Saga Of The European King

As the house flew over the city on the Moon, Roxy Tripfoot and Colonel Glowfist looked over the side of the house. They saw the city and they got a little look at the NPCs who lived in it. They had seen NPCs lots of times, back in Europe and on their travels and adventures. Roxy had seen pretty much nothing but NPCs in Hell for hundreds of years. The point is that they knew NPCs. They knew how NPCs act, how they move, what their walk cycles look like. They know what kind of stuff that NPCs say to each other, and how often. They knew what kind of items NPCs would drop if you accidentally killed them, or if some evil mage you were fighting went nuts with the magic.

So, with their working knowledge of NPCs, they instinctively knew that something was up with these cats. They didn’t move right. They said odd things at the wrong times. They bumped into barrels and buckets and bushes and things. They couldn’t seem to open doors. Something was up. Colonel Glowfist and Roxy Tripfoot looked at each other. They hadn’t said anything to each other the whole time they had been looking. They held hands. They smiled. They knew what was going to happen. It was in their blood. They jumped over the side of the house and Colonel Glowfist used magic so that they didn’t suffer any fall damage. They ran around the town, holding hands. They spoke to the NPCs. They fished around in barrels. They found a secret room in this one guy’s house that had some weapon mods in it, but the weapon mods were for weapons they didn’t use. (Colonel Glowfist had his Infernal Gauntlet and a short staff, Roxy Tripfoot used a kind of sharp hula hoop.) They found one room that was just static and people walking in the air. The people were saying the same things that people had said in Terrorthaw’s town.

The NPCs all said weird things. Some of their sentences were incomplete, or they said things that they weren’t supposed to say yet. Some of them acted like Leonard Cohen had already fought Carolyn in the Palace, some of them got confused about gender. They called Colonel Glowfist a ‘she’ and Roxy Tripfoot a ‘he.’ Some of them even tried to attack the pair for no real reason. They only took a few hits to put down, though, and the other NPCs didn’t even notice, so it was just kind of annoying.

One of the NPCs in the town just whistled whenever they tried to talk to him. But they knew something was up, because he whistled something different every time they tried and walked in a particular direction. They kept on catching up to him and trying to talk to him, so he would walk off, whistling a new tune. They did this for a while, and the whistling man led them to a little cave. They had seen this cave earlier while they were exploring, but it didn’t look very important. There were just some rings in the corner and a few rocks on the floor. Nothing special. But when they followed the whistling man inside the cave, he had moved the rocks into a certain pattern. The pattern was magic. The magic made a hole in the floor. They could see the night sky in the hole – it was all stars and blackness. The whistling man had got a few spacesuits out from under a rock. He had put one on already. He gave the other two to Roxy Tripfoot and Colonel Glowfist.

“I can’t.” said Colonel Glowfist. “I’m too fat.” The astronaut nodded and gave Colonel Glowfist a mask that made him invincible. Colonel Glowfist picked it up and his whole body started blinking. That would protect him from space. Then the astronaut stepped into the hole and fell into space. Colonel Glowfist looked at Roxy Tripfoot with complete love, took her hand, and jumped into the hole. He knew what he was doing. He was magic.

The three of them floated through space. They were floating above the Moon. Colonel Glowfist knew that this was an illusion. He looked at Roxy Tripfoot so that she would know this too. The astronaut whistled still, but his whistling was everywhere now. It was even sadder, and longer. It filled space. It was like the opposite of the King’s laugh: everyone who heard it was sad.

Floating above the Moon, Colonel Glowfist and Roxy Tripfoot could see the Palace at the end of the city on the Moon. They could see Carolyn’s true form and Oranje’s barricades all of the Moonmen swarming around Leonard Cohen’s house. They looked up at Ric, who looked down at them. He stopped whistling.
“You can’t help them. You have to stay here and float in space with me. That’s all there is to do. You will never be together.”

Of course, they knew that Ric was speaking in opposites again.

Colonel Glowfist took out his License To Kick Ass. His robes and cloak grew back and they whipped in the wind, even though they were in space. He looked awesome. Roxy Tripfoot nearly died from desire when he grabbed her wrist and flew at supersonic speed towards the Palace.

Carolyn was going down.

End Of Chapter 40