Black Dragon Pyre II
There is no other choice. You will have to risk it.
“I’ll draw their attention. Handle the rest,” you order.
Ameretat gives you a dainty curtsey. “Aye aye, Lord Jing. As you command.”
You concentrate your qi, and with a wave of your palm, you snuff out the nearby torches, dropping your immediate surroundings into a deeper gloom. The maddened prisoners pause, sniffing the air uncertainly. While Ameretat keeps the others crouched down and quiet on the floor, you make the first move.
Charging in, you throw a single blow from your fist that hurls one of the prisoners back. He slams against the wall hard, to the tune of a dozen cracked bones, and that seems to be the cue for the battle to begin.
The prisoners beset you from all sides, falling upon you like a pack of dogs on prey. Their moves are not mindless and actually seem to be sharper than before; here and there you notice flashes of technique and glimpses of skill. The command given by Hei Youlong seems to have given their aggression a target; coupled with their heightened physical abilities, you do not expect to walk away without a scratch.
Hands grab at you as you whirl around, lashing out with no particular target in mind. Reacting just in the nick of time, you narrowly block a powerful kick that sends a shudder up your shoulder and almost drives you to the ground. You throw off your assailant and slam him into the earth but yet more come, shrouded in the darkness. In the distance, you hear the door opening, allowing light to peek into the dungeon.
They’ve made it out; that did not take long.
Immediately, you grab hold of the prisoners nearest to you. Gathering qi into your abdomen, you let out a forceful shout that causes the earth itself to tremble. Dirt tumbles from above, the earthen ceiling shaken loose by your roar. The prisoners are blown away like leaves in the wind. They break themselves upon the walls of the dungeon, the stone showing their bodies no mercy.
Seeing an opening in front of you, you take it. There is no point being mired in a battle with these people.
You run for the door, which had swung shut again.
Before you reach it, a shriek from over your shoulder tells you quite insistently that you must evade.
You do so.
A bloodied prisoner flies past you, arms outstretched. He lands on all fours, crouched like a beast. As he snarls angrily, his companions encircle you, cutting off your path of retreat again. The crowd grows in number as the survivors begin to recover from the effects of your roar; though most of them are bleeding from their eyes and ears, their persistence is unabated. There are perhaps sixty of them approaching you, and there could be even more lurking in the thick darkness.
You cast a quick glance around you, weighing your chances. Your roar had blown out most of the remaining torches, but you should be able to fight in the dark.
Still…
Subdue all of them by attacking their pressure points, like you did with Zuo Qingfeng and You Lanhai? You do not think you can do it in such an environment; the situation seems perilous enough as it is. The alternative would be to seek a more permanent solution. It looks like the prisoners are going to force your hand, though that is no fault of theirs – the fault lies with the people who made them this way.
You sigh.
The prisoner leaps at you, baring his teeth and spinning around in the air in some strange, bestial technique.
There is but the barest whisper of steel, and he lands behind you, staggering. His head touches the ground half a second later. You flick the wodao downwards, causing the blood coating the sword to spatter across the ground in dark patches.
The prisoners launch their attack, howling in rage.
Thrusting forward, you pierce the heart of one prisoner in a single strike, before twisting the sword and wrenching it upwards. The blade passes through his throat, and then his jaw, and his skull. Shifting your footing, you slash behind you in a circular motion, at a prisoner attempting to claw your back off. The fine edge of the blade parts flesh and cleaves bone with ease under the guidance of your – well, the Sword Saint’s – hand, and your target’s torso falls apart even before you complete your swing. You cut, and cut, and cut; there is little room for finesse in your footwork here. As the bodies fall, you leap deeper into the army of maniacs, executing the Fiery Flight of the Vermillion Pheasant. Here you take off an arm, there you remove a head. Six slashes; ten dead. With every slice of the wodao, you add a stroke to the bloody landscape being painted in the darkness.
Your sword arm twinges slightly – just slightly – and your next slash is stopped by a sturdy spine, the blade of the wodao lodging deep but not cutting cleanly. Your opponent, madly unperturbed by the sword that has embedded itself halfway into his torso, grabs your arm with both his hands. His grip is strong: strong enough to break bones. You slam your free hand into his temple; your claws dig into his skull and the force of your swing tears the head clean off the body. Still, by stopping your movement for just a second, the opportunity has been created… and the horde takes it.
They fall upon you savagely, punching, clawing, kicking, biting. You feel their blows assailing every bit of you from all sides. Your eye-patch is ripped off, the wodao is knocked from your grip, and their fingers attempt to squirm under your skin to tear at your flesh. A hundred wounds are opened up all over your body. You do not want to take this risk, but you have no choice: breathing in as much as you can, you let out a second roar. The prisoners are blasted back by the pressure of your qi shout, and the dungeon is shaken yet again. This time rocks fall, and for an instant you wonder if everybody down here is going to die.
Thankfully, the tremors stop short of burying you in soil and stone. With your last move, however, you have blown out any last bit of light from the torches still remaining, plunging yourself into complete darkness. Strangely enough, despite the absence of any light whatsoever, you can see faint, flickering fires ahead of you seemingly outlining the shaken prisoners in the dark. You raise a hand to your empty eye socket, where the smallest spark of the Holy Flame resides: does it have anything to do with this?
There is no time to ponder this too long: even without sight, the prisoners’ imperative remains unchanged. You are still a target – they must be tracking you through sound or smell.
The first attacks come. In your current state, you cannot achieve enough concentration to perform Taiji Fist – you will just have to power through with all of your might. Sometimes, to defend, you must attack.
You meet their fists with your claws; the first prisoner to reach you – and the one immediately behind her – is torn apart from a single, brutal swing with the Raging Claws of the Mad Lion. You leap over their twitching bodies and strike downwards into the horde, your fingers rending flesh and leaving behind jagged, bloody furrows wherever they pass. You grab the collarbone of another opponent, crushing it under your grip; then, with a loud yell, you drive the side of your palm right into his torso in the form of The Submerged Dragon Left Behind. The center of his chest caves in, and even as he crumples in a messy heap, you turn around and unleash The Lone Dragon Battles in the Wilderness with both palms, sending a powerful torrent of chaotic qi surging forth. The numerous bodies hit by your attack are flung into the air; the very blood is squeezed from their pores, spraying out and forming a fine mist in the air.
Still you are not done yet. There seems to be no end to the enemies in front of you. They charge at you unerringly, more and more of them clambering out from behind boulders and mounds of earth.
You breathe in deeply, clenching your fists.
You cannot risk using the roar a third time now… but no matter what, you are getting out of here alive.
***
You push at the door with your aching fingers – the tips are split open from ripping through so much flesh and bone. Leaving behind bloodstained streaks on the door’s surface, you stagger past the threshold and into the burning light of the sun.
The entire fortress is on fire, swallowed by hungry red flames.
You move, dragging your feet in exhaustion. You are a bloody mess at the moment – granted, most of the blood is not yours, but the battle has left you drained. You had fought until there was no one else left standing; you do not know how many prisoners are left alive, if any. What matters is that you have managed to walk out alive. Your tiredness and minor wounds will be nothing a few days of good rest cannot solve.
There are shouts and sounds of battle coming from a distance, but you do not recognize any of the voices, nor do you see any of your companions at the moment.
Without realizing it, you find yourself having wandered in front of the main building. Here, as with everywhere else, flames have bloomed all over the walls. You remember your initial reason for attempting to sneak in: to rescue Zuo and his family, and to find evidence of the Black Dragon Society’s misdeeds. The first objective is accomplished, and perhaps here you can complete the second.
The interior of the building is deserted. Well, of any one living, to be exact. You look down at the bodies littering the hall. They are all Black Dragon fighters; with the fire gradually increasing in intensity you do not have time to investigate the bodies further, but from what you can see, they have been killed with a single blow that crushed their skulls. Whoever did this must have been a martial artist of great strength.
You make your way upwards, and as you climb the stairs the bodies that you find appear to be in worse and worse condition; some are ripped apart and others reduced to mere husks.
As you reach the top, you glimpse a strange sight:
A cloaked man, swaddled in dirty rags, smashing the wooden windows open and leaping out of it.
You rush to the window, though by the time you get there the man is nowhere to be found.
A low groan from within a nearby room attracts your attention. You enter; perhaps there is a single survivor after all.
Who you find is Hei Zuolong, the elder of the Hei brothers. He is sprawled flat, blood soaking his fine clothes from a wound in his back. His limbs are trembling as he forces himself off the floor, croaking, “Help… help me…” He does not seem to recognize you; his gaze is focused on something behind you. You turn around. There is nothing there.
“That bastard… he… I… drugged… antidote. Quick… before I go mad…” he moans. Hei coughs, and a thick, dark liquid spills from the corners of his mouth.
It is probably the very same potion that was used on the prisoners that you slaughtered.
“Where is it?” you ask.
“Shelf… third from the right… Hurry!” he screams.
It does not take you long to find it. There does not seem to be a lot; it is only enough for a single person. You hold the little bottle in your hand, looking down at Hei Zuolong.
“W…what are you waiting for?” he shouts again, hammering at the wooden floor with his fists even as the fire rages all around him. Even with his injury, the planks creak under the force of his blows.
***
A. A trade of favours: You offer to trade him the antidote in return for everything he can tell you about his dealings with this dangerous drug. He is the last source of information in the Black Dragon Society you can tap; the fire has likely turned any other paper evidence to ashes. He will answer for his crimes after that, in a court of law. That is the proper way to do things.
B. You offer to trade him the antidote – and only the antidote – for information. After that… well, you did not exactly make any promise to spare his life, after all. Bringing this to the courts is only a waste of time. As Shun’s agent, you do not see why you cannot execute immediate justice when the verdict is clear.
C. You would prefer to keep the antidote for Cao’er to study it, so that you can produce enough to save Zuo and his wife. Hei Zuolong would not be able to tell you how to make the antidote; if he did, the sneaky weasel already would have more on hand rather than this small, measly amount. You will do him the favour of putting him out of his misery, however.
D. You will keep the antidote – you need it. As for Hei Zuolong, you will leave him to his fate. It is not for you to decide what happens to him next. Live, go mad, or die; whatever comes is of his own doing... his own karma.
