Mandrake's body loomed above them like an ominous shadow. The emerald coiling form, scales gleaming with majesty, levitated as lightning crackled overhead; his draconic whiskers, long enough to wrap around hills, drifted zily in the air. The dragon leaned down to observe the man in the b coat, its spinal ridges moving like the teeth of a chainsaw.

  Yet those serpentine ember eyes couldn't hide his stark flood of cold fear.

  The arrival of Yulong's God-Emperor hit like a thundercp. His overwhelming presence rendered all of Ming Xuan's soldiers unconscious, leaving only the Lord of Union and Third Prince standing. They were soon joined by others: Nuan Yulong and Xiahana La Louve arrived, carrying the sealed and powerless Shuguang between them.

  All three women, despite being enemies, shared the same expression with Ming Xuan: dread, awe, and trembling fright at the enormous dragon above. Shuguang would have colpsed to her knees if not for the duo holding her arms. Her brother fared no better, refusing to meet his father's eyes, head bowed low in fear of disappointment.

  Ciel, unlike the others, showed no such sentiment. He looked at Mandrake with nonchance and spoke, "Stop grandstanding and come down already. Or I'm going to put goat milk in your food."

  The dragon's rumble caused all but one to jerk in fear. Their instincts screamed at them to fall to their knees. But the sudden downward swoop of the southern behemoth caught them by surprise.

  The beast's body nded headfirst, exploding into a cloud of golden smoke that wafted toward heaven.

  A man stepped from the mist.

  He was a graying elder with the pointed goatee of an Eastern philosopher, offset by a portly waist and medium height. His robes were sewn in red and gold, hiding his hands beneath billowing sleeves, with a matching imperial crown atop his disapproving face.

  "Ciel," he began. "It had been—"

  Then, to everyone's horror, Ciel shut him up with a kick to the face.

  "Ciel!" Nuan gaped at an act that would qualify as heresy by all accounts. "Are you crazy? That is—"

  But in a sequence that bewildered all souls present, the greatest bsphemy in the history of the south went unpunished. Mandrake didn't bst his assaint into smithereens; instead, he stumbled back, nursing his nose. He looked fearfully at his former comrade and protested.

  "What was that for?"

  "That's for backstabbing me back then, you idiot. How does it feel now?"

  The Lord of Torrential Skies looked at his old friend, still maintaining the same attitude he remembered from millennia ago, from the good times. The dam kept for endless years broke at st, and his composure colpsed before every pair of eyes, especially his children's.

  "You must help me, Ciel!" He tossed himself at his only ally's leg, all dignity vanishing into the Void. "These people are crazy! They worship me every time I clear my throat. Half the court is scheming, and half my wives are killing each other!" He bawled as the st three thousand years of misery caught up to him. "My kids are disturbed, and Balor's men are everywhere. The entire nation is going to shit, and I miss Aria's cooking."

  The inventor, seeing his fellow Lord brought so low, sighed. "I believe an 'I-told-you-so' is in order, but it appears time has told you that better than I ever could."

  The referenced children bnked out at this comedy routine. Color appeared to bleach away from them, their features reduced to cartoon parodies of themselves. Brains emptied of thought, mouths jarred open, they stood paralyzed as the ground of illusion fell beneath them to reveal a blinding chthonian river of truth.

  It was Xia who put what everyone thought into words: "Who is that guy?" She pointed at the emperor clutching Ciel's leg, sobbing.

  "This is Mandrake."

  "That's ridiculous!" Nuan argued, while Shuguang and Ming Xuan appeared to stop breathing where they stood. "How can this be the Emperor? He is always—" Nuan's face sank as realization hit "—sitting behind the veil and letting the interpreter talk for him."

  Ciel considered pulling out a stopwatch to measure how long the enlightenment took.

  Xia spoke next. "Are you telling me everything we know about the Yulong Emperor is a lie made by the officials?"

  "Congratutions," he answered. "You finally discover the virtue of not believing a secondary source which professes itself as first-principle truth."

  "B-But," Nuan attempted to find a railing to hang onto amid the revetion. "How? Are you telling me they managed to keep this from Yi Tong of all people? Why is this the first time I'm seeing him like this?"

  "That's the fw of humanity. You love projecting your failures onto gods," Ciel said, turning to Mandrake. "Let me guess, you tried not to interfere, but any time you did, they just took your words out of context."

  "For three thousand years!" Mandrake finally lifted the rock from his heart. "After I saved these people, we had some good years, but then they built me this giant pace and things went downhill ever since."

  "They married their daughters to you," the steely Lord stated.

  "Those noble women are scary," said the sobbing Emperor. "They've been trying to kill each other for three thousand years over jealousy." He moaned. "Every. Single. Generation. Then they started using my name to pull ahead." He tched onto Ciel like a long-awaited ticket to salvation. "You must help me, buddy. Everything's a mess right now. The eunuchs copied my wives and started parading my name around so many times people think I'm this almighty being who has eyes everywhere. I'm at my wit's end here. What should I do?"

  "Face the bloody music."

  "I can't! The entire empire has been banking on that image for the st two thousand years!"

  "This is because you let them give you an imperial harem, you moron. You should have just stuck to one wife who was capable instead of making a gaggle of rumor mills."

  "I couldn't do that. I needed marriage alliances with those noble houses," Mandrake wailed.

  "And you underestimated how many houses there would be," replied the frustrated Lord. "Don't tell me you're stuck accepting more and more wives because it became part of your image, you doormat."

  Mandrake let out a roar of regret: "Just save me from this hell!"

  The three children, finally handed an expnation for their awful childhood, nearly vomited blood from the raw absurdity behind their misery.

  "What about that Dragon Stage?" Nuan brought up her childhood complexes like a bludgeoning stick. "You invented that."

  "I did it as a friendly sparring stadium for my kids!" her father grieved. "Until one of my wives decided to use it to get rid of her rival’s son in public matches." The Emperor of Yulong, again, begged for his old friend's help. "That witch made the entire match public and sent some of her men to rile up the crowd. The reputation has stuck ever since." He trembled. "Women are so scary. They're worse than Balor!"

  "I think you're exaggerating," Ciel pointed out. "Balor is an eldritch horror, Mandrake."

  "Don't you dare underestimate them. Those hags are vipers."

  "Wait," Nuan spoke, as daughter to father for the first time. "When you asked me about giving up—"

  "I was asking whether or not you were fine with this arrangement," Mandrake turned toward his daughter. The frantic look in his face turned into sad understanding. "You are without a doubt my most talented kid. Victory would've been yours, no doubt about it, but the moment you killed that idiot son of mine, your childhood would've been pretty much over." Mandrake nodded in grim admission. "But seeing how much you excelled, and your subsequent career path, I grudgingly admitted you might be on the more mental side like Er Long."

  "I wasn't okay at all!" Nuan cried. "Are you telling me all this time that I could just quit?"

  "Yes," said both Lords.

  "But because I kept carrying this mental burden, my own father thought I was a battle-maniac like Er Long?" the Massacre Princess yelled.

  "You're not?" Mandrake blinked in disbelief. "Ciel, is she normal?"

  "Around Anastasia-level of normal."

  "Wow," the clueless father whistled in relief. "Mind. Blown."

  Xia watched Nuan fall to her knees and bawl at this decades-long joke in the making. "By Romulus' name," she muttered. "And I thought my family had it bad."

  Shuguang Yulong, bearing witness to these mind-numbing alien realities, came to her senses and realized she also had a complex. "Father," she halted for a second, "what happened to my mother?"

  "Shuming is fine," Mandrake replied. "I just saw her st month."

  The revetion hit Shuguang like a sucker-punch. She flopped to the ground, eyes wide and mind screening only gibberish. Her entire perception of reality regurgitated in a mixture of happiness, denial, and confusion. Only one thought went through her mind: Is it this simple? This was all she had to do to solve her life's biggest knot—just ask?

  "But she just disappeared one night?" Ming Xuan spoke after an eternity passed to thaw out his mind. "We believed you had her killed."

  "Why would I do that?" the confused Lord turned to his old friend. "Am I that demonic?"

  "Let me guess," Ciel said. "You have a valley in the middle of nowhere to hide her away from Balor?"

  "But why?" The Third Prince begged for liberation from this weight of confusion. "Why take her away?"

  "Did I do something wrong?" Mandrake asked his recently found transtor for help.

  "Did you take his mother away in the middle of the night when he was a kid?"

  "She was getting bullied in the court, and I asked her if she needed a break!" he argued. "She said yes!"

  "And you put her in a safe house in the middle of nowhere without telling her children?"

  "Don't look at me like a deadbeat, Ciel," he justified with innocent gusto. "That pce is top secret, and I don't have unlimited idyllic gardens hidden in the middle of nowhere for the family members I actually like. You know what would happen if its location got leaked to Balor. Adolescents are not good at keeping secrets!"

  "That excuse only worked ten years ago, but why don't you just tell them now, you idiot!"

  "Because they are doing fine!"

  The three children of Mandrake observed the family skit they never wanted with faces darkened by the renewed light of a terrible truth.

  Shuguang was the one who put it best: "So if we somehow had a mental breakdown in tears, you would just tell us about this little paradise she is staying in?"

  "That's right."

  "And the reason you have never done that," she continued, "is because we never broke down."

  "Correct."

  "What about the command you sent?" Ming Xuan begged for crification. "Isn't 'Brace yourself—'"

  "Wait, did you all misinterpret that, again!" The portly man clutched his head in the throes of a massive headache. "This has to be the thousandth time. I told you to be careful and order the rest of them to help you. Did they use that as an excuse to kill each other, again?"

  "Are you telling me this is all just a misunderstanding?" Nuan squeaked.

  "Bingo," Ciel concluded. "Now get us off the wanted list and then get me a position where I can fix things."

  "That wouldn't be a problem," Mandrake shrugged like the entire shenanigan had never happened.

  Shuguang and Nuan, seeing how all their issues had vanished so easily, flopped to the ground and cried. Meanwhile, Ming Xuan and Xia gnced at the open sky, questioning how foolish they all had been.

  Thus the Massacre Princess's Homecoming came to an end.