by Dante King
It took us another few hours of navigating these treacherous cliffside paths to finally reach the top of the escarpment. When we did, we were rewarded with awe-inspiring views over the mountains we’d just come through. Only just visible in the distance, the blue rim of the ocean lay beyond them.
Ahead of us was a jungle-covered plateau, and the road led into the heart of the trees.
“We have at least three full days’ travel through the jungle before we get to the outskirts of the capital,” Ji-Ko said. “This jungle is crawling with saber-toothed panthers and all sorts of other dangerous creatures. Keep your eyes and ears open at all times.”
I grinned. “Oh, I will.”
Even though it was late afternoon and the sun was still shining brightly, a few minutes after stepping into the jungle it was as if we’d stepped into night. We had to light torches to guide the way; the tree canopy above and the lush green foliage around us was all so dense that it blocked out most of the sunlight. The heat and humidity were oppressive. You’d sweat standing still. Walking a few steps got you drenched.
Not all of the abundant life here was threatening. Many colorful birds flitted around, and strange, vividly colored lizards crawled up and down the moss-covered trees. Insects buzzed and sang, and made such a racket that we could barely manage to hold a conversation.
Layna was delighted to see all sorts of strange spiders in this place. They were nothing like her horse-sized war spiders, of course, but they were pretty big, some the size of a man’s torso. She made pets of them; I guessed it was some sort of Arachne thing, but the spiders scuttled eagerly over to her whenever she called them, and they would sit like docile pet birds on her shoulders, or walk alongside her like obedient mutts.
When dusk did finally begin to fall, the jungle grew really dark, and we were clearly being watched. Many eyes observed us closely, none of them friendly. In the not-so-far distance, I heard threatening growls and rumbles.
Anna-Lucielle walked over to me, looking nervous. “I wish I’d borrowed Rollar’s Beast Helm. Then I could reach out to these panthers and persuade them that we’re not for eating.”
“Don’t you worry about that, Anna-Lucielle,” I said. “If those panthers do try anything as stupid as attacking us, they’ll regret it. You’re safe with me, trust me.”
Layna came over and joined our conversation. “I’ve heard that once a wild beast gets a taste for human flesh, it will want to eat only humans from that point on.” She smiled one of her dark smiles, hairy red and blue spiders crawling over her busty torso. “I can understand the panthers’ desires, I must say.”
A low growl rumbled close to the edge of the road a dozen yards ahead. It was answered by a snarling bark from some bushes on the other side of the road. This in turn was answered by another growl to our rear right, then one more from our rear left.
“Prepare to fight, God of Death,” Ji-Ko yelled as he and his fellow monks dropped into fighting stances. “The beasts have us surrounded, and they will surely attack!”
“Yes! Fuck yes!” Yumo grinned maniacally as she notched a glowing blue Cold arrow to her Ice Bow. “Come here, pussy cats, come play with Yumo!”
Anna-Lucielle shot the enjarta an uneasy stare, and all I could do was chuckle.
I drew Grave Oath and twirled it in my hands. Layna hissed and settled into a fighting stance, her palms facing outwards, ready to blast webs at the panthers. Anna-Lucielle’s hands began to emit a gentle pink glow as she drew on her Charm powers.
“Something tells me a bloodthirsty saber-toothed panther might not be too susceptible to the powers of Charm,” I said to her. “But you’re welcome to try taming one.”
“My Charm powers have gotten us out of some sticky situations before,” she said, “and I’m willing to bet they’ll help us in some way here too.”
“I’m just kidding,” I started, “I—”
A deep, throaty roar cut me off, and I looked up the road and caught my first glimpse of a saber-toothed panther. It was a huge, shaggy beast the size of a draft horse, dark brown with olive-green and deep-green stripes all over its body. Its upper jaws were big enough to swallow a man’s head whole, and a pair of curved fangs extended from them, each well over a foot long. Each of the panther’s four paws had four long, razor-sharp claws. In its huge head, a pair of yellow eyes gleamed with predatory menace.
“Look to your flanks,” Ji-Ko said. “The leader draws the prey’s attention to the front, but the attack comes from the sides. They attack in packs of around twenty cats.”
A group of saber-toothed panthers burst out of the foliage on either side of the road, sprinting faster than any racehorse, running low to the ground, their ears flattened back against their heads, jaws open and claws bared.
The fight was on.
Two panthers came at me simultaneously, while another two charged at Layna, who blasted webs around their heads and rolled out of the way while shooting more webs at the enraged beasts.
I dived headlong into one of the leaping creatures, smashing into it. As the pair of us flew through the air, it tried to slam its claws into my back, but the beast couldn’t pierce my assassin’s armor. We hit the ground and rolled in a mad mess of fur and muscle. Before it could grip me in its canines, I slammed Grave Oath through the panther’s yellow eye into its brain. Its whole body slackened, jerked, then became still as I took its beast soul. Before Grave Oath’s magic could shrink and wither the creature’s skull, I pulled it out. I needed the creature’s body intact.
I sprang to my feet just in time to engage with the second panther. Dropping Grave Oath, I pulled the power of Death into my fists. As the panther came flying at me, I jumped upward and gave it a flying dragon punch. My Plague Fists, black and gray with Death magic, smashed the airborne creature’s head back with the force of a battle-axe. The panther flew up and back into the treetops from the power of the blow. It was dead before its floppy body draped itself over a thick tree bough.
The Blind Monks couldn’t see the cats, but their other senses worked in beautiful tandem to tell them exactly where the cats were and how fast they were moving. The monks worked in pairs, two to a cat, moving with astonishing speed and agility. They somersaulted over or rolled under the pouncing panthers, delivering vicious flying kicks to the beasts and bouncing off them before the cats could use their claws or fangs.
Yumo was whooping with glee as she dived, rolled, and shot arrow after arrow into the attacking panthers. Each of her perfectly placed Cold arrows pierced a panther’s chest, the Cold magic stopping the beasts’ hearts almost immediately.
Up ahead, Ji-Ko had managed to get onto one of the panther’s backs, and I saw him break the writhing creature’s neck with a quick twist of his deft hands. The other monks had also killed a bunch of panthers; an effective demonstration of the prowess of their unarmed combat skills.
I spun around just in time to see Layna stabbing her curved dagger into a web-tangled panther’s heart.
The rest of the panthers fled, not interested in prey who would fight back.
“Where’s Anna-Lucielle?” I asked, feeling worried for my goddess.
Yumo retrieved a Cold arrow from a dead panther, checked the head, and gave a satisfied nod before returning it to her quiver. “She’s over there.” The enjarta gestured to the forest behind me.
When I saw Anna-Lucielle, I almost burst into laughter. She Lucielle was sitting on the ground, smiling, giving the saber-toothed panther a belly rub. The savage beast was lying on its back, looking as content as any housecat, and rumbling out a deep, satisfied purr.
“I told you my Charm powers would come in handy,” Anna-Lucielle looked up at me and grinned.
I picked up Grave Oath and walked over to the purring panther.
“Killing this one will be a lot easier than the others,” I said, kneeling down and raising Grave Oath above my head to deliver a killing blow to the panther’s throat.
“No, Vance!” Anna-Lucielle protested, throw
ing herself between me and the panther. “She’s my friend now. Don’t kill her.”
“It’s your ‘friend’ for only as long as your Charm magic works on it,” I said sternly. “The instant it wears off, it’s a man-eating killing machine again. Let me kill it and raise it as my undead creature. We both know that that’s the only way to be sure we’re safe from this thing at all times.”
“She isn’t a ‘thing,’ Vance, and I’ve found that I’m able to communicate with beasts without Rollar’s helm. She’s agreed to be our ally.”
“After she saw us kill all of her friends? Right.”
“She was the runt of the pack, and they all picked on her. She’s happy to see them go. Please, Vance, don’t kill her. I’ll keep her under control. I’ll make a collar for her and imbue it with Charm magic to make sure. Please.”
“All right, you can keep her,” I said as I sheathed Grave Oath. “But if this thing tries anything, I’m killing it.”
Anna-Lucielle jumped up and threw her arms around me. “Thank you, Vance, thank you! I promise you she’ll behave.”
After I kissed the goddess, I closed my eyes and resurrected all the dead panthers. It felt good to have undead beings around me again; I’d felt like a part of my body had been amputated without them around.
“That was some impressive fighting,” I then said to my party. “Now we don’t only have some extra fighters on our side, we have mounts who can carry us at great speed. There’s enough for everyone to ride. Ji-Ko, you know how fast these things are. If we ride non-stop all the way to the Forbidden Palace, how long will it take us to get there?”
“On these panthers, we could get there at dawn tomorrow, if we ride through the night,” Ji-Ko said.
Chapter Twenty-Five
We rode through the night with threatening growls and snarls all around us in the dark. Luckily, the presence of my undead panther pack kept the other predators at bay. As Ji-Ko had said, by the time the eastern sky grew lighter, the jungle started thinning. Soon after sunrise, we found ourselves on a grassy plateau, looking down over City of Jewels, the capital of Yeng.
The City of Jewels was a sprawling metropolis, bigger than any city I’d ever visited. A broad river ran through it, dividing the city in half. The Forbidden Palace stood on the smaller half, close to the center and on a tall hill surrounded by what looked like a broad, deep moat. This was obviously the wealthier half; the buildings were larger, more spaced out, and even from this distance, we could see they were more ostentatious and impressive. On the other side of the river, the buildings were dirty and crammed together.
“There it is,” Yumo said with a sneer, “the asshole of Yeng: the City of Jewels. And the hemorrhoid on that asshole is the Emperor’s Forbidden Palace.”
Despite what Yumo had just said about the Forbidden Palace, nobody could deny how impressive it looked. As big and mighty as any of Prand’s largest palaces and castles, the Forbidden Palace towered over the rest of City of Jewels like a glorious statue. The architecture was unmistakably Yengish, as were the colors of the many towers and spires; yellows, reds, and gold were everywhere. The palace was surrounded with crenellated walls at least twenty feet high, patrolled by hundreds of archers, and the rooftops were all in the pagoda style. The main road through the city led to the drawbridge over the moat. It was lined with hundreds of fifty-foot-tall statues of past emperors of Yeng, staring out over the bustling city with stern stone eyes.
We decided to set up camp on the grassy heights overlooking the city. While my fighters rested their weary minds and bodies, I sat and observed the place, taking in details, until I was interrupted by a voice to my rear.
“I don’t need to sleep when I’ve got a mission to complete. Sleep is for the weak.”
I turned around and saw Yumo standing a few yards away, wearing a mischievous grin on her beautiful face.
“I have divine aid, let’s say, Yumo,” I said. “But you’re mortal, and every mortal, no matter how energetic or strong, eventually needs to sleep. You should get some rest with the others. I need everyone to be alert and at their best for this mission.”
“Oh, I do sleep when I get tired, I’m not immune from that. I sometimes sleep for days. But when I’m on a mission, I get so pumped I can’t sleep for days.”
“I guess you’re pretty excited about this mission then.”
“Are you kidding? This is the mission I’ve been waiting for my entire life. I get to take my revenge against the Emperor, help the God of Death find Kemji’s lost Dragon Gauntlet and resurrect the Dragon Goddess, and, you know, hopefully prevent the end of the world. This is the sort of mission I’ve dreamed about since I was a little girl!”
“Your enthusiasm is good, don’t get me wrong, but I want to make something clear. I get that the Emperor’s ancestors fucked your ancestors over, and you’ve got a grudge to settle. Believe me, I know what that feels like. The bottom line is I don’t want you to do anything that will jeopardize my mission. Getting the Dragon Gauntlet is paramount here, not your revenge quest against the Emperor. If I have to be pleasant to him to get it, then that’s what we’re going to do. Sure, it might come down to kicking his ass, but I don’t want you to stir trouble and screw things up for us just because you hate him and want to get your vengeance. Understood?”
“I understand, yes.” Her tone was uncharacteristically meek. “I won’t let my hatred of the man cloud my judgment, and I won’t do anything stupid, trust me. I actually have a plan to propose.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“The Emperor has been acting more strangely than usual, which is saying a lot—the current Emperor is even more of an oddball than his predecessor. Recent reports coming from within the walls of the Forbidden Palace are disturbing.”
“Disturbing how?”
“They say the Emperor locks himself up in his room for days, only permitting food and water to be left by his door so that he can retrieve it when no one is around. Unearthly screams echo through the palace halls late at night. Oh, and the halls also ring with maniacal laughter. When he does appear in public, he is said to look emaciated and haggard, as if he’s wasting away. He should be in his damned prime. He doesn’t allow foreign ambassadors into the Forbidden Palace too, and he’s kicked out the foreigners who were already living there. In fact, aside from a skeleton staff of servants and bodyguards and concubines, he’s told practically everyone from the Palace to fuck off. Pretty much no one is allowed to enter now.”
“So you’re saying that we’re probably going to have to break in.”
“Probably, yeah.”
“And you’re not just making this up to get me to do what you want, are you?”
“Go into the city and talk to the citizens. Ask anyone there—merchants, bakers, guardsmen, beggars, whores, wagon drivers, barkeeps, anyone. You’ll hear everything I’ve just said from their lips too.”
I stared at the distant towers, turrets, and spires of the Forbidden Palace. It would be one hell of a mission to break into that fortress, but I’d never been one to shy away from a challenge. Before going down the burglary route, though, there was another avenue of possibility still open to us.
“Who guards the gates of the Forbidden Palace?” I asked. “Who gets to say who’s allowed in and who isn’t? Are they elite, Fated warriors, or just regular guards?”
“Regular guards,” Yumo said. “The Emperor keeps his elite troops close by, inside the bowels of the palace.”
“Then there’s another thing we can try. Anna-Lucielle’s Charm magic and her Beauty Mirror can convince non-Fated people of all sorts of things. I’m pretty sure we can bullshit our way into the palace like that.”
“That sounds like it would work,” she said, but I could hear the disappointment in her voice. “But how would you disguise the panthers? Would Anna-Lucielle’s magic work on them, too?”
“No, it wouldn’t. And she could only cloak a few of us with her Charm. I don’t like going into a hostile place witho
ut backup either.”
“Is there any other way?”
“You know what? There might just be.” I grinned as an idea popped into my head. “You Yengish folks have circuses, right?”
“Many,” Yumo said with quizzical eyes.
“And Yeng is a gigantic city. There must be hundreds of clothing stores down there. Since you’re not in the mood to have a nap with the rest of them, why don’t you take me to one?”
Yumo laughed, and mirth sparkled in her dark eyes. “I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, but sure, let me show you some of the City of Jewels.”
At midday we were all ready to put my unorthodox plan into action. Me and the monks were dressed in the billowing, flamboyant, and brightly colored robes of traveling circus performers. Anna-Lucielle and Yumo were also dressed in outlandish gear, and Layna’s spider legs just seemed part of an elaborate costume. Padding along with us, hemmed in by me and the monks, were the undead panthers and Anna-Lucielle’s pet. The monks each carried whips and a quarterstaff, which I’d bought from a civilian weaponry shop. Using my new powers, I’d enchanted each quarterstaff with potent Death magic. Each hit from one of these black quarterstaffs would deliver a blow of immense power to the flesh it struck, along with a necrotic after effect. The purpose of the quarterstaffs was ostensibly to form an improvised fence of sorts around the panthers, but the monks could kick some serious ass with the weapons if we encountered armed resistance. Yumo, posing as the leader of this motley crew, strode along ahead, crying out in Yengish in her best hawker’s voice.
I wasn’t exactly sure what she said, but I’d run through a script with her earlier. It was something along the lines of, “Come one, come all! View the terrifying but mesmerizing spectacle of the panther tamers, who have trained these savage wild beasts to do all manner of tricks! We also have two beautiful foreign acrobats, who can perform all manner of death-defying stunts!”