Trinity Universe: Prologue: Joshua

[phoenix]

“It’s not a pleasant thing to be boiled alive, Miss Gettel. My honorable ancestors reserved such punishment for traitors and spies. You die by inches as the heat sinks down to your bones.” Firelight gleamed along the harsh outline of Sakamura’s face. “You could last for days, Miss Gettel – but I don’t think it will take that long. Do you?”

My head was still swimming from the ether, and in truth, I thought he was probably right – though I’d rather die by inches than ever betray my friend. Fortunately, I didn’t have to consider it, because it was then that the door swung open. Sakamura spun on his heel, and both samurai drew their long, curved swords.

My voice caught as I addressed Sakamura in his native Chinese, completely at a loss.

“Does.. Can boiling also cause hallucination? Sakamura?”

The man standing in the doorway was like nothing I had ever seen before. Naked as the day he was born – assuming he had been born – and covered in swirling blue tattoos, which looked like tribal markings. He had a long ponytail hanging from the back of his otherwise bald head, and carried two long knives that shone a peculiar shade of sky blue.

I have rarely, if ever, derived so much pleasure from something so simple, as I did from the expression on Sakamura’s face as the bizarre-looking man padded barefoot into the room and made a small bow in the direction of my cauldron. Bound head and foot as I was, I had no way to acknowledge the greeting except through a weak grin. My wrists and elbows were both tied behind my back, and the position made my shoulders ache, and the heat in the water was quickly growing unbearable.

It was then that Sakamura regained his faculty of speech. “Kill him!” he shouted to the two faceless samurai. Responding quickly, both armored warriors advanced on the nude man and swung their weapons at him.

I really, really wish I had seen what happened at that point. All I caught was the clanging of metal and a sort of blue whirlwind centered on the tattooed man. When it was over, though, both of Sakamura’s henchmen fell lifeless to the floor.

I squirmed to view them over the side of the cauldron. The symmetry of the corpses was striking – each samurai’s katana was buried in the throat of the other.

The swordsman took another step towards Sakamura, and he performed a comical backwards leap, tripping over himself and falling supine on the floor. Luckily for him, the stranger had been stepping towards me. Pressing his body against the copper side of the cauldron, he tipped it over and sent me spilling, still in tight bondage, onto the floor.

On the floor, next to Sakamura. That crime lord, seeing me there, grabbed a fold of rope between my shoulder blades and tried to pull me away from the intruder, back into his mansion, I suppose. One of the sky-blue blades flew through the air – I got a splendid view of the masterful throw this time, thankfully – and sank in between Sakamura’s eyes for his troubles.

“Miss Gettel?” enquired my bizarre new friend, with a polite smile that seemed incongruous on someone who had just killed three men. After I nodded, he solved my problem of keeping my eyes above waist level for me by coming around behind me, lifting me to my feet by the same fold of rope that Sakamura had tried to grab. I had never felt so vulnerable in my life, but in mere seconds, the ropes were falling away. I rubbed my wrists gratefully.

“Who are you?” I asked. To my surprise, he replied with what sounded like perfect frankness.

“Someone with a great desire to fight the Black Dragons, and very little idea of how to go about it.” He shrugged. “Someone here told me that a good way to start would be by saving you from them.”

I frowned. “Who on Earth…”

Imagine my surprise when the good Doctor Agaki himself strolled into the courtyard, through the same door that the aboriginal fellow had entered!

“You were expecting Max Mercer?” he smiled.

,,

Dear Max:

I’m coming back to Chicago in time for your little get-together, and I’m bringing someone with me. I found him in Shanghai during that whole Agaki affair. He might not be what you had in mind but I know you can use him. He’s daring, chivalrous and one of the best fighters I’ve seen, or even heard of.

His story, though, is a really strange one. Even I’m having trouble deciding whether to write about it. He says he’s from another world. He says he’s the last surviving warrior from a tribe called the Chepano, from a world called Vo’onos that sounds like nothing we’ve ever seen before – filled with dangerous jungles and urban ruins. The land there is unbelievably verdant, but there are dangerous predators and supernatural beings like the ones we’ve been seeing ever since Hammersmith. He says he’s a member of an elite caste called Jerico, which exists to fight off the zombie allosauruses while the farmers do their stuff to feed the whole tribe.

The other reason I want Whitley and you to meet him is that he says the Ubiquitous Dragon is his enemy, and sounds determined to kill him. I know, I know: he’s not the first man to want to, but listen to his reason.

While he was out on a raiding party to the nearest city ruins – the same kind of raiding party that won him a pair of short swords that he’s pretty handy with right now – something happened that allowed one of the Dragon’s scientists to harness Telluric energies and broach the dimensional gap between his world and ours. He got pretty emotional when the story got to this part, but it sounds like the Black Dragons invaded and slaughtered his whole tribe with Tommy guns, then planted opium poppies in the fields the Chepano used to grow food and left.

Needless to say, he found his way back into our world. I know he killed a few Dragons on the way in, but since he apparently knows nothing of modern science, the inventor that allowed the whole thing to happen got away. He was really upset when I explained all this to him – he even saw a guy in a white lab coat, but he assumed the guy was a janitor or something.

I have to go, I have a deadline. Jake says he’ll get this note to you, and the aborigine and I will be coming by boat. To conclude, reasons you should talk to this guy:

1. He saved my bacon back in Shanghai.

2. He’s a strong, dedicated and resourceful enemy of our enemies.

3. I really, really like him.

Oh, and he doesn’t speak any English, just Chinese (which he calls “the low speech”). That’s not a problem, right? I mean, hell, half the time it seems like Dixon and Primoris barely speak the Queen’s good English.

His name is Joshua. See you in a month or two, Max.

Best regards,

Sarah Gettel