Rustle. Rustle rustle.
"What was that?" demanded Den.
He craned his neck in a full circle, but all he could see was the mass of leaves overhead. They were so dense that they reminded him of the rosettes on Caltrop Pond.
Movement! On the side!
Just a slender branch swaying in the wind.
A flash of color!
The wingtip of a small bird.
A splash of golden-brown!
The fluffy tail of a small tree-dweller, a squirrel, perhaps.
But were they mortal animals? Newly awakened spirits? Demons? They were gone too fast for Den to tell.
"Relax. It's a forest," Floridiana told him without turning back. "There's going to be animals."
Except the mage wasn't following her own advice. She held her dish of seal paste in her left hand and clutched her seal, already inked, in her right. Her shoulders were tense.
Den tiptoed after her, still scanning their surroundings.
Rustle rustle. Rustle rustle. Plink. Plink. Plink.
At the new sound, he nearly jumped into a tree – but it was just a pebble, bouncing down the mountainside, loosened by a serow that bounded from rock to rock.
A serow demon?!
He stared up after it. No, probably just a normal serow. Whew.
"It's just a normal serow," Floridiana confirmed an instant later. "C'mon. We're halfway out."
"Thank all the Stars in Heaven," Den sighed, before remembering that one of those Stars was the indirect reason he was here in the first place.
Thank all the Stars but one, he amended in his head.
"Sir! They reached Nine Turns!" panted Tamiops.
A grin split Captain Rock's pink face, showing two rows of gleaming steel teeth. "Ex-cel-leeent," he hissed.
The massive rock macaque demon rose onto his legs so the soldiers could see him and rolled his shoulders. Muscles rippled under his thick coat of grey fur. Throwing back his head, he unleashed a scream that bent the aspens and rebounded off the mountain across the gorge. In the distance, marble groaned and shifted. One boulder started to move, followed by another and then another, grating and gathering speed and knocking more boulders loose as they fell. A landslide began.
Tamiops sat up straight on his hind legs too and chittered with pride. This was why Captain Rock was King Haplor's most trusted commander! No invader stood a chance against him!
This side of the gorge, the two invaders who were twining their way along the trail's nine turns whirled. They gawked at the landslide, distracted for a crucial instant.
The troop of rock macaque demons attacked.
Screaming at the tops of their lungs, they leaped from branch to branch and surrounded the invaders from above in seconds. As the mage spun back and raised her seal, the rock macaque demons puffed up their cheek pouches and started spitting nuts.
Not just any nuts. The nuts of the great Jadean oaks that grew to immense heights and bore acorns as hard as steel. Not even Tamiops' teeth could pierce their shells, although older striped squirrel demons' could.
YOU ARE READING
The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox
FantasyAfter Piri the nine-tailed fox follows an order from Heaven to destroy a dynasty, she finds herself on trial in Heaven for that very act. Executed by the gods for the "crime," she is cast into the cycle of reincarnation, starting at the very bottom...
