Chapter Text
High Elder Dan Heng had spent the annuls of his life thus far trying to account for his past incarnation’s sins…and kept falling short.
He’d taken up the role of Archivist and carefully studied every text and piece of history he came across, looking for something that would either expunge Dan Feng’s past crimes or otherwise free him from his tether. After the Molten Rebirth and many years within the Shackling Prison, they’d unchained him and clothed him with the nicest finery, perhaps hoping to regain some of the power and influence once held by Dan Feng merely by lingering in Dan Heng’s shadow.
When it seemed as though he’d be less than perceptive to their presence, they’d turned their attention to Bailu, the only source of positivity that came from that fateful night Dan Feng sought to turn back the clock on death. They’d turned her into a pawn and required Dan Heng to be her warden and tutor, leaving her tumultuous behavior to him to correct.
It also meant they left him alone for the most part. Bailu’s near-constant stream of disorder was a storm that drove away even the most persistent Preceptor and while she was in his care, Dan Heng took moments to himself to study his archives. It often meant he’d have a litany of messes to clean up, but it was ultimately worth it for the chance to find what he needed to finally escape from the Loufu.
Which is what he was currently doing with scrolls spread across the lacquered table that represented years of meticulous work: bloodline maps, reincarnation records, records from the Sedition. Each document was a brick in the wall he was building between himself and the ghost of Dan Feng.
The Preceptors had even gone as far as pulling out a children’s book to threaten him with, an act that might have seemed more ominous had it not been overshadowed by the complete ridiculousness of it. The Book of Shapeless Wonders they’d called it, then attempted to use the main villain within it as leverage to make Dan Heng behave. Beware the Gremlin Queen who steals what's loved and breaks what's clean, as if that was particularly motivating.
Perhaps that might have worked when he was still newly hatched and chained within the Shackling Prison; but now for his cynical and jaded mind it was a nuisance that only made him roll his eyes.
He shifted through a stack of papers and reached for the next document in the pile, an official report from that night rolled into a scroll. As he unravelled the ribbon binding it together, a faint, prickling itch trailed along his jawline just beneath the high collar of his robes. The sensation was familiar and unwelcome, the Vidyadhara equivalent of a nervous tick in the form of scales that transformed his skin whenever he became stressed; a nuisance, but one he could probably ignore.
He exhaled slowly and returned to his work, forcing his attention back to the genealogical coefficient he'd been calculating.
"Dan Heng! Dan Heng, look what I can do!"
The voice shattered the last of his remaining concentration and Bailu bounded into the archive with the unchecked enthusiasm of a child who had been told to stay in bed for her afternoon nap. Her small form was practically vibrating with excitement and her hands were already glowing with the telltale shimmer of energy.
"I've been practicing!" Bailu announced proudly, skidding to a stop beside a pile of ancient abacuses that Dan Heng had been using to cross-reference historical records. "Watch, watch! I'm going to make them all shiny and new!"
Dan Heng opened his mouth to object and explain calmly and rationally that magic and ancient calculating devices were not meant to interact, especially with healing magic but Bailu was already casting.
The spell manifested as a burst of pink-and-gold light accompanied by a wet squelch that made him flinch.
For one long moment, nothing happened…then the ink began to drift.
Three centuries worth of archival documentation dissolved and bled outward in vibrant, viscous streams of what appeared to be berry jam, spreading over the table, up the walls and across the carefully organized stacks of evidence that might prove Dan Heng's legal innocence.
Bailu clapped her hands together, delighted. "It worked! It…oh."
The oh came when she finally looked at Dan Heng's face.
He was staring at the ruined documents with an expression that might have been mistaken for calm if not for the absolute stillness of his posture. The itch beneath his collar had become a burning line of heat and he could feel the scales scratching against the inside of his shirt.
His life's work, his evidence, his sanctuary…completely eaten by jam and glitter.
"Dan Heng?" Bailu's voice had gone very small. "I... I didn't mean to..."
She started to cry the high, piercing wail of a toddler who had just realized the magnitude of her mistake and the sound vibrated against his sensitive hearing.
He tried to speak and summon a calm, measured response. His mouth opened but nothing came out aside from a strangled sound that might have been the beginning of several different sentences, none of which made it past his throat.
Bailu continued wailing, the jam continued to spread up the walls and somewhere in the back of his mind, Dan Heng remembered the words of the cautionary rhyme the Preceptors used to scold him.
The words left his mouth before he could stop them, unfathomably cold in his own ears.
"I wish the trash-gremlins would come and take you away... right now."
The silence that followed was absolute and Dan Heng stood in the wreckage of his archive, the words still hanging in the air. The jam ceased to continue to spread up the walls and Bailu's wailing cut off mid-sob, leaving behind a quiet so complete it made his ears ring.
He blinked, his hands still raised in an aborted gesture of speech before he turned to face her.
The space where Bailu had been standing was empty.
Dan Heng's mind, trained to catalog, to analyze, to maintain perfect records stuttered like a scratch in a damaged recording. He took a step forward, his boots squelching on the now-jam-covered floor and scanned the room with methodical precision.
She wasn't behind the overturned scroll rack, nor was she hiding beneath the table.
"Bailu?" His voice came out in the tone of an older brother who had discovered his sister attempting a particularly poor hiding spot during a game. "This isn't funny. Come out."
A single origami bird, no larger than his thumb drifted past his shoulder and dissolved into golden dust.
Was that…a bird? Where did that come from? He hadn't seen it arrive nor did he hear the flutter of wings, yet there had been something, a displacement of air, a whisper of movement at the exact moment the silence fell before it suddenly passed his face.
Dan Heng crossed to the far corner of the pavilion where Bailu's favorite napping spot lay hidden behind a stack of reference materials. Empty.
He checked the supply closet where she sometimes hid when she was avoiding her tutors. Empty.
He even opened the large bronze trash bin in the corner, the receptacle for his failed drafts and discarded calculations, finding nothing but crumpled paper and broken abacus beads.
The pavilion was utterly empty.
His hands started to shake.
I wish the trash-gremlins would come and take you away... right now.
The rhyme surfaced in his memory with the clarity of a nightmare: Beware the Gremlin Queen who steals what's loved and breaks what's clean. She'll grant your wish, she'll take your kin and lock them in her trash-can bin.
That was supposed to be just a story, nothing more than a cautionary tale the Preceptors used to attempt to frighten him into obedience. The Gremlin Queen was only theoretical, a metaphor, an embodiment of chaos that existed only in the abstract spaces of philosophy and children's warnings. She wasn't real.
…except Bailu was gone and he had wished her away.
Horror arrived all at once and his breathing went shallow. The itch beneath his collar flared back to life and Dan Heng pressed his palm flat against the nearest table, feeling the sticky residue of jam beneath his fingers, trying to ground himself in something solid.
The trash bin gave a small, metallic clink.
Dan Heng's head snapped toward the sound. The bronze receptacle sat exactly where it always did nestled in its corner among the ruined scrolls and broken abacuses, but as he watched a faint shimmer of golden light traced the rim of its opening.
Another clink echoed from it, louder this time, like something heavy shifting inside a space that should have been nearly empty.
He took a step toward it, his archivist's mind already trying to catalog what was happening, trying to fit this impossibility into some kind of logical framework. Spatial anomaly? Dimensional breach? Perhaps some residual effect of Bailu's botched healing spell interacting with his spoken wish in a way that…
The bronze bin exploded.
There was no better word for it; the lid shot off like a cannonball, clanging against the pavilion's stone ceiling with enough force to crack the masonry and a cascade of cosmic refuse erupted from the opening. Crumpled star charts glowing with light, broken festival lanterns that chimed like bells as they clattered across the floor and discarded machinery that looked like it belonged in the belly of a ship rather than a waste receptacle spread across the floor in an arc, and from the center of the impossible deluge, trailing streamers of recycled starlight and grinning like chaos incarnate came the Gremlin Queen herself.
At least, that's what Dan Heng’s mind was supplying even while the intelligent part of his brain screamed that this was impossible. She looked exactly as described in the tales: a grey-and-black uniform reminiscent of the Astral Express before it was defunct, completely disheveled and torn, shirts untucked and buckles hanging loose.
The Gremlin Queen landed badly, her boots hitting the jam-slicked floor at the wrong angle and Dan Heng watched with disbelieving horror as she skidded and very nearly face-planted into the mess.
She caught herself at the last second, one hand slapping against his pristine desk and looked up with a grin that was equal parts apologetic and absolutely unrepentant.
"Whoops," she said with the kind of musical quality that suggested she'd practiced that exact tone of faux-innocence until it was perfect. "Sorry about your floor."
Dan Heng stared at her and his mouth opened again before snapping shut.
The Gremlin Queen pushed herself upright, retrieved a baseball bat from the pile of cosmic junk and leaned against his desk. She was looking at him with the focused intensity of an artist examining a particularly interesting specimen.
"Bailu," Dan Heng managed, and his voice came out hoarse. "Where is Bailu?"
"Oh, the little dragonling?" The Gremlin Queen tilted her head, her grin widening. "Safe and sound in my Labyrinth. Well…Safe-ish. Sound-ish." She reached out with one jam-covered finger and poked the nearest ruined scroll, leaving a sticky fingerprint on what had once been proof of his legal separation from Dan Feng. "You know, I don't usually answer wishes this fast, but yours had such feeling behind it. Really meant it, didn't you?"
"I didn't…" Dan Heng started, but she was already moving.
Stelle didn't wait for him to finish. She was already moving, stalking through the pavilion with the kind of confident ownership that suggested she'd been there dozens of times before and found it all vaguely disappointing.
She trailed her fingers across the jam-covered scrolls and crouched down to examine the spreading pool of berry-colored chaos on the floor, dipping one finger in and tasting it with a thoughtful hum.
"Not bad," she declared. "Needs more sparkle, though."
Dan Heng's hands curled into fists at his sides. The careful, analytical part of his mind, the part that had spent three days building his defense against the past, was attempting to catalog what he was witnessing. Spatial manipulation? Matter generation? Reality warping on a scale that suggested either Aeon-level power or...
"You're real," he breathed like a man confirming his own worst suspicions. "The Book of Shapeless Wonders, the cautionary tales. You're actually…"
Stelle's head whipped around and her golden eyes sparkled with delight. "Oh, you've read about me!" She bounded over to him with alarming speed, closing the distance between them in three enthusiastic steps. "What did they say? Was I scary? I bet they made me scary."
She was standing too close now, well within the boundaries of personal space that Dan Heng had spent years carefully maintaining and he could smell the sharp scent or burning wood and char that clung to her clothes. Her yellow eyes blazed at him with the focused intensity of someone examining a particularly interesting puzzle and her gaze drifted down to his collar, lingering on the high fabric that concealed the faint iridescent scales he pretended didn't exist.
Dan Heng took a deliberate step backward. His spine hit the edge of his desk.
Stelle followed, matching his retreat with easy, languid grace. She reached past him and dragged one finger through a pool of jam on his desk's surface, bringing it to her lips in another sloppy lick.
"The tales said you were entropy," Dan Heng managed, his voice tight with the effort of maintaining composure. "A force of chaos that disrupts order…a theoretical anomaly."
"Theoretical!" Stelle laughed, bright and sharp as breaking glass. "Dragon Boy, I'm the least theoretical thing you've met all week." She leaned in closer, her smile widening. "And you invited me, said my name and everything! …well, you said 'trash-gremlins', but that’s close enough, I guess. I really liked how you said it like you meant it and everything. "
The guilt that Dan Heng had been holding at bay surged forward like a flood.
"Where is Bailu?" The question came out harder than he intended, sharp enough that Stelle actually pulled back a half-step. "What have you done with her?"
"Done with her?" Stelle's expression shifted into something between offense and theatrical affront. "I haven't done anything with her yet. She's in my Labyrinth, safe as houses. Well…" She tilted her head, considering. "Safe as houses that are made of recycled starship hulls and sentient garbage. That’s mostly safe!"
"Take me to her." It wasn't a request.
"Oh, I don't think you understand how this works." Stelle retrieved her baseball bat from where she'd propped it against his desk, spinning it once in a showy flourish that suggested she'd practiced that move until it was muscle memory. "You made a wish, Dragon Boy. You asked the trash-gremlins to take her away. And we did! Very efficient service, if I do say so myself. Five stars, would recommend."
Dan Heng's jaw tightened. "I didn't mean…"
"Didn't you though?" The playfulness in Stelle's voice took on an edge, something sharper beneath the surface. She gestured at the ruined archive with her bat, encompassing the jam-covered scrolls and broken abacuses and all the evidence of his failed containment. "You looked at this mess, looked at that crying little dragonling and thought I wish someone would just take her away. And here I am! Fairy godmother of trash and chaos, at your service."
She executed a mocking half-bow that somehow managed to be both graceful and deliberately insulting.
"So here's how it works," Stelle continued, her voice taking on the cadence of someone delivering a proclamation she'd made a hundred times before. She hopped up to sit on his desk, her boots swinging in the air, heedless of the precious documents beneath her. "You have thirteen hours to find your little dragonling in my Labyrinth. Thirteen hours from right…" She pulled a pocket watch from somewhere in her disheveled uniform, an ornate thing that looked like it had been assembled from broken clockwork and wishes. "...now."
The watch began to tick, each sound sharp and deliberate in the pavilion's ruined quiet.
"Thirteen hours," she repeated, her smile widening. "And if you don't find her... well, she becomes part of the collection. A permanent resident. A trash-can, if you will." She said it lightly, like she was describing a minor inconvenience rather than a child's fate.
Dan Heng felt something cold and sharp settle in his chest. "No."
"No?" Stelle's eyebrows rose. "Dragon Boy, you don't get to say no. You already said yes when you made the wish."
"Then I take it back." His hands were shaking again with anger, hot and immediate and directed at the grinning figure perched on his desk like she owned the place. "I take back the wish. Return her. Now."
"Doesn't work like that." Stelle shrugged, utterly unconcerned by his fury. "What's said is said, what's wished is wished. But hey…" She leaned forward, her golden eyes catching the light. "...I'm not unreasonable, I'm giving you a chance. Thirteen whole hours! That's generous, really. Most people only get twelve."
"Why thirteen?"
"Because I like you." She said it with the casual honesty of someone stating an obvious fact. "You're interesting. All that careful control, all those tidy little walls you've built around yourself and one crying toddler breaks them down in under a minute. That's fascinating."
She hopped off the desk, landing with a soft thump that somehow still managed to sound theatrical and started walking a slow circle around him, her bat dragging across the floor and leaving a trail through the jam.
"Plus," she added, her tone going thoughtful, "you're scared of me. Not scared-scared, not that boring 'oh no a monster' kind of fear, you're scared of what I represent! The entropy, the chaos, the thing that proves all your careful order is just one botched spell away from falling apart." She stopped directly in front of him, tilting her head up to meet his eyes. "That's much more interesting than screaming."
Dan Heng forced himself to hold her gaze. "If you want me to be interesting," he said, his voice low and deliberate, "then give me a chance to get her back. Tell me the rules."
"Rules?" Stelle's laugh was sharp with genuine amusement. "Oh, Dragon Boy. There are always rules in a Labyrinth, but where's the fun in telling you what they are?" She tapped her bat against his desk, once, twice. "Figure it out yourself, that's part of the game."
"This isn't a game…"
"Everything's a game if you play it right." She was already backing toward the bronze trash bin, which was still overflowing with impossible cosmic refuse. "Thirteen hours, Dragon Boy. Clock's already ticking so you better get started."
She executed a mock salute, sharp and sarcastic.
"Wait…" Dan Heng started forward, but Stelle was faster.
She dove headfirst back into the trash bin, an athletic, graceful motion that should have been impossible given the receptacle's size and vanished into the impossible space within. A swirl of origami birds followed her, their sharp-edged wings catching the light as they spiraled down into the depths.
The bronze bin gave one final, resonant clang and went still.
Dan Heng stood frozen in the jam-covered pavilion, staring at the ordinary trash receptacle that was suddenly the only path to his sister. The pocket watch in Stelle's hand, wherever she'd taken it, continued its steady tick-tick-tick in his memory, counting down hours he didn't have.
He looked at the bin and at the ruined archive that was supposed to prove his separation from Dan Feng, then he crossed the pavilion in three long strides. He placed both hands on the rim of the bronze bin and hauled himself up and over the edge.
The world inverted, gravity released him and Dan Heng fell through the trash-can portal into the Labyrinth beyond.