Lair of the Beast

by Adam Jay Epstein

  With Agorop and Sceely still clutched tightly in Moshul’s hands, the group continued up the mountain, following the now somber oglodytes’ directions. Wily and his companions were led through a forest of dense trees and past patches of shoulder-high bamboo.

  “Over there.” Agorop gestured to a pair of giant boulders. “Stalag’s just past those rocks.”

  Before the group could take another step, an ominous, hissing voice that Wily was all too familiar with announced, “You are just as small and pathetic as the day you left the tomb.”

  Wily turned to see Stalag step out from between the giant boulders with his hands raised over his head. The cavern mage’s time in the Above hadn’t made him any less frail; his bony arms still resembled the branches of a dying tree. His ghostly eyeballs swung loosely in the dark sockets above his cheeks. But Wily knew that in spite of Stalag’s appearance, immense power resided inside the mage.

  “Be a good son and hand over the enchanted compass,” Stalag said, his words slithering from his cracked gray lips like vipers.

  “Haven’t you learned your lesson?” Odette said. “We’ve already defeated you twice. What makes you think that the third time will be any different?”

  “Maybe the fact that I’ve come with more than just oglodytes and scorpions today?” Stalag said with a sneer of delight.

  The boulders from which Stalag had emerged began to move. Or rather, stand up: the two rocks were not rocks at all but crouching stone golems. Unlike Moshul, these golems had features so lifelike and detailed that, had they been painted one of the many colors of human skin, they would appear to have been made of flesh and bone. One of the two had an alabaster beard, and the other had quartz fingers that sparkled in the sunlight.

  The mighty stone golems, both triple the height of Moshul, marched toward Wily and his companions. With each of their steps, the earth shook with such force that it seemed as if the mountain itself might crumble in fear. Desperately, Wily looked around, trying to find a way to escape, but there was no cover or place to duck and hide.

  “I told you there were only two others,” Sceely cackled. “I just didn’t tell you how big they are.”

  As the two stone golems got closer, Wily could see that they were both smiling.

  The stone golem with the beard stopped before Moshul and looked down at him. Then he laughed a horrible laugh, and the ground around him started to shake.

  “Where’s your mouth, little brother?” His voice echoed like a wolf’s howl in a canyon. “You lose it in the woods?”

  “Or are you just too stupid to talk?” the quartz-fingered golem added with a booming chortle.

  Moshul was furious. Thorns sprouted from the vines that curled all the way down his chest. He tossed the oglodytes in his hands to the ground.

  “What are you going to do?” the bearded golem mocked him. “Throw a mud pie?”

  “Or get some ants to crawl on us?” the quartz-fingered golem said with scorn.

  “You’re a mistake,” the bearded golem taunted. “One that should have been squashed a long time ago.”

  With his mossy fingers squeezed tight, Moshul charged at the bearded golem.

  Thwap.

  The bearded stone golem swung his arm. The back of his hand struck Moshul in the chest. Wily watched as the moss golem was knocked to the ground as easily as a straw man.

  Moshul pulled himself back to his feet while Odette and Pryvyd came running to his side. Pryvyd held his spiked shield aloft as Odette grabbed a broken bamboo shoot off the ground and spun it like a fighting stick.

  “We stand together,” Odette called out to the stone golems.

  “Then you will fall together,” the quartz-fingered golem said.

  “And there’s nothing you can do about it, silent one,” the bearded golem added.

  The bearded golem reached out and grabbed Moshul by the shoulders. He lifted him into the air and threw him—off the side of the mountain.

  It happened so fast, Wily barely had a chance to realize what had occurred. Then Stalag began to laugh. It snapped Wily out of his stupor. He ran to the edge of the mountain and looked down. There, hundreds of feet below, Moshul lay on the ground, motionless.

  When Wily turned back to the golems, he saw Pryvyd and Odette, both rage-filled, charging them. The quartz-fingered golem punched Pryvyd’s shield so hard that every metal spike that had been sticking out from it was snapped clean off. Pryvyd tumbled backward, his brass armor clattering and clanging. Odette used her bamboo shoot to vault herself up onto the shoulder of the bearded golem. She tried to jab him in the neck with the makeshift fighting stick, but it snapped against his hard skin. The golem plucked her off his shoulder and viciously tossed her to the ground.

  “I knew you’d be able to get me the compass,” Stalag said, his frail hand outstretched. “Why do you think I told you right where it was?”

  Wily remembered the locksage who had come to the palace the previous day and told him and his mother of the whereabouts of the compass. Had he been working for Stalag?

  “Hand over the compass,” Stalag said. “And the throne, for that matter. You’re not fit to be king. Not now. Not ever. You’re meant to have a trapsmith belt around your waist, not a crown on your head.”

  Wily was caught off guard. For all the lies Stalag had told, this time he was speaking a truth, a truth that Wily had not yet even fully admitted to himself: he wasn’t ready to lead anyone, much less a whole kingdom. All he wanted to do now was get away before another one of his friends was hurt or thrown off a cliff.

  Wily’s mind worked at breakneck speed. He knew they couldn’t defeat these golems in a fight, and running away wasn’t an option either; for every twenty stops he and his friends took, the golems would need only one. No, they needed another way to escape.

  “Give me the compass!” Stalag demanded once more.

  I need to invent something, Wily thought. But what could I make in mere seconds? Not a flying machine or a speedy boat.

  Wily scanned the hillside for anything at all. Then his eyes fell on Pryvyd. And his shield.

  Wily pulled out the compass and handed it to Roveeka.

  “Throw this over the golems’ heads, as far as you can,” Wily said, gesturing to the golems.

  “But we came all this way for it,” Roveeka said.

  “It won’t do us any good if we’re prisoners,” Wily said as the stone golems moved in on them. “And even less if we’re dead.”

  Roveeka nodded and tossed the compass as hard as she could. It flew up and over the golems’ heads.

  Stalag’s ghostly eyes shook in their sockets as he watched the magical device take flight. “Don’t let the compass break,” he hissed to the golems. “Catch it!”

  Both of the stone golems turned for the flying compass and went chasing after it.

  Wily seized the moment and ran for Pryvyd.

  “Your shield!” Wily said. “Give it to me, quick.”

  “But the spikes have been broken off.”

  “That’s why I need it.”

  Pryvyd tossed it to him.

  Wily reached into his tool belt and pulled out a vial of slither troll slime. He slathered the smooth outside surface of the shield with the slippery goo. Then, he lay the shield down on the side of the hill while keeping a firm grip on its edges to hold it in place.

  “Everybody on!” Wily shouted to the others.

  Roveeka and Odette jumped aboard the curved shield. Pryvyd plucked Righteous out of the air and squeezed onto the shield as well. Wily jumped on last, releasing his grip, and immediately the shield took off down the hill like a sled.

  “Don’t let them escape!” Stalag screamed to Agorop and Sceely. The two oglodytes raced after the companions, but their webbed feet couldn’t keep pace with the ever-increasing speed of the shield.

  Wily was about to give a shout of relief when Roveeka pointed to a sea of trees ahead. “That’s not good.”

  “How do you steer this thing?” Odet
te shouted to Wily, who was right behind her.

  “We’ve got to use our weight,” Wily said.

  He could see that they were heading straight for a very large oak tree.

  “Lean to the right!” Wily shouted.

  All four of them shifted their weight to the right. Even Righteous tilted in the same direction. The shield and everyone on it nearly tipped over. Wily’s elbow scratched against the pebbly ground. But they made it past the tree, if only by a hand’s length.

  “If we had hit that—” Odette began to say before Pryvyd cut her off.

  “Another tree!” he shouted.

  Now the out-of-control shield sled was heading straight for a twisted pine.

  “Lean left!” Wily shouted.

  Everybody shifted their weight again. They missed, but the tip of the shield scraped the bark off the base of the pine tree, leaving a thick gash in the wood and sticky sap all over the shield.

  Far behind them, Wily could still hear Stalag screaming. “Don’t let them get away!”

  “Weeze can’t keep up,” Agorop shouted back.

  The shield sled snaked through a cluster of dense trees and finally bounded out onto the open mountainside. Wily turned around and was relieved to see that Stalag and the oglodytes were no longer visible in the distance.

  “Hey, brilliant inventor,” Odette asked. “How do we stop this thing?”

  This was a very good question that Wily didn’t have an immediate answer to. “It will slow down on its own once we get to the bottom,” he said weakly.

  “We may be getting to the bottom faster than you expected,” Odette said.

  Wily looked ahead and saw that the sled was racing straight for the edge of a massive cliff. There was no way to turn left or right—both would lead to the same steep drop.

  “We have to jump off!” Pryvyd shouted.

  “No!” Wily yelled. “We’re moving too fast. We’ll roll right off the edge. We need to slow the shield.”

  Wily snatched Righteous’s sword from its hand. He jabbed the tip of the blade into the ground behind them. The metal prong dug into the earth, leaving a trail of dirt behind, but it wasn’t enough to slow down the shield.

  “Use anything you got,” Wily yelled.

  The edge of the cliff was rapidly approaching. Roveeka pulled Mum and Pops from her waistband and jabbed the knives into the ground on either side of the shield. Still, it wasn’t enough.

  Odette pulled a coil of rope out from her shoulder satchel and tied a slipknot at one end.

  “Righteous, loop this around that tree branch!” Odette said, pointing to a lone tree on the edge of the cliff.

  Pryvyd grabbed his floating arm and threw it like a spear. Righteous flew straight for the tree and quickly tied Odette’s rope around it.

  “Everyone hold on to the rope,” Odette screamed.

  Wily wrapped his fingers around it tightly as he watched the cliff’s edge get closer and closer and closer—

  And then the shield went airborne, and Wily and his companions soared out over the chasm. His fingers clutching the rope, Wily began to fall.

  Two seconds later, he felt himself lurch backward as the rope went taut. The shield slipped out from under him as he tightened his grip. Wily and the others went swinging back toward the cliff face, smacking into it hard.

  Looking down, Wily saw the shield fall. After a few seconds, it hit the floor of the rocky canyon with a loud clang. Although he wasn’t in the most ideal position right now, he was far better off than where he could have been.

  A hand reached down from above. It was Righteous. The hovering arm helped pull Wily, Roveeka, Odette, and Pryvyd to safety. Once everybody was back on the mountain slope, the group took a moment to collect themselves.

  “I can’t believe we lost Moshul,” Odette said, and Wily saw a single tear roll down her cheek.

  “You know what he would have told us,” Pryvyd said. He moved his left hand away from his chest and stretched his fingers out, wiggling them slightly. “Onward into the light,” Pryvyd said aloud, “He would want us to go on. He would want us to catch Stalag and make sure he won’t be a danger to Panthasos any longer.”

  Wily was barely listening. He was furious with himself. I’m a trapsmith. I should have known better. I should have realized that we were walking right into a trap. If I had been a little more cautious, a little more careful, Moshul might still be standing over us right now.

  A friend had been lost, and it was all his fault.

  4

  A SAD WALK HOME

  Wily had hoped to return to the royal palace of Panthasos with his head held high, clutching the enchanted compass in hand. Instead, he and his companions were coming back far worse than when they had started: the compass was gone, Stalag had it, and Moshul was dead.

  With every step that Wily took, it seemed as if he were pulling himself through a thick swamp of giant-slug slime.

  “Have I told you about the time Moshul and I went to the Raven’s Nest?” Odette asked.

  Instead of grieving silently, elves told stories about the loved ones they had lost. For thirty days after their passing, friends and family would share tales of the dead to keep their spirit and memory alive. Odette had been recounting her adventures with Moshul for the last eight hours.

  “I don’t think so,” Wily said with a heavy heart.

  “I’d like to hear about it,” Roveeka said, trying to brighten the mood.

  Ever since Wily had met Roveeka in Carrion Tomb as a toddler, she had been able to see the light in the darkest tunnel. It was one of the many reasons why Wily was so glad to have chosen her to be his surrogate sister.

  “The Raven’s Nest is the secret gathering spot of the sneakiest burglemeisters in all of Panthasos,” Odette explained. “What makes the gathering spot so secret is that it’s on the third floor of a building with no stairs leading up to it. The Burglemeister Society believes that a true thief should be able to climb up the outside of the building and sneak through a window. Now, being a skilled acrobat, the task posed no challenge for me. Moshul, on the other hand, has a lot of talents, but climbing isn’t one of them.”

  “Had a lot of talents,” Wily corrected her sadly.

  “Right,” Odette nodded grimly. “Had. Thank you for the unnecessary reminder, Wily.”

  She pushed on with her story. “But Moshul wasn’t going to just let me go into a den of thieves and criminals alone. He wanted to be by my side. So, what’d he do? He built his own staircase. He took the stones from a nearby wall and started stacking them on top of each other. When he came crashing through the window of the Raven’s Nest, the entire place went silent. No one knew what to do. They were too scared to accuse him of cheating his way in, so instead they started buying him drinks. Which is extra funny because he has no mouth.”

  “Had no mouth,” Wily corrected her again.

  “Right,” Odette added. “Had.” Her shoulders slumped as she became lost in thought.

  As the group came around Trumpet Pass, Wily caught sight of the royal palace, with its high marble walls and newly planted orchard. He remembered the first time he had seen the palace or, as it had been known then, the Infernal Fortress. Just a few months ago, the walls that were now as white as an albino eel had been stained black with dripping tar. Spinning blades had moved along hidden tracks in the stone to keep intruders away. The palace that his father, the Infernal King, had ruled over was a desolate place filled with traps and monsters of the most unfriendly variety. Wily had changed all that: the traps had been removed and replaced with libraries and sitting rooms. The only monsters left in the palace were a shy giant slug he had rescued from Carrion Tomb and the Skull of Many Riddles who, not needing to set rooms ablaze anymore, had become the palace’s court jester, telling riddles to amuse and entertain.

  As the weary companions approached the palace, Wily could see that the drawbridge was down, stretching across the moat. He had decided shortly after taking residence in the palace
that the drawbridge should remain down and the gate open at all times. Pryvyd had warned him that it was unsafe, especially with Stalag still on the loose, but Wily had insisted. He wanted his new home to bear no resemblance to the one he had lived in for the first fourteen years of his life. In Carrion Tomb, everything was built to keep people out and away. Here, he wanted to welcome people in.

  On either side of the palace gate, a Knight of the Golden Sun stood guard. They both wore the same bronze armor as Pryvyd, and each held a shield decorated with their order’s symbol: a shining orb with eight golden arms reaching out from it.

  “Welcome back,” one of the soldiers called out cheerfully, her silver face paint sparkling in the daylight.

  Wily didn’t have the strength or will to say anything. He just wanted to eat, hug his mom, and go to bed. It didn’t even matter that it was many hours before the sun would set.

  Wily and the others passed the guards silently on their way into the palace atrium, which was decorated with objects from all over Panthasos. When Wily was officially anointed prince, people from across the land had brought many gifts in celebration. Wily had decided to place them here, in the atrium, so that every visitor to the palace could share in their beauty. There were eagle feathers from the high mountain elves, a blood ruby that pulsed with color as if it had a beating heart inside, and a wreath of petrified flowers grown in the rock gardens of the desert basin. There was even an unbreakable metal crown forged in the legendary eversteel furnace of Drakesmith Island, gifted to Wily by the seafaring Brine Baron.

  Continuing through the atrium, the group passed under a large flag that hung from the ceiling. Unlike the flag of his father, which was decorated with a frightening three-horned helmet, Wily’s palace banner signaled a new era when machines would not be built to destroy or control; it depicted a metal gear interlocked with the branches of a tree. Wily had dreamed up the image himself and thought it conveyed the mission he’d set for himself: to ensure that human inventions worked in tandem with nature to make Panthasos more prosperous for all. But right now, Wily couldn’t imagine how he’d ever achieve anything of note. He left the atrium without even glancing up at the flag.