The Azure Dragon

by Vladimir Vasilenko

  "Does it imply attacking us too?" Sting clarified. "Does it mean that we cannot ask you to attack Genghis's detachment or set vanaras to do that?"

  Hanuman jumped up with indignation.

  "Of course not! I'm against any violence. So are vanaras."

  "We've noticed," Kata said skeptically.

  "This is all bad influence of the shamans! That's why they must be stopped. They'll bring trouble to Uobo."

  "All right," Sting continued. "But what if you see that the other squad is already approaching one of the fiery tears and about to find them? If you let us handle this tear, nothing will change. The hairless will still have a tear. Why would you care which of the hairless tribes has it? We're not asking you for every single fiery tear in Uobo. Only the ones that Genghis is about to get a hold of."

  The monkey king squinted, and his eyes turned into barely visible horizontal slits. He fell silent for a long time, but we waited patiently. Meanwhile, Terekhov examined his leg. The petals that enveloped it, have faded and turned yellow. He easily tore off the weakened shoots, releasing the limb. He bent his knee and straightened it out again, then grunted in surprise.

  "I can't interfere directly," Hanuman repeated again. "But since you have decided to help me, I will help you. I can direct you. Give hints. I can use a little magic, for example, to protect you from the local living creatures. But you will have to do the main work yourself."

  "Deal," Terekhov nodded. "All we need is to always know where Genghis's unit is and where the vanaras are. Well, and other attractions out here, such as the Whispering Oak and Jubacca. Be our guide in Uobo, our eyes and ears. And we will be your punishing hand."

  Hanuman seemed to like this prospect because now a smug smile was playing on his face, and he had a dreamy upward gaze. Well, he's had his own unit of fighters for once. Though he called himself the monkey king, and the vanaras were his subjects, he did not really decide anything and did not command anyone.

  "We forgot about the Viper," I reminded.

  "Ah, right," Bers winced. "There's always another guy with us.

  "Yes, the one with dark hair," Hanuman nodded. "Alas, he was not so lucky to escape. But he's already slowly coming around and making his way through the jungle."

  "Toward us?"

  "Not yet. But he's on this side of the river. He's combing the bushes in zigzags. If you stay put, he'll find you soon."

  "He must not see you," Terekhov warned. "And know anything about our agreement. Can you think of anything?"

  "Hm... Well, I won't show myself to you. I can communicate my words... through this little boy, my tiny subject.”

  He pointed his knotted finger at the vanara cub, who immediately hid behind my shoulder.

  "I thought you'd help bring him back to his family," I said. "I managed to get him out from under the noses of the Whispering Oak vanaras."

  "Unfortunately, he has nowhere to return. The family he knew is dead. Very soon, it will be replaced by another. But it won’t be exactly the same."

  "So, the little guy is an orphan?"

  "Are you sure it's a boy?" Sting chuckled. "Did you check under his tail?"

  In response, the cub showed him his tongue, making a long indecent sound. That must have insulted him.

  "Yes, it's a boy," I muttered, patting the cub on the head. "He's very brave, by the way. What am I supposed to do with him now?"

  "Well, for now, he will be very helpful to us," Hanuman shrugged. "And when you decide to leave Uobo, it will be up to you. You can just leave him here. He will be fine, I assure you."

  The monkey king listened carefully and jumped up from his living chair. Flexible stems immediately began to move, turning into an ordinary young bush.

  "Oh, I think I shall be going! Your friend is much smarter than I thought. He's on his way here."

  No sooner had we come to our senses, as Hanuman darted up, with one jump taking off and landing on a branch thirty feet above our heads. God damn it, I wish I could do that! It seemed like the laws of gravity did not apply to him.

  Left alone, we looked at each other.

  "Well, finally something has cleared up!" Bers grunted. "I'm sick and tired of running around the jungle like a blind puppy."

  "You are not alone!" Chuckled Daniel.

  Terekhov rose to his feet, jumped on the spot, checking whether his leg was fully healed, and grunted with satisfaction.

  "Yeah, that red monkey could be very useful to us. Well done, Mongoose! I knew I could count on you."

  "Yeah," said Bers. "What would we do without you, kid?"

  Others also cheered in approval, patting me on the shoulder. The cub got scared and hid further behind my back.

  "Really?" Snorted Kata. "That's quite a change. Do you remember how you treated him before and didn't even allow him to sit at our table?

  "It's all right, Anna," I chuckled. "That was intended. Just an act for Genghis, so that he believed that we fight with each other."

  "And he should continue to believe so," Terekhov nodded. "In real life, we will keep avoiding each other. Keep our mouths shut here, too. Do not forget about the fact that we have an infiltrator in the team."

  "By the way, about him," Daniel grumbled. "We have to get rid of him somehow. He will ruin all the plans if he rats on us to Genghis."

  “We can't. As long as he's with us, Genghis thinks he knows everything we do in Artar. We need to keep him assured in that. Well, then... We need to think. The situation is more or less clear, but it doesn't make it easier. We've all seen those damn monkeys. I have no idea how we're gonna take them out. We also need to get around Genghis."

  "I have a suspicion that we are being tracked with assassin marks," I poured oil on the fire. "So it is better not to approach Genghis’s detachment without much need."

  "How do you know about the marks?" Edge squinted. "They're untraceable."

  "I told you, it's a suspicion. I don't know."

  "There are several assassins in Genghis's squad. If I were him, I would have used this tool," Terekhov nodded.

  "They're all over it, bastards!" Bers said through his teeth. "And we're running out of time. I think it's a matter of days."

  "Yeah, we'll have to hurry.…"

  Something big rustled in the bushes to our right, and we startled, snatching out our weapons. Large, burdock-like leaves swayed, then several of them flew to the ground, cut off by the impact of a sword. Cutting through thickets, Viper came out on the clearing before us. He looked shabby, dirty, with extensive traces of blood on his breastplate and especially on his right hip.

  "Finally, I found you!" He exhaled, wiping his forehead. "What are you doing here?"

  "Well... Just waiting for you," smiled Terekhov.

  Chapter 15. Point of No Return

  An elusive white streak of an arrow flashed in the air, and it struck the corklike surface of the target with a dull thud. It hit it just below the center, on the edge of the bullseye. Annoyed, Edge wrinkled her nose and without looking reached for the next arrow, but her hand only slid over the empty ring quiver. All arrows were the same as the last one, with white plastic shafts and white plumage, and they have already moved to the opposite edge of the shooting range. They were all mostly around the bullseye on both targets.

  "Not bad," I said, and she flinched as she turned around.

  I've been sitting there for quite some time and just watched her practice. I didn't want to distract her while she was trying to focus on the shooting and she probably didn't see me coming.

  "Not bad you say?" She replied grimly, waddling toward my bench. "Four out of fifteen arrows missed the bullseye. At 30 yards!"

  She sat down next to me. A small sports bag was lying next to the bench. As it turned out, it was hers. She took out a bottle of water and took a long drink.

  "What's wrong with your head?" She nodded at my bandaged forehead.

  "Not a big deal," I replied. "Viper and I were practicing blocks. I almost lost an eye. I went to the he
alth unit, where I was bandaged and sent back to my room to rest until dinner."

  "Got’ya."

  To be honest, I was glad to get some rest. And it wasn't because of the bruise on my forehead. My whole body was hurting from these daily exercises on the practice field. Muscles ached from the stress load, and my body was covered in bruises and wounds. Yeah, it was not Artar, where I could simply gulp a potion and feel as good as new.

  "I see that you've been training since early morning. That's good."

  She winced in annoyance, but it was obvious that I wasn't the culprit. She must have been very annoyed by the fact that we were obligated to train every day.

  "Artar's bad influence on me," she said at last, sipping from the bottle again. "I compete in one and a half months. European championship. Last year, I took the silver, but I am planning to win this year."

  "What's the issue then?"

  "I told you, Artar. After all, I often shoot there, but the physics is a bit different in the real world."

  "Yes, I heard about it. I think Sting told me. Archers are more skillful there than in the real life."

  "Exactly. You get used to it. I started to play, got carried away, and for a few weeks stopped training here. I thought since I'm constantly practicing in Artar, why do it for real. And now it backfired at me."

  Yeah, that sounded familiar. I was not the only one with the brain that confused real life and simulation. It sucked for the skills that were built not so much on conscious effort as on muscle memory.

  "Is it that important to you?"

  "Well... Yes, damn it! I don't want to think that I wasted three years on shooting. But I'm not dying to get to the World Cup or the Olympics, I just want to put the European Cup on the shelf. It's a shame to stop when I’m a breath away from my goal."

  "Perhaps."

  “Well, maybe I should just stop. It has happened before—as a child, I liked tennis. When I was fifteen, I won the State Championship for the first time. And then... I lost interest in it. I started liking other things. I don't know how people manage to maintain their excitement for a long time. I'm a woman of many moods."

  "I'm the same way," I chuckled. "Well, what else do you do besides shooting and Artar?"

  "What do you do besides jumping and climbing skyscrapers?" She retorted.

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  "That's probably it. I got kicked out of school for skipping."

  "Oh, you slacker!" She nudged me with her elbow. "Why are you so irresponsible?"

  "Well, let's put it this way... I was forced to study law. But as I imagined my job... Put on a tie, a suit, get up at the crack of dawn and drive to the office... It makes me sick. I'm eighteen. I want something... effortless. It will never be late to turn my life into a turd."

  She laughed.

  "So it's hard to keep you in line?"

  "Better not even try. I have already lost my patience during the first year of studies. University is boring. In classes, they simply play a recording of old dudes mumbling something for half an hour. Good thing you can listen to them remotely. But I still had to come to practice and put up with those same old looneys, but in person. I don't know how I made it through the first semester."

  "Poor guy! I totally get that. I haven't picked out a program yet. Of course, parents have been getting on my case for three years now, but I'm still holding strong."

  "Mine have already raised the alarm. ‘What are you going to do without education?’ ‘What will you do for a living?’”

  "Well, my family is not worried about making a living," she smiled indulgently. "Otherwise, it's about the same. My father is an ardent opponent of Eidos. I was able to get myself an NCI only after turning eighteen."

  "Is he that old-fashioned? Or does he believe the myths about NCI thinning out your brain?"

  Two or three years ago, you could run into some crazy old woman on the street, who saw strips on your temples and started crossing herself and yelping. I loved trolling those loonies.

  "No, my father is an IT guy in the past. He started as a programmer, then founded his own company... But he was very wary of eidetic technologies. He said he didn't understand how they work.”

  "People are always afraid of what they don't understand."

  "It's different. He's good at this sort of thing. He says that NCI is the most powerful breakthrough in technology in the last hundred years. He is surprised how quickly they made a cottage industry out of implantation of temporal sub-processors. He's completely lost about how Eidos works, though."

  "Why is that?"

  "This is also a breakthrough, but even more drastic. It is just unreal even if we assume that the ET phase discovery was made in the mid-20s, and the technology was simply classified. It took only twenty years from the discovery of the effect of ET-phase to the creation of Artar."

  "Yeah, it's insane. It'd be the same as inventing the internal combustion engine and in a couple of years after that building a factory of turbocharged sports cars with electronic injection. I've also seen these videos on the Internet. There are different versions. Some may even think, it had to do with a fallen alien spacecraft."

  "What do you think?"

  "I think the answer is simple—Hashiro Okada is a genius. He's Leonardo da Vinci of our time. It is a pity that he died; he was still young. He might have thought of something else. Something like... an Interstellar ship!"

  "Well, that's not really his specialty," Edge smiled.

  "You'd think Eidos was his specialty! What was his occupation prior to that? I think he was a polar explorer."

  "A biologist of some sort. He studied Antarctica."

  "See."

  Edge smiled again, and the smile lingered on her face. There was a pause, threatening to end the conversation. The girl glanced in the direction of the targets. I wanted to keep her at least a little longer. God knows why. When Hanuman settled for faking Edge yesterday, he knew he had made the right decision. The NPC must have sensed that I wasn’t indifferent to this chick. Moreover, he had sensed that even before I did.

  "How could your father ever let you come here? Does he even know where you are?"

  "He has an idea. But I don't think I'll be here long. I enjoy it for now. It's quiet, fresh air, and nothing distracts me from training. But I'll leave as soon as I get sick of it. Even if I get kicked out of the damn Steel Hounds."

  "Why did you decide to join us anyway? You know that our squad isn't perfect. Everyone has their own skeletons in the closet."

  "You're right."

  "Well, then you must have a secret, too."

  "I'm... I'm just having fun," she chuckled and patted my hair. "You should take it less serious."

  "I'm trying. But I keep thinking about the future…"

  "Screw it! You know what I'm gonna do if I don't like something? I'll get the hell out of here!"

  "What if Genghis tries to keep you?"

  "Yeah, right," she sneered. "I think he's taking on too much. Especially with these restrictions of communication with the outside world. Keeping anyone here by force is a little extreme. It's a criminal act. I don't think his boss would approve."

  She threw the water bottle into her bag and stood up.

  "Okay, I'll go get the arrows. There's plenty of time before dinner. I've got a hundred more tries in me."

  "I wanted to ask you for a while now..." I uttered as she was walking away. "What's your name? I mean the real one? Edge is a little too impersonal. We didn't even know you were a girl when we found out your nickname."

  She swept her bangs off her forehead and squinted slyly.

  "That was exactly my intention. Great name for someone who's always in the shadows."

  "Well, anyway, what is it?"

  "Go get some rest, Mongoose! And next time, watch your head."

  I followed her with my eyes and sighed.

  Yeah, she has a sharp tongue. She's spoiled. And she is from a rich family.

  There was plenty of time before
dinner. I thought that maybe I should go to my room and lie down for a while. I felt a little dizzy. But the thought of having to wallow for a few hours, just staring at the ceiling made me uneasy. I still had no access to the network.

  What should I do?

  All of a sudden, I felt someone's hand on my shoulder, and I almost jumped in surprise.

  "You okay? Did I hit you hard?"

  I turned around and saw Viper with a white-toothed grin on his face.

  "Screw you!" I muttered good-naturedly.

  In fact, Viper was basically my best option for a permanent sparring partner. I could imagine if I had Bison or some other fighter assigned to me by Genghis—someone who has been hostile to us from the first days. I'd probably be carried off the training ground on a stretcher every night. Viper was a good guy. He fought objectively better than me, but not in a critical way. It was perfect for learning.

  "Come on, don't be mad. You should have ducked. I was aiming for the chest."

  "Forget about it. What do you want?"

  "The chief wants you. He has an office in the main building. On the second floor, directly opposite the exit from the stairs."

  "What does he want?"

  "How would I know? But if I were you, I wouldn't keep him waiting."

  I reluctantly got up and looked at Edge one last time. She has already taken her position. Then I headed to the main building.

  In the background of the shabby walls, the door to Genghis's office looked like a foreign object—brand new, modern, with translucent inserts of frosted glass. The decor inside was just as lavish. Obviously, it was fully remodeled, from floor to ceiling.

  Judging by what I saw, the head of the camp preferred minimalism. No decorations, bright accents, or non-functional elements of furniture. A sofa and two rectangular chairs, a small desk, a safe in the corner, shelves with some books, and a huge six-foot screen on the wall. On the screen, there was a dynamic video showing gladiatorial fights. It was on mute.

  It was Artar and seemed to be the famous arena of the Scarlet Circle. I had not been there, but I've seen it in different promotional materials for the game quite often. It was hard to mistake it for something else. And the fighters... It was Destroyer himself!