The Blue Dragon: Chapter 3

-- CHAPTER 3: The Zellij Fountain --

****

“C’mon, Aksel. We gotta go, we gotta go, we gotta go.”

“I know, I know, I know!” Slamming my roll-aboard suitcase shut, I zipped it in a hurry and then abruptly stood up. Rae was already heading out my broken front door, heavily damaged right around the lock. In hindsight, I couldn’t figure out exactly how Rae had managed to break through it.

I was standing beside Rae in the elevator when I realized I’d packed far too little: a handful of things to wear, my laptop, an extra pair of shoes, and my passport. Left behind were my basic toiletries, my iPad, and pretty much everything else.

“Fuck, I don’t even have my cell phone charger,” I muttered, half-wishing I could punch the button for the eighth floor and go right back up.

“Wait, you still have your cell phone on you!?” she asked incredulously.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because they can track your phone!” The elevator doors opened, and Rae immediately pointed at the trash can just outside. “Throw it in the trash.”

“What!?”

“Throw it in the trash!” she repeated. Adding insult to injury, she was holding her own cell phone in her hand.

Grumbling, I hesitantly tossed my treasured cell phone into the trash and then swallowed thickly at the sound of its heavy thump. I was rather attached to my phone, and I felt thethe urge to dive right into the can to get it back. But I resisted that urge and followed Rae outside.

Turned out, she had called an Uber while I’d been packing, and a generic midsize sedan was waiting for us at the curb. While seated in the car, Rae then bought us two plane tickets to Chicago on her phone.

“Why Chicago?”, I asked her.

“Because we need to go to Chicago.”

No further explanation. Not for lack of time, but she made it clear she had no interest in telling me.

And then we sat in L.A. Thursday night traffic for nearly an hour to travel the measly eight miles between my apartment and LAX airport.

Close to midnight, we caught a nonstop red-eye to Chicago O’Hare. My body was exhausted after my ordeal fighting off the venom, and I passed out immediately after takeoff. And when the plane landed shortly before 6AM central, we were just in time to sit in Friday morning traffic for nearly an hour to travel the measly eighteen miles between ORD airport and downtown Chicago.

Rae had already booked us a hotel from her phone, but when we got to the front desk of the Marriott Marquis Chicago and the desk clerk handed us two different room keys, I arched an eyebrow at my blue-haired companion and asked, “Separate rooms?”

“In your dreams,” she scoffed immediately, looking mildly offended.

“N-n-no. I-I didn’t mean--” I stammered defensively, but then I stopped talking when Rae gave me a dismissive wave and then headed for the elevators.

That’s when the pretty desk clerk behind me began, “If you’re looking for some company tonight, I…” But her voice trailed off and she frowned, looking a little confused as to why she would have even started that sentence in the first place.

I merely gave her a warm, understanding smile: the kind of smile Brad Pitt gave to screaming admirers on every red carpet that said, I know you want me, and I’m okay with that. Flattered, really. It’s not happening, but you don’t need to feel embarrassed about it.

And then I hurried over to the elevators.

The hotel had put us both on the thirty-fifth floor, but we didn’t have adjoining rooms. Rae was by the elevators, and I was four doors down. She told me to put my suitcase away and then come back to her room, which I did quickly enough. But when I knocked at Rae’s door less than two minutes later, I jerked my head back in surprise to find that she’d somehow changed into a completely different outfit from the one she’d traveled in despite the fact that she hadn’t brought any luggage into the room with her.

I was still noodling over that particular puzzle in my mind when our elevator arrived on the lobby floor and Rae pointed me to the front doors, telling me  we were going for a walk. Quite reasonably, I asked her where we were going. But Rae rather pointedly ignored my question and silently strode off down the sidewalk, leaving me to follow after.

We walked several blocks from the hotel, passing homeless people encamped beneath the Chicago “L” Train overpass bridges, a couple of whom reached out and asked me for money. Rae and I both quickly strode past them – quite honestly the same way I strode past the many homeless people who lived around Santa Monica – and I was still thinking about that particular “feature” of urban living when we reached the next intersection, Wentworth Avenue.

There, I stopped in my tracks at the unexpected sight of a massive Chinese gate spanning the width of the street. Just beyond it was a large building with two pagoda towers sprouting from its rooftop like horns. And only then did I realize that every business in sight featured signs in both English and with Chinese characters.

“What? You’ve never been to a big-city Chinatown?” Rae teased me. “Let’s go.”

A block down, Rae abruptly turned into a place advertising ginseng, herbs, and tea on the storefront windows. I followed her inside and came to a stop, momentarily awed by the numerous barrels of strong-smelling nuts, dried fruits, and spices right in front of me, packed so tightly on the floor that there was barely enough room to walk around. I gawked at the ceiling-high cabinets full of small drawers containing who-knows-what. And the shelves of glass jars featuring pickled… things… made me a little queasy just to look at them.

An old woman behind the counter looked up at our entrance. Rae said something to her in Mandarin, and the old woman replied in kind. Without another word, Rae walked right through the shop, not even glancing at anything, until she passed through a hallway semi-blocked-off by a beaded curtain decorated with a large a bamboo design and two large Chinese characters. I followed her through the hanging beads, down the hallway, and to a closed office door. Rae rapped her knuckles against the hardwood twice, barked something curtly in Chinese as if she were an angry customer, and then twisted the knob to open the door herself.

The next twenty minutes were something of a blur. The balding old man with coke-bottle glasses inside the office and Rae jabbered back and forth in Mandarin I clearly had no chance of understanding. I got confused and a little defensive when Rae grabbed me by the elbow and unceremoniously parked me in front of a blank white wall, quickly followed by the old man pulling out a cell phone from his desk drawer and taking my picture. I then stood there for a few minutes, wondering why they would need a picture of me, at least until the old man pulled out what appeared to be a blank U.S.A. passport book while the printer in the corner lit up and started working.

Idly, I wondered if the characters out on that beaded curtain translated to Forged Passports.

Sure enough, within minutes Rae handed me my new passport along with an old iPhone 8 that still had a thumbprint button on it.

I sighed in disappointment at the archaic iPhone. But I got a little excited at the passport and immediately opened it to check the name and photograph.

The photograph could’ve been worse, but it could’ve been a lot better. I certainly had a deer-in-the-headlights expression on my face.

The name? Alexander Hamilton.

“Somebody’s got a sense of humor,” I muttered.

“The name ‘Alex’ is close enough to yours for you to respond to it, if necessary,” Rae explained reasonably. “It’s bad enough I had to list your real name on the flight here – Aksel Andersen isn’t exactly the most common name – but at least domestic travel databases aren’t heavily scrutinized. You wouldn’t be able to travel internationally on your regular passport without setting off all kinds of flags for the wrong kind of people to track you.”

“You know you still haven’t told me exactly who the ‘wrong people’ are,” I pointed out. “Hell, you could still be one of the ‘wrong people’ for all I know.”

Rae sighed in annoyance and shook her head. “If I wanted you dead, I would’ve left you where I found you. My life would certainly be easier that way. Instead I’m here: buying you plane tickets, hotels, a new phone, and arranging a new passport so you--”

“So I can travel internationally, apparently,” I interjected. “Care to explain why and where we’re going?”

“Not here. The less Sun Yee Tong knows, the better.” Rae gestured to the old man, who blinked at us behind his coke-bottle glasses with an expression that suggested he didn’t understand a word of English anyways, but I didn’t press her on that point.

In the end, Rae paid him with a stack of bills, I thanked him with the upper limit of Mandarin that I knew, saying, “Xie xie”, and then we left.

Rae led the way, and I quickly realized we were heading back to the hotel. She still wasn’t in a talkative mood, and I knew better than to expect her to tell me more about what was going on while we were in public, so I remained silent for the duration. But once we arrived at my hotel room and it became clear that Rae was about to leave again, I asked somewhat petulantly, “Did we fly all the way to Chicago just to get me a new passport?”

“No, of course not,” Rae drawled as if I were the dumbest idiot in the history of idiots. “But I don’t need you around for the rest of my errands, so I’m stashing you back at the hotel for now. I suggest you get some sleep while you can.”

“May I suggest we take a minute so you can explain to me what’s going on?”

“May I suggest that we don’t have a minute for me to explain because I’ve got a LOT of errands to run and precious little time to run them.” Her clipped English-accent somehow made her tone even more severe. And then she’d promptly left my hotel room, closing the door with a final bang.

I’d intended to take her up on her suggestion to get some sleep. But after changing my clothes and crawling into bed, I found that sleep eluded me.

Then I opened my laptop, connected my VPN, and tried to get some work done. But my mind kept drifting and I wound up doing research on Mangshan pit vipers and scouring news articles for stories about an old Chinese man street performer having his snake biting tourists, without any success.

I must’ve passed out from boredom, though, because I woke up to the sounds of heavy knocking at my hotel room door. Groggy, it took me a moment to sit up and realize what the hell was going on. The door-knocking stopped soon thereafter, and then my iPhone 8 started ringing on the nightstand. I swiped the green slider, blearily answered, “Hello?”, and Rae immediately barked, “Open your fucking door.”

I opened the door and Rae simply glared at me while thumbing the red “End” button on her phone before walking in. She held a small paper bag and tossed it to me, but I was still a little groggy and reacted late, so the bag hit me in the chest first and then I fumbled the catch, letting the bag fall to the floor.

Rae’s withering stare didn’t help me feel any better.

I quickly picked up the bag and peeked inside, seeing a pack of four steamed buns.

“Baozi,” Rae informed me. “They’re--”

“Steamed pork buns. I know,” I interjected.

“Eat up. We gotta get moving.”

“Why are you always in such a hurry? Like it’s a matter of life or death?”

“Because it IS a matter of life or death,” Rae spat in annoyance. “MY life and possibly YOUR death.”

“You’re saying that whether or not I take five minutes to eat my lunch will tip the scales of cosmic balance determining my eternal fate?”

“Just shut the fuck up and eat your pork buns.”

Rolling my eyes, I took a seat at the hotel room desk and started eating. On the desk there were also two bottles of water provided by the hotel, and I opened one of them to drink.

“Those things are five dollars, you know,” Rae drawled.

I rolled my eyes, ready to retort something crass, but just before I did, something held back my tongue. Plus, my mouth was full. But after I swallowed my bite, I took a deep breath and looked up at the blue-haired girl pacing back and forth in front of my bed with her arms firmly crossed over her chest.

“Thank you for saving my life,” I stated sincerely.

Rae stopped in her tracks and gave me a funny look. “Huh?”

“I realized I never thanked you before,” I continued before repeating, “Thank you for saving my life. Thank you for buying me a plane ticket. Thank you for booking me a nice hotel room with five-dollar water bottles. Thank you for getting me a new passport and a new phone. Thank you for the baozi. Thank you for…”

Rae’s eyebrows arched as my voice trailed off, waiting expectantly for me to continue.

“Thank you for helping me throughout whatever it is that’s going on,” I finally said. “I still really wish I you would tell me what’s going on. I don’t like being kept in the dark about stuff, and not really understanding my situation or the true danger I’m in is making me cranky and snarky and unappreciative. But I still should’ve thanked you for saving my life a lot earlier than now.”

Rae pursed her lips and waggled her head. It looked like it pained her to say, “You’re welcome.” But she did it anyways.

“I’ll pay you back for all the money you’ve spent on me.”

“Worry about that later. All the money in the world won’t matter if we can’t beat them to it.”

I gave her a helpless look. “Who’s ‘them’? What’s ‘it’?”

Rae sighed, uncrossed her arms, swayed them a bit, and then recrossed them in front of her. Rather than answer my questions immediately, she instead began, “You should know that I’m not saving your life for philanthropic reasons. I need you for something.”

“Well that part I already figured out,” I said with a shrug and then took another big bite out of my pork bun, and with a chunk of it tucked into my cheek, I added, “But why? What’s so special about me?”

Rae started pacing again, her knuckles turning white from how tightly she was holding her own arms. But after two passes in front of my bed, she stopped and turned to face me with a deadly serious expression on her face.

“I know who killed your mother. Your real mother.”

I promptly spit the half-chewed chunk of pork bun onto the carpeted floor, along with a good junk of drool.

“Oh, shit,” I muttered while hastily looking around for a napkin or something. There hadn’t been any inside the baozi bag, nor were there any on the desk. So I wound up wiping my face with the back of my hand as I stood up and went into the bathroom instead.

I took the time to rinse off my face and dry my hands before emerging from the bathroom with the hotel-provided tissue box, walking over to the nightstand and setting it there. Only then did I turn back to face Rae, mumbling, “Uh… can you run that by me again?”

Rae gave me a soft, apologetic look as she took a seat on the side of my bed, patting the space beside her.

I sat down, not particularly close to her, but she scooted a little closer to me anyways and took my hand into both of hers, squeezing it reassuringly. I was still a little bit in shock, having not thought very much about my real mom in a long, long time. I mean, I’d seen the video multiple times since my adoptive mother Merethe had first shown it to me when I was a teenager. But it wasn’t something I dwelled on very much.

Still squeezing my hand, Rae explained, “It wasn’t an accident. The same group of people who are chasing you now are the ones that murdered your mother and made it look like an accident. She was special, in much the same way that you are special. And they killed her for it.”

“Special how?”

Rae pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. I could see her mentally calculating how much she could tell me and how much she needed to withhold. I didn’t particularly like the fact that she wouldn’t just tell me everything, but at the moment I didn’t want to call her out on it and potentially make her clam up and decide not to tell me anything further. It had already taken her this long to tell me this much in the first place.

Finally, Rae took a deep breath and then continued, “Your mother was descended from a very important family in China. Her blood was the blood of emperors dating back to the Shu Han Dynasty from the Three Kingdoms period. And she was one of the very few left who could potentially fulfill an ancient prophecy and discover the Faguang Long.”

“The fog-what-now?”

“The Faguang Long,” she repeated. “The Golden Dragon. It is a magic artifact with great powers that has been lost for centuries.”

I blinked twice. “Um, magic? Did you say ‘magic’?”

Rae nodded. “I said ‘magic’.”

“Magic isn’t real.”

“Of course it is,” Rae scoffed as if magic being real was even more blatantly obvious than the existence of the sun. “Magic is very real. The Faguang Long is very real. And the descendants of Cao Wei believe it is real enough to kill your mother in order to prevent it from being recovered.”

“Why? What does the Fah… Fahgwah… What does the magic artifact do?”

Rae made a face. “I’m not sure, actually.”

I blinked twice again. “What?!”

Rae held up her hands and confirmed, “I’m really not sure. There are conflicting legends as to exactly what it is and what it can do, but all of the legends agree that its powers were instrumental in turning the tide of the war. And almost two thousand years ago, the Imperial Chancellor of Shu Han, Zhuge Liang, wrote a prophesy about the Faguang Long’s recovery.”

“And you think this two-thousand-year-old prophecy is about me?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And now they’re trying to kill me to prevent this prophecy from coming true? Because I have the same blood as my mom?”

“Yes. They just tried to kill you last night.”

“That makes no sense,” I said with a frown. “Why didn’t they kill me as a baby? I’ve seen the video on the internet. It’s quite obvious which woman picks me up at the end of it. Merethe made no secret of who she was or where we lived. If these descendants of… of…”

“Cao Wei.”

“Right. If those guys wanted me dead, they could’ve picked me off at any time.”

“They could have, but they had no reason to believe you were a threat to fulfill the prophecy.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a male.”

I blinked twice. “Um, what?”

Rae took a deep breath and sighed. She pursed her lips and nodded slowly before explaining, “Until now, it was believed that only women could unlock the gates leading to the Faguang Long. Only women possessed the powers of wuxing and could pass them down a maternal line, with the blood of the mother passing to her daughters. Shu Lien gave birth to a son, you, which was of no importance to the Cao Wei. But now, we have all realized that your blood is capable of unlocking the gates.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Unlock the gates how? My blood? You’re not just like… keeping me alive so that you can slit my throat and throw down my corpse as a ritual sacrifice to the gods or anything like that, right?”

Rae laughed and shook her head. “No, nothing like that. We wouldn’t even need to cut you. Just hold your palm to the right place, and the gate will open.”

“And this only works if I’m alive, I presume.”

“You presume correctly.”

“Why can’t you open the gates? You’re a woman.”

“I’m not a descendent of Shu Han.” Rae shrugged helplessly. “But my family has long been allies with… well… with yours.”

I made a face. “I’ve been an orphan for so long, it feels weird thinking that I have ‘a family’ in the first place, let alone a family with allies.”

“You’re not alone, Aksel,” Rae said sincerely, squeezing my hand again.

I nodded slowly and then pivoted to brace my back against the bed’s headboard, with Rae letting go of my hand. Raising my knees to my chest, I wrapped my arms around them and pondered the situation.

“Is that why we’re here in Chicago?” I asked. “Because the artifact is here?”

“No. The Faguang Long is in China, which is why you need a new passport.”

“So we DID only come to Chicago to get me a new passport.”

“I already told you ‘no’. I could’ve gotten you a new passport in L.A. if needed.” Rae gestured towards the hotel room door. “We came here because one of the keys to finding the Faguang Long itself was moved to Chicago back in 2003.”

I frowned. “Moved here? Why?”

“I don’t know exactly why, only that it did. We’ve actually known about it for years, but we could never gain access to the key before now.”

“Because you needed my blood.”

“Precisely.”

“But won’t the bad guys know about this key here in Chicago, too? Now that they’ve failed to kill me, they’ll have to assume I’m with you. They’ll have to know that you’re coming for the key, and they’ll probably set a trap for you and me.”

“Unlikely. First of all, I don’t think they know about the Chicago key.”

“You ‘think’?” I asked dubiously.

“One of the reasons it was moved was to hide the key’s location. Plus, there are actually multiple relics we will need to obtain before going after the Faguang Long itself, in locations spread around the world. The Cao Wei are powerful, but not numerous. They can’t set traps for us everywhere or be in all places at all times.”

“But they might know about this one, get lucky, and guess that we’re coming for this one.”

“They might, in which case it would take them some time to set up a trap. But it’s been less than twenty-four hours since they sent a viper after you, and if we can get in and out quickly…” Rae let her voice trail off as she tapped her watch. “So like I said: life or death. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.”

I glanced down over at the bag of remaining pork buns and pointed. “We’d better get going then. I can eat those on the way.”

****

Early Friday afternoon Chicago traffic was much less congested than rush-hour traffic, and it was only a fifteen-minute Uber ride to Garfield Park. Rae was on alert as soon as we emerged from the vehicle, eyes darting left and right. I found myself glancing around as well, for some reason looking for sunglass-wearing men in trench coats. But there was nobody around except for a few tourists.

The Garfield Park Conservatory was one of the largest botanical conservatories in the nation. The facility consisted of several large glass structures, like massive greenhouses, and I found myself staring up in awe of the architectural marvel.

Rae seemed like she already knew where she was going, but I couldn’t help but grab a brochure in the lobby and take a look around. The first area we entered was the gargantuan Palm House, which was the largest room in the Conservatory and housed more than seventy palm trees and a variety of additional plants from warm habitats all over the world.

Correction: apparently they were “palms”, not palm trees. Botanically, palms were large, woody herbs and not actual trees. Hey, learn something new every day.

From there, I made to head into the Fern House, but Rae grabbed my hand with an annoyed sigh and dragged me off to the right, muttering something beneath her breath about this not being a sightseeing expedition and how she didn’t want to get killed over me gawking at a bunch of plants. We passed quickly through the Show House, which featured a gorgeous collection of flowers, and then entered the Horticulture Hall.

As far as the greenhouse buildings went, the Horticulture Hall wasn’t nearly as large as the others. The arched ceiling had many metal panels instead of being all glass, with three rows of overhead lights dangling above us. The brochure stated that the room could be reserved for special events, and indeed it looked like the facility was setting up for a wedding or some other kind of banquet. While there were plants lining both sides of the hall, most of the space down the center of the floor was occupied by dozens of circular tables with folded white tablecloths atop them, still waiting to be arranged.

Rae and I were the only ones in the hall at the moment. Early Friday afternoon visitation at the Conservatory was low, and there weren’t many plants of interest here. But we weren’t here to see the plants anyway.

Still holding my hand, perhaps to ensure I didn’t wander off to sightsee, Rae led me on a beeline for an installation that look distinctly out-of-place here in the Horticulture Hall. It was a large mosaic wall fountain better suited to the Middle East than Middle America.

At first glance, it looked as if the entire fountain had been pulled off the wall of some faraway building lining an Arabian desert town street and transported here to Chicago. The mosaic-tiled wall was an upright structure about twenty feet high and fifteen feet wide. An outer border, like a doorway of some kind, featured large red concentric circles in a neatly centered row across the top and both sides, with smaller blue and green circular patterns filling in the remaining space. A large bulb-shaped outline of dark blue was filled in with more concentric circles and patterns. And below, two gold spouts emerged, cascading twin continuous flows of water into a blue-tile-lined pool at the base.

According to the sign, the fountain was built using a traditional eleventh-century Moorish technique in which handmade terra cotta tiles called “zellij” were cut and arranged in intricate patterns. And this particular Zellij Fountain had been built by Moroccan artists in 2003.

“This is it?” I asked Rae.

Looking up at the fountain, she nodded slowly. “This is it.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

Rae didn’t answer me right away. For all her complaints about me dawdling while staring at different plants and the greenhouse architecture like a stupid tourist instead of focusing on the life-or-death situation, she herself seemed caught up in the moment, gazing at the fountain with an unexpected reverence.

“You have no idea how many times I’ve been here,” she said softly, “wishing I could be the one to find the key.”

“You will be the one to find the key once you tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do.”

Eyes unfocused, Rae shook her head slowly. She reached a hand up to the center of the large middle circle where a red dot like a many-pointed star stood prominently front and center. She was short enough that she had to go on tiptoes to reach the red dot, holding her palm an inch in front of it for several seconds. And I watched the corners of her eyes pinch in as if she were straining and reaching for… something… to no avail.

With a rueful sigh, Rae dropped back down on her heels and lowered her arm. When she turned to look at me, I saw moisture in her eyes, and she rather dismissively gestured for me to go ahead. “Put your palm in front of the dot. Simple as that.”

“Really?”

She shrugged as if it didn’t matter to her one way or another. “Try it. Find out.”

I first glanced around the room, half-expecting sunglass-wearing men in trench coats to come rushing into the room with machine guns blazing. But there wasn’t even another tourist in the hall, and after taking a deep breath, I raised my hand and hovered my hand an inch in front of the red dot the same way Rae had done.

Nothing happened.

The water pouring from the twin spouts continued, splashing down into the pool below and making bubbling sounds. Footsteps back by the entrance to the Show House echoed down the hall, and I dropped my hand and turned to look that way. Rae was looking too, and we saw a uniformed security guard making his rounds. When the guy walked halfway into the Horticulture Hall, Rae smiled and waved, and he gave her a smile back before slowly turning around and pacing back the way he came.

Thirty seconds later, he turned the corner and went out of sight.

Rae took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. Nodding at me, she looked far more serious as she said, “Try again.”

I took a deep breath as well and then raised my hand to the dot.

Still nothing.

I went ahead and pressed my palm to the circle.

Still nothing.

The hall remained silent save for the bubbling fountain water.

“Maybe I’m doing it wrong,” I muttered, lifting my hand away from the circle and then pressing my palm against the dot, over and over again.

“Hang on, you’re doing it wrong,” Rae complained, grabbing my wrist and then keeping it steady an inch away. “You’re supposed to hold it here.”

“I WAS holding it there. Nothing’s happening. Are you sure I’m holding it in the right place?” I glanced around and took note of the other concentric circles forming the border of the fountain. There were twenty-one of them, including the ones across the top, plus all of the other large-ish circles within the bulb shape.

“I’m just having you do what I was told for you to do,” Rae muttered. “Something’s not right.”

“Maybe we’re too late? Maybe somebody got here before us?”

“No way. There’s no one else who would be able to--”

The hall suddenly plunged into silence as the twin spouts stopped pouring water. The pump at the bottom must have still been slowly draining the pool however, because within seconds we realized the water level was dropping as a thin line of crusted minerals was revealed: the “bathtub ring” that every fountain or water feature had.

I dropped my hand away from the red dot, and Rae stared down at the receding pool.

“Huh,” I muttered. “Wasn’t expecting that.”

Rae gave me a funny look. “What were you expecting?”

“I dunno. You told me this was magic.” I waved my hands around. “Billowing clouds suddenly forming above the greenhouse, lightning flashing, the room plunging into darkness, and then an unearthly light beaming out through suddenly forming cracks in the fountain’s mosaic surface. You know. Magic.”

Rae rolled her eyes. “You watch too many Hollywood movies.”

By now, the water level had dropped halfway down to the bottom of the pool. I was prepared to wait until all of the water was gone, but we heard a soft click and then one of the dark-blue tiles at the bottom popped up a millimeter or two, revealing a four-sided crack.

I gawked at the tile, but Rae didn’t hesitate for a second. She reached into the water, pulled up the tile, and revealed a small compartment beneath. Tossing the tile aside, she quickly shoved her hand into the compartment, and moments later she pulled out a shimmering blue oblong crystal about the length of her hand.

“Holy shit, I actually found it,” she muttered with an expression of disbelief.

I peered at the object in her hand. I was no gemologist (crystallographer?) and had no idea exactly what the crystal was made of. But I could tell that the color was very vibrant blue, the material was translucent enough to let light reflect through it, and the overall shape had quite clearly been deliberately cut and polished into a specific design.

In fact, with a slightly bulbous head and an elongated body, the thing looked a little… phallic.

“Holy shit, I actually found it!” Rae exclaimed a little louder, this time with a wide, beaming smile full of perfect white teeth stretching her lips.

I grinned and nodded, agreeing, “You found it!”

“I found it! I found it! I found it!” The blue-haired girl abruptly leaped into my arms, grabbing my shoulders and wrapping her legs around my waist. I instinctively caught her and focused entirely on not dropping her while she humped herself up and down several times atop my stomach, repeating, “I found it! I found it! I found it!”

“Everything alright in here?”

We both turned and froze, our heads whipping around to the open doorway back to the Show House. The security guard was back, peering at us curiously. And only then did I realize the Zellij Fountain had turned back on, with water flowing from the two spouts once more.

“Uh… yeah, yeah,” I stammered. “We’re fine. She’s just really excited to see this fountain.”

“Been waiting a LONG, long time for this moment,” she replied honestly, still beaming a pearly white smile.

“Well… alright then,” the security guard conceded. “But please refrain from shouting while inside the Conservatory. For the sake of the other guests.”

“Of course. Sorry, sir,” Rae apologized.

The man nodded, gave her one last smile, and then turned to walk away. And only once he was out of sight did Rae finally realize that I was still holding her up, and she rather abruptly dropped her legs to the floor.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” she muttered tersely, her accent momentarily thicker as she blushed in embarrassment.

“Don’t worry about it,” I replied with a shrug and an expression that told her it was no big deal. I was rather used to holding up girls in the same position, although that wasn’t information I figured Rae necessarily needed to hear.

She’d instinctively closed her hand around the crystal, obscuring it from the security guard’s view. But now she opened her hand again, gazing in awe and covering her gaping mouth with her left hand, still clearly in disbelief that the moment had finally come for her.

I still had no idea exactly what Rae was holding, so I didn’t feel the same sense of elation. But I was happy for her, and I took a step back to give her some space and let her enjoy the moment. Meanwhile, I peeked back into the fountain, realizing that the water level had once again risen to the “bathtub ring” mark. Furthermore, the dislodged tile at the bottom had moved back into place.

“Huh,” I muttered in mild surprise. I still didn’t believe in magic - as far as I could tell, the Zellij Fountain itself was nothing more than an elaborate mechanical device. When triggered, it would stop the water flow, let the pumps drain the level down, and then pop the tile at the bottom. And my Apple Watch (before Rae made me toss that too) had internal sensors that could monitor my blood pressure and oxygenation, so I figured the technology existed that could somehow code itself to my family’s DNA.

My family’s DNA. Now there was a strange thought. I hadn’t been sure whether or not to believe Rae’s story about my mom being descended from a line of Shu Han emperors, but perhaps the truth was as simple as that. The fountain had opened up for me, hadn’t it?

Maybe I really was special.

Maybe the viper attack from last night hadn’t been a coincidental accident.

Maybe there really was a group of Cao Wei disciples who wanted to kill me.

I looked back at Rae, who was still beaming and gazing at the blue crystal in her hand. Funny, only now did I notice that the particular shade of vibrant blue matched the dye she’d put over her black hair.

The blue crystal itself was real. If the blue crystal was real, then maybe the magic artifact was real. And Rae had also said that there were multiple relics around the world we would need to obtain before going after the artifact itself.

I still didn’t necessarily believe in magic, but my own Ax Effect was evidence enough for me that not everything in this world could be rationally explained. Somehow… someway… I’d found myself in the middle of some kind of video-game-esque fetch quest.

And this was only the beginning.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue & Chapter 1: The Ax Effect: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102225387

Chapter 2: Santa Monica: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102437478