Zhu felt his cheeks burn. ‘You know the general?’ he asked.
Syà didn’t respond. She remained perfectly still.
‘All I had to do was let you lead me to him,’ he said. ‘And you did exactly that.’
He strode towards Syà. Amazingly, for a man who was reputed to be a brilliant military strategist, he stepped into her striking range.
Zhu watched Syà’s saber rise, but it did not strike the general. Instead, her sharp blade moved to her own throat. Zhu watched her struggle against it.
‘Shall I consider this your surrender?’ the general said.
Syà was about to slit her own throat. Zhu couldn’t believe what he was seeing. She shifted against it, her fingers pressed white against the saber’s grip, her teeth clenched. She was fighting it. But he didn’t even know what it was. Had he cast a spell over her? Zhu didn’t believe in magic, but he had no other way to explain what he was seeing. The saber pushed against her skin and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Zhu held the elixir bottle further over the bathtub. It hovered above the open pipe, small enough to drop straight through.
‘Let her live,’ Zhu said. ‘Or your Phoenix elixir is gone forever.’
The general paused to observe him. Zhu could tell his mind was working through multiple scenarios, calculating the angles. If he could read Zhu’s mind, he would know Zhu was not bluffing.
The general laughed and turned back to Syà.
Suddenly it all made sense to Zhu. How the general could so easily command armies around the world.
The general wasn’t after the Phoenix for its abilities. He was after it so no one else could get to it first. He already had all three of them.
The general was the Controller.
For the first time, Zhu saw fear in Syà’s eyes. She looked at him, watching the tears in his. He yelled as the saber sliced her throat.
Syà dropped to the ground, blood pouring from her neck. He felt something inside himself boil dark and become rage. With the elixir bottle still clasped between his fingers, he drew his bow and aimed for the general’s head.
His aim wasn’t shaky this time.
An arrow caught Zhu in his midsection, driving between his ribs. Pain burnt through his body, stealing the breath from him. He loosed his arrow as he fell backward into the bathtub. It missed the general and struck the far wall.
The general would kill him now, he knew that.
The elixir bottle rolled down his chest and came to rest on his neck. He felt the cool liquid trickle over his skin. He hadn’t tested the third elixir yet, so he didn’t know if it would work. Or if it would kill him. Such was the risk an alchemist took in pursuit of immortality.
He reached for it. Most of the elixir was still in the bottle.
He raised it to his lips, drank it all.
And he knew he had made a mistake. The elixir moved through him, burning him with fire. His body broke into a sweat. He started to shake uncontrollably. Saliva spluttered from his mouth, over his face. His fingernails sank into the flesh of his palms, drawing warm blood.
He couldn’t tell if he was breathing. He couldn’t tell if he was alive.
The general looked down at him. His bronze mask twisted and distorted. Zhu was certain he had died and this was just a ripple in the afterlife. But then the general reached down and grabbed him by his robes. He hauled him out of the bathtub and, with an inhuman roar, threw Zhu into the air. He struck the wall and fell, landing first on his arm and then his hip. Pain was real again.
Everything around him became solid and sharp. The pain subsided. He could breathe. He saw the general’s helmet roll towards him. It had fallen off when he’d thrown Zhu out of the bathtub. The general’s leather boots approached him. Looking up, he smiled at the bronze mask.
‘That was a gamble,’ Zhu said. ‘But it paid off.’
The general was holding a lance, plucked from one of his soldiers. He aimed the lance at Zhu’s head and thrust down
The lance held still in the air, inches above Zhu’s face. Zhu moved his head to inspect it. The general’s hand trembled. He adjusted his stance and pushed his body forward, trying to drive the lance into Zhu.
Zhu pulled himself to his feet. He dropped the empty elixir bottle. It shattered next to the general’s boots. He peered into the bloodshot eyes behind the mask.
‘That third one had a bit of kick to it,’ Zhu said. ‘More than the other two.’
The general struggled with his lance. He tried to speak, to reach out and control Zhu’s mind, to fight fire with fire. But his body trembled beneath his armor. Zhu stepped to one side and let the general fall, an axe driven deep into his shoulder, penetrating the armor.
The soldier who wielded the axe was standing behind the general, staring down at his dying commander in disbelief. He snapped out of it and reached to his belt for a dagger. But before he could sink it into Zhu, a second soldier, controlled by Zhu, fired an arrow. It punched through the back of the first soldier’s neck. He slumped over the general’s body.
Zhu looked over at the other three soldiers. They were his now.
Two of them readied their scimitars. He could smell their anger as he watched them kill each other, under his control, before he safely moved to Syà.
She lay in a large pool of her own blood. Her green eyes were faded, stared past him. He removed the bandage from her arm and tried to wrap it around her neck, even though he knew there was nothing he could do. She had saved him. And now she was gone.
He stood.
The bathhouse filled with light as another meteorite burned through the sky. Through the windows he could see the Mongol soldiers pushing back through the gate, their feigned retreat catching the Imperial soldiers by surprise. They cut through with ease. Zhu watched the light from the meteor move across the blood-splashed walls. And then the meteorite was gone.
Zhu moved for the door, the skystone and the other elixirs in his satchel.
He was the Controller now. And he would change everything.
About Nathan M Farrugia
Nathan M. Farrugia served in the Australian Army in infantry and reconnaissance, and studied film, television and professional writing. He worked as a post-production video editor, colorist and copywriter, where he earned the nickname Fagoogoo because no one could pronounce Farrugia.
Nathan lives in Melbourne, Australia. In his spare time, he discovers hidden places around the world with urban explorers, practices lock picking and escaping from plasticuffs and straitjackets (you never know when that will come in handy, right?) and studies Systema, a little-known martial art and closely guarded secret of Russian special forces. Nathan has trained under USMC, SEAL team and Spetsnaz instructors, the Chiricahua Apache scouts and Aboriginal Australians. He also drinks tea.