I had thought the mist was spread all about the heavens. Apparently that wasn’t the case, thankfully.
It had taken us—or me to be precise—hours but we were finally out of the mist. I could now see a great area of the heavens. And in the distance there was what looked like a massive castle in the sky.
“Go towards the castle,” Xoris said to me, “I feel the gods of the barbaric realm live there.”
As I moved towards the castle, I couldn’t help but observe that it seemed to be in a poor condition. The walls of the castle seemed like they had endured ages, and the age was finally taking a toll on them. All the same, the castle was really massive. It was at least a hundred times the size of the Lazaki fort that I had destroyed.
The castle was surrounded by a great wall, which wasn’t in the best condition either. Certain parts of the wall had collapsed and I was sure that if I charged at the wall and hit it hard then I would easily be able to break through it.
My heart skipped a beat when just in front of the main gate that led into the castle grounds, the solid clouds underneath my paws gave way because they couldn’t hold my weight. The result was that the lower part of my body went through while I struggled to hold onto the solid clouds with the upper part of my body. Mintuk leapt away from my back to save himself.
“Quick!” Xoris yelled at me, “Get yourself out of this! The hole will get larger and you will fall through it to the earth. You do not have time.”
I sank my front paws into the solid clouds right in front of me and with great effort was able to pull myself out of the hole in the clouds. I panted as I looked at the hole. Through it I could see the greenery of the forests of the barbaric realm down below.
Mintuk came to the very edge of the hole and stared down at the earth through it. And then he turned his head towards the castle and then at me.
“Father, this is the first time that I really thought I was going to die,” Mintuk said in his cold voice, “I have faced hard times, but this was the first time that the possibility of me dying came to me. If I fall through that hole I am never going to survive. If I fell from a lower height perhaps I could use my powers to slow myself down. But falling from up here my powers would be useless. You have told me that you want to deal with the gods of the barbaric realm because you believe that they are lazy gods and it should be within our ability to defeat them. However, I do not understand the purpose behind defeating them. We have taken a lot of risks to come here.”
Xoris ordered me to turn into a human and I did so obediently. Then he spoke through me.
“My son, the gods of the barbaric realm are responsible for most of the natural things that occur in the barbaric realm. The cycle of the seasons, the speed of the wind, even lightning, thunder, earthquakes and floods. Do you remember the last time there was a lightning storm? Do you remember how violent it was? The gods of the barbaric realm were the ones who created it. The barbaric realm is barbaric because these gods are careless and we can use this particular weakness to our advantage. The Creator was the one who brought the gods to existence, very much like he brought us humans to existence. He made the gods way more powerful than us, but he put the same weaknesses that plague humans in the gods too. And sometimes the weaknesses in gods could be of a worse nature than in humans.
“So through hook or crook we might be able to defeat the barbaric gods. And if we aren’t able to defeat them, we might be able to trick them into letting us know how exactly they can create such violent lightning. Imagine what it would be like if we had such powers!”
Mintuk however gave a less-than-excited expression, perhaps because I had repeated Xoris’s words in a less-than-excited fashion.
“Why didn’t you come here earlier then?” he said.
“Well, we mustn’t forget that for long I had to be a little rabbit that had no capacity for performing magic. All the same during the time I was a little rabbit I was observing the power of the gods with much fascination and at the same time noting that the gods were being careless to an extent. So the moment I had the chance to do things as per my wish, I decided that my best bet to become powerful would be to go to the heavens and make the gods give me their powers.”
Mintuk didn’t say anything. He nodded however. While I could repeat whatever Xoris asked me to speak, I could never maintain the same tone of Xoris as a result of which I believed that Mintuk found conversations with his father awkward at best.
The major difference between the heavens outside the castle walls and inside the walls was that plants grew in the castle grounds. Plants of all sizes and shapes, and they were growing recklessly. However the colour of all the plants was same—white. The plants seemed to be formed of solid clouds, even though touching them felt the same as touching real plants on earth.
I was steadily moving towards the main castle in the centre of the castle grounds, when suddenly I heard a sound ahead, coming from behind a bunch of thick trees. I saw a coloured body of sorts moving behind the trees and a moment later a person appeared.
He was a giant. He was as tall as the cloud trees and was at least half my size. He had a single eye in the middle of his face just over his nose that he seemed barely capable of keeping open. Then I noticed that there was a fat rum bottle in his hand. He kept looking at me and Mintuk on my back intently, all the while fighting to maintain his balance and to keep his eye open.
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“He might be one of the gods here,” Xoris said to me, “be careful.”
So, a drunk god? Great. No wonder the barbaric realm was barbaric!
The giant god put the mouth of the bottle to his lips and then drank some more wine. He burped, massaged his stomach and then spoke, a lazy smile on his rum-kissed lips.
“A giant rabbit,” he said, “should make a fine dinner. Should inform my brothers and the warriors.”
The god turned at his spot and staggered away towards the castle.
“Should I go out of the castle grounds?” I asked Xoris. The god was half my size and I was sure his brothers would be of a similar size. Then there were the warriors. Together they would easily catch me and turn me into dinner.
“No,” Xoris said, “just get away from this spot. We do not want to be here when the brothers and the warriors come.”
I moved away to a clump of trees relatively closer to the castle than the spot where the god had seen us. I hid myself between the trees and prayed that I wouldn’t be sighted.
From the spot I was hidden, I could clearly see the gargantuan main door of the castle and now from there the one-eyed god came out, accompanied by two other gods of a similar build. Except one of the other gods had three eyes while the other had no eyes at all. They seemed to be talking between themselves. I activated my listen spell, curious.
“Are you sure you saw a giant rabbit?” the three eyed god was saying in disbelief.
“Giant rabbit in the heavens?” the blind god laughed. “Hell, there are no giant rabbits even on earth! This is the funniest joke I have heard!”
“There can be giant rabbits on earth,” the one-eyed god pressed on seriously, eager to convince his brothers, “maybe something happened to the small rabbits and they got big.”
“Still, the possibility that a rabbit would have the brains to use the Bamboo to the Heavens is low,” the three-eyed god said, who I felt was the most rational of the three, “a giant rabbit would be more likely to try to eat the Bamboo to the Heavens than to use it to come to the Heavens.”
“You are going to see anyway in a few moments,” one-eyed said, marching ahead of the other two. At that moment, the warriors came out of the castle door. They were none other than the ape monsters that we had encountered earlier. However, unlike the naked ape monsters that we had encountered earlier, these ones wore clothes. They were dressed in white shirts and black trousers. There were ten of them in total. None of them were carrying any weapons and they looked least like warriors in their clothing. However, I was well aware that they could do good damage with their boulder-like heads and sharp canines.
“Didn’t the giant rabbit run away on seeing you?” the blind god asked.
“No,” one-eyed replied. He still moved with a stagger and he was slowing down despite his best attempts to march ahead of his brothers.
The blind god laughed.
“That is so unlike a rabbit,” he said.
“Why should it run away? It’s twice my size and had no reason to fear me. Also I think there was an ape baby on the back of the rabbit.”
“Giant rabbit with an ape baby on its back, great!” the three-eyed god sighed. “I have got imaginative brothers!”
“On a side note I wonder if it’s time we took a look at the earth below soon,” the blind god said somewhat seriously.
“Didn’t we do that last month?” the one-eyed god said, his thoughts momentarily distracted from the rabbit he was after.
“We did that last year,” the blind god said.
“No, we did that three years ago,” three-eyed said, “it was the turns of you two to look at the earth last year and the year before.”
“Doesn’t matter, this year it’s your turn and you must take a look at the earth soon,” blind said. “Don’t forget, we are supposed to be taking care of the land below us. Carelessness cannot be accepted. Plus, you can forgive me for not looking at the earth during my turn since I am blind.”
“Don’t speak like you cannot borrow my eyes,” three-eyed said in an exasperated tone. I couldn’t believe that all the people in the barbaric realm prayed to such careless gods.
They kept quarrelling over small matters the rest of the way to the spot where I had previously been.
“Here it is!” the one-eyed god declared when they reached the spot.
“Where?” three-eyed asked.
There was silence for a moment.
“It was… here,” the one-eyed god said. “Where did it go? We would miss such a fine dinner!”
“Well, a rabbit has legs and can move,” the blind god said.
“How come we never thought of that?” one-eyed said. He turned to the warriors, “Warriors! Go find the giant rabbit!”
“Couldn’t we have ordered them to do that before?” three-eyed asked. “There was no need for us to walk all the distance from the castle, and now we must walk all the distance back to it!”
I had thought that the three-eyed god was more rational than his brothers. Now I realised that he was simply lazy. I turned off the listen spell. The three gods were big careless idiots. There was little point listening to their conversation. It was a wonder that nobody had taken over their castle till now. I did not want to waste any more mana on them.
“They are searching the entire castle grounds,” I said to Xoris.
“Well,” Xoris said to me thoughtfully, “they are searching the castle grounds but they are not searching the castle. They left the door of the castle open. I think it’s very much possible for you to enter the castle since the castle door is so big.”
There was sense in what Xoris was saying. I moved as quickly as I could to the door of the castle. I was about to enter it, when two warriors who had been left inside the castle leapt out at me. One came charging at me with the intent to hit me with his hard head. I made a quick move and the ape warrior instead overcome with inertia went and hit the wall of the castle, and slumped down.
However, I was distracted watching it, and the other ape warrior took the opportunity to bite my belly. Overcome with pain, I stretched my neck and was able to bite the warrior with my teeth and pull the ape away from my stomach. As I let go of it, both of us bleeding heavily, the ape warrior began to make howls. Far away I saw an ape warrior turn its head towards the castle door. It saw us and it too began to howl.
“Enough of this,” Mintuk said angrily. And the next moment the skin of the ape warrior that had bitten my stomach began to peel off, revealing blood and flesh underneath. Whatever spell Mintuk had used on the ape was skinning the ape alive.
“Get inside the castle!” Xoris ordered me. For once I was glad for an order as I did not think I could watch the ape being entirely skinned without throwing up. Despite my bleeding stomach, I pulled myself inside the castle and then closed the door, which swung with surprising ease considering its massive size.