Chapter One—Knights and Dragons
Ryo lengthened his torso languidly as he rose from his warm, beckoning bed. Rubbing his eyes and clearing his throat, he yawned before swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and stepping onto the cold wooden floor. He adjusted the waistband on his boxer shorts and proceeded to do six stretches to loosen his sleepy body. He then walked into his kitchen to fix himself a light breakfast before his morning run with Cye and Mia.
Casually, he flicked on the television, merely for background noise. There was little going on in the minute Toyama suburb of Wakki, so hardly any natural sound permeated the walls. Sometimes it could be so aggravating, but four years ago—after Talpa's defeat—that was all any of the Ronin Warriors longed for… peace and solitude.
A swift knock at the door reverberated through the foyer. "Come in!" Ryo called out to the unknown visitor. The front door squeaked open, and Mia's soft voice chimed delicately. "Ready yet?"
"You know," he began, gathering his dishes from the table, "you ask me that every morning, and what's the answer—which never changes, I might add?"
" 'Do chickens have lips?' I thought maybe, to be cute, you might surprise me for once."
"Not this week, honey. I'm going to be Mr. Nosurprise." Then, unexpectedly, he scooped Mia up in his arms, spun her several times and kissed her passionately. "Starting… now!"
She slapped him playfully on the arm, still blushing madly under her veil of brown hair. "I don't know why I put up with you."
"Because I'm a good kisser?"
"Sage is better. You should ask him for lessons." Ryo waved a fist at her in mock anger before pushing her out the front door.
"Let me change into my jogging clothes, and I'll be with you in a second."
"Fine, just don't make it too long." And Mia blew Ryo a kiss.
He reluctantly turned away from her beautiful face to climb the stairs to his bedroom. Ryo couldn't be happier with his routine, though he often complained about it. Every morning the Ronin woke up when he felt like it, ate a filling breakfast, saw the woman he loved and then went for a swift jog through the town he adored. Of course, the best part of that whole pattern was seeing his Mia, though he always told her otherwise. And naturally, he never mentioned that to his buddies; they would only laugh at him, except for maybe Rowen. But he didn't want to rub in the fact that he had someone and Rowen didn't. The other four Ronins had someone to call their girl, but not poor Rowen.
Even four years after the Dynasty's destruction, Rowen confessed Talpa wouldn't leave his blood or his mind. He was haunted unlike any of the other guys, which surprised everyone, especially Anubis. They thought if anyone would've been affected like this, it would have been Ryo. But they were wrong. Now Talpa's tarnished memory had completely faded from the others' minds, with the exception of Strata's. It embedded itself in Rowen's system and changed him, mutated him.
It was hard to describe. For most of the time, he was still the same Rowen Hashiba they all knew and loved, but on occasion he would swing into these dark moods—periods in his life where his eyes seemed to flicker red with fire and his soul suddenly blackened with hate. And from what Sage told Ryo, every night, in his neighboring bedroom, he could hear Rowen tossing in the grips of a horrific nightmare, where he would shout someone's name for hours, but Sage never learned whose name it was. Hunted by nightmares and plagued by memories, it was easy to see how he could be so tortured.
Unfortunately, everyone could sense his building frustrations and anger, including the women. Rowen was dangerous goods, and it wasn't even the attractive type that lures some women; it was a fateful danger, one that couldn't be trusted above anything. Ryo wished Rowen could overcome whatever obstacle blocked him so he might finally find happiness. But that could never happen if Talpa reigned inside him.
Ryo decided to stop at his friends' apartment and pay the roommates a visit (although it was doubtful Rowen would be awake). Quickly, he stripped off his clothes and slipped in his comfy, old sweats. He raced down the stairs to find Mia tapping her foot impatiently like she always did. "Miss me?"
"Like a boil on my butt," she mumbled sarcastically.
"Lovely simile. You should write poetry."
"Careful, you might just get your wish." Ryo cringed visibly. Not that he thought Mia would make a particularly bad poet, but it was all part of the routine in the romantic games they played. "Let's go, Casanova."
Outside the sun hung limply in the sky, dangling just above the skyline of the distant Toyama. The last strands of the regular morning smog cloud drifted out, moving on to the next city like a scavenging wolf. Its opaque gray fangs sunk into every living thing as the beast encircled and strangled it. Then it smacked its lips as the next suburb was engulfed, bewildered and lost in its belly. Underneath the burning sky though, the grass grew green and the flowers flourished in a rainbow of colors. The early risers of Wakki, though friendly when they had the time to be, rushed hurriedly to their cars and sped off downtown, tearing up asphalt in their wakes.
Ryo loved Wakki. It was the paragon of a quiet suburb, but it harbored a special flare on which the Ronins couldn't place a finger. There was something that drew all of the Ronin Warriors here after the war with evil. The charm perhaps? The peace? Or something else? "The latter," he thought to himself.
Mia took the lead and steered him into a neighboring park. Every so often she would turn around to check to make sure he was keeping up with her quickening pace, and upon finding him but a few steps behind, she would flash him an attractive grin. Shadows from the trees mottled her perfect complexion, writhing and contorting as she ran through them. Always beautiful—even when consumed by darkness. Ryo sighed dreamily, a thing he did not often do. But more and more he found himself doing so as he spent each morning with Mia. She brought that out in him. And he liked it.
When they reached the edge of the park, Mia turned right and Ryo shouted out to her. "This way today, Mia! I wanna stop by Sage and Rowen's place for a change!"
Catching up to him now, she slowed her strides until they were almost in step with his. "How is Rowen anyway? I haven't seen him in almost two weeks, I think."
"He hasn't been out much lately, I'm afraid. I think I've only seen him twice this week compared to the other Ronins whom I've seen everyday."
"He's dealing that poorly, huh?"
Ryo nodded solemnly, focusing on the blurred ground moving beneath his feet. "Rowen doesn't understand what's happening to him, and you know how he hates not understanding something. It has to be as maddening as Chinese water torture for him."
"So what is wrong with him?"
"I wish I knew. Everyone else does, too. Unfortunately for Rowen, he's the only one who can figure out this problem. Only he can interpret his feelings in their true forms." Ryo wished all that he said was not true—for Rowen's sake—but it was.
"There's nothing we can do for him?"
Ryo looked up at his girlfriend's startled face streaked with the lines of sadness and helplessness and frowned. How could he speak the truth? How could he tell her no? So he lied. "Yes, there is. We can be his friends."
@~~`~~~
As Sage sat down to his hot tofu soup breakfast shortly before ten o'clock, there was a rap on his front door. Slightly groggy and still reveling in that wonderful warm feeling one gets when one wakes up, he shuffled over to it and opened it slowly to reveal Ryo and Mia. "Out on your morning jog, I see. Well, don't just stand there! Come on in." They smiled warmly in unison, slipping their shoes off and donning the offered slippers by the door. "So what brings you two to this end of Wakki? I thought your usual route ran you passed Cye's place then looped back around?"
Ryo settled easily into the crinkly leather couch, his weight squeaking the taut fabric. "Normally it does, and we probably should have told Cye we were coming here first, but I guess I really didn't think about that. Oops!"
Mia nudged him gently toward the phone with her shoulder. "Obviously we only have one genius in our midst. Speaking of Rowen…"
"Oh," Sage gasped as though he had just remembered he had a roommate, "he's still asleep, though I didn't think you'd really expect him to be up now. Last couple of days he's been sleeping a lot later than usual. I think it has something to do with the fact he can't fall asleep until around three in the morning every day. He gets into his bed at ten—no later—and lays there for hours on end, wide-awake. Says he can't close his eyes for fear."
"For fear of what?" Mia prodded gently, glancing over at Ryo to see that, even though he was on the phone, he was listening.
"For fear is all he ever says."
"Creepy."
"Just a little," Ryo mumbled to them, covering the phone's mouthpiece with his hand. "What? No, Cye, I wasn't talking to you…"
"When can we expect him up?"
Sage shook his head sorrowfully. "When I said he's been sleeping in later than usual, I meant more like two in the afternoon."
"Oh my! Maybe if you woke him up earlier, then he'd go to bed earlier."
"Nope. Tried it. Only makes him sleepier the next day because he loses what few hours he accumulates."
"Sure it's okay?" Ryo asked, winding up his phone conversation. "Good. Sorry about not calling… Thanks, we'll see you soon. Talk to you later, Cye… Yeah, tomorrow sounds great. Um-hm. Bye." With that, he hung up and returned his attentive eyes to the other two. "How about you and Rowen come over to my house tomorrow along with Cye and Kento and the Warlords? It might be good for him to get back into the swing of things with the rest of us."
Sage nodded in agreement. "I'll run it by him when he finally wakes up. In the meantime, can I get you two anything? Tea or coffee or something?"
"No thanks, buddy. We have to get to finishing up our jog. Otherwise we'll end up looking like Kento."
The blonde winced. "Now that was a low blow."
"I know, but I just can't help myself."
Mia leaned over to Sage's ear and whispered loud enough so Ryo could hear. "Sometimes I wish he would!"
"Quiet, woman, or it's back to the kitchen for you!"
Muttering to herself as she made her way to the door, Mia put her tennis shoes back on. "I hate men."
Sage and Ryo exchanged humored glances before Ryo got up and replaced the slippers with his regular shoes. "Give me a call later on today and tell me if he feels up to it."
"I will."
"Give Rowen our best wishes," Mia ordered politely, lacing up her shoes before jogging out the door with a careless wave.
"Later, Sage," Ryo nodded, closing the portal behind him. And the blonde bid them a nice day as he turned back to his now cold breakfast.
@~~`~~~
Rowen awoke cold and shaking, bathed in a thick, icy sweat, with his breathing staggered in unusual gasps. "Dammit," he cursed quietly to an empty room. It was the same dream—no—nightmare he'd had every single night for the last four years. Once he realized he was clutching his sheets desperately in his clenched fists, sheepishly he loosened his grip on them and smoothed them out around his upright figure. Rowen sat as straight as his arrows, his body reeling from the amazing fear of his reoccurring dream. But as often as he had this dream, the same fear was remained—fear of the unknown, fear of the unseen.
Night after night it was the same scene as the one before.
Rowen is dressed in his Strata armor, scanning the mountain setting for a way of escape from whom or what he does not know. Each untamed path cuts dangerously up or down the stony slopes of ancient behemoths, and each only grows narrower as it transgresses through the raw wilderness. Suddenly, he begins to run, uncaring of where the trail may lead him. Whether it be to savior or death, it's better than what is behind him. He must get away; that is all that matters. The ground beneath his speeding feet trembles furiously, and unbelievably, he can feel the vibrations penetrating his bones. He must get away.
He runs faster, dragging his partner behind him. Urgently, Rowen tugs on the hand he is holding, bringing his companion to his side. He looks instinctually to his left to assure himself she's okay, but he can no longer see her face—or almost any of her, for that matter. Only the few ravaged remains of her tattered, mutilated black and purple gown and her naked arms and feet can be seen. Her white skin is slick with sticky blood. Wounds gouged in the tender flesh of her shoulder, pulsing blood rhythmically with the thudding beat of her heart, continuously apply fresh, bright paint—the color of war—to her delicate arm. The hot red liquid runs onto Rowen's own hand, greasing his armor's joints with a revolting oil. As they race away from their hidden enemy, Rowen glances down at his legs and sees they are splattered with minute droplets of blood, not from him but from her, also. Wherever she came from, she obviously never needed shoes there, for she wears none. The meat of her bare feet slices easily on the shards of razor-edged rocks, and the resulting blood splashes onto his shin guards as she plunges forward to keep up with him.
It still chases them. It is persistent. It wants to taste their blood on its lips. It is gaining on them. No matter how fast Rowen runs, it always catches up, but he is too afraid to turn around and see what it looks like. And that's the way it wants it. It does not want him to see it yet, not until it grasps Rowen in its slobbering jaws and pierces his skin with the million teeth Rowen is sure it has lining its mouth.
They run faster.
Abruptly, the twisting trail ends, and they stand wavering precariously on the edge of a natural stone terrace, reaching over the wide valley with its granite arms. There is nowhere left to run. They have come to the end of the world and can go no further. But it can and will come. It will be there shortly, and they cannot escape it or allude it any longer.
Rowen turns toward the shaking girl. She is weak from a long sleep and the daunting chase. Her hands quiver in his grasp and she whines pitifully—like a hunted, dying animal. Her white skin pales even further as she looks up the trail they had just came from and sees it lumbering down to them. Rowen can't look. He merely calls the woman's name, with such tenderness that it sounds as though she is a divinity. Then he grabs her by the shoulders, clutches her to his chest and leaps over the side of the cliff, sailing downward with alarming speed.
And it stands there dumbfounded, looking on helplessly as its prey disappears into the canyon. It roars with incredible intensity, and the mountains answer back with the same cry. It disappears. Rowen never sees the creature.
That's the moment Rowen awakens, terrified as never before, never knowing what became of the woman he was with or himself.
Rowen closed his eyes and could still picture the blood. So much of it. Everything remained so clear, even after the dream ended. The smells were the same; the sights were, too. And of course, the mood lingered for hours. Worst of all, the cycle was unending, and he couldn't tell his friends about it. How could they come to understand? They surely would think him crazy. What other choice, then, did he have but to keep everything inside him? So that was it. No one would ever know about the woman whose name he could never remember and the creature that hunted him with such persistence.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the Ronin clambered out of his bed onto his unstable feet. He swayed for a moment, then balanced himself using his bedside table as an extra leg. That nightmare always left him a little woozy.
Rowen stumbled over to his bedroom door, his eyes blurry with the remainders of a fitful sleep. The world around him was cloudy, the sun barely lighting the room through his shuttered windows. Objects stayed featureless, blackened shapes. Rowen had a hard time discerning between the wall and the door. Everything within the place seemed uniform, unbearably similar. When at last his clammy palm came to rest upon the dull brass knob, Rowen practically yanked the door off of its hinges, trying to escape his banal room as quickly as possible.
To his surprise, Sage stood outside his room, staring on at him with bewildered eyes. "Morning?" he inquired, rather than greeted.
"Uh, yeah," Strata mumbled, scratching the back of his head. "How're… things?"
"Fine. With you?"
"Fine."
"Great. Um, Ryo and Mia stopped by earlier today and asked about you. I wasn't sure what to say, so I said you were doing okay. So then they asked if you and I wanted to come over to Ryo's place for dinner tomorrow evening. All the other guys will probably be there, too. What do you say?"
Rowen swallowed the lump in his throat. The conversation was moving in a less than desirable direction for him, not to mention he felt as though he was talking to a perfect stranger instead of to his best friend. For heaven's sake, Sage was practically begging him like some street urchin. "I guess. What time did he expect us over?"
"I don't believe he set a regimented time, but I assume he meant around 4:30-5ish. So, you think you're up for it then?"
He shrugged sleepily. "I guess, but it'll be more like lunch to me."
Sage walked with Rowen into their kitchen and seated himself next to his buddy. He watched detachedly as his former best friend poured a bowl of soup and ate slowly. "How'd you sleep last night?"
"Same way I always do, which is on my back."
"You were never the one to make jokes, and now you're Mr. Funny? You know what I mean."
"Yes, I know what you mean; however, I don't want to talk about it."
"You had that dream again, didn't you? About that girl?"
Startled, Rowen averted his buddy's eyes. "I don't know what dream you're talking about. I don't dream. Ryo is the one that usually does."
"I see," Sage muttered, "along with the comedian comes the smartass."
"Precisely, oh wise one," Rowen smiled, spooning another slurp of soup into his mouth and smacking his lips with emphasis.
Although his purpose was to interrogate his friend, he couldn't help but smile at his feistiness. Sage loved a challenge. He was going to enjoy wrangling the truth out of Rowen even if it meant physically wrangling. "Okay, buddy, here's the deal. You're going to tell me what the hell you've been dreaming about for the past four years or else I'm going to choke it out, clear?"
"Empty threats, me boy, empty threats."
"I'll give you an empty threat!" Sage lunged across the table to knock the spoon out of Rowen's hand. Chunks of tofu flew across the room, milky broth splattering on the floor. The blonde grabbed Strata's wrist, wrenching it almost cruelly in order to get him to submit. When he refused—an ebony gleam of madness in the whites of Rowen's eyes—Sage squeezed a little harder. "Come on, Rowen. Just tell me what I need to know and be done with it."
"What do you care what I dream about anyway? Why should it make a difference to you? You don't have to endure the nightmare, so why bother with it at all?"
"Because," he shouted, releasing the wrist, "it's affecting you, my best friend. And if I don't know what the root of the problem is, how can I help?"
"There is no problem," Rowen whispered, turning away from his roommate.
"Bull. You know as well as I that you've changed. Everyday I see it more and more, and so do the rest of the guys. You're suffering, and you don't want us to know it, which makes us notice it even more."
"Fine, you want to know the gory details? About the woman and the blood and the unseen monster? That's what you want to hear about? So be it," Rowen's voice flared, his fist clenching tightly. "But don't say I didn't try to keep you out of this mess…"
@~~`~~~
The dragon growled menacingly at the snow-capped mountains. They were bigger than he was, and he didn't like things that were bigger than he was. Being exceptionally large gave him an advantage over everything, over anyone. There was nothing he liked better than towering over a helpless human before devouring him in his dripping mandibles. It gave him such a rush of power and importance. Nothing and no one intimated him… except Lady Morin.
She was dark and mysterious, with a secret agenda about which even he did not know. She was the one human he dared not mess with—even though she was only a half-breed (half-human, half not). What that "not" part was exactly, he felt he didn't need to know. Lady Morin ruled over the execution of the Yusaki operation, and he must not question her orders at any cost.
And he never did, which was why he now roamed the mountains in search of the Ancient One called Anubis. According to the Lady's most reliable sources, the monk dwelled in a hidden cave at the peak of one of the mountains. It was Rantach's job to sniff him out and gobble him up before he might receive a vision of their coming.
Gray, starving clouds sopped up all moisture in the air as they consumed the sky above the land. Rantach wished he could soar through them now, letting their wispy fingers tickle his scaled belly. But alas, the Lady's orders must be carried out first, lest she fly into a fit of rage and rip him apart with her most painful spell. How he longed to stretch his wings and take to the empyrean like in those eras long forgotten. To touch the stars was to touch perfection. No one could understand this better than a dragon that had been in captivity for five thousand years.
The raw scent of human life filled the beast's sensitive nostrils, hot and lively enough to make his blood run rampant through his veins. His breath increased to an alarming rate as his heart raced with primitive hunger and fury. Since he viewed himself as a sophisticated dragon, Rantach would stifle those urges, but this time Lady Morin encouraged his deepest animal lusts to emerge from beneath his mental block of superiority. So now, in short, he wanted to kill… savagely.
The Earth trembled meekly underneath his thundering claws as Rantach sped across the mountain range, following the faint scent of terrestrial life. Flowers and grasses alike whimpered in fear at the oncoming monstrosity, and even the mighty hills shook with terror.
Rantach began to pump his wings furiously, desiring very much to fly right to the man of this peculiar, alluring smell. Such strength and power in an odor. Why, to be capable of leaving a trace like this, he must be made entirely of unadulterated energy! To eat this man would be a rare treat. Strength of this caliber was next to impossible to find. How could it be in a weak, fearful human?
His glossy sanguine body rippled under the faint rays of the sun. Every scarlet scale was alight with rage and desire. The animal within took complete control over the reasoning mind, leading him to an unknown destination. Rantach had never felt such domination. Everything in the area feared him! He was omnipotent. Nothing could stop him. This man of incredible energy—this Anubis—would be his before the burning sun set.
And the mountains cried out…
And Kento of Hardrock heard…