The bridge over the lake was narrow – only wide enough for two people to walk side by side comfortably. Cor took the lead, resting his spear over his shoulder. The bridge was supported by stone columns rising out of the lake, and gradually rose higher and higher until they were thirty feet above the water’s surface.

The mist parted to reveal what could only be described as a small castle or fortification set into the side of the mountain. A large drawbridge was pulled up in front of a central tower that rose of battlements on each side, carved into the side of the mountain.

“What is this?” Hudson asked. The bridge they were walking on ended in a platform; he could see additional platforms appearing out of the mist to the sides, all arranged in a rough semi-circle facing the castle. Between the castle and the platforms, individual stone columns rose out of the water, dispersed in a random pattern. Enormous, carved figures blazed on a lintel above the drawbridge.

On the far side, just barely visible beyond the castle battlements, was the outline of a path and stone steps climbing further upwards in switchbacks up the face of the mountain.

“So someone with more imagination than sense came up with this disaster of an architecture project. Pretty obvious, without poking your eyeballs on that big ole sign from hell, that the point of these shenanigans is to get past the castle.

“You’re probably thinking it’s easy. Just huff, puff, and blow yourself up and over the wall.”

Hudson was thinking that exact same thing. He could jump carefully from pillar to pillar – some were positioned fairly close to each other – and then with his cultivation-enhanced strength, jump for the wall itself.

Cor fished a rock out of his pouch and chucked it high over the walls. “Watch this.”

The rock sailed upwards at an arc, until it crossed an invisible line. What Hudson had assumed were crenelations on top of the parapets suddenly moved. Here-to-fore solid blocks of stone suddenly stood upwards, arms and legs separating out from a main torso. The arms swiveled to track the rock, and with a silvery pulse of light and a woosh, currents of air swept out from the ends of the arms to hit the path of the rock, sending it backwards to splash into the lake.

“Golems,” Cor said with disgust. “But that ain’t the worst. We got an even uglier problem… yup, there they are, right on time.”

Three familiar faces peaked over the top of the central tower: Kenji and two others whose names Hudson couldn’t remember. They were the three members of S.E.C.T. who had stayed loyal to George and continued to do his bidding within the trial.

“Back for another dive in the lake?” A jeering voice met them.

Without missing a beat, Cor yelled back a response. “The water was quite refreshing, actually, you feckless worms. It doesn’t wash the ugly off though, so it ain’t gonna help y’all out any.”

Cor looked at Hudson and gestured with his head up at the three. Hudson stared back, confused.

“C’mon, watcha got?” Cor asked him in a low voice.

Hudson’s mind went blank as he tried to come up with an appropriate insult to level at the three.

“‘F’ for effort, ‘F’ for execution,” Cor judged when Hudson couldn’t come up with anything quickly, shaking his head. “Another thing we gotta work on. I’ve already tried to make ‘em mad enough to hop out of their little treehouse, but they have shown significant restraint beyond their intelligence level, and not taken the bait.

“The problem with those guys is they got a bunch of rocks up there, and they chuck ‘em at us when we try to jump across the columns and approach them walls – which, by the way, are not all entirely real.”

“Huh? What do you mean, not real?”

“The little stone columns. Some of them at least. Let me tell you what, that was a shocker. Some of these skinny little stone columns are, as best we can tell, just illusions made from qi.

“So if we don’t fall through an illusion, or get knocked off by the random winds that swirl through here, or take a fastball to the head from one of the three stooges, and actually get folks in place to jump over the walls… the golems just knock us back into the drink.”

Cor cleared his throat and spat an enormous loogie over the side of the bridge.

“We been at it a few times without much luck. I was fixing to try and swim over and scale that cliff on the edges, but I’m doubtful that’d work.”

Hudson didn’t think it would work, either. Simple bypasses to the elements in the sigil challenge hadn’t worked before, so he didn’t think they would work now. The walls were likely enchanted with some kind of qi that made them extra slippery, or some other kind of nonsense like that.

“What about George? Any sign of him?”

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“No sign. Likely gone on ahead to reap whatever benefits he can, throwing these guys in our way like he’s done before.”

Hudson nodded. He was probably right, but he was also worried that George had waited to show himself.

“Hmmm… I just had a thought. You said something about random gusts of wind, right? They are probably not random. Can you cover me for a second?” Hudson asked Cor before sitting down and adopting a meditative pose, eyes closed.

“Strange time and place to pick for a nap, but I still got a few good ones I wanted to try out,” Cor said agreeably. “Nothing better than a captive audience.

“Hey hero! Not you, the other one. The ugly one. Yeah, you, the one whose momma pushed him out of the nest, and hit every single branch of the ugly tree on his way down.

“Have you ever considered wearing a bag over your head? No? It would hide that monstrosity from the world, heaven help us. Not to mention breath mints are clearly not working for you, so a paper bag would help with the halitosis as well. Bless your heart, I can smell it from here.

“I apologize. Can’t expect y’all to know the word ‘hal - ee - toe - sus’. No, it is not a foot fungus or a dirty barracks room, although I suspect you have both of those as well. It’s a big word for ‘your breath melts the skin off my face.’”

Cor swung the butt of his spear and intercepted a rock aimed for his chest.

“Tsk tsk. We’re just talking right now and that ain’t called for. But hang on a second… that reminds me… what was the name of the cultivation technique your grand pop-pops proudly passed down to you? If I recall correctly… it must be ‘The Heaven Melts Before My Breath’ – gotta admit, not a bad ring to it.

“But moving on to your friend there… Lord have mercy… ”

…..

“Are we ready?” Hudson asked Cor. They and all twenty-one of the grasshoppers were arrayed on the beach of the lake.

“Are you asking me? I was born ready, and the rest of y’all are still trying to catch up,” he replied.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’” Hudson had been making his own feverish preparations, and it was now time to storm the castle.

“Just one more thing,” Cor said. “We got told by the director that pretty much everything goes when it comes to other participants, except for outright killing them.

“That’s all well and good when it comes to the three goons we’ve seen up there, but if it’s George… We can’t afford to pull any punches, you understand? You have a shot, you take it, and don’t worry about any of the consequences that come afterward.”

Hudson nodded grimly. It made sense; they knew that George was out for blood. Suzume had told him as much also. Half-measures would only leave them dead.

“I need to hear you say it, son.” Cor’s expression was harsh and unyielding.

“If I have a shot, I’ll take it. No half-measures,” he said. “No holding anything back.”

“Good. Now let’s get this party started,” Cor said before motioning to the grasshoppers. They peeled off in groups of three and ran down the beach towards the other bridges hidden in the fog. There were ten in total, and they split up to cover the majority of the slim bridges.

The leader in each group carefully held a spear. The head of the spear was wrapped in the super sticky spider webs from the cave tunnel that Hudson had traversed; apparently the tunnels that Cor and team had traveled through had not had any spider webs, or spiders.

Instead, they had encountered swarms of large cockroaches that smelled horribly when squished. And they hadn’t needed to pass through a windy gorge, either; they had traversed very different paths to arrive here at the same place. Their path through the forest had hit a large number of pit traps, falling log traps, net traps – basically any and all kinds of non-lethal traps imaginable, including qi-based traps and illusions.

After making it through the forest, they had arrived at the sheer face of a mountain and proceeded to climb up the side of that mountain using vines taken from the forest and denuded of thorns as rope, using those same thorns and a few spear heads as makeshift pitons. Those same vines were now tied to the end of the spears, forming sticky grappling hooks.

Cor and Hudson ran up their bridge, readying their own portion of the offensive. Cor carried a few bags of rocks and his spear, but it wasn’t covered in spider webs like the others – he had a different role, as did Hudson, who gingerly carried coils of vine-rope and multiple heavy bags in his arms and on his back.

Close to the edge of the central platform, Hudson took one of the vines and secured it to the stone bridge before dropping it over the edge, setting up a central retreat point for anyone who was knocked into the water. Rather than swim back to the beach, they could swim back to the central pillar and climb up the vine there.

Cor dumped the rocks into a pile on the platform, and they got started with the first phase of the plan. The rest of the grasshoppers held further back on their bridges, out of sight and waiting for the verbal signal to join the fight.

“Did you know I used to play ball?” Cor said as he picked up one of the fist-sized rocks. “Used to have quite the heater, until I threw out the elbow. Was going to go pro, but ended up in the army instead.”

“You’ve told me three times in the past 10 minutes,” Hudson replied, then picked up his own rock. He didn’t think this would work, but they were going to try it anyway. He focused in on one of the golems, hiding as a bump on the wall of the castle in front of them.

His perception tightened and his gaze locked as his breathing technique deepened. He pulled back and threw the rock as hard as he could. He hadn’t played baseball since he was a kid, but with his cultivation-enhanced strength and senses, the rock hurtled through the air at a blistering speed.

It struck the golem square and center, shattering on impact. The golem had not had enough time to react or fire off a pulse of air from its arms, but the blow was still ineffective. It only left a mark, and didn’t dislodge the golem or do any significant damage.

Cor looked at the rock in his hand, threw it back in the pile at their feet and quipped, “I’m past my prime anyways. You want the honors?”

Hudson nodded, then took a deep breath before yelling out to the waiting grasshoppers on the bridges. His voice echoed against the mountain wall and over the lake.

“Forward!”