But then what happened to the horses? How did they get freed?

Well, while Mindy was wrestling with anti-magic in a swinging basket, Tim had found the Underground King.

Then began an epic battle, the likes of which need not be described…

Oh? You want to know what happened?

Might I recommend we not go there? Do we really need to go through exactly what happened and how?

I'll confess it. The fight was not actually glorious or epic in any way. In fact, I'd go so far to say it was downright dirty. I don't think you want to know what happened…

You still want to know? You really, really want to know?

Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you. This was NOT the kind of fight you want to tell stories about. This was a fight between lynxmice and beggars, between bandits and spies, between a crime lord and a desperate tweenage boy. There was nothing glorious, nothing dignified, nothing even fair about it. Everyone was using every dirty trick they could get their paws on…

You still want a detailed explanation?

Fine!

Tim and three clans of lynxmice (one of which were of the desert lynxmice) tracked and trailed the Underground king through endless tunnels that reached all the way from Fal'herim into the Wildlands. Days of tunneling led them to the Underground King's (temporary?) lair in the Stag Lord's fief (though they wouldn't have known it if they hadn't kept Psionic contact with other lynxmice on the surface).

They found him surrounded by his lackeys. Suffice to say it took quite a wait (roughly half a chapter's worth of description) while the man boasted about his secret ways and unspeakable cunning and sure success and how much he looked down upon the miserable sufferers at KarGoth cowering under his profound Beast Wave torture.

Then they waited until the Underground King was alone in his room before they pounced on him.

The battle began with Tim kicking the man straight up between the legs. "OWwuughhh…!"

"Mikiik!" As his hands went down, Mikai went up, straight for his throat.

BANG! The Underground King's head went down just as fast, and between mice and men, the king's head was harder; Mikai went down a lot faster than he went up, and the king went from gasping to howling as his hands separated, one between his thighs, the other one onto his forehead. "AUGH…"

"Now!" Tim tried to restrain him.

"Rraaagh!" the Underground King drew up his wrath and elbowed Tim in the nose, then spun around and kneed him viciously in the stomach.

"OGuu…" Tim gasped, stumbling back.

"HELP!" the king yelled. "GUARDS!!!" He tried to make a run for it.

At that point, two lynxmice tied his shoelaces together. They did it so hastily, one of them tied himself into the tangle of shoelaces. "Kiik…?!"

"WHOA!" The king stumbled and fell face-flat into the ground.

The lynxmice charged! Three scurried into his clothes, teeth and claws attacking furiously. One gnawed his flimsy belt broken and a united formation of five brave lynxmice pulled his pants down.

Even that wasn't enough to stop him. "HELP! Guards! GUARDS!! I'm being attacked by RATS!" The Underground King hobbled out of his room, hunched over an aching groin and an aching head, screaming for guards with his pants coiled around his feet, which were tied together in a tangle with his pants, his laces and a lynxmouse squealing in between.

The revenge of the king's henchmen was ruthless. Seeing they were up against lynxmice, they called out the cats, and a few of them even threw rat-traps baited with melted cheese. One of them even threw out cheese spiked with alcohol. They went at the lynxmice with brooms and shovels, and someone even raised a saucepan against their feline-rodent foes.

But then Tim enacted his own revenge upon the Underground King, jumping on him from behind, pulling his hair, so that the Underground King's hands went up, just in time for him to launch another well-aimed kick against his original target below…

The second kick fared with much more success than the first. The Underground King went down, and then an all-out brawl began. Mice and men were kicking and squealing and rolling around in the dirt, everyone clawing at each other tooth and nail, absolutely no terms of civil conduct or martial prowess to be seen.

But in the end, there were simply far more lynxmice than there were beggars, thieves and bandits present with the Underground King. It was a fight of three hundred against nine, and ultimately, the three hundred won.

"It's not fair!" One of the defeated beggars grumbled, hanging from a ceiling root with one hand tied to his ankle, and the other arm wrapped around his own neck.

But yeah, it really, really wasn't fair. That was kind of the point.

That guy wasn't actually in the worst position. There were five others tied into a tight tangle, one of them with his head very close to someone else's smelly foot, with only half a dirty sock still dangling on it.

"Grab everything! Feed them their own spiked cheese!" Tim growled, trying to stop the bleeding from his nose. He was 'basking in his glorious victory', sitting in the dark with his back to the wall, holding on to his nose, and regretting ever getting personally involved in the fight. Whoever said that a straight up kick between the legs was a sure way to take a man down was an idiot. Either that, or he'd missed a key target or didn't have enough power. Or maybe the Underground King's pants were just hanging too low.

Whatever the case, Tim managed to defeat the 'true' king of Fal'herim, rob him of everything but the clothes on his back (actually he literally also lost his pants, but that wasn't Tim's doing) and in one fell blow, eliminated the agency causing Beast Waves in the Wildlands!

At least, until their bosses found someone else to do the dirty work. The Coalition of Six were still out there, after all, and there was no telling if it were the kings (or equivalents) of those countries who were responsible, or merely certain factions within them, or simply a single enterprising ent.i.ty out there somewhere…

"Who hired you?" Tim asked the Underground King, but the man simply glared back.

Tim went quiet. Deadly quiet. Then, he glanced at Mikai. "I need a few hungry lynxmice."

The captured 'king's face went pale.

Grimly, Tim took off the king's shoes.

"I'll talk!" The 'king' said suddenly. "I'll tell you everything!"

"Who hired you?" Tim asked.

"It was the Crown Prince!"

"Anyone hungry?" Tim asked the lynxmice around him, taking off the 'king's socks.

"It's true!" the 'king' screamed.

"The Beast Waves began long before the Crown Prince was ever in power." Tim pointed out.

"Uh…" the 'king' hesitated.

"Bring some of that cheese…" Tim told Mikai.

"NO!!" the 'king' yelped. "It's true that the Crown Prince pays me now! But before that… before that… it was Deutero! Deutero hired me!"

"Oh, really? And what did they want you to do?" Tim asked blandly.

"Uh… smuggle goods…" the Underground King trailed off.

"Who hired you to magick Wilds and send them on Beast Waves?!" Tim specified.

At that, the Underground King fell silent.

Tim started applying cheese to his toes.

"Caliph Irafa. Or at least, his butler." The words sounded like they were dragged out from between his teeth by a horse. "He paid me to start the first Beast Wave. The Desert King found out and paid me to continue it. When he died, I approached the Crown Prince, and he kept it going…"

"Why?" Tim asked, eyes narrowed.

The Underground King bit his lip.

"WHY?!" Tim demanded, drawing a knife.

"L-land values!" The Underground King shrieked. "For old claims to be sold! For lost treasures and ruins yet unexplored! To make them all too costly to be exploited, and the rights to the lands cheaply bought!"

"Bought from who? n.o.body owns the Wildlands." Tim frowned.

"The treaty… recognized by 48 nations… with Ecclesia and the Dragon Empire as witnesses… every colonization effort in the Wildlands… has a hundred years of claim… before it expires…"

"And those claims can be sold?" Tim asked.

"Yes! The Desert King already bought half of them…"

"So who owns them now that he's dead?"

"The… the Crown Prince…"

"And if the Crown Prince is also dead?"

The Underground King stared in shock. "You… you want to kill the Crown Prince?!"

"No, it's too late for that." Tim shook his head. "He's already dead."

The Underground King's face went totally white.