She placed the final scroll then began a hasty descent, losing her footing twice before she jumped down to the ground.
Each of those scrolls would ignite and create a powerful chain reaction, transmuting the trunks into two pillars of unbreakable, incombustible ironwood. Somewhere in Liang, two ironwood trees would perish in their place.
Her heart jumped into her throat. The last charm had been placed at the base of the trees. “We’re done here, and we need to leave this area now. Let them discover us, not our purpose.”
“Get everyone moving,” Wen instructed. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“I’m not leaving you behind,” she argued.
The sorcerer flashed a brief, humorless smile. “The magical effect will level this entire area. Get the men clear, because none of you will survive if you’re caught within range. There’s no guarantee I will survive.”
“I see.” She clasped his arm and met his gaze. “For the empire’s honor.”
“Honor and sacrifice.”
Though her body protested, Mulan and her remaining soldiers ran under the cover of the sparse trees around them. The area wasn’t as densely forested as the land stretching hundreds of miles to the east. At any moment, a scouting griffin could have seen them.
But the Lady of Fortune was with them.
Please, Mulan prayed, touching the jade charm that had become a lucky talisman for the past five years. Let us live to fight another day.
Their unit pushed their bodies until their lungs burned. The thick, tall grass didn’t make their escape easy. All the while, she counted in her head and prayed they’d put enough distance between themselves and the transmutation site.
Exactly on time, magic illuminated the sky bright as the dawn. Mulan spun around and stared. A huge shimmering dome had spread out from their construct, leaving nothing within its boundaries but fire and ash. Even from a distance, she could feel the energy it gave off. Within a few heartbeats, the dome expanded, draining the life from every plant, animal, and insect within its confines. Within a day, it would reach full power and the Imperial Army could march through onto enemy soil.
“Hua Mu, someone approaches,” one of the men hissed.
She crouched and drew her blade. Instead of a ferocious beastman, Fan Wen stumbled into view. Smoke drifted from scorched robes that had guarded him against the potent spell, though the smell of burnt hair wafted off the sorcerer. Prior to the explosion, he’d had a glorious mane of dark hair bound by a ribbon. Now little of it remained, singed down to a blistered scalp. He collapsed a few feet away.
Mulan raced to him and knelt at his side, already bringing her waterskin out and placing it to his lips. “Stubborn sorcerer. You did well.”
“Almost didn’t make it,” he gasped.
“It will be a story to tell your children. Now come. I know you are tired, but our enemies will not have missed that.” She nodded toward the dazzling dome in the distance. No sooner had the words left her mouth than howls cut through the night.
“Move,” she ordered.
“I…I cannot.”
Mulan’s gaze snapped to the other men in their company, each of them equally exhausted as her.
I can’t leave him.
A wild feeling came over Mulan as the next howl tore through the air and a wind whipped through the sparse trees. An alien strength infused her that she’d never felt before. She threw Wen onto her back and ran with what remained of the Haste potion burning through her veins.
“You can’t get us both to the wall, Commander.”
“I can!”
The breath came from her in great pants, and perspiration stung her eyes. The men stopped to crack open second ampoules, though her heart already felt ready to burst from her chest. The beasts weren’t far behind. Soon enough, the great wall came into view.
Unfortunately, their enemy waited.
Mulan dropped to one knee and rolled Wen from her shoulders onto the ground. As feral as the assortment of werebears and tartan-clad warriors, she rushed toward an enemy with a drawn blade. The mountain of a man wore furs and green plaid instead of armor, and his mass equaled two of her. Perhaps even three.
He met her blade with his battle axe. The power behind his strike sent tremors through her entire body. As her warriors fought bravely around her, she took hope from their bravery and pushed back her opponent with a swift spin kick. Her slighter build became an advantage that allowed her to duck beneath his guard afterward and drive her gauntleted fist into his side. The poisoned spikes on her knuckles bit into his exposed flesh.
When the giant fell to his knees, Wen delivered the final blow, sending an entropic shard of purple magic through the beastman’s heart.
“Wen!”
The sorcerer shot her a crooked grin. “Couldn’t let you all do the fighting alone.”
They’d needed him, though it was clear from his shaking hands that he couldn’t provide much more help. The enemy kept coming, both men and beasts attacking. A wolf as large as a horse leapt into the fray, its pale gray fur matted with blood. The beast’s eyes gleamed red in the predawn light.
Mulan’s sword sang as she sliced downward through fur, muscle, and sinew. Yelping, the gigantic wolf collapsed to the ground, but another beast leapt over its fallen comrade in a defensive maneuver, jaws snapping. Mulan backed away but kept her guard up, choosing a tactical retreat. All that mattered was getting her men home. They only needed to get through the barrier.
“Get through now!” she ordered, continuing to back up. “Everyone retreat!”
Splashes behind her indicated her men were following her order, retreating through the thorns close to the river’s edge.
Bao, the largest of the men by far, though only by four inches over Mulan, swung a bladed whip that sliced through the air in an elegant arc and felled three of the approaching shifters.
“Go, go, go!” she shouted,
urging another man ahead of her as a dark shape rushed from the left, moving too fast for her to block. She twisted and lost her footing on the slippery ground, bringing her face to face with a snarling black wolf.
It lunged. In the moment, she saw only heavy paws tipped with dagger-sized claws and teeth flecked with saliva. The latter should have closed around her throat. The creature should have ripped the life from her.
Blinding light surrounded Mulan instead. A corona of vibrant green expanded in a powerful burst and carried the wolf with it. Flung backward, it landed a great distance away where it lay smoking. Unwilling to question her good fortune, Mulan scrambled to her feet and limped for the thorn wall. She squeezed through without looking behind her, focusing on escape. The beasts didn’t pursue.
After what seemed like an eternity, she emerged into a familiar jungle, her remaining warriors all catching their breaths. A quick count revealed no one had been lost battling the Oclanders.
“We’re alive,” said Togashi, a warrior from one of the distant, western territories. “We’re alive!” The man fell to his knees and kissed the grass.
“Yes, we are. Thanks to Wen.” Mulan turned to face the sorcerer, grinning.
“Huh? Thanks to me, what? I did nothing.”
“You shielded me from that black wolf.”
“Uh… I did nothing. I couldn’t crush a worm at the moment with the magical power I have left. Activating the gateway drained me, and I really pushed it with that one spell.”
Togashi rolled onto his back and lay there staring at the sky. “It must have been the gods watching out for you again, Commander.”
“Maybe so, but we should not press their luck by remaining here. We can all celebrate when we bring the news of our success to the general. Let’s move out.”
6
A desperate horseback ride took Mulan and her surviving troops back to the river. They pushed their mounts as hard as they dared until the animals foamed and frothed at the mouth. Sometimes, the wild shapeshifters sent scouting parties across the thorn wall and hunted groups of Liangese soldiers.
Mulan and the Jade Emperor: an Adult Folktale Retelling (Once Upon a Spell: Legends Book 1) Page 4