Chapter Twenty-Six:

The journey through hundreds of years happened in a blink of an eye. The carriage appeared outside of a village, and the moment Hadrian stepped outside, he could smell it. Fear, and not because of him. Because of the dark force which fell over the Kingdom. The bodies of men, women, and children lined the street. Their deaths, pointless, but to prove a point, and Hadrian shuddered at one of the monuments destroyed. While it could be rebuilt, he could feel a temporal shift, and his old enemy, had been brought out of time as well.

"What happened?" Cassandra asked.

"The Mandarin happened," Hadrian said.

The fearful villagers moved out. Many of them women, some of them children, and Hadrian only saw a few men scattered in the attacks. Many of them, too weak to do anything. Most had obviously been recruited by the Emperor, in a final attempt to defeat this old enemy. Anyone able bodied, they met a fate worse than death.

"He's here!" one of the villagers cheered.

"The Great One, the Dragon, he's here."

Hadrian, where he went in several places, had been met with fear. Stories of his exploits had been spread far and wide. Some of them twisted, some of them accurate, but the Dragon was a feared boogeyman to many. The villagers, these villagers on the other hand, stepped out, all of them peering onto Hadrian.

"Fa Mulan, she's with him as well!" one of the girls cried out.

They all bowed down. Cassandra, could not help, but have a twitch of amusement over her lips, despite the fact this situation had grown depressingly serious.

"I know a great evil has come to your land," Hadrian told him. "Mulan, after everything she has sacrificed, sought out my temple. And her faith, has brought me here. And your faith, will keep you strong."

Hadrian closed his eyes and channeled the energy. From his experience, the ten rings had given a very distinctively trail, one which Hadrian could easily track. He wanted them in his trophy room, but the Mandarin slipped one step ahead.

"I will find the one who did this and take him down," Hadrian said. "All of you be strong."

They all dropped to their knees as Hadrian, Cassandra, and Mulan passed. Given they had been blessed by the Dragon, the villagers all worshipped them just as much as they worshipped the Dragon.

"Here, you're worshipped, but in other places, you're feared," Cassandra said.

"It varies," Hadrian said. "We don't have much time."

A pair of eyes watching from the village started to do a runner, up to the Emperor's Palace, where the Mandarin likely had been setting up shop. Both Cassandra and Mulan, drew their swords, until the Dragon King put a stop to that.

"No," he said. "That fool will lead us straight to the Mandarin...although he is as precisely as I said he would be."

Time to settle an old score, and take down someone who stayed one step ahead of Hadrian. But now, Hadrian had been more powerful than ever before.

The Mandarin sat proudly across a throne of bones in the Emperor's old palace. Some of them made of the emperor himself, the others made of the soldiers himself. Four skulls sat in prominence on pikes surrounding the throne, with a fifth pike open for the skull of Fa Mulan. She would pay for denying his rule.

The cowardly girl fled. Typical of a woman. If she was China's greatest hero, then cementing his rule throughout time and space would be easy.

A subordinate rushed into the room, breathing heavily, and almost collapsed at the feet of the Mandarin. The Warlord's eyes parted with disgust, as he reached down and yanked the soldier to a standing position.

"What is it?" he demanded.

"Dragon….Dragon….Dragon!" the subordinate yelled in fear.

"What?"

The Mandarin's cold voice chilled the other guards surrounding him.

"The Dragon is here...the Dragon is here….Mulan found the Temple of the Dragon and brought him here!" the subordinate babbled.

"And you ran from him and he saw you, and you will have led him here," the ruler said unimpressed. "So be it."

The Mandarin blasted his formerly loyal subordinate into ash to teach a lesson and to prove the point to the other cowards lining about the temple. The Mandarin's cold steely gaze fell on them.

"So, the Dragon comes," he said sharply. "So be it."

Not even in Ancient China, the Mandarin could not escape the persistent boil on his ass. He tried to run up the Dragon by eliminating several of his power bases of followers, throughout time, starting with this time period in China. But, allowing the girl to flee in terror, and not hunt her down, proved to be fatal.

The Mandarin walked down the steps from his throne of bones, pass the corpse of a red dragon speared to a pike and a crushed cricket.

"Dragon, come to me!"

Mulan stepped into the palace, with Cassandra following. After the Mandarin slaughtered all of her friends, Mulan wanted to take him down, although she could not do it along. Thankfully, she did not have to do it alone. The squad of the Mandarin's guards appeared outside of the temple.

"Eight on one?" Cassandra asked. "That seems a bit...uneven?"

Without any hesitation, both of the women made short work of the guards. They had no chance, although admittedly, Cassandra barely did anything. Mulan went through the guards like a hot knife through butter.

The Mandarin stepped outside, in front of Hadrian Peverell, the Dragon.

"You are going to perish at my hands," the Mandarin said.

A blaze of energy shot from the rings and Hadrian deflected it back. He spun around and appeared right behind the Mandarin.

"You will…."

A flash of magical energy utterly destroyed the Emperor's Palace, with Cassandra and Mulan teleporting just out of the blast zone.

Cassandra pulled herself up from the rubble, mouth wide open, as a large dragon with green and black scales appeared, towering over them, and standing over the Mandarin.

The Dragon could in fact literally turn into a dragon, and said dragon skipped the formalities, and tore the rings off of the Mandarin's hands. The fact his rings were still connected to said hands did not bother the Dragon at all. The Mandarin screamed in rage, but not for long, as the Dragon stamped him completely out.

A deep hole in the ground contained the grisly remains of the man who slaughtered Mulan's friends. She moved over, looking at the Dragon. The dragon snorted smoke at them, and of course it did, because it was a giant freaking dragon who could torch the entire village down.

"Good dragon?" Cassandra asked uncertainty.

The Dragon bent down and Mulan patted him on the nose, with an awed smile. Cassandra did the same.

She wondered why Hadrian did not do this more often. The dragon shifted back into a human, as the sorcerer dropped to the ground on his knees.

It had been easier to keep his human mind in that form even more. The first time Hadrian tapped into this side of himself, he obliterated a castle which stood for a thousand years, reducing it to little more than ash. Although, no less draining. Cassandra reached out and Hadrian took her hand, almost leaning up against her.

"I'm fine," Hadrian said. "That takes a lot of power...I only pull that out when someone really gets on my nerves."

"I figured," Cassandra said.

"Mulan, take my hand," Hadrian wheezed.

The two took Hadrian's hands, and he activated the locate which teleported them back to the carriage, along with the Mandarin's mangled hands, the rings still on them.

"Corona, please," Hadrian said.
The Shameless Smut Returns In the Next Chapter