Civis' grip on his sword softened just slightly, allowing the air in the cavern to begin to dry the perspiration that formed between his palm and the handle of the sword. "Who are you?" countered the Roman. "Where is the Black Dragon?"
The expression on the Ch'in did not change. "Oh, the Dragon is here. You need not worry about that. This humble person is Fu Hachu, advisor to the Emperor."
A voice behind Civis and Han Xin responded. "Former advisor, Fu Hachu. You are banished. Be grateful it is not executed."
The Ch'in laughed with a high pitched cackle. "Emperor... Eternal One... (the Ch'in laughed again) I don't think you are in a position to banish or execute anyone."
Han Xin raised his sword. "If the Emperor so commands, I shall be more than happy to oblige the Eternal One, you insolent stooge of the Dragon! Bow before the Emperor, or by the dust of my ancestors I shall make you the mirror of General Wan Li!" The Ch'in began to laugh even harder.
Han Xin, angered beyond all reason and ready to strike found Civis between himself and his laughing target. "Stop Han Xin, there is something not right here. We don't know what it is, but you musn't attack him until we know what we are facing!" Han Xin hesitated, seeing logic in Civis' caution. The Roman added in a whisper, "He is too confident. Do you understand my meaning?"
Still angered, Han Xin nodded, but continued to glare at Fu Hachu.
"Wisely said, foreigner," observed Fu Hachu, the smile on his face remaining though his laughing ended.
"Wise indeed, Civis!" called out a new voice belonging to a new face emerging from the darkness, but new only to the cavern in which they stood, not to Civis. More faces emerged with the tall green-eyed man. With Accipiter was Titus Tarquintius, Da Long, Roulv Dania, Rong Ming, and two, no three women: Sin Ying, Olivia and Xia Deng.
It was Xia Deng's expression that caught Civis' eye. She was clinging to Accipiter, trepidation mirrored in her face. She was pulling back on Accipiter, physically trying to dissuade him from approaching Fu Hachu any closer than he already had. Accipiter stopped as the pulling on his arm became increasingly urgent.
"No, Accipiter. No closer!" she cried out.
"No closer! No closer!" Fu Hachu's high pitched voice mimicked Xia Deng's protestations. "So we meet at last, Gaius Accipiter. I presume that is the full name you use for this moment? And do you plan to attack the Black Dragon in his lair? Of course not! Forgetful me. You cannot do anything. You are prohibited from acting on your own. How weak you are, how incapable, how insignificant."
Olivia felt anger begin to replace fear. Emotions began to churn, especially those closest to and aligned uniquely with Accipiter. Something within her began to rise and as it grew she felt something else approach and touch it enabling growth to accelerate. She looked at Sin Ying and saw that her eyes were glazed over, her expression blank. She had been increasingly this way the closer they had come to the entrance to this cavern. Sin Ying never saw her husband standing with Han Xin. Olivia looked at Accipiter. He seemed to be focussing his attentions on Fu Hachu, but with Accipiter she never could be exactly sure.
Civis felt battle calm. Many a time in the past as he led forces into battle, just before the battle began, his thinking would clear, uncertainty would fade and everything would begin to slow before his eyes so that no single detail of the battle would be missed from his perspective. It was happening again. He wondered if Han Xin, Titus, Da Long and Roulv Dania felt the same.
Roulv Dania, quiet dutiful Dania, precipitated what followed with a nondescript shift of the box he held behind his back. He picked that moment, and that moment alone, to shift the box he carried to the front of his person, holding it out for Fu Hachu to clearly see. "Since you seem to speak for the Black Dragon, do you think it has maybe a passing interest in this artifact?"
Fu Hachu's eyes opened wide and the mocking smile on his face crashed to somewhere near his chin and disappeared into his long mustache. "Bring that here!" he commanded in a voice no longer high pitched, but deep and resonant. Xia Deng impulsively dropped Accipiter's arm and ran to stand before Roulv Dania both hands raised to hold him back.
"No Dania! Don't! The Dragon is obsessed with this box! I don't know why! It was my mission to steal it from you and deliver it to the Dragon! After seeing Wan Li, I couldn't do it. I... I..."
"Betrayer!" bellowed Fu Hachu, all pretext of calm erased from his face. "You are forfeit, Xia Deng!" Fu Hachu withdrew his hands from his sleeves and extended his arms, thick wrists and scaled hands with their extended claws in Xia Deng's direction. Something from within rumbled out of Fu Hachu's mouth and through the fangs that began to lengthen and appear, growing longer over his darkening lips.
"NO!" cried out Accipiter. Too late. Xia Deng stiffened, her eyes opened wide and her body became immobile. Within her torn outer garment her body began to compress and wrinkle, her hands withered into thin layers of skin over bone, patchy with dark blotches outlined in red and purple. Her face sunk inwards until the outline of bone and the layering of her skin was one and the same. Great creases formed on her forehead and cheeks, as if her face was a map for some foresaken land of gulleys and rises. Her hair, shimmering black, greyed and then whitened. Her knees bowed, bones thinned and snapped and she crumpled to the floor, all of this happening with the passage of only a few seconds and far too quickly for anyone to do anything to stop the ravaging of the Emperor's Number Two Wife.
She whispered one word in the kind of weak voice heard only from the lips of a mortally ill, aged woman. "Accipiter..." Then she lay on the floor of the cavern motionless and unbreathing.
"A little past her prime and usefullness, it seems," hissed Fu Hachu, his metamorphosis continuing. The Ch'in seemed taller and wider now. His teeth were animal-like, his hands clawed like a lizard's.
"DRAGON!" cried out Accipiter. "THERE WAS NO NEED!"
Dragon! The word echoed in the minds of Titus, Civis, Han Xin and Da Long. All four concurrently and immediately conceived the same thought and rushed Fu Hachu with their swords extended and ready. Roulv Dania did not attack, but bent down and was doing something with his box. The women were standing together seemingly focussed on something beyond Fu Hachu.
The erstwhile Advisor to the Emperor could not possibly misinterpret the murderous intent of the warriors' charge. Fu Hachu raised his hands and slammed them together palm against palm. A tremendous explosion of light and sound filled the cavern, causing a section of the roof to cave in somewhere behind them. In the midst of the moon filled nightlight filtering through the swirling dust, the bowled over warriors found their feet and swords and prepared to attack again. But before them was not the slowly transfiguring Fu Hachu. Standing before them in all of its fanged, clawed, scaled, gigantic fury, was the huge form of the Black Dragon himself. He brought his reptillian eyes to bear on his enemies and prepared to battle them to their deaths.
[This message has been edited by Civis Romanus (edited 05-22-2003 @ 10:26 PM).]