Ninety-seven. Nice, I managed to skewer the guy behind him. Ninety-nine. God, there's so many of them, we could be here way longer than I originally planned. . .

I glanced up to a milky sky. The sun smudge was halfway down the skullcap's rear, leaving us with approximately two hours left in Zoxum to get home comfortably, perhaps three if we sprinted.

"Maya, we need to pick up the pace. Do you see the King anywhere? He's probably hiding, but there's a chance he'll come out and watch the battle," I shouted, removing my sword from the armpit of a Zoxan.

"Give me a second! Cover me," she hollered back. After decapitating the one in front of her, Maya ran to the corner of our building and stacked several dead bodies on top of each other, standing on them.

"I'm going to be a bit occupied over here, so just let me know if you see something. Try and make it quick, please."

As gullible as ever. One hundred and thirty-three, one hundred and thirty-four. . .

It was getting hard to maneuver around the dead bodies littering our rooftop arena. We'd been trying to push as many off as possible, but with the constant refreshing of soldiers it was just not possible to keep up. I began to fumble, my bare foot being caught and cut, burning on the tiling of black armor that was sucking in sunlight like a garden of iron Black Cat Petunias. I was slaughtering the Zoxan forces with ease, but the dead were finding a way to fight back.

I was forced back to the ledge, near Maya's little corpse outpost. From a perimeter viewpoint, it became clear that the roof was sagging slightly in the middle, buckling under the weight of a hundred dead men clad in mail and plate. I glanced right, down a row of homes and markets arranged like stepping stones, each building no more than eight feet from the next.

"Any sign of the King yet?"

She kept her vision focused, squinting hard beneath an unnecessary hand on her brow. "I think I see him. There's a caravan about 150 meters away, to the right of their central tower. I can't see it well, but it looks pretty fancy from here. We should head there first."

"Well, we better get moving now. They're starting to come through faster than I can fight them, and the roof's giving out. I have an idea, though--this time, I'll need you to fend them off a bit while I work."

She hopped down from her step-stool and smiled at me. "Don't mind if I do."

Well, there goes my lead.

We hacked away at the few I hadn't gotten to yet, hopping from corpse to corpse the way a child might avoid stepping on cracks in stone.

"When I tell you to, jump over to the building next to us. You might want to sheathe your sword--it's not going to be an easy one."

I hopped to the center of our rooftop, lifted my sword high into the air, and plunged it straight down with all my strength. It was only enough to cause a small crack around the point of impact, but with tons of dead Zoxans pushing down on it, that fracture quickly expanded. Within seconds, it was branching out like a flash of lightning, cracking like thunder, and I signaled to Maya for our retreat.

She knocked back her foe, fumbled with something on the ground and we bolted across the rooftop, bouncing from Zoxan to Zoxan, before leaping to the next building.

Of course, Maya had not sheathed her sword before making the jump--and, of course, she cleared the gap with little issue. I, however, slammed my chest into the ledging and barely managed to cling on. A chorus of howling came from below me as Zoxans piled against the wall and tried to hack at my dangling toes.

"Maybe next time you should try jumping with your sword out," Maya mocked me, looming over my dangling body. Thankfully she didn't gloat for long before dragging me up.

"I lost my footing, since I’m missing a damn boot now." I looked down at the naked foot, crusted in a mixture of blood and sand that almost looked like footwear.

Maya grinned at me, beaming with pride, holding up a red boot. "I even took his sock off. You owe me one."

My foot sang a song of praise and salvation as I equipped it. I stood up, shifting around to settle it in its new home. The current of Zoxan soldiers shifted toward us, but some were still climbing into the previous building. Five, ten, fifteen more scrambled up onto the roof, and with thunderous crack of stone splitting, it caved in. The dead came crashing down upon the living, along with a hundred tons of rubble. The sides of the building blew out and toppled over, which couldn't have been any worse a fate for the tightly-packed stream of Zoxans around it.

A cloud of debris and sand kicked into the air, rushing over us at our new outpost. I shot Maya a satisfied look, hands on my hips, and chuckled. "What is that? Probably at least a hundred, right? Damn, I'm good. I should win because of that alone."

She fired a squint-eyed sneer at me. "Shut up. They seem to struggle with rooftops, so we should try to hop across this row of buildings for now, then cross over to the next row once most of them fall behind. Try not to fall and die along the way, will you?"

"I think I can manage, now that I have this new boot."

We took off, soaring through the air between stony buildings. I was barely making each jump, wobbling and stumbling as I tried to find footing on the ledges with a sore sole and loose boot, but I was getting by on my own nonetheless.

One Zoxan actually had the foresight to try and cut us off, climbing onto a building we hadn't yet reached. Still, he was no match for me--I slid down and swept his legs from under him without losing much momentum, taking care of the problem without wasting any time. A pained howl cut through the air as his left arm hit the ground palm-first and inverted at the elbow.

"We're getting closer, but we shouldn't jump down until the horde is further behind us," Maya shouted over her shoulder, hair whipping behind her. "Just follow me."

After leaping across three more buildings, Maya dropped to the ground, buckling her knees, rolling across the sand and springing back to her feet. I followed suit, albeit far less gracefully and with more. . . crashing. I stumbled, regaining my bearings with a groan, and we ran into a building two rows over.

Up the stairs we climbed, through the roof, and we were once again jumping from building to building. With my semi-heavy mail, the fighting, leaping, and heat were starting to slow me down. I stopped for a moment to look back, hundreds of Zoxans swarming in between buildings, plunging from rooftops to be trampled in a stream of their own allies.

I wonder, is all that black staining the earth of this city just armor, or blood?

The caravan was soon close enough to see clearly; a series of elephants with canopies on their backs, fashioned from silver and dressed in exotic tapestries of green, donned with gold frills and blue gems. The poor beasts had their tusks sharpened to a deadly point, and the largest of them was dead center in the caravan.

"Maya, let's hop onto the nearest one in his row and cut through to the center. If we're on equal grounds with him, no one can stop us."

"Good plan, I'll try to swing around from the other side if I can," she shouted, bounding over a building. "Oh, one more thing."

"Yes, dear?"

She made a sloppy heart shape with her hands and smiled as wide as she physically could. "If you hurt the elephants, I'll kill you."

I sighed and left the safe stability of solid ground, landing on a bobbing animal, its rough skin speckled with thin, wispy hairs that were damn near invisible. Its back was the size of my personal quarters, a spine thick and knurled like an oak root raised and splitting it in two sections. Though it had nearly no forward momentum, each step was accompanied by a crash and sway that carried through my body. There was a rhythm to the beast's gait, as if it were the beating heart of a stone giant long since lost to the world. Jarring as it was initially, I quickly adapted to the ebb and crash and flow, dancing with vectors as I charged the Zoxan crew aboard.

Warriors manning each elephant were clad in black garb with crimson, leather plate atop it, matching Somnior's slick coating. On each chestpiece was a swirling sun as black as their blood, and bladed quarterstaffs replaced ordinary broadswords. They looked magnificent, menacing and powerful, but they charged at me like children wielding sticks and fell in mere seconds.

It's pathetic how poorly trained these soldiers are, down to the rear guard.

I jumped onto the caravan's heart, slicing at the tapestries hanging between me and the King. Two more grunts charged, armed with double-sided staves taller than me. A challenge had presented itself at last, and it was welcome.

Just as the excitement settled in, I heard the familiar war cry of an overexcited Maya explode from behind them. Turbulence kickstarted with a trumpeting cry as weight shifted to the beast's opposite side, knocking me flat on my back and sending the two guards stumbling forward. They tripped over their obscenely large staves, dropping them in panic to free their hands. It didn't take long for the quaking to end, and when it did, two defenseless soldiers scrambled toward me without even grabbing their weapons. I cut through them much like I did the room's exterior cloth.

"How disappointing," I sighed.

Ahead, there was a lavish bed the size of a small room, lined with disheveled, silk textiles of red and gold. Black, velvet body pillows were strewn across it and the surrounding floor. Beyond that, there was nothing.

Did he see us approaching and run?

"I've got you now, King!"

I frantically ducked, just as a bat zipped over my head with blistering speed. Maya stumbled forward, pivoting abruptly on her left foot before spreading her arms and falling onto the bed as though that were the intention to begin with.

"Don't kill me!" I half pleaded, half spat.

"Oh, sorry. I got kinda carried away there." She let out a light chuckle, then sat up and looked around the tent. "Aww, did you already get him? That's lame. . ."

"He's not here. There were just a couple guards, like every other tent I cut through. This one actually had fewer men in it, now that I think about it."

She chewed on my words for a moment. "It's probably a decoy, then. Clever guy, this King. You think there's another caravan on the other side of this city?"

A blazing trumpet blared through the city air, lingering like kicked dust as a definitive answer to her question. We ran out of the tent, and hopped back onto the buildings for a proper view.

Oh, my. . .

There was an ocean of Zoxan knights standing at attention, a black hemisphere immediately behind the city's center tree. After several moments of silently gazing at the sea of glimmering death, Maya and I nodded to each other and set off for its shore.

At its forefront stood a man, taller than the rest, leaning against the towering trunk--but as we approached, it became increasingly clear that it was not a man, per se. Thick, black fur fanned out from its body, with the facial structure of a mountain bear. Thin streaks of red accentuated the beast's cheekbones, running vertically from eye to jaw. It was wearing a bright robe that looked just like the tapestries we'd seen atop the elephants, with a gold crown that was spiked the way a serrated knife would be. A large steel greatsword with a dark orange handle and pommel shaped like the sun was pointed into the ground, the King shifting away from the tree and leaning into it like a walking stick.

Wind struggled to whip sand through air thick with tension as we stood not thirty feet away.

"So you're at the front line, eh? I expected you to be cowering in a tent, surrounded by guards. I'm not sure if you're bold, arrogant, or just a fool." I threw my words at it like daggers, set to gash even the tough hide of a King's pride.

"A good leader should lead, no?" he responded with a thick, growling voice, heavily weighted with an unfamiliar accent. "You will battle me, not these measly drones. Clearly, even with numbers on their side, they are too stupid for skilled fighters such as yourselves; slaves have a limit to their purpose, I suppose."

Maya contorted her face, taking a step forward. "Slaves? You call your citizens--your soldiers, dying for you--slaves? What's wrong with you?"

"Silly girl, these are beasts bound to me--not some troop of free men. They do as I say, without hesitation or regret; they are nothing but my will made real. Watch, if you don't believe me." He pointed to a soldier behind him and snapped his fingers.

The Zoxan skewered a soldier to its right, opening a spigot from its neck. Not a soul stirred in the battalion as the slain soldier crashed forward without a single yelp or groan; an army of stone men carved hollow.

Maya was gritting her teeth, fists clenched and shaking. "Then we'll just kill you and set them free. People like you don't deserve power."

The king let out a hearty, bellowing laugh that filled the city streets. He stepped forward from underneath the tree's near solid canopy, out of the shade and into reddening light that left his face-lines blazing.

"Let me ask you something, girl. What is 'power'? Is it merely something temporary, whether handed to you or plundered with force, or is true power something much deeper than that? Something that can't be taken, or subdued despite all efforts.

“Is 'power' truly power if it can be stolen, like a chest of gold or fine, silk sheets? I think not. These men aren't bought, or broken and trained. Their very existence is owned. I am their God, and nothing you do will change that. I--"

With a massive squelch, roughly three liters of a viscous, chunky liquid rained down on the King, drenching his robe and soaking into his soul. He remained frozen, mid-speech and mouth agape as if the words were stuck in his throat, choking him.

The stench. . . it's nauseating.

"For a guy that talks a lot of shit, you sure don't wear it well," I quipped at his unmoving body, statuesque like the army of slaves he'd bred.

"Reza, look! Up there!"

I traced the path of Maya's finger. Two bats were circling overhead, looming above us like swirling stormclouds. As they passed in front of the low sun-smudge, orange light punched through the thin membranes of their veiny wings, exposing all the bones in their arms twisting and gyrating with each wild flap.

Well, I guess I can't complain. That's some serious aim on their part, though.

The bats swooped down and began plowing through the crowd, knocking beasts about. They couldn't drag any of them very far, but the commotion brewed chaos amongst the once serene soldiers. After a few attacks, the bats began grabbing debris from the building we'd downed and dropping it on the army, poking holes in their ranks. Their formation was crumbling like a smashed sandstone building.

The back of the city-skull was painted a reddish-purple, bruised on the horizon. Before I could urge our attack, Maya was already in motion.

Swords drawn, we approached him with no trouble at all--he was vomiting, desperately trying to wipe the guano from his eyes and nose. After a venomous glare at us, and a glance back at his suddenly chaotic army, he ripped his sun-sword from the dirt. The blade shimmered an orange of sunrise.

It was something of a dance, the way Maya operated when burning with fury. Twisting, she threw a dagger directly from her hip, then whipped another hand at him in a cyclone of graceful wrath. The King unsheathed his sword from the dirt, slicing the dagger out of the air, only to be caught in the chest by a second.

He let out a wet cough of sticky blood that unraveled into crazed laughter. "You think these people are yours to take, to free--but they are not. I am their leader, silly girl. . . their only leader. Even in death, I will show you what power is.

"It cannot be taken, child."

He plunged the sword deep into the tree's heart. It glowed in his bloody hand, sending pulses of light coursing through the trunk and up into a thick matting of branches. Like a struck match, brilliance pooled in the canopy, aqueous and shifting, then sank down. The tree turned to charcoal, collapsing in a tsunami of smoke.

When all settled, where once a pillar of life stood, only a pile of swirling ash remained. It blew across the open courtyard and into the city's veins. A single needle was all that was left, its green a sliver of life on dead sands. Every Zoxan within the sight had fallen on their swords, staining the sand like upturned inkwells, and the King was singed and crumpled. Maya cringed, the vicarious sorrow of ten thousand dead men in her eyes; that look of sadness, however, was quickly swallowed by burning anger. I barely managed to get out of the way as she pulled Vesper from the King's body and hacked once more, leaving a furry head spurting blood several feet away, its hairs melted and curled.

"You sick bastard," she muttered amidst labored breaths. "I wish I could kill you a thousand times."

"It's dishonorable and cowardly, but I don't think we could've fought the rest of them." I wiped Somnior clean with a muffled gag. "Hey, Maya, would you want to take the scroll from him? I, uh, need to go. . . check something out over there."

When she turned to protest, I'd already pulled off her signature move. Her eyes rolled back to the King, and she used her sword to part his shit-stained robes, revealing a small ornate box at his hip. I inched closer as it clicked open, revealing the gold and ebony scroll we'd come for.

"Let me open it up and read it, just to make sure," I told her, holding out my hand. The parchment stretched about half a meter long, with just a few words in large font.

He who holds this scroll,

Has irrefutable evidence,

That he claims this land, ZOXUM,

As his own.

“You know, the language in these things could use some work, because a ‘she’ just killed his ass,” Maya said, pulling back from her perch near my shoulder.

I retracted the scroll, handing it to Maya for safekeeping. "We can add an ‘s’ here and there for you. Now, the problem is: how do we get home in time? I don't think it's possible to run fast enough through that damned forest."

She looked longingly to the sky as muted sunset light caressed her bloodstained face.

"I have a feeling our new friends can help us out," she replied with a visage carved from stone.

The two bats hovered low, gently grabbing each of us with a leathery claw. I glanced at Maya, making no effort to conceal the fear in my eyes.

"You'll be totally safe, Reza. Just. . . know that it's going to be at bumpy ride. Their wings connect all the way down to their legs, so as their wings beat, we're going to get kinda kicked around. It'll be fine if you don't struggle."

"Lovely. I'll make sure to turn toward you when the time comes for me to vomit." My gaze turned to the setting sun and the milky, purple-orange work of art it created through the skullcap. "I really hope you can direct these things back home. . ."

Without warning, the bats took flight, dragging us through the skull's nasal cavity. I screamed at nothing but a desert graveyard and ten million insects crawling in the forest alongside it.

I wonder, is this how the Clueless Worm felt? My only hope is that my adventure doesn't end with a splat, as his did. I don't think I can survive a fall like him. . .

It only took a few minutes to become familiar with the bat's flight pattern, which made the jerkiness mildly more tolerable. I watched as miles of forest passed below us, a blur of green and auburn staunchly contrasting the violet sunset haze attempting to engulf it.

So this is what the canopy looks like from its other side. I could get used to this. It's amazing what a little change of perspective can do. . . the forest has never looked so beautiful.

I shouted over rushing wind. "Hey, Maya. I thought bats use echolocation to see, how are you communicating so easily with gestures?"

"Fox bats don't use echolocation, they see with their eyes. Most bats can see out of their eyes, they aren't there for decoration."

I'll take that as a cue to shut up.

Somehow, completely unbeknownst to me, Maya directed the bats to our keep. They let us down gently within the castle walls, and Maya gave them both fruit from her pack. It was much easier to see them in open space, and they almost looked cute in dusk's light. Brown, furry bodies and black leathery wings acted scarily like human arms as they embraced her. I expected them to dramatically fly off into the sunset, but instead, their claws latched to the stone beam above our main entrance and they draped down like curtains--kicking their feet up after a hard day of work, I suppose. Maya squealed a little, hopping and clapping hurriedly at our new drapery.

I motioned inside. "Come on. The sun's about to set."

Back up the stairs we ran, stripping our armor and weapons along the way. Maya handed me the scroll and I placed it in a chest near our bed, alongside the six others we'd collected, each embossed with patterns of different stone and color. We hopped into bed and I pulled an amethyst-like gem from beneath my pillow.

"Good night, love," I said, placing the gem into a keyhole above our headboard and twisting. "See you tomorrow. And sorry the King was such a prick. It seemed to throw you off."

"It's fine, I just hate that I'll never be able to make him pay enough for what he did." She gripped my hand and kissed me, looking deep into my eyes. "Good night! By the way, I think the contest is void."

"Yeah. I guess the King beat us in terms of numbers."

"Let's just say the bats won this one, they're the true MVPs."

Hard to argue with that logic, honestly. I smiled and nodded.

We closed our eyes, letting darkness settle in around us.

~

An alarm went off, buzzing harshly in my ear like a nasty fly that refuses to leave. I sat up and swatted at it haphazardly, rubbing my eyes and yawning with a deep stretch. The clock read 7:00am, meaning I had no time to lie back down for a few minutes and procrastinate waking up.

I don’t want to get ready for work. Why can't I just lie in bed and sleep forever?