Notes: So I've been working on the, "Dashi preemptively runs the world's worst groundhog day loop in an effort to save Chase," fic, wherein he finally gets in over his head playing with very powerful magic in order to solve a minor problem. I figured I'd post the first bit to gauge interest. It's a little rough and could probably do with another draft or two, but right now I'm getting back into writing so I kind of have to post it before i talk myself out of doing so.
"This is going to be the year I finally beat Li at cards," Dashi said, gazing fondly upon his latest invention.
"He hides them up his sleeves Dashi," Chase said, rolling his eyes. "Everybody knows this."
"He would never besmirch the noble institution of gambling!" he insisted.
"Isn't that what you're doing?" Guan asked.
"I'm not cheating," he said, not at all defensive. "I'm just taking the gambling out of my gambling."
"I still can't believe you spent months building a powerful magical artifact that can supposedly see the future…" Chase said.
"…and you want to use it to enable…" Guan continued.
Dashi waved off their baseless complaining and said, "One day, you're going to appreciate my genius," before slipping the crystal glasses over his face.
He pitched forwards. His joints suddenly ache as the temple courtyard spins into view. He catches himself on a low stone wall that shouldn't be there amid smoke and screaming.
He staggers, soot clinging to his skin, and grabs the nearest monk. The woman's face is unfamiliar, yet he knows her.
"Sister Ning what's happening?" He doesn't know where her name comes from, yet he knows her long, narrow features and serious dark eyes. He's never seen her before in his life, yet he knows she's barely older than Chase and Guan and her favorite food is preserved lemons.
"A monster," she replies before turning to help wounded villagers into the safety of the temple.
He carries on into the village. His right side is stiffer than it should be. He blames an old chimera bite. But he's never been bitten by…no, he will be.
He slides around a corner, looking for his brothers. Guan's probably already in the thick of it. He hasn't seen Chase all morning, off training or studying, but he wouldn't be far behind. Dashi would have been a bit more worried when he skipped breakfast, but Chase skipping meals had become frequent as of late, and he'd been moody and snappish last night.
Smoke rises from the far side of the town square. Guan stands in an alleyway, spear at the ready. He looks too tall and broad-shouldered to be his quiet, sensible little brother. There's movement down the darkened side street, but he can't quite make out anything but a flash of black spines. It stops. Guan's spear clatters to the ground, his shoulders slumping forwards.
He rushes towards them, tearing the water from the well, from catch barrels, even from the river, but he's a step too late. The creature lunges forwards in a blur of black and green. Its jaws clamp around Guan's shoulder. The wave crashes over them, but the creature pulls Guan to the ground and rolls. It's all over in a spray of blood and the horrible sound of tearing flesh and breaking bones.
How was he going to tell Chase?
He has no time to think about it. The creature extricates itself from the deadly embrace and rushes at him. It covers the square in a blur. He hardly has time to pull the water back to him before it lunges. Its claws fall just short of his head only because something big barrels into him from the side.
He rolls across the cobblestones, his skull cracking against the well. For a few heartbeats, everything goes black. Then, vision blurred and ears ringing, he lurches back to his feet.
Dojo and the creature twist and clash through the narrow streets. Dojo was massive and powerful, but the creature was quick and clever enough to keep him grounded. Dojo slams into the ground, trying to pin the creature under his bulk. It scrambles over him, Dojo roaring as the creature's claws dig into his side.
The ground rolls under him like ocean waves as he staggers towards them. His control over the water is as slippery as his balance, but he can't make another mistake. He can't lose anybody else.
He engulfs it in a bubble. For a few moments he can almost see it clearly as it thrashes and chokes. Some kind of great lizard with black and green stripes and black spines running down its back.
Dojo wraps his coils around it and starts to squeeze. It goes limp and the temple guardian lets up just enough for it to scramble free.
It leaps to a rooftop to avoid Dojo's great snapping jaws. He flings a barrage of ice spears at the creature, but it dodges and lunges for the dragon again. Dojo rears back, roaring in pain. He changes the trajectory, but the dragon keeps writhing, crushing homes and shops under his body. They're too wrapped up in each other to try a third time.
Then Dojo makes a horrible gurgling roar and falls back. He tries to run, slipping and stumbling, the world spinning around him as the creature worries at Dojo's throat. The dragon weakly thrashes until the creature leaps back, a strip of bloody scales clenched in its teeth.
A cold pit opens around him as the creature noses at the body. His stomach rolls and he nearly vomits as it tips its head back and swallows a hunk of flesh.
It crawls over Dojo's body. He staggers back as he suddenly understands why Guan was unable to fight back. The creature has the most beautiful, horribly familiar, honey gold eyes.
The creature bolts forwards and knocks him backwards before the shock can wear off, its bloodstained maw clamping around his throat.
Then he jolted to a stop, the crystal glasses in his hands, Dojo still draped safely over his shoulder.
"So," His heart stopped at Chase's voice, "how much money did you lose?"
Dashi's attention shot to his friends. Guan was still whole and lanky and alive. Chase was still perfectly human.
"Dunno," he said, quickly feigning nonchalance and shoving them into his pocket. "They don't work."
"Told you," Chase said, somehow managing to sound both smug and disappointed. He turned to Guan. "You owe me your dessert for the next week."
"If they don't work," Guan said. Dashi grit his back teeth. Guan's earth powers made him very difficult to lie to, "what did you see?"
"I was washing the dishes," he said with very real shudder. "By choice!"
"I told you," Chase said. "You can't predict the future. There's too many little variables all over the world for a fixed timeline. If someone in Tikal kicks a pebble down a pyramid next week, you don't know how it's going to bounce, or if it hits someone important, or if it…"
As Chase rambled, he found it difficult to reconcile his little brother with the beast from his vision. Sure, he could be an arrogant know-it-all, but he wasn't a monster.
Chase was a bright, curious young man who loved sweets and the temple cats and fell asleep studying way too many times to count. He was always eager to join in a prank war or help making Shen Gong Wu. He made bad tea because he got impatient ant scalded the leaves. He'd accidentally burned Guan in a training accident once and couldn't get more than a weak whisp of smoke from his powers for weeks. He couldn't have slaughtered them all.
The Crystal Glasses didn't work. They couldn't work. Chase was right. He couldn't predict the future. There were too many little variables.
"As fascinating as our little genius is, we're going to miss the festival if we let him keep this up," Dojo said, drumming his fingers on Dashi's shoulder.
"You guys go on ahead," Dashi said. They couldn't work, but he had to be sure. "I've got a few things I want to finish up here."
"You sure you want to leave Jiang waiting?" Guan asked. "She's still angry with you for leaving a mess at the forge the other day."
"She knows I'm always fashionably late." He waved them away. Besides, she always forgave him. Eventually. Normally after he'd spent a few days working in the blacksmith's shop and came up with a few good puns.
"Your funeral," Chase said. "Dojo?" Chase held his arm out and the little dragon coiled in preparation to jump over. After Dashi, the supernaturally warm dragon of fire was his favorite perch.
Yet even though he knew it couldn't be real, Dashi couldn't put the creature's bloody maw out of his mind.
"Actually, I need Dojo here," he said. "You know how it is. I need a mystical dragon to help fix a mystical artifact."
Guan eyed him in a way that indicated that he knew that he was lying, but followed his friend from the courtyard anyway. As they left, they passed a pair of senior monks taking measurements where that little stone wall would be in just a few years.
He waited until they were really gone before sinking back against a column and taking the Crystal Glasses from his pocket with shaking hands.
"What's with the earthquake?" Dojo said, coiling a little tighter around his shoulders. "You sure you don't want to go over, maybe get some dumplings…you feel like you need food."
He set his hand on his friend's head. Dojo's cool scales helped calm some of his panicked shaking.
"I'll be fine," he said, steeling himself to put the glasses back on. "I just need to check something."
In spite of the warm autumn afternoon, a chill rolled down his spine with every new card he drew. He stared in nearly open horror at a winning hand. He could play it right now and finally win, no matter which cards Li's shoved up his sleeves. He'd put whatever money he'd saved up over the last few weeks into this game. Yet rather than let the vision play out, he walked away, feeling at once relief and a growing grim determination.
The future could still be changed.
