Monkey King paced around inside his cage, muttering loudly. "If there's no way to open the lock, then I must bash the bars apart! If only I had my golden staff... that would do it! It was taken from me by the Dragon King, long ago when they put me in here. He can't still be mad, can he?"

Then turning towards us, Monkey King said, "If you can fetch me back my golden staff, and help me get out of this cage, I'll get you your Turtle Ball and help you out!"

"Sounds fair. Where can we find the Dragon King?" I asked, and the Monkey King answered, "The Dragon King's realm is at the bottom of the Lake of the Rising Sun, to the north of here. Just jump in and swim... you'll find it! Tell him you want the Challenge."

"What kind of challenge is it?" Emma asked suspiciously, but Monkey King waved us away. Since Emma had been traveling by chartered sloop before meeting me, she dismissed the captain so she could sail with us aboard the Santo Oro.

A few hours later, we dropped anchor at the docks. Nikolai had asked to come with us, saying that all his patients needed now was rest, and that he would leave their care in the hands of Subodai, Sarah Steele, and Milo Graytail. In his own words, "you'd probably need a little magic on your side."

Anyway, the ravaged valley leading to the lake looked like a war zone, with burnt buildings and fallen trees in our path, and I heard Nikolai whisper, "I feel like I'm looking at Hiroshima..."

"Look at these." Emma said as she pointed to the ground, and we looked to see hoof prints in the dirt. "Horse barbarians from the Amber Horde... And look at the crossbow bolts embedded in the walls. They must have some power to get that deep."

To lighten the mood, I asked the little black dragon perched on my shoulder, "Are you excited about meeting the Dragon King, Temeraire?"

Temeraire perked up as he nodded his vaguely triangular head eagerly, his bright blue eyes shining. "Oh, yes. I would like to ask him many things about the sun, the moon, the stars..."

I laughed as I scratched his head. "Well, you're certainly the most interesting newborn I've ever met. None of them can speak as soon as they were born, so it makes things rather difficult for those who take care of them."

Temeraire blinked as he looked at us with more interest. "You mean you don't hatch out of eggs? But then how do you-"

"Come on, we'd better hurry." I said quickly, cutting him off. Our pace quickened, and we reached the Lake of the Rising Sun in no time at all, where Nikolai cupped some of the deep blue water into his hands to peer at it more closely. "These are magical waters. We'll be able to breathe freely once we get inside the water, but we should be careful."

Nikolai and I stripped down to our trousers while Emma went off to change into a two-piece swimsuit the color of cherry blossoms in bloom. Arming ourselves with harpoons, we dove into the lake, where I could hear Emma clearly as she said, "The entrance to the Dragon King's court must be somewhere nearby."

We nodded, but as it turned out, the Dragon King's forces found us first. Blue Elephant oni armed with curved swords and giant koi fish burst out from the tall kelp growing around us, and they attacked us with full force.

A glowing magic circle appeared in front of Nikolai, and a storm shark emerged from the opposite side, scattering the giant koi as it chased after them with rows of sharp teeth. Temeraire hissed as a blue oni raised his sword, and he soon found dragon claws digging into his trunk as Temeraire scrambled towards his face.

Emma and I took on an oni together, and as he swiped at me, Emma slammed the butt of her harpoon into his helmet, knocking him out but breaking her harpoon into two, and more oni seized us and Nikolai by the arms. Temeraire hissed at the oni gripping his slender body with one hand, and the oni glared at him as he rubbed his badly-scratched trunk.

Outnumbered and out of our element, not to mention that our weapons were all snapped in two, the oni took us to an underwater palace that was presumably the Dragon King's, and I thought, "Huh. I thought it'd be covered in barnacles and kelp, but it's actually very nice."

The doors open to admit the oni inside, and they took us to the audience chamber, where a green dragon like Temeraire was coiled on the seat of a golden throne, and he rose like a cobra preparing to strike as the we were brought forth. He wore golden jewelry embedded with rubies, and he stroke the two tendrils on his upper lip as the leader of the oni whispered his report into his ear, and his amber eyes flashed with anger.

"Who are you to come into my kingdom and do violence upon my people? I detect the Monkey king's hand in this... He sent you, did he not?" Dragon King asked angrily as he swam towards us, and I slowly nodded as we stood eye-to-eye, blue eyes meeting amber. "We are here to take the Challenge, Your Majesty."

"The Challenge? I knew it! You have come seeking the golden staff, wrought from one of the pillars of this very hall. I suspected as much." Dragon King said, and I looked to see that the pillars were made of gold, with golden dragons coiled around them. One side had a single pillar more than the other, and I suspected that the missing pillar was Monkey King's staff.

"Distasteful as it is, I am honor-bound to allow you to take the Challenge: any who return my jade egg will gain one wish from me." Dragon King said. "My jade egg was stolen by the Monkey King! He hid it in the Valley of the Titans, in Khotan Skyway. If you want the staff, bring me my egg, and wish for it!"

Dragon King's amber eyes softened slightly as they landed on Temeraire, and he said, "The young Celestial may stay here to learn from me, but the rest of you must go."

Temeraire looked both excited and apprehensive as he was let go, and he turned to look at me with worried eyes. I smiled reassuringly at him. "Don't worry about us. We can take care of ourselves, and I can see how much you want this."

Temeraire nodded eagerly as he swam quickly towards me to coil around my neck in a hug, and he swam off to join Dragon King at the foot of his throne. Letting go of us, the oni escorted us back up to the surface, where we dried ourselves and walked back to the Santo Oro to set sail for the Valley of the Titans in Khotan Skyway, near Sujimura Village.

Dropping anchor at the docks outside of Sujimura Village, we walked to the gate leading to the Valley of the Titans, where we began our search for the jade egg, and Emma said, "The temple is the best place to start. Let's look for the gates and see if we can get inside."

"Wait, what was that?" Nikolai asked, perking up, and without waiting for an answer, he grabbed us to drag us behind some bamboo, as little men with long noses and red skin wearing lacquered armor passed by, armed with an assortment of MooShu weaponry. "Tengu goblins!"

We waited until the Tengu passed by, and sticking to the bamboo as we walked on, we soon found the wooden gates leading to the temple, where a gray Goose wearing a white gi stood outside, armed with a naginata and a sheathed katana. "Greetings, honorable visitors from a far-off land. Could you perhaps make a charitable donation to the Order of the White Lotus?"