"If I'd had my armour, something like this would never have happened."
"Although it will help me not to get used to it and rely on my armour all the time."
It was the first time in several months that William had taken off his silver-scaled armour, ever since he'd received it as a reward for hunting down and killing a fearsome Silver-Scaled Drake.
As the armour had no card attached to it, William had always wondered which god had received his offering.
Perhaps Artemis, the goddess closest to the Stone family, or it could well have been the goddess Athena, who already had a record of similar deeds over the years.
Among the most famous was when Athena lent her shield, the Aegis, to Perseus so that he could deal with the threat of Medusa.
As for William Stone obtaining a suit of armour forged by the god Hephaestus himself, this was not so unusual amongst heroes; with the favour of two of the principal Olympian goddesses and a great achievement to his name, the reward was more than deserved.
Achilles himself received a suit of armour forged by Hephaestus at the request and entreaty of his mother, the sea nymph Thetis, mediator of conflicts between the gods and possessor of a beauty that even Zeus and Poseidon themselves desired madly.
William continued walking down the corridor barefoot; by this point, a thin layer of dust had settled on the soles of his feet.
Both his trainers and his boots and shoes had, to a greater or lesser extent, small metal parts, so William had no choice but to go completely barefoot. Jean and her friends had no trouble getting past Black Phillip's 'anti-steel' barrier, as they were all wearing soft pyjamas with plastic buttons and slippers.
- A few moments earlier. -
"Who is this fellow who has dared to enter my chambers uninvited?"
The pale man stood up on his long, bony legs and asked aloud; the light from the fire burning in the fireplace reflected off his pale, white and blood-red skin.
Black Phillip gently placed his empty glass on the long wooden plank table and replied with a shrill bleat and sounds worthy of a goat; none of the three who attended the banquet had uttered a single word in human language so far, nor would they do so in the future.
"I'm just as surprised as you are; I haven't the faintest idea who he is."
The enormous billy goat, with fur as black as ollin and four curved horns on his head, bent his neck at an unnatural angle and replied whilst sticking out his long, thick tongue, with which he licked his long yellow fangs.
He seemed to be enjoying the unexpectedness of the situation, judging by the way he narrowed his eyes with amusement and delight.
"And how long are you going to stay on the floor? Get up and do something about the intruder, you filthy rat."
At the pale man's words of condemnation, the lifeless body of the Rat King, Ruuttus, writhed as if in boiling water, and the bleeding hole in his chest gradually began to close.
His flesh stretched and twisted until the veins, nerves, muscles and skin were joined back together as one; such miraculous healing power did not come without a cost.
This was demonstrated when one of Ruuttus's three heads, Rattos—the head that looked younger and stronger than the other two—underwent a change; his shiny grey fur and black eyes were corrupted in an instant, his screams and cries of pain lasting only that long, before he fell like a piece of mummified flesh against Ruuttus's chest.
"I'll take care of dealing with the young hero..."
(In any case, Rattos posed a threat to my control over this body; I'll have to find a more docile replacement next time.)
thought Ruuttus as he bit into Rattos's remains with his four sharp incisors and tore them from his body with a swift, sweeping movement of his neck.
"Come to me, my royal guard!!!"
Ruuttus crouched against the dusty stone floor and the broad shadow beneath him; long hands with sharp claws emerged as if piercing a thin membrane.
First came a hand, then an arm, followed by the shoulders and head, until the full bodies of two great rat-men stood side by side before the King of the Rats.
Clad in heavy full-body leather armour, both knelt before their King.
"Marzu at your service, my King," declared Marzu, with white fur and eyes as red as pigeon's blood.
"Blue of Auvergne at your service, my lord," declared Blue of Auvergne with equal devotion before Ruuttus.
"Enough of these fine words. Bring me the human and the children hiding over there."
Ruuttus straightened his hunched back and spoke, pointing with two of his four arms in the direction where William had walked off at a slow pace.
The Pale Man's lair had a peculiar T-shape; in the main hall stood the Pale Man's vast banquet table and the large carved wooden thrones for him and his immortal kin.
In the right-hand corridor was the trapdoor through which William had entered, and on the left the new chalk door that Jean was about to carve.
Marzu didn't say another word; he dashed off swiftly, making the most of his long, curved hind legs, but not before drawing his long, heavy, broad-bladed cleaver made of steel from his lower back.
"Leave this to us…!!!"
"Do it!!!"
Before Marzu could finish speaking, Ruuttus interrupted him with a powerful slap; his long, sharp claws tore fresh wounds into Blue de Auvergne's lips.
"I thought we couldn't bring our stags..." said Black Phillip, his rectangular, black goat-like pupils staring directly at the pale man. "If I'd known that with so many centuries under your belt you'd become more lax with the rules, I would have brought a couple of women from my Aquelarre."
"To have some fun... Argghhh!!!"
Black Phillip roared as the Pale Man gripped his arm—which was holding a new bottle of wine—tightly and pulled him towards him, biting down so hard that Black Phillip's blood trickled down his loose, sagging double chin and stained the plates where his eyeballs had once been.
Despite his thin, bony appearance, with skin so sagging and flaccid, the Pale Man possessed such immense strength that it rivalled Black Phillip's; his thick, muscular arms were no match for the Pale Man's slender muscles, which were only slender in appearance.
Marzu did not wait for a second rebuke from his former King; he strode forward and drew his short bow, made from a buffalo horn, from his back. With his long, white-furred fingers, he nocked a bone-tipped arrow and aimed at the corridor where his brother had vanished.
*Thud!!!*
The wet sound of something being thrown right at his feet made the hairs on Blue de Auvergne's moustache stand on end.
(No, no, no.... NO!!!)
Fearful and reluctant, he looked down and caught sight of his older brother's severed, still-bleeding head; the red blood, waiting for no one, soon formed a small pool around it, overcoming the dust of the earth.
Pat, pat, the huge paws of the enormous Siberian tiger left beautiful impressions of its claws and pads on the white tiles, using Marzu's blood as ink on a canvas, as it advanced through the main hall.
Without his Beast Rings, William was unable to take on any form he desired, not unless he had previously assumed that form.
The largest cat in the world, the Siberian tiger, was of course on his list of favourites; with his Nemean Lion ring, he had obtained all the major cat breeds in the world.
(This fur is far too warm in this climate.)
William shook his back and wagged his long tail; his thick, fluffy coat was made for the Siberian tundra and the cold winter. The long black stripes on his pristine white fur, combined with his silvery eyes, gave him a majestic air worthy of being regarded as a Bai Hu in China or a Byakko in Japan—a white tiger of enormous size.
Blue de Auvergne did not pause to admire the beauty of William's beast-like form; he simply pulled the string—made from lizard tendon—as tight as he could on his shortbow and fired his arrow.
The Siberian tiger had already had its sights set on him from the start; the rat archer's rapid, successive and precise arrows were dodged as it charged towards him.
Wounds and scrapes appeared on its white fur; blood stained small patches of its back; two of the arrows had grazed it, before it could pounce upon him.
First, it tore off his dominant arm with a single bite; its long, sharp fangs sank in precisely where his leather armour offered no protection.
Then Blue de Auvergne's head was thrown down right beside his older brother's; they shared one last glance with each other before they both died.
His days of eating babies and kidnapping children deep in the tunnels of Italy had come to an end in the blink of an eye.