Daring Do and the Shroud of the First King

Navigating back upward through the underbelly of the monastery was relatively easy despite her wound, Dust thought. It was simply a battered spiral stairwell dug out of the solid rock beneath the structure which wound back upward into the lower hall of the building. Finally, with some effort and quite a lot of pain, Dust clambered upward through a collapsed pile of rubble at the top of the stairwell and into the hall. Limping out into the wide open area, she collapsed to the ground and nursed her leg.

'Leaf had better be nearby, or I'm going to be lost in here forever...' She winced, catching her breath before standing up, intent on continuing onward. A loud, echoing scream punctuated the dust-choked silence. Leaf was near... And he was in trouble.

'I swear, one of these days I'm going to settle down and have a quiet life...' Dust muttered to herself, and with that, she bit down on her lip and limped as quickly as she could toward the source of the scream.

There were at least a dozen of them, if not more. Hooded, robed monks, pale and decrepit in appearance. They wore the same pendants around their necks that had been found on the corpse by the river, now crowded around Leaf. They had appeared almost silently, climbing out of hollow sections of wall or dropping down from the ancient wooden rafters above. They each drew curved, rusted blades from scabbards beneath their cloaks, holding them in their jaws silently.

‘Hey… Uh, can we talk about this? I didn’t mean to intru-’ Leaf stuttered, trying to retreat slowly as the monks stepped forward silently. The closest lunged forward, swinging its sword in an arc toward his throat. Leaf closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.

There was a loud smack.

When Leaf opened his eyes, the attacking monk had crumpled to the floor, a large rock having smacked into its head. Leaf turned his head back in shock. Dust stepped up beside him quickly, picking up the incapacitated monk’s blade in her teeth and lowering into an aggressive crouch.

‘Get moving, Leaf. Find a weapon.’ She snarled, moving painfully but steadily forward. Leaf staggered around, picking up a rock in his hoof and tossing it at another of the monks. It was stunned, staggering back. Quickly, the skirmish began. Dust swung the blade in her jaw at the first row of monks, hacking into their robed torsos and tearing off the head of one. Leaf dove forward, ducking under one of the attacking monks and grabbing a sword of his own and stabbing upward into the abdomen of one monk. Dark, almost black blood sprayed over him.

‘They… Are they undead?’ He yelped to Dust, shoving the gutted monk off of him before steadying himself again.

‘I’m not sure…’ She called back, stabbing her blade into the skull of one monk and head-butting it away. ‘They’ve survived this long, but they appear to be as mortal as us! There must have been some force keeping them alive indefinitely!’ She turned and grabbed Leaf by the hoof, retreating slowly down the hallway into the entrance hall and glancing up at the titanic statue of the Goddess in the centre as they entered. ‘Keep them busy while I search for some way to stop all this!’ She passed her sword over to Leaf, turning and dashing over to the huge statue as fast as her wounded leg would allow.

‘Make it quick! I don’t know if I can hold them off for long!’ Leaf fumbled with his sword, swinging it this way and that, lopping off a monk’s foreleg by sheer luck as it closed in for a killing blow.

Dust quickly surveyed the statue, moving around it and searching for inscriptions, occasionally having to lean on its pedestal and turn to smack approaching monks in the face with her hooves, knocking them back. Left with no other option, she began to climb the skeletal form of the statue. It was a painful, slow ascent. A handful of monks followed up after her, blades in their jaws. She kicked down at them, knocking one back down to the floor with a loud thud and a crack of broken bones. Reaching the upper back of the statue, Dust began to climb by grabbing onto the vertebrae of the skeletal figure, moving upward faster. Another kick, another monk sent flying. This unfortunate monk dropped down onto a hanging torch, knocking it off the wall and setting the wooden floor ablaze. The fire began to spread at an alarming rate, licking all around at the mostly wooden structure of the monastery. Dust climbed ever higher, hanging onto one of the skeletal arms of the statue and calling down to Leaf.

‘Climb, Leaf! Up here!’ She yelled down to Leaf as his sword was knocked out of his mouth by a significantly more skilled monk. He turned, one of the monks managing to carve a wicked gash in his back as he leapt up onto the sacrificial bowl of the statue before beginning to clamber up the front of the statue. As his blood flecked the bowl below him, there was a slight tremor from all around. Dust stared down at the spattered blood in the bowl as it dissolved away, the tremor coming to a stop.

‘Of course… Making sacrifices to the Goddess must strengthen her power on this island.’ She murmured to herself before leaning down to help Leaf up. Pulled onto the skeletal arm of the statue, Leaf collapsed in pain and weariness, shaking with shock and adrenalin pumping through his body.

‘Th… Thanks…’ He managed to utter. But their sense of calm was short-lived as the monastery began to collapse. Fire scaled the wooden walls, blasted through the halls, and scalded the near-immortal monks below. Burning planks and sections of roof began to collapse downward, the freezing wind blasting in through the rapidly-collapsing roof.

‘Hold on tight!’ Dust yelled. She and leaf wrapped their hooves around the limb of the statue just in time – as the entire, fragile structure of the monastery began to crumble and fracture, splitting down the middle. The walls began to fall away, fiery planks blown away on the wind. The huge bronze statue of the Goddess teetered on the remaining frame of the monastery before tipping over and falling over the edge of the mountaintop. The statue went speeding downward, smashing down from the frozen mountain’s peak into the lush green of the mountainside forest, levelling trees as it tumbled down, falling on its side to continue to roll. At the last moment, in a last-ditch attempt at survival, Dust leapt into action. Grabbing Leaf by the hoof, she dove off the falling bronze titan, smacking into the undergrowth of the forest before rolling to a halt. Bruised, battered, bloodied but alive, the two lay holding onto each other tightly, still shuddering in shock and breathing quickly.

‘We’re… Alive?’ Leaf gasped, staring into Dust’s eyes in surprise. Before he could say another word, Dust pulled him down roughly and kissed him deeply. Finally letting him go again and grinning, she sat up.

‘Very much alive.’ She nursed a bruise on the side of her head, and then gazed down toward the valley below. The bronze statue continued to topple and roll downward before flying off a plateau and crashing violently through the roof of the Citadel. A thunderclap exploded overhead, the sky slowly turning a shade of dark blood-red. ‘I’d say that’s the Goddess taken care of…’ Dust muttered, smirking. Aching all over but relieved, she staggered to her hooves and began wandering down the tree-laden slope toward the coast. ‘Come on, Leaf!’

Leaf was still completely speechless.