Chapter 3

They didn’t have to run for long, as after a few minutes houses appeared in front of them. He turned around and made a hand sign towards Hawk. Hawk directly vanished into the bushes to take care of the Dragunov-Snipers. Dragon turned towards the houses again and started watching the buildings. Occasionally some people with weapons would walk from house to house, probably patrols. Aside from that there were suspiciously few enemies, which raised the bad feeling Dragon had.

They patiently waited and after short five minutes Hawk appeared besides them, his curved daggers were dripping with blood.

Dragon looked at him shortly, nodded and gave the hand sign for ‘silent attack’.

Right afterwards all five of them vanished as they sneaked towards the houses as fast as they could. No sound was heard, no tracks. It was like they were panthers in the night, hunting for their prey.

The first to reach the houses was naturally Hawk and luckily two armed guards walked right past him. With four slashes, too fast for the normal human eye, the two guards grabbed their throats and chests in panic as blood gushed out between their fingers. They dropped to the ground and struggled almost soundlessly as their vocal cords and lungs were pierced accurately. Soon after both of the guards died Hawk, who already shifted his position, stabbed to more patrol groups. Meanwhile Dragon, Tiger, Snake and Turtle, were steadily sneaking closer to the big building, as all the guards around them were taken care of. A few moments later they met up and shortly waited for Hawk, who appeared a short breath later. Dragon looked at them and counted down with his hand. He took four fingers off the metal handle of one of his axes and let them fall onto the handle again one after the other.

‘Four’

‘Three’

‘Two’

‘One’

‘BANG’ ‘CRASH’ Tiger and Turtle directly ran through the closed door, as if it was paper and the other three jumped through nearby windows.

They directly stood in a five man formation after they got inside and looked around, ready to fight. But…there was nothing. It was an empty hall. The whole building was just this hall, stuffed with old crates on the sides, dust everywhere.

“What the hell…” Snake said as he looked around searching for movements.

There was nothing.

Dragon suddenly felt the bad feeling grow stronger rapidly and he saw flying objects with smoke coming from their ends flying through the open doors and windows.

“IT’S A TRA-…” he shouted but he was interrupted in the middle of the sentence as the flying objects, which in fact were RPG-Anti Vehicle Rockets, hit the ground and exploded in a giant fireball, enveloping him and his four brothers. Additionally to the rockets explosions the floors were suddenly exploding as well, as explosives which were placed there before got activated.

It was a deadly trap. No one could escape an inferno as big as this, even if one was one of the best martial arts experts on planet earth.

That truth applied to Dragon and his five brothers too, as they got smashed into pieces, and burned half alive.

‘Should’ve realized it earlier…I am sorry brothers’ then his brain too melted into nothingness.

Darkness. Endless darkness. Dragon felt nothing. It was like he was not there, even though he was there.

‘Is this hell…’ he thought as he tried to turn his body around to look in a different direction. He couldn’t. Suddenly he heard something. The sounds came from underneath him. He slowly tried to look down and was immediately terrified. A chain was stabbed into his chest. That wasn’t the most shocking thing as something was connected to the chain. Dragon looked further down and discovered to his astonishment, that there was something similar to a human hanging on the other side of the chain. One couldn’t really see who this human was, but he kind of had a familiar feeling as he observed the lifeless burned body, with countless deep wounds.

‘Where am I….am I alive? No, no one can possibly survive something like this. I was careless!’ he thought and suddenly he felt a lot of pain inside his heart.

‘I’ve let you down…’ he thought in a pained voice. One after the other the four faces of his brothers flowed through his mind, in an endless circle. Slowly something wet started to gather in his eyes, rolling down his cheeks, dropping on the chain on his chest. Dragon didn’t even realize that he was crying as he was overcome by grief. Without a warning a loud ‘BANG’ came from the chain and with a jerk the chain got severed by tears of blood. One half of it was still stuck inside of his chest but the half with the burned corpse vanished into the darkness.

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Suddenly he heard voices in his head:

‘DRAGON’ ‘DRAGON’ ‘DRAGON’ ‘DRAGON’ ‘DRAGON’

That shook him out of his grieving state. He knew these voices. His name was said by four voices, all of them completely different, yet similar.

“TIGER, HAWK, SNAKE, TURTLE!!!!!!” Dragon shouted as loud as he could, almost rupturing his hearing. ‘Wait…why…how do I feel pain…how can I think- Wait nevermind! The most important thing right now is the possibility of them being here!!!’ He looked down again and to his surprise the chain, which was tied to the corpse before, was severed in half and a bloody liquid stuck on the severed end. Dragon tried to move. ‘Yes! I can move!!’ he thought excited and all his grief was replaced by hope. He leapt into the darkness and tried to find the source of the voices in the endless darkness. Dragon didn’t know how long he flew through this endless darkness, as there was no way to measure the time and his hopes were slowly starting to drop as:

‘DRAGON’ ‘DRAGON’ ‘DRAGON’ ‘DRAGON’ ‘DRAGON’

The voices sounded out again. They were nearby now. Dragon tried to increase his pace as he made strange swimming moves to part the darkness and suddenly he directly slammed into something. He looked up and saw that he collided with four corpses, each of the corpses had a silvery chain coming out of the chest. Dragon rejoiced and quickly followed the chains upwards.

Soon he found what he hoped for and he started laughing loudly. In front of his eyes there were four white, almost transparent men floating in the darkness with silvery chains attached to their chests.

“TIGER! HAWK! SNAKE! TURTLE!” he shouted and quickly flew over to them. His eyes were slightly wet again, but this time out of joy instead of grief.

He was not alone. His brothers were with him and he was with them.

“DRAGON!!” the four men shouted and they too had tears in their eyes as they had thought they would never see him again. They tried to move towards him, but were stopped by the weight of the corpses attached to them.

“We cannot move. The corpses are binding us! Can you do something about that?” Snake said with an urgent voice. Dragon instantly got an idea and held the end of his chain, which was still slightly bloody against Turtle’s chain. With a loud ‘CLING’ the chain got severed and the corpse vanished. Turtle was free. Overjoyed that his idea worked in this strange world, which defied all common sense he directly severed the chains from the other three brothers. Soon all three of them were free and they watched the last corpse fall into the dark endless abyss.

Dragon turned around to them looked them into the eyes with a serious and pained gaze and said earnestly: “I have let you down brothers! I am endlessly sorry for your deaths! I will atone for my sins in Hell” he bowed deeply before them after he said that, trying not to look up into their eyes as he didn’t want to see the pain in their gazes. Suddenly he felt something on his shoulder. He looked up and saw the serious gazes of his brothers.

“We’ve let you down as well!” Tiger said with grief in his voice “So let us go together towards whatever will happen to us as we are brothers beyond death! And besides…we talk, hear, feel pain, hope, happiness, so how are we dead?” Dragon and the other three looked astounded at Tigers face. He had never talked that much before. They looked at each other again and, out of relief, started laughing together.

“Well said Bro Tiger! Brothers beyond Death! As long as we are together we can smash everything apart!” Turtle said with a confident voice.

“Yeah…well except maybe for RPG’s” Hawk said jokingly, which earned him an annoyed look from Turtle and laughter from the other three.

 “Well…that’s all good, but…does someone know where the hell we are?” Snake asked and looked around.

Nothing but darkness.

“I can’t see anything” Turtle complained and almost jumped back at the glares he received from the others for stating the obvious.

“We certainly aren’t dead, which means we are alive?” Hawk asked and looked at the others.

“Not necessarily. Haven’t we read the old scriptures of our dojo?” Dragon asked.

“Yes of course! The words in the scriptures stated that the soul of a martial artist gets strengthened simultaneously with physical training and age. We are only twenty now, but we matured through killing and taking care of our lives. Also we should have reached the pinnacle of martial arts on earth.” Dragon said excited. That would explain certain things.

“Wouldn’t it be possible for our souls to live on, if our bodies get destroyed?”

He continued and his excitement rose.

“Doesn’t that also mean…there are other worlds except of earth?!” Snake shouted shocked.

As soon as they realized this, a bright grin spread on the faces of the five brothers. They could find a world to train martial arts to a higher realm!

It was like a dream come true for them, as they always were exceptional geniuses, which learned everything in a lot less time than other martial arts experts. That was the reason for them being on the pinnacle of martial arts on earth with only ten years of training and two years of killing criminals. 

“The question is…how do we get into another world? And even more important where and how should we train without bodies?!” Hawk asked.

Dragon frowned. These were good questions. He tried to think of an idea, but it seemed like there was a blockade in his head again, similar to the barrier in martial arts.

“What if we just…well…think of entering another world? And for the body part, can’t we look for a solution when we have found a world?” Turtle said seriously.

Everyone just watched him speechlessly.

“Well…nevermind…it was just an idea guys…continue thinking…phew” Turtle whispered.

“No Turtle that’s actually not a bad idea, considering that we have nothing in here, except for the chains and us. I think we should just try it…I mean we are already dead anyway…” Dragon said and looked at his brothers.

“How about it?” he asked.

“I’m in” Snake and Hawk said at the same time.

“…in” was the only sound heard from Tiger.

“Well I am obviously in, as it was my idea!” Turtle said proudly.

“Then let’s do it. Think of getting into a completely different galaxy. A galaxy perfect for martial arts. Perfect for us brothers to become great!” Dragon said enthusiastically and closed his eyes while thinking hard about a perfect galaxy for them. His brothers were doing the same.

Minutes passed. Nothing happened.

After a long time Turtle slowly opened his eyes and awkwardly said: “Well that didn’t work…”

Exactly that moment, out of nowhere a giant swirl appeared underneath the five brothers. Uncountable amounts of stars glittered in the swirl, which rotated endlessly. With a sound, strangely similar to the rustling of leaves in the wind, the spiral instantly sucked the five brothers into its galaxy.

The endless darkness was empty again.