by Eric Nylund
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” The chimpanzee set a hand over his heart. “Accept my apologies for taking advantage of you last evening. Hardly sporting of me, considering your wounds and state of exhaustion.”
My face burned.
“I assume you came to our valley seeking our secret techniques?”
He said “seeking” like he meant “steal.”
I’d give just about anything for a handy pop-up quest alert to confirm I was on the right track… or better yet, give me a clue what to do, like:
QUEST ALERT!
You have met Master Cho.
Present him with a legendary bottle of liquor to become his friend.
Rewards: The freedom of your companions, the return of your gear, and Master Cho will teach you as many martial art techniques as you desire!
Wishful thinking. No such help since I was outside the bounds of the Game.
“I have come to learn your Drunken Monkey style,” I admitted, “but I am also looking for my friends who might have accidentally wandered into this valley. And if possible, could I collect my belongings, which you have so thoughtfully stored for me?” I set my hands together in a prayer gesture and gave him another bow.
“Ah.” He smoothed the long white whiskers on his chin.
The partition slid aside and a troupe of lemurs entered. They carried a small table, kettle, and cups, and set the afternoon tea service between us.
Master Cho poured. “Tea?” He offered me a ceramic cup so delicate it was translucent.
I accepted and inhaled the scent. Green tea.
He sipped and narrowed his eyes with satisfaction.
I brought the cup to my mouth, tilted it, but didn’t let the contents touch my lips.
Master Cho shooed the lemurs away.
“It has been many years since such a skilled aspirant has come to challenge me.” He gestured to my arm and the golden dragon tattoo that glistened in the sunlight. “From the Domicile of the Sleeping Dragon, no less. I am honored.”
I tensed. “I am not here to challenge you, sir.”
He drained his cup and set it down. “So you say. You want your belongings. And your friends. I understand. But this may not be so simple. You see, you made quite a show of defeating my top students. It is expected that you will now challenge the master of the temple.” He hesitated, looking slightly embarrassed. “If we do not fight, my students may think me afraid and that I declined your challenge.”
I felt the urge to jump up and punch my way out of here… which I sensibly put back into its box.
I wouldn’t get one step closer to Cho before the gorillas outside swung in and pummeled me to paste. This was assuming, of course, Cho didn’t flatten me first.
“I sense you are modest.” The old ape stared into the distance. “What is the human expression? I have forgotten so many of them. Ah, yes… let us ‘strike a bargain.’”
He had forgotten so many human expressions? Implying he’d been human? I didn’t need any more convincing that the wine here made monkeys of men. Dwarves and elves for that matter too.
“Go ahead,” I whispered, deadpan. “Strike away.”
“If you prevail in the challenge, I shall gladly return your safely secured possessions and—” Cho snapped his fingers.
The partition slid aside and a gorilla entered. In one meaty hand he carried a bamboo cage that he set next to Master Cho. He then bowed to Cho and withdrew.
Two creatures cowered in the far corner of the cage, a young orangutan and one of those little lion-maned macaques.
The orangutan’s hair was a bright orange and shot with gold. It was thick about his face… like a beard. And he had only one arm. The macaque was sleek and cute with needle-sharp claws. Its fur was black with tufts of blood red, the same colors a certain druid-thief trickster favored.
If not for years of training and meditation, I would have attempted a number of stupid things. I kept my cool, though, and managed to restrain my pulse from becoming a drumroll.
The two monkeys stared at me with something approximating recognition in their wild panicked eyes.
The orangutan then touched the side of his nose, the unmistakable gesture I had seen Elmac make so many times.
My friends, what have they done to you?
Monkey Elmac and Morgana dipped their paws into a tiny bowl and licked wine-stained fingers. Whatever dark magic was in that wine, it looked to be highly addictive as well. Could it even be reversed?
Cho snapped his fingers once more.
The gorilla outside returned and picked up the cage.
As he removed my friends from the room, Morgana raised a tiny imploring paw to me.
The gorilla left and slammed the partition shut behind him with a bang.
I took a slow, careful breath in, and just as slowly released it.
“You were saying, Master Cho? If I prevail…?”
A smile rippled over his thick lips. “If you prevail, you regain your possessions and friends, who I believe still have a fair chance at reverting to their prior, albeit lesser, forms.”
I said nothing, knowing if I spoke any of the replies boiling in my brain, I’d make the situation worse.
He must have taken my silence for acceptance for he went on. “Good. We fight until one of us yields or is rendered unconscious. Nonlethal combat, naturally.”
I had a flashback to my duel with that cheater, Grimhalt. Cho sounded like he was setting the terms of a PvP duel. Or was I just imagining that?
“Additionally, if you win, I shall gift you with scrolls instructive in the basic techniques of drunken boxing as a token of my respect. In fact” —he paused to feign surprise as if he had just thought of this— “please, you would do me a great honor if you examined some of those materials beforehand. You will find them illuminating. The library is just down the hall.”
Why the heck would he give me a chance to evaluate his style’s strengths and weakness before we fought?
“Thank you, Master Cho. Most generous terms. But, uh… if I lose?”
“Then you remain, as will your friends. I shall train you myself. I am sure you will be my best student.”
As a monkey.
“It will be an incredible privilege,” I lied, “to test my humble skills against yours, Master Cho.”
He tilted his head.
“However… might I get my gear back before the challenge?”
“Oh, I have no wish to take advantage.” He shook a hairy finger at me. “If you had your weapons, I would be obliged to use mine. I think bare fists will be to your benefit. Besides, my fellows have had enough of your summoning fire and lightning with your magical objects.”
They thought those elemental effects had come from my gear? Why not? No one would have guessed I was a dual-classed Spirit Warrior/Mage of the Line. I might be able to use that.
“Still, it is hardly a fair match,” I said.
“You are too modest,” Master Cho replied. “And even if true, the game you play is hardly fair.”
I froze.
Had that been an innocent coincidental expression?
Or could Cho know about the Game?
He wasn’t a player. There was no placard over his head. The only thing floating over his liver-spotted scalp were gnats.
I stared into my cup of tea and focused on the surface reflection.
I had no name tag over my head. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen them over monkey Elmac or Morgana either.
We were obviously so far outside the Game they no longer displayed… so, Master Cho could be a player.
This made little sense, though. Why would a player be hanging out here, teaching kung fu to monkeys?
Cho made a show of struggling to his feet as if he had arthritis. “I shall leave you to your meditations then. Until tonight.” He paused at the screen and gave a tiny bow. “And please, feel free to review the scrolls in my library.”
I stood but didn’t return the bow. There was only
so much hypocrisy I could swallow.
“We fight at dusk.” Master Cho left and slid the screen shut.
I’d meditate all right—meditate on just how screwed I was. Why had the Game Master given me this quest at first level? A test of my worthiness? Or had he simply wanted me out of the picture? It would have been a surefire way to get my first-level butt and the Ebon Hands of Soul Death outside the Game’s boundary where no one would find them, or me, for a long, long time. If ever.
Hmm. Something was fishy here.
The fact was, however, I was on this quest and had only a few hours to find a way to beat Master Cho or escape with Elmac and Morgana. I had to stay focused on that.
Did I have any advantages?
A surprise attack with magic? The elemental effects and extra damage were nice, but it was unlikely to sufficiently tip the scales in my favor.
My Spirit Warrior skills and abilities? Well, Cho had identified me as from the Sleeping Dragon school, so it followed he’d be familiar with their techniques.
Ah, maybe I still had some gear.
I opened my inventory. Thankfully that system still worked this far from the Game’s boundary.
There were the two vials of Karl’s Guaranteed De-toxinifier I had bought to counter the Syndicate’s poisoned weapons, the nub of the candle I had used to talk to the Game Master (that I was pretty sure wouldn’t work outside the Game), the comped 1762 bottle of Gautier Cognac de me courtesy of Hiltmyer & Co., that half liter of Red Dragon Whiskey I hadn’t had the chance to return to Elmac, a bunch of other miscellaneous non-magical gear… and last and least, the black-scaled Ebon Hands of Soul Death.
I could simply don the scaled gloves…
No. No. And definitely NO.
Wearing them would guarantee victory. It would also guarantee me killing every living thing in the valley, including my friends. They were an evil beyond evil, and I was keeping the wretched things only until I found the equivalent of Thera’s Mount Doom to dropkick them into.
Worrisome, though, that I’d considered it even for a second.
I was about to shut the window but spied one last item: the penny that had been my father’s final gift.
My heart swelled with sorrow and nostalgia. How far I had wandered from the painted wagons that had once been home. I’d have given anything to be back there now.
I sighed and waved the window away.
None of that stuff would help in a straight-up fight against Master Cho, or a more improbable escape while under the watchful eyes of his gorillas.
That exhausted my options.
What about my surroundings? Some advantageous terrain? A handy magical spear on display? Heck, I’d settle for a local chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Or… those scrolls in Cho’s library?
What if, as unlikely as this sounded, that while Master Cho had to fight me to maintain his position of authority, he might also be taking pity on me and throwing me a lifeline of sorts?
I didn’t really buy that—but okay, I’d play along.
I slid open the partition.
A short hall led to another silk screen. Four gorillas loitered in the corridor.
They didn’t immediately attack, so I took a chance and quickly averted my gaze (which the apes might have taken as a challenge) and took a few slow steps forward.
With mutterings and sub-vocal growls, they shuffled out of my way.
I crossed the hall, opened the partition, entered, then shut the screen.
This room had a low table in the center and floor-to-ceiling shelves holding hundreds of scrolls. On the table was a bowl of smoldering incense and three scroll tubes.
I sat on the floor and tucked under the table. It was walnut and about its edges were carved skulls, frigates, pirate flags, and stormy seas.
I shook out a roll of parchment, smoothed it flat, and read.
Whoever had inked this had been three sheets to the wind, but if I understood the shaky calligraphy and illustrations, this scroll was a primer of Drunken Monkey style. The basic techniques allowed the practitioner to flow around defenses, and take advantage of openings with constant forward pressure. All standard stuff.
That, however, is where the similarity to the human-based kung fu ended, and something else started. Something more… how to describe it? “Random” might be close, but that still missed the mark.
A Drunken Monkey boxer had counters for every strike and block in my Sleeping Dragon-style arsenal. And they could use them effortlessly. Unthinkingly. In fact, the less they thought, the drunker they were, the better this worked. Or so claimed the text.
I swallowed and read the next scroll.
This one was on special techniques.
Little was legible. Many passages careened off the rice paper and never wandered back to finish the sentence they started. I could make out a few of the titles, though, like: Stinging Scorpion Slap; Broken Back Forward Kick, Chasing Swarm of Moths; Sticky Face Sticky Hands; and Dance of Endless Firecrackers.
And I swore there were a few lines of non-linear differential equations. That, or a spattering of old browned banana. Hard to tell.
The parts toward the end covered advanced special techniques. These were more complicated and correspondingly harder for me to puzzle out. I managed, though, to decipher the titles and a portion of the text for two.
The first was called Wings of Butterfly. It began with delicate, almost poetic hand motions—this was followed by a part where ink had been spilled and completely obliterated most of the remaining instructions. One could, however, clearly make out the move’s finale where a monkey boxer inserted his fist through the midsection of an armored opponent. Yikes.
The other was the technique of the Strangest Attractor. It had dizzying foot placement charts along with stick-figure contortionist instructions. Using a weave of chaotic motions, the practitioner trapped their victim with increasingly smaller, more refined locks and joint compressions, and then with an accelerating spiral of momentum finished with an elbow strike between the eyes. A surprisingly clear anatomical illustration showed the result of that last blow—the force blasting both eyes and optical nerves into the brain where they bounced about the skull, smashed the brainstem, and severed the spinal cord.
This stuff had to be made up.
And yet, in what I could read I found no flaw in the physics or martial arts.
Then, only with the greatest trepidation, I dared unroll the last scroll.
It was covered by smeared monkey paw prints. Totally useless.
I’d seen enough, though, to know that if this was real, without training to counter Drunken Monkey boxing, I couldn’t win against my equal in this style, let alone defeat a master.
Cho had wanted me to see these… so I’d know I was going to lose.
CHAPTER 32
It was an hour after dusk (when Cho had set the start of our match), and he hadn’t yet shown. Apparently, the Master was entitled to be late.
I stood waiting in an open-air arena surrounded by concentric rings of stone bleachers. About the sandy floor tiki torches stood blazing.
Of course, there were spectators: the monkeys I’d beaten, bruised, electrocuted, or partially blown up. They hooted and jumped up and down, eager to see the nasty elf who’d wreaked havoc on their valley get slaughtered.
They might get their wish.
I’d spent the day reading scrolls in Cho’s library. My assessment of my odds hadn’t changed.
Master Cho finally waltzed into the arena.
The crowd applauded and cheered and threw flowers at him.
The elder chimpanzee sat on a stool on the far side of the arena and proceeded to “prepare” for our match. This entailed his troupe of attending lemurs handing him sloshing gourd after gourd, and him guzzling more booze than Elmac could on his worst night of debauchery.
I was actually a little impressed.
Until that is, he staggered to the edge of the ring and relieved himself.
Nonetheless, Cho would be hard to hit, harder to damage, and his strikes would be difficult, if not impossible, to block.
What wasn’t he good at? Well, in his current blitzed state, he wouldn’t have the concentration to use mystical powers like Spiritual Regeneration. He’d also thought my elemental powers had come from my magic items, so he wouldn’t be expecting any more such attacks.
I better check what I had to work with in that department.
I phased into the aether.
The red and blue ley lines of fire and electricity I’d used yesterday were here, but feeble, thin strings, flickering like shorting-out neon. An improvement, however, from being completely drained. Still useless for my purposes.
My best option would be to tap one of the two fuming white threads of elemental cold.
The freezing effect hadn’t slowed Grimhalt much. Would Cho even feel it? I couldn’t afford not to try, but I better not count on it either.
The icy ley lines were just out of reach. Without Blackwell’s Band, I’d have to watch my position.
I then noticed something wrong with my health and mana bars. My maximum health was 160, not 180. My reflexive mana was 110, instead of its normal 120.
Oh… of course, the demon bone knuckles that Cho had removed had given me +1 to my STRENGTH and REFLEX.
I had a feeling I was going to sorely miss those points.
I returned into normal space-time and then did the only reasonable thing under the circumstances. I sat on the sandy floor and meditated to top off my mana… and hoped inspiration struck.
Besides, I wanted to at least appear cool and collected, like I faced drunken boxing masters all the time.
Master Cho meanwhile performed a backflip and landed on his monkey ass—confirmation that he was blasted out of his mind.
He got up, pointed at me, and slurred, “Yoush an meez gooona fite nooow.” He teetered and fell over. So much for his Lawrence of Arabia impersonation.
The gorilla I’d chained before limped to the center of the arena. He smiled maliciously at me, narrowed his eyes, then turned to the audience and raised his long arms.