Princess Takiyasha's Arc

Chapter 6 of 10

The alligator king dropped his greataxe to the mud. He would not fight with steel. He wanted his hands. "Single combat," he hissed. "You and me. Winner takes the throne." Takiyasha's warriors went silent. She looked at the king's arms, thick as tree trunks. She could not win a shoving match against that. She needed the field to fight for her. So she nodded, and turned to the ground behind her. A stone gate stood there, old and mossy, carved with frogs. The swamp folk called it a holy path. Beyond it, the mud sank soft and deep. Takiyasha walked backward through the gate, spear raised, drawing the king after her. He laughed and followed, crown gleaming. He did not watch his feet. At the edge of the soft ground, a stranger crouched. He was a minotaur, huge and dark-furred, his crescent axe laid across his knees. He had come from the passes days ago, tracking a grave in some far valley, and had stopped to watch her war. Takiyasha had asked him for nothing. Now she caught his red eyes. "The trap," she said. "Under the reeds. Set it." Tauros did not ask why. He reached into the reeds and pried open a great iron jaw, rusted teeth ringing a wide circle. He wedged it beneath the mud where the king would step. "Ready," he said. One word. Takiyasha planted the jade naginata and let the king close. He charged, all weight and fury, jaws wide. She waited until his front foot came down on the hidden plate. The iron jaws snapped shut around his ankle. The king screamed. His charge folded under him and he crashed face-first into the muck. He thrashed, but the trap held. Takiyasha stepped over his back and set the pale blade against his throat. The whole field watched. Skull-topped torches burned along the line, and by their light every soldier saw their king pinned in the mud like a caught frog. "Yield," she said. The king spat mud. His slitted eyes burned, but he had no ground to push from. "Kill me, then," he rasped. She did. One clean stroke. The crown rolled free and stopped against a mossy stone. The alligator army did not charge. They stared at the body, then at the frog-helmed princess who had felled it. Some dropped their axes. Some fled into the trees. Takiyasha lifted the crown from the mud and held it high, and a hundred frog voices roared. But the throne was not here. It sat in her father's hall, far across the marsh, and the king's leaderless soldiers were already scattering toward it. Whoever reached that empty seat first would hold it. Takiyasha wiped her blade and looked to Tauros. She had won the field. Now she had to march.