Saturday, January 15, 2022 - TriBeCa, New York City, United States

It was only a few days left until her interview at Ixus. Ella needed whatever leverage — or at least the appearance of it — she could get before she met this High Priestess or Arcsa. Whoever they were.

She was studying for her interview when Charlie walked by the dining table, “What the hell is that you are reading?”

And then Ella was forced to explain her plan and what she had found out about Xu.

“A dragon!” Charlie’s eyes shined. “Like with scales and stuff? No fucking way!”

“Yes fucking way.” And Ella recapped the most recent events.

“So let me see if I got this straight? A bunch of half human, half scorpion people beat the shit out of you in an alley because you are the motherfucking princess but then decided since you have magic that you are their prophesized goddess incarnate on earth and are now a fanatical army waiting to go on some sort of jihad for you?”

“Ummm. No? Maybe? Bahu, one of them I met, reminds me of this girl I just met in Iceland, all bubbly chat. But in this case, it feels like bullshit, like she could go from zero to high-order violence like that.” And Ella snapped her fingers for emphasis.

Charlie came and plopped down in the chair next to her. “Ok. That is definitely fire. Who are we going to conquer first? I kind of want an island… you know like Australia?”

“Are you high?”

“A little bit…”

Ella felt a bit uncomfortable in the fancy designer suit Charlie had pulled out of her closet. But it fit pretty well if a bit tight around the bust, and the fabric was ridiculously comfortable. No Ann Taylor Loft synthetic from the discount rack here.

Ella was starting to get worried. This interviewer wasn’t paying attention to her answers, and she needed to get to the next round of interviews. She knew she was nailing the answers but he spent more time staring at her cleavage than listening to answers. Ella pointedly noted the wedding band on his hand, but this guy was oblivious.

They were just wrapping up when Ella felt a sudden surge of power behind her and in walked Tommy Xu. When Xu walked in she could instantly see the realness of magic around him. It was obvious and felt like an endless wave of water spilling off of him in every direction, almost pushing her along a way of thinking. But a brief moment of concentration and that wave parted before her like the leeward side of a rock.

“Pardon me for interrupting your interview, young miss. I needed to speak to young Mr. Goldberg here.” He did not wait for Ella’s assent before addressing the associate, “the numbers on your long and short positions look unbalanced. I want to know what you are doing with my money.” The voice sounded urbane and patient, as if a grandfather asking a young child why they had ice cream on their shirt, but Ella could imagine that there was a bit of edge, the faintest hint of anger, on the words “my money.”

Perhaps Ella would have played it cool and waited if she hadn’t felt pressured both by the scorpions and how her interview was going.

“Mr. Wu? Wu Shen? I’d love the chance to speak with you.” Ella gave him an empty-headed, winning smile.

The creature in front of her was perhaps too experienced, too ancient, to be nonplussed. He merely raised an eyebrow and regarded her.

The associate, Goldberg, hissed under his breath, “this is Thomas Xu, the CEO. Not whoever Wu Shen is.” He turned to his boss, “I am sorry Mister Xu. We were just finishing up our interview here.”

Ella held Xu’s eyes ignoring the associate. He no longer mattered.

“Oh, my mistake. Wu Shen and his son Wu Longwei are someone I have been looking forward to meeting for quite a while.” Ella let the grammatical error sit there in the open.

Mr. Xu’s eyes crinkled a bit in the corner and a slight smile appeared on his face. Ella might have been disarmed by the apparent amusement on his face if she couldn’t suddenly feel the build up of magic behind it. A lot of magic.

No guts, no glory, thought Ella.

“Now, now, little forest lizard1. Let’s not get Mr. Goldberg here all hot under the collar.” And Ella flared her eyes. The glow was brief, but she knew he could see it through her colored contacts.

Xu stared at her, and his smile became a bit strained. Ella could still feel the magic gathering and just had enough time to start worrying before she felt it begin to fade.

“Mr. Goldberg. I think this candidate just skipped the line. Miss…?”

“Jindal-Witten. But you can call me Ella. All my friends do. And I can tell we will be great friends.” She winked. Time to be bold.

As if they were at some formal court event, Mr. Xu (and Ella could not think of him as Tommy for even a moment even inside her head) offered her his arm, and they walked back to the lobby and up the grand stairwell in the lobby.

The office in which she found herself in was absolutely massive, three or more stories high and with floor to ceiling windows which featured a view over Central Park to the north. Marble floors and fireplace, expensive wooden desk, even more expensive Chinese tapestries. Mr. Xu walked to the corner and poured a drink for himself.

“Lay Mou?” He gestured at the bottle.

Ella thought for a moment before nodding yes. Her moment of bravado in the other room felt thinner after the walk, and it was all she could do not to tremble.

He handed the glass over and poured another for himself. He took something out of his pocket and it was a large pearl which he moved absentmindedly across and around his knuckles with practiced movements.

The glass had a slightly yellow tinge in the crystal tumbler. The drink had an sweet, overripe fruit aroma that turned Ella’s stomach. She forced herself to take a sip and maintain impassivity despite the odd, almost fermented soy sauce taste.

A strange sense of lunacy took over her, perhaps it was just Charlie’s influence: Ella took a deep breath and downed the rest of the glass in one go. She held up the glass for another pour which she downed as well.

“I bought this bottle at auction. It is the last bottle left. So… perhaps you could take it a bit slower and at least pretend you are enjoying it. At least for the 750,000 dollars you just drank.”

Ella’s eyes bugged out. “That bottle… is seven hundreds and fifty thousand dollars?”

“No dear. Those two glasses you just drank like a drunken sorority girl were worth that much. The bottle was perhaps two million.”

Ella looked at her glass. It still smelled horrible and the lingering taste wasn’t much better. Liquid courage and need formed her approach.

She threw the crystal glass and remaining liquor into the fireplace, hearing the crystal shatter but refusing to look.

“Mr. Xu, or Wu, or Li, or whatever name you would like to go by in this era. Enough with the posturing.”

There went the eyebrow up again. Ella started wondering if she could raise up one eyebrow like that. She almost tried before realizing that she was, absolutely, undeniably, being insane. No guts, no glory.

“Tommy is fine. After all, you are the first in hundreds of years to know my secret. In fact, both parts: that I have lived so long, and, more importantly, what I am. I believe you called me a forest lizard?” And now his tone was not friendly at all.

All Ella knew about dragons was that they were prideful and she needed to establish her bona fides here.

Ella stood up and looked right into the eyes of this creature that had lived for longer than anything she could contemplate.

“Well have you seen them? They are so cute! I am sure in your native form you are just as cute!”

He began to sputter a bit. Ella guess she had found out what it would take to disconcert a dragon. Now to shift the tone while he was off guard.

“I am here for your allegiance, and I will have it.”

And now he truly looked surprised.

“Allegiance?” and his eyes changed, becoming yellow and slitted. Another surge of magic but this time Ella flared her eyes bright and let her crown settle on her head. She pulled deep of magic, her eyes lit up to a blinding glaring light. The room was cast in stark relief.

“That crown,” he hissed. “I thought I smelled Ekerri’s stink on you. We bowed to that orc once. But never again. We rule this world now.”

“Emperor Ekerri,” chided Ella gently. No reason not to lean on borrowed authority.

He looked upset now, Ella waited, she thought about looking at her nails dismissively but thought that might be overplaying it. And then she realized that there was no overplaying it.

“Emperor Ekerri,” he growled in concession.

“Do you rule? What kind of ruler must hide like you do? What a reminder of the fragility of your power to have to conceal yourself? Can you call yourself a champion among ghosts?”

Ella didn’t know where her audacity came from, except from her desperation.

Scales began to split Xu’s face. The fine suit he was wearing began to bulge and tear at the seams.

A perverse sense of lunacy gave Ella the clarity she needed on what to do, how to disarm him, and she sat back down in her chair, laughing. “Put that away and sit down. No need to Hulk out here. Let us talk about power and what we can do for one another.”

Aren’t Indo-Chinese Forest Lizards cool looking?