by Tony Corden
“Pardon, but perhaps you forgot our ability to enforce behaviour and payment.”
“No, I suggest those responsible for waste, deal with waste. Let those who enforce, enforce. If you arrange it any other way, then corruption is hard to unmask.”
Lady Atik had a few more questions and then looking behind Leah said, “Thank you for your time, Claimant Atherleah. I hope your visits are all pleasant.”
As Lady Atik nodded to Leah, Leah, feeling warned by the strange look Lady Atik had made to someone behind her, took a step to her right and the usher’s snapping jaws only grazed her left arm and were deflected by the armour. Leah turned as she equipped the Amber Dragon and cut off the usher’s head before he could regain his balance. With a quick look around the room, she noted that none of the other members of Lady Atik’s group of attendants had even moved.
Leah looked up at Lady Atik and said, “I’ve made a mess, but please don't worry because I clean up my own mess.” Then she harvested the usher and made her way out the door.
As she crossed the room to the second office, she summoned two of Lord Kötü’s Level Three Minions and commanded them to guard her back. The waiting usher welcomed Leah and asked her to follow him
LORD SOKAK’S USHER - ANACONAN (Level 351) 369603/369603 HP (17550 EP) - (Lord Sokak has 10/10 attendants)
As soon as Leah entered the room, the usher and four guards attacked. Leah was ready and cast Circle of Sloth and stepped to her right, allowing the two minions to attack those on the left while she dealt with two on her right. She cast Freeze twice and then brought the Amber Dragon down on the hibernating snakes, shattering them into small pieces. When Leah killed the last of the attendants, she harvested them and saw the remaining snakes all calmly watching her. As she approached the desk, the Lord rose a little higher on his coils and greeted her.
LORD SOKAK - COBRAZOR - MINISTER OF ROADS (Level 432) 529200/529200 HP (21000 EP) - (Lord Sokak has 5/10 attendants)
Lord Sokak seemed interested in Leah’s views on Roads and thanked her for visiting without any other attacks.
Leah moved from room to room. Several times she left the room without being attacked, but in the fifth room, which belonged to Lord Sahte, the Minister of Magic, Leah was attacked not only by the ten mages who attended the Minister of Magic but another seven from the previous offices she'd visited. Leah freely used Chain Lightning because she had no fear it would arc and strike the minister. She survived by making her way to the corner of the room and continually summoning guards and restricting the number of snakes who could attack at any one time. Twice more she was attacked by more than ten snakes, at the offices of the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Justice. As she left the last office, a portal appeared on the end wall. Leah had been attacked by eighty-one of the one-hundred attendants. She waited until she was fully recovered, and then stepped through the portal to the fifth level.
Leah arrived standing on a circular platform, which was lifted ten metres above the floor of the long narrow hall. At the far end, she could see a wide throne with an Amphisbaena reclining on it. Both heads wore a crown, and they were looking at her. Between Leah and the throne was an obstacle course. Along the path was a series of platforms similar to the one she was standing on. On each of the platforms, a snake was coiled and waiting. These were the first snakes she’d seen who were covered fully in chainmail and armour. Between Leah and the first guardian was a five-metre-long peeled and smoothed tree bole. It had a diameter of forty centimetres and was held horizontally between the two platforms by a metal rod which had been run through a hole bored along its axis. In the space above the tree trunk were six large moon-shaped metal blades swinging back and forth, each a heavy pendulum bob.
Leah took a step forward.
Atherleah (Level 324), King Somur T’kan is protected by his guardians. Their only purpose is to protect the King. You come uninvited to claim his city and so you must face his protectors. If you succeed in defeating the guardians and if you are able to approach the King both uninvited and with a weapon in your hand, then you will have defeated him. To reach the King, you must complete the Gauntlet of Champions.
Leah took another step and then carefully placed her foot on the log. It rotated easily under her foot. At that moment she was thankful for all her training with Jimmy’s boys. They had used something similar when teaching her balance. She watched the blades until she had the pattern fixed in her mind. There was only one place where she had to stop. In every other case she only needed to slow down or speed up. Instead of stopping, she decided she’d step backwards and then start walking again because it would be easier to maintain her balance if she kept moving. Leah let the blades swing through another sequence as she once more counted out the movements.
Leah waited for the beginning of the sequence and then stepped onto the log and walked straight down the centre, using her arms and torso to keep herself centred. As she walked, she counted out the time in her head. Twenty seconds later Leah stepped on to the platform with the champion. It was a Level 365 Anaconan with a large two-handed sword. She expected it to attack her immediately, but instead, it said, “Atherleah, you may not approach the King uninvited or with a weapon. Turn back or be prepared to defend yourself.”
Leah didn’t say anything. Instead, she equipped her sword and waited. The Anaconan attacked with a swift downward strike. Leah parried with the Amber Dragon and was surprised not only by the strength of the attack, which drove her backwards half-a-step but by the resilience of the snake’s weapon. Usually, the Amber Dragon either cut slivers from the other sword or snapped them completely. The Guardian’s sword looked undamaged. Leah had no time to ponder the weapon's resilience as the Anaconan’s tail swept Leah’s feet from under her and then its sword was descending toward her torso. Leah rolled twice towards the snake to change the angle of the strike. On the second roll, she noticed the Anaconan was lifting itself using its coils, and the sword was now going to miss the floor and catch her through the middle. Leah misted her torso as she changed direction and rolled away from the snake letting the sword pass through her. She got to her feet as the snake’s flexible body and skill brought the blade around in a horizontal sweep.
Leah cast Dragonfire toward its face to gain some time for her to step back out of danger. She summoned two minions and equipped her bow. She only got one shot away before she had to dive out of the way of the sweeping tail. The arrow Leah shot was one of the new ones, and it had an adamantine point. It caught the Anaconan high on the right side of his chest, but even though it pierced the armour, it didn’t penetrate more than a few centimetres. The snake’s next swipe killed both minions and forced Leah back a step. She equipped her new mage staff and cast Tangle to trap the lower half of the guardian. Hampered by the vegetation, its next stroke had less momentum, and Leah was able to parry and then follow through with a lunge through the snake’s torso.
The Amber Dragon cut through the armour but not with the ease Leah was used to. As she stepped back from her lunge, she had to duck a sweeping arm as the snake held the sword with one hand to achieve a swifter retaliation. One of the Anaconan’s claws momentarily caught on Leah’s armour as it sliced across her back and she was sent staggering to one side. She took a step to steady herself, the snake used this time to hack at the vegetation and free himself. Leah summoned another two minions and cast Chain Lightning. When the Anaconan reared back, she lunged again, and this time as the blade passed through the snake’s armour. She cast Dragonfire through the sword. The guardian’s health dropped by ten per cent. Leah stepped back and cast Tangle a second time before she had to block an upward swinging arm. Her sword sliced through the armour with difficulty but she did reduce the snake’s health.
The fight continued for several minutes and was a real battle of attrition. Leah had become used to fighting creatures above her level but a forty point difference added to the elite armour, speed and skills of the guardian was almost too much for her. In the end, she pe
rsevered because of the combination of vampire abilities, magery, and sword, because the sword alone, even with her agility, would not have been enough. As the Anaconan finally slipped to the floor after sliding off Leah’s sword, Leah sank to her knees exhausted.
Several minutes later she stood, and before harvesting the snake, she took a potion of Luck because she wanted to see if she’d be able to harvest his sword. Over the last few days, she’d not been paying much attention to the large amount of loot she’d gathered, but she’d been impressed with the sword’s durability.
You have harvested:
1 Set of Guardian armour
1 Great Sword of Valour
2 Vials of Anaconan Blood (7, 1)*
1 Platinum coin minted with an image of King Somur T’kan
10 Gold coins minted with an image of King Somur T’kan
1 A Speed Spell for Attack
*As a vampire, when you drink this you will have a serpent’s flexibility for one hour.
Leah had stopped reading the descriptions and realised her mistake. There were a lot of valuable items she’d not taken advantage of. A quick check of her inventory showed she had enough vials of blood to keep her flexible for a long time. Leah looked at the Speed Spell, and when cast during a battle it increased the speed of any attacking stroke for the duration of the spell. She studied the spell and swallowed one of the vials of blood. She didn’t feel any different and she moved the same. She asked Gèng to check the Dunyanin site, and there was a description of how to use a flexibility potion. Leah read the explanation and then holding her arm in front of her she visualised it ending forward in an arc. As she pictured it, her arm bent as she'd envisioned and she still had the strength and control to swing the sword. She decided that experimenting in a real battle probably wasn’t wise, but she knew it would be very handy if she learnt to use it effectively.
She was almost healed so she looked toward the next platform. Between the two was a series of stepping stones held aloft by poles attached to a device on the floor which moved the steps back and forth and side to side. Hanging above the stones were three large basketball-sized spiked metal balls. These were moving in concentric circles over the steps. Leah watched the motion for several minutes before jumping to the first step. As it moved forward she leapt to the third step, and then back to the second to avoid being hit by one of the balls. Then back to the third and so on. It took her about half a minute, but she finally made it to the second platform with a guardian.
This guardian was a Medusal Viper, and she was almost a foot and a half taller than Leah and carried a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. She warned Leah in the same manner and then attacked when Leah stood her ground. The fight was another long one, and although Leah won, she needed to take a restore potion to overcome the venom in her system from several viper bites. On most occasions when she’d attacked, one of the small snakes which had made up the Medusal Viper would strike out and latch on to her hand or arm.
The path to the third platform was through a square tunnel which was slightly taller than Leah. Long blades moved in and out of the tunnel walls as well as from the roof and the floor. Although Leah watched for almost five minutes, she couldn’t see a pattern. She tried to freeze one of the blades, but her spell just slid off the weapon. This time she would need to stay alert and agile. Leah stepped into the tunnel, and even using the snake flexibility she’d gained from the blood, she still suffered wounds to her arms and legs. As she stepped onto the platform, she was met by a ten-armed Deathadder with a blade in each hand.
Although Leah started the battle with less than perfect health, her ability to interweave magic and weapons again proved to be the deciding factor. She could see the waiting guardian on the next platform, and it was a new type of snake, a Daggerback Wyrm. It had red and orange scales arranged in a squashed diamond pattern so that the diamond resembled long double-bladed daggers. The scales which weren’t touching the ground moved and shifted to extrude sharp spikes and blades. The head was that of a dragon with a sharp bird-like beak. A stream of smoke drifted from its nostrils and there was an aura of mana shifting around its eyes.
On each side of the space between Leah and the guardian was a wall riddled with holes. Long spears were repeatedly thrust through the holes, and there was no path across, only a set of monkey bars hanging in the space between the platforms. Leah had to leap to grab the first bar. She had to concentrate as she slowly moved from bar to bar, twisting and bending to avoid the spears. She found the snake flexibility was the only thing that saved her at times, and even so, she had a nasty wound in her side and a gash on one cheek by the time she swung herself from the bars and onto the platform.
After the same speech the Daggerback attacked. During the duel Leah found the wyrm to be just as adroit at mixing magical attacks and swift darting strikes. The deciding factor though was the variety of spells and the snake’s lack of limbs to hold a distance attack. It did breathe fire and the blades on its scales were able to slice through Leah’s armour and caused long, though shallow, cuts. Leah finally killed it after casting a Duel Freeze spell while holding her new staff.
There was only one more platform, and Leah was looking forward to it. She’d found the last four fights the most challenging and exciting duels she’d experienced for some time. They showed her that even with her new armour and weapons, she would be entering the Merkize contest at a considerable disadvantage. To get to the final guardian, a Boamazonian with a trident in one hand and a shield in the other, there was another passageway with a wall on each side. This time the walls didn’t have holes but were scattered with a variety of hand and foot holds. They looked to Leah like the bouldering wall John had once constructed to teach people how to move up and along walls. Both walls curved inwards toward the top to form overhangs.
To make the challenge more difficult, she could see two blades which were positioned to be sent swinging along the length of the walls. The blades were positioned to swing near to the walls, and Leah would need to leap from one side to the other to avoid being swept off the wall. Leah wasn’t very confident and thought of misting across, but after she tried a message informed her that her Misting ability had been switched off during this challenge. Eventually, she leapt for the left-hand side and caught a grip up high with one hand. She was able to stretch an arm out and grip onto a small ledge and then find a place to put one of her feet before she saw the blade sliding along the wall. Crouching down on the foothold, Leah leapt for a grip on the right-hand wall. She succeeded in holding on but was too low to repeat the move and used the time she had to pull herself up and find a higher perch before leaping back to the left side.
By repeating this left and right, back and forth, up and down pattern, she slowly made her way across to the final platform. When she finally arrived, she was exhausted and both her Stamina and Ki were low. This time, when the guardian said, “Atherleah, you may not approach the King uninvited or with a weapon. Turn back or be prepared to defend yourself. ” Leah responded.
She said, “I’m not going to turn back but could you give me a minute to recuperate before I defend myself?”
The guardian lowered the base of her trident to the platform and said, “Of course, to do otherwise would be dishonourable. You have fought well and shown both courage and skill.”
Leah took several deep breaths and said, “You guardians are well trained. It has been a challenge getting here, and there were times I didn’t think I’d survive.”
“We have practised for a long time to hone our skills. We take the responsibility of guarding the ruler of Yilinlar very seriously.”
“I’m disappointed I’ve had to kill each of you.”
“Don’t be too dismayed. We have all taken a variant of the Phoenix potion, and although we will have to buy or make new armour and weapons, the ruler of Yilinlar will remain under our protection.”
Leah’s statistics were almost full, so she said, “Thank you for waiting. I will be ready i
n just a moment. Any hints about the best way to beat a trident?”
“Of course Claimant Atherleah, I will give you the same advice I give to every trainee. ‘Don’t find yourself stuck on the pointy end.’”
Leah chuckled and took up a ready stance as she said, “I’ll keep that in mind.”
As soon as she’d finished speaking the Level 370 Boamazonian struck. Leah had never given the trident much attention as a weapon, and she was surprised to find that the outside edges of the external tines had been filed razor sharp and the guardian not only used the weapon to thrust and jab but also used it to block, parry and slice. Leah lost the Amber Dragon several minutes into the fight when the tall Boamazonian caught the blade between two tines and with a twist of her wrist wrenched it from Leah’s grasp. Leah equipped her other sword and continued.
Leah wasn’t outmatched though, and just as she received damage from cuts and bruises so also did the Boamazonian. Leah’s attacks left burns, cuts, broken scales and pierced armour along with damage from shadow and lightning. Leah found that discovering that the warrior would be revived gave her a boost and a freedom she didn’t realise she’d been lacking. Leah ended the battle when she managed to sink the battle axe into the top of the Boamazonian’s head after enclosing her in a mass of Tangle vines and slowing her down by a combination of Freeze and Circle of Sloth.
Once she’d harvested the guardian, the platform slowly descended into the floor of the great hall. She found herself standing before King Somur T’kan.
