The Last Victory

9. Broken

With a loud scream, Shen struck a pillar. It had taken more than an hour to be responsive again. Not least thanks to the soothsayer, who had given him and his family a quick waking up remedy.
Now everyone was in one of the many halls. Po could only make it clear to him with difficulty that he would never dare to approach the clutch without permission.
"Shen, it wasn't his fault," Soothsayer tried again. "I saw myself how he tried to rescue them."
"Yes," Po added. "As I said, it was this veiled, flying figure."
Po broke off when Shen's wings began to shake extremely. Everyone could see that if the soothsayer wasn't in the room, he would have torn the panda to pieces.
Yin-Yu was not far from them, but she was still quite dazed from the soporific. But she had already noticed that her unborn children weren't there anymore. Xia stood next to her and held her wings. She was extremely affected by the whole thing, too.
"Maybe there is still hope," she said calmly, although she wasn't sure about herself. It was actually impossible that the eggs could have survived such a fall. Nevertheless, they had induced that the soldiers searched the area.
Shen's sharp look immediately silenced her. Anger and despair had eroded the peacock internally long ago, but he still could control it that he not perished with that.
At that moment a couple of rams came into the room. Shen looked up immediately. But to everyone's surprise, his voice seemed to have died. Instead, the rams had to begin their report.
"My Lord, this is all we have found." With these words, he held out something in a basket. Immediately, Shen ran over to him. But what he found in the basket were empty eggshells.
Suddenly, Yin-Yu jumped up and lunged forward. A single look was enough for her to see the Chinese markings. With a loud cry, she turned away briefly, covering her face. But that very moment she threw herself on the basket and hugged him as if it were a living person. Shen stood next to her and was initially unable to move. Then he slowly put a wing on her trembling shoulder. Apart from her sobs, nothing was heard in the room. The air in the hall was oppressive. As if you couldn't breathe anymore.
Po slumped down. He couldn't believe that the children who were soon to see the light of day should no longer be there. They just weren't there anymore. It seemed so unrealistic to him. He screwed up his eyes and opened them again, hoping to wake up from a nightmare.
But what happened after that made it brutally clear to him that it wasn't a dream at all. Because in the next moment, the white peacock turned to him. Po could just avoid the approaching knife bullets and hide behind a pillar.
"YOU DAMN CREATURE!" the lord screamed.
In shock, Po peeked around the corner. "What did I do? I tried to save them."
There was another load of feather knives and the panda was forced to take cover again.
"You caused this calamity!" Shen continued to yell at him. "I should never have let you into my house!"
Po pressed against the pillar. He couldn't blame Shen's outburst of anger, but he feared Shen might go nuts in his anger now. His fears seemed to be correct when the peacock suddenly appeared next to him.
Startled Po backed away. "No, please calm down!"
But Shen seemed completely insane and rushed to the panda. But before he could reach him, someone pushed him aside. The peacock slid across the ground and came to a halt on a wall. Panting, he straightened up and looked into the faces of his children, who stood protectively in front of the panda.
At first, it looked like the peacock would attack again, but when Xia and Sheng raised their wings, he sank back to the ground, as if he understood the whole thing now.
Nobody said a word for a while. Shen lay there, panting, until he got up crouched. Then he leaned his wing against the wall and stared at the floor.
Finally, he took a deep breath. "Leave my house immediately!"
"Father, please..." Xia fell silent when her father raised a wing, which silenced her.
"Leave my house," he repeated in a firm voice. "And never come back!"
With heavy, slow steps he left the room, followed closely by a hard slamming of a door.
The room fell silent. Even Yin-Yu had stopped crying, but she still couldn't utter a word. She was lying on the floor, still clutching the basket, and seemed somehow absent-minded. Her daughter quickly took the initiative and leaned down to her.
Po looked around and didn't know what to do now.
Finally, Soothsayer spoke. "Po, just go," she said. "There's no point in making him angrier. Maybe he'll get over it."
The Dragon Warrior noticed that she doubted it very much, but at the moment he couldn't think of anything better. With hunched shoulders, he went towards the exit. On his way he passed Yin-Yu and Xia. He paused and gave them a sad look.
"Po," Xia said to him. "It wasn't your fault."
But that couldn't cheer up Po anymore either. And the fact that the culprit could not be held responsible, since no one could identify him, either without a description, depressed him even more.
After he had packed his things, he left the palace with heavy steps. While he wandered across the large square, he didn't notice a pair of eyes who watched him from the roof. The dark figure waited a while longer, then he swung himself into the air and flew into the mountains.