The Tales of the Dragon Warrior

The Banished Lord Returns and the Consequences of Arrogance

(The image above is Lord Shen)

Meanwhile, as Jade and her lovers were learning about her past, miles away, in the coastal Gongmen City, catastrophe was on the horizon.

It was late in the afternoon. The sun was setting over the city, bathing the ocean and the buildings in beautiful shades of orange and purple. Ships bustled about the harbor and people roamed the streets, getting ready to return home after a long day at work. Shops were closing and bars were opening as the day crowd was swapped for the night crowd. It was just another evening in the city of fireworks... until a certain someone came strolling through the city gates.

No one realized who that certain someone was, at first. The checkpoint guards just let him waltz through the gates like anyone else, thinking him to be just another traveler and barely bothering to look at his face. They had no idea who they had just let into their city, and the chaos he was about to bring.

Boisterous chatter turned into hushed whispers, and people froze in shock and fear as the city's banished heir walked back into the ancestral homeland he had cast from and down the city's main road, seeming to not have a care in the world. The city's older residents stared at the man, and marveled at how the young lord had changed so much and yet so little. It had been ten years since his exile, after all. A decade was sure to have changed him, at least somewhat. The man barely gave them the time of day. He was not there to merely be gawked at. He was on a mission, and he intended to complete it.

The man made it to the end of the road without issue. Everyone was too scared to try and stop him, especially when they saw the small army of men and mysterious box being pulled behind him.

'Good.', the man thought spitefully.

'They're right to fear me.'

At the end of the road lied a palace. It was shaped like a gorgeous, ten-story tall tower decorated in red and green with accents of gold. It was the Tower of the Sacred Flame, his ancestral home. The palace boasted a large courtyard with beautiful trees and a man-made river with stone bridges over it. It was also heavily protected, with armed guards at the front gate, four stone watchtowers, and a ginormous stone wall to keep out intruders. The man snorted. He never thought he'd see the day his own home's defenses were to be used against him, but here he was, about to storm the palace that was rightfully his like an invading tyrant. He couldn't help but feel bitter about it.

'All of this because of the ramblings of an old woman.', the man thought, the bitterness he felt intensifying with every passing second.

As the man got closer to the front gates on the wall, he saw that their design hadn't changed a bit. They were still colored with black lacquer, and had two black metal peacocks on either door, breathing red metallic fire into the air like dragons. The symbol of his family. How bad of a joke it was that no one who could claim that symbol resided in the palace at the moment. Well, it didn't matter now. The man was about to change that.

The man listened closely to the sounds beyond the gates, trying to asses the situation he was walking into. He heard grunts of effort and the sound of metal clashing against metal. The sounds of fighting. It seemed the imposter rulers that had been sent to manage things after his parents' death were training. How quaint... and how utterly useless. Their precious kung fu wouldn't save them from what he had in store for them. Not this time.

The man kept striding towards the palace gates, the many blades on his person rattling with every step that he took. His long, white silk robe dragged behind him on the now empty street as he climbed the stairs, getting closer and closer to his destination. Upon noticing him, the six guards that stood in front of the gate froze in fear, before steeling their resolve and rushing at him with their spears, battle cries falling off their lips. The man barely gave them the time of day. He merely plucked six steel knives from his sleeve and threw them at the charging men. Each knife hit its mark, and all the men crumpled to the ground with cries of pain, clutching their stab wounds as their once pristine blue robes were stained with red. The man stepped around them and avoided getting too close to them. He didn't want to ruin his outfit, after all.