Chapter 3
Between one moment and the next, a humid blanket replaced the hot desert sun as the air trilled with the cries of countless exotic jungle birds and the chirp, whine, and buzz of hoppers, crickets, and many other bugs.
Alex took a deep whiff of blossom-scented jungle air, a smile coming to his lips as he accessed Forest Sense, Infravision-enhanced eyes peering carefully through the trees as the prince’s sharp commands cut through the noise.
“Everyone, assume your positions. Fire and ice wards, now!”
No matter the furious cyclone of Linnea’s flame that turned lush foliage into blazing leaves and charred trunks… fires that Hanz and Lieberman’s conjoined cyclone of ice shards extinguished just seconds later, Alex could still sense the jungle terrain perfectly in his interface.
Everyone quickly got into position as the prince turned to face him. “I’m given to understand that you understand this jungle as well as anyone. Do you have any sense where the corrupting formation might be hidden?”
Alex, lips pressed tightly with concentration, slowly shook his head. “Apologies, Your Grace. It might take a few—” His voice abruptly cut off, eyes widening.
The prince’s expectant gaze firmed. “Aspirant…”
“I sense it!” Alex said with something close to awe, not having seriously thought that he would have any chance of spotting the forest disturbance without a very thorough search while dodging shadow pumas around every tree trunk.
Yet sense it he did, thanks in part to knowing the feel and configuration of those dark stones after delving by Ya Ling’s side.
Just to be sure, he quickly summoned one of the exquisitely carved obsidian stones in his hand to check and felt the connection to the distant stone grow even stronger.
His eyes widened. He really was sensing it, reading the forest’s pains beyond Linnea’s fire, the pressure being experienced by the entire pocket realm as if squeezed and crushed by impossibly deadly forces.
“Disciple, that you would dare!”
The headmaster hissed, eyes wide with outrage as a wincing Alex came back to himself, realizing the grave offense he had no doubt given. Had this been any other situation where his skills weren’t vital…
He instantly made the stone disappear with a deep bow no mysterious seneschal bothered correcting this time around.
“My sincerest apologies, Headmaster. Please rest assured, I was absorbing all the Dark Qi radiating from the jewel. My unique path renders me all but immune to the deleterious effects of Waste Qi.”
The prince’s expression, fortunately, was far closer to excitement than offense. “Do you sense where our prizes lie, worthy aspirant?”
Alex swallowed, feeling an odd flush come over his cheeks with so many eyes now turned his way. “Actually, yeah. As a matter of fact, I do, Your Grace.”
This earned the warm smile radiating such benevolent majesty that Alex couldn’t help but feel a lightness in his step before the pleased-looking prince.
“Wonderful. Then by all means, aspirant. Lead the way.”
Alex slowly did just that, his gestalt moving as he willed. For they were now an extension of himself, their wards of ice and fire the protective dome under which they all carefully traveled.
It was all he could do not to flitter ahead through the lush foliage and scout for trouble, yet three quarters of his mind seemed to think that was a very bad idea.
And he couldn’t disagree. For at the moment, even with Infravision, all he sensed were rapidly fleeing birds, a handful of monkeys, and foliage being incinerated before Linnea’s fearsome heat.
So if there were no shadow cats ahead, there was no reason to split away.
And if they were so well hidden that he could sense absolutely nothing, then Bullrushing ahead could easily become his death sentence.
So much now depended on the wards of ice and fire surrounding them.
Fortunately, Alex knew his partners were in no danger of running out of mana anytime soon.
Still, Alex kept his fangtian ji at the ready as the tension built, all but tasting the weight of the storm he would summon in a heartbeat, if needed.
Then Sulia hissed, “The air is tainted!”
This sent instant prickles of alarm through Alex… before his lips softened in a smile.
“Actually, that’s a good sign, Lady Sulia.”
She glared at him. “Are you mad?”
“It’s because the stones forming the configuration we need to break are in the clearing just ahead,” Alex declared as he spotted his objective, a jungle glade filled with wildflowers, bushes adorned with ripened spirit plums, and the largest horde of spirit beasts that he had ever seen.
Alex froze as he sensed so many things through the fire and ice wards he now really wished that his gestalt mind had learned to form far more subtly.
Dozens of powerful shadow pumas radiating such wicked killing intent, no longer hiding in that clearing. As for the leader of that pride…
Alex recalled all too well the terror he had felt the very first time a Gold-tier spirit beast had roared its outrage after he, Liu Li, and her alchemist father had dared to steal the Silverbells hidden so carefully under the shelter of ancient spiritually-attuned trees.
Of course, Alex had grown in countless and profound ways since then.
Yet it didn’t change the fact that when the massive shadow puma spared a heartbeat to glare his way, his death was absolutely assured in those eyes of blazing shadow.
“Husband, we must leave, now!” Sulia cried in a voice that seemed so faint and far away.
Yet the impossibly deadly Gold-tier shadow puma that could have effortlessly ripped through their wards and killed them all spared them no more of its time, dismissing them as if they were utterly beneath its notice.
As did the dozens of powerful Silver stalkers by its side, clearly all in their prime, all of them turning to face what had grabbed their attention in full.
Alex’s heart skipped a beat. He already knew it was only by wild luck that they were not already being torn and shredded and about to suffer massive overwhelming casualties.
As the low-pitched throaty growl that made Alex’s ears bleed made all too clear.
For the shadow puma lord hadn’t gathered all his men to stalk the human fools who dared to enter his domain. At least, not until he had taken care of the threat they now faced.
Two score of massive stone hounds that seemed elemental as much as spirit beast, with thick black streams of smoke coming from their nostrils, every bark belching fame.
And the largest of them all, the one the Gold-tier puma had all its focus on…
he radiated a furious presence painfully similar to the woodland dragon Alex had once dared to bargain with on a mad run through the forest, so very long ago.
A dragon that, thank goodness, didn’t end up roaring for his head.
Unlike so many other powers of the world he had left behind.
And right underneath the massive stone paws of the Gold-tier stone hound was the prize that none of the fools who dared to follow Alex had a chance in hell of getting.
For their prizes were glittering in plain sight, guarded by two hosts of Silver-tier monsters led by leaders of Gold, and every last one of those midnight-hued prizes were infused to a tainted artifact of cursed stone.
Artificer skill check made: You sense a rift’s torment!
Alex shuddered with horror, sensing the awful warping pressure of this construct that was somehow so much worse than the one that had been loosely conjoined in the rift of sand.
It was a forced melding of not a dozen but hundreds of what should have been countless overlapping probabilities, all of them somehow fused into one continent-sized actuality with such terrible spiritual weight and pressure that when it finally burst…
Alex wasn’t entirely sure what would happen, but he was pretty damned sure that the caldera would be doomed.
Which meant, once more, that the Duo Li clan that had wanted absolute unyielding control, but certainly not the complete and utter destruction of their home, had been played like fools.
“Back, back, back!” Alex hissed, four voices speaking in curt unison, such was their dread.
All that mattered was backing up, because once those elemental stone hounds got their scent…
“By all the gods, can you not sense it through the wards? There are dozens of those horrors!” Te Chang hissed.
“We court death, even standing here! There are multiple Gold among their numbers!” Sulia declared in a panicked voice.
The headmaster said nothing, her eyes wild with something disturbingly close to panic.
The far calmer prince caught his eye. “We have to retreat. Now.”
Alex nodded, already doing so, the killing pressure of the pair of Golds and scores of Silver about to embrace war easing as they quickly backed away.
Yet the awful knot in the pit of Alex’s stomach wouldn’t go away.
The glares they had received made it clear that a stay of execution had not been granted. Merely a momentary reprieve.
“We need to move faster. Once they finish doing whatever they’re—” The deadly quiet of imminent battle was instantly replaced with ear-shattering roars and barks.
The ground shook.
Blasts of fire tore through the canopy.
The two armies were going to war.
“RUN!” roared the prince, an order none dared to disobey, though Alex’s Ruidian companions struggled to keep up with the pace of multiple Deep Silver.
When Linnea flagged, Alex didn’t hesitate to scoop her up, even as Fitz’s wheeze and Lieberman’s stumble made it clear that none of them had any hope of moving fast enough on their own.
Strength check made! Finesse check made! You’re effortlessly able to carry your companions!
Even if he had earned a wide-eyed look from a panting Sulia, who soon found herself in her grimly smiling husband’s arms as they tore through the undergrowth, thankfully mostly clear, as it was the path by which they had first come.
“The boy has the right idea.”