Chapter 2
Dozens of them. There were dozens. Rhinos in heavy armor, armed with spears, spiked maces, and something resembling Chinese double-edged swords.
My human side went cold. This was the end. They would simply bury me in numbers.
But Tai Lung — Tai Lung inside me roared with delight.
Twenty years the body had spent locked in chains, and now it was starving for movement. Starving for a worthy fight.
The instant I landed on the platform, a mace was already swinging at me. While I was still trying to figure out what to do, my mind was screaming *dodge* — but the body was already moving.
And against my own intentions, I didn't dodge.
I stepped forward.
All it took was a slight tilt of my head to let the spiked ball whistle past my ear by a hair's width, and one sweep of my arm. My palm closed over the rhino's wrist. I yanked him toward me using his own momentum, pivoted on my heel, and threw him over my shoulder.
The attacker grunted in surprise, sailed past his companions, and dropped screaming into the bottomless chasm of the prison below.
One down.
I had no time to enjoy it. Steel flashed to my right. A spear thrust aimed at my chest.
A backflip — the body handled it on its own again. I pushed off the floor, the world inverted, the spear passed beneath me and nearly grazed my back, and I landed on both feet as softly as though I'd spent my whole life as a… well, yes. A leopard.
I pivoted the instant I touched down, and my Chi-charged leg fired out in a reverse kick, connecting with the second guard's face.
*Crack.*
He dropped like a sack.
"He — he's — KILL HIM!" someone roared.
And then it was chaos.
This wasn't a fight. It was a slaughter. My conscious mind simply stepped aside, making way for pure, primal instinct — instinct sharpened by thousands of hours of training and combat.
To the left — the whistle of another double-edged sword. I ducked under it and in the same motion grabbed the hilt, tore the weapon free, and drove my elbow into the rhino, sending him into the abyss. Two.
To the right — a mace blow. I didn't bother dodging. I threw a Chi-charged fist straight at it, and the mace exploded into splinters. The rhino stared dumbly at the handle still in his hand. My elbow was already burying itself in his solar plexus. Three.
A spear from the side. I caught the shaft, wrenched it from its owner's grip, spun it around, and cracked the blunt end across his legs. Four.
A sword strike from behind. Without turning, I snapped my heel backward and caught the attacker square on the jaw, sending him into the world of dreams — or the world of the dead. Five.
I found the current.
Weaving through attacks from every direction, dismantling enemies, pushing steadily toward the exit — my mind crystallized into perfect clarity. A mind conditioned for battle analyzed everything in real time, and the body responded without hesitation, executing whatever the mind judged best. My eyes took in everything at once: every swing, every lunge, the arc of every strike, the movements of all the guards together rather than one at a time.
The rhinos were clearly trying to overwhelm me with numbers — block the passage with their bodies, force me out of rhythm. But they were too slow. Their attacks were too clumsy. During the decades of my imprisonment, these worthless guards had forgotten what I was. Now their minds were caught between fury at a criminal and animal terror at a legend that had gotten loose.
I ignored the shouting and the blood that appeared here and there on those flat noses, and pressed through them toward the exit as though there were no resistance at all.
Every strike I landed shattered their weapons. Every hit crumpled their armor, sending the unlucky recipient over the edge or into his still-standing comrades. A palm strike — a crack of armor. A kick — a rhino flies five meters and takes out two more behind him. I snapped their spears, stole their swords, used their own companions as battering rams.
It was… fun. The part of me that was Tai Lung reveled in it. Every movement was flawless. Every hit precise. All of it was simply proof — of my strength, my mastery.
One more push, and I broke through the final line of defense. Before me was a staircase leading up toward the exit.
I didn't run up it. I flew, clearing ten steps at a time, and burst onto the upper platform.
I stopped.
Freedom.
I could feel it.
All that stood between me and it were the remaining guards under the command of Vachir — the head warden, the man who had tortured me every single day — and one iron door that needed to come off its hinges. Then I would finally, completely, be free.
But a bridge led to the exit. A long stone bridge that looked extremely sturdy — except that vague impressions in the back of my mind, fragments of memory from the film, were telling me that this very bridge would be destroyed by stalactites the prison guard would drop, condemning everyone still on it to death.
At the far end, right before the exit, stood Vachir, flanked by two dozen rhinos with crossbows. In his massive fist he held the trembling messenger by the throat.
"We're dead," the goose announced, not even struggling anymore. "This time we're definitely dead…"
"Ha-ha-ha!" laughed the bastard torturer. His smirk was as revolting as ever. "Not yet! NOW!"
He shouted the order, and one of his men fired a flaming arrow into the ceiling. I followed their gaze. Up near the ceiling of the cave, attached to the enormous stalactites hanging directly above the bridge, were bundles of dynamite.
*Damn.*
I lunged forward, cursing myself for not charging the enemy immediately — for trusting Tai Lung's instincts to lead instead of acting — but it was already too late.
*BOOM.*
The first explosion went off directly above my head. An enormous stalactite sheared loose and plummeted, dragging the central section of the bridge down with it.
*BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.*
The blasts came one after another. The cave shook. Rocks, ice, and bridge fragments rained into the chasm. I barely managed to throw myself back onto the platform in time. The bridge was gone.
Vachir was laughing on the other side.
"So then, Dragon Warrior that never was?! Where do you go from here?!" That same disgusting smirk. It made my blood boil.
I jumped onto a chunk of the bridge as it fell and immediately kicked off from it, launching myself toward one of the stalactites in free fall. Lucky that they hadn't all blown at once.
"FIRE!" the head rhino commanded, and there was fear in his voice again. Good. Be afraid, you bastard.
*Twang.*
A dozen crossbow bolts punched into the stone where I'd been standing a second ago.
Leaping higher and higher off the falling debris, I was working toward the ledge where the rhinos stood — but the problem was that dozens of arrows and bolts were flying at me from all sides, and one idiot even threw his mace. There was never quite the right opening. I was getting closer, but too slowly.
Was this really going to fail? This was an impenetrable prison, after all — no wonder someone who wasn't truly Tai Lung might not be able to pull it off. Even the real Tai Lung had needed luck. Maybe escape really was impossible…
*But for the Dragon Warrior, nothing is impossible, right?*
SO WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING WHINING WHEN I SHOULD BE ACTING?!
*BOOM.*
A delayed explosion made me grin. Another stalactite was peeling away from the ceiling. Just beginning its fall.
*Let's gamble.*
I flooded my legs with Chi. Blue light — cold and sharp — enveloped me. That was the color of my Chi. Pouring everything into a single movement, I kicked off from the stalactite hurtling toward the abyss and launched myself toward the one that had just begun to fall.
It worked.
I pushed off from it, caught the ceiling, and dug my claws into the last stalactite — the one that still had a coil of explosive powder fixed to it. Gunpowder, essentially.
*DING.*
An arrow sang past my temple.
I jumped again, pushing toward the explosives, dodging bolts and arrows mid-air.
*Twang. Twang.*
"Finish him!" my torturer screamed. The crossbowmen began to reload, but I only smirked.
"Oh — you spent all your ammunition on me? How very generous of you."
I grabbed the hissing bundle and tore it free from the stalactite, then swung out on one arm, spinning, and hurled the dynamite —
Not at them.
I threw it behind them. Straight at the massive iron-banded door leading to freedom.
"DOWN!" someone shouted, far too late.
*B-B-B-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-M.*
The explosion was deafening. The shockwave nearly knocked me off the stalactite. The massive door blew out like a cork from a bottle. The rhinos, Vachir included, were scattered like toy soldiers — some down into the depths of my former dungeon, some out through the opening.
I pulled myself up, cleared the remaining gap, landed on the edge of the platform, and walked through the smoking ruins of the doorframe and out.
Snow.
Cold, clean, white snow. I fell to my knees and drove my fingers into the drift. For the first time in twenty years, I breathed mountain air — icy and sharp and real.
Wounded guards lay across the snow, groaning or unconscious.
The goose, though, had gotten lucky. He was alive and intact, rattled but breathing. The messenger was trying to get to his feet, brushing snow off himself.
I walked toward him.
The young man froze when he saw my shadow fall over him. Slowly, he lifted his head. His eyes held pure animal terror. He was certain he was about to die.
My clawed hand came to rest on his shoulder. He flinched.
I looked at him for a moment. And then — I laughed. Not the contemptuous snarl from before. This was genuine laughter, a little hysterical maybe, but real. The laughter of someone who had just risked everything and won.
"Thank you," I said.
The goose blinked at me, completely bewildered.
"Wh-what?"
"For coming," I said, with a smile. "You helped me more than you know."
With that, I removed my hand and helped the young man — twenty, twenty-two at a glance, though his look made it hard to tell — back to his feet. He was still staring at me with deep suspicion. Geese tended to be short.
"Fly," I said, turning serious. "Fly to Shifu. Tell him…" I paused. "Tell him that the true Dragon Warrior will be coming home soon."
The goose, unable to believe his luck, nodded frantically, stumbled, flapped his wings, and shot up into the grey sky and was gone.
And now I was alone.
I surveyed the aftermath and noticed that the rhinos were beginning to stir. Should I kill them? The Tai Lung in me demanded blood — but was that fair? Twenty years of hell in exchange for a quick and easy death.
I knew that Tai Lung had often dreamed not just of escape, but of death itself. As for me — I had no desire to kill. Not this many people at once. It was… beyond me.
So I found a compromise.
For the next half hour I methodically, one by one, dragged the unconscious guards — sometimes with a little help from me to put them under — to the edge of the chasm and dropped them back into the prison. Alive. Let them suffer as I had suffered — without food, without water. They had no Chi to survive on indefinitely, but at least no one would torture them. We were even.
When I finished, only two living things remained outside.
Me. And Vachir — the prison warden.
The bastard had come to long ago and was trying to drag himself away, one hand pressed to his side where a wooden splinter from the door had punched through his armor.
He went still when I approached.
I crouched down in front of him.
"So then, little rhino," I said quietly, using his own words. "You don't look very cheerful today, do you?"
For the next half hour, I… killed him.
Slowly and methodically, I dismantled his will with pain, feeding Chi into his body to keep him conscious, using my knowledge of acupressure to make sure the wretch felt everything. I stopped when something slipped out from beneath his shoulder guard — not a man begging for death anymore, just a groaning piece of meat.
A photograph.
Oh, for — not this tired trope. Not the "revenge for family" angle. Damn it all.
I spat, then picked it up anyway. It was smeared with blood in places. Except it wasn't a photograph — it was a drawing. Crude, hand-drawn figures of rhino people. *Mama, papa, me…*
Twenty years ago, when Tai Lung had snapped, he had torn through the surrounding valley — including villages populated in part by rhinos.
"You're a piece of filth," I said, setting the drawing back where it had fallen. "But I understand how you became what you are." I pressed my foot to the throat of the rasping man beneath me.
*Crack.*
I could have broken him for much longer — but as I said, we were even. Let him be reunited with his family in whatever came after death. He had already gotten everything from me that he was going to get.
I stood on the mountainside and breathed in the frozen air. The feeling of freedom was intoxicating. The storm around me seemed to be intensifying, but I felt no cold. My thoughts drifted inward.
What was I supposed to do now?
The damned tortoise, as far as I knew, would be dying soon — and besides him, no one in this world was a real threat to me.
But what then? I was a criminal in the eyes of the law. The Emperor himself had once signed the decree authorizing the construction of Chorh-Gom specifically for me. Walking into the Valley of Peace was not an option. They would attack on sight.
And then something fired inside my head. Not fired. Roared.
*BECOME THE DRAGON WARRIOR. TAKE REVENGE.*
The thought hit so bright and so hot that I actually staggered.
Rage. Resentment. And — purpose.
Ha. The snow leopard was trying to impose his desires on me. But… did I want something different? He wasn't just a "neighbor." He was the force that had just dragged me out of a genuine hell. Tai Lung had literally saved my life.
I looked out at the snow-covered peaks, feeling the true storm drawing in around me.
"Hey — Tai Lung. Can you hear me?" I said aloud, addressing the consciousness inside. "You want revenge. You want the Scroll. You want Shifu — you want your father — to acknowledge his mistake." I took a slow, deep breath, gathering my thoughts. "I will get the Dragon Warrior's Scroll. And I will take revenge — for you, for us both. But I'm asking something in return." Everything inside went still. "This body is mine from this moment on," I said, and my voice was steady. "Not just the body — your strength, your skills, your memory, your Chi. All of it becomes mine. I will stop fighting you. But you stop fighting me. Accept this. Become part of me — and I will fulfill what you desire."
Honestly, I wasn't sure it would work. I wasn't even sure the master's personality truly existed separately from my own — maybe it had all been residual memory, the echo of old emotions.
The answer was a sensation.
The Chi in my body, which had been obedient until this moment, erupted. It surged and blazed, covering me not in simple radiance but in thousands of ice-cold needles driving inward from every direction. I cried out and fell to my knees in the snow.
Memories from two lives poured into each other, mingling. I saw the grey walls of a garage and the sunlit courtyard of the Jade Palace. I smelled motor oil and incense from a training hall. I remembered my mother's warm hands… and Shifu's cold, disappointed gaze on that day.
*I…*
A voice sounded in my head — not really a voice, more like a roar.
*…Agree.*
And then everything went quiet.
The radiance pulled back into itself. The storm outside had not stilled, but the storm within had. I was breathing hard, still on my knees, and slowly raised my head.
The world was… sharper. Brighter. Louder.
I understood clearly, for the first time, that this body was mine and no one else's. No. Not quite right.
I understood that *I* was *me.*
There was no longer an "ordinary mechanic" and a "snow leopard." There was only me. Tai Lung. But… not the same one.
What a strange feeling. A feeling of… wholeness.
I needed to find shelter. I felt well — more than well — but with the storm moving in, it would be worth taking some time to settle into myself. To remember who I was now.
And to figure out, for the love of everything, where I was even supposed to go — because I didn't have a map.