Storm Phase – 13

In this epic fantasy, a young wizard with a mysterious destiny, a cat-girl ninja, and a diary that turns into a bat-like creature journey through worlds of monsters and mayhem.

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The book once again burst into a cloud of swirling paper, leather, and wire. “Master!” a voice croaked from within the cloud. “Watch out!”

The hand released Turesobei’s shoulder as Lu Bei coalesced into his creature form and flexed his arms, claws, and wings. The transformation happened much faster this time, taking only a handful of seconds instead of a couple of minutes.

“Strike!” Lu Bei cried out in his childlike voice as he zipped past Turesobei.

“Wait!” Turesobei yelled, but it was too late.

The creature crashed into Kahenan and slashed his claws into the old man’s right arm. He then attempted to bite Kahenan’s hand, but Kahenan swatted him away.

“Off, foul beast!”

Lu Bei crashed onto the nearest table, rolled over, and then launched himself upward, wings flapping furiously.

As Lu Bei circled around for another attack, Kahenan drew Yomifano with his right hand. The white-steel longsword slid free from its leather scabbard without a sound. Light from the fire globe glimmered along the shimmery, white as snow blade.

“Lu Bei, stop!” Turesobei said, but the creature either didn’t hear him or ignored him.

With his other hand, Kahenan drew a spell-strip and held it pinched between his thumb and forefinger. The polished bamboo piece was the length of Turesobei’s hand and the width of three fingers. Kahenan shouted an incantation, and the runes inked onto the spell strip flared bright white then disappeared. Though intended to primarily bind demons, the spell could affect any creature of magic or spirit.

As Lu Bei dove toward Kahenan’s face, streams of energy flew from the spell strip and wrapped around him, binding his wings, arms, and legs. Though he couldn’t move his wings anymore, Lu Bei still floated in midair. Turesobei didn’t know if that was a property of this particular binding spell or Lu Bei’s nature.

“Chonda Turesobei!” Kahenan roared, blood dripping down his arm. “What is this thing?”

He met his grandfather’s fiery eyes and shivered. “A creature from a diary.”

“Actually, I am the diary,” Lu Bei muttered through clenched teeth.

“It transformed from a book into this,” Turesobei said quietly. “Its name is Lu Bei. It says it was created by… Well, it says it was created by me. But what it actually means is that it was created with my kavaru — by Chonda Lu himself.”

“How long have you had this book?” Kahenan asked.

“Since this morning.”

“Where did you find it?”

“When I grabbed my books in your workshop, it was mixed in with them. I didn’t realize it was there until I reached the library.”

“Are you lying to me?”

“I swear it was with my books, Grandfather.”

“True, true. Master speaks true!” Lu Bei said.

Kahenan pointed a finger at the creature. “Quiet, you!”

“Master—” Lu Bei began, but Kahenan waved a hand, and suddenly the creature couldn’t speak.

“I will soon give you time enough to plead your case, creature.” He turned to Turesobei. “Why did you not tell me immediately?”

Turesobei shrugged. “I… I was angry and frustrated. And after talking to Lu Bei, he seemed harmless.”

“Often the most harmful things in a wizard’s life are the ones that look the least harmful. Have I not taught you this?”

“Yes, Grandfather.”

“Hmph. Not well enough it seems.”

“I wanted this to be… to be my thing. For a while, anyway.”

Kahenan eyed him thoughtfully and grunted. Then he cast a spell and all the lanterns within the library blazed to life. He held his arm up to the light. The cuts must have been shallow for the bleeding had already stopped.

“How did you know I would be here?” Turesobei asked.

“I am not a fool,” Kahenan snapped. “Why would you request that I open the library tonight, tired as you were, if you were not up to something? Besides, you were asking strange questions.”

“How did you get here so fast?”

“I am old, but not crippled, and you took forever with that leaping spell.”

“You were watching?!”

Eyes now glowing white from the use of kenja-sight, Kahenan ignored Turesobei and circled Lu Bei, examining the creature carefully. After a few minutes, his eyes returned to normal.

“Lu Bei, you will now answer the questions I ask of you,” Kahenan said.

“I obey only my master,” Lu Bei proclaimed.

“Sobei?” Kahenan prompted.

“Please, do as my grandfather requests, Lu Bei.”

“I don’t know…” the creature said dubiously.

“That’s an order,” Turesobei told him.

“But is it in your best interests, master?”

“Yes. It is.”

Kahenan twisted Yomifano. Lu Bei’s eyes darted to the white-steel sword. It could easily destroy a kenja construct such as Lu Bei. “It is in your best interests,” Kahenan growled.

“Aha! Well then. Um… what would you like to know?”

“Everything. Starting with your bite. Is it poisonous?”

“No,” Lu Bei said. “Neither are my claws.”

“Who fashioned you?”

“Chonda Lu. The next answer is two thousand, four hundred and thirty-eight years ago.”

“How did you come here?”

“Well, I have always been here, in a pocket of the Shadowland that…”

The room went silent, even though Lu Bei’s lips were still moving. Before he could mention the problem, Turesobei could hear again.

“Yes, he made me before he came here to Okoro,” Lu Bei said.

Chonda Lu had been the first baojen from the land of Tengba Ren to sail west to Okoro across the Sea of Sunrise. The arrival of his expedition unintentionally led to the colonization of Okoro by the baojen over the next two centuries.

“I was created to help Master record everything he experienced. And to fetch things for him — tea, books, spell components, or anything else he needed.”

“That… that is amazingly clever,” Kahenan said with a bright gleam to his eyes. “Do you still retain all this information?”

“Oh, yes, yes, of course. I remember everything Master ever told me and everything I have ever seen or heard.”

A smile creased Kahenan’s face. “The knowledge you must possess! We know so little about Chonda Lu now, so little about our past. We have, for instance, only a single, simple account of Chonda Lu’s first voyage here.”

“About twenty-seven pages long, would you say?” Lu Bei asked.

“Exactly,” Kahenan replied. “In terrible penmanship, I might add.”

“Sorry, I wrote those for Master. He was terribly busy and couldn’t do it himself. I wrote a longer account later. You must have lost it.”

“We lost most of our history,” Turesobei said. “The original Chonda Library burned centuries ago. And some other volumes were stolen, by a rival clan, we think.”

Kahenan shook his head as if he still couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing or hearing. “It must have taken years for Chonda Lu to create you.”

“One hundred and eighty-seven,” Lu Bei said proudly. “Working for two hours each day.”

“Astounding! The spells that must have gone into it, all that work and dedication…” Kahenan’s eyes narrowed. “But why would he do this? No offense, but surely, you must have served some additional purpose.”

“Master enjoyed the effort in making a spirit construct. His own fetch. A companion to help him with his work. Not summoned, but created and imbued with a personality he chose carefully. You would need him to explain the process of my creation to you, though. My memories begin when he first woke me.”

Lu Bei looked at Turesobei. He simply shrugged his shoulders in response.

“Why did he need everything to be recorded perfectly?” Kahenan asked.

“Oh yes, you see—”

Silence fell again. They were both still talking, but Turesobei could hear none of it. He was also beginning to feel dizzy, as if he’d spun in place for several seconds.

He interrupted them. “Would you like for me to leave, Grandfather? It would make things easier on me. The silencing spell you’re using is starting to make me queasy.”

Kahenan turned to him. “You could not hear what we were saying?”

“Not a word after Lu Bei said ‘Oh yes, you see.’”

“Interesting,” Kahenan replied. “That explains why you did not react as I thought you might. But this is not surprising given—”

Silence again, followed by a wave of vertigo.

“You did not hear that, did you, Sobei?” Kahenan asked.

“No!” Turesobei said with exasperation.

“Alas,” Lu Bei said. “It is not the time yet. I am decidedly early.”

“Early?” Turesobei asked. “Early for what?”

“When Chonda Lu decided to—”

Silence again, and this time, the accompanying vertigo forced him to sit. A few minutes later, Kahenan knelt before him.

“I am sorry, Sobei,” Kahenan said, and there was a deep sadness in the tone of his voice. “I know you are frustrated, but this is… this is not something you are meant to hear — not yet.”

“That’s the worst version of ‘I will tell you when you’re older’ that I’ve ever heard.”

“I really am sorry,” Kahenan replied. “It is not my decision.”

“Can’t you fix it?”

“This magic goes far beyond my skills, Sobei. Far beyond.”

“Ahem,” Lu Bei said as he wrenched his body back and forth.

“Oh, Lu Bei, how careless of me,” Kahenan said, swiping his hand through the air as he stood.

The bindings around the creature disappeared, and Lu Bei fluttered down to the nearest table.

“Truly amazing,” Kahenan muttered.

Lu Bei spoke, and silence returned. While fighting off vertigo, Turesobei activated his kenja-sight and scanned the surrounding area, searching for the source of the silencing spell.

Lu Bei glowed brightly, of course, but no energy currents were flowing out from him. And the ruby kavaru hanging from his grandfather’s neck was dark and cold. His amber channeling stone, however, glimmered as currents radiated outward, enveloping him. His own kavaru was creating the silencing effect and without his knowledge of it!

With the chain stretched out as far as possible, he cradled the kavaru in his hands and gazed into its mysterious depths. He muttered the command used to end an ongoing spell, but nothing happened. Then he tried a counter-spell, but that didn’t work either.

Maybe the effect would end if he took off his kavaru. He tugged the chain with one hand, but he couldn’t shift it from his neck. That was weird. Clutching it with both hands, he grunted and strained, but still, he couldn’t take it off.

Was this another unknown spell affecting him? If so, he saw no sign of it from the energy patterns issuing out from the stone.

Naturally, he wore his kavaru all the time, even when bathing. After all, a wizard would be nearly useless without his channeling stone. But suddenly, he couldn’t recall ever having removed the stone, even for a single moment. But that couldn’t be right. Surely, he had slipped the chain off his neck before, perhaps to clean it.

The kavaru was housed within a basket of silver wire attached to the matching chain. A clasp on the back of this basket locked the kavaru in place. He tried to pry it open, but to no avail. Then he tried to detach the basket from the chain itself, and when that failed as well, he tugged as hard as he could in an attempt to snap it free from the chain. It held firm. He then attempted spells to unlock and unbind the chain and the clasp, but that didn’t work either.

No matter how he tried, no matter how strongly he exerted his muscles and his willpower, he could not remove the stone.

“Damn it! Why won’t you come off?!”

Lu Bei and Kahenan were staring at him. Each spoke to the other, but Turesobei couldn’t hear what was said.

A thought occurred to him then. A ridiculous thought. Because it just couldn’t be. There were no others left in all of Okoro, perhaps the entire world. And yet… the inability to remove his kavaru… little things said over the years… things only he could do… things maybe even his grandfather couldn’t do…

“Lu Bei,” Turesobei said. “Grandfather. Am I…” Turesobei chuckled nervously. “This may sound silly, but am I a kai… a kai…”

The vertigo intensified, the world darkened, and bright specks floated in his field of vision. “Am I…”

Weak and nauseated, he slumped toward the floor. “I… I must know if I…”

***

Lu Bei was fluttering over Turesobei, tugging at the collar of his shirt. “Master, are you okay?”

His head was fuzzy, his ears ringing. “What… what happened?”

“You fainted,” Kahenan replied. “Likely from fatigue.”

He sat up. “I was about to say something… only… only now I can’t remember what it was.”

Kahenan chuckled. “You will find that a common occurrence once you reach my age.”

“It wasn’t important, master,” Lu Bei said. “Think nothing of it.”

Kahenan reached a hand down. “I will help you get home, Sobei.”

“Lu Bei,” Turesobei said as he took his grandfather’s hand and stood. “It’s probably best for you to turn back into a book now.”

“Yes, master, of course.”

Moments later, the fetch was a diary again. The dramatic change made Kahenan’s eyes dance. They left the library, and slowly Turesobei’s strength returned, though he was far more tired now than before.

“Keep Lu Bei out of sight,” Kahenan said as they neared Turesobei’s house. “Do not, under any circumstances, let your mother see him. And do not release him too often. We don’t want anyone to find out by accident. Lu Bei’s presence here needs to remain a secret.”

“Yes, Grandfather.”

When they reached the house, Kahenan paused. “Tell your mother it is my fault you are late. And get some extra rest tonight. You may show up an hour later than normal tomorrow.”

“Will I still have to do extra work?”

“What a ridiculous question! Not only were you disrespectful today, you also tried to hide a potentially dangerous magical creature from me. Just be thankful for the extra rest, for you will be up late again tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Grandfather,” he muttered.

“By the way, I spoke with Master Kilono. You will not have martial arts practice tomorrow.”

Well, at least there was that. He entered the house quietly, but before he could make it to his bedroom, his mother intercepted him.

“You’re three hours late,” she said with a scolding slur. Her breath smelled of wine, and her hair was disheveled. “And I don’t care if it’s your fault or your grandfather’s.”

Sensing the extent of the berating to come, he groaned. She was going to use up his extra hour for sleep.

To Be Continued…