Kuu
Kuu knew that he had to act fast. His padded feet pounded against the desert floor as he raced toward Yelto’s compound. He heard his brother yelling after him, but it didn’t stop him. Wait behind? he scoffed. Not a chance.
The walls of the fortress were high and broad, but that didn’t matter. The gate was open, and Kuu was small enough in his fox form to steal his way inside.
But directly inside waited the robed figure of a Priest of the Holder, standing right in his path and staring him down.
“I see you’ve returned, boy,” the priest hissed, drawing himself up to his full height and gripping his staff in his hands. The sounds of battle exploded around them as swords bit into armor and blood spilled on the ground. “But you’re too late: the Holder is being awakened as we speak. His dominion over this world is drawing near.”
“Then let me pass,” Kuu said with confidence—he hoped.
“And allow you to free the Ghost?” the priest scoffed. “Never.” His ghastly eyes were narrowed in contempt.
Kuu was undeterred. “It was worth a shot,” he said. Backing up, he began the transformation back into his human form. If he was going to fight, he would do it in the body that was more capable.
His vulpine form was quick, yes, but it didn’t hold a candle to how deft and maneuverable his human form was—not to mention how good it was with a sword. As his bones cracked, split, and reformed, he looked around for a weapon he could use. The sounds of clattering steel rang in the air as Yelto’s men clashed with the tribesmen. On the ground, next to the body of an old man in platemail, was the perfect blade. He dashed over to it as the last of his fur receded, naked flesh his only armor, and picked it up.
Facing the priest again, he held the sword out in a readied stance. “Then I guess I’ll have to go through you,” he said defiantly.
The priest’s exposed facial muscles contorted into what Kuu assumed was a grin. “You are welcome to try,” came the hissed reply. Raising his staff in the air, the priest brought it back down, smashing the end of it on the ground with a resounding crack.
And all around him, Kuu felt the earth shake.
He had heard of their power, and had hoped for his entire life that he would never find out if the stories were true. But when he saw the first of the bodies shudder back to life and stand up, he knew right then that the stories were not just stories.
“The Holder has given us a gift,” the priest said with an air of self-importance. “You should count yourself as privileged to witness it firsthand.”
Kuu frowned. He didn’t feel privileged. If anything, he felt afraid. But despite that, he held fast. Shifting his attention to one of the reanimated bodies that shambled toward him, blood still oozing from an open neck wound that had felled the original owner, he turned to face the thing. He wasn’t quite sure what power drove the body now, and he was determined not to dwell on it; the only thing that mattered to him now was how to stop it.
“Thanks, I guess,” Kuu said indignantly.
The body of the man—one of the Kuufi, he could see—was slow and clumsy, walking like a drunkard after a long night in the taverns. The eyes were glazed over with death, and Kuu wondered if the thing was even using its eyes to navigate at all, or if it was simply being compelled by whatever power had brought it back to life. As it closed in on him, Kuu knew that it probably didn’t make a difference. He readied his sword.
The creature hobbled nearer.
Kuu flexed his knees, going into a fighting stance. And then, quicker than he could blink, the creature was toppled by a huge, green-eyed wolf.
The terrible din they made as the two of them crashed to the ground sounded to Kuu like the end of the world.
“I told you to stay put,” Sivulu growled, sinking his fangs into the thing’s neck and tearing out the throat. He bit again and shook his head savagely, severing muscle and sinew, and dropping the head from its former body. The big wolf looked up and narrowed his eyes. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
Kuu shrugged this off as he turned to face another encroaching corpse, swinging his sword above him and gracefully relieving the creature of its head by way of his own biting steel. “We’ll see,” he said, turning to engage another. They were rising up all around them, and the priest was just standing there, grinning that skeletal grin. Kuu wondered if he was even expending any strength.
“No, Kuu,” Sivulu shot back, pouncing on another corpse and driving the thing to the ground. “Your brothers and I can handle it. You weren’t built for this.”
The words made him wince, a blow he couldn’t deflect. “Siv,” he countered angrily, “I can handle myself.”
As if to prove his claim, he took down another two corpses that had gotten closer, slicing his sword through their throats as easily as he would butter bread. A third one, though, had caught him by surprise from behind. By the time Kuu saw it, the thing had already raised its curved sword and was bringing the blade down on him. He turned to parry the blow but was forced to his knees by the surprising strength of the creature.
Ka’s breath! he swore to himself. How are they so strong?
Before the thing could do any more damage, Sivulu knocked it off balance, bringing it to the ground in a howling crash of livened steel.
“Then prove it,” his older brother said, glowering at him from atop the fallen body. “There’s still time to free her.”
Kuu used the hilt of the sword to help him stand up, growling with frustration as two more creatures approached. “What are you saying?” he asked his brother.
“I’m saying I will handle the priest,” Siv answered. “You need to go after the Ghost. She is our last hope if Yelto succeeds in waking the Holder.” He looked Kuu in the eyes. “You can get farther inside than any of us; they won’t be looking for a fox. You can free her.”
Kuu growled in frustration. His brother was right, but he didn’t want to leave him. They were outnumbered, and the numbers were only growing further and further against them. He looked at Sivulu as the huge wolf lunged at the throat of another of the priest’s puppets.
“Go!” Sivulu growled. “You are wasting time!”
Kuu swung his sword at the neck of another approaching corpse and watched the thing drop to the ground. He felt his bones breaking apart and fusing back together as his body changed. He hated doing it, but his sense of duty overrode his sense of comfort.
“And you,” he said as he turned and headed toward the entrance to Yelto’s chambers, “are the same old Siv.”
If what the priest was saying was true—and Kuu didn’t doubt that it was—their lives were all in danger. Yelto was waking the Holder. But there was still hope as long as the Ghost was with them.