Saga Of The European King

Listen guys. Chapter 50 became so epic that it had to be continued on the next chapter. That’s this one. That’s how it goes, with epics. This chapter is just as epic as the last, but on a more internal scale. Let’s go.

Once everyone had eaten a good square meal of health-giving pork chops in the burning hall, they recharged their spells and got themselves fully healed. It was high time for the King, his Adventure Friends and his thousands and thousands of troops to breach the Dracula King’s inner sanctum and wipe his scourge right off the face of the world. After wiping his face with a napkin (The King has impeccable table manners), The King opened the big double doors of the burning main hall and, flanked by Roxy Tripfoot and Colonel Glowfist, led the charge inside the Dracula King’s house. They jumped through the doors with thousands of highly trained Sons Of Europe behind them. They struck a pose. The King held David by the leg and assumed a spiritual martial arts stance that he had learned in India. Colonel Glowfist cast a cosmetic spell that made his hands and eyes crackle with electricity, which is something he normally only did when he was hitting on girls or shouting at children. Roxy Tripfoot did a dancing move with her dangerous hula hoop. She had jangly bits on her costume that jangled when she did this. It was sexier than anything you’ve seen, but not in that gross sexy way. They all looked awesome. The background music agreed with them.

There was no fire raging in the Dracula King’s inner sanctum, unlike the rest of the castle. Axe Axewound’s axe had not penetrated it and Ba’al’s lightning had not touched its walls. It was calm and cool in there. The room was awesome. There were all these really old chairs that no one sat on anymore and photos on the walls of the Dracula King and his family that gave you a look into the Dracula King’s life and the way he probably feels about a lot of things. There were mirrors that were really portals into other dimensions and other people’s houses. The Dracula King’s friends could come and visit him at any time by just stepping through the mirrors they had in their own houses. The Dracula King was never alone and always had buddies over, especially girls who dug him. There were books lining the walls – the Dracula King was really smart and he read a lot of books. Most of them were written in Dracula language, so they were useless to the King. There were also candlesticks and chandeliers and curtains and statues that come alive and usual Dracula stuff. What the Dracula King’s inner sanctum did not contain was the Dracula King. On his throne made of the bones of mortal kings (none of them were European, don’t worry), there wasn’t a thin guy in a load of stupid clothes, which is what the King expected. Oranje sat on the throne instead – the King’s ex-wife. She was chilling, just being the King’s ex-wife. She had this look on her face that was, like, “Oh no, I’m SO scared!” The look was sarcasm.

The King froze right there in his awesome pose. Then he told David to leave the room. He had to wait outside, in the main hall. David obeyed. He gently pushed his way through the thousands of soldiers and left through the big doors. The soldiers politely got out of the way as he walked through them. They liked David a lot. Each man wished that David was their kid. The troops didn’t get to see their own kids very often because they were always away from home on adventures, killing, looting and raping people for Europe. When David was gone and the doors had closed, the King decided that it was time to have a domestic with his ex-wife.

“Why do you always DO this?!” bellowed the King. ”Why can’t you just be nice to me?!”
Oranje just looked at him like, “I thought I LEFT you.” She didn’t seem interested.
“Why did you leave me?!” screamed the King. He really wanted to know. He was crying now. It was okay though, because he was angry.
“What are you even doing here?” said Oranje, really casually.
“We’ve come to slay the Dracula King!”
“You mean, my boyfriend?” laughed Oranje. This made the King feel uncomfortable, because it meant that his ex-wife was sleeping with a jackass, which maybe meant that he was a jackass too.
“You won’t stop me!” said the King. “You’ll never stop me!”
“I don’t have to.” Said Oranje. “I already slew him this morning.” She pointed to a pile of clothes over by the dresser. Those clothes were exactly the kind that the Dracula King would have worn. “Stabbed him right in the medallion while he was taking a shower.” She said as she pointed at the medallion that was hanging around her own neck. “I have his Dracula King powers now. I can control the dead and curse people. Maybe I will curse you, Your Highness.” She was flying now. Her eyes were black and she had pink energy coming out of her hands. The King unsheathed Cutty, who said, “How could you, Oranje? You’re breaking his heart all over again!” But the King stood his ground. The fight was still in the talking stage.
“Break the curse on the gypsies! We don’t need to fight now!” shouted the King. He didn’t want to fight Oranje again. He wanted her to come back.
“I can’t. It’s a very strong curse.” Said Oranje, flying around the room. The King looked at Roxy Tripfoot. Roxy Tripfoot understood the look, closed her eyes and prayed to her chaotic gypsy god. The chaotic gypsy god had been listening in the whole time. He was pretty interested in the whole turn of events in the Dracula King’s castle. He knew that if the gypsies became uncursed, he’d become a lot more respected among the gods and he’d stop having to nick things and play tricks in order to get attention. He told Roxy Tripfoot how to break the curse. He was pretty sure that he knew how it could be done. Roxy Tripfoot opened her eyes. The chaotic gypsy god had told her everything.
“We’ll need to gather up the Dracula King’s eye, his heart, his rib and his medallion. Then we need to travel to the Life Tree at the centre of Romania. It is withered and ruined. We must throw the items down the Well of Roma, which rests in the shade of the tree. The Life Tree will soak in the magic through its roots and will be restored.
“Right!” Said the King. He channelled his anger and his crying into something constructive, like freeing the gypsies. He waved Cutty around and pointed him at Oranje. Oranje was floating up by the ceiling. “Give me the medallion, Oranje. The gypsies have suffered enough. Do not put your ambition above their suffering.”
“I don’t intend to. I will free the gypsies myself, as soon as I complete my quest.” Said Oranje. This surprised the King like anything.
“You’re not the one who has quests. I’m the one who does the quests!” screamed the King, getting angry again.
“I’m on a quest now, Your Highness. And now I have the superpowers to solve it.” As she said this, she sucked some hit points out of the King and added them onto her total. She didn’t even need to do this. She was at full health already. It was on. Colonel Glowfist cast a Make Everyone In The Room Go Faster (except baddies) spell. Considering that the room was full of thousands of soldiers with magic swords, this was a smart move. While Roxy Tripfoot prayed up some defensive spells, the soldiers mobbed Oranje. Oranje wasn’t too impressed at this. She was flying. The troops just kind of ran around her shadow, tripping over each other. She rained down disease and fatigue and curses upon them. In an instant, the troops had so many penalties to their attributes that Oranje could swoop down and kill scads of them at a time with swishes from her scythe. The King was trying to put a stop to this, but there were too many guys in the way. He shouted and jostled, but the troops were still trying to attack Oranje, who couldn’t be attacked because she was flying. It was a godawful mess is what it was. Had David still been around, the King would have hurled him at Oranje and knocked her out of the air, no problem. She would have been cut to death by the thousands of soldiers. But the King had no ranged weapons. Neither did Roxy Tripfoot. Colonel Glowfist had explodo spells and the like, but Oranje was basically immune to magic so long as she had that medallion on. The King scratched his beard. Thirty more of his men were gibbed in that instant. He did have one ranged weapon at his disposal. He used his anger and his crying and he screamed. Every man who stood within a five metre radius of him dropped dead. The mighty magical pillars that held the Dracula King’s inner sanctum aloft cracked and shook. Roxy Tripfoot, Colonel Glowfis and all of the other troops in the room were stunned for three rounds. The Dracula King’s medallion shattered. Oranje fell to the ground. She was not cut to death by the soldiers, since the soldiers were stunned. The King was still going through his scream animation. She had exactly one second to react. She ran across the inner sanctum at full speed, hit a button on the Dracula King’s throne as she passed, jumped onto the balcony that overlooked Romania and scrambled into the rocket ship that she had tethered there on the balcony. Just as the King ran up to the balcony to stop her, she blasted off. Wasting no time, the King ran off back into the inner sanctum and headed for the staircase. He ran up the stairs as fast as he could and smashed through every door he encountered with his wooden hands. Soon he was on the roof of the castle, where Gappy was waiting. Gappy could fly if he got enough of a run-up. He ran, full pelt, and jumped on Gappy’s back, but Gappy was inconveniently being a naked blonde man just then and the King jumped off again. He saw Oranje’s rocket ship blasting off into the distance. He sighed. He was about to do something pretty drastic. He didn’t do it very often but, well, his ex-wife was involved. He took a run-up and jumped right off the castle roof.

The King was a man of the world. He’d been everywhere. He’d been to all of the bonus levels. In most cases, the bonus levels were just full of extra lives and ammo and cakes and the usual stuff. Sometimes, there was something special on the bonus levels, like a secret item that you couldn’t find anywhere else in the world. The Seven World Stones were a set of these special somethings. The King had read in a magazine that, if one didn’t go to all the bonus levels and collect all seven of the Seven World Stones, one wouldn’t get the complete ending. If there was one thing that the King wanted in life, it was the proper ending. He carried the Seven World Stones on his person at all times. He kept losing them, but he always went back to the bonus levels and finding them again. After a while, he found out that if he jumped in just a certain way, the Seven World Stones would activate and he would turn into Super King. When he was Super King, he could run faster than anything you’ve ever thought of. He could fly through space unaided. He could beat any boss without really even noticing it. The problem was that doing so sucked out his life force, made the Seven World Stones disappear back to the bonus levels and made him feel pretty horrible once he’d reverted back to plain old King. The King turned into Super King when he jumped off the Dracula King’s roof. He hit the ground flying. He took off after Oranje screaming blood every inch of the way.

Back in the Dracula King’s inner sanctum, Roxy Tripfoot, Colonel Glowfist and the guys regained their senses just in time to see that hundreds upon hundreds of minor and greater Draculas were coming out of the mirrors that hung on every wall of the throne room. The button that Oranje had pressed during her escape was marked ‘Party.’ This was the button the Dracula King pressed when he wanted everyone he knew to come and chill at his house for drinks and Dracula orgies. Since the Dracula King was the king of all Draculas, his phone book was incredibly huge. What this means it that every Dracula in Romania was pitching up in the same room and now Colonel Glowfist and Roxy Tripfoot had to fight them. Also, the inner sanctum was collapsing. So was the whole castle.

Outside, on the peripheral of the Dracula King’s estate, Axe Axewound, who was being a werewolf while he was tearing and eating his way through the endless undead, noticed that the attack had stopped. The undead were just regular dead again. Moments later, he heard the King screaming and he understood. The Dracula King’s medallion had shattered and the fight was over. He looked over at Ba’al, who had realised much the same thing. They were both so tired. They had been fighting the whole time. They wanted to rest and rest and rest. But then Axe noticed that the Dracula King’s castle was collapsing – with all of his friends inside! He ran towards the castle. Ba’al took up his lead. They ran for an hour. The world around them was filled with the festering dead. When Axe arrived at the slowly-tumbling castle, he used his werewolf skill to jump up the walls. Ba’al summoned a cloud and rode up on it. It took a while, but they soon got on to the roof. Gappy was there, looking terrified. He was using his foot to scrape the floor and was puffing through his nostrils. Ba’al stroked his hair and told him it would be okay, but Gappy looked at Axe warily. Gappy was taking all this werewolf business quite badly. Just then, Roxy Tripfoot emerged from the fire escape and found herself on the roof, among friends. She was holding David. She was also holding a bundle of clothes that contained the Dracula King’s heart, eye and rib. Axe and Ba’al ran to her, but she screamed at them.
“He’s still down there! He’s fighting the Draculas! We’ve got to go get him!” She was talking about Colonel Glowfist. Axe looked at Ba’al. Ba’al looked at Axe. Axe picked up David and hurled him off the roof. He was invulnerable, so the fall wouldn’t hurt him – the idea was to get him clear of the castle in case he got trapped under anything. Then the three of them ran back down the stairs. They met a few Draculas coming up, but Axe just tore them to shreds. They had no time for big fights. They cut and tore and snarled and danced their way through the Draculas until they found Colonel Glowfist. The scene was hellish. The walls were falling in. The dead soldiers were piled up ten deep. The dust from dead Draculas thickened the air to near solidity. Everything magical was exploding. The mirrors were shattering. The books were burning. Corpses were being sporadically reanimated by stray magic and lurching around. Colonel Glowfist had activated his Licence to Kick Ass and had killed thousands of Draculas, but he was still on the verge of being overwhelmed. He used up the last of his Kick Ass energies and then his clothes melted, the fat piled on and he collapsed from cardiac arrest. The Draculas moved in, ready to devour him completely. The Adventure Friends weren’t going to let that happen. Roxy shot out some violent rabbits while Ba’al used the last of his lightning to knock the Draculas off their guard and Axe howled in to grab the Colonel. Axe had swigged his final potion of strength before he’d gone down the stairway. He wouldn’t have been able to even drag Colonel Glowfist away if he hadn’t have done that. They made their way back up to the roof, Roxy Tripfoot praying for luck the whole way (which decreased the enemy’s chance to hit considerably) while covering the stairs behind them with rabbits that the Draculas would step on and trip over, and once they got onto the roof they ran for Gappy, Ba’al conjured up his cloud and they jumped just as the castle fell into the ground. The pursuing Draculas grabbed only at air before they were crushed to death by their own momentum.

Ba’al’s cloud was not strong enough to support the weight of them all completely, but it gave them a soft enough landing on the hard Romanian soil. The Adventure Friends picked themselves up and watched the Dracula King’s castle collapse. As it did, and the Draculas inside the castle died, the castles that dotted the landscape of Romania collapsed too. Great groups of them fell all at once. The sky soon filled with dust. They quickly found David in a pond and retreated into the mountains to wait out the devastation. They met up with the two hundred or so soldiers who had survived the ground war. They were led by Timothy and Jacob, who had levelled up so much while fighting all those waves of undead that they were now muscular, handsome and likeable.

They camped for a whole day while the castles came down. The King did not come back. No one knew where he had gone. One day turned into two, then to four, with no sign of the King. David cried all the time. Roxy Tripfoot had found one Scroll Of Remove Curse in the Dracula King’s castle and it was David who had been elected to receive its benefits, so he no longer turned into an adorable wolf-boy. This was little comfort to him. He just wanted his dad back.

On the fifth day, Ba’al set out to talk to the local gods. With the Dracula King gone, he explained, they could all get back to their jobs and make restore Romania to the beautiful place it once was. If they agreed and got back to work, he would impregnate them with healthy babies. If they dragged their heels or professed to -like- being a wandering spirit-god, Ba’al would cut them in two with his scythe and devour them. This was how gods communicated with each other. Anyway, before long the Romanian Earth gods were loosening the soil and building new animals, the Sun gods were shining brightly and pleasantly, the Fertility and Agriculture gods were holding hands and singing their songs to make the plants grow and the Weather gods were pulling strings and writing letters to make the climate just slightly less shitty. The chaotic gypsy god ran all over the place, appearing in dreams and visions, pulling miracles out of just about everywhere, trying to get the gypsy people to move back into Romania. But the curse was still in place. Oranje had taken the shattered medallion with her when she had escaped in her rocket ship. The gypsies were still the feral and evil bog-people that they had been for generations. The chaotic gypsy god was so disappointed. He told Roxy this. He reckoned that Roxy Tripfoot was his only chance of ever being somebody again. He cared so much about this one thing that he got all humble, buried most of his hatchets and asked around with the other gods about this one little thing he wanted. It cost him dear and he had to give away all of his neat tricks, but he found out what he wanted to know. He told Roxy Tripfoot what he knew as soon as he could.

Roxy opened her eyes. A week had passed since the destruction of the Dracula King’s castle. It was during dinnertime. They were all eating rabbit.
“I know where the King is.” She said.

End Of Chapter 51