Jackmaw Yapyap’s map called the place “MEGAFAUNA FUCKING EVERYWHERE”, but most explorers had named it Paradise. It was a tangle of green and brown, contrasting the harsh desert with the biggest oasis the wasteland had ever known.

  Lenny was in complete shock. Rufus had never mentioned this place, even in his stories of the myth of the Emerald Expanse. On his Journey with the Gordo clan, he had learned that Rufus’s circular wanderings hadn’t even scratched the surface of what the valley had to offer. He and his brother had remained relatively safe under their master’s wings.

  This was the truth of the world. It was so much bigger than Lenny could have ever imagined, and it was full of mysteries like Paradise.

  Standing at the edge of the vast jungle, the Gordo clan barked and whooped in excitement. Lieutenants were holding back their squads as most wanted to excitedly burst right in. The lush greenery met the dry sands like the border of heaven and hell. Beyond this was the Emerald Expanse, Jackmaw knew it.

  He had remembered it this time. Though he had only seen it once in his youth, he remembered the vast jungle that preceded it. And he couldn’t forget the creatures that dwelled within. Without Shi-Toh here to screw things up, he had a run of the place, and he was going to make do with that.

  Ripe fruits hung in the trees. They were the size of a grown man’s torso. The perfect size for a beast of great proportion to snack on. Jackmaw watched the trees for signs of the megafauna, then he caught it. A smile stretched under his mask.

  High in the trees, something stared back at the clan. While the band of raiders was busy fawning over the beauty of the place, they completely missed the beast right in front of them. With a whistle, Jackmaw commanded their attention.

  “You guys want to go in that bad?” the warlord asked with a devil’s grin.

  “My guys can barely contain themselves, Lord!” Dansk said. He looked like he couldn’t control himself either. The clansmen in his group were cheering him on and slapping him hard on the back.

  “Why don’t you go check it out, Dansk? You and your guys go see if you can grab that fruit out of the tree.”

  Even when Jackmaw nodded in the direction of the fruit, no one saw the creature in the trees. Dansk looked to his men and gave a war cry to rally them. They sprinted towards the fruit like a band of wolfmen descending on a fresh kill.

  “Pay attention, all of you.”

  Dansk and his men reached the tree line in a flash, scaling the thick trunks and ascending towards the fruit above. The smell of sweet nectar and the allure of supple flesh was enough to make their mouths water. Even as they reached the top, they had no idea what was in store.

  The lieutenant was the first to reach the top of the tree. The fruit was so close, he could already imagine what it tasted like. Dansk was picturing a soft, succulent fruit that had the taste of sweet apples. He drooled as he swung across the branches towards it.

  Dansk was actually able to touch and feel the fruit before the creature made its move. A giant claw the size of the fruit reached around the tree and swatted at Dansk. The arm it was connected to was covered in shaggy grey fur. As Dansk backed off of the fruit, it reared its giant head out. Yellow eyes stared from its drooping blue skin, and its slack jawed mouth was open to reveal nubby, herbivore teeth.

  The creature snatched the fruit and escaped into the trees. It shook the jungle as it moved, making a perfect path to track it. The Gordo clan watched it slink off to a spot not far away. Dansk nearly fell out of the tree. It took his whole group to get him to stop shaking.

  Lenny had watched the whole ordeal in horror. For some reason, he couldn’t detect that beast either. Even with his connections formed with the mega vulture and now Bantu, he still couldn’t bond with strange animals the way he could with random people.

  “Get a marker tapped into one of those trees. Shi-Toh will need a way to find us when he brings me back my apprentice,” Jackmaw said with a satisfied smile.

  On his command, a group of raiders nailed a handful of feathers to a tree. To Lenny, they made the tree look like it was leaking multicolor blood. It was oriented in a way that was code for the consul, and Lenny didn’t know whether to despise the marking or revere it. It meant Krav would find him sooner, but then again, it meant Jackmaw Yapyap would have his prized possession.

  They continued into the jungle. There were noises in Paradise that were so uncommon in the rest of the wasteland, they sounded like the voices of angels. Tiny creatures scurried along the rich soil, squeaking like mice, but looking more like lizards. Birds in the trees gave warning cries and bounced from branch to branch. The sound of running water came from every direction.

  It took a lot to control the clan as they marched. So many times, one of the fledglings would attempt to step out of line and go off exploring on their own. They were often met with the sharp smack of a palm whip from their superiors, but after multiple siren calls from the jungle, Jackmaw gave the order to let them go. By the time they reached the first river, they were missing four of their men to the call of the jungle. The warlord didn’t seem to mind.

  They made camp near the coursing river. As soon as Jackmaw’s tent was constructed, the raiders were free to do as they pleased. Many started foraging the jungle for the communal dinner everyone was expecting. Some fished, others cautiously climbed the trees for the fruits. Lenny sat on the riverbank with his feet in the water.

  It seemed like it was just yesterday that him and Krav were in Agua Fria. He could imagine his brother sticking his whole head underwater to gulp it down with greed. An immeasurable sense of loss was carving a hole in his chest, but he had hope that he could see him soon. Even if that meant he was coming at the end of a leash with Shi-Toh.

  Then he had a terrible thought. It was so concerning, it affected his mental state. In his hazy vision, the river slowly turned red. The clansmen who were upstream and fishing were pulling bloated corpses from the water on their fishing lines and celebrating. He hadn’t imagined it would ever get this far, but what would happen if they actually did bring Krav into the fold?

  Lenny had spent enough time with the Gordo clan to know the answer. Krav would probably fight back, but with Jackmaw Yapyap’s affinity for him, the warlord wouldn’t allow them to just kill him in response. They would have to break him. He hadn’t seen them do it yet, but from the acts burned behind his eyes, he knew they were very capable of it.

  And then? If Krav eventually gave in and joined them? That was an easy answer too. He would be Jackmaw Yapyap’s nightmare prince of the world. Krav was just as stupid as them, perhaps just as cruel. Maybe he wouldn’t even need much convincing. If Lenny was safe and Krav was kept fed and high, how much complaining would he really have to do?

  It was an easy future to see, even without the mask and the tank. The river of blood and corpses was warning enough. Krav and Jackmaw would burn down the entire wasteland together.

  Suddenly there was a violent splash in the bloody waters. The explosive cannonball shocked Lenny out of his vision and he wiped water from his face. It was Jackmaw Yapyap having too much fun in a place he lovingly called “MEGAFAUNA FUCKING EVERYWHERE!”

  “Come on in kid! The water feels better than it did in the oasis!” The warlord called. That wasn’t saying much, considering the awful fish that called that hole home. He floated on his back, red skin glistening like shimmering bloodstones.

  “I’m ok,” Lenny managed. He had to swallow hard and look away from Jackmaw to talk to him. The image of a river of blood seemed to have a shimmering existence around him.

  The warlord smiled and gave his signature whistle. Two members of the Gordo clan snatched Lenny up beneath his shoulders and threw him in. The boy cried out as he sailed in the air. He hit the water, and as soon as he submerged, he got another vision.

  The river couldn’t have been deeper than six feet. When Jackmaw stood all the way up, his chest still rose above the waves. But in his vision, Lenny saw the river as a vast, endless ocean. And something was swimming in it. Red eyes and a dark body watched him from a mile away, but the speed at which it swam made Lenny feel like he could never outrun it.

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  A hand dragged the boy up from the water and he thrashed back to shore. The taunting laughter of the Gordo clan floated behind him.

  “What’s the matter, kid? Can’t swim?” Jackmaw teased and splashed Lenny as he fled.

  Back on shore, Lenny was on his hands and knees gasping for air. His heart raced thinking about the thing that swam around them. How the hell could they not tell it was there? He checked up and down the river for any signs of the beast, but there was nothing obvious.

  Jackmaw must have sensed it too. When the warlord noticed the boy on edge, he sniffed the air and looked upriver. With how intense his eyes were, Lenny knew he could see it too. The smile beneath the mask slipped.

  “Out of the water, pups. Now.”

  “I thought the buzzkill was on leave,” Dansk laughed. He splashed Jackmaw, and the warlord returned the favor by snatching him by the neck.

  “Out of the water, all of you!” he boomed. The clansmen that were enjoying their swim cowered and obeyed. Dansk was thrown aside by Jackmaw’s mighty strength, then the warlord’s attention was on Lenny. “My knives! Get my knives!”

  It was swimming towards them. Almost as if it could smell the panic and confusion, it moved quickly to catch the fleeing prey. Massive ripples formed at the center of the river and crashed against the shores in waves.

  Lenny was busy watching the creature approach. In his vision, he couldn’t see what it looked like, and now his mind drowned in hypothetical appearances. What could a predator in the water look like? Was it like the fish from the oasis? How the hell was it moving so fast? Could it leave the water if it wanted to?

  “My knives, scab head!” Jackmaw called, but it was too late. The thing came out of the water.

  A massive, tapered head rose from the depths. Powerful jaws the size of Jackmaw himself opened wide to consume him. The creature was a massive, scaled beast that looked more akin to a lizard than anything Lenny was imagining. An enormous tail pushed it through the water at incredible speeds, and two arms pushed it off the riverbed. Teeth the size of fists slammed into Jackmaw.

  It looked like the megafauna had taken out the king of the world in one bite. Both disappeared under the waves for a moment, and each second was like agony to the onlooking Gordo clan. Some screamed. Others rushed to help, then stopped just before letting themselves jump into the water. Lenny didn’t move. He could see what the others couldn’t. Unfortunately for the valley, Jackmaw Yapyap wasn’t going to die to something as trivial as a giant water lizard.

  There was a storm of thrashing and splashing as the creature appeared and disappeared again. It was an animal in its death throws. Suddenly, it held its head above the water. Jackmaw was standing in its mouth, feet pressing down on its lower jaw and hands forcing the palette to open wider. Skin in the corner of the beast’s mouth tore, then gave way as muscle and tissue ripped.

  Jackmaw yelled with all of the crazed force he could muster as he broke the lizard’s jaw. There was a guttural clicking noise deep within its throat as it protested his onslaught. Then came something that no one but Lenny could see coming. One of those massive legs lifted from the water and moved to slash the warlord with claws like sabers. The warlord caught it out of the corner of his eye, but could do nothing as it sailed into him, stabbing into his thigh.

  “Jackmaw!”

  “Lord!”

  “My King!”

  Cries from the Gordo clan filled the air. Some went for their weapons, firing into its scaled skin. The bullets bounced off with a sharp pinging noise as its tough scales protected it. Jackmaw gritted his teeth as the claw in his leg was trying to wrench him out of its mouth.

  Throughout the chaos, Lenny saw an opportunity. Some of the clansmen were wading through the water with poleaxes and machetes to attack the beast, and if they made it, they might succeed in rescuing the warlord. He turned to the ones who were stull on shore unloading into the lizard.

  “The eye! Aim for the eye!”

  With any luck at all, one of them would miss their mark and end up shooting Jackmaw dead. The closest raider next to Lenny heard his command and loaded another magazine into his blinker. As soon as he started shooting at the head, the rest of them did as well.

  The noise was like a warzone. Lenny watched the holy Ammo rattle against the lizards hide like an array of anti-air guns firing into a flight formation. Bullets came in so much volume, the pings against the scales began to spark. Eventually, someone hit the mark. There was a squelch of flesh, and an explosion of blood. The lizard toppled over into the water.

  They had managed to hit the eye without so much as grazing Jackmaw. Lenny watched with his jaw on the floor as the raiders dove into the water and tried to drag their warlord out, but he exploded from beneath the waves with a roar.

  Massive ripples were retreating upriver, but Jackmaw Yapyap snatched its tail. With great effort, he wrestled the beast to the shore. It gave one last stand, but it was unable to persist against the full might of the Gordo clan. Snares caught its legs, hooks held its mouth open, and ten men laid on its tail to keep it still. Jackmaw hobbled over to its face and shot a fireball down its throat.

  For a long while, the only noise in the jungle was the heavy panting of the Gordo clan and the sizzling larynx of the lizard.

  The night ended with the beast hanging upside down from a tree as the clan tried to cut it up for meat. They managed to remove a leg at the hip joint and that was enough to keep their bellies satisfied for a moment. As Jackmaw and his retinue ate, he ordered his fledgling clansmen to get another leg.

  “Make it quick! All of you need to be fed if you’re going to survive the rest of this shithole.”

  Lenny held his leaf with a small portion of meat. He was tired of eating monsters, but it seemed like that was the clan’s only diet. The disappointment of Jackmaw’s survival had passed, he knew there was no way that would have worked now anyways. It was like Shi-Toh said, the currents of fate seem to bend around him.

  The boy eyed the bound injury on Jackmaw’s leg. For some reason, whether it be onset madness from the drugs or a spark of willpower, he tried to antagonize the warlord. “It got you pretty good.”

  “You bet. But I got it right back,” he sucked down a strip of meat and burped. “Look who’s eating who now, bitch!”

  The clan cheered with him, and the warlord sang with a guttural laugh. There was so much excitement and energy it made Lenny sick.

  “You said this place was filled with megafauna, but so far we’ve only encountered two,” Lenny said. He would continue, but he was cut off by a jabbering raider.

  “And that’s more spotted in a single day than you’ve seen in your life, stupid!”

  Lenny shot him a glare. They had dragged him back and forth across the wasteland, exposing him to some of the most depraved sights he had ever seen in his fifteen years. The only reason they were here at all was because of him. And this raider whose name he didn’t even know was going to call him stupid? Something in the war sage snapped, but he bit his lip and stifled the urge to stab him in the neck. “Don’t fucking call me that.”

  There was a chorus of jeers and hoots as the clan teased him around the fire. They had spent so long bullying him, they couldn’t imagine their puppy of a war sage would have enough courage to bark at them. Lenny shook his head and stared into the fire.

  Jackmaw didn’t laugh. He took an unfinished portion of meat from the offending raider and popped it in his mouth. He spoke with his mouth full. “Your right, sage. You’ve only seen two. I counted eight on our way here.” The clan went silent at his words. A look of worry spread across their sunbaked faces. “Oh yeah. Number eight is right there.”

  They all followed Jackmaw’s finger. Just across the river, there was a shadow among the brush. It ducked so low that it was able to hide from the firelight within the greenery. The only evidence that there was a creature at all was a pair of reflective orbs that burned yellow. Each one had to be the size of a human head.

  “Nobody go freaking out,” Jackmaw warned. “If you start shitting yourselves it’ll make its move. Bantu’s been sniffing them out for me all day.”

  Now that Lenny thought about it, the elephant had been on edge ever since they set foot into Paradise. Even now, it stayed close to Jackmaw like a scared dog. Surrounded by fruits and greenery, it ate plenty but didn’t so much as dare to sneak a drink from the river.

  “You aren’t worried? One of them almost took your leg off,” Lenny said.

  Jackmaw smiled down at him. The fire reflected in his blood-red eyes. “I’m the king of the fucking world. I don’t bow to anything. If they want to end up like that,” he pointed to the strung up lizard, “then all they have to do is come out of their hiding spot. Trust me, kid, they’re more afraid of me than I am of them.”

  “King of the world!” Dansk roared. The rest of the clan echoed his celebrations.

  What Shi-Toh had said back in Kiva Noon resonated with Lenny now. They all really believed that Jackmaw Yapyap was the king of the world. It was easy to write them off as sycophants before, back when the red devil was conquering weaker men. He must have seemed unstoppable when he was pillaging villages and kidnapping women and children.

  Even the war with the Bone Eaters wasn’t impressive. The Gordo clan had completely overwhelmed them with their weaponry. Worse yet, they were already weakened. The only thing that impressed Lenny was that Jackmaw walked through that nightmare completely unscathed.

  But now… now he was conquering nature itself. This place moved around him like he was the storm. It avoided him, and when it tried to take him out, it ended up strung up in a tree and fed to his followers.

  Lenny gave one last glance to the eyes in the brush. They slipped away, disappearing back into the jungle. The band of psychopaths and murderers weren’t worth the fight, apparently. As it retreated, the boy could see the greenery sway, and it was apparent that whatever it was had been unfathomably large.

  Maybe it was true. Maybe Jackmaw Yapyap was the king of the world. Lenny finished his food and retired to the retinue’s tent. He hoped Krav didn’t make it to him. If the Karmic winds had any mercy to them, they would blow Krav far away from here.

  When he slept that night, he had a dream. A vision. Two titans made of the very energies of the world battled high in the sky. One burned a great red, its elemental form the wind and rain. The other was black and brown, almost completely formed of earth and fire. The wind and rain eroded the fire and earth, the fire and earth sundered the wind and rain. In the end, there was no clear winner. All Lenny could understand from it was that should those forces ever meet, the result of their battle could mean the end of everything, and he didn’t even know which one he was supposed to be rooting for.