by Eric Vall
The path beneath our feet was made of cobblestones, and Starlight’s hooves clopped against the ground. As the minutes ticked by, the tension in my shoulders started to ease, but then I started to catch sight of white sparks in my peripheral vision. I hoped it was a trick of the eye, but when I turned, there were definitely small bolts of lightning flashing through the trees.
“Shit,” I swore. “I think we’re getting closer to trouble.”
The horse seemed to sense it, too. She neighed loudly, and I could see the whites of her rolling eyes.
“Joe, what should we do?” Jessamine asked as she gripped Cienna’s back tightly.
Then the wind picked up, and I started to hear the familiar terrible laughter echoing on the wind.
“Hang in there,” I assured the dark-haired princess as I gripped tightly to Genie’s Wrath. “We’ve been through this before.”
“Damn it,” Cienna hissed. “I think I see something up there.”
I looked up and saw what she was talking about, and it wasn’t encouraging. From up about a thousand yards ahead, I could see a dim red glow at about eye level, and the sight was all too familiar.
“Fuck, I think there is a whole line of those undead bastards up ahead,” I growled as I wiped the sweat away from my forehead.
We needed a plan, and fast. If we weren’t careful, we could easily be surrounded.
“We could really use my cavalry,” Princess Cienna groaned and slowed Starlight’s pace. “The quicker, the better. But I have no idea how to get them here.”
“I might have an idea,” Jessamine chimed in with a thoughtful look on her face. “You may have noticed there have been times the magic carpet seems to behave almost like… an animal. Some sort of pet. And you know how we use birds to travel with messages? I think we might be able to use the carpet in the same way.”
“What do you mean?” I asked her. “I thought someone needed to be touching the magic carpet in order for it to work.”
“I think that you might be able to do this, hero,” Jessamine assured me. “It will be the biggest test of your power yet, but I think I might be able to help you now that we have been married and are bound together. We’re going to have to get the carpet out, and I’ll show you what we need to do.”
“Do you think you could do it from horseback?” I hated to ask her to dismount with the wild laughter echoing throughout the trees, but the carpet was so large and unwieldy.
“I don’t think so.” She shook her head, and I could see she was worried as she squeezed Cienna’s back tighter.
“It’s okay, Jessamine,” I reassured her and tried to smile. “I’m here, and so is Genie’s Wrath. We’ll protect you.”
I held out a hand to her, and the dark-haired princess swung down off the horse. Then she reached into the pack to grab the scarf-carpet, and I noticed her hands were shaking and her golden cheeks were pale.
“Joe, hold my hand so I can do this spell,” she requested with a grimace. “I need a little backup at the moment.”
“Of course,” I replied. “Anything you need, Jessamine.”
I gripped her hand, and sparks flew before the carpet spread out before us on the ground.
“Okay, now this part is going to be a little tougher,” Princess Jessamine told me. “Let’s get it up into the air first. Cienna, maybe you should get down off Starlight, too. We might need to combine all of our magic powers to get this to work.”
I pulled the carpet up to waist-height as Cienna dismounted.
The wind whipped us in the face over and over, and the carpet rippled wildly in a snakelike motion. The laughter seemed to be getting louder, and I knew we didn’t have any time to waste.
“What do you need us to do?” Cienna asked, and her expression was determined despite the spark of fear I saw in her sapphire eyes.
“I think we are all going to need to place our hands on the carpet,” Jessamine replied with a thoughtful look. “Cienna, I need you to picture your cavalry and your castle. Joe will be able to make the carpet fly there, but he doesn’t know exactly where he’s going. I believe your thoughts will make it possible to direct the carpet, but I need you to concentrate really, really hard.”
“What do I need to do?” I questioned.
“Okay, Joe, I need you to talk to the carpet,” Princess Jessamine said. “Just, you know, tell it what it needs to do.”
“You want me to do what now?” I asked, and I felt a little silly at the thought of coaxing the carpet to move.
“Just pretend it’s your dog or something,” the gorgeous brunette suggested, and I groaned.
“Fine, whatever it takes to defeat Jamar,” I replied and bent down toward the rug. “Okay, carpet, I’m going to need you to go get Cienna’s troops, alright?”
If the carpet had shoulders, I would have sworn it was shrugging, but it didn’t move.
“Try again,” Jessamine proposed with a slightly perplexed look. “And this time, let’s hold hands instead.”
We stood around three sides of the rug and grasped each others’ hands, and I realized that, despite the morning’s events, this was the first time I’d ever touched both princesses at once. Electric energy flew between our joined palms, and the sensation was so intense I almost wanted to pull away.
“Wooowww, do you feel that?” Cienna breathed as her blue eyes widened. “I wasn’t sure I believed in the power of what we were doing, but this is crazy.”
“We can do this,” Jessamine encouraged us with a smile. “Just focus, everyone. Hero, tell the carpet what to do.”
“Ahem,” I cleared my throat and spoke with more force this time. “Carpet, to Cienna’s castle!”
The carpet continued to sway in the wind, but it didn’t move forward.
“Cienna, are you picturing the cavalry?” the dark-haired princess asked, and she looked a little discouraged.
“As hard as I can,” the beautiful blonde replied with a grimace on her face.
And then, suddenly, the carpet shot away from us like a rocket and headed toward the castle on the horizon.
“Holy shit, we did it!” I exclaimed, and a broad grin split my face before another thought occurred to me. “Wait, how is the carpet going to tell them to come back here and find us?”
“The carpet works in mysterious ways that we are only beginning to unlock,” Jessamine informed me. “In the past, I have seen it tap a man on the shoulder and beckon him to come forward. I am hoping the rug can do that today with one of Cienna’s generals. At the very least, I am hoping some of the soldiers may follow a mysterious rug in the sky back to us.”
“So, what do we do next?” Cienna asked me, and she almost had to shout over the howling wind now.
I’d noticed the blonde had started to ask for my opinion more, and I was happy she was starting to trust me.
“As much as I don’t want to, I think we’re going to have to keep riding forward and approach those zombies,” I said as I rubbed my eyes, and the cackling in the trees around us had started to get to me. “It’s more than we’ve encountered on the ground before, but with the right strategy, I’m hoping we can plow right through them to get to Cienna’s castle.”
“How are we going to push through them?” Jessamine asked and wrung her hands. “There are just so many.”
“Could we use my time magic the same way we did in the woods yesterday? Cienna suggested. “We could freeze time and slash through them somehow… ”
“I actually was thinking I should try to get on Starlight’s back with you,” I told the princesses as I stared grimly at the lightning in the trees. “I think we might be able to plow through the hordes that way. Jessamine, you have your scimitars, and I have Genie’s Wrath, and we should be able to use those from horseback.”
“Are you sure that will be okay?” Jessamine asked, wide-eyed. “I’ve never seen three people on a horse before.”
“It’s fine for a few minutes,” Cienna shouted, and she had to raise her voice against the win
d. “Starlight is a huge horse. I’ll stop her for a minute, and we’ll try to help you get on.”
She halted the giant white mount, and both princesses hopped on before they reached out to me. I grabbed their arms with my hands, braced my foot against the horse’s belly, and jumped up as high as I could, and before I knew it, I was sitting on Starlight’s back between the two of them. Cienna was practically in my lap, and Jessamine’s breasts pressed into my back.
“A Cienna and Jessamine sandwich, now this is ideal,” I laughed under my breath despite the tense situation.
“What?” Jessamine screamed in my ear. “I can’t hear you over the wind!”
“I know!” I shouted and laughed even more. Then I poked Cienna in the back. “Let’s go!”
She kicked Starlight in the sides, and the horse immediately began to gallop. I held on to Cienna for dear life, and Jessamine clutched me. Just when I’d started to fear we might actually fall off, though, the horse slowed to a walk again.
“I’m sorry!” Cienna called out over her shoulder. “I think she’s a little spooked.”
The red eyes of the undead had gotten a lot closer during our brief gallop, and it was possible now to see the oddly-angled forms of their decrepit bodies. I started to get a little nervous at the thought of actually plowing through them, but I knew we had to press forward.
Jessamine squeezed me even tighter, which reassured me temporarily.
But my reassurance was very temporary, indeed.
I started to hear the moaning that meant undead minions were near. I looked around me, but I didn’t see anything. It was harder to fight at night, but those fuckers sure were hard to see in the daytime, since their eyes didn’t stand out as much and their rotten bodies tended to blend into the landscape.
A moment later, I heard loud cracking sounds from the woods on either side of me, and as I looked around, I almost cried out in shock. A solid line of zombie forces had emerged from the forest to line the path on both sides, and their numbers stretched on for as far as the eye could see.
“Fuck!” I shouted from my place in between the two women. “There are so many of them!”
“We can do this, Joe!” Jessamine shouted from behind me, and the warrior princess’ faith in me bolstered my own confidence.
We could fucking do this.
We had no other choice.
The undeads’ glowing red eyes beamed out from shattered skulls, and the wind howled around us. We were approaching the horde from the front now, and they shuffled blindly down the road in our direction.
“Cienna, do you think there’s any way I could control Starlight?” I screamed over the wind and moaning. “I’d rather be in front here.”
“Starlight is a very sensitive horse,” Cienna replied as she pulled the mare to a halt and turned around to speak into my ear. “I am able to command her with the slightest touch. I think that if I hold onto you and we feel the spark, you will be able to do it, too. Now, how are we going to get me behind you?”
“I’m gonna put my hands on your waist and hold on as tight as I can, and then I’m going to help you turn around so you’re sitting facing me,” I suggested. “I think from that position you’ll be able to scramble over my shoulders.”
“Okay,” Cienna said with determination. “Here goes nothing.”
I grasped the princess around her slim waist and helped her swing around so she was facing me. For a second, she was sitting on my lap, straddling me, and staring into my eyes, and I had to catch my breath because she was just so fucking beautiful. Then the moment passed, and she was over my shoulders and behind me.
A moment later, the sparks began to fly between Cienna and me, and I leaned down over Starlight’s neck. I decided I would try to command the horse like I did the magic carpet, since I really had no other experience. So, I gently rubbed my steed’s neck and nudged her gently in the side, and she began to move forward.
“Yes!” I shouted. “Now, how do I get her to go faster?”
“Kick just a bit harder!” Cienna screamed, and I brought the horse up to a trot before the blonde spoke again. “Joe, I think I need to freeze time. These zombies are really starting to surround us.”
She was right. Their moaning had gotten so loud I could barely stand it anymore, and their ghastly arms were almost close enough to touch us now. I didn’t ever want to be touched by a zombie again, and I wanted to kill those motherfuckers now more than ever.
“Go for it!” I told her, and then the roaring silenced around us. As the horse moved forward, I turned around to see Jessamine mowing down zombies with her scimitars, and their frozen bodies fell to the ground. “Yeah, Jessamine! You can do it, baby!”
My voice echoed back to us against the trees. We’d gotten closer to the castle, and I’d started to feel hopeful that we would actually make it.
Suddenly, though, the roaring got even louder until it was almost unbearable. I held tight to Starlight’s neck since the horse had started to buck nervously, but I wished I could cover my ears.
“What is happening?” Jessamine shouted, but I could barely hear her.
“Shit!” Cienna screamed in my ear and gestured off into the distance. “Joe, look at that!”
From behind the trees to our left, I saw something straight out of my darkest nightmares. A huge, black funnel cloud had appeared on the horizon, and it seemed to be headed right for us. It sounded like a freight train roaring down the tracks, and I watched as it destroyed everything in its path. Huge bolts of lightning exploded down from the sky around it, and I could see small fires start to burn where the flashes hit. I pushed Starlight up to a canter, but the closer the horrible tornado got, it became apparent that it was way larger than I’d first thought.
But I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to try to outrun it anyway.
I pushed the steed to a gallop, and we shot down the path toward the horde in front of us. The swarm of zombies around us had grown thicker as they made their slow approach from the woods, but they were seemingly unfazed by the swirling wind.
The tornado was almost upon us now as the wind and debris stung my exposed skin, and I realized I could see something coming through the center of the funnel. I caught a glimpse of a huge, black horse headed toward us, and I suspected I knew who its ghastly rider would be.
As the horse rode in our direction, Jamar emerged from the heart of the black funnel cloud. He wore a long, blood red cloak and a matching turban, and he carried not a staff, but the largest scimitar I’d ever seen with a giant red ruby in its hilt. As he drew closer, the tornado seemed to dissipate around him, and then it was nothing but us, the evil man himself, and his surrounding minions. The wind grew quiet, and all I could hear was the sound of hoofbeats and the zombies’ terrible moans.
“Joe, stop the horse,” Jessamine said in a grim tone from behind me. “I need to look this man in the eyes before we cut him down.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Cienna cried out. “Shouldn’t we just run at this point?”
“No.” I shook my head as I slowed Starlight to a trot, and then a walk. “There’s no outrunning him. It’s time to stay and fight. We need to defeat this asshole once and for all so he stops terrorizing us.”
I brought Starlight to a stop, and I turned the horse to face the specter of the man who now stood right before us. A long black goatee curled down his chest, and the irises of his eyes were completely black with no visible pupils.
“Princess Jessamine, it is lovely to see you after all this time,” Jamar sneered, and I found myself almost hypnotized as I stared into his deep, dark eyes.
“Stand down, Jamar,” my wife growled from behind me, and I’d never heard her sound so angry. “You can’t win against us anymore, because our powers are too strong. Run away now and save yourself.”
“Oh, Jessamine,” the great wizard laughed, and the red stone on his sword gleamed like blood. “You’ve always been a bold one. I think you’re the ones who should be running.
You can’t defeat me and my hordes. There are thousands of us, and only three of you. I know you’re scared, even if you’ll never admit it.”
“You need to step back, motherfucker,” I snarled as I tried to resist the hypnotic powers of those black eyes.
Anger flashed through those obsidian orbs, and he raised his palms. Bolts of lightning shot out of them toward the ground, and he laughed with pleasure.
“So, it’s going to be you and me, then,” Jamar cackled as he looked me up and down appraisingly. Then he began to circle Starlight with his gigantic steed, and I pulled Genie’s Wrath from my belt. Its purple gem flashed, and I could feel a jolt of energy shoot down my arm.
Then there was a huge flash, and when I could see again, I realized we were now surrounded by multiple Jamars. Four images of the man on horseback encircled us, and I was truly concerned for the first time.
“What the fuck is going on?” Cienna breathed, and I had no idea either, but it was god awful.
“Try and catch me now!” the Jamars shouted with an evil cackle, and all four of the men shimmered around me from atop their steeds. “Good luck striking the real man!”
Terror reared its ugly head in my chest, but I shoved it down and away as an idea struck me.
“Cienna, I need you to freeze time,” I muttered to the blonde princess, and a moment later, all was quiet. For the brief seconds that time stopped for me, there was now only one Jamar left. It was as if the spell stopped his illusion and made it possible for me to see the real situation.
“You’ll never catch me, boy!” the apparitions shouted, and they all raised a palm to shoot lightning in our direction. The electricity struck around Starlight’s hooves, the horse startled, and the Jamars laughed wildly. “Come and get me! If you can find me!”
“Cienna, do it again!” I shouted, and a moment later, time froze. Then I slashed out with Genie’s Wrath toward the real wizard, but the spell quickly reversed itself, and the four images whirled around us, only to stop and taunt me again.
