He snarled, and charged the beast. As he ran, he used weaves to lift chunks of rock up into the air, then burned them molten in the blink of an eye and sprayed the jumara’s maw with melted rock. The thing screamed, the rock trembling as the creature pulled away from the end of the tunnel, revealing that it crouched in an enormous cavern. Its mouth had been pressed against the tunnel’s entrance near the ceiling of the cavern, to devour anything that tried to enter the cave.
Bao’s foot hit the lip of the rock at the end of the tunnel and he threw himself out into the cavern, using a blast of Air to hurl himself forward. The enormous jumara reared beneath him, the “vines” proving themselves to be the tentacles that surrounded its mouth, the insectile arms the spines that grew from its maw. It was easily a hundred feet long, pushed up against the side of the cavern, its enormous clawed legs clinging to the rock.
Bao raised his sword and dropped through the air toward the thing.
Bao hauled himself to his feet, gasping, covered in blood from the jumara’nai. Its heart continued to thump, its body splayed open in places, crushed by rocks in others. Bao stumbled, then retrieved his sword from the rocks where he’d dropped it near the stream that ran through the cave.
Behind him, the beast’s heart finally stilled. Bao leaned against a rock, ignoring his bruises and cuts. Darkness within. The thing had nearly had him. He hated the monsters he could not fight directly by channeling. Bao was convinced that Aginor had created them not to be part of the Shadow’s armies, but because of a twisted desire to see just how terrible a beast he could make.
Bao summoned light. The cup had better be in there. If it was not…
He crossed ground overgrown with plants. Between them peeked the bones of fallen heroes who had tried to best the cavern’s champion. A jumara was nearly immortal unless slain; they could live for millennia in hibernation, only eating when something touched one of their spines or tentacles.
Bao shook his head, thinking of how easily these heroes must have fallen. Even with the One Power, even with centuries of training at the sword, he had nearly become another meal—and he had fought jumara before. He knew where to strike.
Sword out, Bao reached the other side of the cavern. Here, upon a natural stone dais, he found the plants grown together into what seemed a kind of face or head.
“So I was right,” he said, kneeling beside the face. “I thought the Nym had all died.”
“I…am not of the Nym…” the face said softly, eyes closed. “Not any longer. Have you come to give me rest, traveler?”
“Sleep,” Bao said, channeling Fire and burning away the creature. “Your service is at an end.” The plants on the dais writhed, then shriveled, drawing back.
Upon the dais, the withdrawing plants revealed an object of gold. Bao could see why the people of this land had called it a cup, though it was not truly one. He had spent two years seeking it, slowly teasing its location from old accounts, myths, and stories. He picked it up, reverent.
A short time later, he left the cavern and stepped into Angarai’la, the River of Souls, to wash off the blood of the fallen guardian, and drank deeply of the cold water. That done, he walked to his pack and removed the golden rod, as long as his forearm, that he had carried in it. A short distance below the end, the metal splayed out into a disc shape.
He took the “cup” and slid it down onto the rod, the two locking into place. How enraged he’d been when he’d found the rod, thinking his quest done, only to find that the sa’angreal had been separated into two pieces!
Now they were whole again. He took a deep breath, then channeled through the rod.
The One Power rushed into him, flooding him. Bao cast his head back, drinking it in, and laughed.
Laughter. How long had it been since he had laughed? This land, these experiences, had brought mirth back to him somehow. He exulted in the power. What he held was no cup, but the second most powerful sa’angreal ever created for a man to use. D’jedt, known simply as the Scepter during his time, had been so powerful that it had been kept locked away during the War of the Power.
This…this was a grand weapon, greater than Callandor. Holding it, Bao felt powerful, invincible. He found himself running back up along the river, and did not grow fatigued.
He ran through the rest of that day. The hours passed as if in the blink of an eye. At sunset, he burst up the last few feet of the trail, bearing his prize. He raised it up high over his head, striding to where he had left Shendla.
She waited there still, sleeping in the very spot where he had left her. She rose, then immediately went to one knee before him.
The Freed scrambled down from their hillside above. He did not fail to notice that the female Ayyad, dressed in black robes with white tassels, had arrived to watch for him. Two hundred of them waited with the gathered nobility that Bao had appointed. In a wave, they fell to their knees as Shendla had, leaving only Mintel, who sat at the top of the path with legs crossed as he meditated.
“Mintel!” Bao announced, walking up to Shendla and reaching down to her shoulder. “Open your eyes to angor’lot! The day has come at long last. I name myself the Wyld. Your dragonslayer has come!”
The people began to cheer him, and Shendla looked up. “You smile,” she whispered.