Saga Of The European King

So it turns out that Oranje wasn’t really that much of a bad person. She was trying to save her kid, which is a pretty nice thing to do. The reason she kept on clashing with the King is that she thought he was a villain, even though she was dead wrong about that.

“So why were you an Assassinatrix on the Moon?” asked the King. They were talking now, and not fighting as hard. Oranje had dropped her scythe accidentally-on-purpose and they were grappling with each other on the top of the ancient stone temple. It was raining hard and there was lightning all over the place, so they had to talk really loud.
“I needed the experience points!” cried Oranje, over the rumble of thunder. “I’d learned all I could from the gypsies!” The King punched her in the belly and then cried to go for her neck, but she grabbed his hands. He tried to push her over the edge of the temple, but she pushed back just as hard. They strained against each other, face to face, hand in hand. They wanted so much to be in love again. They kissed then, and for a second it was just like old times, back before it became necessary to lock their daughter Princess in a high, windowless tower. The kiss went long enough for lightning to strike again. With the flash lighting up her face so that she looked white and ghostly, Oranje pulled away from the King’s awesome lips.

“After I free Princess,” sobbed Oranje in the rain, “We’re both coming back – for David!” At this, the King’s eyes widened. He was shocked. The thought of losing David was so powerful that, in that instant, it was as if he had lost David already. The feeling chilled the King’s mighty blood and his strength was frozen. Oranje saw the look on his face and understood. With a mighty heave, she sent the King hurtling over the edge of the temple. Lightning flashed, and she was gone.

The King’s horror at the thought of losing David to Oranje was a much greater pain to him than his great fall onto the temple steps below. All through the long night, that horror ate away at his remaining seven hearts. He imagined all of his Inner Demons growing bigger and stronger out there on the Astral Plane. He imagined a future world without him, where Oranje and Princess and David went to Disney World every day and ate ice-cream for dinner and nobody even cared that he was gone. His Adventure Friends grew fat and old and useless, because Oranje had had sex with all of the enemies of Europe and now they sent her presents all the time. The fat, old faces of his Adventure Friends called out to him from their imaginary world. They asked him to get up, to fight on, to stop Oranje’s mad bid for power. They wanted him to stop them from ever giving to exist. Even Terrorthaw wanted him to get up. Terrorthaw said that he’d miss the King, and that Oranje would never let him see David because of the time when Terrorthaw tried to kill the guests at the King and Oranje’s wedding. The spectres of his future Adventure Friends all stood around him, chanting for him to get up. The King heard them. He wanted to obey them. He channelled all of his chi into healing his broken body enough that he could take one of their outstretched hands and just get up. He mustered up every ounce of chi he had. His shattered bones glowed green with life force. He put his hand up. It was taken, and he was pulled back up onto his feet.

The King was so grateful. He looked up at the sad, future versions of his Adventure Friends. He’d seen them all there around him, Adventure Friends old and new. They were all clapping for him. All of them: Rigor Mantis, Jungle Spiderweb, Father Dominoes, Lady Dragontail, Brother Kinetic of the Mandatory Order, Axe Axewound, Axe Axewound’s sister – Checker, Colonel Glowfist (thin version), Gappy, Trappy, Michael, Leonard Cohen, Roxy Tripfoot, the Devil, Baroness Catsex (the version of her before she became a goddess), The Iberian Samurai, Ba’al Hadad, Mechanicus, Queen Gobi, General Majesty, Robowoman MKVI, Colonel Glowfist (fat version), and Sally Minefield. Sally Minefield. He wanted to apologise to Sally for her death to a lightning trap in the Dracula King’s castle. He wanted to give her back her jacket. He reached into his inventory and pulled her jacket out to hand to her. When he looked up from his inventory, the Adventure Friends were gone. Instead, there were a bunch of Vikings standing all around him. They all had their spears pointed at him. He was trying to hand them a slightly charred leather jacket in a woman’s size.

Confused, the Vikings arrested the King and threw him in jail for two years.

End Of Chapter 54