To clear up the confusion I've noticed among a couple of my readers, the elephant has no significance. It's just a figurine on a bedside table.
Read and Review.
Po had slept in.
He had realized that the moment he woke up, pushed himself into a seating position and spotted the empty mat and second bed.
The two doors that led to the small balcony were currently shut, in order to keep the cold out, though Po didn't remember shutting them. Perhaps Crane or Di Tan had gotten up in the middle of the night when they decided that they weren't quite used to the Himalayan climate. The closed doors meant that the room devoid of daylight. The only reason Po could see that he was alone in the room was because the two bedside lamps had been lit. The elephant figurine on the bedside table was illuminated only on one side, and what Po could see of its face stared at him with blank golden eyes that made him think of the blind beggar he occasionally gave money to back in the Valley of Peace.
Feeling uncomfortable, Po reached out and turned the figurine so it was facing the opposite direction. Then he looked back at the empty bed and mat.
Po felt both annoyed and dismayed. Everyone knew that Shifu dealt out the harshest punishments for sleeping in, and Crane and Di Tan didn't even think to wake him up?! This was so unlike them that Po likened it to Mr. Ping giving out free bean buns. Not just any bean buns, the buns that were not about to go bad.
And to think it was usually Monkey who liked to make Po suffer.
Once Shifu was done with Po, the panda would tend to his wounds and then teach Crane the price for inconsideration: a prank he had been reserving for monkey involving hot peppers and a jug of water.
Dang, was that bird going to scream.
Deciding to just get up and get Shifu's punishment over with, Po climbed out of bed. The floorboards were so cold he could feel it through his shoes, which he had neglected to remove the night before, as always.
There was a foul taste in Po's mouth. He went to the bathroom and poured himself a cup of water. Drank. Swirled the water round in his mouth. Swallowed. He felt better.
As he set the cup down and left the bathroom, he saw something that he found strange. The bedroom door was still shut.
Weird, Po thought. Shifu should have burst in and giving Po a thrashing for sleeping in by now. Or maybe he was planning to confront the panda the moment he left the guest room.
Deciding that the latter was plausible, Po shook off the unease he felt and strode towards the balcony doors. A little fresh air would do him a world of good before the beating Shifu would give him.
Po grabbed the handles with both paws and opened them to reveal…
A dark sky.
It was still night.
Po blinked several times.
It seemed that early dark came early in this part of Asia. It should be morning by now, but the sky was still inky black, with no sign of color indicating dawn approaching, save for the lightly falling glowing orange snow…
Po blinked again.
Glowing orange snow?
Po stepped out onto the balcony.
A second small balcony right above the one Po was standing on meant that none of the weird glowing snow fell and settled on his balcony, so Po cautiously walked up to the rail, and stuck his paw out into the air. It wasn't long before one of the orange flakes floated down onto one of Po's fingers…
Po pulled his paw back with a gasp. The snow was hot to the touch.
"Embers?" Po whispered, more than a little confused.
This shouldn't be possible. There was no sign of a fire from what Po could see, and didn't embers usually float upwards before coming back down as ash? Or was that totally wrong and Po needed to go back to school?
What was going on?
First Shifu not bursting in to punish him, now embers falling from the sky?
Had he woken up in an alternate universe or something?
Po pushed aside the silly thought and left the balcony. He headed straight for the door. The others had to know about this, if they hadn't already.
"Hey, Master Shifu!" Po said as he opened the door. "Sorry for not sleeping in, but you're not gonna believe…" He froze. "… this."
The corridor was empty. No Master Shifu was waiting outside to punish him.
Po stepped out into the corridor, getting more and more confused by the second.
What the heck was going on?
He could worry about that with the others once he'd told them what he had witnessed.
Figuring that it would be wise to check the other guest rooms before travelling all the way to the mess hall, Po made his way to Monkey and Mantis's rooms.
"Guys?" He called as he opened the door. The guest room was empty. The balcony doors were open, the falling ember snow visible outside.
Po closed the door and headed to Viper and Tigress's room. The guest room was also empty. A minute later Po found the same result upon checking Shifu and Su's room. Po decided not to bother going up to the main bedroom and checking on Emperor Xian.
Okay, so they were all most likely in the mess hall having breakfast, no need to panic. Still, the thought of them not waking Po, especially when they were currently on a mission, was as weird as it could get.
Strange… Po suddenly realized.
It was quiet. Too quiet.
Still, no need to panic.
Po made his way down the silent corridor, hoping that the mess hall was still where he remembered it was. Even without the two towers, the fortress was bigger than the Jade Palace. It was all too easy to get lost.
Even so, Po was able to locate the grandiose entrance hall without too much trouble.
The hall was just as silent as the corridor, and Po felt his heartbeat speed up slightly. The torches which lit the hall were now faded and dying, casting most of the large room in darkness.
Okay… Po thought, rubbing his chin, fighting the anxiety which was beginning to grow. "Which passage leads to the mess hall?"
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps, so faint he couldn't identify who they belonged to.
"Who's there?" He called.
When no one answered, he followed the direction of the sound: the entrance to one of the larger passageways, a jade archway carved with stunning detail. Po couldn't remember where it led to.
He was twenty feet from the archway when he slowed to a stop. Though his ability to see through the dark was poor at best, even with inner peace and all, he could make out a figure just in the archway. A lean figure at roughly the same height as him.
"Tigress?" He asked.
The figure had his or her back to Po.
"Tigress, is that you?"
Po stepped closer.
It was her. He could see her long tail, which always turned him on, he remembered with a flush in his cheeks, and the redness of her vest.
"Tigress, where's everyone else? You're not going to believe what I just… hey, where are you going?'
The striped feline suddenly walked forward, disappearing into the passageway.
What was she doing?
"Hey, wait, stop!" Po called and started running.
The corridor was large yet darker than the last, but Po kept running.
As he ran, he realized that Tigress had also broken into a run. In the darkness, he could see her arms pumping and her legs speeding along the floor, as if she was doing all she could to get away from him.
That Po thought was the strangest of all.
He was now convinced that something was very wrong with not just the sky, but with the fortress itself. Aside from himself and the feline he was chasing through the winding, dark passages, the fortress appeared to be completely deserted. Since waking up he had not met a single soul before Tigress, and even while chasing her he saw no other signs of life.
Just as he felt his stamina begin to fade, Po saw Tigress turn a corner. It took his five seconds to reach the corner, go round it, and then he was back in the library. The torches here were still going strong, the shadows in the corners tiny and insignificant.
Where was Tigress?
"Tigress?"
The feline had disappeared.
Po ran out into the middle of the ground floor of the library. He look upwards, turned his head left… right… there!
"Tigress, wait!"
Po ran for the spiraling staircase and furiously climbed up towards the top floor, where he had spotted Tigress striding towards one of the bookcases.
By the time he reached the top, panting and sweating and cursing stairs, Tigress was standing in front of the bookcase, her back again to the panda. As Po fought to regain his breath, the feline reach out towards one of the wall torches, and pulled on it.
There was the grinding sound of an ancient mechanism activating, and then the bookcase suddenly slid beneath the floor, revealing nothing but darkness.
Without so much as a glance at her pursuer, Tigress stepped into the darkness and vanished.
"Tigress!"
Po ran towards the entrance.
All he saw was a stone staircase leading down to nothing.
"Tigress?"
Po gulped.
He did not have the faintest idea as to what was down there, and he knew he didn't want to.
But Tigress was down there.
Whatever strange force had made her act so strangely was more than likely down there with her.
Not a chance in hell was he going to give in to the loud voice in his head screaming at him to run away and just leave her in that black hole.
"Tigress!" He called.
The feline didn't answer.
Biting his lip, Po grabbed one of the other wall torches and took his first step into the hole.
"Tigress?"
Two steps.
"Tigress, answer me!"
Another three steps and there an echoing grinding sound as the bookcase slid shut behind him, shutting out the light from the library, and leaving Po with only the light of his torch.
"Oh crap." Po whimpered. He couldn't help it. His heart was thundering so hard it hurt.
The echoes faded into nothing, and then all Po could hear was his heart and his heavy breathing.
Grasped the torch with both paws, took a deep breath through his nose, and continued down the staircase. He kept a steady pace, the speed at which he usually walked.
He hoped that Tigress hadn't gotten too far away.
From what little he could see in the light of his torch, this passageway was narrow with a high ceiling which his light couldn't reach, made from the same stone as the exterior of the fortress.
Po reached the end of the staircase and found himself travelling down a straight corridor with no corners and no forks in the road.
Po had to summon every ounce of chi he could muster just to keep walking.
"Tigress?"
His voice echoed in the corridor, and ended up unanswered.
Po kept walking.
The corridor seemed endless.
Soon his feet began to ache from walking so much.
The corridor opened up suddenly. The sides of the corridor vanished, and Po realized that he had just entered a larger room, equally as dark.
"Tigress?" Po wished she would hurry up and answer.
His torch caught a hint of something shiny. Po lowered his torch to the ground and gaped at what he found.
Mounds of gold, jewels, treasure chests and a variety of other valuable objects littered the ground, orangey yellow in the firelight. Po was in a treasure vault.
Po couldn't help but stagger slightly at the thought of how much this was all worth. But stagger was all he did before steeling himself and continuing through the room. He was searching for something much more important than gold.
"Tigress?" He called again. "Are you there?"
He may as well have been shouting at a tone deaf goat.
Po kept walking, his eyes searching for a hint of striped fur amongst the glimmering treasure, when an enormous pair of double doors brought him to a halt. A large and ferocious looking dragon had been carved on each door.
"Tigress?" He whispered.
He reached out with a shaking paw and grabbed one of the large stone handles.
There was a deafening creek as he slowly pulled the door open, revealing more darkness.
Praying that his torch wouldn't go out any time soon, Po stepped inside.
The stone floor illuminated by the torch was bare and cold. There was no treasure to be found.
"Tigress?" Po called out. "Tigress!"
Hello, Po.
Po stopped dead.
His torch flickered.
"Tigress?"
Over here.
"Where?"
Keep walking.
"Tigress!"
Po broke into a run.
He sprinted through the darkness.
"Tigress, where are you?"
Slow down.
Po skidded to a halt, right in front of a large stone rectangular object sitting on the floor.
I'm glad you're here. Finally.
"Tigress?"
I'm not Tigress.
Po realized that the rectangular object was a sarcophagus.
His breathing became erratic.
"I-if you're not Tigress, then who are you?" He asked.
I'm a body in a coffin.
"W-w-well I k-know that." Po stammered. His paws were shaking as they grasped the torch. "What are you?"
The room was silent.
"Where am I?"
A tomb.
"Where is Tigress?"
She's safe. You do not need to worry about her.
Po's eyes narrowed. He took a step forward towards the sarcophagus.
I have done nothing to her.
"Where is she then?"
In bed, dreaming of childhood.
"What do you mean?"
That wasn't Tigress you were following.
"Wait, are you saying that was an illusion or something?" Po stepped back. "Why did you lure me here? What's going on?"
A lot more than you think. I lured you here to give you a warning.
"A warning?"
Do not go to the western region.
"You mean the place where the killer is hiding?"
Yes.
"Is that all you wanted to tell me?"
"No."
Po whirled around when he heard the voice coming from behind.
Right in front of his face was a demon.
"Holy!" Po leapt backwards, the torch flying out of his paw and disappearing into the darkness as if it had never existed.
Po scrambled to his feet, utterly blind in the darkness. He was gasping in terror now, his paws stretched out in front of him as he searched for a way out.
He ran forward, eventually collided with solid wall.
Panicking, feeling with his paws, Po quickly made his way along the wall, trying to put as much difference between himself and the demon as possible.
Where the hell were the doors?!
He suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder. It wasn't furry and it wasn't scaly.
His blood froze and he let out a tiny squeak.
"Monkey lied, Po." He heard the demon speak right next to his ear. "He knows more than he's telling you."
Then he felt the demon put both hands on his head.
A second later his neck was snapped like a toothpick and he knew nothing more.
Holy crap on a rice cracker! Did Po just die?!
Find out what became of the others in the next chapter.
Now if you don't mind, I'm going to duck behind my computer desk as the angered KFP fans throw stuff at me.