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He tore open door after door, pounded down hall after hall. The palace was in an uproar, attendants and Dodrec fleeing in confusion and alarm, and the sight of a huge, heavily armed foreign bear did the general tranquility no favors.

Turning a corner, he discovered a crowd of nobles flanked on either side by Dodrec guards. Pulled between two diverging hallways, they bickered about which direction they should choose.

"Fools!" Prince Mergen cried from the center of the mass, waving his emerald scepter wildly. "Does no one know how to get to the carriage house from here?" When he noticed Shere, his eyes went wide. "Kill that bear!" he directed his guards.

The guards glanced at Shere, then at each other, then dropped their spears and fled through the nearest doorway. As Shere continued his approach, the defenseless crowd backed away until they bunched up against the wall.

"Baron Kyrn. Lord Kabir," Shere said, nodding to the cowering noblemen in turn. "Would you mind moving out of the way so that I can execute your prince?"

Drawing a dagger from his robe, Kyrn said, "Don't you dare come closer," at the same instant that Kabir said, "Of course, by all means."

Prince Mergen and several others glared at Kabir. "I will address that comment later," he said.

"There won't be a later for you," Shere promised. He continued his approach, mere feet from striking distance. Revenge for the treatment he had endured here would be sweet, to say nothing of single-handedly ending the civil war.

An explosion, louder than any before, rocked the room and sent several nobles stumbling to all fours. Nearer to the source of destruction now, Shere perked his ears to identify it, but found he could only compare it to the bellowing of a beast - an obvious absurdity given its magnitude.

Returning his gaze to Prince Mergen, he saw that the snow leopard had taken advantage of his distraction to level his scepter at Shere. The snow leopard looked ridiculous wielding such a tiny weapon with such confidence. What did he hope to accomplish beyond giving Shere a few bruises by which to remember him?

Then Shere felt the charge of magic in the air, and his fur stood on end. Shere pulled his sword free of its scabbard as the prince waved the emerald scepter through the air, but it was too late. The ground slid away under Shere's footpaws, and he fell backward. The scene before him flew away, receding into the distance as though he were dropping into a well.

Shere's back slammed into a dirt floor with such force that the air was driven from his lungs. Far overhead, Prince Mergen's smirking face faded away as he closed the enchanted portal he had just opened.

Shere noticed his sword hovering in the air. He must have dropped it in his surprise, only for it to be pinched inside the portal. Then it slipped free and fell, and he rolled aside just in time for it to miss his head and bury itself, wobbling, in the ground. One end of the crossguard had been neatly severed by the closing portal.

After catching his breath, the bear stood, brushed himself off, and collected his sword. The area he now found himself in was the darkest, most barren part of the palace he had yet seen, nothing but flat ground in every direction.

Whatever pit the prince had cast him into, Shere doubted it would prove hospitable. He cursed under his breath. He had hesitated too long before making the kill, but vowed that he would not make that mistake again.

He began walking in a random direction. Whatever the powers of the Onyx Palace, this room could surely not go on forever, and he would surely find something if he only walked long enough.

Before long, Shere sensed that he was not alone. Something moved in the darkness with a sound like water lapping at the shore. He smelled it, too: sharp, overpowering, and somehow familiar. Shere stopped moving and took a fighting stance as he waited for the thing to reach him.

He did not have to wait long. The thing burbled forth from the shadows, a shapeless mass of viscous murk. Suspended inside, chunks of half-digested flesh still clung to the skeletons of previous victims. The beast stopped twenty paces from Shere and rippled as though smelling the air. Then it launched a corona of writhing tendrils in every direction.

Shere stepped out of the way of the nearest one before chopping through it. It came apart easily, but before he had time to recover his stance, the severed tendril reconnected to its base and circled back to him. He hacked again, and this time kicked the severed end into the distance before it could reconnect.

Stray droplets of the thing clung to Shere's footpaw and soaked into the bare flesh of his pads. The effect was immediate - a flush of heat and arousal, and the clouding of his mind. This creature was undoubtedly the source of the aphrodisiac that Prince Mergen had humiliated him with. It even had the same harsh smell, only in living form it was thicker, muskier, and lacked any floral additives to mask it.

Now aggravated, the creature lashed out with dozens of tendrils at a time. Shere's blade carved blindingly fast arcs through the air, severing each one. None were fast enough to touch him directly but, unavoidably, more and more drops fell onto his fur and seeped into his skin.

Unless the creature's mass hid a heart or brain, Shere's sword would do no good. He also knew that the creature's influence would soon overwhelm his mind. His reflexes were already slowing, his mind dulling. Unbidden, the memory of Prince Mergen's tailhole filled his mind and his cock stirred beneath his armor.

The only choice was to run. Another minute more of that smell invading his snout and the aphrodisiac seeping into his skin, and he would fall prey to the thing. He made one last sweeping slash to clear his escape, then turned and fled.

The monster was faster. Without his constant parrying, its tendrils reached him easily. One wrapped around his ankle and dragged him to his knees, then more arrived to pull back his arms and coil around his legs. They slithered under his armor and underclothes, and each place they touched his bare fur made him moan even as he struggled to free his sword arm.

One tendril encircled his muzzle, adhering to the top and bottom, then wrenched it open. Then another slid in over his tongue, rammed the back of his throat, then plunged deeper. It thrust in and out roughly, but the toxins building up in his blood ensured he never gagged.

Another tendril prodded under his short tail, his hole already stretched by the Dodrec and readily available. It invaded him, sliding impossibly deep while his limbs and mind were helpless to stop it. His struggles slowed as aphrodisiac flooded him from inside and out. The tentacles in both ends of him ejaculated thick loads of their mass deep into his unprotected insides, and his eyes fluttered shut as he was overwhelmed with pleasure.

When he was able to reopen them, he found himself suspended over the central mass of the creature, which shaped itself into a funnel. It was going to draw him into its center to be dissolved and digested like so many nameless others.

With one last desperate effort, he wrenched a paw free of the tendril binding his wrist. Every movement was a struggle, but as the beast tried to regain its hold, he inched his fingertips toward the purple gem on his gorget. Just before his strength failed him, he managed to touch the gem and poured the last of his will into a desperate cry for help.

Then the creature deposited another belly-swelling blob into him from both ends, and Shere's muscles slackened as his mind departed for good. His body inched into the maw, leather armor sizzling when it came into contact with the acids inside.

Suddenly, the gem shrieked and emitted a blinding violet light. Even with his eyes shut, the intensity of it stung Shere through his eyelids. The shriek went on for what felt like minutes, and continued to ring in his ears even after it stopped.

He slowly unclenched his eyes and looked around. The creature was gone, with only a wet stain in the dirt to show it had ever been there. Shere touched the purple gem in equal parts fear and gratitude. It throbbed under his paw as if alive.

"I don't know how to thank you," he said, feeling foolish for speaking to a stone, yet certain that he was heard.

The creature's hunting ground was deceptively small, and Shere soon found his way to a storeroom full of the beast's foul ooze. From there, a short time wandering brought him to the palace entrance. The colossal hallway was now strewn with rubble, its braziers had been allowed to cool, and its grand tapestries fell from the walls in tatters to reveal ancient, grotesque bas reliefs beneath. All was silent.

A Dodrec limped down the hall, leaning heavily on the wall for support. When he saw Shere, he grabbed for the knife on his belt but lost balance and fell to the floor with a pained cry.

Shere approached the injured Dodrec. "What happened here?"

"Something attacked."

"I can see that. What was it?"

"I don't know. Big." The Dodrec pointed to the titanic doors of the throne room. "It's in there."

"Where is the prince?"

He pointed at the doors again. "In there with it."

As Shere stared at the doors, the Dodrec picked himself up and fled for the exit. He didn't doubt the truth of the Dodrec's words. Just looking at the doors was unsettling, and dread coiled in his stomach at the thought of opening them.

He sighed. After all that had happened, he could not imagine walking away if there was a chance that Prince Mergen still lived.

Steeling himself, Shere touched the purple gem, which still throbbed with energy. Then he pushed into the throne room. It was even darker and colder here than outside, and unoccupied save for two distant figures - Prince Mergen seated on the throne, and, beside him, a stranger whispering in his hear. A sense of unnatural danger overcame Shere, and each step toward the throne required an immense force of will.

As he approached the dais, the two men turned to look down at him. Prince Mergen's eyes were wild, his tail was puffed up, and his paws clutched the emerald scepter as if trying to snap it. The stranger, a bull with dark russet fur, was calm. He wore only a simple traveler's robe, but his bearing and his large, regal horns radiated power in a way that Prince Mergen never could.

"Shere," the bull said. "A pleasure to finally to meet you face to face. My name is Karmach."

The name sent a shudder through the bear. "What are you doing here?"

"In my new capacity as adviser to the throne, I am proposing a small number of policy changes."

Prince Mergen said, "He wants to use me to bring back-" but a shudder went through him and he couldn't finish his sentence.

"More pressingly," Karmach said, "I believe tradition demands you be granted a boon for freeing, well, one of my kind. What can I do for you, Shere?"

Shere pointed to the quivering prince. "I want his head."

"Your single-minded focus is admirable. However, His Grace's head is not something I am free to give. I serve a higher authority, one which requires the prince alive. Can I offer you something else?"

"Yes. You can go back to your prison."

Karmach gave an exasperated sigh. "Shere, be realistic. My posting here is temporary, and I will, of course, step down at the appropriate time. However, I am not free to take my leave before my work is done."

"Then I wish for this whole rotten palace to fall down around us."

Karmach laughed and shook his head. "I offer to grant you anything in the world, and you ask for water to run uphill. May I make a suggestion?"

Before Shere could respond, Karmach raised his arm and a sickening charge of energy filled the air. Shere drew his sword reflexively, but the magic was not directed at him. Instead, its unseen hand reached behind a fallen column and yanked a Dodrec from his hiding place. He squirmed, holding his throat as if choked, as he was dragged before the throne.

"This is Askash," Karmach said, then paused. "That is how you pronounce it, isn't it? 'Askash?'" He waited for the Dodrec to give a pained nod, then continued. "Askash is twenty years of age - old for a Dodrec. Born in a small fishing village, he spearfished and dove for pearls for his first sixteen years. Seeking greater opportunities, he rode with a nomadic warband for three years, then served the Onyx Palace for one. He has produced or fertilized around two hundred eggs, only a fraction of which were laid, let alone hatched. That is the sum total of his legacy."

Darkness swelled, and Shere shivered violently as the already-icy air turned glacial. Something moved in the shadows. Twice the height of the bear, it stood on a multitude of long legs and held a mantis' head aloft on a long, flexible neck. Its long arms, which dangled to the floor, were tipped with crab-like pincers. Most alarming of all was the long scorpion tail which curled a wicked point high in the air.

The invisible hand released its grip on Askhash. As the Dodrec tried to rise to his feet, the thing behind him threw out one of its spindly legs and impaled him with enough force to crack the stone beneath him. He screamed and snatched for his sword, but lost his grip and sent it skittering harmlessly across the floor. His flesh began to draw up into the leg like a siphon and he fell silent as his body rapidly dissolved.

When he had disappeared completely, light returned to the room and the bull once more stood where the thing had been.

"Now, Askash is part of something greater," he said, continuing his explanation as if nothing had happened. He paused for a moment as if remembering something. "Oh, and it seems the emphasis is on the second syllable. The young man was simply too polite to correct me."

"What did you do to him?"

"Nothing. He's right here." Karmach tapped the side of his head. "He is now eager to help me accomplish the deeds I have been tasked with. If you only join him, you too will see what is in store - greater things by far than anything you could hope to achieve in the short few years you have remaining. This is the boon I recommend to you."

To Shere's surprise, rage welled up within him and his vision went red. Any fear he felt was dwarfed by anger and revulsion, and he automatically bent to pick up the Dodrec's fallen sword.

Karmach's ears flicked in interest. "Do you think that wise?"

"Ever since I arrived here, I have heard nothing but other peoples' plans for me. How I could be broken or shaped into something else. I will hear no more of it." He twirled both swords once around his paws to check their weight. Satisfied, he turned them toward Karmach.

Karmach turned to Prince Mergen. "Do I have your leave to kill him?"

Prince Mergen, looking a million miles away, nodded.

The room darkened as Karmach once more assumed his true form. The temperature plunged with a fury that betrayed Karmach's irritation at having been denied, and it wasted no time in charging toward Shere.

The thing first came at him with its claws, but snapped only empty air as Shere dodged away. Then it reared up and stabbed with its front legs, which Shere swiped away with his swords. As the rest of its legs crashed down, he dove aside, then returned to duck below the thing's sagging belly.

He slashed up at the soft flesh and sank his blades deep. Dark blood rained over his face as he tore into its foul innards, and a psychic wave of pain told Shere that he had dealt it real harm.

Karmach's scorpion tail curled under its body to stab at Shere, and he slipped back out from under it. It hissed and leapt away at the same time, smashing into a tree-sized marble column and crumpling it as though it were made of paper.

"A commendable blow," Karmach said. "Were I alone, you might have killed me. Instead, you've only managed to kill Askash." The blood flowing from its underside had already begun to dry up. "And I have yet more faces than you can count."

Undeterred, Shere raced forward to clash with his enemy again. Blades and limbs crossed, tangled and untangled. Each time Shere managed to strike Karmach's belly, head, or neck, he heard another psychic scream as one of its victims perished in its stead.

After receiving one such blow, it brought its claws down like hammers, missing Shere and burying themselves deep in the floor. Shere took full advantage of the brief second that the thing was stuck in the ground. Climbing atop a fallen column, he threw himself onto the creature's head and straddled its neck.

He sunk his swords to the hilt into its large compound eyes, which burst and sprayed his fur with jets of rancid-smelling black fluid. As Shere twisted his blades in the creature's skull, one of its claws snapped blindly into Shere's left shoulder and bit deep. He didn't stop for the pain, nor for the blood which streamed down his arm and formed a sickly mixture with the black fluid.

It was only when he heard the claw crunch into bone that Shere knew he had to relent or else be dismembered. He pulled free of its grasp with a roar of pain and dismounted Karmach's neck awkwardly, jarring his mangled shoulder as he landed.

He looked back to see that its wounds were already healing, caved-in eyes re-inflating like a bladder filling with water. Shere panted in pain and exhaustion. It seemed there was nothing to do but prolong the inevitable.

Prince Mergen had taken the opportunity of the pause in fighting to slink away, only occasionally glancing over his shoulder as he retreated. Noticing him, Shere had an idea. As subtly as he could, Shere turned toward him and caught his eye.

The prince cringed as though afraid that the bear would attack him, but Shere held his gaze and held up his sabre with its broken crossguard. He could not read the snow leopard's dazed expression, and could only hope that he had been understood.

Karmach crawled toward Shere and stopped just outside of striking distance.

"It doesn't hurt," it assured him.

The bear closed his eyes and took a ragged breath. Then he nodded. Karmach lifted its leg and brought it slowly down like a king dubbing a knight. Shere controlled his breathing tightly.

Just as he felt its leg brush the tips of his fur, Prince Mergen cried out, "Now!"

The bear's nose twitched to the smell of damp soil, and he opened his eyes to see that the prince had indeed opened the portal. For the first time, he experienced a warm feeling toward the man.

Shere sprinted through the black gateway and into the shadows. After a moment of surprised hesitation, heavy footsteps pounded close behind him.

"I told you it doesn't hurt," Karmach said, "and usually that is true. In your case, however, I will make sure that it does."

Not daring to look around, he pushed his screaming muscles to their limit as the skittering footsteps grew louder and louder. He was expecting to feel the stab of its leg at any moment when the ring of light finally reappeared. Shere wasted no time in diving through.

He landed on his back and pulled himself backward on his elbows, howling with pain each time he rested his heavy weight on his broken shoulder. In unthinking rage, Karmach crouched low to crawl through after the bear. Its snapping mandibles loomed close, and Shere saw his shattered reflection in its compound eyes.

Prince Mergen lowered his scepter, and those eyes widened as Karmach realized the trap it had fallen into. The portal closed itself around its body like a guillotine, neatly severing the two halves of its body. Its front half stumbled for a moment, then fell over face-first.

A cosmic scream shook the room as untold thousands of Karmach's victims gave their lives to preserve it.

"I yield," it said.

"I don't care," Shere said. He raised his arm to signal the prince for another portal, but saw that there was no point. Karmach was no longer attempting to heal its body, and was presently dissolving into putrescent sludge.

"I will gather more souls before long," its disembodied voice said. "I won't be so kind the next time I see you, Shere. Nor you, little prince."

Shere knew it would hold good to its threat. Beings like Karmach had long memories, and held onto grudges. Nevertheless, he would enjoy this temporary escape from death, he decided, and spat a muzzleful of blood into what was left of Karmach's face.

"I can't believe it's gone," Prince Mergen said, pulling Shere from his thoughts. "That thing, Karmach, came to me when I was a kitten. My sister and I used to play a game of who could stay on the bridge the longest, and it haunted my dreams for years after. Horrible dreams."

Shere's shoulder was beginning to burn as the adrenaline of the fight faded, and he was sure it would soon be engulfed in agony. He had no patience for sentimentality.

"What you're saying," he said, "is that you knew this palace housed that kind of evil, but you still wanted to rule it."

"Someone has to!" the prince protested. "Are you so naive to think..." He paused, seeming to remember what he had done to Shere over the past several days, and reconsidered his words. He cleared his throat and straightened the diadem on his head before trying again. "Brave Shere," he began. "Although we have had our differences, you have done the Kingdom of Ellara a great service today. I offer you any reward it is in my power to grant."

Shere took a step toward the snow leopard, who reflexively took a step back. "I decline."

The gem at his collarbone was noticeably warmer and heavier now than when he had first found it, and he knew exactly what to do with it. He pressed his paw to the smooth, glassy surface, and mentally gave the command.

Bright violet light filled the dark room, and the slime beast that had been captured inside spilled onto the floor. The snow leopard's eyes went wide and he turned to run, which only served to arouse the creature's interest.

Shere turned his back as Prince Mergen's pleas echoed through the room, and he let his heavy sword fall to the floor with a hollow ring. The pain was throbbing now, and would soon start to burn, but freedom lay just ahead.