…And then I said: ‘guess you didn’t like what you saw in the mirror, huh?’

  Wow, so cool! But if you could have defeated it all along, why did you run so far?

  Uhh, I was just looking for the right setting, you know? A nice, open clearing was the best place to have our fated battle.

  Dario was smiling dumbly at the tablet when the distant scream of an ape had him scrambling to his feet.

  “Shit! What am I doing? I don’t have the time for this!”

  He quickly stuffed the tablet in his pack and then bent over the ape’s corpse. After some hurried sawing with his dagger, he managed to get the head off and held it by its thick ochre fur, blood dripping from it as he ran back into the jungle.

  A quick glance at his time-keeping device showed the cylinder a bit over two thirds of the way full, so he should just barely be able to make it back in time.

  First, he ran to his hideout, scaling the mossy wall and entering the hidden tunnel as he’d done before. When he peeked his head around the corner, he let out a sigh of relief when he saw the lizard wasn’t there. One less problem to deal with.

  He dropped the Aureate Simian’s head in a corner of the cave next to his belongings, then took a brief moment to water the plant and channel a bit more of his Ki into it. It was already looking better than before, having grown a few inches and with a healthy sheen to its leaves.

  “I should be back here soon, if everything goes well. Wish me luck!”

  Once again he felt the slightest touch, like a whisper through his body, but he didn’t have time to ask Hana about it. He turned to the tunnel, double checked to make sure he had the necessary artefacts on him, then took a deep breath and was off.

  With his thoughts on the upcoming ambush, thinking of how exactly he was going to pull this off, he didn’t notice the apes until he was halfway down the wall. Six white-and-gold eyes stared at him as he lifted a hand as a sign of peace.

  “I didn’t do it!” he exclaimed, then noticed the bits of ochre fur that still stuck to his bloody palm.

  “...Crap.”

  A moment later, Dario was barreling through the jungle again, throwing glances over his shoulder and then ducking behind trees and rocks to dodge burning rays of light. The apes were almost on him when he leapt through a brush and came skidding to halt.

  There was a wide variety of beasts, all seeming to fight over something, gathering around the thorny bush he’d pushed through a while ago. He spotted something brown stuck between the green leaves, then patted at his right pocket, which was torn and empty. Oh no. The brown, meaty flowers which served as a strong lure must have fallen out.

  Now there was a pack of wild beasts right in between him and the gorge, the apes quickly closing in from behind. There was no time to wait or even think of a plan, so he just ran full tilt ahead through the beasts, chest heaving and legs burning. He quickly cast an illusion of the brown flower in hopes of drawing a few beasts further out and clear a path. Then, chaos erupted.

  His eyes burnt bright with Ki as he frantically dodged attacks from every direction. Beasts snarled and lunged at him, chasing behind as he dodged past their attacks. He rolled under a swiping claw, ducked under a spine that was shot from a porcupine’s back, then cut behind a tree right before a burning beam of light could rip through him.

  The cliffside was coming quickly closer. His eyes were wild and a sound that was half-scream and half-laughter ripped from his throat as he raced for it. Some strange furry beast with a bird’s beak snapped at him and he jumped over it, then kicked off its back to go soaring over the cliff.

  With enough momentum to carry him most of the way over, he then kicked off the other wall as he was half-way down, slamming his knee and shoulder into the rock. He landed in a rough tumble that knocked the air out of him, then came to a stop against a boulder with a groan of pain.

  “Beast wave,” he tried to shout, but it came out as a wheezing grunt.

  “Is that our scout?”

  “Hey! What are you doing, you idiot?” the younger guard shouted. “Shit, he’s drawn in a beast wave!”

  They were just a few meters further down, now running toward him, drawing their weapons. Dario glanced up to see beasts beginning to stream down the sides and into the passage, then held up his hands as he got to his feet.

  “It was an accident,” he said between heaving breaths, wincing with each step as he moved closer to Hokori and his guards, “I didn’t do it on purpose…” He trailed off as he saw the hateful looks on their faces, realizing they weren’t going to buy this. This was the final straw for them. They were going to kill him.

  But the men looked up with wide eyes as even more beasts came roaring down the walls. Dario made his decision. With one hand, he grabbed hold of the escape rope he’d hidden by some moss along the wall, while the other channeled some Ki into his fog-generating treasure. Smoke blasted out from the artefact, covering much of the passage in an instant.

  “Screw you, assholes!”

  The rope went taut and a line of the quickly spreading fog trailed behind him as he was pulled up and over the cliffside. He limped away into the jungle, wincing at the sounds of battle behind him. It wasn’t like they didn’t have it coming, and at least he’d gotten away.

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  But as he struggled, hopping over an increasing number of rocks as the terrain began to change, he heard a familiar roar behind him. His head snapped around and with a rush of Ki to his eyes, he could make out three ochre auras.

  “Tenjin’s balls but those monkeys are stubborn,” he muttered as he considered fighting them, but two more shapes fell in behind the first two. There were still plenty of trees between the large rocks here, they’d have a clear advantage. He needed to find better ground.

  Dario pushed himself into a limping jog, growling at the stabs of pain from his knee. Hissing and cursing, he dragged himself forward onto a jagged slab of granite that led out to a series of scattered cliffs, with only a few plants dotted in between the craggy peaks and troughs of rock.

  He stopped only to turn and loose a few quick arrows, but with the ape’s keen eyesight and fast movements, they failed to hit any vitals. Still, any bolts sticking from their limbs would slow the beasts down, so he kept taking potshots at them as he pushed onto higher ground, until they got nearly close enough to return fire.

  In front of him stretched a series of cliffs and trenches, the dark rock with patches of yellow moss forming a random and uneven labyrinth. The narrow corridors would be the best he could hope for against five of the Simians, but still, it would be a dangerous fight.

  Hiding wouldn’t work, they’d see right through it. What did he still have? A few of the bulbs with irritating pollen. The bubble-shield artefact, the treasure book, a water-cleaning shell, the thing that blasts air and… the bomb! How could he forget about the bomb?

  The sounds of angry hooting and claws scraping on stone got closer, so he hurried into a corridor, taking out the few bulbs and sticking them into narrow grooves in the wall. Then he ran further down and waited, air blasting artefact and bow at the ready.

  As soon as the first ape turned the corner, he triggered the blast of air which rushed down the tunnel, taking the burning pollen with it. The gale had him stumbling back a few steps and he realized that it wouldn’t be wise to use the bomb anywhere near here.

  One of the apes went down with two arrows in the chest, the others screeching as they rubbed at their eye. But then he recognized the dangerous build-up of light orange Ki and ducked around the corner. Furious roars echoed through the passage as he scrambled up a squat cliff. He could only see as far as the next few craggy peaks, but he thought he saw a passage that widened as it sloped down. With a bit of luck, that would lead somewhere he could set his final trap.

  The apes caught up faster than expected and he was forced to duck and roll under two burning beams that drew smoking black lines on the stone.The final stretch to the slope felt more like an elaborate tumble than a run - a roll that turned into a leap, throwing himself over a wall, rolling over a few times before crawling under a slab of stone.

  One last dive and roll had him rushing down the passage, only barely getting his feet under him as the slope declined. The peals of agony from his knee built to a crescendo as gravity forced him into a mad dash down the slope. With a curse, he crashed and tumbled, the walls twisting and turning in his vision until he spilled out into a large basin.

  The first thing he noticed was that it was mostly white, especially near the center. The granite must have somehow given way to chalk or talc here. He thought he could see a tiny bit of crystal poking out from the white stone, but then movement drew his gaze to the opposite side of the valley.

  Framed by countless tall spires of white rock was a dark-skinned woman, her hair almost pale enough to match the ivory spears around her. She was locked in a battle with a squat four-legged creature, seemingly made of black granite. He gaped as thick chunks of dark Ki gathered around the woman’s arm and she struck a mighty blow, cracking the beast’s tough skin.

  It was the noblewoman from the market again. He’d recognize that heavy, dark grey Ki anywhere. With her help, it would be a lot easier to deal with the apes.

  A glance over his shoulder showed them thundering down the passage, a snarling mass of claws, fiery fur and shining eyes. Dario took off in what he really hoped would be his final sprint of the day, lungs burning and his joints feeling like rusted hinges as he drove himself to the white spires.

  The noblewoman finally noticed him as he called out to her, but moving her attention away from the wounded beast proved to be a mistake. It rumbled, then spat shards of stone at her. Somehow, the sharp rocks broke on her forearms without puncturing the skin. The craggy beast got another heavy punch to the skull as payback, but before she could land a finishing strike, there was a roar that sounded almost like an avalanche.

  Two more of the rock-covered beasts burst out from a tunnel, charging towards the woman, who froze for a moment, then turned and ran.

  Straight towards him.

  Dario looked like someone had just told him he’d be having a drink of trash-juice for breakfast. Did she not see the raging apes chasing him? What was the plan here?

  He looked around desperately for somewhere to hide, until his gaze landed on one of the many series of white spires, about halfway in between him and the woman.

  “Over there!” he shouted, pointing at the top of the spire. “We need to get up there!”

  The woman frowned, seeming unconvinced.

  “I have a bomb!” he yelled, waving the reddish orb around with his right hand.

  Her eyebrows lifted and she sped up, reaching the spire well before him and leaping right onto it. She was already halfway up by the time he began to climb, grunting and panting as his sweaty palms gripped the rough and dry stone.

  “Watch out!” she cried and Dario swung around the thin spire reflexively, sharp edges cutting at his palms as he barely dodged a beam of burning light. The apes were coming in fast and so were the stone bulls from the other side.

  “Gah!” he grunted as he pulled himself up further, leaving bloody palmprints as he climbed. Seeing that the beasts were nearly on them, he then pushed a wave of Ki into the bomb and let it fall.

  When the orb clattered on the ground and remained still as an ape rushed by, Dario’s stomach dropped, but then all of a sudden there was a whooping sound as all of the surrounding air was violently sucked into it. It was enough to drag the apes off their feet, though the lumbering stone-scaled ones were too heavy to be affected.

  Then, there was a spark of flame and-

  BOOOM!

  The explosion was drawn out, gouts of flame shooting in all directions, only to be sucked in once more before a deafening blast shook the ground around them. They clutched the spire and pushed their faces into their elbows for cover against a blast of searing air. The spire shook violently as the explosion was immediately followed by rumbling crashes of stone on stone, nearly as loud as the blast itself.

  Only after a breath of silence did he dare open his eyes again. He heard a gasp from above him and it was obvious why: a large part of the ground before them had somehow entirely collapsed, now replaced by a gaping black hole, ringed by spires and cliffs. There was no sign of the beasts though.

  Dario whistled appreciatively at the unexpected damage his bomb had caused.

  “Looks like we got ‘em all,” he said, looking up with a happy grin and a thumbs up.

  But the noblewoman didn’t seem so happy. In fact, she had quite the horrified look on her face. He frowned, following her gaze down to see that the hole was quickly expanding, its sides crumbling. It had already reached the base of their spire, which shuddered ominously.

  “Uh-oh.”

  It was the last thing Dario said before the white spire toppled over and they both went screaming down into the darkness.