The Dragon Warrior

by Katie Zhao

  Heart hammering, I rubbed my numb hands against the backs of my legs to try to return the feeling to them.

  Wang examined his unbound hands, stunned. Luhao swayed on his feet and looked close to fainting.

  “Move it,” Luhao yelled at his friend as he scrambled through the rubble that had been our prison door. “What’re you waiting for?”

  Moli whipped her sword out of her hóng bāo. Ren ran with his crossbow in front of him, shooting to disable the guards running toward us. Some fell back, but more kept coming.

  “This way!” Wang waved for the rest of us to follow Luhao. “Look out!”

  Wang pushed Alex out of the way as a chunk of ceiling thudded to the floor where my brother had been standing moments ago.

  “Th-thanks,” Alex panted, sounding uncertain.

  “Thank me later. Run!” Dodging falling debris, Wang grabbed my brother’s arm and yanked him along after Luhao.

  The caged dragons roared and bucked against the bars of their cells. Freedom, they cried. Escape … so close …

  A guard grabbed at my ankle, but I shoved him away with Fenghuang. Wang had disappeared. Alex and Moli had engaged guards in combat and fought their way over the rubble. Moli held up surprisingly well—probably because Ren, who was running beside them, knocked down a guard with each arrow he shot.

  One by one, the dragons flew out of their cages—so many that the hallway couldn’t contain them. The dragons bucked against the ceiling. The rocky walls cracked. The floor shook. Alex shoved Moli out of the way right before a chunk of rock fell onto her head. The two stopped under a huge piece of rock crumbling from the wall. Moli screamed. By the time the nearest person—Ren—turned around, it was too late.

  “No!” I shouted. “Dragons—save them!”

  Instantly, the white dragon swooped in and snatched up the two of them, along with Ren. The boulder crashed to the ground where Alex and Moli had been a heartbeat before.

  Right behind the white dragon was a horned blue one carrying Wang and Luhao, who were screaming their heads off while simultaneously chucking rock after rock at the guards. Considering the speed at which they were flying, they had really good aim and knocked down at least a quarter of the guards.

  The dragons flew down the hall, rousing the other dragons, who screeched and leapt into flight after them.

  Follow us, the white dragon commanded.

  “Don’t let the warriors and dragons escape!” came Chuangmu’s shriek. With a swoosh of air, the goddess hovered on her cloud at the end of the hall, commanding her men forward with a great sweep of her arm. Her hair had fallen into a frazzled mess around her shoulders. “One of those dragons is worth more than all you idiots combined. Catch them, or I’ll have all your heads on pikes!”

  I sprinted faster, arms pumping madly. Then I felt claws encircle me and lift me into the air. Screaming, I looked up at a scaly red underbelly.

  Relax, Heaven Breaker, the dragon said. You’re in good claws.

  Alex and Moli yelped as their white dragon pummeled the wall that separated us from the outside. His snout beat against the rock, crumbling it, but at this rate, Chuangmu and her guards were going to catch up.

  “Pathetic!” Chuangmu’s shrieks bounced around the tunnel. “If you useless guards don’t catch those kids, you’re all going to pray to me a thousand times today!”

  The idea of praying to the goddess of love must’ve been less inviting than standing up to a bunch of dragons, because the guards yelled and renewed their charge toward us.

  “Dragons, break down the wall!” I yelled.

  The swarm of dragons moved as one unit. They crashed their heads against the wall. Three guards rushed at me from behind. One of them got close enough to slice his sword at me, and I didn’t duck away in time. Pain shot down my forearm as the guard drew his sword back triumphantly. I swore.

  But before he and the other two could finish the job, Wang yelled, “Over here, pea-brains!”

  The guards looked. It was a mistake. Three fist-sized rocks flew at their helmets, knocking them out in one blow.

  Before I could thank Wang and Luhao, a voice seized my mind. The voice of a deity, responding to my prayer—at long last.

  I grant you the power to escape, Heaven Breaker.

  A bolt of golden light shot out of Fenghuang’s crystallized point. The light slammed into the guards and threw them against the wall the dragons had been breaking. The force of the guards’ bodies cracked the wall, which gave way with a resounding crash.

  “No, the other deities shouldn’t be helping you brats escape! They’re supposed to be on my side!” I heard Chuangmu wail.

  Shouts of panic echoed in the ruined hallway. I glanced behind me to see that the ceiling was caving in, chunks of it dropping onto the guards behind us.

  I screamed and closed my eyes as the dragon shot forward. We tumbled out of the prison and into the crisp, cold air.

  CHAPTER

  18

  I opened my eyes, but that turned out to be a mistake. Tiny toy houses lay far below us. My heart leapt with fear. I looked forward instead, facing the colorful beasts that surrounded me. Dragons twirled and flew through the air, reveling in their freedom. Their joyous roars clamored in my head.

  Then they stopped and turned in midair. I watched with wide eyes as the tall black building—Chuangmu’s realm—crumbled to the ground.

  A few lucky guards escaped and raced out of the rubble on a cloud. But Chuangmu hadn’t joined them.

  I gulped. Any moment, she’d emerge from the building, spot us, and give chase. But when the dust cleared, the goddess of love was nowhere to be found.

  The blue and white dragons drew even with my red dragon. Sitting in front of Alex and Moli on the white one, Ren asked, “Is Chuangmu …?”

  “No idea,” Alex said.

  A horrible thought occurred to me as I gazed at the ruined hotel. The chariot. The horses. We’d left them behind.

  As if she’d had the same thought, Moli let out an ear-piercing whistle. For a long, heart-stopping moment, nothing happened.

  Then something shot out of the building. Several somethings, I realized as they flew closer. Our empty, horse-drawn golden chariot. And two other horses, belonging to Wang and Luhao.

  “That hotel had the worst noodles I’ve ever eaten,” Wang said with a shudder.

  Both boys leapt off the blue dragon and onto their horses. Wang buried his face in his black steed’s neck. He looked so happy that I couldn’t bring myself to hate him, even though his friends and family were all jerks.

  The golden chariot hovered below me. The dragon’s claws released me, and I dropped into the back seat with a thud. The horses jolted forward. With two more thuds, Moli and Alex landed in front of me.

  “Good horses,” Moli gushed, wrapping her arms around the two closest ones.

  Wang took a deep breath. “We’re going home. It’s time we returned to the Jade Society to protect our families, like we should have been doing all along.”

  “Oh, give me a break,” Luhao said. “I never thought you were such a coward—”

  “This isn’t about being a coward or not, Luhao,” Wang said sharply. “We’ve heard the guards talking about the destruction out there. Our people need us. Your family needs you.”

  Luhao hung his head, his gaze fixed on his horse’s brown coat.

  “We should go back, too,” Moli said, raising her eyebrows at me.

  Maybe the right thing to do would’ve been to go home and protect the people of San Francisco. I had no love for the people of the Jade Society, but if they were in trouble, abandoning them during the Lunar New Year, when the demons were strongest, was a jerk move.

  But Wang shook his head. “You four finish what you meant to do. The two of us have been training our whole lives to fight demons. We’re ready.” He drew himself to his full height. “If you really want to protect the people of Earth, go to the banquet. Become the gods’ general.” Wang gave me a fierce smile
. A nod of respect. “Lead the Jade Emperor’s army against all the demons. That’s something only you can do, Faryn. Falun.”

  I blinked, stunned. “Wang, I …”

  “I believe in you, Heaven Breaker.”

  “So do I,” said Alex. For a moment I was touched, and then he added, “There’s no way you could fail with such an amazing brother by your side.”

  After a moment of hesitation, Luhao nodded, too. “You idiots better not die before I get to destroy you.”

  Well, Luhao still needed some work in the niceness department, but this was progress. I returned his nod. The other warriors didn’t think I was a fraud. I could do this, after all. I was worthy enough to be the Heaven Breaker.

  Moli swallowed hard. “Promise me … promise me you’ll protect my father.” Her eyes glistened. I wasn’t used to seeing Moli ask anyone for anything.

  “Course,” said Wang. “We’ll protect Zhao shū shu and all the others. That’s what warriors are supposed to do. Right?” Wang raised his fist toward Luhao, who bumped it.

  The two boys turned around and shot off into the distance. Their horses picked up speed, plunging through the puffy white clouds. Then they were gone.

  Alex stared after them with a strange look on his face. “Sometimes those guys can be all right.”

  Moli gasped, her mouth falling open.

  My brother waved a hand in her face. “Um … I’m shocked that they can be decent, too, but are you okay?”

  When Moli still didn’t respond, I pinched her arm. “Hello?”

  It was another good fifteen seconds before she seemed to come back to herself.

  “Longma. He’s in trouble.” Dread crossed Moli’s face.

  I gave her a strange look. “Yes. Longma’s gone MIA. You’re stalking him hardcore. We’ve established this.”

  She shook her head, tugging at the end of her ponytail. Her lost, uncertain look reminded me of a Moli I thought had long since disappeared—a younger girl who once trusted me enough to confide her greatest fears.

  “I—I had a vision just now,” Moli confessed.

  “A vision?” Ren interjected.

  “Ever since the Lunar New Year started, I’ve had this connection with the horses. I can feel when they’re tired or sad, you know?”

  “So can I,” I said. “It’s called using your powers of observation.”

  Moli’s scowl deepened. “I know what I saw. I had this vision of Longma. H-he was in pain. He was chained to the floor in this dark, horrible shed. And we need to rescue him. Now.” Moli settled herself behind the horses.

  “Wait,” Alex said, raising his hand. “Let’s assume, for a moment, that what you saw was real.”

  “It was real!” Moli insisted.

  “Just where did you sense him?”

  “I …” She shrugged helplessly. “Somewhere to the east.”

  “Somewhere to the east?” I repeated. “East, like New York, east? Or east, like China?”

  “Just—east. Can we figure it out on the way? We have to go.” Moli yanked on the horses’ reins. “Jià!”

  The jerky movement knocked the breath out of me for a moment. “H-hold on. We should figure out the third riddle before—”

  “Third, find the city in quiet ruins and reclaim a lost treasure,” Alex interrupted, his eyes glued to the notebook again. “There’s nothing about a ‘city in quiet ruins’ in Ba’s notes.”

  He looked as unnerved as I felt by the fact that our father’s notebook couldn’t help us this time.

  But the phrase that had caught my attention was a different one. “Reclaim a lost treasure …”

  Could it be possible that Longma was the “lost treasure”?

  “We’re probably supposed to go to another Chinatown,” Ren suggested. “There are a bunch of those on the East Coast. Moli’s right. We should head there.”

  “Thank you,” Moli said, giving him a rare smile. It vanished when she turned to Alex and me. “Can we get moving now, since neither of you have any brighter ideas?”

  I nodded. “I agree. I think Longma’s the lost treasure. I mean, have any of us lost anything important to us?”

  “Besides our father and grandfather, and possibly our home, you mean?” Alex interjected bluntly.

  Okay, I should have expected that.

  As the other two shifted awkwardly, Alex sighed. “Okay. You’re right. Longma is our best lead, too. East it is, then. But we still need to pick a Chinatown—what about the other part of the riddle? The city in quiet ruins?”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “That’s easy.”

  “You’ve figured it out?”

  “No, I mean it’s easy because you’re going to figure it out,” I clarified, flashing my most winning smile.

  Alex grumbled and crossed his arms, but he didn’t offer any further suggestions. In fact, he looked sullen. I knew my brother well enough to recognize when he was bottling up his emotions.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Alex.

  “Fine,” he muttered.

  “Okay,” I said.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Fine! Since you’re pestering me so much, I’ll tell you what’s bothering me,” Alex snapped.

  “I didn’t pester, I just asked one question—”

  “I’m the one who’s been using Ba’s book to help us figure out the riddles, okay?” He waved the book under my nose, whacking me with a sharp corner. I winced. “I mean, fine. You helped in Chicago. But I guess I just … I don’t know. If you guys can suddenly solve everything without me, I feel kind of useless now.”

  Alex was so smart for his age that it was easy to forget he was just another kid like me. Suddenly, a wave of guilt washed over me. “Sorry. I guess I—we—didn’t realize you felt this way …” I managed a weak smile. “And we can’t solve everything without you, by the way. We wouldn’t have gotten here without you. Plus, like you said, we don’t even know if we’re right about where Longma is yet … or even if we are, which East Coast Chinatown is the right one.”

  As soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted to shove them back. When had I become this gross, mushy older sister?

  The slight upturn in my brother’s lips told me that even if he wouldn’t admit it, my words had appeased him. “Yeah, whatever.”

  I rolled my eyes. “So, genius, how would you solve the riddle?”

  Alex paused. Then, grudgingly, he admitted, “I don’t know. I guess I was thinking that the lost treasure was …” He shook his head. “Never mind.”

  “Alex. Tell me.”

  “You’ll think I’m being stupid.”

  “I won’t. I promise.

  Alex sighed, avoiding my eyes. “Fine. Ba wrote about a Chinatown in the east. Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown. It’s where … he met our mother. ‘A woman as fierce as she was beautiful, with a heart of gold. I couldn’t help but fall in love with her.’ ”

  I wondered how many times my brother had read those lines to himself, over and over again, perhaps running his finger down the page so much that it had begun to weather.

  I fell back in my seat, stunned, and swallowed the lump in my throat. Our mother. I’d only ever seen one picture of her. The idea of finding the town where she’d met Ba—suddenly, it seemed more important than anything in the world. Even more important than the immortals’ banquet.

  “I guess I just thought … maybe …,” mumbled Alex.

  “That our mother’s family might be ‘the lost treasure’?” I supplied. “That they’d be in that Chinatown?”

  His eyes were bright. With hope or tears, or maybe both. “Ba, too. He could be here.”

  When I hesitated, Alex’s shoulders fell, and he dropped his gaze. “Never mind. You don’t have to listen to my stupid idea.”

  A sudden memory struck me. Hadn’t Leizi, the weather goddess, been reporting about D.C. on the television back at Chuangmu’s hotel? How had she described the city’s current state?

  Lying in quiet ruins.

&
nbsp; “It’s not stupid,” I said. “Alex, you’re right. I saw a report back at the hotel—they said D.C. ‘lies in quiet ruins’! That has to be right, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” gasped Moli. “I remember that report. And—and something’s telling me Longma’s there, too!”

  To my surprise, Alex just shrugged. “I don’t know. But if you think so, Faryn, it’s probably right—you’re the Heaven Breaker after all. It’s better that you’re in charge and forget all that stuff I said about being the riddles expert.”

  “But, Alex, you were right, so—”

  “No, really, it’s fine.”

  “To D.C., then?” Moli interrupted.

  I fell silent, unsure what to say, certain that my brother and I were barely speaking the same language anymore. What had changed? He’d seemed so proud of me, even just now in the dungeon. Ye Ye would have been able translate for us. But he was far away from us now, too. And without Ba and Ye Ye, Alex was drifting further away from me than ever.

  Ba, why did you have to leave us all those years ago? Had my father’s duty really been worth more to him than his children? The thought weighed heavily on my mind.

  Pushing past me, Alex squeezed into the spot next to Moli. “Let’s get going.”

  Goaded by Moli’s shouts, the horses tore across the sky after the dragons, picking up speed as they went. Alex began to boss her around with directions, and strangely, she actually let him do it. She even gave my brother a turn guiding the horses. But after the chariot veered violently to the right, Moli snatched the reins out of Alex’s hands despite his protests. She smacked him. Even then, he managed to bring a tiny smile to her face.

  I felt a twinge of jealousy, to see them get along so well. But, maybe it was best to give my brother some space if we were going to make it through the rest of this journey intact.

  I looked over at Ren, who absentmindedly stroked his crossbow.

  “You’re an awfully good archer,” I said.

  “Oh. Uh. Thanks.”

  “Where’d you learn how to shoot?”

  Ren gave me a sheepish look. “I told you Mr. Fan owns an antique weapons store, right? Huge weapons guy. Sometimes I’d sneak his crossbows down to his basement and practice shooting at the dartboards.”