CHAPTER 75: 75

"Hundun1, that as the name we ended up settling on," said Gou Ngaam.

She’d taken over storytelling duties when Cheungyi came and told Aunt Yeung that the preparation for the spell was complete. Now she and Aunt Yeung were in an ink drawn circle to the side of Lok Saan’s tank, along with a few others I didn’t know, while Gou Ngaam and I watched from the sidelines.

"Hundun?" I couldn’t help repeating. "That’s... Chinese?"

"Mandarin," said Gou Ngaam. "In Cantonese it would be wahn-dan. It is actually a... being of sorts, the primordial chaos that life arose out of. Later we discovered that this being had been purposefully created, making the name Hundun not really fit, but by that point the name had already stuck.

"Who created it?" I asked as I watched Aunt Yeung carefully place the lock of hair into one of the smaller circles in the design. She then went on to place four more items at equal points around the edge so that they, and the lock of hair, would have formed a pentagon had someone drawn straight lines between them.

"A weapon of unimaginable power silently left behind for the native population to deal with. Who else could have created it but the Pretans."

I had complicated feelings about Pretan, but flinched when I heard her tone - I still considered the place my homeland after all. "The Pretans? But then, why is it in Pearl City?"

Gou Ngaam sighed and turned away from the spell casting. She slithered some distance away and sat on the ground, tail coiled around her. I followed.

"It has been a long day," she said, once I’d settled beside her. "I apologise for my manner."

I quickly shook my head. "I just don’t get it, that’s all."

She nodded. "You are young, it is understandable. You were born after the colonial era, after the point in time when the powers that be said they’d put an end to their ambitions." She smoothed out the creases of her dress and shirt. "You see, back then, the colonial powers of the day saw the world through the lens of ’what can I take that can make me powerful?’ and ’what can my competition take that can make them more powerful than me?’"

"An arms race for resources," I said. "I learned a little bit about it at school." A little was an understatement. More than one essay I’d written in high school had been on the subject, though I knew that doesn’t make me an expert by any stretch of the imagination.

"An arms race for resources, yes, that is a good description, especially if you call the peoples of the world and the world we live in the ’resources’." The snake woman sighed and I, not for the first time, wondered just how old she was. "Things have not changed as much as I’d like since those times," she said, "but there has been progress, I cannot deny that." Then she smiled an patted me on the knee. "And you have not come to me to have me tell you old bedtime stories."

"Uh..."

"No matter," she said with a wave of her hand. "The Hundun was their weapon of war, the ace up their sleeve if they ever faced a proper armed resistance. Have you not wondered why, even with such intricate and powerful magics here, why we were sliced up so neatly in so short a period of time?"

I considered the question. "I’d always thought it was mostly to do with the invading powers being industrial countries, while here hadn’t reached that point yet, but..." my eyes fell on the spell casting that was now in full swing. "You mean the Hundun gave them a big advantage over anyone they tried to invade?"

"Precisely," replied Gou Ngaam. "It was their weapon of war, and their tool of subjugation. In each conquest, they channeled power from the beast to their own casters, into their own spells, and wrecked unimaginable havoc. Once they had attained control of what they wanted, they would take and... feed those with power of their own to the beast."

"Feed? You mean..." I gestured towards my open mouth.

"A metaphor," said Gou Ngaam. "It would be more apt to say that the beast would ’absorb’ its meals."

My stomach churned as my mind brought up an image of melting flesh before my eyes. I looked away. "Was that... the Merlin Club?" I asked.

"Not bad, little dragon," said Gou Ngaam with a little, sad laugh. "It was indeed the Merlin Club who played caretaker to the Hundun once control had been established in the city."

"But... how did they create it to begin with?"

Gou Ngaam smiled sadly. "The Hundun is a chimera in the truest sense of the word. It is an amalgamation, the ultimate experiment in grafting together those not originally one. The Pretan took powerful trophies from its victims and used those to create the beast - Welsh dragons, Scottish unicorns, and so on."

"Chinese dragons?" I asked.

Gou Ngaam nodded. "Just so."

"So when the time came for the Pretan to leave, Whale Toes stopped them from taking their weapon by sealing it here?"

"No. We sealed it out of necessity, but we did not want that monstrosity here. You see, the Pretan never really thought their empire would come to an end, at least, the leaders at that time didn’t. They thought it was more of a shift, not the end, which was why they passed the mantle on - they thought their empire would be eternal, even if it had to go under another name. That is why they chose to leave the Hundun here. They thought that not all was lost, that there was still a game left to play."

"A trap then."

"You can call it that. And that was why Whale Toes had to seal it. Had we not..." She shook her head. "I don’t want to think about what could have happened."

I looked over at the compass spell being enacted as I digested her words. "So... so what’s happening now?" I finally asked.

Gou Ngaam cocked her head to one side. "What do you mean?"

"I mean..." I searched for the words. "What are Morgan and Zhan trying to do? I heard that the Merlin Club shut down, so... are Morgan and Zhan trying to become the new masters of the Hundun? So that they can... destroy Pearl City? Control it? That’s... That’s just so silly..." My voice trailed off as my thoughts became more disordered.

It made any sense to me. It was like this was some plot to a bad TV show from when I was a kid where the bad guys always wanted to dominate the world and that was it. Just... pointless.

Gou Ngaam smiled and patted me on the shoulder. "Silly things rarely seem silly to the people who are doing them," she said. "I imagine... they must see things quite differently."

I didn’t understand her words and I could tell she knew, but I kept my mouth shut.

I had more questions, but before I could pose them, an uproar from the spell casting interrupted everything.

"It’s done!" someone shouted and I quickly got to my feet, eyes searching for Aunt Yeung to see her reaction.

She stood in the centre of the people with a glass globe in her hand.

"Aunt Yeung!" I called out as I rushed over.

I saw her smile as she looked at the globe and the swirling blue ink in it. "The spell was a success. We can find him now."

I don’t know why, but hearing that nearly made me cry. "Then-"

She looked up then frowned. "Cheungyi," she called, eyes locked on me.

"Yes," said Cheungyi, appearing at her shoulder.

"Bring Misha back up."

"I’m coming with you," I interjected.

"No," replied Aunt Yeung. "You are not. Cheungyi," she continued to her guard, "make sure he doesn’t leave."

"But-!"

Cheungyi bowed then gestured to me.

"But..."

This time it was Gou Ngaam who replied, standing (or slithering) beside me. "Yeung-jie will move heaven and earth to make sure Bran is alright," she said to me.

I bit back what I wanted to say and forced myself to nod. I’d been told and given explanations for many things that afternoon, but if there was one thing I understood, it was that I was too insignificant, too weak to help - whatever I could do would only get in the way but they were just too kind to say it.

"Good luck," I said to Aunt Yeung, nod meeting her eyes, then followed Cheungyi back into the tunnel.

I heard Gou Ngaam’s scales scratch against the ground as she went to Aunt Yeung. "You should explain more," she said in a hushed voice I don’t think I was meant to hear.

"Later," replied Aunt Yeung. "But you know as well as I why he can’t be involved."

I wanted to linger, to hear the rest of the conversation, but Cheungyi urged me on and I decided to let it go. Besides, it was unlikely it would make me feel any better.

混沌