Xoris did not tell me where we were exactly headed, and neither did I ask him where we were going. I just kept moving south, without changing my directions by even a slight degree and he seemed happy with that as long as I kept moving my legs as briskly as I could. Xoris was careful that I always received apt amount of rest, so that I could keep moving briskly without slowing down.
Whenever he asked me to sit and rest at a place he would get me to transform to my human form, so that through me he could converse with his son Mintuk. Most of the time I would just be repeating whatever Xoris wanted me to repeat to his son, without actually absorbing most of the information myself, such that even during the times that Xoris spoke about our destination to his son, I only caught words such as ‘gods’,’ barbaric realm’ and such.
It was on the fourth day since I had left my wives at the foot of the Lazaki mountain, that I saw at the horizon what was a straight line that seemed to extend all the way to the clouds. But it was so far away that I couldn’t make any sense about what the object really was, except that it had to be something really big and tall.
It took me four more hours to reach the structure. I found out that it was a massive bamboo tree. Even a single leaf of the tree was multiple times my size and the girth of the bamboo tree was at least four times mine.
“It’s time to go to the heavens,” Xoris said inside my head in an excited voice.
As I approached closer to the tree, I saw that there was a man in a hood sitting at the base of the tree. He stood up seeing me approach and it was only then did I realise that the man was not one who possessed any skin or flesh. All he had were bones and he extended a skeletal hand towards us.
A message popped up in my vision.
If you want to use the Bamboo to the Heavens you must pay the blood price to the owner.
Blood price? Did I have to kill someone to pay the blood price? I was never going to do anything like that.
“Pay the price,” Xoris said to me. “I intend to use the bamboo.”
“How?” I asked.
“With your own blood, of course,” Xoris said to me as though it was too obvious.
I had earlier resolved to follow Xoris’s commands and I decided that I would not turn down this one. I bit my left paw as hard as I could. It took a lot of pressure and effort on my part, all the while enduring the pain that I was inflicting on myself, but in a few seconds I had made a wound on my paw and blood oozed out of it. I let the blood drop over the extended skeletal hand of the hooded man. After I had given him a certain amount of blood, the hooded man seemed satisfied and he withdrew his hand.
A notification appeared in my vision.
You have completed the blood payment. Now you can use the Bamboo to the Heavens.
Mintuk had to make a separate blood payment to the hooded man as well. He made a slash across his palm with a long nail of his other hand through which the blood oozed out. Every individual had to make the payment using their own blood if they wanted to use the Bamboo to the Heavens.
My paw continued to bleed. I hoped that the wound wasn’t too deep and the bleeding would stop in the span of minutes. The hooded person then went to the base of the bamboo tree and then knocked there three times. A glowing outline of a massive door formed at the base of the bamboo tree and then it swung open very much like a real door and I could see the hollow inside of the bamboo tree.
“Get inside it,” Xoris said to me inside my head. The door was large enough even for my size and I was able to get inside. The hooded man closed the door from the outside, so that Mintuk and I were in complete blackness.
A certain wind began coming from the top and it only got stronger with each passing moment. I had no idea of whatever was happening.
A minute passed and abruptly the wind coming from the top stopped. The door opened and my breath got stuck in my throat seeing that outside the bamboo tree there was no forest. Instead there were only white clouds.
Get out of the Bamboo to the Heavens quickly or else you would be transported back to earth!
But how could I do that? There were clouds outside and no solid land in sight. If I stepped outside I would fall back down anyway and be transformed into pulp!
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Why are you waiting?” Xoris yelled in my head. “Get out! Or do you want me to give you a taste of the pain from before?”
Well, if I did happen to fall the moment I stepped outside, I would die and be freed from Xoris. So I decided to take my chances and I stepped out of the bamboo.
The clouds surprisingly took my weight. They were soft but they were very much solid and they wouldn’t allow me to fall down. The door of the bamboo tree closed behind me. I saw that the bamboo tree extended even further upwards from the place in the sky that we had reached and I couldn’t quite see its top because of the presence of mist overhead.
The mist was present all around us, such that it was not easy to see far in any direction, though I doubted we would find anything but clouds (solid or otherwise) in any direction particularly in the altitude that we had reached.
“So where are the gods, father?” Mintuk who was still sitting on my back said aloud in a voice filled with a certain amount of awe even though he knew that his father couldn’t speak through me in my rabbit form.
“Okay,” Xoris said to me inside my head, “I do not know in which direction we should go to come across the gods. I reckon our best bet would be to keep moving in a straight line forwards from this point. Be careful, the clouds may be solid but despite that certain weak spots in the clouds might not be able to hold your massive weight and you might fall down and it would be the end of all of us.”
As directed, I began to slowly move forwards from the bamboo tree. After a while when I turned back I saw that because of the mist the bamboo tree had disappeared and now I had no idea of what distance I had come from it. Still, I kept moving in a direction in a straight line and was careful not to veer too much from it. The last thing I would want was to keep moving about a region in the clouds in a circle.
A few minutes passed and then the sorcerer Mintuk suddenly flung his arm in a particular direction and said,
“I saw something there!”
But when I turned towards the direction I saw nothing. Either the sorcerer had lost his mind or the mist was preventing me from seeing whatever he had seen.
“Be careful,” Xoris said to me, “the gods are not known to be very happy when people from earth come to their realm.”
Barely had he said that when Mintuk let out a scream and the next moment I felt a painful impact on my back and fell sideways.
You were hit!
You lose 40 health!
I was able to quickly pick myself up, wondering what could have made someone of my size fall. When I turned to look behind, I saw the strangest creature ever. It was an ape of sorts with a massive head that had a hard shell at the top. The ape’s eyes were small for the size of its head, but its mouth was very big and its mouth was filled with canines and it had a split tongue that it stuck out in a gesture of aggression at me all the while making a hissing sound. The ape’s body size was at least three times the size of the largest ape that I had seen on earth, and I realised that in the realm of the gods I wasn’t the only giant around.
The ape charged at me again. I moved away just in time that the ape missed me and went by my side. The sorcerer who had leapt off from my back when I had fallen earlier pointed his hand at the ape and muttered something. Immediately the ape fell to its knees as though it was in great pain. I saw a grin on Mintuk’s face, happy that he was being able to torture a creature of the heavens. Mintuk’s happiness was short lived though for the next moment three more apes leapt out of the mist and charged at Mintuk to save their friend that he had been torturing with his magic.
Mintuk climbed up me in an attempt to save himself, and the result was that I was too late to act and I received the hits from the three apes together, all on my chest.
You were hit!
You lose 150 health!
The apes that had hit me went some distance away to charge at me again, but the ape that Mintuk had tortured came and bit me on the very paw that I had myself bit in order to make the blood payment earlier.
I hit the ape on the head with my other paw repeated times, but the determined ape would simply not remove its canines that were embedded deep in my paw. To make matters worse the other three apes charged at me again and hit me such that I tumbled to a side. I felt weak and for a moment I wanted to give up.
“Get up!” Xoris yelled inside my head and it was clear from his voice that he was very frightened of the prospect of me being killed by the apes, “Or else I would make you feel the pain again!”
“Really?” I asked him. “You cannot come up with something better to motivate me? They are going to kill me anyway, it wouldn’t matter if you make me feel the pain or not.”
“Come on,” Xoris said, “if you do as I say then at some point in the future when I find a way to detach myself from you I would free you from being my slave.”
Well, Xoris kept his word. At the same time I wondered if Xoris ever planned to let me go alive. Once he was done using me he might just kill me fearing that I could pose a threat for him in the future. That way he would still be freeing me and keeping his word.
At the same time, giving up and letting the ape monsters kill me would mean that I had given up hope. And I had not given up hope, not yet.
With extreme effort, I pushed myself up, my paw still bleeding heavily. And then I broke into a sprint into the mist. I didn’t care where I went as long as I was putting distance between me and the apes. I felt a sharp pain on my behind and turned my head to see that it was one of the apes that had somehow managed to catch up to me and sunk its teeth into my behind. I kept moving my limbs despite the pain, not wanting to let the other apes catch up as well.
Mintuk pointed his hand at the ape biting my behind and immediately the ape let go and shrunk into a ball as though in extreme pain. For once, I was thankful to the sorcerer Mintuk, the very same who had disrupted my relatively peaceful life by abducting my wife.
I kept running. I had lost enough blood that if I happened to lie down I would lose consciousness.
It was after at least fifteen minutes that I could keep moving no more.
“I am done,” I said to Xoris and then I fell on top of the solid clouds. My body was in pain all over. Stars appeared in my vision and I lost consciousness.
***