Work Text:
It started with a book.
Since it wasn't the kind of book that might end the world if it fell into the wrong hands or anything like that, Harry didn't worry about it. It was just something that was keeping a lot of the White Council distracted and, in his opinion, that was always welcome. Especially when it was harmless.
The contents were nothing special: it seemed to be a very basic training manual from some Chinese style of magic. The thing was, it happened to be a really old training manual. Old enough that Ancient Mai herself had to give up and admit that they needed to find an expert if they wanted to know whether it was the real thing. Harry had no idea where they'd find someone like that, but, again, not his problem. He did have some curiosity about how a book like this one had ended up in a random collector's library - if it was indeed an original - but not enough to interact with the Council to learn more. If there turned out to be anything interesting about it, he'd find out through the grapevine.
So he didn't think it had anything to do with it when he heard that Sanya was in town.
"What brings you here, then?" Harry asked him over a couple of beers at Mac's. "Should I worry?"
"I hope not," Sanya said. "I'm not here on business. I heard Lan Xichen was around, and I haven't seen him in a while. He doesn't go out much."
"Lan Xichen… Wait, that's Ancient Mai's expert." Yeah, he did sound like the type who didn't go out much, then. "I didn't know you were friends with ancient book nerds."
"Why the surprise? I'm friends with Spider-Man nerds, too."
"Hey! Spider-Man is cool."
The conversation turned towards their usual small talk after that, and both the book and the expert on it were quickly forgotten.
* * *
The book turned out to be the real thing. As expected, Harry only heard about it secondhand; he'd stopped paying attention days ago, busy as he was with his own work. Once it was proven, though, the buzz was unavoidable. It didn't matter that the contents of the book were relatively mundane. Something that old could gather quite a bit of power just by still existing.
That meant that some jerk was inevitably going to try to get it, because that kind of thing always happened. Perhaps there was a reason why Sanya was here. Harry couldn't imagine that a ridiculously old book expert would have much luck trying to fight off attackers.
Or, at least, that was what he thought until he met him. Sanya had insisted on introducing them to each other, and nobody could say no to Sanya.
"You'll like him," he'd told Harry. "Oh, and bring Mouse. He'll like him too."
That was how Harry and his dog had ended up going to a park, ready to meet this mysterious nerd. As it turned out, Lan Xichen was nothing like he had imagined.
The guy was tall, like Sanya, but with a lean athletic build in contrast to the Knight's more brickhouse-like shape. He was also so damn good looking that, if Harry hadn't known better, he would have suspected he was White Court. There was a timeless air to him, in spite of his modern clothes and haircut. Something that Harry could only describe as serene even though he knew how cliché that sounded. He had the kind of smile you usually saw in Buddha statues. The only slightly weird thing about his looks was his white headband, and somehow he made even that work.
"You must be Harry," he said. "Sanya speaks very highly of you. I'm pleased to meet you."
Lan Xichen bowed to him, and Harry had never felt so inadequate in his entire life. He didn't even know how he was supposed to react to that. Luckily, Mouse solved the situation for him by throwing himself at the other man with all of his strength.
"Mouse! Don't— Sorry," Harry managed to say in the end. "He's not usually this rude."
"Oh, he's just friendly!" Lan Xichen laughed. He was half-sitting, half-lying on the ground, scratching behind the ears of the huge fluffy dog on top on him, and yet still managed to look graceful. The nerve. "I haven't seen a real temple dog in… well. In a very long time."
"Yeah, Mouse is special like that," he replied. It was a time-honored way of dispelling awkward situations: just talk about how great dogs are. It worked almost every time.
Lan Xichen was a man of taste, evidently, and he appreciated Mouse's qualities. He smiled and ruffled the fur on his head once more before standing up again. Mouse somehow managed to look disappointed. Harry was very definitely not jealous.
"So, did you have a plan for today?" he asked. "We could go to Mac's if you don't. Best beer and steak in Chicago. Maybe the world."
"Unfortunately," Sanya said, "our friend here doesn't do either."
"Ah, that's not a problem," said Lan Xichen. "I think I would like to meet him, anyway. He's someone else I've heard a lot about."
"Oh, he's great," Harry replied. "It's just kinda sad to go to Mac's and have a salad. Guess that's the price of living however many centuries."
"Harry," Sanya started to chide him. But Lan Xichen just laughed.
"A sense of humor is important, too," he said. "Even if I have heard that one far more times than I can count."
"Wow. I don't know if I feel better or worse now."
Sanya patted him on the back.
"You'll get used to it," he said. "Mac's it is, then."
* * *
They didn't make it to Mac's.
One moment they were walking down a crowded sidewalk, and the next, it was as if they had stepped on a gate to the Nevernever. Except Harry hadn't had any warning. Even Mouse hadn't seemed to notice anything amiss until it was too late, and now, that was worrying. Whoever or whatever had done this knew exactly what to do, and had been precise enough to isolate the three of them - plus the dog - without getting any random bystander involved.
That last bit might have been relieving, if it wasn't for, well, everything else about the situation. It looked like they were in a cave. The only light was the one they created themselves. Harry used one of his usual, simple spells; Sanya unsheathed his sword; and Lan Xichen -
Lan Xichen had a flute. A white, glowing flute. Harry bit back about a dozen snarky remarks, because his brain was helpful like that. Perhaps the guy could put whoever was attacking them to sleep, who knew.
Which reminded him - having any idea of who was doing this would've been great. But no one was showing themselves.
"I don't like this," he muttered. If he was going to control himself enough to not make stupid dick jokes, then he had the right to at least state the obvious. "Do we know who could be doing it?"
"Too many people want that book," said Sanya.
"But there can't be that many who can do something like this. Right?"
"One would hope so," Lan Xichen said mildly. He didn't sound the least bit concerned, as if it didn't take someone ridiculously powerful - or at least ridiculously precise - to pull off a stunt like this one.
And then, of course, things got even worse. First, Mouse started growling lowly, a sure sign that bad guys were approaching. That was followed by a hint of what those bad guys might be: the sound of drums, closer and closer.
"Great," Harry sighed. "Zombies."
He sneaked a glance at Lan Xichen, and was surprised to see that he still looked as calm as ever. It didn't seem as if he was faking it, either. Harry raised his eyebrows, not even pretending to be stealthy about his concern anymore.
"Not your first rodeo, huh?"
"Not by far," Lan Xichen told him, still with that same friendly, impossibly natural smile. "You don't need to worry about me. I can handle myself just fine."
"Understatement," Sanya laughed under his breath.
Not for the first time that day, Harry was left feeling that he was missing something. He didn't have time to ask, however, because now those drums were really close. Mouse had stepped in front of all three of them, ready to be the first line of attack as soon as the zombies showed up. Mysterious in-jokes could wait; Harry focused on gathering his energy to get a spell ready.
It was not long until the shapes of the undead starting becoming visible, right outside the glow of their lights. They were nothing but dark shadows, so far, but they were fast approaching.
Before they reached the circle of light, Lan Xichen started playing.
This was no steady beat, and yet, it was more than obvious that it was counteracting the effect of the drums. Whatever the magic in his music was, it was something different - and it was powerful. It was unbelievably soothing, but not in a making-you-sleepy way: it was something much harder to describe. Harry could almost feel the dark magic around them losing its strength bit by bit.
He didn't waste the unexpected boost.
"Forzare!"
The spell hit the front row of the now even groggier zombies, pushing them back into the ones coming behind them. It wasn't going to be a devastating attack, but it'd slow them down even more. The living dead were uncoordinated in the best of situations, so just trying to disentangle themselves from each other was going to take them a while. Sanya took his chance and attacked, cutting them down while they were still struggling to get back up. Mouse also joined him.
Harry took the brief moment of respite to gather his thoughts into a plan. He would have loved to just set them all on fire, but that was not an option when he couldn't see more than a few yards around him. Who knew what - or, even worse, who - might be out of his line of sight. Using Forzare again would work to keep them away if the approached again, but that was only a defensive strategy. They needed to find out where the person with the drums was.
"We need more visibility," he said. "I'm gonna turn on the lights."
He concentrated, and the little glowing sphere floating over his hand became a blinding flash for a second. Once his eyes adjusted, he saw pretty much exactly what he expected: a sea of moving corpses. And behind them - way behind them - there was a small, old man in black steadily beating on a drum.
"Oh, come on," he muttered under his breath. "That guy?"
Those guys were always the worst. Tiny weak looking necromancer, huge army of zombies? Yeah, that meant this jerk had a ton of power. It wasn't as if he was fighting with his own sheer dumb muscle here.
All right, then, time to come up with a plan that took that into account. Lan Xichen was still playing, and Sanya was still chopping zombies, so Harry just talked aloud and hoped Tiny on the back was out of earshot.
"We need to get to his drum," he said, feeling like he was stating the obvious. "Any of you guys happen to have a long-range weapon?"
"Just the sword," Sanya reminded him. He was a little out of breath, but didn't sound very concerned. That had to be good news.
Harry didn't know much about this type of music, but even he could tell that Lan Xichen was doing something fancy before he stopped playing at last. The flourishy sound must have been some kind of spell, because the zombies reacted as if they'd been hit. Something similar to Harry's own Forzare, he figured, to buy them some time to speak.
"I can get to him," Lan Xichen said, "but I won't be playing. Do you think you two can hold on in the meantime?"
"You can get to him?" Harry repeated. That sounded fake.
"Trust him," said Sanya, ever the optimist. "He can."
There wasn't a lot of time to argue, or even to come up with some other plan. A few of the closer zombies were even starting to stir. Harry bit back a grunt and nodded.
"I'll put up a shield for us," he said. "But if we see things get bad, we're joining you."
"Fair," Lan Xichen agreed.
Then he jumped up, and it made those fancy martial arts movies look like documentaries. He was graceful even as he stepped on a bunch of corpses' heads, as if it was no effort at all to run around like that. Oh, and at some point he'd drawn a sword from inside his sleeve, too. Because of course he had.
Harry couldn't exactly stand there all star-struck, however. As soon as Sanya and Mouse kicked off the last couple of zombies clinging to them, he put up an energy shield just like he'd promised.
"What the hell," he said, once they were all safe behind it. "What the hell."
Beside him, Sanya shrugged, as if all of this was perfectly normal to him.
"The Lan don't lie," he told Harry. "Or brag. If he says he can, he can."
"How did you even meet this guy?"
"Work," Sanya replied. He did not elaborate.
On the other side of the barrier, Lan Xichen was still making himself a path over, and sometimes through, the zombies. It was only a few more moments until he reached Tiny. He didn't even waste a second fighting the man: instead, he drove his sword right through the drum.
As soon as the beat stopped, all the corpses fell down at the same time.
Harry lowered his shield. Together with Sanya and Mouse, they made their way over to where the others stood. It was pretty gross, but at least nothing was attacking them.
It wasn't just the magic controlling the zombies that had stopped working. The darkness receded, too, and Harry could now see that they weren't in a cave at all. They'd just been moved to an alley not very far from where they'd been walking. That thick darkness surrounding them hadn't been simple lack of light: it was a spell, like layers of fog surrounding them, and now that the guy in charge had run out of juice it was dispersing at last.
Lan Xichen was tying his arms behind his back, and the old man didn't bother struggling. At least he could tell when he was out of his league. He did, however, rant a lot. Harry only half listened to him, because it was mostly the usual: power and ego, blah blah blah, that book couldn't possibly be as harmless as the White Council said, it rightfully belonged to him, all of that.
The only interesting thing he said was that he'd expected it to be part of the writings of the Yiling Laozu. That name rang a bell. He must have read it somewhere while trying to research necromancers back in the day, Harry thought. In any case, the book's age and place of origin must have matched his.
"It really is just a training manual," Lan Xichen said, still as calm as ever. "A very basic one, for children."
"But—"
"There are no surviving notes from the Yiling Laozu," he interrupted. "He made sure of that himself."
Tiny still grumbled to himself a bit more, but had no chance to argue. Now that whatever he'd done to hide them all wasn't working anymore, the place was about to get full of Wardens. This was the kind of stuff that made them act fast.
Sure enough, they were still deciding whether they should call someone and who, when a small group of Wardens showed up of their own accord. They were on the younger side, and Harry didn't personally know any of them. This time, that worked in his favor. It meant he didn't feel bad about leaving them to handle the clean up. This was all very important business, after all, it should definitely go through official channels while he and Sanya made sure that Lan Xichen finished his trip without any more incidents.
"So," Harry said once they were out of earshot. "You guys still up for Mac's?"
* * *
This time around, nothing interrupted them. They chatted a bit while they walked the rest of the way to Mac's, and it was nice to not be worrying about solving a case for a change. Harry was very curious about many things that had happened today, but in a quite pleasant turn of events, it was nothing his life depended on.
He mused on the things he knew about Lan Xichen, the biggest of today's mysteries. He was very old, older than Ancient Mai. He was enough of a book nerd to be able to tell an original from a fake, but he was also unbelievably skilled at martial arts. He was the kind of person Sanya met during work. He could use music as a source of magic, in a far more complex way than a necromancer's steady beat, but still seemed to know a lot about the subject…
Suddenly - or finally, depending on how one looked at it - Harry's brain managed to connect the dots. Lan Xichen. He knew why that name was familiar.
"Zewu-jun," he said, thinking aloud, and of course Lan Xichen turned to look at him. Why wouldn't he? "You're Zewu-jun. Legendary immortal, generally a badass—"
"Ah, don't believe everything you hear," Lan Xichen interrupted, but his smile still showed his amusement. "Half those stories are made up."
"That implies the other half are true," said Harry. "And, wait, I just realized. It also means the Yiling Laozu is—"
"My brother-in-law, yes," he finished for him. His serene Buddha-like expression was definitely getting closer to an actual grin now.
"Don't mind him," said Sanya. "He's a bit slow for a detective."
"And you're a bit of a jerk for a Knight of the Cross, did anyone ever tell you that?"
"I just have a sense of humor!"
"You're embarrassing me in front the immortal warrior."
"There's nothing embarrassing about this," Lan Xichen said, and it was almost like a teacher getting his students to shut up. The worst part was that it worked. "I suppose my identity is not so obvious unless you already know about it. The truth is, I don't go out much."
We knew that, Harry thought, but in an amazing display of willpower he didn't ruin the moment by saying it aloud.
"Well," he said instead, "now that you're here, we can take you out for some wild partying."
"Harry," Sanya sighed, long-suffering, "he's a near ascetic immortal, I'm a Knight of the Cross, and you like roleplaying games."
"I did mean game night," Harry cheerfully admitted. He decided to ignore that Sanya had almost called him a nerd again, because he was nice like that. "That's pretty wild for the likes of us, right? First Mac's, then D&D."
"That would be new," said Lan Xichen. He even sounded enthusiastic about it and not like he was just being polite. The world was full of surprises, huh.
"Then it's a plan," said Harry. "And also one of those anecdotes that no one believes when I tell them. Oh, yeah, I met Zewu-jun once. He played a bard in our campaign."
"I'll confirm it," Sanya chimed in. "People always believe me. It's a perk of the job."
"If you want a picture," Lan Xichen said, and he was grinning again, "you can just ask."
Harry laughed, trying not to look too much like he'd been caught being a fanboy, and took the opportunity of being already close to Mac's to change the subject.
But he was definitely going to take him up on that offer.