About two weeks later, Chase pushed his chair away from the table where they were having breakfast and said, "I think it's time you had an opportunity to test your skills in the real world."
The monks stopped eating and glanced at each other in surprise. It had been some time since they'd started their training here, and so far the only times they'd been allowed to leave the lair was for yet more training and the one instance of retrieving a Shen Gong Wu. The opportunity to get out, even if it was only for a little while, was tempting, but it was unexpected enough to make them suspicious.
"Yeah?" Raimundo said. "And what's the catch?"
"You might find out you're just as useless as you were when you first got here," Chase replied, but his tone was more amused than malicious. "Other than that, no catch. Constantly fighting me will only hinder you in the long run, regardless of how many different styles I use against you."
"It's not another Shen Gong Wu, is it?"
"No." Chase clasped his hands on the table. "It seems that Wuya, despite my warnings, has decided to align herself with Hannibal. I assume she thinks this will give her a powerful position should he take over the world. She fails to realize there will be no positions left for her to have."
"Why bother warnin' her?" Clay's words were careful, ready to spring a trap if the response he got hinted at some evil alliance. "Ain't you two on bad terms?"
"Generally, yes, but compared to all the other villains involved in Dashi's long-standing mess, she's decent company." Chase paused. "Most of the time."
"Wow," said Kimiko, leaning her head on her hand with half a smirk. "Coming from you, that almost sounds romantic."
"For a given terrible definition of the word. She certainly would like to think so." Chase's smile was brief and thin. "We'll set out as soon as you're done here."
They finished eating in record time and followed Chase to the central training room, where he drew a strange, circular sigil on the ground in chalk. They watched, nonplussed, until he straightened up.
"Teleportation will get us there fastest," he explained, "but while teleporting myself is a matter of no consequence, four additional people require a bit more power. Stand in the center. Don't scuff the lines, and don't let any part of yourself outside of them, either, or it will be left behind."
"Be a real shame if you got any more bloodstains on these floors, huh?"
Chase raised an eyebrow at Clay derisively.
The teleportation itself was strange and unsettling - the entire world seemed to shift out of place around them, blurring through color and motion in a few fractions of a second - but their feet landed on familiar ground and their noses picked up familiar smells as soon as everything steadied again, and any discomfort was wiped away in an instant.
They were back at the Xiaolin temple, under a sunny sky.
The grounds were unkempt and there was an eerie silence in the air, but they hadn't expected to see any of it again until the world had been saved who-only-knew how many more months down the line. For Omi, seeing everything again brought back a rush of homesickness he'd banished in their first few days of training. He swallowed hard and straightened his back and looked around to see if anything had been moved out of place.
"Here?" asked Raimundo, giving the grounds the same once-over as Omi was. "Why would Wuya be at the temple?"
"I'm hoping we'll find out." Chase moved past them, heading for the temple buildings. "Since I doubt Hannibal would send her to steal Shen Gong Wu, there must be something else of value around here."
But it was at the temple vault that they found her, after a few minutes of searching. She was striding out the open archway, scowling, her arms thankfully stiff at her sides rather than wrapped around as much stolen Wu as she could carry. It took her a few seconds to see them, but when she did, she stopped dead.
"And now this!" she exclaimed, throwing up her hands. "Could my day get any worse?"
"Careful what you say. Never know when Jack might show up," Rai said with a smirk. Wuya grimaced.
"Knowing him, he would," she grumbled. She put her hands on her hips and glared at all of them. "And here I thought you were actually off training, but no. Here you are, ready to inconvenience me yet again." She glanced past them at Chase, who was leaning against one of the columns along the edge of the temple walkway. "This seems awfully petty, even for you, Chase."
"I did warn you," he said dryly. "Aligning with Hannibal means aligning against me, and I will show no mercy to those who do so."
"So you're siccing the monks on me?" The corner of her mouth turned up slightly. "Should I be scared?"
"They could use a little exercise. Trouncing an old witch should do the trick quite nicely."
"An old - !"
Wuya's almost-grin dropped. Her hands clenched into fists, and a familiar flickering green light danced at the edges of her skin. Everyone jumped into a fighting stance - except Chase, who only rested more weight against the column and watched.
The ground rumbled, buckled - and out of it came six stone giants, massive and impenetrable with eyes lit by Heylin fire. They were as big as ever, reaching the roofs of the temple buildings when they pulled their feet out of the earth. Wuya wasn't playing any games this time around.
She pointed a claw-nailed finger at the monks and opened her mouth to order the attack, but her words never made it to the air. There was a flash of movement and she had to duck suddenly to avoid one of the giants' heads flying straight at her. It crashed into the ground, sliding to a stop scant inches from the vault wall.
The body it had been previously attached to reached up to pat its empty neck in confusion before crumbling into pebbles and dust at Raimundo's feet.
"Only a few? C'mon, Wuya, you can do better than that." He cracked his knuckles and grinned, like this was just another scrap over who got first shot at the Wu for training.
Wuya snarled with rage and clenched her glowing hands into fists.
The fight broke out without any fanfare; Raimundo, Omi, and Clay were on the stone giants immediately, but Kimiko nimbly leapt around them and made straight for Wuya instead. Wind and water and earth could wear down stone just fine, but fire only made it more dangerous. Nobody wanted to deal with rocks so hot they were melting. She rolled under a blast of green fire and returned it with one of her own, fast and bright like the heart of a star.
It was clear that Wuya wasn't prepared for this level of aggression from them. Already the giants, naturally slow because of their size and weight, were falling under a series of blows from every angle, and she couldn't call up more and keep herself from being burnt to a crisp. She ducked and dodged and weaved around the chaos, but it was the work of a minute for the last of the six giants to wash away into the unkempt rock gardens at the edges of the temple walls.
Omi kicked the last stone into the newfound decor and gave Wuya a triumphant grin.
To her credit, she only stared for a few seconds before scowling at them again, her composure only shaken. The usual mocking light in her eyes was harder now.
"So you have learned. Looks like Chase is a better teacher than any of us ever thought."
"Surprising, isn't it?" agreed Kimiko. Both of her hands were still casting heat waves just above her skin, ready to fling fire at a moment's notice. She glanced back and saw Chase looking decidedly unimpressed with the insults, but he said nothing. Wuya, after all, was still there.
"And there's more where that came from. You gonna make a break for it now, or do we have to keep kicking your butt until you realize there's no way you can win?"
"I've won plenty of times before. One minor setback here doesn't mean you can start celebrating." She leaped into the air, but as Kimiko's fists lit up she landed on a roof rather than attacking. Her whole body glowed with Heylin light now, eyes as fierce as the first time she'd been set free from her spiritual form. "You want a challenge? Here. Have one!"
The shockwave as the ethereal fire hit the ground almost knocked them off their feet. Kimiko just barely managed to avoid getting flung through a far wall. For a moment everything was still; then the ground exploded outward, unleashing something monstrous.
There were a few regular rock giants, slightly smaller than the first, but they were nothing compared to what dragged itself out from underground after them. Longer than it was tall, its stones jagged and hooked together rather than the smoother, rounded construction of its more humanoid cousins, it looked like a scorpion with arms and legs. When it opened its stony mandibles, a mouth spat green fire and dripped molten stone. It screamed on the edge of hearing and made them all wince.
Omi stared, both in horror and because there was something familiar about it. Like she had reached into a nightmare he'd had once and pulled out the monster that had been chasing him.
From her perch, Wuya smiled with an edge of sharp teeth and gave them a coy wave.
"Enjoy!"
The giants and their monster charged. The monks didn't see her vanish over the temple walls.
Disposing of the giants would have been easy enough if it weren't for the scorpion-thing spewing flames at the giants' backs, which did no damage to them but made trying to dodge flying fists and rolling maneuvers significantly more difficult for the monks. Worse was the fact that every missed flame caught some part of the temple on fire. The magic in it meant that it scorched stone and killed grass, leaving behind swathes that were corrupted rather than burned.
Raimundo backflipped onto an adjacent roof and hissed as his tunic smoked. Some of that fire had caught him on the arm, going right through the cloth to leave the skin underneath stinging. It was painful, but probably not serious, so he focused on the fight looming below instead.
"Guys! Up here!"
The rest of them joined him in a blink. The giants didn't see where they'd gone, but it wouldn't take long before they tried looking up rather than left and right.
"This is gonna be fun." Kimiko glanced over at him. "You okay?"
"Just a scratch. I'll be fine." The scorpion unleashed another shriek, making even the giants tremble. "How're we gonna get out of this one?"
"With great difficulty." Omi crouched by the edge of the roof and clenched his fists in frustration. "I cannot put out those flames with water. They simply refuse to extinguish!"
"Really? Dang. Maybe you can cut off that thing's fire, Kim?" asked Clay. His hat was somewhere on the ground; he winced every time a giant foot came perilously close to stepping on it.
"I don't know. It's not regular fire, but I can try." Evil fire, that was all it was, but would that put it out of her purview?
"And I don't want to risk making it worse by blowing it around," said Rai. He watched the things below move around, knowing that at any second they would be spotted and wanting to take advantage of the element of surprise so long as they had it. "Okay. Let's try this. Omi, you and me take the dudes to the cleaners. Keep them away from the big ugly. Clay, you try to get that thing trapped. Dig a hole, trip it up, whatever you think will work best. Kimiko, stop the flames. If you can't, then keep them away from the rest of us. Me and Omi'll go for the kill once you two have it stuck. All right?"
They nodded. At that moment, one of the giants looked up and pointed. Every head swiveled around to fix on them.
As one, the monks leaped.
For Omi and Raimundo, the task was straightforward and simple. Clay and Kimiko, not so much. They landed on either side of it, so it kept swinging its massive tail around to try and keep them both in sight at the same time. This meant they had to dodge, which put a crimp in their ability to actually fight. By unspoken agreement Kimiko ran in front to bait it, trying to keep its attention, but it knew Clay was somewhere nearby and kept turning to try and figure out where he'd gone. Finally, Kimiko hit it just under the eye with a narrow bullet of fire, leaving a scorched mark but no real damage.
That got its attention. The mandibles crashed at her once, threateningly, and it started to lumber toward her.
Clay opened a pit under its feet.
At first it wobbled and collapsed down, half-kneeling, letting out another keening noise. But with its weirdly human arms it pushed itself free, dribbling on the grass as it opened its mandibles to start spitting fire again. He tried another pit, this one deeper, but this just meant the fire missed Kimiko by a matter of feet when the whole body slung to the side. It was single-minded and dumb, but that single-minded stupidity was dangerous in its own right - and fixed on Kimiko.
She was managing to redirect the fire as best she could, but it wasn't purely fire; the Heylin touch in it was fighting her. And Clay wasn't about to try and open an even deeper pit, because he might drag a building down with it, or collapse a hidden basement somewhere. It was bad enough doing as much damage as he was to the temple grounds. The thing was getting past everything he tried - it was smart, which very few of Wuya's creations ever were. He wondered if it was really her idea.
It wouldn't stay down, and when he tried to trip it instead it nearly burned Omi to a crisp. Clay grit his teeth. This wasn't working. The tail was still swinging, nobody could get close enough to stop it, and he was doing nothing to stop it …
Frustration and anger boiled in his gut. Chase's words from all their past training sessions filtered into his head, mocking and hateful. Even the amused little shot before they left turned into something vitriolic as he tried, and failed, to stop the monster that was lumbering after his friends. He was losing, failing, screwing up, and this thing was even made out of his own element and he couldn't -
It was made out of his own element.
The mists parted. There was one clear shot here, something that might kill him but might also work. Lightning fast he realized what he'd need to do. He ripped a handful of earth up to knock into the monster's jaw and waved at Kimiko.
"Kim! Turn it this way! Turn it to me!"
She stared at him in disbelief, but he gave her as steady a look as he could manage considering how this would turn out if he was wrong. Another massive claw swiped down at her, making her dodge, and he watched her leap and run around its side toward him. It turned slowly, eyes glowing terribly. Kimiko landed next to him and fell into a stance.
"I hope you know what you're doing," she said. Sweat had left her hair a limp mess around her shoulders, but she didn't look hurt. Clay nodded.
"I sure do too."
It had turned to face them completely. Green ooze burned the ground between them as it stepped forward. Fire licked the edges of its mouth, danced up toward its eyes. It could tell when prey had given up and was ready to be eaten.
Clay steadied himself, set his legs apart, and clapped his hands together in front of him. Earth was his element, and stone was part of the earth. Wuya could twist it to her will with as much magic as she had, but she couldn't twist the core.
He took a deep breath and reached.
The monster paused, watching them both. It tilted its head to the side. Kimiko balled her hands into fists and tried not to grab Clay by the back of his shirt to drag him away before it crushed them both. It trilled something high and nasty before bringing up its claws. The broken edges of stone cast cruel shadows on them both.
There was silence. Raimundo looked over and almost started running when he saw the sight: the raised claws, hanging theatrically as if to give Clay and Kimiko one last chance to regret their lives before coming down hard …
Except they didn't come down.
As close as she was, Kimiko could see the sudden trembling that ran through the monster. The mandibles worked frantically. A fresh surge of molten fire leaked from its jaws but didn't spray outward at them. Stone arms and legs were racked with tremors, trying to move by inches but barely managing anything at all. She looked at Clay and saw him stock-still, sweating more than if he was locked in a furnace.
He was holding it back. All on his own, he was keeping it from moving one more step.
"Omi! Rai!" She whirled to face them both, where they were finishing up the last crumbling giant. "Over here! Get it now! Hurry!" The thing let out a thin, high shriek, a mental scream that made her want to clamp her hands over her ears. It was trying to break out of his control and she didn't know how long that would take.
Both of them came at a run, Omi bounding up and over to land a hard heel in the center of its body. It jerked down, still shrieking, still unable to fight back, but Clay twitched as it fell and the end of its tail lashed wildly. Raimundo shouted something to Omi, and the two of them split up again, then charged it from opposite sides. Kimiko set her arms aflame with everything she had and reeled back.
As hard as they could, the three of them slammed into the monstrous head, heels and fists powered by all the strength they had to muster.
The mental shriek cut off abruptly. The shockwave of their hit rippled through the entire stony body. Then, almost in slow motion, cracks spread out to cover the entirety of the head, and it crumbled to pebbles and dust in a pile of swiftly-cooling molten stone. After a few seconds, the rest of the body followed suit.
It was destroyed. They'd won.
Clay sagged, and Kimiko caught him. He rested a grateful arm over her shoulder.
"Dang," said Rai, sitting down heavily and rubbing his ankle. "That hurt."
"Evidently Wuya makes her monsters only out of the most difficult stone," Omi said, by way of agreement.
"Hard," Raimundo corrected absentmindedly, but Omi just shrugged.
A shadow fell across them. They glanced up at Chase, who gave them an inscrutable look before moving to sift through the remnants of the monster. In silence he nudged aside larger stones and broken shards, but if he was looking for something, he apparently didn't find it. After a minute he turned back to them and gestured for them to stand.
With varying shades of grumble, they complied.
"Raimundo." Rai stood up a little straighter and matched Chase's look with a raised eyebrow. "You did well to evaluate the situation properly and assign roles as needed. Striking before Wuya was prepared was also a good tactic. Never give your enemies an opportunity they don't deserve."
"Seemed like as good a time as any." Rai grinned and tried not to lean on his bad ankle. Chase turned to face Omi.
"Omi. You didn't argue with the orders given and fought without holding back or showing off. Knowing when to keep your pride in check is a difficult lesson to learn for those of us entrenched in it, and I'm glad to see you handling it well."
There might have been something snide in there, but it the barb was slight and dull and aimed at them both. Omi nodded solemnly, not quite able to hold back his own smile.
"Kimiko." Chase had moved on. "You recognized when your powers would hinder rather than help and went straight for the source instead, which kept the battle from dragging on and minimized the damage done. Your level of control and awareness bodes well for your future battles."
"Fire with fire, like you said." But her grin only lasted a few moments as Chase finally turned to face Clay, who had since moved to stand on his own and was wearing a hard grimace.
"Clay."
Chase folded his arms across his chest. He let the silence build a few moments before speaking.
"To take control of a Heylin elemental using the sheer strength of your own elemental prowess is an extremely difficult undertaking, as well as extremely dangerous and foolish. Even holding it still as you did has killed other men in an instant." He met Clay's glower with a steady gaze. "I am impressed."
"Yeah, well, if you'd been out there for a minute, I - "
And then Clay's brain caught up with his ears and realized what he'd just heard was a compliment, and he stopped talking completely.
"Heylin magic corrupts everything it touches, as we've seen here today, so to be able to reach past that to what little was left unmarred is not something to be dismissed lightly." Chase leaned in a little, momentarily grimacing. "And as I see no corruption in you, it seems you were fully successful in wresting control from it, at least temporarily. To do such a thing requires a complex understanding of all sides of an element, which is something few people have ever managed. If you can master that ability, you will become a terrible threat to the Heylin - likely moreso than anyone has been since Dashi's heyday."
Clay tried to think of what to say. A thank-you was contrite and he didn't feel grateful enough to get the words out, but to hear Chase admit he had more than potential, had promise - that he could be dangerous enough to strike fear into the hearts of evil - was throwing him for a loop.
" … then that's what I'm gonna do," he finally said, words more certain than he felt, but Chase nodded and turned away without another comment.
The tension in the air around all of them vanished. Postures drooped and injuries started to make themselves known. Chase directed them to clean up the messes left behind as best they could before they headed back.
"Except you," he added, pointing at Raimundo. "Show me your arm."
Reluctantly, Rai did so. Chase peeled back the sleeve to reveal a vicious burn, the one left by the trailing scorch of Heylin fire from the monster. His mouth twisted slightly and he pressed at the black mark, making Raimundo hiss against the pain.
"Hey, easy there."
"It's shallow." Chase ignored the protest and scraped one gloved nail against the wound. "But it could use attention nonetheless."
"Think it's gonna corrupt me like everything else?"
"It might. It would have if it had gotten more of you, though if we'd cut off your arm you might have been saved." The momentary flash of teeth Rai saw probably meant that was a joke, he figured. "I'll treat it when we return."
The cleanup was swift (there wasn't much they could do about the ruined pathways and grass, but at least the rock gardens would never need refilling again) and Chase took them back to his lair, where he dismissed all but Raimundo for the foreseeable future. The two of them retreated to a smaller room off the main training chamber, where small pots bubbled over fires and there were cabinets filled with ancient-looking medical supplies.
Rai sat down and looked around as Chase pulled out a roll of bandages and a handful of bottles from one cabinet and a few acupuncture needles from another. He gave those a wary look when Chase knelt across from him.
"Is that really necessary?"
"It'll hurt less than you think." Chase set down the supplies. "Take your arm out of the sleeve."
The air was cool despite the little fires going in the corners, making his sweat chill against his skin now that it was bared. Raimundo grit his teeth and extended his arm when Chase held out a hand. Again there was prodding at the injury, which left him wanting to swear, but he held back and just watched in silence instead. He tried to think about the fight and what came before it - finding Wuya making her way out of the temple vault, even empty-handed as she was. Why was she there? How did Chase know about it?
He watched, grimly, as Chase carefully picked up a needle and carefully pressed it into place on the edge of the wound. It stung, but in comparison to the constant pain from the burn, he barely noticed it.
"Didn't figure you as much of an acupuncture person."
"I've known it to help on more than one occasion." Chase put another into place and reached for a third. "This will do less to alleviate the pain than to ensure I can anchor any lingering corruption and cut it free."
Raimundo raised an eyebrow, even though he knew Chase wasn't going to look up to see it.
"Not gonna leave it in there for me to do battle with later on?" Chase made a dismissive noise, almost a snort.
"You've had your battles with darkness." The third needle went in. "I doubt something like this would be your downfall. It would be far more likely to trip you up partway through an upcoming battle, which is something none of us needs."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Rai never stopped watching what Chase was doing; even if he didn't think there was any real danger, he wasn't about to take his chances and look away. Besides, it couldn't hurt to see what was happening. Magic in general was still kind of a closed book to him, and this didn't seem like it was Heylin, so how bad could it be?
There were six needles in place before Chase did anything significant, and even then, Rai didn't really understand it. All he knew was that green and purple lines flickered between the points of metal briefly, and then his arm suddenly felt like it was on fire. He choked and would have lashed out with his injured arm if Chase hadn't been gripping his wrist tight enough to bruise, so he just wrenched down into his shoulder, refusing to make a sound.
Eventually the pain ebbed down into something bearable. When he looked up, Chase was pulling the needles free, setting them in a tiny bowl. There was no blood, he noticed, and also the wound didn't look as bad any more. Instead of a blackened, threatening mess, it just looked ugly.
"Geeze. Warn a guy, will you?"
"I did." Chase let go of his wrist. "You'll be fine, and the scar will be something I'm sure you can show off in the future."
"My first real battle scar, huh?" Raimundo turned his arm to the side to get a better look at where it curled at his elbow. "Seems kind of pathetic I got it fighting one of Wuya's monsters."
"She's capable enough, when she wants to be, but I understand the sentiment completely." Chase uncorked one of the bottles he'd brought and carefully poured a measure on the burn. It stung more than the needles did, and Rai hissed through his teeth. "Rub that into the wound."
"Not enough that she got what she wanted today." He grimaced and did as he was told. "Whatever that was. Any ideas?"
"No. I can't imagine she was actually trying to steal the Wu, whether on her own initiative or Hannibal's." Chase set the bottle back on the table and picked up another. "She is shallow, vain, petty, and selfish, among other things, but not even she would be stupid enough to ignore the upcoming danger in favor of trinkets."
"So there must have been some other reason." Rai moved his hand to let Chase put a few drops of something else on his arm, which didn't hurt as much as the first. "I didn't think there was anything in the vault except Wu, but … I've only been there for a couple years." He paused. "Weren't you there a long time ago?"
"It was an entirely different temple back then," Chase said wryly, reaching for a third bottle. "One that I burned to the ground after I turned away from the Xiaolin. If they hid something in the depths of the new one, I never noticed."
"So it's possible." The third liquid felt cool on his arm, making Rai sigh in relief. "Think Guan would know?"
Chase tensed and hesitated, gloved fingers twitching as they reached for the coil of bandages nearby.
"He might." The fact that it was a visible hesitation made Rai wonder. The two of them had been icily cordial at each other in their last few meetings, so much so that it was almost unreal. "Ask him the next time he visits."
It was a little strange, having one of his worst enemies bandage him up, but Raimundo didn't say anything about it. It was more convenient than doing it himself, and the silence between them as Chase worked was at least calm, if not really companionable or pleasant in any way. It reminded him of … something. Something he couldn't quite place. Something similar, like this had happened before, somewhere else.
He frowned. Where else would this have happened? It wasn't like this was a regular thing. Chase usually made them take care of their own wounds.
But the sight of gloved fingers carefully folding over the end of stark white bandages so they didn't come loose struck a strange chord with him. Something flickered, and for a second he was sitting in a dim room somewhere, sunlight trying to filter through dusty windows, watching as someone else wrapped old, torn linens around a gash in his forearm. Someone with careful, steady, ungloved hands.
It lasted for less than a moment. Rai blinked and it was gone, and Chase was pulling away, standing up to put everything back in its place. Uneasily he pulled his tunic back on and got to his feet. He headed for the door, but paused before he stepped out.
"Thanks," he said, without glancing back.
"Not necessary," was the response. It wasn't sharp or dismissive, really. More an automatic response.
Raimundo drummed his fingers on the edge of the doorway before making his way out and toward the hall back to his room.
No point in dwelling on it. He had enough to think about already.
.-.-
Almost.
Things were falling into place.
The world was shifting in little ways. Power was moving, redirecting itself to the appointed place. The paths of spirits were being carefully but firmly nudged in the right direction. Little things were being put where they belonged - sigils in stones, talismans in trees.
And above all, things were being thrown in the wrong places, too, and that was why this was taking so long. All of this was so far from subtle it could be seen from the edge of the universe. Hannibal was under no impression that he was getting away without being noticed, so he had to throw red herrings left and right to keep the Xiaolin off his trail. At the same time, he needed to make sure he still had enough power to go through with the ritual, so there couldn't be too many false leads, or at least too many in out-of-the-way places.
It was difficult. It was frustrating. It was almost enough to make him tear out his metaphorical hair. But it was working, and that was what mattered above everything else in the world.
Alone in his underground lair, Hannibal hopped off a table and made his way to a pile of papers inscribed with ancient mantras of evil. They were worthless, hardly even tainting the paper they were written on, but they looked bad and the Heylin had picked up a reputation of style over substance in his absence.
There was nothing wrong with being flashy every so often, especially when you'd won, but these days it was all flash and no bang. Presumptuous and arrogant. Which, again, was fine, until those early celebrations landed you face-first in the mud at your enemies' feet, or stuck in a timeless hell of a prison for 1,500 years.
So he would use the expectations of his enemies to lead them on the wrong paths. Already the focus was back on the Xiaolin Temple. The sudden appearance of hundreds of curse talismans over the so-called hallowed ground of Dashi's hometown a few miles away would solidify everyone's suspicions, leaving him free to keep burning out the real seals just under the surface of the earth.
It was a necessary waste of time. But it would be worth it in the end. He had to keep reminding himself of that, before he gave up and went the way of all the other Heylin around here and just let everything blow up in his face.
Little shadowy servants skittered in and out of the room, grabbing talismans and vanishing into the darkness. They were just highly intelligent rats, but he'd done his best for illusions so now anyone who saw them would scream demons, demons coming up from the cellar! And everyone would wonder what new power he'd summoned up from the abyss and start looking for answers in all the wrong scrolls and leave him to his plans, thinking he was leaving giant footsteps in his wake.
Nevertheless, he sighed wearily. It was draining, manipulating so many things at once, using so much power he didn't really have. And all for an end result that might not even acknowledge him. Or at least his efforts - it was going to acknowledge him, so long as he had the shards. Which was all he really had at this point. That, and a grim determination to see this through to the bitter end.
Well. Bitter for everyone else.
Hannibal turned away from the talismans and looked at the nearly-invisible slot in the wall where the hidden door was. The damn things were drawing attention from other realms now that they weren't buried any more. They were nearly impossible for living people to find, he'd made sure of that, but they were blazing like a beacon on every other level. Spirits clustered around the sealed room and made a nuisance of themselves. Of course, a nuisance was about all they could manage, but it was annoying either way.
Especially certain spirits.
He could feel a deep, distant pressure as he moved through the underground caves, trying to grab not at the barriers protecting the shards but at him. It was coming from a very long distance away but making steady, though sometimes questionable, progress. Lately he'd been hearing distant hissing whispers. That was a bad sign. It meant he was weakening. It meant that bastard was getting closer. That was the only real danger he faced now - one with nothing but time to keep it at bay.
But everything was so close to coming together that he didn't want to risk another delay just to ensure one little problem didn't get bigger. It could lead to new problems, or old ones getting a new foothold. He'd be done before this turned into an issue.
The world would be his well before those whispers were audible.
So long as he didn't start slacking off.
Hannibal moved through corridors and into caves. He collected more candles and took them to the hidden rooms where the artifacts of real power slowly ebbed and waned, kept safe thanks to their fake counterparts shining with brittle brightness on the surface. He tested sigils, redrew what had burned away through sheer power and felt satisfied with what was holding out. He looked over ancient maps of old power nexuses, now covered with his own drawings and decisions as he rearranged them under a quiet forest clearing. Four points here, six there … he took a moment's break to feed Ying-Ying a handful of seeds and reread messages from distant, shadowy servants and acquaintances. Observations from everywhere that might pose a problem. For instance, the land of Nowhere.
Chase and the monks weren't a threat. The Xiaolin in general never really had been, but this attempt was laughable. Four pitiful wannabe Dragons trying to learn how to master skills that had taken Dashi his entire life to do? What had the world come to? It was almost insulting, but Hannibal was sensible enough to realize that not having a bonafide hero coming after him was a good thing. The hit to his pride wasn't worth being annoyed over.
Not even Chase alone, at the ultimate peak of his power, would have been good enough to stop him. Nor Guan. Arrogance made him think nor Dashi, which was easy enough when said monk was long since dead. They would try, the lot of them, and in the end Hannibal would succeed and fling them into their own private little hells for all the trouble they'd put him to.
Especially Chase. Fifteen hundred years in a world with no time …
He owed the bastard.
Something distant and ghostlike hissed from a long ways away. Hannibal's almost-smirk dropped into a grimace.
"Shut up," he snapped. "Dead men oughta stay dead."
.-.-
Guan hadn't known anything about something hidden in, or under, the temple. As someone who'd helped to supervise its construction, he would have found out if there had been additional work to keep something safe. Though he admitted it was possible Dashi could have kept something like that from him, it seemed highly unlikely.
He did, however, say that artifacts of great power were often stored in temples to keep them out of evil's reach. It seemed like an obvious place to put them, but at the same time, anyone attempting to actually get at them would have to fight their way through armies of highly-trained, extremely disciplined warriors, often with no sense of humor or mercy.
For a while they'd discussed whether or not they should go back to the temple and search it fully for anything that Hannibal might have wanted. Guan said it was too dangerous, and in any case they needed to continue their training here. He would ask Master Fung about it, and tell them what he found out next time.
But that didn't stop them from being curious about what might be hidden, and what was being held in other temples. Chase wouldn't give them any real answers, instead waving them off with an insistence that they had training to do, but it occupied their mealtimes and free hours enough that he finally gave up and, with some reluctance, let them into his library to look up whatever information they wanted on their own.
It was the biggest library any of them had ever seen.
Buried under the base of his citadel, it seemed to go on forever. There were scrolls filling long, winding honeycombs made of stone and wood. Bound books filled what seemed like endless shelves that stretched up to the ceiling. With a snap of his fingers Chase lit the place up, fires springing to life in carefully-contained torches in the walls. It was still dim, but there was enough light to see by, and in the center of the room was a small dais with cushions and better lighting.
"I'll take your stunned silence as a compliment," Chase said after a few moments.
"It's pretty impressive," Raimundo said, looking up one of the bookcases. "You've been collecting these since forever?"
"Since I realized it was more than worth the trouble to find and keep them. Unfortunately, this was not an early realization." He brushed past them, heading for the dais. "The histories are to the right. Start with the bound copies, since you may actually be able to read those. And be careful of the scrolls; some of them are older than I am."
They fanned out. It took a while to find the right books, some of which were twenty feet above their heads and required Omi's careful climbing to get to. Even then, most turned out to be old enough that the pages were yellowing and written in ancient dialects, rendering them difficult, if not outright impossible, to read. Even Omi couldn't decipher some of them, and he'd been taught to read on these sorts of things.
But even with the difficulty of the search and translation, it was … fun. It wasn't endless training, wasn't backbreaking or painful (except for the occasional book avalanche), wasn't lorded over by an arrogant warlord. They were left to themselves to find the information they wanted. The hours passed in a blink.
After a while, Omi, his head too full of ancient writings to focus any more, left the collection they'd amassed and wandered over to the dais, where Chase was lazily sprawled with a few books open on his lap and an unrolled scroll in his hands. He didn't seem to notice Omi's approach, so the monk took the opportunity to look at what he was studying. There was no hope of translating the words, but the scroll had pictures on it. It looked like a war manual. He grimaced.
"I do not see why you would study the Eight Gates formation when our battles are most certainly not with an enemy army."
Chase looked over at him sharply, eyebrows raised.
"How do you have any familiarity with Bagua tactics?" he asked, incredulous.
"I have read many of our ancient texts as well!"
"In the temple?" Omi expected a sneer, but it didn't come. "Those old monks gave you access to war texts?"
"Er … " Omi shrunk down a little, glancing back at the others. "I was not … exactly given permission to do so."
Chase's eyebrows raised even further.
"Then why do so, if it was forbidden?"
Omi hesitated. It was a silly thing he didn't want to admit, but he couldn't lie, either. He wrung his hands for a second, then sighed. If Chase mocked him for it, at least he'd expect it.
"For a time I believed it was of the utmost important to know all about war, in case it broke out and we were called to fight. I … thought I should know all the best tactics, for when I lead an army." He lifted his chin defiantly, even if he was still embarrassed.
Chase's eyebrows stayed raised, but surprisingly, he didn't smirk or laugh.
"Not a bad idea, though these kinds of wars - " He flicked the scroll with a finger. " - aren't fought any longer, nor was the arrangement of anything inspired by Bagua truly effective in the long run. Impressive, but far too much work for far too little payoff." Chase leaned back and set down the scroll. "I can't imagine what got the idea of leading armies into your head."
"Old stories of great heroes. Including Dashi," Omi added, wanting to see what effect this had, and he almost laughed to see Chase's expression sour in an instant.
"Dashi never led armies. If you were told a story like that, it was an outright lie." He idly rolled up the scroll. "Advised, yes, maybe. But stood at their head and marched with them to battle?" Chase laughed unpleasantly. "He only dreamed of such things."
Omi glanced at the other books Chase had been reading. They were probably on similar subjects, but why? This wasn't a war between men.
He glanced back at the sound of footsteps. Raimundo, Kimiko, and Clay were all approaching, Kimiko with her smartphone in hand. She'd been using it to keep track of all their findings, saying that writing them all down would take too long.
"Funny joke?" asked Rai, rubbing stiffness out of his shoulders.
"In a way," Chase said dryly. "Did you find what you were looking for?"
"Not really." Kimiko ran through the list one more time, trying to pick out pieces of information. "There's no mention in anything we found of our temple hiding something, but that might have been deliberately left out. There were a lot of others, though, and some of these things … are they actually real?"
"As real as the Shen Gong Wu and all your weapons."
"Dashi made those, though." Clay glanced down at the rolled-up scroll in Chase's hands, at the books still open on his legs. "All we've read's said these were made outta thunder and lightning, or came from the heavens, or just … showed up."
"He also imbued them with their mystical powers. Surely those would fall outside the purview of what's generally considered 'real'." Chase set the scroll aside and closed his books. "You've seen worlds outside time, demons in numerous forms … you know the shards are real enough, or you wouldn't be here at your masters' behests. Don't doubt something simply because you don't understand its origin."
"Sure," said Raimundo, sidestepping any arguments anyone else wanted to make, "but why keep them around, if they might be so dangerous? Why not just throw them somewhere nobody can reach? The bottom of the ocean, or inside a volcano."
"I couldn't tell you the precise reason, but my guess is something along the lines of 'in case of an emergency', or 'because'." Chase smiled thinly. "There's always some inscrutable reason to keep them around, just in case, and it always ends badly."
"And Hannibal might be going after them."
"If he has the shards, I don't know why he'd need to."
"Best lead on him we've got, though."
"I suppose." Chase stared at nothing for a few long moments. "Undoubtedly this line of questioning will echo through other enclaves and temples. When we hear about this again, even if the Xiaolin temple is still a mystery, we may get answers we didn't realize we were seeking."
"I fear that will make this most complicated."
"It's already complicated." He stood up and looked at the mess they'd left behind, and this time he did sneer. "Clean up and we'll continue today's training." He glanced down at Omi, the sneer momentarily fading. "I believe I have a new idea I'd like to try."
Omi gulped, and suddenly wished he hadn't said anything about tactics.
