Saga Of The European King

“You didn’t die!” cried the King. The sun was coming up. Axe Axewound’s throat was hoarse, even for a Celt. He’d been telling his story now for so long. He wanted a glass of water. But the King was stern. “First, you must tell your King how it came to be that you died but are still perfectly fine.”
“Okay,” croaked Axe Axewound. He coughed and continued his story.

Axe Axewound had fallen into a pit of spikes. As he watched the life ooze down the rusted metal and into the drains at the base of the pit, he wondered why the people who had built this ancient and ruined city with the pillars and the marble and the false gods everywhere had seen fit to include in their city so many terrible dangers that had to be avoided by jumping from floating platform to floating platform. He thought it was quite funny, actually. He tried to laugh, but heard only a low gargle, and then heard the little bluebird calling his name and felt a beak pull at his ear. A cat was meowing, talking about healing. Then the skin shrivelled from his frame, his muscles disintegrated and his skeleton crumbled like dry mud.

His ghost rose above the spike pit, but he was only peripherally aware of his animal friends crying and shrieking below him. He could see everything now. It was all layered on top of itself like a ball of string. Anywhere he looked, he could see the past and the present and the future and the things that moved through it. Some of the things he saw were familiar – the Earth below, the clouds above, the Sun and the sky – but he could also see the little people walking through the soil and the air, and he could see the claws of Inner Demons taking swipes at the back of his friends’ necks. He could see bars and readouts hovering above everything he saw. He knew by looking at the bars how healthy they were and when they too would die. He knew then that he was being asked a question. He didn’t know what the question was, but he knew how to answer it. He whispered his own name, and each letter arranged itself in front of his vision, along with some words and numbers. It looked like this:

AXE_ ……………………. 0000348036390
(AXWRR LVL 43)

Then he saw all the names and all the scores of everyone who had ever lived right there beside his name. He saw how well he had done compared to them. Not too bad, he thought.

Then he had an urge to travel high up into the sky. No real reason, he just wanted to. He saw different things above the clouds. He saw Hell, and all the people didn’t love the King or had never heard of him hanging out with the Devil, who was busy in the gym. He saw Animal Heaven, which is were dead animals go to learn how hard life is when you have to deal with talking and clothes and remembering birthdays and politics and money and knowledge on a daily basis. The animals didn’t look like they were having a lot of fun, but Axe knew that when they died in Animal Heaven, they would fall right on back down to Earth to forget everything again. He saw Viking Heaven, which was kind of cool, but could be better. Then he saw a little room filled with doors and wooden mannequins dressed as gentlemen. It was attached to another room that was full of machines that you could fight against. They revolved around and tried to hit you and so forth. He saw a woman in the room fighting one of the machines. She seemed to pause for a moment when he drifted past, but she went right on back to her training.

Then he reached the main event: Real Heaven. Immediately, Axe felt cool. He felt that he was at a party and that everyone was talking to him because they wanted to know more about him and the DJ knew exactly what kind of music to play. Everyone was having a jelly fight in Heaven at that moment, and there was no cleaning up afterwards. Everywhere he looked, people were laughing and learning important things about Europe and the Universe. Some people were reviewing moments from their lives on these floating consoles made of glass. They could rewind and zoom in and see what they were doing someone else’s perspective. There were monitors showing what they were thinking at the time, compared to a graph showing their brain chemistry and hormone levels. A lot of people at the consoles were shaking their heads.

Suddenly, a wall of force was before him. Axe tried to look at him, but he didn’t know what he was looking at. He saw the King’s face, and he heard a lion talking. He thought then that the King had died, gone to Heaven and become a lion for kicks, but then a kind voice that was everything altogether told him that he was not the King, nor was he a lion. Then Axe was able to see things as they were. The King’s Dad was standing in front of him and there was a lion by his side. He laughed at his silly mistake, and the King’s Dad laughed along with him. The laugh made everyone in Heaven feel even better, and it made the people sitting at the consoles reviewing their old lives feel that their lives had been better than they had been. Then the King’s Dad spoke, but Axe could not hear it. He would only hear its echo when his body reappeared at the edge of the spike pit where he had died.

RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE

Is what the King’s Dad had said.

Axe Axewound was back in the ruined city. His animal friends were shocked to witness his resurrection. His image was appearing and disappearing. He knew instinctively that he had three seconds of invincibility before he would be mortal again. He sniffed the air and ran at full speed across the spike pit that had just claimed his life. He did not fall and the spikes did not puncture his feet. When he had reached the other side, his image appeared solid again. He turned back to his animal friends. He waved and smiled.

“Be careful on those platforms!” he cried, cheerfully.

End Of Chapter 60