Pathway

"Something's wrong." Ju Feng looked up at his sister's words. He was standing in the arena, looking up at the wooden seats in front of the obsidian walls. With no people in the seats, the black walls were intimidating as hell. He felt as if he was staring right into the Abyss.

Chang Chang had come in through the entryway to the holding area. Remnants of a rusted metal gate hung from the top of the entryway like stalactites, all that remained of the gate after Tau had kicked his way through it, freeing the enslaved fighters.

"What's the matter?" Ju Feng asked.

"Zu Ruo isn't in the office. And one of the fighters said he saw Dragong walking around with a soldier."

"Crap."

"Yeah, crap. We've got our 'investment' from Hama Nuang, we just needed Feena to distract the psionists so we can get Fa Mu and get out of town. That's gonna be a lot harder with the Chan Tao here."

With a sigh, Ju Feng said, "Yeah. C'mon, let's see what Dragong's doing here—maybe we can use it to our advantage."

"I don't know, Ju Feng." Chang Chang sounded hesitant, something Ju Feng had never experienced in his sister before.

"What's wrong?"

"We've already taken a lot of risks here. I mean, we've bested the King of the World."

Ju Feng glared at her. "How else were we supposed to get Fa Mu out? If we didn't best the king, we'd have had to try to figure out a way to break him out of the dungeons in Destiny's Kingdom—something we're utterly ill-equipped to do.

Besting the king is a bit more within our means. Besides, what happened to all that nonsense about not caring who the victim is, just running the best the same no matter what?"

Chang Chang stared at him. "I was trying to reassure Zu Ruo. But he's right, this is a little crazy, and if we try to best Dragong again, we'll be pushing our luck all the way over the edge. We need to cut and run."

"Fine, then," Ju Feng said, "let's do that."

"Good." She sounded relieved. "We'll get the coins out of the office, get Feena, Zu Ruo, and Tau, and get the frip out of here."

"What about Fa Mu?"

Chang Chang threw up her hands, causing her bracelets to rattle up and down her forearms. "What about Fa Mu? Have you seen what he's been turned into? I'm not sure he wouldn't be better off with the psionists."

"Uhm, okay," Ju Feng said slowly, "but you get to explain that one to Zu Ruo and Feena."

"I will. Don't worry about it. Let's just go."

Ju Feng wasn't at all confident that there would be nothing to worry about—but she was also right that they needed to finish this and get the hell out of Anjin. They'd rescued Zu Ruo, at least, and they were about to make off with almost three thousand gold. It was a helluva big score, one that would have Ju Feng dancing in the streets normally, especially given who they took the gold from.

But Zu Ruo wasn't going to like them leaving Fa Mu.

However, he saw the same thing Chang Chang saw: whatever that creature was, it could no longer truly be considered to be Fa Mu Mandred.

Ju Feng wondered if that meant that Zu Ruo was going to want to stay with the emporium. Ju Feng certainly didn't mind—he'd always enjoyed Zu Ruo's company, even if he did talk a little too much—and Feena would naturally be all for it.

The others, though, might take some convincing.

As he followed Chang Chang down into the catacombs, he reminded himself to worry about one thing at a time. They had to get out of there alive, first, a notion complicated immensely by the presence of the Chan Tao.

Tau was walking down one of the corridors when they got down there, and Chang Chang walked up to him.

"Can you retrieve the coins from the office and bring them to the carriage?"

The mul raised both eyebrows. "We're leaving?"

Chang Chang nodded.

"About time."

Ju Feng snorted. "Yeah."

"Just hold back enough silver so we can pay the fighters," Chang Chang said. "Oh, and when you get to the stable, have Mother and Father get the carriage ready to bug out. We're going to have to get out of Anjin pretty much the instant we all get into the carriage, and since they're back there guarding the merchandise anyway, we might as well have them make the getaway as smooth as possible."

Tau turned to carry out that instruction. Ju Feng allowed himself a small smile. Nobody got their crodlus moving faster than Mother.

As soon as he turned the corner, the malformed body of what had once been Fa Mu Mandred came crashing through the stone wall, pulverizing it as if it were made of sand.

Ju Feng looked at his sister. "There's just no way that that's a good thing."

An eldritch glow that Ju Feng recognized as the residue of powerful magic covered Fa Mu, followed by Dragong floating through, surrounded by a similar glow.

Then he saw that the Chan Tao's nose was gushing blood onto his upper lip. That was less impressive—he knew from Feena that such only happened to practitioners of the Way who were overstepping their abilities.

Fa Mu gestured and seemed to throw the glow off him, slamming it instead into Dragong, who deflected it aside, causing it to shatter another wall, sending rock flying. Ju Feng raised his arm to protect his bald head from the debris.

Beyond that wall were the cubicles that held the fighters. Peeking out from his arms, Ju Feng saw that at least one of them was dead, one was buried under rubble and might have been dead too, and several others were injured.

"What the frip is that?"

"Volmar's dead."

"Hell with this—I'll get three silver somewhere else."

As the fighters scattered like mice, Ju Feng saw one of the dwarves—a bald fellow with a thick mustache—trying to help the one who was buried.

"What are you doing?" some idiot asked. To Ju Feng's shock, he realized that he was the idiot—confirmed by his feet moving, somewhat against his better judgment, toward the dwarf to aid him.

The dwarf—whose name, Ju Feng recalled, was Bang Ling—said, "Zu Ruo's under here."

Ju Feng felt his stomach drop. "What was he doing in here?"

Bang Ling was grabbing rocks and throwing them to one side, trying to clear Zu Ruo's body. "He got knocked in here by that thing with the three mouths that used to be Mandred. Now you wanna help me, or not? He might live if we get him out."

"If we don't get out of here, we might not live." Even as Ju Feng said the words, he kneeled down and, like the dwarf, started tossing stones aside. He wasn't about to leave Zu Ruo behind on top of everything else.

Dragong was losing.

In truth, he had lost before he started. Whatever the Voidharrow creature was, he was considerably more powerful than Dragong. The Chan Tao feared he might be more powerful than Hama Nuang.

Dragong had to put everything he had and more into his fight. To spare anything, even to summon the king to aid him, would be suicidal.

Too late, he realized his own arroZu Ruoce, his own blindness. All he'd thought about was how he and Tharson could use the creature to curry favor with the king by providing him with a way to raise an army that would enable him to truly become the King of the World.

Instead, he'd let himself be fooled by charalatans—he wasn't sure how or why, but he knew now that Wrena and Dalon were frauds—and now he was about to die at the hands of an otherworldly creature he couldn't hope to understand.

But he for damn sure wouldn't go down without a fight.

On the Astral Plane, the Voidharrow punched him repeatedly in the stomach. A sad irony that their magical battle would translate in the ether to the very fisticuffs that Dragong so abhorred.

This ends now, minion, the dreadnaught boasted as he slammed Dragong with a misshapen fist.

"No, it doesn't," said another voice.

A blonde with curly hair was standing behind him. Dragong hadn't the first clue who she was, but his trained mind instantly detected that she had a powerful talent—albeit raw and unfocused.

"I will aid you, Lord Chan Tao," she said, touching his shoulder. He could feel her power flowing into him. "Together, we will make this thing pay for what it did to Fa Mu."

The Chan Tao grabbed onto the woman's power, and for a moment it nearly overwhelmed him. She was obviously untrained—which, if nothing else, proved she was not born and raised in Anjin. Hama Nuang's shadows tested every child born under his rule and placed them appropriately. A child of her ability would have been fast-tracked to the King's Academy just as Dragong had been—but where his placement was due to his station, hers would've been entirely due to ability.

But Dragong was in no position to dwell on the waste of letting her potential lay fallow. Right now what he needed was the strength of this woman—whose name, he now knew, was Feng Stang, the sister to the one with the eye patch—to stop the Voidharrow.

Perhaps now he might not lose. At the very worst, he'd put up a better fight.