The forest didn't just wake up. It got hungry.
Vines as thick as pythons uncoiled from the canopy, snapping at the air with the sound of cracking whips. The giant mushrooms groaned, their caps shifting to reveal rows of jagged, wooden teeth. Spore-Bats screeched, diving from the blue mist like fuzzy, toxic missiles.
The Goblins panicked. They scrambled over each other, screaming about "Angry Salad."
But the Legends? They didn't flinch.
Kaelen stood with his hands in his pockets, watching a massive vine curl toward him. Thal was perched on a branch, cleaning his fingernails with a dagger. Lyra was checking her scroll, annoyed by the noise.
They weren't afraid. They were waiting.
They were looking at Aris.
Aris felt their gaze heavier than the monster in front of him. This wasn't a battle to them; it was a Tuesday. They had blitzed Demon Armies. They had slain Gods. A mushroom forest was beneath them.
This was a test. They wanted to see if their new King would hide, or if he would lead.
Aris didn't step back. He didn't hide behind Kaelen. He straightened his tie, trying to look dignified despite the fact that he was standing in ankle-deep sludge.
BOOM.
The ground shook. A massive foot, made of twisted roots and rotting logs, stomped down just outside the clearing.
The Mycelium Golem rose above the treeline. It was fifty feet tall. It looked like a walking nightmare made of compost. It had glowing red eyes and a mouth that dripped green sludge.
It roared, raising a fist the size of a carriage.
"Orders, Boss?" Garrick asked, floating upside down next to Aris's ear. "I can drop it into the sun. It'll take about three seconds."
"Too messy," Aris said, his voice trembling slightly. "We need the food. Vaporizing it defeats the purpose."
"I can slice it," Thal offered from the shadows. "Fillet it before it hits the ground."
"Too slow," Aris countered. "The acid blood will ruin the meat."
The Golem swung.
It was a massive, clumsy haymaker aimed directly at Aris.
Aris tried to hold his ground. He tried to look like a stoic Demon King. He planted his feet firmly.
Unfortunately, he was wearing Italian leather dress shoes. And he was standing on wet, slippery moss.
As he shifted his weight to look cool, his left heel hit a patch of slime.
"Woah!" Aris yelped.
His feet flew out from under him. He flailed his arms like a windmill and fell backward, landing hard on his butt in the mud.
Whoosh.
A razor-sharp vine, which had been hidden behind the Golem's fist, snapped through the exact space where Aris's head had been a second ago.
If he had been standing tall, he would have been decapitated. Because he had slipped like a cartoon character, the vine cut harmlessly through the air.
BOOM.
Kaelen stepped forward and caught the Golem's massive fist with one hand, stopping it inches from Aris's nose.
The Hero looked down at Aris, who was sitting in the mud, clutching his briefcase, looking terrified.
"Careful," Kaelen said, sounding amused. "You almost got a haircut."
Aris stared at the vine retracting into the Golem's arm. He swallowed hard.
"I... meant to do that," Aris lied weakly, scrambling to his feet and wiping mud off his pants. "Tactical... slip."
Kaelen chuckled. "Right. Tactical. Well, stay down there, Boss. It's safer."
Kaelen turned his attention back to the Golem. "Weak," he critiqued the monster. He flicked his wrist, pushing the fifty-ton beast back as if it were made of paper.
Aris exhaled, his heart hammering against his ribs. That was pure, dumb luck.
"Aris," Lyra called out. "If you are quite done playing in the mud, we have a monster to process."
"Right," Aris said, regaining his composure. "Let's eat."
"It regenerates," Aris analyzed, his voice gaining strength now that he wasn't about to die. "Brute force won't work unless we destroy the biomass. But if we consume the biomass faster than it can regrow..."
Aris looked at his army of starving, hallucinating goblins.
"Krakka!" Aris shouted.
The Warlord was currently trying to eat a rock. "Yes, Boss?"
Aris pointed at the terrifying, fifty-foot monster that Kaelen was currently bullying.
"That isn't a monster, Krakka," Aris lied smoothly. "That... is a giant Ke-Bab."
Krakka squinted. The blue spores swirled in the air. He tilted his head.
"Ke... bab?" Krakka whispered. "What is Ke-bab? Is it a rock? Or a vegetable?"
"Neither," Aris improvised. "It is an Ancient Word. It means... 'Meat on a Stick'. The Stick is the bone. The Meat is divine."
"Divine Meat," Krakka drooled.
"And," Aris added, pointing to the Golem's leafy head, "it is flavored like the legendary Spicy Chicken."
Krakka gasped. The goblins around him gasped too.
"Chi-cken?" Krakka asked reverently. "What is Chi-cken? Is it a dragon?"
"Yes," Aris lied without hesitation. "It is a tiny, delicious dragon that does not fight back. And this monster is made of five thousand of them."
"FIVE THOUSAND TINY DELICIOUS DRAGONS?" Krakka roared.
He turned to the army.
"BOYS! LOOK!" Krakka screamed, pointing his claw at the monster. "IT IS THE LEGENDARY KE-BAB! IT IS MADE OF CHI-CKEN!"
The goblins stared at the Golem. They had no idea what those words meant, but they sounded expensive.
"What is Chicken?" one goblin asked his neighbor.
"I think it is a type of gold that you can eat!" the neighbor shouted back.
"I heard Chicken gives you wings!" another yelled.
"IT IS THE MEAT OF KINGS!" Krakka bellowed. "ATTACK THE CHI-CKEN!"
"FOR THE CHI-CKEN!" four thousand goblins screamed in unison.
They erupted. They didn't run with fear; they ran with confused, hungry enthusiasm. They swarmed up the Golem's legs like piranhas, chanting a word they didn't understand.
"CHI-CKEN! CHI-CKEN! CHI-CKEN!"
The Golem panicked. It tried to shake them off, but Kaelen grabbed its other arm, pinning it in place.
"Hold still," Kaelen said politely. "The customers are eating."
"Bite its ankles!" a goblin screamed.
"This Chicken tastes like wood!" another yelled, ripping a chunk of bark off the Golem.
"That is the shell!" Krakka shouted back, acting like an expert on a food he just discovered. "Eat the inside! The Chicken is inside!"
They were biting the wood. They were sawing at the vines with plastic spoons. They were consuming the monster alive in search of the mythical tiny dragons.
"They are eating it faster than it can regenerate," Valerius noted, watching a goblin tear a chunk of moss out of the Golem's chest. "Their metabolic rate is terrifying."
"It's raw though," Aris noted. "Elowen. Toast it."
"Finally!" Elowen cheered.
She stepped forward. She didn't throw a fireball. She clapped her hands together.
"Convection Oven... MAX!"
A pillar of blue fire erupted around the Golem. It was controlled, precise heat—enough to cook the mushroom flesh without burning the goblins clinging to it.
The Golem shrieked as it turned a delicious golden brown.
"Garrick," Aris ordered. "Plate it."
"With pleasure," Garrick grinned.
He pointed a finger.
Gravity x 10.
The Golem, now cooked and covered in goblins, suddenly weighed ten times more. It collapsed to its knees with a massive THUD.
The Golem groaned one last time, toasted to perfection, and stopped moving.
Silence fell over the clearing. The air smelled of roasted portobello and victory.
Krakka climbed to the top of the Golem's smoking head. He took a bite out of the Golem's ear.
Crunch.
Krakka's eyes widened. He looked at Aris with pure awe.
"Boss," Krakka whispered. "The Chi-cken... it tastes like fungus."
"That is the flavor of victory, Krakka," Aris nodded wisely.
"I love Chi-cken," Krakka declared, tears filling his eyes. "It needs salt."
"YAAAAAAAAY!" the army cheered. "ALL HAIL THE CHI-CKEN!"
The march back to the castle was very different from the march in.
They weren't marching in a column. They were marching in a food coma.
Garrick was floating a massive chunk of the Golem—the size of a bus—overhead. The goblins were walking underneath it, occasionally jumping up to take a bite out of the floating meat-shroom.
Aris walked in the front. He was limping slightly because his shoe was full of mud.
Kaelen walked beside him. The hero looked pristine, not a speck of dirt on his white coat.
"That slip," Kaelen said quietly.
Aris froze. "What about it?"
"You have terrible balance," Kaelen noted with a grin. "If you hadn't fallen on your ass at that exact second, you would be headless."
"I know," Aris sighed, wiping a smudge of dirt from his lapel. "I need new shoes. These have zero grip."
Kaelen laughed. It was a genuine, warm laugh. "Well, better lucky than good, I suppose. Remind me to never play cards with you, Aris. You have the devil's own luck."
"We fed the army," Lyra interrupted, walking up to them. She looked pleased. "And we cleared the infestation. Though I am concerned that Valerius is bringing a pet home."
Aris looked back.
Valerius was walking happily, dragging a Spore-Bat on a leash. The bat looked terrified. It hissed, dripping green slime onto the path.
"His name is Fluffy," Valerius announced. "He spits neurotoxins. He is perfect."
Aris stopped walking. He stared at the bat.
"Fluffy?" Aris repeated, his voice flat. "Valerius, you have a Fluffy at home. That necrotic rat in your lab is named Fluffy. The jar of eyeballs on your desk is Fluffy Junior. You cannot keep naming biological weapons Fluffy."
"It is a legacy title," Valerius argued, petting the bat which immediately tried to bite her finger off. "Besides, look at his fur. It is technically mold, but it is very soft."
"He is hissing at me, Valerius."
"That is just his love language," she dismissed. "He purrs when he thinks about murder."
Aris rubbed his temples. "Fine. Just keep Fluffy the Third away from the kitchen."
"Speaking of the castle," Eve noted, appearing at Aris's elbow. "Since we have acquired tons of high-grade fungal meat, I believe we can cancel the order for sawdust."
"We did good, Eve," Aris smiled tiredly. "We survived."
"You did, Master," Eve agreed. "However, I must inform you."
"Inform me of what?"
"While we were gone," Eve said, checking her pocket watch, "The one thousand goblins from the Night Shift whom you left behind to guard the castle... got bored."
Aris stopped walking. "Bored is bad. How bad?"
"They decided to paint the castle," Eve said. "They felt Black was too depressing. So they found some yellow paint."
Aris closed his eyes.
"How much of the castle is yellow, Eve?"
"Only the lower battlements," Eve reassured him. "And the statue of you. It is now a giant banana."
Aris stood in the middle of the road. He looked at his victorious, full-bellied army. He looked at his legends who were watching him with amusement.
He laughed. A slightly manic, broken laugh.
"Yellow," Aris wheezed. "They painted the Castle of Shadows yellow."
"It is a happy color," Kaelen offered helpfully.
"I need a vacation," Aris whispered. "I need a vacation to a place where nobody owns paint."
"Come along, Boss," Garrick said, floating past him. "Banana Castle awaits!"
Aris straightened his tie. He picked up his briefcase.
"Let's go home," Aris said. "Before they decide to add polka dots."