The courtyard was an area of flat sand with the four fortress walls enclosing. Napoleon's robotic hoods pressed their backs to those walls in side-by-side formation, and from the thousand windows above and around us, prisoners cheered in support for their warden.
"Bonaparte! Bonaparte! Bonaparte!"
Keeping close to each other in this cauldron, none of us asked Harmony to explain the bruise under her eye, or the disappearance of her bandanna No explanation was necessary.
"Bonaparte! Bonaparte! Bonaparte!"
"Why are they all for him?" I yelled. "I don't get it."
"They cheer for the hand that feeds them!" replied Napoleon, straddling a huffing black horse. "I promise you, spectators of my next tournament, will soon be doing the same!"
The Emperor was immaculately suited in medieval armor. His voice was strained under the burden of jangling mail and plates, but he didn't seem to mind. Smiling, Napoleon tangled the reins of his toothy charger around one arm, and with the other he held a long wooden lance — the tip as sharp as any spear.
"Solid oak." he said, raising the lance like a trophy.
"Viva l' emperor!" his crowd responded. "Viva l' emperor!"
Their sound was deafening, and magnificent. A wooden rail stretched directly down the courtyard centre. Its purpose to separate the soon to be charging horses into lanes. "My prisoners are in for a treat!" said Napoleon, his cheeks like roses. "All their pains postponed for the spectacle. Ah!" he exclaimed, looking behind us. "Mr Fox, here is your catch!"
Napoleon pointed to an arched doorway, where a humpbacked John Curtis — twitching and cowering — shielded his face from the burning suns. A thick rope was wrapped around his waist — a request I made — and a masked soldier now tugged him along by it. "I'm a man of my word," Napoleon said. "Prisoner 2020 is yours for the meantime."
The hood brought Curtis to my side and I greedily snatched his leash and wrapped it several times too many around my arm. He looked weak, but intelligence was still strong in his eyes.
"Do not get attached!" added Napoleon. "I will soon be taking my property back."
The Emperor then, with supreme confidence, looked down upon a grey-faced Eddinray. "Are you ready nurse? The time is now!"
"I am ready." he answered, convincing none of us. The tournament was clearly not on Eddinray's mind, nor was the fear of failure and eternal suffering in the 9th Fortress. Harmony Valour was all that occupied his thoughts, yet she ignored him.
Presently, a hooded soldier passed Eddinray the reins of an unhealthy looking brown charger, and a similar oak lance with sharpened tip.
"No shields?" asked Kat, keeping Yuki glued to his side.
"And why are the lance-heads sharp?" I added.
"This is a duel to the death!" said Napoleon, obviously. "Shields and blunt lances defeat that purpose."
"You never mentioned this!" Harmony protested. "This wasn't the arrangement!"
"The arrangement is whatever I want it to be." he uttered, circling his horse. "I am already giving you and these…people…much leeway Harmony. Do be grateful, and do pray it is the only change of plan! To the death then!" he announced. "We charge to kill nurse, do you accept the terms?"
Eddinray slunk as if already beaten, and moving to his horse, he struggled to get a foot inside the stirrup as the animal nudged him aside.
"It's called a horse!" giggled Napoleon, clicking down his visor. "Do not dawdle to your station nurse. The crowd are a thirsty lot! They expect blood to be spilled and spilled soon!"
Napoleon turned his pristine animal around to make a cloud of rising sand, before prancing over the courtyard. His prisoners now, through honesty or force, sycophantically applauded.
"Bonaparte! Bonaparte! Bonaparte!"
Pompously waving back, Napoleon revelled in their adulation; much like Eddinray, this was a man playing a knight, and he too was smitten with the façade. Fearing the worst for our knight, Kat surprisingly attempted to inspire confidence in him. He left Yuki's side for the first time, took authority over Eddinray's fussy horse then passed him the reins. "Be solid." he growled, pressing the lance firmly under Eddinray's arm. "Be one with the beast. Focus your aim."
"You can do this!" I added, while he mounted his horse. "Believe it!"
"I need to do this!" he replied, steadying himself over the saddle. "For Harmony, for all of us, I will do this!"
Poorly pretending not to hear him, Harmony kept her eyes toward her feet.
"I see failure all over him, Fox." whispered Curtis in my ear. "Almost pissing himself. It's pathetic."
I tugged the prisoner closer, aiming my sword at his groin. "That's enough from you."
Before Eddinray set for his mark at the start of the rail, Harmony approached his horse. The crowd’s volume increasing, the angel glanced up to Eddinray's hopeful eyes. "I have one question." she said, leaning against the horse. "Did you ever…love me? Was that a lie too?"
"I'll love you!" jeered Curtis, grinning. That smirk was quickly wiped from his face when I kicked the back of his knee and watched him fold in on himself like a deck chair. "I'll murder you for that!" he cried on the sand. "I'll murder — "
"I have always loved you Harmony!" interrupted Eddinray, his courage returning. "And if such a thing is possible my love, and if such a man be worthy — will you consent to be my wife?"
Eddinray appeared to be stunned by his own audacity. We all were. All eyes turned sharply to Harmony, who did not accept or refuse him, in-fact she did not say or express any emotion; she simply released Eddinray's horse and shrunk back into our group.
"Right!" huffed Eddinray, his voice breaking. "That answers that then!"
"Eddinray!" I begged, catching his eye. "Good-luck man!"
Without comment, he slid the pot-marked visor down over his face, glanced over Harmony one last time then galloped for his station. The baying crowd kept their applause exclusively for the warden, and did their master proud with pantomime boos for Eddinray.
"He'll be okay." I said. "He will."
Napoleon pulled up his horse at the furthest end of the courtyard, and forty feet away, his challenger fought to control his stubborn animal. Between them, at the centre of the wooden rail, one hood raised a flapping tissue in the air like some high-school drag race.
"Bonaparte! Bonaparte! Bonaparte!"
The Warden aimed his sharp lance over his horse's head and the crowd reacted with delight, causing the living walls of the 9th Fortress to shimmer and pulse.
"Bonaparte! Bonaparte! Bonaparte!"
"Do it Eddinray!" I cried at his back.
"He can't hear you!" Curtis complained. "Christ, I can barely hear you!"
"Bonaparte! Bonaparte! Bonaparte!"
Inwardly suffering, Harmony appeared to be caught in two minds.
"Bonaparte! Bonaparte! Bonaparte!"
The angel reached into her gown pocket and removed an Indian's red bandanna. She sifted it slowly through her fingers, before fixing it tight around her head.
"Where are you going?!" exclaimed Kat, as Harmony suddenly sprinted toward Eddinray.
"I will Godwin!" she announced, over amplifying adulation. "I will!"
She shouted, she screamed and she begged him to turn, to see her; but the noise was too great. The hooded soldier now dropped his white tissue, and horse, lance, and men set off for each other, leaving Harmony eating dust. She cleared her eyes and moaned for Eddinray to return; but he would not stop his charge.
"Let him go." I muttered.
Harmony looked back at us with dirty tears streaming down her face. I called for her, but she did not. Instead, the dust-covered angel started her own charge over Eddinray's fresh tracks. "Godwin!"
Kat and I yelled for her, but she and we were drowned out by the dammed.
"Bonaparte! Bonaparte! Bonaparte!"
Both horses galloped, all eight feet trouncing toward a fatal collision. Eddinray gripped the reins tight and hugged his body against the horse's wide neck. The visor impairing his vision, his French opponent was merely a blur of horse and lance coming at him.
"Bonaparte! Bonaparte! Bonaparte!"
I could barely watch, and although Yuki remained wordless, her clenching hand around Kat's wrist spoke volumes.
"Godwin!" cried Harmony, frantically, breathlessly chasing and never catching. "Godwin! Godwin! Godwin!"
"Bonaparte! Bonaparte! Bonaparte!"
Both knights lowered their lances, Napoleon beating his horse ragged until his charger was at a bolt, until the two solid projectiles of Sir Godwin Eddinray and Napoleon Bonaparte came to a grizzly, and shattering head.
CRUNCH!
Lances clashed, splinters burst, horse's squealed, dust exploded, and the duel was over in a brutal blink of time. Silence followed, then a collective holding of breath as every soul in the courtyard waited to see the victor, hidden somewhere in a fog of sand and smoke…
"Godwin!" spluttered Harmony, arriving breathless in that rising cloud. "Where? Are you?"
She coughed through the orange gas toward the only body she could see, the one not moving. The horse dead underneath this man, the helmet was knocked clear off to reveal Eddinray's slim face, dishevelled hair, and uncouth moustache. No energy or oxygen left inside her, the weight of the angel fell over the knight. Harmony folded her arms around Eddinray like a duvet, and her gasping on his neck finally stirred his eyes open. The first thing he noticed was a football shaped object bobbling between his thighs. Squinting at it, Eddinray's focus revealed a human head, decapitated from the neck.
"Oh no!" he panicked. "Oh no! Harmony, my dear! Harmony! I have no head on my shoulders! No head I say!"
Harmony winced at the petrified face of Napoleon Bonaparte staring back at her. Disgusted, she kicked the head aside then passionately embraced her champion. "I will marry you!" she cried. "Of course I will!"
The cloud of sand settling, the rest of us saw their fused lips and all but John Curtis rejoiced, utterly astonished at the last man standing. "He did it?!" yelled Kat, uncharacteristically leaping. "How could he?"
Prisoners of the 9th Fortress were in similar awe at their windows. Unsure what to make of it, unsure what this would mean for them. It was only when one timidly clapped, when this tense wall began to topple. A second man applauded, followed by another — stronger this time — then another and another until the sound of wonderful ovation dominated the courtyard, a wave of hysteria, praise and wholehearted thanks to one individual, one hero.
The angel and knight returned hand in hand under this overwhelming music, and Eddinray unashamedly milked it for every drop, punching the air with his fists and taking theatrical bows.
I embraced the pair on their arrival, whilst Kat's subtle nod showed his appreciation for Eddinray's efforts. Yuki meanwhile, wearing a brief smile, appeared to be coming alive with every passing second.
"What happens now?" asked Eddinray, casting a satisfied eye over the courtyard. "I enjoy an adoring audience as much as the next fellow, but would it be wise to dwell here?"
"We're not staying." I agreed, tightening the rope around my forearm.
The arched door over my shoulder was our way out, but before I could order a sprint toward it, an abrupt jolt knocked us all to the ground. It was a jarring and unnatural displacement of the earth, some brooding beast pounding from underneath.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The crowd of watching thousands and masked hoods scampered from windows and formations — the quake causing our bodies to vibrate as if sat atop an out of control washing machine. This was the warden's furious retribution, and I expected the entire 9th Fortress to fall in on itself at any moment.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Our bodies were scattered like marbles over the sand, and clinging to one another, Curtis arose my attention to the 9th Fortress, its squirming towers and squiggling spires like the arms of a raving octopus.
"What's it doing?!" he bawled.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
An almighty crack now opened the centre of the courtyard, followed by an explosion and eruption of billowing gas.
"There's something horrible down there!" cried Harmony; she and Eddinray arriving at my side as the words "lurking surprise" flashed into my mind. Napoleon said escape was impossible, and we were about to discover exactly what security measures he had put in place here.
The dust and sediment creating an obscure orange cloud, the courtyard surface resembled shattered treacle as we six ran like mad for the walls. A final crack, like the breaking spine of a Diplodocus, came from that courtyard centre. There was a sudden and huge collapse of earth, and there, from a smoking new crater, the thing climbed free from its cage.
"We should vacate the premises!" gulped Eddinray. "It's…it's…huge!"
I saw it only as a collection of rising skin and bone through the cloud, a body growing like a beanstalk.
"Look at that!" cried Curtis, spotting a hand with fingers longer than all of us combined. That hand made a fist of flesh, and then hammered it down onto the courtyard.
SMASH!
Shock waves hit like an atomic blast, blowing us off our feet in a gale of dust. The Fortress wall put a thumping halt to both my prisoner’s flight and me. We lay dazed but conscious on the broken surface as the monster opened its salivating mouth -
"ME…WANT…BODIES!"
"Alright?" yelled Kat, arriving with wife beside me like a powdered orange ghost. I nodded back then followed them along the wall to the rest of our companions.
"Look!" bawled a boggle-eyed Eddinray. "There!"
The monster stood, free from the crater and clear of any smoke. Easily reaching two hundred feet tall and dressed in shabby rags, it yawned with a jowly face and a mouthful of crooked yellow pincers. Head bald and egg shaped; it had two baggy arms and legs, and a single, all Seeing Eye in the centre of its forehead.
"A Cyclops!" declared Harmony, petrified. "It is!"
The one eyed monster now reached into the crater and removed a pit headed stone club, resembling a miniature moon.
"WHERE'S…ME…BODIES?!" he demanded, its spit coming down like rain.
Worryingly, Kat shunned his katana at the reappearing masked soldiers, a dozen or more coming at us. Kat cut down the four closest, then, with weapons armed and soldiers pursuing, we moved along the edge of the devastated courtyard while the creature's eye adjusted to the new light.
John Curtis stuck like a rucksack between my shoulder blades, screaming as I swung my sword at enemies on route. Ahead, more robots swarmed over our door and exit, leaving us no option but to fight through the lot. Harmony fired several arrows and frustratingly missed all her chosen targets.
"Hateful thing!" she exclaimed at her bow.
"Give me a weapon Fox!" Curtis begged. "Anything!"
"BODIES! WHERE?"
"You hear me Fox? A weapon! Any weapon!"
"I am your weapon!" I howled back, slicing my sword cross the mouth of one foot-soldier.
"He sees us!" yelled Eddinray. "He bloody sees us!"
Adjusted now to his environment, a delighted Cyclops witnessed his many bodies rushing along the courtyard edges; and making no distinction between friend or foe, he demolished his club through a collection of hoods, bursting them to blots of blood and cloth.
"SMASH BODIES!" he boomed. "SMASH! SMASH! SMASH YOU!"
The freckle-cheeked giant was in ecstasy, like a child let loose on the parents ornaments, his club collided into the 9th Fortress to send chunks flying out of the structure. The eternal prison wobbled like a tower of jelly but remained steadfast under his barrage.
Killing the last remaining soldiers, we reached our arched door under a shower of falling rocks. Kicking and cursing, Kat pulled and pushed at the locked door handle. "Over there!" cried Harmony, pointing beyond Cyclops to another arched doorway at the far end of the courtyard — this door open for all to see.
Bringing us to a huddle of faces, Curtis included, I yelled at the top of my voice, "We stick tog — "
"RAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHRRR!!"
The monster's scream caused all living things in proximity to seal their ears shut, and I could well imagine prisoners in cells ducking for cover.
"ME WANT…BODIES!" bellowed the insane, attention starved wild animal.
Glancing again at the open door, to the returning multitude of sabre wielding soldiers and a stomping Cyclops, I took command. "Stick together!" I exclaimed. "Move fast! Faster than your legs can carry you!"
"Where?!" asked Eddinray.
"Through those legs!" I roared, pointing under the Cyclops.
Before any answered back, I started running over the unstable courtyard toward the super-sized legs of the monster; Kat at my rear, Curtis beside, and others trailing.
Seeing his fodder, the giant enthusiastically bashed his club several times into the dust, decimating soldiers and throwing us to scraping knees and palms.
"GOT YOU BODIES! GOT YOU!"
"Up!" Kat yelled, pulling Yuki closer. "Move!"
We stumbled to run and run for those lofty legs.
"Can't see where I'm going!" wailed Harmony. "Not a thing!" Immediately, Eddinray collected her wrist and guided her clear of the crater and directly under the giant.
"MORE!" It demanded. "MORE BODIES!"
The dust settled while we went like mice between those two blubbery skyscrapers. He was awesome, stink potent, and the power of his eye substantial.
"SMASH YOU BODIES!"
His club came down and struck a foot from Harmony's wings, throwing her and Eddinray ragged. They hit the dirt rolling, and a layer of thick sand covered their stunned bodies.
The soldiers ran mindlessly and the moon like club obliterated them, batting out more great chunks of fortress in the process.
"RAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHRRR!!"
Harmony and Eddinray now stood from under the things legs, and blurry eyed, they scurried for the open door, leaving trails of dust behind them.
Curtis and I were first to reach the doorway and the set of ascending steps inside it. Turning, I stretched my arm out for the incoming Kat and Yuki, only to witness them disappear behind a piece of fortress rock the size of a house, crashing and spewing debris everywhere. A mixture of smoke and stone consumed the doorway, and feeling my lungs filling up with dirt, I was surprised and delighted to see Kat and Yuki stumbling alive toward me, caked in soot and more than a little disorientated.
"You made it!" I gasped, coughing violently. "Where…where's Harmony? Eddinray?"
"MORE BODIES!"
Yuki pointed through broken boulder pieces to the couple racing our way, and the darkness of Cyclops foot bearing down to crush them. The knight — seeing it coming — pushed his beloved angel aside then dived to safety a moment before being flattened underfoot.
"CRUNCH BODIES!"
Harmony, quick to her feet, pulled Eddinray up by the neck, only to shriek at the monster's hand, reaching down to collect Eddinray's foot between its thumb and index finger.
"Urk!" baulked Eddinray, rising into the air "Heeeelp!"
"Godwin!" cried Harmony, loading and firing an arrow at it. Her projectile swerved off to strike the 9th Fortress. She fired another, this time clanging off the armoured back of Eddinray.
"Oh my!" she gasped. The giant put the sword-flailing knight under his nose for a cautious sniff, but the scent of Eddinray seemed to repulse the monster.
"Too good for you, eh?" said Eddinray, the blood rushing to his head. "How dare you refuse me!"
The ogre placed the Englishman into the middle of its immense palm, and squirming at the door, we expected our friend to be squished as those trunk-like fingers proceeded to close.
"Fox!" growled Kat, suddenly pressing his wife's hand onto my chest. "Look after her!"
"What you going to do?" I asked, but Kat was too busy doing it. He sprinted toward the giant, decapitating a straggling soldier on the way. He continued passed Harmony while she loaded yet another arrow into the longbow; and arriving at the monster's fat heel, Kat sliced through its Achilles tendon, causing congealed blood to burst from the wound and washed over him. The Cyclops instantly dropped Eddinray and wailed like a newborn baby.
"Catch meeee!" the knight shrieked, clattering on top of Kat, whilst the Cyclops stumbled to head-butt another dent into the 9th Fortress. A blood painted samurai angrily threw Eddinray off his stomach as Harmony appeared over the two of them.
"Time to go boys!" she said, returning the long sword to Eddinray.
The three now hauled ass for me at the door; the Cyclops, meanwhile, pulled its face from the fortress, and then searched for those bodies responsible.
"WHERE? WHERE?"
Spotted by that pulsating eyeball, the monster smiled at the samurai, knight and angel rushing to my desperate arms.
"Come on now!" I screamed. "It's coming!"
"RAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHRRR!!"
I pulled them into the doorway while a hobbling Cyclops drew back his bat.
SMASH!
The pitted club annihilated the arched door, and we six ran for our lives from a cave in behind us.
***
The steps led us to the elevator doors on the ground floor, and Kat cold-bloodedly lacerated the guard there in half. I retraced our way down spiralling steps to arrive back at the popping moat of lava, and that thin path to the surrounding outer wall and iron gates. Almost home free, our hopes were dashed when we noticed more masked men gathering at those gates. "There must be fifty!" I said, exhausted. "Where are they coming from?"
"Worry about the moat." growled Kat. "I'll take care of the masks!"
Then, with his wife in one hand and his sword in the other, Kat charged and we followed over the narrow path. Eddinray and Harmony covered the rear with sword and arrows, whilst I joined Kat to take the army head on.
"This is mad!" cried Curtis, continually.
The army watched us coming, some falling into the moat as they fought for space on the path.
"Chop them up!" Kat roared.
"Kill them all!" I spat back.
The CLANG of meeting steel followed as the battle begun, a blurry array of arms and blades and moans. Kat received a slash down his katana arm, but the warrior was too immersed in protecting Yuki to care, so swiftly dismembered the mask responsible. I cut down three then kicked one to frazzle in the moat; even Curtis got in on the act, kicking one and punching another. Eddinray fought well too, with Harmony beside him, using her very last arrow as a makeshift sword, jabbing holes in any killer close by. Suddenly, as our minds were lost in the fury of battle, another tremendous earthquake hit us.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
Like an old episode of Star Trek, all standing bodies on the path shuddered sideways, left then right.
THUD!
The boiling moat made waves and the path jolted, sending dozens spilling into the lava and causing Harmony to briefly immerse her wings in it. She howled in agony.
"You're okay!" Eddinray cried, bashing out the flames licking her back.
"The Cyclops!" moaned Kat, stretching his hand toward the trembling 9th Fortress. And there, crackled lines appeared randomly over the structures immense belly.
THUD!
THUD!
CRACK!
A gigantic piece of the 9th Fortress blew out, and the egg shaped head of the Cyclops peered out from its smouldering hole.
"BODIES!!"
Fortress boulders splashed into the moat, spitting up the great dollops of bright yellow lava. Kat and I cowered from landing magma, before focusing our energies back to the slaughter of foot soldiers.
This new hole in the face of the Fortress spanned thirty feet, but was still minute compared to the prison itself, and the Cyclops made that gap wider when forcing its body through.
Their overriding priority to protect the 9th Fortress, the masked few thankfully passed us and started toward giant. They slashed at its fat toes — and no more than a nuisance — the robotic lot were swept into the moat.
"BURN…BODIES!" he chuckled.
"Come on!" I yelled back at a dawdling Harmony and Eddinray. "Move your asses over here!"
Cyclops reached its hand back into the hole, searched a moment then pulled its pitted moon from the debris. Its eye hungrily scanning the path for more miniatures, for more bodies — ours!
Kat, Yuki, Curtis and I made it to the iron gates, and gasping, we looked back to the broken 9th Fortress, the scatterings of foot-soldier parts, the towering Cyclops and our tiny friends: Harmony and Eddinray before him. We yelled and screamed, but Harmony stood strangely still, even while a scared Eddinray tugged on her hand. "My dear!" he begged. "My love we must move! We must!"
"What is she doing?!" I cried, forcing against Kat's arm, restraining me against the gate.
"You cannot save everyone!" he said. "You understand?"
In no time, the Cyclops caught the metallic glint of Eddinray's armor, and his resulting smile formed creased crowfeet at the sides of its un-blinking eye.
"Godwin?" announced Harmony, composed. "Tear off a piece off my gown."
"My darling," he said, swallowing; "this is hardly the time nor the place — "
"TWO BODIES! MY BODIES!"
"Now!" she complained. "Be quick about it!"
Eddinray bungled to his knees and briskly tore a strip from the bottom of Harmony's gown. He placed the cloth into her hand and watched her wrap it tightly around her last arrowhead.
Searching back at us, I knew Eddinray wanted to scramble as far as possible from the giant, but also knew he would never leave Harmony alone with it. Itchy and frustrated at the gates, we left them to their fates as Harmony placed the arrow into her bow.
"Stand back Godwin!" she grimaced, dousing the cloth covered arrowhead into the moat. "This will take someone's eye out."
The arrow burst into flames when she removed it, scorching the fine hairs of her fingers. The Cyclops roared a final time before raising his club to smash their skulls. Quickly and precisely, Harmony crouched to one knee and drew back the arrow with a scrunching ache on her face. Then, and with no time to spare, she released the bowstring with a snap, and watched the arrow fly…
"BYE BOD — "
Squish!
We gawked at the gates as that fiery arrow pierced like glass through the centre of the monster's eyeball, bursting pupil puss everywhere.
"Yes!" exclaimed Harmony, leaping. "Yes!"
Cyclops bounced backward in abject misery, crushing more of its fat onto the fractured 9th Fortress.
"RAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHRRR!!"
Harmony threw down her longbow and quiver, and then ran with her love over the cracked path and body-parts. More Fortress rock fell as the blinded beast manically battered and smashed anything in range of its fists. He punched out Fortress windows and prisoners in their hundreds blew out of their cells. During its pain, its mad disorientation and attempts to dislodge an arrow from its eye, the thing set one clumsy foot into the moat, and that was the end of it. The substantial pink flesh of that leg fried from the bone in an instant, and the rest of him sank — splashing, wailing, and melting to a squeamish liquid on the molten moat. Watching, I felt sorry for that childlike beast as it turned to soup. Gone without a trace.
A flushed Harmony and Eddinray finally arrived at the gates, so we hastily moved outside and away from this godforsaken place. Before taking another step however, a white-faced Yuki jerked in fear at a presence to her right: the benevolent Italian poet. Coursing full of adrenaline again, I approached him.
If Virgil's heart was broken by the loss of Napoleon Bonaparte, his eloquent demeanour and placid expression did not suggest it. "Are you…in charge now?" I asked. "Of the 9th Fortress?"
He shook his vaporous head. "I offer my endorsement to the successor." he returned. "I take no charge. Another — Gaius Octavius — will shortly take up the position."
"But you also assist souls in Hell," inquired Harmony. "True?"
"Those who seek my help."
"Then we seek it." I said. "Virgil we want the Gauntlet. Where is it?"
Without hesitation, Virgil bowed then replied. "The Gauntlet awaits you west of the 9th Fortress. There, souls face their toughest challenge. Mental and physical endurance will be tested to their limits. Be warned, only the virtuous can see the road, and none have ever passed the test."
Grave expressions went round our party at the mention of another challenge, the toughest test, and the great poet did not alleviate our concerns. "Say your goodbyes now, for not all, if any here will survive the Gauntlet."
"Your advice?" I asked him, failing to mask my desperation.
"No advice." he answered, simply. "I have none to give."
Virgil then passed through the iron gates and floated serenely toward the 9th Fortress, awaiting the arrival of its new warden…