Chapter 25- The Simian Complaint

The group quickly made what few defensive moves they could. Tian’s first instinct was to pull out some barricades he had in a ring, but quickly decided against it. The Monkeys would be attacking from the trees, either coming straight down on top of them, or attacking from a high angle. Nothing he could cobble together would give them an edge there.

The Wang Clan prepared differently. Brother Wang quickly hung a talisman around his neck, while Sister Su slipped a carved bit of glass in a gold hoop over one eye. She also, Tian was relieved to see, pulled out her little flag and bundle of darts. The monkeys were about to find out that numbers were not on their side.

As for Sister Lin, she had her bow out, a beautiful construction of heavy wood and horn, and a generously stocked quiver of arrows hanging at her waist. She daintily cleared her throat, and proceeded to screech, howl and yap in a way that would have had Tian delivering a therapeutic kick to the head in almost any other circumstances.

The monkeys, now visible in the trees, made no reply.

“It was worth a shot.” Lin shrugged and knocked an arrow. “Though they are too quiet to be proper macaques. Expect odd behavior.”

“Like the fact that they are on fire?” Tian had his rope dart out, the head lazily spinning by his side.

Lin drew her bow back, and loosed a long arrow. One of the monkeys was impaled and pinned against a tree- falling off the tree almost immediately. It seems the arrow didn’t manage to penetrate.

“Oh nonsense! I can put an arrow through granite-” The monkey exploded in a puff of fire. “Like I said. Unnatural.”

“Deploying swarm countermeasures.” Sister Su said, cool as a knife in autumn. She swung her little flag out like a swordsman making a point, and instead of her usual upward launch of her darts, she flung them side-arm at the monkeys.

“Is that flag a little different? I think it is.”

The bundle accelerated, separated, then separated again. Clouds of rock dust popped up, as the uncontrolled darts smashed into trees and shattered. Enough of them hit monkeys. Then the next wave of darts came. Then the next. Sister Su had never forgotten the battle at Depot Four. She had killed more than her fair share of demons, killed so many that people thought a Heavenly Person had made a move. But there was always room to optimize.

It was good that she had. “That’s a lot more than two hundred monkeys!” Brother Wang yelled, and he was right. Worse, the monkeys were using their brains and starting to move from cover to cover in the trees. There was an eerie silence to them. Lin and Su kept up the stream of attacks, but while it thinned their numbers, the wave of monkeys pressed in.

“Are they glaring at me? I feel like they are staring at me. Fixated on me.”

Liren dropped back a little, positioning herself close enough to help, but still out of the likely radius of a swinging dart. They had trained and fought together for half their lives, and her eyes had always been sharp. The others picked up on it when the monkeys started clumping, converging on Tian. The good news is that it made Su’s darts more effective. That was the only good news.

They swarmed in, in their hundreds, flaming fur, long claws, eyes narrowed in fury. Twenty yards out, they started screaming. It was the only way he could describe it, primal screams of absolute hatred and fury. All aimed at him. Anger so pure and ancient it shuddered the soul. He didn’t wait for them to get any closer. He reached like a vine, and twisted.

The heavy steel head rushed out and plucked a monkey from the air. The heavy steel head bit into the small chest with enough force to punch completely through it, then returned to his hand all in the space of a single breath. The monkey burst into a small fireball in the air. The other monkeys didn’t seem to notice or care. They kept right on coming.

Liren’s spear was lively as a dragon, relying on skill and control more than explosive speed and strength. Instead of skewering individual monkeys, she tried to slap them away, knocking them into heaps for Su to exterminate.

Brother Wang was doing something similar. His shield was nearly as big as he was. Monkeys that hit the iron slab bounced off again, usually quite some distance. He, too, tried to deflect the monkeys into a heap for disposal.

“Form up around Brother Tian. I don’t know why they are targeting him, but it makes them easier for the rest of us to kill!” Wang yelled.

An old memory intruded, from before Tian had joined the Monastery. Baboons had furiously pursued him through the jungle. In part because he had killed one of their troop, but also…

“I smell good to them. I smell… really good to them.” Tian felt like crying.

“I don’t think the unnatural magic monkeys are interested in lotuses, Brother Tian.” Lin snarled as she put another arrow to her string.

“Well what the hell else could it be?” Tian kept his rope dart moving, dipping around tree trunks to pick off the monkeys protected from Sister Su’s barrage. “Could it be because I killed one coming in here?”

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Everyone was focused on the monkeys for a few more seconds. Then Liren spoke. “It’s the pinecone. They didn’t attack until you got the pinecone and brought it here. Two gates, one water, one fire. Two types of energy in the pinecone, fire and water. It will have seeds.”

Tian’s brain raced ahead. The bowls coming out of the gate were too far apart to be manipulated at the same time by one person. He had a feeling that the timing would matter.

“Liren, Wang, Su, cover me.”