Being a king is fucking awesome, except for all the times it isn’t.

Perched on a rocky outcropping above my territory, I experienced both sides of that coin. To the west, the sun was a smiling, golden god who had driven back the mists of corruption and bathed my people and lands in light and warmth. I’d done that by purifying the nexus below the Wave Serpent’s temple, and I was damned proud of that achievement despite the horrible price I’d paid for it.

To the east, though, shit was still all fucked up.

What had once been the vital and powerful White Tiger Kingdom was a blighted disaster covered in the sticky, wet mist of senjin corruption. Angry clouds boiled above the damp landscape, spitting rain onto the heads of the poor bastards who still lived there, and shadows flitted across the landscape like hungry spirits.

It wasn’t just the difference between light and dark that marked the division between the two kingdoms. The eastern edge of my territory was a rocky cliff that plummeted from the light into darkness. The only way into my kingdom from the lower ground was to climb the sheer cliffs or navigate the maze of a ravine that crossed both territories.

From my vantage, the chasm was a jagged lightning strike of shadow gouged out of the terrain. The branching ravine was a foreboding, eerie place that supposedly led to the lost city of Amankala, once a gateway for trade between the Moonsilver Bat Kingdom and the White Tiger Kingdom.

Now, according to the Wave Serpent, the city was a tainted ruin filled with all manner of deadly creatures and traps waiting to take a bite out of my ass. It was the last place on Earth I wanted to visit.

Of course, that was where I was headed.

“You’re sure she’s down there?” I asked Ryasina. “If we get down there and this was a wild goose chase, we’re in deep shit.”

“Brooding does not suit you.” The Wave Serpent wrapped the end of her long tail around my left thigh and flicked its tip under the edge of my breechcloth. “It will give you wrinkles, and you are far too young for that.”

“I’m not likely to get old if I keep sticking my nose into every dangerous hole I sniff out,” I said with a chuckle.

“Every dangerous hole?” The witch giggled and her tail’s tip brushed the inside of my thigh.

“You bet.” I turned and pulled her into a tight embrace. “Did you find a new one I need to look into?”

“New to you.” The witch flicked the end of my nose with the pointed tip of her pink tongue. “But it’s probably better if we wait for that. And, yes, I am sure the Lapis Scarab is still somewhere inside Amankala. The Scarab’s corrupted nexus holds her prisoner just as mine captured me. If we free her, the White Tiger Kingdom will be yours.”

Despite the Wave Serpent’s advice to the contrary, I couldn’t help but brood. The Midnight Emperor was pissed as hell about his defeat at my hands, and I had no doubt he’d already started planning his revenge. I had a very narrow window of opportunity to bolster my position before he rallied the other kings of the Sevenfold Empire to come stomp my skull into red paste.

Ryasina had suggested we make a move on Amankala almost as soon as she’d put a crown on my head. She’d visited the city before the corruption had turned her nexus into a prison and claimed the place had once been chock full of magi who’d likely left behind some scripted toys for us to loot. The ruined city was also a chokepoint between my territory and the rest of the Sevenfold Empire, and it came with the added bonus of another nexus in need of purification and another witch goddess as a potential ally.

If we could reclaim Amankala, purify the nexus, and gain the trust of the Lapis Scarab, we’d be way ahead of the game. But that was a very big if.

“This is going to be tough, isn’t it?” I asked Ryasina. In the short time we’d been together, I’d learned to trust her judgment on most things. She knew tons about being a shaman and the world I’d returned to, and I needed her wisdom to help guide me through this bullshit.

“Not too tough for you, my king.” She kissed me, gently, and leaned back to look into my eyes. “You accomplished so much before we met, and you’ve learned more than I’d thought possible over these past weeks. You can do this, Kyr.”

“Thank you,” I said. “For everything. I don’t think I’d have come so far so fast without your help.”

The Wave Serpent had been one hell of a tutor while she’d recovered and during our trek toward the ruins of Amankala. She’d taught me more efficient ways to cycle my breathing, shared a plethora of advanced herbal medicine recipes, and started working with me on improving the Crimson Claws and Bear’s Mantle techniques. It had been quite an education and had shown me just how much there was for me still to learn.

“You are a quick study, my king,” the witch said, her tail tightening around my thigh. “As you advance your core I will be able to teach you more. Much more.”

“And I’ve got a lot to teach you.” I pulled the witch closer to me, eager to show her exactly what I meant.

“Perhaps now is not the best time for that,” the Wave Serpent whispered, her chest heaving as desire snatched her breath away. “I believe Jaga is on her way with her report.”

“She can join in.” I lowered my mouth to the witch’s and kissed her, long and deep. For a moment, I wasn’t worried about leading my merry band of misfits into the mouth of hell or the many, many enemies who were no doubt on their way. I lost myself in the warm, wet heat of the witch’s mouth and the rapid beating of our hearts.

“Blood God, Kyr,” Jaga groaned. “Can’t you be alone with a woman for two minutes without trying to fuck her legs—I mean, tail—off?”

I let the kiss linger for another second, just to prove to Jaga that I didn’t answer to her. The riverboat captain had been invaluable in spreading the word of my kingship through my new territory, and her connections with other sampan pilots, smugglers, and mercenaries had made this journey possible. But I was still the boss.

“You think I started this?” I said, mock offense on my face as I pulled away from the witch. “She jumped me!”

“He is telling the truth.” Ryasina squeezed her tail tighter around my leg. “I thought we had a bit more time before you would interrupt us.”

“You, too?” The captain shook her head. “I like a good dicking down as much as the next girl, but we have business to attend to.”

“Life is shorter than you know,” the witch said. “Learn to take your pleasure where you can find it.”

The captain rolled her eyes and dove into her report.

“While you two were twiddling your bits, my boys and girls found a way into the ravine. We can be there in an hour.” Jaga beamed with pride at her scouts’ discovery.

“That’s optimistic,” Yata said as it fluttered out of the sky to land on my shoulder. “The river’s current is slow here, and there’s a bunch of rocks between us and the ravine. Don’t even get me started about how steep the slope is on the last leg of the journey down to White Tiger territory.”

“My pilots can navigate the river, bird, and the slope.” Jaga scowled at my familiar. “Not that you fucking know a thing about river currents or rocks.”

“I’ve forgotten more about travel than you’ll ever learn,” the three-legged raven cawed.

“You flying rat.” Jaga scooped a pebble off the ground. She hurled the makeshift missile at my familiar, narrowly missing the bird as it vaulted into the sky with a flap of its wings and a squirt of white poop.

“I know where you sleep!” Yata called as it sailed away, sunlight gleaming on its blue-black feathers.

“Thank you for your hard work.” I clasped Jaga’s hands in my own and kissed her knuckles. “I trust your judgment, so if you say we can be there in an hour, let’s get there.”

“Follow me,” the sampan pilot said, her cheeks flushed by my praise. “I won’t let you down.”

“She is the only one who refuses to call you by your proper title,” the witch whispered to me as we followed Jaga down from our vantage point to rejoin the rest of our group.

“Without Jaga, I’d never have been able to rescue you from the corruption,” I said. “I’m not going to demand she call me her king.”

“It will encourage others to be disrespectful,” the witch said with a frown.

“Trust me, none of the sampan pilots or sellswords that Jaga’s recruited for us will get the same lenience from me that she has,” I looped an arm around the witch’s sinuous waist. “And I trust her, even if she won’t bend the knee.”

“I suppose,” the Wave Serpent said with a sigh. “But none of this is going the way I had imagined it would.”

“I think it’s safe to say that’s true for all of us.” I grinned and rubbed my hand along the small of her back. The line where her skin met her scales was particularly sensitive, and the witch shivered at my touch.

“Do not start something you will not finish,” she said with an impish grin. Despite the fact that she was older than the Sevenfold Empire itself, the Wave Serpent didn’t take herself too seriously. If it wasn’t for her formal speech patterns and stilted accent, she could have easily been mistaken for a young woman fresh off the farm.

Other than the snake tail. You didn’t see a lot of serpent girls down on the farm.

“All right, boys and girls,” Jaga shouted as we approached the riverside camp. “Time to pull your thumbs out of your asses and get your shit on the boats. We’re pulling out of here in half an hour.”

“Fuckin’ crow tits,” a wizened captain with jug-handle ears grumbled. “We only left the river an hour ago.”

“And we’ll be back on it in half an hour, Grundley.” Jaga stomped over to the man and shoved her face to within an inch of his. “Unless you want to quit and miss out on all the treasure the rest of us will snatch when we reach Amankala.”

“If we—”

Jaga threw an elbow across Grundley’s jaw hard enough to stagger him. The blow was so sharp and fast I wasn’t sure I’d seen it until the whiner took a step back and rubbed the side of his face with one calloused hand.

“Okay, fuckin’ Frozen Hells,” he said. “You made your point.”

The rest of the captains minded their manners after that and got us back on the river in twenty minutes. Not even the mercs complained about the short break, and they hadn’t been paid yet. I hoped the promise of gold to come when we reached Amankala would keep them on the straight and narrow because we couldn’t afford to lose them, and I didn’t think Jaga’s temper would motivate them forever.

The first leg of our riverboat trip was just the way I like things: boring and peaceful. The sun smiled on us, its rays warming our upturned faces while the wind blew a soothing breeze to take the sting from the heat. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was out for a pleasant float trip with friends rather than running a desperate race to save the world. Even the bit of whitewater that Yata had warned me about did little to disturb our trip as Jaga and her captains navigated the difficult currents with ease.

We crossed the border into the White Tiger Kingdom near the end of the hour Jaga had promised me. The cheery sunshine and gentle breezes decided not to cross over with us, leaving my crew at the mercy of the clammy, sticky fog that clung to the corrupted landscape. The river grew murky around the sleek hulls of our boats, and the rolling plains swelled into rugged hills and steep-sided chasms that cast long shadows over us.

The wildlife changed, too. The deer and rabbits who had pranced merrily alongside the river in my kingdom were replaced by packs of mangy mutts that watched us with hungry eyes. Buzzards swooped through the dense fog, spinning circles so low over our boats that the mercenaries took to swiping at them with their spears to drive them off.

It’d been almost two months since the last time I’d set foot in the corrupted lands, and I’d already forgotten how goddamned miserable the tainted energy made me feel. The foul power pushed at the boundaries of my core and clawed at the edges of my thoughts, looking for any way into my spirit. The effort of holding the rotten shit at bay left me cranky and irritable.

By midafternoon, the river had dropped into the branching channels of the ravine we’d spotted from our earlier vantage point. Stone walls closed in from the sides, and the river flowed faster as its banks tightened. The pilots cursed and shouted warnings as rocks thumped into the flat bottoms of their sampans with unnerving force.

Yata helped us navigate with its frantic reconnaissance. The three-legged raven flew itself ragged, and I reminded myself to give it something tasty the next time we camped. If it hadn’t been for the bird’s constant flights, we’d have never found the route to Amankala. The ancient city wasn’t lost so much as expertly hidden in this geographic maze, and even with the raven’s guidance it still took us until well after sunset to find the narrow, twisting branch of the river that took us to our goal.

“This doesn’t look like much,” Jaga confided to me after we’d pulled the sampans up onto a sandy riverbank at the ass end of a boulder-strewn box canyon. “I was expecting a lost city, not a bunch of fucking nothing.”

“This is the place,” the Wave Serpent said as she slithered up to join us. “It may not look like our desolate surroundings contain the treasure we seek, but rest assured that the path to our goal is clear to me.”

“It’d better be,” the captain said. “The mercenaries were promised sweet loot, and so far they haven’t seen shit. Their leaders think we’re lost.”

“How much farther to the city?” I asked the witch. If the mercenaries were going to be whiny little pussies because they thought we were lost, I’d show them just how full of shit they were.

“There is a concealed tunnel at the end of the canyon.” The witch’s tail twitched, and her eyes gleamed as if she was eager to see what the city held. “It is only a short trip from there to the gates of the city.”

“Awesome.” I hoisted my war club over my right shoulder. I doubted there’d be any trouble on a walk this short, but Mielyssi’s kiss made an admirable light source that would serve us well when we went spelunking. “Let’s take a peek.”

Aja and Ayo fell in behind us as the witch, Jaga, and I headed downstream toward the professional soldiers gathered on the river’s gravel banks.

“What’s up?” Aja asked me. “You look like you’re about to kick someone’s ass.”

“Maybe,” I said. “We’ll see how this goes.”

I hadn’t been a huge fan of hiring mercenaries for this job, but Ryasina and Jaga both insisted more bodies would help us reach our goal in one piece. After all, the White Tiger King had to be pissed as hell about the men he’d lost, and he might send more out looking for me. While it had seemed like a good idea at the time, I hadn’t been able to pay the mercenaries up front, and they’d been grumbly ever since. To keep them from walking off the job, I needed to show them I knew what the fuck I was doing.

“You and you,” I jabbed my finger at Marku, the leader of this bunch, and his second-in-command, Vyria. “Come with us.”

“Can I ask where the fuck we’re headed?” Marku asked, the vivid blue tattoo down the left side of his face twisting as he grimaced.

“To Amankala,” I said. “I want to show you fuckwits I know what I’m doing.”

“Nobody said you didn’t,” Vyria said. She touched the thick band of scar tissue around her throat when she spoke, an absent-minded gesture that told me her voice hadn’t always been quite so gruff.

“Cool,” I shot back. “Still, I figure it will help you rest easier if you know we’re almost to our destination.”

The mercenaries shrugged, then nodded. We didn’t have much else to say to each other for the next fifteen minutes during our walk. The ravine’s walls seemed to close in on us as we followed the river downstream, and soon enough the end of the canyon rose through the mist to block our path.

“This is it,” the witch said.

That drew uncertain glances from the two mercenaries. There wasn’t so much as a gopher hole in sight, much less a tunnel that would lead us to the fabled lost city.

“Better be more to it than this fuckin’ wall,” Marku grunted.

The witch raised her arms over her head with a flourish, and the soldiers pointedly looked away from her chest as the long strands of her purple hair shifted to reveal the heavy globes of her breasts.

And then we all had something else almost as impressive to look at.

Ribbons of amethyst fire floated away from the witch’s outstretched hands and settled on the stone ahead of us. Inch by inch, the flames burned away the illusion that had covered the stone.

“I’ll be damned,” Vyria said.

“I doubt we’ll be that lucky.” A faint wind curled out of the cavern and stirred the mist around our feet. There was something in there. Something that didn’t want us to come any closer to Amankala. “Come with me.”

The mercenaries shook their heads. The fear on their faces told me they’d felt the shadowy presence lurking in the tunnel as clearly as I had.

“Let’s come back in the morning. I’ve seen enough for tonight,” Marku said.

“Me, too,” Vyria agreed.

“Perhaps we should turn back, my king,” the witch said. “Your hirelings appear to be satisfied with this proof. We can return in the morning with our full force.”

The Wave Serpent’s words were wise, but I wasn’t in the mood to hear them. The mercenaries had doubted me. It was time to show them I wasn’t a man to be trifled with.

“I’ll be back shortly,” I said with a snort.

As I walked into the darkness, I heard the tall man ask Jaga, “Why the fuck is he going in there alone?”

“Because,” Jaga replied, with something like pride in her voice, “that’s what fucking heroes do. They march right into the belly of the beast, even if no one else has the balls to follow.”

I couldn’t help but smile at the captain’s words. I held onto the tone in her voice as the icy fist of dread closed in around me, and the darkness seemed to take on a life of its own.