I tugged at the sleeves of my robes, pulling them back up to my wrists as they once again rode up to my elbow. The tough wool and silk of the green, black, and gold Dai Li outfit was very comfortable and almost as addicting to play with as the green tassel on my conical hat, but for the life of me it would not stay in place.
"How much longer till we get to the convention?" I asked from the back of the car I was in.
"Not much longer," my friend Marideth told me from the driver's seat. She was dressed as Azula from one of our favorite shows, Avatar the Last Airbender, dressed in the earth kingdom clothes she had worn after taking control of the organization that my outfit was inspired by. "How you holding up back there?" she asked, taking a moment to look back as we came to a red light.
"I'm fine," I muttered, once again pulling my sleeve up after readjusting my hat. "Sleeves are a pain but that kind of comes with have them so wide." My other friend, Ryan, who was also dressed as a Dail Li agent like me, chuckled while we resumed our drive to the convention center.
"Yea, maybe next year we could go water tribe. They're either wearing no sleeves at all, tight sleeves, or jackets. Would that make you happy?" he teased in a faux patronizing tone.
"I already spent a couple thousand to make these costumes as authentic as possible, even down to their supposed durability. If you want the water tribe, you're buying the furs," I told him seriously. Of course, I wasn't actually serious, but these outfits did cost a pretty penny, even for someone with my salary. I could afford it becoming a yearly thing, but not by much.
"Ah, don't worry," Marideth said, waving her hand dismissively. "We won't bleed you dry. Besides, I'm getting a great new job in a month, so I could chip in too."
After some more idle chatting about plans for future conventions, we arrived the huge convention center. Thankfully, today was another one of those days where the weatherman had lied and instead of a blistering heat, a nice cool breeze greeted us. Even the inside of the center was nice and cool, despite the crowds. Apparently someone had even been kind enough to break the thermostat while it was on a comfortable 68 degrees, if the madly grinning Naruto cosplayer being pushed into a police car for 'destruction of public property' was anything to go by.
As soon as we entered though, Ryan and I flanking Marideth, we began turning heads left and right. Marideth radiated confidence and charisma, just like the actual Azula, while only having to fake the fire princess's sadistic superiority. And just like we had practiced for weeks, she pulled it off perfectly. Ryan had some trouble keeping a straight face as everyone ogled us but just like Marideth, our practice allowed him to keep the calm and apathetic demeanor of the Dai Li. Unlike him though, I didn't need to pretend to hold the same demeanor. Granted, I exaggerated a little when it came to dismissing everyone else as worthless peasants, but I didn't have to do it too much since that was Marideth's ball park.
"Woah!" someone shout from one of the small crowds that had gathered to take pictures of us and ask about how we made our outfits look so real. A scrawny kid, probably fourteen or thirteen, dressed like Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter pushed his way through the crowd and looked at us with awe. "You guys look just like Azula and the Dai Li from The Last Airbender!"
"Well, I'm glad that someone was able to recognize fire nation royalty even under all of this hideous dirt fashion," Marideth exclaimed haughtily, looking with some disdain at the bald and nose-less robe clad convention goer, "even if he is some hideous street rat." Ryan and I stayed silent with our hands folded into our sleeves, our hats shading our eyes from the public.
The little boy nearly fangasmed at this. "And you act and sound just like them too!" he squealed in delight. Marideth looked at a clock on the wall and sighed. She always did enjoy getting attention but it seemed that we had to cut our fun short so we could move on to sign up for the main festivity, the costume contest.
"Dai Li, I grow tired of the presence of these peasants. Take me to my destination," she ordered, waving dismissively at the boy Voldemort as he was dragged away squealing by what I could only assume were his parents.
"Of course, your highness," I intoned with a bow. Ryan and I took up positions in front of her now and walked through the crowds, not bothering with manners, except for one elderly lady carrying many Star Trek memorabilia, and just barged through any group that got in our way. Of course, no one was mad, though slightly disgruntled. This convention center often hosted contests where behavior was also judged throughout the con. So far I think we had nailed our roles to a T.
Finally, after some hours of going around and looking at and buying fan drawings and paintings and other such things from shows we liked, we finally made our way to the area where the costume contest would be held. However, on our way there Ryan noticed something out of the corner of his eye and grinned, completely breaking character as he ran off to look at a solitary stand with a number of items that looked like authentic pieces of gear from what looked like dozens of franchises.
"Guys! Guys! Look!" Marideth laughed as we walked over and also broke character while I just slowly facepalmed, hiding a small smile of my own at my friend's antics. Ryan pointed to two sets of gloves and shoes that looked to be made of earth as well as the little crown/hair piece that Azula wore. He grabbed a glove and shoe. "And look! They even feel like rock too!" He put the glove on and marveled at it.
"That's because it is!" the friendly, if unassuming, man behind the stall counter exclaimed. I looked at him questioningly, Marideth and Ryan too engrossed with looking at the items respective to their characters.
"How? It doesn't look like there's anything holding it together..." I said. Really, it just looked like pieces of rock shaped to someone’s hand and yet, as Ryan moved his hand around, it looked about as flexible as any other glove. I grabbed one myself and tried it on. It did indeed feel like rock and yet none of the little plates of earth caught onto each other or anything as I closed my hand then wiggled my fingers. "These are pretty cool."
"Pretty cool?" Ryan asked incredulously. "These are awesome!" The man behind the counter blushed slightly.
"Oh, why thank you. I put quite a bit of work into all of these." He motioned towards all the merchandise. He noticed Marideth flipping Azula's crown this way and that, eying it for all its details, and grinned. "Find something you like?"
Marideth looked up and smiled amicably. "Yea, is this 24k gold? Looks and feels like it..." she trailed off. The man nodded and her grin got even bigger before she quickly re-did her hair into a top not, using the green ribbon in her hair to secure it, before placing the crown around it. "You got a mirror?" she asked. Once again he nodded and pulled out a small hand mirror. She grabbed and couldn't help but be impressed. "Well now, don't I look absolutely diabolical now." She chuckled and I rolled my eyes.
I could tell the both of them wanted these and I couldn't help but admit so did I. They would go well with our costumes. I turned to the man. "How much for these?" I asked. One transaction later and Ryan and I were sporting earth shoes, which were shockingly comfortable, and gloves while Marideth wore her new crown as well as the psychotic fire princess had.
Half an hour later, our group and a dozen other people stood behind large curtains off to the side of the large stage that had been erected for the costume competition. I could make out characters from several famous franchises, though one girl was dressed as someone I couldn't for the life of me recognize. I had a feeling that the weird combination of black thigh high boots, mini skirt, enormous shoulder pauldrons, tight sleeves, and suspenders whose only purpose were to cover her nipples was famous among the audience if the loud cheering when she had gone on stage had meant anything.
Thankfully, I didn't have to say anything as, when she approached us to wish us luck, Marideth had rebuffed her with the same level of haughtiness that only Azula herself could match. She didn't say anything about the girl's state of dress, sure, but I could tell even she was annoyed by it, which was enough for me. Really though, it was so impractical and blatantly meant for fanservice I almost felt insulted just seeing it existed.
"Are you ready, your highness?" Ryan asked neutrally as the duo in front of us, dressed like Ryu and Ken from Street Fighter, were called up.
"Of course I'm ready," she replied hotly, playing it up someone for the camera watching us. "What do you take me for, a child?"
"No your highness," he replied hastily and bowed his head. I almost smiled. We were sure to win at this point.
"And next!" came the voice of the announcer. "Marideth, Ryan, and Charles as Princess Azula and her Dai Li agents!" That was our cue.
We walked up the stage in formation, our stride confident, faces passive and somewhat dismissive, and demeanor otherwise unaffected by the loudly cheering crowd. We stopped at the center of the stage and Marideth crossed her arms, giving the crowd one self-assured and prideful smirk, sending them raving. Oh yea, she had definitely just gotten us first place.
Unfortunately, our little victory was short lived as the ground began to violently shake. People began screaming and ran about, pushing past each other to get outside. The three of us were knocked off our feet as the earth beneath the convention center seemed to make waves, shattering concrete and collapsing pillars.
"What's going on!?" Marideth cried out desperately as Ryan and I pulled her up and steadied her against us, our rock shoes apparently giving us more traction than normal shoes.
"Earthquake!" I yelled as a wall collapsed. 'What the hell?' I couldn't help but think. The last time an earthquake this bad hit California was way back in 1906 and I was beginning to think that this one might have been more powerful as a large portion of the building collapsed and crushed several dozen people. This place was supposed to have been built to withstand natural disasters like the San Francisco earthquake and yet here it was crumbling like sand! We had to get out.
We slowly began making our way to one of the out of the way exits that only a few people seemed to remember. I nearly lost my footing several times but, by coincidence, the earthquake kept causing several pieces of tile to pop up and stop my foot. Marideth wasn't so lucky since she had to place all her weight on our shoulders due to the ground knocking her feet out from under whenever she tried to move on her own power.
It was only fifty feet away, the door. Barely a few seconds worth of walking. Yet, as we made our way to it, it seemed like hours passed us as we stumbled and forced our way over the undulating ground and falling rubble. But just as it seemed like we would make it to the door, the final pillar holding the roof above our heads succumbed to the earth's power. We didn't even have time to scream as the rubble fell on us.
I sighed within my stone prison, wishing for all the world to be able to fiddle with the cloth of my robes as I pulled myself out of my trance. That had been a long time ago, the memory that I had just relived through. So very long. It was a miracle that I had kept sane these past few thousand years.
Even more so considering the kind of trance I was just in occurred often, through my own will no less, during my meditations.
But none the less, reliving my past and pondering the many questions of the universe, as well as a great deal of pride, helped soothe my mind and ward away the clawing grasp of insanity. It also helped me become much more poetic in my speech too.
But never the less, that memory had been the last time I had been with my old friends before I came to this world. This world of magic and anthropomorphic creatures of legend. This world where I had spent years building a hidden empire only to locked away in stone by two ponies. Two ponies, sisters, one a great crusader and the other the queen of all pirates, with the powers of the sun and moon respectively at their command who had deemed me too great a threat to their interests and used the power of ancient artifacts to lock me away for thousands of years, put up as a trophy of their victory in the gardens of their homes.
And in that time, I had seen the two sisters found their own kingdom, battle the lord of chaos, ward of hundreds of invading nations, and eventually battle each other, a battle that had resulted in the younger sister, the once proud pirate queen, being locked away in the very celestial body that fueled her powers and then returning not but a year ago to be cleansed of the dark spirit that had possessed her.
Well, I hadn't seen them directly, but I had seen the results beyond my stone prison. But that didn't matter now because I would soon be the cause of similar events, for as I recollected all that I had seen and experienced, the horrified visage of the re-petrified lord of chaos, who had escaped earlier that day, was wheeled into the gardens across from me. I would have smirked in satisfaction were my lips mobile as, when the ponies who had brought the statue in left, I began to feel cracks along my prison as the chaos lord's final bit of residual magic began to free me in one final act of revenge against the rulers of this land, the sisters who had locked me away so long ago.
It was night when the stone around had weakened significantly enough for me to simply walk off the platform, trailing dust as the final remnants of my prison failed. I nodded in thanks to the the lord of chaos. He knew that I held no ill will towards the princesses of this land, as I would have likely done something similar to what they had done to me unto them under similar circumstances, but he also knew I had priorities that they were in the way of.
With little hesitation after my brief thanks, I willed the ground under me to open up. With my senses clear, I began to 'swim' through the earth, the vibrations of my movement through the ground giving me a perfect image of the land around me. By the end of the night, I had left the gardens and the castle and city attached to them sitting atop the lonely mountain they sat on dozens of miles behind me. I did not stop though, for I knew my destination, the place that I been absent from for nearly two and a half thousand years, and could not delay my return any further.
Tomorrow, I returned home.
I looked around me as I emerged from the ground. I was in a small tunnel. An old one that had some how managed to weather the tests of time. I nodded in approval. That was good. I had made this tunnel and thousands of others like it. I would have been rather upset to see my work undone.
Well, more than upset really. These tunnels took a long time to make.
But I shook off the small bit of pride at my handiwork and moved down the long tunnel, using the vibrations in the ground to give me a clear image of my pitch black surroundings. There would be time later for self-congratulations. For now, I had to make sure that what I hoped was at the end of this tunnel was still there. For even if my tunnels had survived, what I sought was far from being guaranteed the same fate.
It took an hour of walking at my slow and steady pace to reach the end of the tunnel. I could have arrived faster but, even if the tunnels had survived, they had still suffered some damage from age, damage which I fixed with but a few waves of the hand and simply sliding my feet over cracks in the floor. Before me now lay a disk-door made of highly dense stone, once more made by me, that rolled to the side with a small flick of my chin. Green tinged white light poured into the tunnel and my goal was finally revealed to me.
The capitol city of my once great empire, hidden under half a mile of earth. It stretched for miles in every direction in the circular dome-like cavern, great thick pillars of earth as thick in diameter as thirty men standing side by side holding up the roof. The cavern was lined with green luminescent crystals and several waterfalls fed the lake and rivers of the underground water supply. But most impressive to me, the thing that I was most proud of, was the city itself. The skeletons of tens of thousands of stone buildings stood proud, bare of the wood and painted that had rotted away after so long and yet still radiating an unrelenting strength like the very earth they were made from.
And directly in the center of it all, surrounding a pillar three times as thick as the rest, was a great palace surrounded by a mile of fertile ground where exotic gardens use to call home. But like all the other buildings, it was bare of all wood and paint. The gardens still held life though but the exotic flowers and trees and bushes had fallen to sickly weeds and the like.
Despite all this, I looked across it all with a proud, if slightly detached, expression. The whole city had been built by my hands, my apprentice, and thousands upon thousands of proud and determined people that called this place home so long ago. I cocked my head in wonder as I gazed at the palace. Speaking of my apprentice, I couldn't help but wonder if he still called this place home.
Only one way to find out.
With a strong punch to the air, my arm parallel with the winding stairs on the cavern's wall that led to the main streets, every step smoothed into each other to create a perfectly smooth ramp. With speed impossible for most creatures, I rocketed down the ramp with a great trail of dust, my earth shoes keeping me firmly attached to the ground.
As I traveled deeper into the city, I began to notice something was amiss. I could feel movement in the ground that was not my own, yet it was too light for me to make out what was making it and moved too much like something of my size to be mere rodents that had taken up residence.
After several more instances of this, becoming more and more frequent as I got closer to the palace grounds, I stopped and was immediately engulfed by the dust cloud that had followed me. I could feel them much more clearly now, the strange creatures that had apparently been setting up an ambush for me. I closed my eyes and extended my senses even further, slamming my foot into the ground to 'ping' my surrounding area.
Oh yes, they were much clearer now that I wasn't moving. There was more than a few dozen of them, about forty-two if I was correct, and they were positioning themselves into a circle around me, using the dust cloud as cover. Smart but still useless.
From what I could tell, they seemed to be some kind of bulky, bipedal mole people. That would explain why they would want to live underground in a dilapidated city and how they were moving about the dust so easily. They probably relied less on sight then they did their other senses.
As the dust began to settle, I opened my eyes, only to see a single one of the mole persons. It was an ugly thing, completely fur-less with taut, pale skin clinging to every nook and cranny of its skull. Were it not for the beady pupils flitting about examining me through nearly closed eyes, I would have thought that its eyes were completely covered in skin. Its mouth was a horrific cavern of raw pink flesh with four huge rabbit-like teeth on its lower and upper jaw and its nose looked as if it had been made flat by sandpaper. And to top it all off, it was hunched over with bulging muscles, clawed hands and feet, and wore a pitiful excuse for clothing. In its hands was a shield made of what looked like a broken panel of metal and a rectangular sword that looked equally scavenged.
If there was any proof of there being a face that only a mother could love, this was it. And I was being generous.
"What you do here, surface monkey?" it, for I would not go through the effort of trying to discern its gender, demanded in an aggressive, scratchy, and all around nails-on-a-chalk-board like manner. I raised an eyebrow at its speech, not that it could even see the top half of my face, thoroughly surprised it could even speak basic, well, basic.
"I am here to reclaim my city after several thousand years of absence," I stated, straight to the point. I would not waste my time on these creatures.
The thing snarled at me, spittle flying like some disgusting mist. "Bah! You surface monkey not take Dredge city! Is ours now and there only one of you! You not have!" It slammed its weapon against its shield, apparently signalling the attack.
I would have none of it.
With a quick spin to gather the necessary energy, I landed in a squat and threw my arms out to my sides, palms facing out. In an instant, the walls of the buildings with the mole people in them along the streets slammed into their opposites, crushing everyone of them with little resistance. Before the one in front of me could react, I took a step forward and throw my hands forward, my rock gloves flying off my hands in response to punch it in the gut and teeth, shattering them. The thing flew back a few feet before landing in a crumpled mess.
I slowly walked towards its fallen form as my gloves reassembled around my hands. Once I was standing over it, I looked down disinterestedly. "It's not very smart to attack a king in his own home, you know. He tends to build it to his advantage." It was a bad habit, really, but I couldn't help but taunt those I defeated, like this weakling. There was often a look in their eyes that became so much more than could be described with the application of but a few simple words. It would probably come back to bite me some day but I didn't see it happening any time soon.
The Dredge gargled and spat out the shattered pieces of its teeth, looking at me with obvious fear. "You monster! What you want? I give!"
I shook my head at its attempt to bribe me to spare its life. Really, it would be better to just end the thing's suffering. But then a thought occurred to me. I crouched down so that I could look at its beady eyes easier. "There is something I want. How many of you have infested my city?" I asked. It gargled again and spat a wad of blood onto the ground.
"Me no know. Just that many tribes be here, like my. Me no know how many in other tribes but my have maybe hundred. We small though," it wheezed out. My glove had apparently broken a rib or two.
I nodded and stood. "Thank you for your information. Now, unless you want me to hunt your tribe down, I suggest you get your people to leave. Tell the other tribes the same. If they don't wish to, tell them that I will wait for them to take up their grievances with me at the palace over there." I pointed down the main street, where the large palace could be seen.
"Yes, yes, I do that! We go leave surface monkey's city! We not bother you!" With that, the thing scrambled away in some random direction, stumbling all the while from fear. When it was out of site, I resumed my journey down the road.
Finally, the little interruption now far behind me, I arrived at the base of the several hundred steps that would lead up to palace's main floor and hopefully the person I was looking for too. As I began the long climb up the stairs, I let a part of my mind wander to the past.
I looked around at the cavern that I had spent nearly five months to make. I couldn't help but sigh in irritation though for, despite the miles of area now filled with the basic stone skeletons of buildings being filled and finished even further by thousands of citizens pouring through the tunnels I had spent several months prior to now making, I was still nowhere near done. In fact, as I turned to the project before me with grim determination, I couldn't help but wonder just how long it would take before the city I envisioned would be finished.
Considering the palace in front of me that was almost one-fifth finished after a month, I guessed it would be a long time. I shook my head though and raised my hands resolutely, ready to continue giving my vision form one highly dense, extremely heavy block at a time.
"Hey, Wu Lee," a voice behind me greeted excitedly. "How's the palace coming?"
I sighed and lowered my arms, irritated by the interruption but relieved all the same for it. I turned and gave a small smile to the prepubescent dragon in front of me. "I told you already, as my apprentice you are part of my inner circle. You can call me Charles." The child waved it off with a grin filled with many blunted teeth. "But since you asked, it's coming along fine." I waved towards the large, trapezoidal platform that would raise the palace proper up about a hundred feet. The platform alone had taken some time to do, building it up with numerous individual slabs to provide it extra flexibility in case of an earthquake or something similar. By tomorrow I was sure that I would be able to get started on the palace itself.
The dark yellow and white scaled dragon rubbed at his chin with a claw thoughtfully, taking in every detail of the, honestly, complex structure. "Pretty impressive," he said. "Great spirit knows I don't have the control for this kind of construction. I'm having enough trouble with making the smaller buildings as specified by the architects. And I'm just making the bare minimum of the buildings. I'm not sure I could handle making all those roofs and ceilings and stairs and so on. That's what all the wood and stuff the civilians are bringing down is for."
I nodded in approval, both to my apprentice who had been working so hard to learn earthbending to the same degree as I and the citizens for their own hard work in creating a home for themselves and their families. "That is good to hear. I hope to finish the palace as soon as possible so I can get back to work finishing the other half of the cavern." My apprentice blanched at that while I turned back to the prospective palace and pulled another huge slab of dense rock from the ground and slowly floating it to its needed position.
"You're crazy," he chuckled out with a grin. "The cavern is big enough. Heck, I don't even think we have enough people to fit what we have now." He motioned an arm towards the streams of people leaving and entering the tunnels. I didn't need to look though. I knew there weren't enough people. That there was still a relatively small population that swore fealty to me.
I smirked though. "There will be more. After all, if we build it, they will come."
"I feel like you're referencing something," he said, annoyed. I just gave a quiet chuckle and slightly adjusted a slab that looked out of place.
By the time I had returned my full consciousness to the present, I had already made my way through the now completely bare palace. I did not dwell on the complete lack of regal tapestries, rugs, paintings, statues, and ornate wooden doors inlaid with expensive and beautiful metals. Like the rest of the city, everything could be fixed. And where one would consider all the culture of the city lost, I and hopefully one other still lived to rejuvenate it.
I entered the inner courtyard and found my quarry wrapped around the great central pillar of the cavern, resting. My old apprentice, the young, prepubescent yellow and white dragon, was now a monolithic elder. His yellow scales had dulled to to an almost sand-like tone and the white that had ran along his belly and chin was now a pale, glowing green. Like all stone dragons, the vestigial wings he had as a hatchling were completely gone, replaced by scales thicker than his winged brethren, the sky dragons. His neck was short and thick, his head far more geometric than the organic shaped sky dragons.
In fact, compared to any non-stone dragon, he was much larger in every aspect. Huge muscles bulged under his scales. His claws as big a large house. He was even large enough, if I included his tail, to wrap himself around the great pillar. And yet, despite how different he looked, I couldn't help but smile fondly at the silently resting titan before me. For to me, it was if the slumbering dragon had not aged a day.
I took a great breath, held it for a moment, and released. "TORQUE!" I shouted. The sound bounced off the walls of the palace and seemed to grow in volume until it sounded like a mighty storm booming overhead. For my dragon friend though, it was akin to the annoying buzz of an alarm set on vibrate.
Hot air flooded the court yard as Torque's body began to wake up from the stimulation. He groaned, the sound like two mountains grinding together. Slowly, the great elder dragon oped his eyes and immediately locked onto me. A great maw of grey, blunted teeth revealed itself as Torque grinned, each tooth nearly thrice as tall as I and twice as thick.
"Charles," he rumbled in a slow and deep, booming bass that made the earth beneath me shake. "It has been far, far too long."
I nodded solemnly. "Yes, it has." I gave him a meaningful look, to which he returned full force. One that had originally brought us together as pupil and master. One of ambition and promise. "But I have returned now and I believe we still have some unfinished business to attend to."
