Leaving Dan and his newly absorbed soul stone was a terrible idea, but if she had stayed with him, Fa Lian wouldn’t have had time to search the vault. Something to help open the door? Something to help them deeper in the labyrinth? Lian’s thoughts contended that pretty much everything in this room fit inside one or both of those categories.

Who could argue that a sash which became an unbreakable hoop of sharp metal wouldn’t be useful at some point? Lian had always thought the staff which could extend and retract in such a way as to allow the user to fly on it was a ridiculous, gimmicky toy but if it were positioned right, it could lever the door, right? What about gloves that allowed you to manipulate things at a distance, as though your hands were across the room?

With all the choice of the Guan family vault, Lian found that she was frozen by opportunity.

She had been right. Not a single thing in here wouldn’t be worth taking. Still, when the small girl had spoken and told her to find something useful, as much as she hated being told what to do, a very specific item had appeared in Lian’s mind. She could hear her grandfather’s voice in her head. Not the voice he had now, that not-quite-there version of the man she used to know. She could remember that day so clearly now, as though it was happening again right in front of her.

“Quiet, Lian, this one needs calm or it will get upset.” Guan Po Bul was a powerful man, and his huge hand was more than enough to stop Lian at that small age of eight years old.

“A… stick?” Lian smirked as she thought back to how innocent she had been. Before things had gotten so complicated. Before she had been asked to shoulder the weight of her father’s filial feud. Before her grandfather had pushed a soul stone onto her that evil night and her uncle had begun to hate her.

“It’s not a stick.” Lian repeated her grandfather’s old words as she approached the open space that formed around the artefact. It was as though the other items wanted to give this strange, straight piece of wood a wide berth. They, like her grandfather, knew to be respectful. “It is a dragon.”

Even now, having approached and been accepted by the dragon bo, Lian was tentative. Permission could be revoked, and she had feelings of self doubt that made it seem obvious to her that she would need to prove herself again. As she stepped over the boundary line, invisible but tangible, the normally brave Guan Fa Lian realised she was holding her breath.

CAADUMMMMMM.

It hadn’t taken her long to find the staff, but with that final smashing. Every step away from the labyrinth was dangerous, especially if it was her uncle smashing into the vault. This was necessary though. Just like the slipstream robe might as well have been crafted for her brother, Shen, the dragon bo had always called to Lian. If she was going to get anything for a dangerous journey, it would be this.

“How is that a dragon?” She had asked, nearly seven years ago.

“A dragon,” Lian took a step with each word she repeated aloud from her grandfather, the soul stone rumbling with the nostalgia of it all, “can be whatever it wants.” Lian wanted to be a dragon, then and now. She had only ever been able to be what her family needed, what her father wanted. If she were a dragon, maybe she could change.

The vault was breached. She needed to leave.

There was a clear area of about fifteen paces in a circle around the dragon bo. The staff was planted into the stone of the vault floor like a javelin had fallen from the heavens. It radiated heat, a haze in the air around it. Black, red and purple veins of coloured could be seen where the light in the room hit certain angles of the shaft. It looked a little like an insanely sturdy piece of bamboo, punching perfectly straight from the stone.

Its surface was not smooth, Lian knew. Even before her hand reached the rough, heavy staff, Lian was remembering how it felt the first time she had held it. It had scratched her hands, and her eyes had watered from the heat of it. It had been a challenge for Lian even breaching the circle of intimidation which surrounded it.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

She had only been a cross stage practitioner then. Now she pushed against the edge of square stage, those old barriers were no longer an issue. The heat barely tickled her sturdier skin, Lian pulsing some mana through herself and her core to reinvigorate her muscles and harden herself. The soul stone within shuddered as it registered the power before it, Lian almost smirked, sure that the stone had taken longer to read this magical item than others.

Dragon Bo, the golden lettering read. Flowing below the name, in a dancing, fancy script of silver, followed the description. It read “Within this dragonscale staff, the soul of Ryong Aang lies slumbering. The dragon may still enact its will, exert influence upon a wielder or even grant power to those that it deems worthy.”

There was more to it than that, Lian knew. It sounded almost simple when the words were laid out before you like that, but Ryong Aang had been a source of many nightmares for Lian. She woke up from dreams, sure that the flames were already eating away at her bed, her curtains. A nightmare of a cataclysmic meteor hurtling straight for her. Lian can find no shelter, and before it lands she sees that it is no meteor, but a staff. The collision with Jaia, and her subsequent death in the dream, was just as dramatic, whether it be a meteor or the dragon bo.

As her hand wrapped around the staff, the heat made it nearly impossible to hold. Nearly. She closed her eyes as skin began to blister. This was the test. Ryong Aang could feel the tension in the air. “The vault is broken.” Lian said to the staff as it continued raising the temperature. Sweat beading on her forehead from both pain and the new humidity, Lian endured.

She hadn’t been able to get the labyrinth door open. She hadn’t been of any real help in the fight against the Puppetmaster. Remembering how she had been treated like a ragdoll, or a chew toy of a vicious dog, filled her with prideful rage even now. In fact, as she burned, she felt all of the different slights against her intensify in her mind.

Her brother, always placed first, yet never given any of the responsibility. Her father, the strongest in all of the land and the one who leaned on her the most. Her uncle who was so pathetic and greedy that he could barely keep himself focused on one thing before he was ruining something else. Her barbaric cousins dripped with bloodlust and misplaced entitlement.

Guan Ah Dan was a nobody and now he was more important than her.

She roared. Guan Fa Lian screamed, the bone of her hand beginning to sear as the staff ate through the skin and muscle of her hand. Still she held on. She endured. That was what Guan Fa Lian was good at and if she wasn’t good enough to save her family, or strong enough to open the door she needed to open, she would at least become so. She would brute force, claw, and break herself if needs be, so that she could become a dragon. So that she could burst into flames and never be held back again.

Delusions of grandeur, perhaps, but in spite of the pain, Lian felt a confidence in her choice. She looked at her hand, and the burning mess that she expected to see was not there. Her hand bore no scarring, no ragged tendons dripping away. There was no great conflagration waiting to surprise her, but a suddenly cool grip. The rough, boiling hot exterior now felt to Lian like gripping the smoothest of metal.

She removed it from the hole it had once buried in the vault floor.

[Item Attuned]

[Your bond with the dragon, Ryong Aang has increased.]

[Your attributes have increased.]

Lian shook away the strange message that appeared before her eyes. The soul stone often made bizarre statements like this, as though Lian could not think for herself. She could feel the strength flowing from the staff to her, from Ryong Aang to her. It was not an uncontrollable torrent, but to Lian’s excited surprise, a vast reservoir that she could dip into as she liked. It felt incredible, like a second core was now held in her hand, but this core was gargantuan in scope. It dwarfed the power held within her soul stone.

SSSSSSSRRRRRckrackaKUNK.

Like a huge, metallic oak tree had fallen, the scream of protesting metal filled the air before it turned into a thunderous explosion of force behind Lian. She just managed to turn and brace, staff held before her protectively, before whatever it was had collided with her. Lian had no reference point for the incoming damage, but she could tell that without the strength given to her by the staff itself, she would have been shattered by the collision.

The impact had been spread out slightly by the staff. Lian’s arms buckled, her left arm fell limp as the shoulder and elbow both failed on that side. The pain was astounding, but she was soaring through the air and conscious enough to land on her feet. A cloud of dust had exploded from where she had previously been standing. The clear circle that had been the resting place of the dragon bo was now a crater in the vault stone.

Move.

It was the only thought in her mind, and she couldn’t do it. The force of the blow had sent Lian flying, landing inside what was essentially a small library. A collection of rare scrolls, treatises and maps had been placed to one side of the vault. Lian landed hard on the roof of a bookcase, rolled backwards off it and disappeared amongst the shelves. She still had not seen what had hit her, but she heard it coming. It had been a foolish hope, but she thought it possible that her assailant didn’t know where she was either.

Her attacker didn’t need to know where she was if they were just going to smash everything to pieces.

The bookshelves were torn to pieces, a screech of metal accompanying the destruction. Lian managed to escape the shelves just in time to see a large metallic arm fall through books behind her. Lian planted the staff into the ground and launched herself, vaulting out of the danger.

Or so she thought.

She saw what had once been her uncle. Now, a twisted mash of machinery dominated his form. The only part of him she could see now was his face, which seemed twisted in pain and fear. Absurdly, perhaps, Lian felt a moment of intense pity for her uncle. Just before his other mechanical arm whipped around and caught her by the neck.

“Where is the door?” Asked a voice that was not quite her uncle Po Shang’s voice. It carried the scream of the metal within it too. Lian dropped the staff as she struggled, and all of her newfound strength failed too. The grip around her neck tightened, and Lian’s vision went red as blood vessels popped in her eyes. Angry, useless tears fell from her eyes as the lack of oxygen stole away the rest of Lian’s consciousness.