Page 51 of Of Skulls Of Shackles

Saliva—or foam—pooled in my mouth and dribbled from the corners. The thought of rendering him weak with my power rattled in my vice-ridden soul. Not vice. Necessity. Cold survival. Crucial for the world. I felt apart from the whisperings of my soul where I challenged violent and controlling ideals. They grew fainter with each leaping stride as ancients pumped their schemes into my blood like oxygen.

I sucked in a long breath. One hundred smells existed in the breath and one hundred more. “He sends his human subjects to attack,” I called on the wind. “Hold them back.”

My pawns howled and whined behind me as I shoved my heeled boots into the ground and bounded over the shrieking wave of beastly humans, who sprinted and drooled and scratched to intercept me.

They were not to blame for their state. A king controlled them, just as ancients controlled me. We were one and the same.

I leaped high in the sky over rubble and beastly remains. A crater formed upon my powerful landing.

I blurred on without thought to the crawling pace of pawns. Madness had found me truly, and my body heaved, never more entrenched in monsterdom.

When I reached the forest edge, terrible laughter spilled from my lips.At last.I burst into the trees, kept so meticulously uniform by Princess Change. Unnatural. Unworthy of wildness—that is how she viewed this kingdom, or maybe fooled herself into believing.

I did not care. I would burn this incredible forest down to find a king. Then, I would burn down the world.

Everyone and everything.

My rabid grunts filled the unnatural forest.

I pulsed my power forth and opened every sense. A stillness overcame me, nevertheless as mad as my grunting state had been. I breathed in through my nose in an effort to detect a king.

I tilted my head to better listen as I pivoted in a slow circle.Nothing.No smell. No sound. No palpable barrier of his power.

A snarl tore from me. Change was hidden. Cloaked.

I laughed again, anticipating how the forest would burn to ash.Burn for me.

Did King Change lurk in the deepest midst of the forest?Nothing so conventional. He would not allow himself the pleasure. A king who believed himself evil would linger where he felt self-punishment was strongest. I had this king’s reason well in hand. No, he would not lurk deep in the midst of the forest. He would linger closest to beastliness. In humans and monsters.

Twisting in the very air, I bounded back to the boundary of King Change’s kingdom. The dirt underfoot muted my pounding gait, yet my sinister intention was a reverberating beat of the drum—I could feel it in the world itself.

As I neared the last lines of trees, I slowed my blur and blink, and then arrested my movement. My slipstream swept past me with a greatwhoosh.

Still in the confines of the trees, I pulsed my power out. My power swept in arcs through the forest.

“Change,” I said on the wind, then called, “Where do you hide, weak and undone?”

I rested a hand on the nearest tree, then weaved my power through bark and into the tree’s soul. An impossible lattice blinded me. I blinked through the maze and web revealed and realized I looked at every tree and every root system in the forest. Here was a map of Change’s kingdom. My lip curled as I swept my power over the intricate webbing pathways and the kings hidden between.

One king, that was to say.

My high-pitched laugh was gleeful to the extreme. I padded through the forest toward where King Change had buried himself amid thick roots. Only his crown had betrayed him with how it was so pointed amongst curving and flowing roots. What poetic symmetry: His crown was the only reason I had come.

I padded closer, coiled with predatory readiness. “Would you like to face a queen while standing on your immortal feet or shall I drag you out of the dirt?”

A hand shot through the ground at the base of a tree ten feet before me. Dirt crusted in the long nails and congealed in great patches over scarred and manged forearm.

Another hand followed, and then the crown, head, and torso of King Change emerged from his hiding place in root and tree. His lips always showed an excess of spotted gum, but his top lip drew over yellowed fangs. A snarl. Low, warning, and building in power, rumbled from him.

“Youdarethreaten me so in my own kingdom,” he snapped. “Fool queen, you have willingly entered my trap. Here, your cage for centuries and forever.”

The trees bowed inward toward him as though dragged. Branches cracked and the few leaves in the forest showered between us.

Yet such ancient confidence filled me. In madness, there was no such thing as doubt. “You are the new object of my obsession, King Change.I am come to conquer you.”

Sinister chuckles interrupted his words. “You thinkyoucan conquer a king.”

The trees did not straighten, though, so their king was not calm.

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