After he left the palace of the Dragon King, Goes-With-Heaven flew back to the land. There he lived a nomadic life, at the same time making the acquaintance of dozens of famous robbers and brigands. But instead of turning them away like he had done in the past, he promised them untold riches in exchange for swearing loyalty to him. Thus he founded a company of robbers, having at one point more than five hundred fighting men in his employ, along with countless servants. His company soon was the terror of everyone in the region. And since he held the power of stormy Heaven in the palm of his hand, With-Heaven was unstoppable--very few dared to fight against him. Three years passed, With-Heaven and his company were wealthier than they had ever been before, and they had even established dominion over a few small territories.
One day that autumn, With-Heaven was flying through a mountain range in one of the western districts when he spotted a young woman who had gotten trapped on a rocky ledge. The path was above her, but it was several fathoms high and the cliff was too steep to be climbed. Below her was a drop of what must have been fifty fathoms or more. Since she had no way of saving herself, With-Heaven flew to her, grabbed her at the waist and took her up to the path. It was at that moment that he noticed her arms and legs were covered in black scratch wounds from the pointy mountain rocks. He set her down on the path, dressed her wounds, then flew off into the mountain forests. By then he had acquired an ample knowledge of medicinal herbs and where they grow, so he gathered the best ones he could find, then returned to the young woman. He made the medicine into a tonic and had her drink it. Then he took her into a cave where she might be sheltered from the elements. After a few days' recovery, her wits returned and she thanked With-Heaven from the bottom of her heart. He found her incredibly fair and wondered why she had been wandering the mountains alone like that, but being as he was bad with words, he did not ask her where she had come from nor whither she was going. Nonetheless he was enamored by her and took their meeting to be fated, which is why he spent several nights with her in the cave.
After several nights passed, he went into the forest to hunt, but while he was out he heard the sound of men calling loudly, as though searching for somebody, and returned to the cave. But when he got back, he saw a party of some ten men who had already gone into the cave and found the young lady. He came before them flourishing the Shadowbrand and said: "Who on earth are you?" The leader of the party said: "We are the search party dispatched by the Prince Loves-Battle, son of King Loves-Danger, to search for his betrothed who went missing in these mountains. But we have found her now and will be on our way. Please do not let our trespass offend you." And With-Heaven: "She is betrothed to me now. Leave now or your bodies will end up at the bottom of that chasm." To which the leader, now brandishing his own sword: "And who do you think you are? Do you have any idea how powerful Prince Loves-Battle is? He can have you and your entire clan wiped off the face of the earth and your names smudged from history." With-Heaven said: "Some powerful prince, who could not find her as quickly as I did. If you had just found her today, she would already be dead, but several days ago I found her trapped on a cliff, wounded, and nursed her back to health." "Hand her over to us, and the prince will reward you for your good deeds." "I will not." And with only a few slashes of the Shadowbrand, seven of the men lay dead, and the others, unable to believe their eyes, turned around and fled as fast as their legs would carry them.
With-Heaven turned back towards the cave where he saw the lady weeping on her knees. He said to her: "Lady, why are you crying like this?" She said: "Mister, you have made a terrible mistake. First you slept with me, now you have killed the retainers of the demon prince Loves-Battle, to whom I was betrothed. Believe me: he will chase you to the ends of the Earth and fight you tooth and nail till he has killed you and taken revenge." With-Heaven swung his sword crushing a nearby boulder, and said: "Let him come. Even if he comes with an army of ten thousand, I will not founder." He then picked up the lady who was still crying and flew away from the mountain range. He returned to the headquarters of the company of robbers he was lord of and had a small lodge built to house her. When word got around that he had kidnapped the betrothed of the demon prince Loves-Battle, many of With-Heaven's followers considered deserting him so as not to get mixed up with such a powerful enemy. About half of them ended up doing so, making off with a lot of treasure in the meanwhile. This enraged With-Heaven. He commanded those who were still loyal to track down the deserters, destroy them and return with the stolen treasures, but even the retainers who were loyal could not blame the deserters. They explained to him that the demon prince and his family were in possession of an ancient techniques that allowed them to level entire armies with the snap of a finger. Nonetheless, With-Heaven got them to swear reluctantly they would join him in the battle.
It did not take long for the demon prince Loves-Battle to catch wind of With-Heaven's whereabouts. He gathered three thousand of his most skilled warriors, all either on chariot or horseback, and marched in the direction of the mountain where With-Heaven and his company had built their stronghold. But With-Heaven anticipated their arrival, which is why he ordered his carpenters to build fifty catapults. These were set up in two rows at the top of a huge cliff. Massive bolts were loaded into the catapults, and as soon as the enemy was spotted on the horizon, each row fired volleys in turn, one shooting while the other reloaded. With-Heaven himself sat at the top of an especially tall tree and hurled thunderbolts at the enemy once it got closer. The missiles and thunderbolts were doing a worthy number on the enemy warriors, but soon the ranks opened like a giant gate and Loves-Battle rode forward on a silver chariot pulled by four white steeds, gripping a gigantic trident that was the same color as the moon. Loves-Battle then turned over his right hand, and the tree With-Heaven was perched on immediately burst into flames. He leapt down from the tree and landed at the fore of the battlefield.
The demon prince Loves-Battle roared thus at With-Heaven: "With-Heaven, son of Lord Tengir, I have not come to do you any harm, but from the look of all those war machines it seems that you wish to have a good sparring with me. But before you do so, let us try to come to a peaceful resolution. I have only come to retrieve the lady who was lawfully betrothed to me, whom you unlawfully carried off. If only you will give her up, I will leave here having not spilt a single drop of blood, and on top of that, considering you saved her life, I will reward you with a thousand gold pieces, two hundred bolts of silk, and fifty thoroughbred steeds, not a single one of them inferior to the ones that are now pulling my chariot. But if you will not, then you will get the fight you wish for, and I shall not only destroy you, but shall grind your entire mountain and everything and everyone on it into particles--except for your treasures, which I shall plunder." With-Heaven responded thus: "I would rather have my fight, if for no other reason than that you have shown up here thinking I am base enough to be bought off by such a pittance of a reward." They wasted no more time bandying with words, and they fought. Over sixty rounds they fought, with neither emerging as the clear winner. In the meantime, With-Heaven's fellow bandits engaged the enemy army and fought duels against the demon prince's generals, but most of them were slain in doing so. At last the enemy warriors scaled the cliff and set fire to the catapults. With-Heaven was not at all fatigued, but without the catapults he did not feel as confident, so he began to retreat with the remains of his forces. They walled themselves up in a stronghold whose ramparts made of massive stone blocks were four feet thick. The army of the demon prince quickly surrounded the stronghold and invested it. As he sat gazing at the sky, thinking of a solution, With-Heaven's eye fell upon the richly snowpacked peaks of the mountain and he wondered if he could not loosen them with his command of the winds and cause an avalanche. After making sure he was well hidden, he flew to the peaks and drew the winds forth. The winds blew more snow onto the peaks till they were overladen and soon collapsed from the immense burden. Most of the enemy army was buried beneath five fathoms of snow and surely perished, but his men, as they were still walled up in the stronghold, were uninjured. The demon prince Loves-Battle fled in the confusion, but before he even got halfway down the mountain, With-Heaven struck him dead with a thunderbolt. The remainder of the enemies either fled or were slain.
But this victory was not a cause for joy for With-Heaven and the few men who were still loyal to him, for they knew just as well as he that the demon king Loves-Danger and his army would soon be en route to punish them for destroying his son. This time, of With-Heaven's fifty or so retainers who were left, all but two deserted, making off with what little treasure they could carry on their backs, and the road they walked they wet with their tears. With-Heaven threatened them with death but could not stop them, and he wondered whether he would not do the same thing if he were in their shoes. The two men who were left, Tiger-God and Green-Steppe, regarded With-Heaven as a brother and swore they would follow him till the very end. The three pledged to hold out at the stronghold for as long as they could, then to die together.
Since he was resolved to die there, With-Heaven solicited a band of passing travelers to take the woman he had kidnapped home to her parents. Before she left, he told her: "If you have any depth of feeling for me, then wait at home for one year. If I do not come to you within that time, you are to remarry."
Sure enough, within weeks the army of the demon king Loves-Danger was visible upon the horizon, and it looked to contain greater than six thousand warriors, some on horseback, others on chariot, others still on foot. When Loves-Danger got close enough to see the stronghold, someone informed him: "I heard that the fiend With-Heaven has shut himself up in that stronghold with only two other men." Loves-Danger laughed, then said: "A stronghold of that size cannot be held by three men even if they have the powers of gods. Generals, heed my order: Take one thousand men up there to storm it. These three are no ordinary fighters, that is true, but see if you can't kill them with sheer numbers first. That way the other men can rest and don't need to get worked up over a trivial battle." The generals gave their assent, before a few of them led a thousand men up to the gates of the stronghold. One of the generals shouted thus over the top of the gates: "With-Heaven, son of Lord Tengir, and killer of Loves-Battle, son of King Loves-Danger, you and your compatriots will be dead ere the sun has reached its western limit. Will you quietly greet the inevitable, or do we need to waste our time storming your stronghold?" With-Heaven came out on top of a rampart above the gate, flashing the Shadowbrand in the sunlight, and responded thus: "If it is my Fate to die today, I will accept that, but not before sharing that same Fate with as many of you as possible. For although I stand before you now as an enemy, we have unfortunately met one another in the same burning forest. Let us go to our graves as brothers!" Hundreds of archers let arrows fly at him, but not a single one of them struck home. He leapt from atop the ramparts while flinging thunderbolts into the throng of warriors, killing dozens at a time. The generals ordered the men to advance on the stronghold. With-Heaven, Tiger-God and Green-Steppe at his side, could not stop them from busting down the wooden gates, but they stood at the ready to face them on the other side. Men, swords drawn, came flooding through the gates by the scores, but most made it no farther than the vestibule, where they were all either cut in half by the Shadowbrand, pierced by Tiger-God's dagger-ax or shot with one of Green-Steppe's arrows. In the meanwhile, more warriors came flooding in from the sides, causing the three to retreat into the central courtyard. By now all four sides of the stronghold had been breached by the enemies, who inundated them, but they held their ground valorously, sustaining not a single injury. Not long after, the central courtyard was piled high with the bodies of slain warriors, and the walls and floors were stained with blood and charred with lightning.
Whoever was left came back down the mountain and reported that the entire cohort had been wiped out. Hearing the report, Loves-Danger said: "This will be a real battle after all. Generals, heed my command: All the men are to be taken up the mountain to surround the fortress and cut off all paths of escape. I will go there, together with my champions, to engage the fiends in single combat." And the warriors, arrayed in massive divisions and cohorts, filled in all the traversable land within half a mile of the stronghold. Then he himself went towards the walls, a black staff four fathoms tall in his hand, encrusted at the top with a starry crystal. With a wave of his arm, balls of fire ten feet wide appeared in the air and were made to rain upon the stronghold. After thirty or so of these conjurations, the stronghold was nothing but a mound of macerated stone blocks. With-Heaven, Tiger-God and Green-Steppe climbed from the rubble. When he saw them emerge unharmed, Loves-Danger commanded: "Three champions are to go forward and fight them, not stopping until they have all been slain." And as soon as he said this, three demon champions went forward, each ten feet tall, six wide, and laden with two swords and thick steel armor.
Each man picked a champion to face off against, and each fought him for over a hundred rounds, till the sun was beginning to slant towards the western horizon. And though the demon champions were not unworthy of the title, tirelessly giving battle with the highest order of bravery, fortitude and elasticity, they all finally met their match in With-Heaven and his sworn brothers and were resting on the dirt. Seeing as three of his champions had been slain, Loves-Danger sent three more champions into the field--no less perfected warriors than the previous--but when the one who had been grappling with With-Heaven was slain by the latter, he himself brought out his greatsword and went forward. He sparred with With-Heaven for a hundred and sixty rounds. Halfway through Tiger-God and Green-Steppe killed the champions they were fighting and, having no one else to fight, joined With-Heaven against Loves-Danger. Even with his greatsword--made of dark steel, three feet in width and two fathoms in length--and his endless arsenal of conjurations, he was beginning to waver, being he was one against three, so with a wave of his hand he summoned a crowd of eminent and highly cultivated demons who had been standing at the ready to support him. The youth of the three warriors bloomed with glory and with beauty, and the power of Heaven was on their side, but their foes were monstrous beings who already had centuries of cultivation under their belts--they fell, not more than a few minutes before the sun set. Tiger-God was in his eighteenth year; Green-Steppe his seventeenth; and With-Heaven, who was the last to fall, was in his sixteenth.
After they were killed, the demon king Loves-Danger had their bodies buried where they had fallen, and confiscated their weapons: With-Heaven's Shadowbrand, Tiger-God's dagger-ax and Green-Steppe's longbow. It was the custom of that tribe to destroy the captured weapons of fallen enemies, out of a belief they held that the spirit of a fallen foe's weapon would return to avenge its slain master, but when Loves-Danger tried to destroy them, he could not, for they turned out to be by some mysterious quality, indestructible. So instead he had them sealed in metal crates and sunken to the bottom of the nearby Stony River.