Tim the Tremendous Monuga could see the black waters of the pool, and smell the rot of the flesh and fur of the fake enslaved spirits sitting in it unmoving. Stupid, silly things, not even knowing they were rotting the jungle, not smart enough to care, only to obey.

  The pool was upwind, the tuskers would not smell them coming, could not see them. Tim just waited there, his feet standing on the air just above the trees, a swirl of mist with no source and cause, weird but not very visible in the night.

  Stone began to rise around the pool.

  There was no sound, no grinding, no tremors. Smooth and silently, like it was water taking on a new form, the stone began to rise around the pool in the darkness, up and up and up, the first section of it thirty feet high in mere seconds, and then it began to expand sideways around the pool, which was only a few hundred feet across. Its waters surged up from below constantly, flowing over the edge of the waterfall constantly in a churning mass whose quicksilver drops were muted and blackened by the filth and disease growing there.

  Tim watched the stone walls grow around the pool, ringing the black forms there inside it, leaving them no escape except the waterfall’s cliff… and then the stone advanced across that too, except bars and sluices extended down, not interfering with the flow of the water all that much, but still closing that way out.

  “Come,” Cloud Flower’s voice sounded in his ear. A globe of magical Light expanded out and around from the middle of the pool, encapsulating all the tuskers below, some of whom were aware enough to look up in confusion at the sky and wonder what was going on.

  The sound of the waterfall from that direction was cut off like a knife.

  Tim started forward, holding out his hand as he’d been shown, and Called for his Weapon.

  His Soulbound Weapon.

  The first Class of this magical System he’d taken had been an Advanced Class. The Soulmark was a Class about building a bond with a Soulbound Weapon, harmonizing with it, filling it with Soul and making it strong.

  It was a very unusual way to go about such things, but from the instant Smasher had fit into his three-fingered palm, it was the only thing that was appropriate.

  The Spiked Club materialized into his hand, called from the non-space it was stored in when he didn’t need it. Brown light crawled over silver and adamantine, his Essence pumped through it. It was just long enough that he could easily touch the ground with it when he swung it, balanced for throwing if he so desired it to be… and it would come tumbling back to his hand if he did throw it, pulled back by his soul.

  As he closed in on the tuskers in the pool, the aware ones now seeing a sourceless Brown light in the sky, there was another swirl over his Weapon, and unwhite mists, a color that was not white, was more than white, latched onto the spikes and the mass of it.

  Then he was past the edge of the Sound Bubble, the sound of wind and jungle was replaced by the muted fall of the water, and as he raised Smasher, he felt the Invisibility upon him break. With real delight, forty feet of Tremendous Monuga, clad in silvered Armor reflecting the moon and stars and complex patterns of Shaped Soul Essence, came down out of the sky onto the tuskers. In his hand was what looked like a tree clad in a boiling white cloud, and he roared with a voice as loud as any thunderclap.

  Three of the diseased Assailer tuskers died in seconds, two from tons of monuga landing on them, one as Smasher came down and flattened it just as badly as the others.

  Vivic flames wooshed up from the pool, and began to eat away at the tusker spirits and the rot they emanated alike, while Tim began to pound and kick away at the things.

  His boots had pointed toes, shaped like a crescent blade. A simple kick would split a tusker open like an orange, sending their furred bodies flying. He had to restrain himself from trying to see if he could launch one over the stone walls as he tore through the pool, going after every dark bundle of fur that moved.

  Hissing shafts of fire began to whistle out from atop the walls. They were aimed at all the tuskers who were outside the pool, giving him more targets to swing at, as well as occasionally dropping one or two of the Assailers with extremely accurate burning bits.

  There was a flash of light, and suddenly dozens of streaks of fire were arcing through the air all around Tim. Everywhere they went, and they went everywhere, they plunged through a tusker and ignited their fur, lighting up the whole top of the pool with stinking, burning tusker fur… and making easy targets out of every single one of the dozens of tuskers still left for him to smash.

  The Assailers, every single one of them wounded now by those streaks of fast-moving, almost blinding light, were converging on him, but that was fine, fine by him. Every step was a tusker to kick, another one to step on, and Smasher was arcing back and forth, sending tuskers flying, their strong bodies cracked, pierced, and broken.

  Unstinting volleys from the little ones on the walls sent Assailers screaming to flaming deaths, even falling into the pool not helping them when their hearts and brains were cooked inside them. The mistflames of the vivus ignited on them, having spread rapidly across the pool, and Tim added more bodies to the flames with every step he took.

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  The magical multi-colored fires from the Shards went out if the tuskers died, so it was easy to tell which ones still needed to be stepped on, kicked, or Smashed. Tim happily did so, while the fists of the tuskers beat on his armored legs and feet. He added chuckles to his roars of delight, because their blows barely hurt at all, whereas before he might even have been wincing a bit to receive them!

  But no, not now, not after getting his Armor. Tim enthusiastically Smashed everything moving around him until the bright fires were all gone, and the only things Burning were the vivic mistflames boiling thickly over and through the waters his feet were still floating above, the purity of the mists caressing his soul and letting him know the magical vapors were a really good and clean thing.

  Cloud Flower floated in the air next to his shoulder, gesturing him over to near the waterfall. Tim was more than tall enough to look over the wall there, and he saw that the little fighters had all moved that way, looking cautiously over the stone at what was beyond.

  Tim carefully stepped over there, staying on top of the water as he breathed deeply, feeling his blood pumping and nowhere near as tired as he had ever been after such energetic fighting!

  There was a shimmer in front of him, vaguely looking like the open sky. “So they don’t see you,” Cloud Flower whispered, and Tim nodded wisely, for he was certainly easy to see, towering above the stone.

  He looked down on the greater lake below, and scowled deeply.

  There were… a lot of tuskers down there. He hadn’t seen so many tuskers since the Tusker King had come with his great army of followers to drive Tim away from the island, long ago.

  And all of them were dark and rotting and Tainted!

  He wasn’t the pickiest of eaters, but even he turned up his nose at the smell. There was nothing down there to eat at all!

  “What’s the read, Magos?” Dangerous Sword Princess spoke up, standing just to his right. The one eye that glanced at her could read a hunger to fight on her that was obvious even to him. Her hand was on the Sword at her side, and he knew first-hand how incredibly painful that Sword was in her grasp.

  “I see only a dozen real ones among all of them, and 762 Summons, dominated by eighty percent Assailers, fifteen percent Devastators, and thirty-nine Annihilators.”

  “Damn, that be a lot of monkeys,” Dangerous Black Sword muttered. “Mudmouth?”

  That would be the Bad Fake Tusker. “Not present,” Cloud Flower said.

  “His lair be about six miles due south, or it were,” the Mick stated, pointing that way with his Sword. “He can make it here in twenty minutes or less once the fighting starts, if he hears anything.”

  “If we kill the real ones, he’s not going to hear anything,” Kris stated firmly. “So those are the first targets. The rest are Summons, and are programmed to fight.” She turned to Tim. “You ready to stand in the middle of them and kill them as they come, big guy?”

  He looked at Cloud Flower, who just nodded at him, and he knew he could do this, it didn’t matter how many tuskers they were.

  If nothing else, couldn’t he simply step up into the sky out of their reach? But he knew it wasn’t going to come to that.

  “Archers up and ready.” Regretfully, Dangerous Sword Princess let go of her Sword and racked up an odd missile-shooter in her hands. She moved her hand back and forth on it, and a flaming missile came into existence on it

  All along the wall, but below the sight of the tuskers below, flaming missiles were fit to Bows and Autobows by the little ones.

  Tim felt kind of strange, seeing those fires light up, knowing they were not pointing at him, but were going to be pointing at anything trying to attack him, trying to hurt him.

  He was going to be protected by the little fighters, while the tuskers, they didn’t have a chance!

  “I’m going to be putting up a Sound Bubble at V, which should be enough to cover the entire lake below,” Cloud Flower stated. “Tim, we’re following you.”

  Tim grunted, looking down. “Right into the middle?” he asked eagerly, knowing this was definitely going to be the biggest fight he had ever been involved in.

  “That will draw the most of them in,” she answered calmly.

  Tim jumped up once, twice, with high-stepping strides, and his feet were up level with the top of the stone wall that had contained all the Assailers up here. The misting waters of the pool were frothing below him, but hadn’t managed to make any progress against all the accumulated rot below.

  With no bellow, for the magic wasn’t up yet, Tim jumped out and down, crouching, feet braced, aiming for two of the biggest tuskers who were standing side by side in the waters.

  Like falling stars from the heavens, the little ones on their Disks and Wagons arced down after him.

  Magical light burst out above them, the sound of the wind went away, and Tim bellowed his battlecry again, waking up dozing tuskers as he came down from the sky. He slammed into the two big tuskers, flattening them against the stone of the shallow waters there instantly.

  Smasher came down and added one of the dirty gray Devastators to join them.

  He saw precisely twelve tuskers scattered all over the place light up with some strange purple fires. A second after they did so, all twelve were targeted by arrow fire coming from above, as well as a few magical spells from other little spellcasters now able to unleash.

  None of the twelve managed to do anything other than die flaming, and now the many, many tuskers were coming for Tim!

  Tim laughed and he roared and he bellowed as the tuskers scrambled over one another, trying to get to him, trying to overbear him, trying to bring him down.

  Flaming missiles filled the air around him, and tuskers pitched over and died screaming, flaming, falling to vivus, their bodies not even able to build up as the ectoplasm they were made of was devoured by flames.

  Smasher came up, Smasher came down. If they built up high enough, Tim smashed them with his Armored fist. His legs kicked, and Tuskers crumpled around the toes of his Boots. He took a step, and tuskers crunched and broke under his weight and mass and the metal treads of his Boots. He waded through them, fire descending all around him, and tuskers died before they could mound up to be any real threat to him, even with as many as they were.

  Standing in the air at shoulder-height to him, the little fighters and their flaming missiles fell like the vengeance of heaven, and the rotting tuskers burned as Tim crushed all that came at him!

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