LMS VII - A Rocky Side Adventure

They spent a few minutes just showing each other what they’d spotted on the menu before Jason ordered some sort of red drink that ended up too sugary for his liking (his Monochromon form would have despised that, he was sure!) and then they both could order their food. Roasted sandwiches with glittering rock and something that Jason was half-convinced were shards of a mirror. Texture was interesting for sure— and he could catch a, heh, snapshot of his brother covered in glitter and staring sullenly at his sandwich---betrayed by a sneeze.
Which did remind Jason and he fished the pictures from Diane’s presentation out of his exto. And noted how loose the strap now sat since it also needed to fit his Monochromon. Huh, he supposed that another trip to Dad’s favourite tailor would be necessary soon…
He hesitated a moment, pictures in hand, when he thought back to the encounter with Dad and Lee yesterday. His brother noticed, stopping half-way between two irritable swipes with his towel. It was glittering now as profoundly as Lee himself did.
“Is this what I think it is?” Lee asked, sounding way too long-suffering. He was of course only seeing the pictures. Jason made an effort to pull himself together and forced a smile that felt pretty convincing to himself.
“It definitely is,” Jason said easily, sliding the pictures over and making sure to let some glitter fall onto them. Dad would appreciate the effort and Aunt Kim would appreciate the art.
While Lee took them, irritably shaking off the glitter with an annoyed look, Jason leaned back and nearly fell off the chair because it did not have a backrest. Oops. Good thing Lee didn’t notice, too busy scowling at his own picture scowling back at him. Wouldn’t do to let the little brother think he’d lost his edge.
“You look like a grumpy gargoyle in this one,” Jason pointed out once he was secure in his seat again, resting both elbows on the marble top.
Lee just sighed and rendered the family book out of his own exto. Ah, so that’s where it was. With meticulous effort because Lee never did things by halves, he clipped their newest acquisitions onto the black, velvety pages. Dad would later put up a nice script to them, like he usually did.
Ugh Dad. Jason couldn’t remember a time where he’d been more frustrated with their father. He wished he wouldn’t let his century of experience run away with him all the time, ignoring the problems of today. Dad was way too carefree, all the time, and way too stubborn too. Lee got that from him. The way Dad refused to go for a straightforward solution when he thought he could get away with something flashy and fancy never failed to annoy Jason—but usually that was all it did. Dad usually NEVER endangered them all on purpose, just because something struck his fancy that he just had to try.
Yet twice now, Dad had refused to digivolve when the situation called for it. Dad was stable as a Rockmon, Jason had to remind himself. And yet, he almost never used it. Jason got it, Rockmon was large and cost extra on train fair (the reason why he dropped back to Gotsumon for train travel too) and the limbs were weirdly proportioned so maybe they lacked the dexterity that Dad preferred? But surely that was only a matter of practice? And it shouldn’t matter when a bunch of hooligans were shaking down their train and a Rockmon with a freaking laser beam would have been a perfectly valid deterrend!
And Jason really really didn’t want to start on yesterday.
Yesterday.
“Little brother,” Jason began without being sure where he wanted to go with this.
Lee was carefully scanning the family book, a look of pure concentration on his face. In a matter of seconds, the entire thing had vanished in a glitter of fractal code nearly as shiny as the specs of glitter still circling the air between them.
“Good job,” Jason added then. He hadn’t even begun to understand the fractal code work and just settled on being impressed now that Lee appeared to know what he was doing.
Lee grinned. “Heh.” Then he titled his head. “You were saying?”
With everything else that happened yesterday, and Aisha’s and Lily’s great efforts to distract from the situation, Jason really didn’t feel like he got a good talk out of either his father or his brother. Plus he had been too angry for it anyway. But that was yesterday. He gave Lee a quick onceover but his brother appeared his usual self: slightly frustrated with whatever project he was currently working on, annoyed about the way the conference had gone and of course curious for what was gonna happen next.
“…how are you, really?” Jason decided to ask.
Lee picked up on the shift in mood which was probably the only reason he was merely drawing his eyeridges in and not ridiculing him for question. Instead, his sharp yellow eyes fixed Jason with a stare and he could basically see that brain of his spinning into gear. It was almost a bit eerie. His brother was scarily smart when he set his mind on a task.
Eventually, Lee seemed to have determined the reason for the question and rolled his eyes. He leaned back against the backrest (because of course he had chosen the bench mounted to the wall and not one of the free-standing stools) and made a non-comittal noise.
“You shouldn’t worry so much,” he said eventually, giving Jason a stare out of half-lidded eyes. “We’re fine now, right?”
It was a similar thing to what he’d told Aisha and Lily yesterday too back before Jason had gone to have this unsuccessful confrontation with Dad.
“Really?” Jason asked, more to see the reaction. He felt a bit better equipped for the conversation now, at least.
That got him another narrowing of eyes until the simmering yellow was only a small strip in the black.

ut Jason was determined to win this test of patience and waited, clicking his finger against the edge of the plate.
Finally, Lee relented. He sighed. “What do you want to hear from me?”
“Maybe you could start with a straight answer,” Jason said, shuddering as his brother took a sip of his tee. Lee didn’t even bat an eye. Actually, he wasn’t even breaking eye contact. Gathering himself, Jason continued, “You know, because no one of you told me how this happened.”
They only really told him that they ran into an angry Grounddramon in the middle of the warehouse district and NO ONE had been there to help. This didn’t happen out of nowhere! You didn’t just run into angry Ultimate level digimon, and you were never really this alone in a city. Especially the city with the Guard Headquarters. This was too much of a coincidence, no, too convenient. And Jason bet that this was somehow Dad’s fault too.
“All you wanted to do was head to the library,” Jason reminded his brother, getting a little angry. He still couldn’t believe it; that he let them out of his sight for a couple of hours and they both managed to nearly die. In a city. He had to think of Lily’s earlier reprimand, as if things were safer here.
Lee paused, busying himself with stirring the tea. He was even throwing sugar into the mix now too. Yuck.
But the stalling couldn’t last for ever and there was a slightly embarrassed gruffness in Lee’s voice when he said, “Uhhh…. We kinda got got. Someone sent a messenger Sheepmon inviting Dad over, so we went there. And wouldn’t you the quickest way to Hawk’s Nest had been straight through the Warehouse district?”
Since this was Jason’s (and by extension Lee’s too) first time in Mirage (Not much to explore or find out in such a well-known city after all), Jason had to consult what he remembered of the map Dad had given them. Huh, kinda an oversight that Hawk’s Nest, home of the resident bird digimon could only be accessed via ferry. From the Warehouse district. As if they didn’t even want visitors over there.
“And you didn’t find that suspicious at all?” Jason asked, still pondering this. Something else was niggling at him too.
Here, Lee actually shrugged. “Well it was one of Dad’s contacts. He knows people everywhere we go! And they’re all weirdos. Remember the anti-social Kunemon?”
Jason remembered. A trio of yellow caterpillars who only communicated via leaving messages on walls when no one was watching. It had been a whole thing. A very Dad thing because of course he’d played along.
“Getting a letter was comparatively normal!” Lee insisted.
Since Jason couldn’t really put his finger on why this was bothering him more than he already expected, he just motion for Lee to continue and remained silent until he got the whole story.
How Grounddramon had used a gullible Sheepmon to lure his father and his brother into this suspiciously cleared out district (and he started to wonder if Lee was right, maybe Grounddramon HAD eaten all the other occupants before the village guard showed up to deal with him). How Grounddramon had ambushed them, the brother of a friend of Aunt Kim’s, so not even someone involved with Dad specifically. How somehow this ultimate level dragon had connected all this to his dead sister, murdered by Human digimon. And how Dad had of course refused to digivolve, or even summon any of the reliable constructs until it had nearly been too late. In the end, if it weren’t for the Village Guard FINALLY noticing the commotion right under their noses (or maybe, possibly, the reports of all the missing people), Jason wouldn’t have a brother and a father anymore.
So.
Well.
That certainly was something. And even with all the information now presented to him, it still didn’t really make much sense!
“And if you were asking if I was scared,” Lee concluded, snappish after reliving yesterday’s events, “well of course I was. You would have been too. It was a gigantic Grounddramon and it had it out for Dad specifically!”
Really, it was that part that actually scared Jason. That this digimon had somehow decided that Dad was a target for… for coming here? For being a Human digimon in favour of this random conference?
“And don’t think yourself too important,” Lee continued when Jason remained silent. His little brother had his elbows on the table, staring him down. “It’s not like you could have done anything even if you’d been there. It wouldn’t have made any difference.”
…yeah, it wouldn’t have. Monochromon was sturdy alright but it probably wouldn’t have made a difference against Grounddramon. The level difference would have had been too steep.
“You don’t know that,” Jason said instead. He hadn’t been there, in the end. He couldn’t really picture the situation all too clearly. And maybe his presence would have made the difference. The important part was that he had not been there. And he should have.
He really never should have let Lily and Aisha convince him to leave his family alone.

Ugh, Jason was brooding.
Lee sipped his tea (Will had been right, this was pretty good!) and really didn’t understand what the problem was. Yes, yes, scary Grounddramon, Dad being incorrigibly stubborn. It was the usual. It annoyed Lee that Jason couldn’t seem to let this go. He said he was fine and he meant it! He took way more about fractal code away from this entire encounter, now that he figured out how to do a wide-scale scan!
Yet, Jason seemed preoccupied with other things. “If this guy had been a former Village Guard, why has he even attacked you? Aren’t they supposed to be… I don’t know… better than the rest of us? And don’t you think Dad’s been kinda weird about this whole thing? Weirder than usual. He’s avoiding me.”
Lee titled his head.

He hadn’t really noticed any avoidance, but now that Jason mentioned it…. There had been something strange about Grounddramon. He thought back to the mad ramblings that the large, green, Ultimate-level had descended into. Groundramon had started so coherently, answering back whenever Dad said something with something that made sense. Sure, he was completely off-kilter, blaming them for the entire conference or… something. Well, he could at least tell them all about his sister and her last day without… well. Without what became of him later. Lee remembered vividly, the mad ramblings, how whatever Grounddramon said made less and less sense. Come to think of it, the fact that he’d managed to reason himself into the position that somehow DAD ended up the bad guy in his eyes… That whole process of logic had been… unusual.
“There was this… haze around him,” Lee said slowly. “I mean Grounddramon.”
“What?” Jason let go of his glass of boring water and stared at him across the table.
Lee nodded. “Yeah. Dad noticed it too, I think. Didn’t say anything about it tho…”
He tried describing the thing to Jason but could already tell that his brother gave up on the pair of evil yellow eyes that Lee thought he’d seen floating in the haze. But then again, they had seen weirder…
“So you think this might be the reason that Grounddramon behaved so irrationally?” Jason asked. He looked back at him attentively and suddenly it was hard to tell if he was skeptic or actually believed him.
Lee shrugged and was about to give a half-hearted agreement, when a new voice spoke up.
“That’s absolutely the reason, kiddos.”
That scratchy, self-aggrandizing voice. Lee sat up straight, eyes wide, and turned to the tall Beast digimon that had for some reason decided to start climbing in through the window. The wooden frame creaked ominously as the cat lady shimmied through, absurdly long claws clicking against the glass. Lee flinched at the sound and then got annoyed for showing weakness in front of that digimon.
“Lady Bastemon!” Jason said, surprised but not intimidated as Ophanimon’s daughter dropped down next to their table with cat-like grace. She even managed to NOT catch her wide trousers in the window, somehow.
Belatedly, Lee added a much less enthused, “Lady Bastemon…”
Behind the veil over her cat face, she was grinning sharply. “And you are Oliver’s spawn. So that’s where you went!” She easily jumped onto the high bench next to Lee and he couldn’t suppress another flinch.
Lee hastily shuffled away from her, especially when she put her feet up the table (and yes, these claws were just as long as her fingernails), and started watching them out of creepy, yellow eyes.
Jason, not fazed, simply said, “He didn’t hatch us. He got us from Primary Village like a normal person.”
Bastemon chuckled. To Lee it sounded decidedly evil. He looked for a way out but there hadn’t been that many digimon in the café to begin with and--- well you couldn’t really turn down a child of Ophanimon when she sought you out specifically…
“Ha no one with even a gram of sanity left would choose to hatch a digimon.” Bastemon said, still smiling. “I’ve seen what THAT does to people. In any case, heard you ran afoul with Mirage’s Most Wanted yesterday?”
The brothers traded a look. And Lee could tell from experience that Jason was a lot less sure of the situation than he was letting on. His older brother was carefully tapping his finger against his almost empty glass and even his orange-tinted eyes had started darting around the room.
What did this intimidating digimon want from them? Bastemon was at least as dangerous as Grounddramon had been, if not more. Sure, Dad had introduced her as a classmate from his university days, but that meant very little. She was… bad news. Not that he would let her know that. He set his face into a scowl but couldn’t actually find his voice to tell her off.
“You mean Grounddramon?” Jason asked, and Lee noticed the sharp edge to his voice he tried to hide behind his usual approachability. “My father and my brother ran into him yesterday.”
“Exactly. Had all the brave little village guards stumped. But you saw it, didn’t you?” Bastemon turned her unsettling gaze onto Lee. “The aura?”
Lee shook his head, annoyed at himself that he couldn’t look away from these eyes. The movement was slow, so he could keep her in view at all times.
She ignored the reaction, and if possible her smile widened. Through the translucent material of her veal, her teeth looked especially sharp. “I know what it was. Seen it often enough, over on Metal. Cases have been rising, in the last forty years, huh?”
“What are you talking about?” Jason asked. He had stopped tapping his glass and was now looking at Bastemon with single-minded focus.
Bastemon wiggled her toes. “It’s obvious isn’t it, if you think about it for half-a-second. Which power left in the Digital World could whip a digimon into such a frenzy? Could twist your beliefs and turn you manic?”
When she received only blank stares, she huffed. “Ugh, they really don’t teach you anything at school anymore huh? Add it to the pile of things my mother would be devastated over.”
Now that was just unfair. Lee had studied really hard for school and he hated having his intelligence questioned. Even if it was by a random Beast digimon forcing herself into their space. Why was she here? Wasn’t she Dad’s friend or something--- Wait.
“Did Dad send you?” Lee asked, surprising himself with how steady (and of course accusing) his voice came out. He held onto the anger to keep himself going. “Why else would you show up now?”
He still nearly wilted when she turned her attention back to him and said without any inflection in her voice, “Of course not, I came here to stalk you all on my own volition.”

Lee had no idea what to make of this digimon.
“What kind of power in the Digital World…” Jason repeated Bastemon’s words. He sounded almost thoughtful. No, he DID sound thoughtful. There was the same intense look in his eyes as whenever Dad was being especially mysterious and unhelpful, putting them in front of a riddle.
Only, it already annoyed Lee that Bastemon had made it sound so obvious. That not figuring this out immediately meant he simply wasn’t smart enough.
Then again, he also said this was something the other children going to school should have figured out. Which meant several of the more interesting discoveries Dad had taught them about where out of the question.
Against his better judgement, Lee found himself thinking about the issue. What kind of thing was taught in school about … Hm, mind altering substances? Something that brough tout the worst in people and made them paranoid, more susceptible to their base urges?
“It’s not that weird mirror thing. From the dark temple in the desert, that’s for sure,” Jason said, also focused on the problem at hand.
Bastemon simply looked at him, a flicker of confusion going through her eyes. Hah, of COURSE she wouldn’t know all of Dad’s discoveries.
“Has to be something anyone from school could know,” Lee added.
Jason made a face. He had failed his school exams several times because he couldn’t bother to memories the official narrative. But Bastemon would also not be interested in the typical lies told there, right? She was a Beast digimon after all. Hm Beast digimon…
There…was something taught in school about influences on the Digital World. Something Lee himself had never ever seen in action but everyone who had been alive before the war, including Dad, swore by the effects. Schools still taught it, and asked exam questions about it, as if the past 30 years hadn’t been a thing.
Bastemon herself had just mentioned it. Her mother was Ophanimon, the Angel of Love and Life. According to Dad, just being in Ophanimon’s presence had been revitalising. She’d been able to foster peace and friendly relations wherever she went just because of who she was.
And then… Seraphimon was the Angel of Law and Order. He’d founded the Village Guard system because he loved justice so much. Dad didn’t really talk about him all that much, apparently Seraphimon hadn’t really been a mon of the people, preferring to keep to himself and his advisors. And the Village Guards of course.
Both were dead now, so their influence wouldn’t count, even if Grounddramon’s rage could have been caused by a sense of twisted justice, couldn’t it?
“Cherubimon,” Lee mumbled. Cherubimon was the Angel of Knowledge and Truth. And he was very much still alive.
Bastemon laughed. Rather she cackled like an evil witch, eyes small with mirth.
“Exactly! That’s it! Cherubimon!” She made a grand gesture with her clawed hand and finally, the trio of Chuumon on the neighbouring table gave up their pretense and scattered in terrified squeaks. Hah, Lee knew everyone had just been desperately pretending to be fine with the Ultimate level Beast digimon of unclear motivations casually hanging around the café!
Bastemon took offence at the fleeing mice. She growled and raised her fist but something made her pause. She contemplated for a moment, an expression that didn’t seem to fit onto her face, and then decided against taking any drastic action. She huffed, self-satisfied, and watched the little, pink mouses through the window. “Yeah you better run, you little morsel!” She chuckled darkly.
Why were all of Ophanimon’s children such massive jerks? It’s not like Jason or he could do anything about it; Lee’s last run in with a Beast digimon on her level had been discuss in too much detail already after all.
“What is going on here? What---” Togemon’s voice boomed next to them, the gigant cactus coming to a stop hear their table. The holes in his prickly skin that constituted his eyes, were wide and round. “L-Lady Bastemon!” Deep dropplets of sweat formed below his thorns. “To what do I owe the honour!” he managed to croak out, clearly unhappy with the ‘honourable’ guest and desperately hoping no one would notice.
Bastemon gave him a vernichtend look over the sharp nails of her feet. “I want some spirits, got any?” She added another one of her dark chuckles. “Hah! The alcoholic kind of course!”
Togemon stared a moment longer, probably trying to swallow his frustrations and then forced his mouth into a smile. “Of course. Right away.” He spun on his boots and stalked straight through the pearl curtain into the kitchen, completely ignoring the line of bottles near the counter.
“Seriously, the alcoholic kind?” Jason scoffed.
“Wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong kind of idea,” Bastemon said sharply. “Never found the Spirits Mom used to hide in her basement. A shame really. We could really put them to use over on Metal.” Her tone suggested that she’d just made the joke of the century but Lee was still lost.
He was still thinking about what she’d meant when she basically accused Cherubimon as the origin of that… aura… that evil thing that happened to Groundramon.
He tried to catch his brother’s eyes but Jason suddenly had this worried crick between the plates of his forehead. What…?
“Ophanimon… she had the Human Spirits of Thunder, Ice and Fire, right?” Jason asked and Lee wondered at the odd tone in his voice.
It was true of course. Ophanimon might have never created her own Warriors out of them, unlike Cherubimon, but she did have these three Spirits. Nobody really knew what happened to them. He’d always figured that they went to Ophanimon’s children… and now that he knew what they were like, they probably had them on display in on of their fancy mansions.
But then again… Bastemon had just said she also didn’t know where they’d gone… Then, where they still in Ophanimon’s Castle? Maybe encoded light the Spirit back home…! The Spirit back home!

Suddenly Jason’s reaction made a lot more sense. Lee vividly remembered their trip to the three great stone statues, so many years ago. The very first puzzle Dad ever gave them. How long it had taken them to just understand the first few lines, to realise that THIS was a resting place for a great Spirit of the ancients. It had to be Garmmon, the Beast of Light. The Human Spirits had always been with he Angels after all.
For a moment, Lee wondered why that was. Why had they only been entrusted with the Human Spirits? Why were the Beast Spirits so special? Or rather: What really happened, back when the Ancient Warriors had lost their lives against Lucemon? How were the Spirits created? Would looking at their fractal code composition answer some of these questions?
Dad always said that the Beast Spirit back home was way too dangerous, that it was better they didn’t tell anyone and that it should remain encrypted. Light and Wind were Seraphimon’s Spirits, so Garmmon was rightfully his… And Dad hadn’t told him about it, even though Dad had known about the Beast Spirit for decades. So… had Dad not trusted Seraphimon with that knowledge? What really had been happening, so long ago?
Bastemon was looking at Lee with her glowing yellow eyes. They were suddenly so large, like dinner plates, the black pupils nothing more than tiny slights. He wanted to recoil, never realising how close she had come to him. He… He should stop thinking about this. Immediately.
“So not even you know anything about Lady Ophanimon’s Spirit Warriors?” Jason asked and the spell was broken.
Lee nearly fell over in his effort to lean away from Bastemon, figuring that dropping to the floor was still preferable to her closeness. But Bastemon too had straightened and turned to Jason with lazy grace.
“What Spirit Warriors? My mother would never burden a normal digimon with such responsibility,” Bastemon said flatly. “Seraphimon on the other hand,” she added with a meaningful undertone and again Lee felt scrutinised. As if she knew.
Lee stared back at her, desperately rallying his anger. How dare she just come in here and, and, and threaten them like that! If Dad hadn’t told Seraphimon, they would sure as hell not tell HER!
“Lord Seraphimon has used his Spirits?” Jason prompted, and there was at least an undercurrent of interest to him. Enough to tell Lee that this wasn’t purely to catch Bastemon’s attention even though he really appreciated his brother’s interference. “Lobomon and Kazemon?”
“Those two? No, no I don’t remember them. It has been forty years tho so…” Bastemon trailed off and dramatically tapped her head as if to visualise some sort of memory impairment. If she weren’t still so terrifying, Lee would have scoffed.
“But I do remember Zephirmon very, very well,” Bastemon continued with a self-satisfied grin. “Such a shame that she’s been such a stick-in–the mud before she died. Otherwise she would have been kinda hot.”
Zephirmon… the Beast of Wind. Lee actually hadn’t known that she was active. Or had been, rather. “She died?” he asked, now also getting interested. There was just something inherently COOL about the Spirits of the Ancient Warriors. And again, he thought about Garmmon and what they could learn of the past from it. If only…
“Zephirmon? Yeah. She has to be dead. Otherwise she’d be a poor servant of Law and Order now, would she?” Bastemon said dismissively. “Bet she died as a prelude to the war and now Cherubimon’s keeping her Spirit somewhere. Probably can’t control such a goody twoshoes, hah!”
Right. Cherubimon. It always came back to Cherubimon, didn’t it? He started the war on Metal. His aura made digimon act out. He was collecting the fractal code and destroying everything…. Just, it was all so frustrating.
“Mercurymon’s also a poor servant to Cherubimon,” Jason pointed out, probably remembering the recent headlines.
Here, Bastemon let out a low groan that… for the first time sounded real. Like her first genuine emotion since this daughter of Ophanimon’s had decided to mess with them.
“Don’t get me started on THAT prick,” Bastemon said, going so far as to remove her legs from the table to sit up straight. “We can’t go five steps over on Metal without that idiot trying to micromanage our every move. I have no idea what Angie sees in this guy.”
Okay, yeah, definitely a real frustrating with the Warrior of Metal there.
For a moment, Lee was afraid that Bastemon would talk herself into a fury, she seemed like the type, and all the negative consequences that would entail. But the moment passed and then the heavy steps of Togemon interrupted Bastemon’s building rage.
She flicked her eyes toward the pearl curtain just in time to see the green cactus come back out. On his gloved hands he carried a massive tablet with a large mug and a gigantic teapot. It had a layered design, each layer separated by an intricate relief. Only once Togemon was close to their table, Lee could make out the different Royal Knights in the teapot’s design. Steam was curling from the long curved spout.
“Ah, the good, good stuff,” Bastemon said appreciatively, grabbing the pot from the tablet—which nearly caused Togemon to overbalance and drop the mug. The mug itself was a pretty standard three-angel design which gave Ophanimon the prominent spot, her long hair forming the handle. That much was typical Mirage schlock you found at every corner store. The teapot was special though. No one really gave the Royal Knights their due attention (except maybe Cassie when she wrote her romantic stories about them) and Lee had his magnifying glass against the ornate design the moment Bastemon put the pot on the table. He barely paid attention to her grabbing the mug as well or that she even deigned to pay for whatever this was. (Some sort of fancy, alcoholic tea that Trailmon brought in from way beyond the Luv Mountains, apparently, not that Lee cared much). Only later, Jason would tell him that Bastemon had also paid for THEIR drinks and food in the same, fell swoop.
For now, the teapot. It was very obvious that, much like Ophanimon on the mug, two of the twelve Royal Knights had also been put into a position of prominence on the teapot. Ophanimon in Mirage was of course expected; this had basically been her city, even if Seraphimon put the guard headquarters here.
What made Dukemon and Crusadermon of the twelve Royal Knights so special, that they alone would build the bottom layer, the one all the other layers relied on? Crusdermon’s spiralling ribbons formed the spout and Dukemon’s flowing cape the handle. From the way the relief stood out against the white ceramic, Lee would say that this utensil was very old. At least three thousand years, if he correctly judged the style.