by Ino Lee
The forest thinned out and patches of open space could be found on all sides. When the screams were almost upon them, they stopped and went silent.
“They’re closing in,” Li warned. With a thought, the orb intensified. He spun around and backpedaled, shifting the light behind them in a wide arching path, revealing figures running in pursuit.
They frantically picked up their pace.
Li looked forward again, and the orb shifted accordingly. But what could not be seen before could be seen clearly now. Ahead of them stalked a lo-shur ninja, its stark white face frighteningly illuminated by the light.
Han, Zhozang, and Tae hesitated and let their pace drop. Li’s heart skipped a beat and a pang of fear shot through his body, but instead of slowing down, he lifted his sword and charged. The demon squealed.
They were several yards away from each other and about to clash when Li shot the ball of light into its eyes. Blinded, the lo-shur ninja howled and jerked its head back. The moment was all Li needed and with his sword in hand, he took the head off his enemy with a single clean stroke.
The ball of light disappeared the instant the blow was delivered—Li’s concentration instead focused on the strike—and the forest fell to darkness. The rest of the party caught up to him.
Zhozang noted the severed ninja’s head rolling past his feet.
“Well played,” he said.
Movement could still be heard. Li held out his hand toward the danger—fingers spread and palm facing outward. A ball of light flared into existence. Dark ninjas halted in their paths, startled by Li’s orb.
“Dark ninjas . . . but no lo-shur,” Han observed.
The foremost ninja grabbed its neck, examined a needle in its hand, and then fell to the ground, paralyzed. Kai re-pumped his gauntlet.
“I think Kai has the right idea,” Tae said. She fired an arrow into another’s chest.
The demons charged.
After a short scrimmage, the ninjas were either killed or turned back—their numbers insufficient enough to pose a real threat. But despite their victory, the company did not find itself at ease, for there were still rumblings throughout the area.
Li peered ahead.
An uneasy peace settled. Though ninjas could no longer be seen, the forest was alive with clandestine activity. General movement could be sensed, random and unfocused. There was an electric feeling in the air that hinted at battles to come.
Li listened carefully. He picked out one direct, quickly-approaching entity. Tae heard a familiar low, rumbling noise.
“I know that sound,” she whispered. “Zhuk kwai.”
“It’s large!” Han barked. “Like an earthquake.”
Runes on the Shaolin Sword flared and glowed with energy unlike before.
“No sense running now,” Li announced. “Brace yourselves, for I fear this thing coming is both lo-shur and zhuk kwai.”
Zhozang’s eyes grew wide. “A lo-shur zhuk?”
The beast burst through the trees, the limbs bending and snapping before it. Dark gray fur matted its monolithic frame, extending to its arms which wielded a giant club—a massive weapon that appeared the size of a stripped down tree trunk. The abomination was indeed a possessed zhuk kwai, with pitch black eyes and incredible size and strength. Armed with the fighting instincts of the demonic spirit, the beast was nearly invincible.
The creature turned to face them, looking for a point of attack.
Suddenly, another club-bearing zhuk barreled in from behind, compounding the impossible situation by two. This new beast was nearly identical to that of the first in size and shape, except its fur was a muddy shade of brown. It appeared more excited than the first and darted its head about skittishly, scanning them over and moving constantly. It rallied its companion and together they joined in harmony, thumping their clubs against the ground ceremonially and gnashing their teeth at the prospect of battle.
“Fantastic,” Zhozang said.
The skittish zhuk was the first to break rank and charge. It barreled toward Tae with a giant hack and missed, shaking the very earth with its blow. Quickly, it dragged its club from its downward position and swiped at Han, who used much of his strength to deflect it overhead.
Li blitzed, hoping to take advantage of an opening, but the beast picked up his movements and hammered downwards. Li sidestepped the attack, jumped onto the demon’s club, and ran up it lengthwise. The Shaolin Sword pulsed with energy as he looked to deliver a punishing strike, but the lo-shur zhuk swung its weapon overhead, catapulting him over its shoulder toward the gray zhuk behind it. Li ricocheted into the beast and hopped off its head, drawing its attention.
The muddy brown zhuk continued its attack, swiping again at Han, when the sweet hum of an arrow could be heard and a poisoned tip plunged into its chest. The beast bellowed a low, guttural groan, but did not appear extremely hurt. Tae let another arrow fly, wishing instead that she had more viper arrows, but the demon blocked by lifting its club. It charged.
For its size, the demon was much quicker than Tae expected. She turned and ran, feeling the club thunder murderously behind her. When the sounds of pursuit went silent, she glanced back to investigate but the demon was gone.
Just then the earth shook and the unholy beast crashed down in front of her—it had sprung into the air and over her head, cutting off her escape. Before she could react, the demon backhanded her with its club, sending her flying into the trees behind them.
In an instant, Han appeared and hammered the beast back with several booming blows. Three needles riddled its chest as it staggered and fell. Han rushed, but before he could deliver another strike, the beast kicked out with its leg and knocked him to the ground.
Han got back to his feet and distanced himself, then took Kai out of his pack.
“It is safer for you to be away from me now, little one.”
He turned to see the injured zhuk wobbling, yet managing to rise to its feet. The beast was noticeably weaker than before as the toxins from the viper arrow and paralysis needles spread through its body. If not for the infusion of lo-shur power, the beast would already be dead.
Tae was nowhere to be seen. Zhozang had taken up the fight against the gray zhuk with Li. Both were dwarfed by the demon.
He knelt beside Kai. “If we can’t beat them, run as fast as you can away from here. Do not stop. Keep on running. Wong will find you.”
He made sure Kai understood with a look, then turned and was off.
Kai watched helplessly as Han rejoined the battle. He looked out into the forest and tried to sense where Wong was, hoping that he would arrive to turn the tide of the battle.
Zhozang and Li worked together to get past their enemy’s defenses. They stood apart from each other, trying to find a weak link at different angles. Li approached first but was driven back by repeated swings. Zhozang charged in from another angle but was driven back in the same manner. For every stroke of the zhuk, they were forced to dodge and jump back in retreat, knowing they were not strong enough to block the enemy’s blows head-on.
“It’s too large,” Zhozang called out. “It’s club has too much reach.”
“Noted, Zhozang. Stand apart. Wait for my move.”
The demon swung at Li. Instead of dodging the attack, he ran straight at it. His sword dripped with energy as it struck against the lo-shur’s club, slicing a chunk off the end like a hot knife through butter.
Zhozang moved in and caught the beast’s midsection, drawing blood. The zhuk scrambled back and held him off with its damaged weapon.
“Filthy beast,” Zhozang taunted, striking again and again.
Han pulled open the bottom end of his mace, revealing a carriage that contained five poison darts and a piece of candy. He had never used the blowgun before and questioned whether it was a good time to start, but the zhuk seemed like an easy target and poison w
as already coursing through its veins. It was also the first time he had seen the piece of candy too, undoubtedly placed there by Wong years ago as a birthday joke. He wished instead that he found it at a time when he could afford to laugh.
He placed a dart in the hole at the bottom of his mace and aimed it at the zhuk, which moved in his direction. He blew hard and watched the dart sail over its head. Not a very good shot for his first try, he thought. After reloading he fired again, this time pinning the beast in the upper torso. His poisoned foe approached quickly and he fumbled for his next shot before finally giving up, dropping the dart, and engaging it in hand-to-hand combat.
The zhuk’s reactions were slow and the sumo took advantage. After the demon swung ineffectively with its weapon, he hurled his mace at its face, stunning it. He then grabbed the fat end of the demon’s club, ripped it from its grip, spun, and cracked the handle against its jaw, splintering the wood in two. The zhuk fell back and when it hit the ground, black shadow lifted from its body. The lo-shur spirit darted away in search of a heartier host.
Zhozang charged the gray zhuk, feeling the tide of the battle starting to shift in their favor. He pressed past its defenses and leapt in the air with the intent of burying his war cleaver in its skull. But he had pressed too hard and with a shift of its head, the beast caught him with a horn and knocked him midair to the ground. It then twisted and unloaded its anger on him with a vicious swing, fueled by the pain of the recent gash in its side.
The Guilin champion beamed across the ground, flipping and curling, until he finally crashed into the side of a tree trunk some distance away. He did not move again.
Li’s heart sank. “Zhozang!”
He thought to charge, but held back for a more tactful approach after seeing Han come off his enemy.
When the sumo arrived, the demon took the offensive and rushed him, thinking it could take out the slower opponent first. Instead, Han shifted away, chased by several crushing hacks.
Li advanced to take the pressure off of Han. To counter, the demon slapped its free hand into the ground and launched a mound of earth in his direction. Jumping high in the air to avoid the thickest part of the debris, Li reappeared through it, almost on top of the demon. The zhuk ducked and lifted its weapon to avoid him, but it was too late, and the Shaolin Sword sliced into a shoulder muscle.
The zhuk screamed and spun around, flailing wildly with its club. Li dodged the club and then catapulted off the weapon, using it to propel him toward the demon’s body. But just as he was about to deliver a deadly strike, the demon caught him by the waist with a hand. It dropped its weapon to firmly grasp him and snarled, blowing steam from its nostrils. Then, with a mighty heave, it flung him back overhead, sending him skyward, high above the treetops and into the distance.
Han stood aghast. He shook off his disbelief and moved in strong to slam the zhuk in the leg, dropping the beast to its knees. It fell forward and into him, preventing him from getting off another good shot by wrapping him up. There was a brief struggle and the zhuk managed to get a hand around his neck. Han cracked his mace against the beast’s arm repeatedly to free himself, but the zhuk used its other arm in support. With both arms securely wrapped around his neck and upper torso, it squeezed.
Han struggled and writhed, but the zhuk was too strong. Air cut off from his lungs and his face turned red. He dropped his mace and began to lose consciousness. Soon everything went black.
28
THE WEAPONS MASTER sprang through the trees, pursued by a horde of demons. Dark ninjas flashed by his peripheral vision at every turn, and somewhere behind him hunted three that were infused with black spirit.
His first instinct was to run and put distance between them, but after a short time he decided on a new strategy. He reasoned it futile to expend energy battling the lo-shur when they could just take over new bodies; he had to either kill them outright or take out their supply of bodies—the dark ninjas. Seeing the latter option as the easier task, he set his sights on destroying the lesser beings.
The demons converged around him. He looked at them and plotted course.
Closest to him pursued two ordinary ninjas on lower branches. He pulled out a throwing spike and launched it at the first, hitting it, and causing it to drop from the treetops. He then jumped against a tree bough and propelled off it like an arrow, in the direction of the second ninja. They exchanged blows midair and the ninja suffered the same fate as its comrade on the forest floor.
He perched atop a tree bough and reached for another spike.
From above came the cries of the lo-shur ninjas. Wong stood up, peered at the ninjas swarming down upon him, and leaned back. A half dozen ninja stars plunged into the abandoned tree bough as he fell away.
Landing on a lower branch, he flicked up his throwing spike. It missed a lo-shur demon as it shifted midair but hit a dark ninja directly behind.
Immediately Wong ran off again, moving horizontally through the treetops. Cutting stars whizzed by his head, making him lift his staff to deflect more. He moved higher into the trees where his enemies would have to climb to attack him. The higher he went, the thinner the tree limbs became, making each step more fragile and deadly than before.
A ninja landed on the branch in front of him. Wong jumped and landed hard, sending a quiver down the limb’s length and shaking the ninja off its feet. The ninja flailed its hands in the air, grasping for anything to stop its fall, but plummeted downward with nothing but a fistful of leaves.
The onslaught continued as more ninjas lined up on the branch. The Weapons Master plowed into them with the dual blades of his staff, knocking them asunder. When a more powerful lo-shur demon landed behind him, he bounced away without engaging, keeping to his strategy of eliminating the weak.
Slowly but surely, he was chipping away at the ranks of the dark ninjas.
The blades on the Dragon Arm recoiled and he stowed the weapon on his back. With a running start, he catapulted upward using the spring of a branch and soared high in the air. He let loose a cutting disc downward and its spinning blades impaled a ninja below. Upon landing, he squeezed the clutch on the disc at the opposite end of the cable to extend its blades, slashed at the midsection of a ninja, and continued on. He freed the first disc from its victim with a tug and whirled it wildly overhead by the cable. The disc whistled briefly before he unleashed it at another.
Soon he had both ends of the cutting cable spinning in the air, cutting down enemies while holding others at bay. His weapon had greater reach than the Dragon Arm—a commodity needed in the current field of battle—and with Ko Hang’s improvements, his reach extended even further. He noted how much faster the cutting discs moved with the silken cables and wondered why he hadn’t replaced the chains earlier.
The lo-shur demons tried to move in, but every time they drew close, a cutting disc whizzed by their heads. They plotted to reach him by various means, frustrated at how he managed to keep the discs moving in the treetops without getting them snagged. When a lo-shur finally managed to disrupt the disc’s movement with a properly timed blow, Wong retracted the cable and sped away.
Perched atop a bough, he pulled out the Dragon Arm and inserted one end into a slot on a cutting disc. He spent another second attaching it before the lo-shur demons chased him from his position. He jumped away with a grin.
Lifting the staff high overhead, he whipped it in their direction and cast the cutting disc on the other end of the cable like a lure on a fishing line. The disc lashed out with tremendous speed, the leverage of the Dragon Arm giving it extra velocity. It shot through the air and sliced the neck of a lo-shur ninja before it could react. Immediately, Wong retracted the disc and lashed it out again and again. It tore up bits of wood as the remaining lo-shur scattered.
With his attention focused on the lo-shur demons, the dark ninjas moved in on his stationary position. They rushed, forcing him to leap from the tr
eetops without regard as to where he might land. He fell away, dropping from the heights, and with no landing underfoot, he lashed the cutting disc into a tree limb and swung away safely.
More ninjas were on him and the lo-shur began to regroup. They chased him through the trees. Ninja stars riddled the space around him.
Wong felt a sharp pain in his back and winced. He leapt once again and lashed the cutting cable into a tree limb ahead, but instead of propelling himself forward, he swung hard underneath and held on; his momentum forced him upward and around, turning him back to face his enemies.
The Dragon Arm, which was now the handle of his cutting cable, lit, and a blade protruded from the bottom end. He launched it like a spear into a surprised ninja and knocked it back, dragging the cutting cable along with it. But by turning into the enemy, several dark ninjas were already upon him and the lo-shur compounded the danger by dispatching several handfuls of ninja stars.
A shower of razor-sharp metal closed in.
He tugged hard on the line to retrieve his staff and flicked his wrist over and over again, sending circular ripples down the cable. The Dragon Arm spun so rapidly that it appeared circular in nature as it traveled back to him and acted like a shield upon which the ninja stars deflected. The dark ninjas, caught midair on their way to Wong, were the unfortunate casualties of the deflected shrapnel. Though not fatally wounded by the redirected blades, they faltered and slipped away from the treetops when stung.
Wong caught the twirling Dragon Arm solidly by a hand and waited. The lo-shur-infused ninjas caught up and landed on a nearby branch.
A temporary accord was reached and they paused to catch their breaths. Wong looked around and took note—the forest was completely still. No dark ninjas were left. Only two lo-shur demons remained.
He felt behind him and pulled out a ninja star that was caught in his back—the source of the pain experienced earlier. He grimaced and let it drop. Reaching down slowly, he freed the other end of the cutting cable from the branch. The lo-shur demons watched and never took their eyes off him.
