A Thousand Drunken Monkeys

by Eric Nylund

  One of these tree shadows, however, took a step toward me.

  Ah, not a tree.

  A silverback gorilla, nine feet tall and close to nine feet wide at his shoulders, paused mid-sip with a bottle at his lips. His glassy eyes narrowed at me.

  Me being cautious, cunning, and stealthy? Yeah, not so much anymore.

  He charged using fists and feet, snorting like a locomotive—and was on me before his bottle hit the ground.

  I fired off my Perfect Motion buff.

  The ape made a grab for my throat with impressively long and well-muscled arms.

  I ducked, slid through his legs, rolled to my feet, and punched him in the back.

  A good solid hit. The demon bone knuckles added extra mass and a tingling of magic that gave my right-handed strike greater impact.

  I’d nailed him so hard, the gorilla stumbled, fell—but managed to tumble back to his feet.

  He rubbed his spine and snarled, “Ow!”

  I was no biologist like Morgana, but I was fairly sure gorillas didn’t talk. Also, when I’d been up close, I’d seen fine gold wires woven into the fur on his chin—just like Karkanal’s men had worn in their beards.

  My suspicions of what had caused the Far Field tribes to stop coming to Thera and the odd fruit here clicked together.

  If I was right, this gorilla might not be entirely a gorilla. I might be able to reason with him.

  “Hey, big guy. I’m Hek—”

  He pounded the earth and charged again. This time it didn’t look like he’d overshoot.

  I slapped aside one of his meaty limbs, then ducked a massive fist that whooshed over my head.

  This ape had power and good technique. He’d dish out some serious pain if he connected. I had to finish him before he got ahold of me.

  I stepped closer and let loose a sequence of chain punches—to his temple—nose—chin—throat—blocked one of his punches—then planted a knee in his gut.

  That should have taken the wind out of his sails.

  But he only roared in outrage—right into my face.

  The overwhelming reek of digesting banana and fermented peaches made my eyes water. It took me a second to blink away tears and regain my senses—time enough, though, for him to grab me and draw me to his chest.

  And squeeze.

  My Spirit Armor held, for a heartbeat or two, as I struggled and kicked and did my best to wriggle free.

  His muscles were unbreakable iron bands, though, tightening with every breath I took.

  My eyes bulged. Bones popped.

  Damn.

  I entered the aether and stopped my subjective time.

  If I could have sighed in my astral form, I would have.

  All my strikes had connected. And hard. But it had been like slugging a heavy punching bag filled with lead shot.

  This guy might be able to take that kind of punishment all night.

  In martial arts movies, drunken boxers were usually so intoxicated and numbed, they felt no pain. You practically had to drop a mountain on one to bring them down… and none of those boxers had been drunken gorillas.

  This could actually be a problem.

  So far I’d used non-lethal strikes on this ape, because if it was as I thought, and he was one of the Far Field barbarians transformed—I couldn’t kill him. He could be Karkanal’s son for all I knew. Besides, murdering the natives wasn’t likely to make them share their secret martial art techniques.

  But… back to RULE TWO. Elmac and Morgana came first.

  Sorry, big guy. One way or another, you were going down.

  So, what did I have at my disposal here?

  There was the usual weave of golden spatial lines, a few threads of blazing crimson fire, more distant filaments of cold, one I hadn’t seen before of smoking green… and ah, there, just beyond arm’s length, a twisting sinew of cracking, sparking lightning, hazy with ozone, and the buzz of high voltage. That looked useful.

  I reached for it and felt the magic of Blackwell’s Band swell and stretch my astral form. If Lordren had known how useful an item that tripled one’s range in the aether was, he would have increased its price a hundredfold.

  My elongated hand caught the ley line. I winced from the initial shock, drew it to me, and wrapped it around my body.

  When I’d used this trick on Grimhalt, the stun effect hadn’t lasted long. That time, however, the power arced from my fist to his metal armor before we even touched. This time, I had more body contact than on my last date five years ago. Sad but true.

  All I needed was the ape to let go—just for a second. I’d be ready to move fast.

  I phased back into normal space and time.

  A hundred blinding arcs strobed. Thunder rolled outward in peals.

  The gorilla convulsed and dropped me.

  I backflipped away before he fell on me, whistled, and my semi-sentient ninja chain jumped to my hand. I whirled the bladed end and whipped it around my neck once to increase its velocity.

  The gorilla shook off the taser stun and got up. He stared at my weapon as it painted the air with smears of moonlit razor.

  We circled each other.

  I wasn’t going to wear this guy out. A knockout was equally unlikely. And at all costs, I couldn’t let him close on me again.

  There were other ways, however, to win a fight.

  “You’re not afraid of a few little cuts, are you?” I said.

  He squinted at the mesmerizing pattern of Shé liàn’s blade and went slightly cross-eyed.

  “Or are you the type that faints at the sight of blood?”

  He snorted.

  Oh yeah. He’d charge me.

  And why not? He knew he could take whatever I dished out.

  Just as predicted—he sprinted, arms outstretched to grab and crush whatever piece of elf he might catch.

  I whipped the weighted end of Shé liàn at him and nailed him in the gut.

  He instinctively grabbed the chain.

  Like I hoped he would.

  I mentally whispered to Shé liàn, Wrap him up like a birthday gift, and then sidearmed the bladed end.

  Shé liàn obliged—spiraled around and around—snaking about his knees—his midsection—and his elbows. Then it tightened.

  The gorilla toppled like a giant sequoia. Face first.

  He thrashed and flexed against the binding chain.

  The links pinged and groaned… but held.

  I jumped onto his back and squatted there.

  Loosen up just a bit, I suggested.

  The ninja chain did so, rendering the ape’s great strength less effective.

  I let him struggle for a few seconds.

  “So, care to talk this over?” I asked him. “Or should I let you eat dirt all evening?”

  The gorilla gave one last titanic flex and released a huge sigh.

  “M’hhhurrph?” the gorilla inquired.

  “Oh sorry.” I rolled him over.

  He spat out a chunk of sod. “You,” he replied in a rumbling growl, “are walking dead meat.”

  I sat on his chest. “You’ll have to explain how I’m walking dead meat. From where I’m sitting, banana breath, you’re the one in a tight spot.”

  He tried a chuckle, but Shé liàn gave him a vindictive squeeze on my behalf.

  Good girl.

  “This is the Valley of the great drunken god, Dà Xiào Hóu and his many, many disciples.”

  “Yeah, I saw them. Passed out in the temple. Not that impressed.”

  “The priests?” he scoffed. “Useless. I meant the rest of us.”

  Rest of them?

  I looked up.

  From every tree in the orchard, monkeys dropped from the branches like it was raining simians. There were spider monkeys, macaques, baboons, chimpanzees, howlers, lemurs, and a few more gorillas. They lit torches. More of their kind stirred from the dew-drenched grass. They grabbed tools and makeshift clubs.

  And there weren’t a dozen.

  No
t even a mere hundred.

  It was like that scene in the 1932 flick, Island of Lost Souls. The entire half-human, half-animal population of the island had Dr. Moreau cornered in his House of Pain, intent on dissecting him alive.

  And likewise… what looked like a thousand drunken monkeys surrounded me with murder gleaming in their eyes.

  CHAPTER 29

  They swept over me like a hurricane took a drowning man.

  And I choked.

  It wasn’t fear… not exactly.

  It was the shock and awe of seeing so many creatures intent on ripping me to pieces—each hairy face contorted with an exaggerated outrage that only the truly drunk can manage. Just imagine all those long arms reaching for you, those gnashing teeth, and the screams—my God, they sounded like a stadium full of inebriated soccer fans protesting a referee’s call.

  I came to my senses and punched and punted the first half dozen of the smaller ones—but there were too many, too fast. A pack of them got on my back and started gnawing at my Spirit Armor. Little punks.

  Chimpanzees dove for my legs and I went down. More grabbed my arms. They knew how to apply a proper armbar, too.

  An orangutan jumped on my face, and headband of mystical sight or not, I couldn’t see anything but… well, you figure it out.

  And finally, a gorilla bellyflopped on me. At least that’s what I assumed happened because of the sudden weight crushing me (and from the squishing squeals of lemurs and macaques caught under him as well).

  Very effective squadron tactics.

  I wasn’t able to draw a breath.

  Enough was enough. I executed a tactical retreat to the aether.

  I’d just grab as much electrical energy as I could and—

  Hang on. The ley line I’d used a minute ago was glass clear. Not a spark of energy pulsed inside. Had I drained it? I didn’t even know that was possible. How long did these things take to recharge?

  My questions had to wait.

  That boiling green ley line I’d seen before was within reach. Just looking at it made my fingers itch and burn, filled my nostrils with the smells of sulfur, and my esophagus clenched as I suddenly recalled the time I’d mixed peppermint schnapps and Southern Comfort and hurled the resultant mixture.

  This was the essence of elemental acid.

  Not much choice, so I snagged it, and

  —phased back.

  There came the sizzling sound of water on a hot griddle and the stench of burning hair.

  The gorilla jumped off me and rolled in the dirt. The mob of monkeys leapt off as well, all screeching and scraping their blistering parts over the grass.

  I flipped onto my feet.

  Thankfully, as before, I was immune to the forces I channeled from the aether. Also good, the ten points of damage I’d done had been distributed among many, so the little guys were scared, some might be scarred, but they’d live.

  The gorilla rounded on me, his left shoulder smoking, and he snarled.

  I’d have to deal with him… along with the other nine hundred monkeys who hadn’t yet gotten their turn. They looked, if possible, even more pissed.

  Time to follow RULE THREE (do not get caught or killed) and use the ancient martial art technique known as A Hundred Footsteps… executed as rapidly as possible.

  I reached out to my ninja chain.

  It unwound from the other, bound gorilla and leapt to my hand.

  I jumped for the nearest tree and landed in its topmost branches.

  Monkeys scampered up after me, all grasping hands and howls of fury.

  I vaulted to another treetop.

  Flying through the air, I took a look around.

  Beyond this orchard, the valley was surrounded by cliff walls. Next to a mighty waterfall, the adjacent stone had been carved into a three-hundred-foot column comprised of titan monkeys of various species. These statue simians stood on their hands, their heads, or were in other improbable gymnastic poses. A few drank from the adjacent waterfall (actually diverting water down their throats), and lower in the stack other monkeys then discharged that water in graceful arcs.

  Mist from the waterfall made a moon-lit rainbow, and beneath a silver ribbon fed a mirror-placid lake. On the shore sat a mill with paddlewheel and grain silos.

  Still farther I spied stairs chiseled into a cliff at an absurdly precarious angle. They led up to a pagoda with sweeping beams and white-tiled roofs. Past that—I got just a glimpse at the apex of my trajectory—a trail that snaked higher into the hills.

  That was my way out of here.

  I fell toward my target tree.

  Four orangutans with double sticks waited for me in its branches.

  I slung the weighted end of my ninja chain at one, knocked him off, and landed in the spot he’d so graciously vacated. I dodged a few of the remaining monkeys’ strikes, kicked two of the creatures off, but the last one jabbed me hard enough to penetrate my Spirit Armor and cracked a rib. Someone had definitely trained these guys.

  I glanced at my health and mana bars.

  Health was at 98/180, due to various scratches and bites and being crushed nearly flat. Spiritual mana at 70/90. And reflexive mana down to 73/120 from the blast of lightning and acid and lingering in the aether.

  Not bad, but at this rate, I wouldn’t last long in a prolonged fight.

  Smaller, faster monkeys started to swarm up the tree.

  I kicked my last orangutan sparring partner in the face—he fell back, grasping at air—and I used the borrowed momentum to launch myself to the next tree.

  Rather than land there, however, I threw my ninja chain ahead, snagged a branch—yanked myself forward, and aimed at a large apple tree at the orchard’s edge… a hundred feet away.

  This did indeed bend the laws of physics, but as promised, my upgraded Wire Work ability let me fudge the boundaries of Newtonian mechanics with “maneuvers limited by your imagination and only sometimes the force of gravity.”

  I glanced over my shoulder.

  I had put a bit of distance between myself and the ape mob.

  Who was I kidding, though? They had to see I was heading for the stairs. I just had to get there faster than them.

  I alighted in the tree. A perfect landing. The branch under my feet, however, snapped—as did every other limb and twig I tried to grab as I tumbled to the earth.

  Only slightly dazed (my pride took most of the damage), I got up.

  My pursuers had closed my lead by half.

  I ran out of the orchard, ignored the path, and cut through a garden of Japanese maples, arched moon bridges, and gracefully arranged bonsais—leapt from stone to stone over koi ponds—and dashed over a lake inlet covered with lily pads and lotuses, my feet leaving only feather-touch ripples in my wake.

  Dozens of pursuers attempted to follow me over the water, only to splash through the surface, squawking their confusion and displeasure after me.

  I next plodded through a Zen rock garden, losing time and ground over a large patch of soft groomed gravel.

  Finally at the stairs, I paused to take in what I was up against. I estimated the cliff face was between sixty and seventy degrees, and the stairs mirrored that angle—so steep that one stumble and I’d bounce down the entire half-mile length.

  The stairs were narrow. Two people (maybe) could squeeze by one another.

  Past a low wall on either side of the steps, the adjacent cliff was covered in slimy moss.

  One more thing: stacked next to the base of these stairs were hundreds of wine barrels. What poor monkey got saddled with the job of carrying them up and down?

  Projectiles splattered the cliff over my head.

  Oh, shit.

  I spun around.

  My monkey friends had closed to thrown-weapons range.

  I bounded up the stairs.

  I had to focus on climbing, for even with my 5 STRENGTH and 17 BODY, this was a grind, and soon my legs burned with fatigue and I sucked wind.

  After a minute, thoug
h, my pursuers’ war screams and calls for my entrails weakened, and ceased… replaced by exasperated, exhausted cries.

  These monkeys, while decent fighters, were apparently in lousy shape. They faltered a quarter way up the steps, panting, slumped upon one another and wheezing. The result, no doubt, from too much fruit and liquor and not enough exercise.

  With a sizable lead and halfway up, I might just get out of here in one piece. Then I’d circle back and—

  A shadow appeared at the top of the stairs.

  I squinted and recognized the shape: hunched, quadruped, an unmistakable high-domed, no-neck head.

  Gorilla.

  He charged down the stairs. His long arms gripped the low walls on either side so he wouldn’t go ass over teakettle on the precarious grade.

  Did I face one five-hundred-pound gorilla, or be nibbled to pieces by fifty ten-pound lemurs?

  It was no contest. I ran up to meet him, pumping my shaky legs to build speed.

  The gorilla thundered toward me, black eyes glinting with the anticipation of extreme violence. He took his hands off the side walls to grab for me.

  The instant before he could—I stopped, planted, braced, grabbed his wrists, and yanked.

  I rolled onto my back, kicked him in the stomach, and judo flipped him.

  His momentum did the heavy lifting and he sailed over me.

  I slapped with one arm and used Shé liàn’s blade to catch the edge of a stair to keep from following him.

  The ape soared fifty feet—all that muscle flailing uselessly—hit, bounced, and tumbled wild and uncontrolled—crashed into the exhausted mass of monkeys and steamrolled them. It was a wonderful landslide of simian flesh.

  I turned to resume my dash.

  Now, however, two gorillas stood at the top… and rolled wine barrels down the stairs.

  Uh-oh.

  The barrels together filled the width of the stairway, rolling, sloshing, and picking up speed.

  I jumped over one, and ducked under the other as it went over my head.

  From the thick rumbling sound, I knew they were full.

  Getting hit would flatten me and certainly knock me down the steps… or off them.

  I tried to resume my ascent, but two more barrels were incoming. These hadn’t been rolled. They’d been tossed and arced through the air toward me.