I could tell the Monkeys were getting really excited watching me treat Noble like a living thing, coming in from crazy angles with equally crazy approaches to the sparring. It didn’t mean I got past Sama’s defenses, as she was as elusive as trying to hit smoke, but I had a lot more variety in how I went at her.

And then, of course, it was short sticks time.

This was not something I used in a fight, as it was meant to take on a lot of weak things, not the bigger things Humans here routinely faced. Still, I began to use both Sticks I pulled out of my Masspack and set up a raining tempo on Sama. I was definitely exciting the Monkeys with the amount of violence the whacking and cracking rain of blows, spin moves, exchanges, and just utterly ferocious attacks were making.

Sama withstood it all stoically, meeting sticks for sticks, whackedy-crack-crack, and after a few minutes we sprang apart.

“Looks and sounds impressive, right?” I got lots of approving hoots and calls for that. “Your Majesty, if I may?” I gestured him forward, and he promptly bounced up and landed in front of me. “A demonstration on its effectiveness.”

They all quieted down as I wound up the Sticks, and proceeded to whale on King Dorado’s chest.

It was loud, it was ferocious, and he sort of cocked his head down at me as the whumping cracks and splats of metal drumming on his muscle filled the place, obviously not hurting much at all.

He sent a casual backhand in my direction, and I went sailing thirty feet through the air into a hooting pack of Monkeys, who all caught me with loud jeers.

I took it on my Soak, didn’t care as he grinned at me. The Monkeys tossed me back to my feet, and I held up the Sticks.

“Only good on smaller things that aren’t very tough. Maybe the skulls of smaller Bugs and Ants and stuff!” I announced to them all. “Compare to this!”

I flipped out Noble, whipped him around once, and glided forwards to smash King Dorado in the chest.

Despite his strength and toughness, he was bounced back ten feet, doubling over slightly as he soaked the hit, and even clutched at his ribs in surprise.

“Or, you poke him!” The point flashed out, and suddenly Noble was at the King’s throat, shining like a starpoint, and King Dorado hopped back instinctively.

“Staff, Spear, THEN Sticks,” I told them, waving Noble around, and they hooted and called out, waving their own massive Weapons, even King Dorado.

“Hai-i!” King Dorado grinned, showing massive fangs as he did. “We would like to learn this Oak and Willow, Hag Sama! Can you teach it?”

“You know how bloody busy I am, King Dorado, and Healer Fae is even busier. We just don’t have time to sit around and run you through Forms out here. We’ve got the whole rest of the world we wander around, not just your jungle.” She nodded east. “Going to go kill more Night Weavers, too.”

Humms of hatred and interest pervaded the air. The Monkeys definitely didn’t like those Spiders over there!

“Could some of my Guard accompany you and learn it?” he asked quickly. He couldn’t abandon his people, as his power was one of the bulwarks enabling them to grow to such numbers hereabouts.

Sama tilted her head at Reynard. “Hey, Fox, pick out four of them who would be good matches for some of the fighty-types back at the Compound. Your Majesty, if they’re willing to Contract with some Humans for a while, so that we can say they are ‘controlled’,” the Monkeys all hooted and pounded their Sticks proudly at her words, “we’ll be good. There’ll be no problem training them up and sending them back to teach the rest of you what they learn. We can even improve their Sticks if they are willing to crack some Aquatic skulls and trade some favors.”

More hoots and calls rang out, Sticks were hefted happily. That was definitely something they were ready to do!

“While they are doing that, you can be learning to throw spears,” Sama pointed at King Dorado, who eyed the nasty point that popped out of his massive Tetsubo, and just nodded with a ferocious grin.

------

Reynard didn’t even bother to get up as he surveyed all the Monkeys, and picked out five.

Yes, five. One Whip-arm Spider Monkey, one Regal Owl Monkey, one Emperor Tamarin, one White Crown Marmoset, and one Steel Claw Gibbon.

I cocked an eye at him as the very pleased Emperor Tamarin and his long ‘staches, a Commander-Class who was nonetheless one of the very few Monkeys smaller than I was, ambled up Reynard’s side and resumed grooming the Celestial Fox. “For you!” Reynard said promptly, and stretched out to enjoy his grooming.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

For me, yessss...

Even the Tamarin snickered at that. I just shook my head.

“King Dorado, a personal request?” I asked the great golden Howler softly, leaning in. He crouched down promptly to listen intently. “I can Teleport, coming to you on the breath of the world from a great distance, if need be. I would need a place I can arrive at to do so, where I could carve out a Seal that I could home in on from a great distance.

“Sama, Briggs, I, or those we trust, would thus be able to deliver those who come with me back to you, or arrive here quickly if you need help. I could even make a Message Stick you could break if you really, truly needed some help with something... and you are far too wise a King to think there is nothing in the jungle or this world that can threaten you and your people.”

He sat back to consider that point, obviously thinking hard about the implications. I leaned over to Sama, who was trying to get drunk and failing as she leaned back against Reynard, but was also clearly enjoying the attempts. “You never Marked him?” I asked her.

“He’s not as smart as he thinks he is, and I’m not sure his pride would take the hit if introduced to Markspace,” she replied simply. “He’s as smart as ninety percent of Humanity, sure, but our Markspace has a bit of a skew to the high end of the scale.”

“Especially ourselves.”

She fixed me with her heavens-blue eyes and nodded. “Especially ourselves,” she agreed.

“Should do it. The Monkey is still a fool,” Reynard informed both of us. “Thinks Human Monkeys maybe not so different from other Monkeys.”

Sama and I both winced. “You can regrow his fur, right?” Sama asked.

“Of course.”

“I’ll get him Tatted before we go.”

------

He bounced through the Markdoor, ready to look at this whole new universe, see what we looked like there, and then he halted.

He looked around, his hackles rising, as he stared at Briggs, Sama, and I, rising above him, towering over him like a King Ape would, only in a very, very different way.

He could see it, he could feel it. The power of our minds. The intelligence. The depth, the breadth, the speed, the clarity, and the force of our thoughts, our wills.

There was no place to hide, to conceal himself. He looked around us, at the many, many minds in the Markspace, almost all of them Human, almost all of them faster, brighter, and stronger than his own.

Over to the side, Reynard snickered softly. The other Beasts who’d been Tatted, almost all of them Contracted, waved mentally at the Monkey King, and despite his uncertainty, he skittered over to talk to them.

He’d never spoken to a Drake, Fox, or Avians like this before, not to mention the Lizard, Snake, Porcupine, Armordillo, and the like.

Oh, and there was Babe and Husker, too, two half-Emperor Beasts, clearly also old and wise and powerful.

He had no Bloodline here. There were only thoughts and power and will, and these Beasts had been in the Markspace far longer than he had, and grown as a result.

They’d also grown their Tats, which had been Mental to begin with, and started learning non-Beastly things because of it, perhaps even (gasp!) taking simple Classes they could deal with, helping them grow more...

--------

Our escorts to the Spiders’ territory were markedly silent and much more careful, especially as they came within a couple miles of the border areas where the Spiders were known to lurk... which didn’t mean said Spiders weren’t going to go beyond that area looking for prey.

Of course, someone was in the area with a Detect Non-Good up with a VERY long range, and given we were moving slowly, I was panning it around.

“Hup.” The Monkeys pinged my senses, as did many other creatures, but the malevolence I was sensing was Purple, not Brown. Sama glanced at my feed, and promptly altered course, waving the Monkeys to stay well back, as their bouncing through the trees could alert her prey.

They were very happy to do so.

Having lightfoot myself, I just wrapped myself in Camouflage so I didn’t stand out in the jungle, and sidled along after her.

The Night Weaver Spider was moving through the branches about fifty feet up, a common area for traveling Monkeys, advancing slowly and carefully. It used branches if it had to, but otherwise was setting jet-black legs down on open air, little threads of force materializing there to take its weight, almost as if it was conjuring webs out of the world to walk upon.

Sama fed me her view of it as she came in a hundred feet above it, little more than a casual ripple of leaves as she did so. It wasn’t worried about being hit from above with its wide-angle vision, and she narrowed in on the casual motions of its rear legs, her gaze flicking around under it and back to the branches it was passing. You had to have really good eyes to see the shadowy lines it was leaving behind it, erecting a tunnel and trap for anything that might seek to come up behind it.

Sama didn’t waste any time, sidling down the far side of the tree it was on, below its line of sight, back up and then along the underside of the branch it was moving along, her lightfoot giving off no vibrations, no sense of magic, no noise, no motion.

Her strike was as sudden as it was deadly, a convulsing of muscles launching her up and along underneath it, Tremble plunging through the steel-hard carapace along the joints of its legs, right into the nerve ganglia there, pulling out before it could even convulse to hang back on the branch.

The Night Weaver jerked, its legs snapped down, and it dropped down as it lost all balance on the eight legs that had folded back underneath it. It swung away, anchored by the shadowy web attached to its back legs and spinnerets, swinging impotently there in the air, black eyes gleaming as it saw the smirking face of the Human who had taken it out so impossibly quickly.

-Below you,- I /told her quietly, gliding through the air to a branch a hundred feet above her, looking at my display.

Sama swung her feet back up to the underside of the branch, Cloudstepping Sandals clinging easily to the tree, even as a great dark head the size of a car, perched atop a very long neck, rose up out of the undergrowth below.

A Black-Banded Anaconda, one of the lesser varieties. Had to be at least a hundred and fifty feet long. It had its slitted eyes fixed on the hapless Spider, although it turned to keep Sama in its sight as it did so. She wasn’t worth the trouble of trying to bite her, but the Night Weaver, even a small one like this, was a decent prize!