The door reopened, and we moved into the next hallway.
“The Dojo,” I said as I ran, my bass in my hands as I prepped for a B major chord. I hit it, and the next door started to melt away.
“What’s wrong with the Dojo?” she asked, her voice filling with panic.
“We have to get there now!”
Chapter Seventeen: The End of Our Dojo as We Know It
The lightning steeds lifted into air.
I could barely see straight by this point. Filled with fury and the desire to get to our Dojo as quickly as possible, all I could do was buckle down and move ahead as quickly as the horse would allow.
They need our help.
Aya and Lady C. knew what was happening now. I told them somewhere around the green or orange door. I’d seen them both angry before, but I’d never seem them so enraged, ready for vengeance, violence.
By the time I finished telling them, they had pressed past me, determined to get out of the tower.
I couldn’t quite decipher the look on Iris’ face, but I could tell by the way she was gritting her teeth, and how she held the reins of her horse with one hand while holding her ukulele with the other that she too was ready, prepared to do whatever it took to prevent calamity.
I cast aside my frustration regarding the Steeple.
There was supposed to be something at the top; that was the whole point of going there, discovering its secret, hell, every story I had been told and epiphany I had experienced had a mountaintop moment.
But there was no mountaintop moment with the Steeple.
It had simply been a white room devoid of sound, a room that everyone in EverLife wanted to get to, to understand, to be part of.
And I didn’t know what I’d been expecting.
Maybe the selfish part of me was expecting some type of prize, some reward for making it there and cracking the secret. And I was even a little angry at myself for this, upset that this was how my mind worked, that I expected a reward.
I didn’t deserve any of this. I didn’t deserve my newfound successes in life, the changes I had experienced, the fact that I was responsible for the well-being of others.
I’d gone from a musician with a broken bass to…
Whatever I was.
I didn’t join EverLife to discover its secret.
“Faster!” Aya shouted at her horse. She switched to Thulean and the beast took off, leaving a crackle of lightning behind it.
What if there had been some crazy reward? What if getting into the room had made Iris and me king and queen of EverLife? What then? What if it had given me one million Proxima dollars? How would I have spent it?
All of these were questions that I didn’t have an answer to, so maybe I deserved an empty room.
“Yeah,” I told myself as I buckled down, my body closer to the horse now. We were over the kingdom center, to the left of it actually, and I couldn’t quite see our Dojo in the distance yet.
But I knew what was coming; I knew that the battle had just begun.
Lady C. zipped ahead, her skirt beating in the wind revealing the top of her panties.
I’d seen her on one of the horses before, but I’ve never seen her go this hard, this quickly, her body pressed forward, her hands on the reins of her horse, her two swords slapping against the tops of her thighs.
“Faster!” I shouted to my own steed, mirroring Lady C.’s riding style.
It didn’t take much longer for me to see the damage already wrought, the smoke coming off our mythcrea quarters, fires blazing, a dragon circling in the air above.
“Aya, take the dragon down!”
The Thulean nodded and scissored forward, stand-riding as she prepared to leap off her horse.
More chaos below. There were smoldering craters in the meadow past our Dojo, and all of our mythcrea were busying themselves fighting off the invaders.
And there were a lot of them.
The invaders wore black armor, and many had hoods over their heads. They wielded axes, swords, morningstars, and otherworldly weapons that fired large blasts of energy.
Up ahead of us, Lady C. steered her horse to the surface level. She hit the ground running, bolts of lightning sizzling off her horse’s body as she charged forward.
Her two swords met a string of necks, and no less than ten intruders were decapitated by the time she slipped off her horse, twisting and moving through their ranks using her whole body to propel herself forward.
Yaksha charged forward, squashing the intruders, but also taking some heavy damage.
Even with his size, they managed to entrap him using nets made of laser beams, which they fired out of shoulder rockets. Magnus and Ophelia took over from there, covering Yaksha while Fujin used his wind powers to free the golden Buddha.
To the north of the main melee, Schnoogles and Mitchell were down, spears sticking out of their chests. It looked like they taken out a few intruders though, evident in the trail of bodies around them.
Above us, Anastasia, the bird with a woman’s head, was turning some of the black clothed intruders on themselves.
Joe Camel and Rose were tag-teaming more of the would-be assassins, Rose ripped through flesh and limb, blood spritzing the air, Joe alternating between his front and back legs, knocking out anyone who came near him.
I saw Iris’ cat launch himself into the air and bring one of the intruders down. Garfield clawed at the person’s face, hissing and screeching as the man tried to throw him off.
Once I steadied myself, I took my first shot, clearing out three of the assailants. The blasts from my bass guitar left a long trail in the ground, and my next shot blew one of the invaders’ legs off, his leg flying into another guy’s face and knocking him out.
Iris was next to me now, firing short blasts from her ukulele, the notes she formed jarring and extremely sharp.
“Do you see him?” I shouted to Iris.
“Over there, I think!”
William.
There were a lot of mercenaries standing between him and me, but this fact didn’t bother me one bit. I’d cut as many down as need be to get to William, and put an end to this.
A towering wolf made of stone crashed into some of the intruders, their weapons firing into the air, narrowly missing the dragon circling above. The wolf morphed into a large reptile with a spiked tail that took out a few more of the invaders.
Altsoba morphed back into a wolf and tackled a pair of muscled sellswords with incredibly large axes.
I heard the dragon screech above us and I glanced up to see the beast struggling with Aya, who was exhausting it just by running along its body and stabbing her knives into the soft places under its scales.
She hadn’t had a chance to get it with her buster sword yet, but I knew it was coming.
“I hate ninjas!” Mirror the phantom kangaroo shouted as her form solidified, as she tossed the guy directly in Rambi the rhinoceros path.
Rambi had busied himself slamming into anyone he could touch, which had resulted in extensive damage to the sidewall mythcrea quarters as well as Lady C.’s cabin. He was good to have in a fight, but utterly destructive.
Iris moved to my right, taking down more mercenaries with quick strums on her ukulele.
As I had done before, I began playing a low rumbling note that formed a barrier around me. I didn’t want to explode myself this time, but I did have an idea as to how I could get to William.
I saw Sun Wukong frozen to my right, a grin on his face as William’s orcs beat at him, each of them trying to land the finishing blow, and each of them failing because of his unbreakable body ability.
“Fick you, you fickered fick-faced fickboys!” Spew Gorge was having a hell of a time taking on a trio of club-wielding soldiers, narrowly dodging each of their attacks as he prepared one of his putrid smoke bombs.
While I continued to work on the shield of sound forming around me, strumming my bass and charging, Spew’s smoke bomb went off, a yellow mist engulfing his th
ree attackers.
A jagged dagger in his hand, he slipped past one of the men and drove his dagger into the guy’s neck. “Fick yeah!”
Another managed to club him in the face, but only because he was swinging blindly. Spew Gorge’s pink hair went flying to the right, where he was finished off by a guy whose arm had morphed into a large gun.
The man with the gun arm aimed his weapon at me.
While his hood covered his face, I could tell by the glint of his white teeth that he was grinning as he fired his first blast.
Iris turned just in time to meet his blasts, a pink burst of energy firing from the end of her ukulele.
Rather than fire again, she began strumming, playing a soft melody, and humming in an almost agitated way, which told me that she was trying her damnedest to maintain a calm focus with all the chaos happening around her.
The gun armed man turned to his own party, and began firing his weapon at them.
His actions ended up clearing the way for me to move deeper into the crowd of black-clothed guards.
My shield was up now; each one that tried to touch me was tossed backwards, where they met either Magnus’ sword or a ball of purple fire from Ophelia.
As predicted, Aya came crashing down onto the battlefield riding the red dragon, just as she had done in the match against William, her ironing board of a sword jutting out of the back of its head.
The Thulean steered the beast to the left like a captain taking the wheel of a ship, taking out even more of the intruders.
That was when I saw William, a big grin on his face as he waited for me, his blonde hair combed to the side, a red cape flowing off his shoulders.
I let my shield down and brought my instrument up. He was laughing as I did this, his hands on his hips as he bent his neck backwards, exposing his throat.
I fired my first blast at him and…
Lady C. slammed into me, tossed aside by one of the bigger sellswords. My shot went wide, fizzling out once it got high enough in the sky.
It hurt, but I managed to recover and roll to my feet, my concern now on Lady C.’s well-being.
“Chase,” she said through gritted teeth, “he’s getting away.”
“Like hell he is,” I said as I fired another blast, this one connecting with William’s back, and sending him to the ground.
“I’ll be fine,” said Lady C. “Finish this…”
I moved closer to William, two more invaders advancing toward me.
Iris finished them off, now playing muffled notes on her ukulele.
I stepped over William, and kicked him in the side, turning him over. His face and blonde hair were streaked with blood, and he was laughing maniacally, his eyes practically rolled to the back of his head.
“Why?” I asked, out of breath.
“Because I can.”
William’s finger twitched, and he logged out, his form entirely disintegrating.
As soon as he was gone, his armored soldiers turned to sand and filtered away.
We were left standing in the field before our Dojo, amidst ruins, injured mythcrea, and utter shock. Joe Camel was limping, and Rose stood in front of Gobi, checking to make sure her cub was okay. Anastasia landed, one of her wings injured, and Fujin limped toward us, Sun Wukong helping him.
I glanced to Magnus, who stood with Ophelia in front of a smoldering crater, his weapon not yet sheathed. Yaksha was down on one knee trying to pat out some of the flames in the meadow, Mirror rudely pointing out spots that he missed. Altsoba morphed back into her dark-skinned form, her hand immediately coming to her shoulder, nursing a wound.
A prompt scrolled across my pane of vision:
William Dante has declared war on your Dojo.
“What the hell?” I said as I lowered my bass guitar.
Iris moved over to me, holding her ukulele with one hand.
“He’s declared war on us?”
“Looks like it. What an idiot.”
“I will kill him, his offspring, and destroy anyone who carries the Dante family name,” said Aya, as she helped Lady C. to her feet.
“I am with you, Lady Aya,” said the Metican. “The invaders destroyed my cabin.” She sighed miserably. “Now Chase has to buy me another one.”
“Correct, because you are not staying inside my cabin.”
I was just about to tell Lady C. that it was Rambi who had accidently destroyed her cabin, but was interrupted by Iris.
“There’s only one thing we can do now,” the petite woman said, the anger in her eyes partially hidden by the flames reflecting across the lenses of her glasses.
“What’s that?” I asked her.
Iris looked at me defiantly. She took off her glasses for once, giving me one of the most powerful stares I’d ever seen from her. “Fight back. We can fight back.”
I turned to the meadow, my eyes skipping to some of the fires near the gazebo. “Yeah, that’s what we’ll do.”
“And the Steeple? What will we do about that, Chase?” asked Lady C.
“We’ll keep our discovery a secret for now. Something tells me that there is more to the Steeple than an empty white room. But we can deal with that later. We know how to get back there. For now, we rebuild, and we increase our defenses. We’re going to need an architect.”
Iris smiled. “And a mortgage.”
“That too,” I said, “but that’s fine. Anything to protect our Dojo. Anything.”
The end
Back of the Book Content
Reader,
I really hope you enjoyed this installment.
If you haven’t already reviewed the first book, please do so. People see the first book, and it makes them decide if they’re going to start the series or not. Thanks! I’ll keep them coming, and your reviews help other readers find this book. My guess is the next Monster Hunt will be out in winter, and you can join the Proxima Galaxy group on Facebook to be the first to hear about it.
Yours in sanity,
Harmon Cooper
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I have written over thirty books. Here are some of the highlights!
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