Saga Of The European King

The King awoke after only two hours of sleep. He felt weak and hollow. This was weird to him, because sleep normally made him even stronger and more powerful than he had been the previous night. Something was up. He suspected villains, or maybe gypsies. He’d been cursed with gypsy magic before. It didn’t hurt so much, but it usually made him less effective in a fight – he’d miss his target and become much easier to hit and so forth. This felt a lot like that, or perhaps poison. When he’d been in India as a young man, he’d encountered every kind of poison imaginable. He’d been knocked out and turned temporarily evil/berserk/cowardly by poison just about every week. But as he ran through his super-immaculate mental database of what those poisons felt like, he realised that he hadn’t been poisoned, either. All of this had taken less than a second, so the King’s mighty brain hadn’t properly booted up yet. When it did, the King was able to remember what he’d done and then he fell to his knees and wept.

Let me tell it to you – in Europe, in the Medieval Age, trying to score a chick that was into your friend was a terrible crime. You could go to prison or lose a hand if you pulled that crap. The King had himself made grand and moving speeches about how lame it is to muscle in with kisses on a honey when your friend was totally just about to. This was one of the many reasons why Europe used to be such a paradise – if you were interested in a girl, your friends would just back off and let you get on with it and wouldn’t try their luck or get all competitive about it. This was exactly what the King of Europe had done on that horrible, confusing night. Axe Axewound had introduced him to Astrid Gimmerleck, who was an archaeologist and smart and quite attractive in a Viking sort of way and totally into weird animal sex which was perfect because Axe Axewound was a werewolf a lot of the time. The King had tried to get with her in a really creepy, unattractive way. He hadn’t succeeded, but that wasn’t the issue. He had tried, and that was crime enough.

“Make it go away!” cried the King to the heavens. “Make it all go away!” But it didn’t. The heavens were totally not interested. The King’s crime would not ever go away, ever. He wept some more, then got up and thought about going downstairs to find Axe Axewound and apologise. But as soon as he opened the door of the Mask Temple’s guest bedroom, he saw that the hallway was full of tanked-out Viking guards. The King might have tried to have taken them, but the King was no dummy. The tanked-out guards took him to Erik Rage-Eater!’s bedchamber, then left him alone with the Viking Lord. Erik was dressed in full armour. He was looking out of a window as the sunlight streamed in. His back was to the King. There was some silence for a while, and then the King said,
“Erik, I…”
“Do not speak to me, False King of Europe. You have lost the right.” Said Erik Rage-Eater! He turned around and held out his hand. There was a large object in it that the King recognised. It was the Magic Telephone. The King’s eyes lit up. He thought that it had been lost during the fight with Oranje two years earlier.
“I was going to give this to you for Christmas, but since you’ll be leaving, you’d better take it now, False King.” Rumbled Erik Rage-Eater! The King walked across the room and reached out for the Magic Telephone. As he took it, Erik Rage-Eater! spat in his face. The King grimaced, but he knew that he deserved it.
“Go now, False King. When next we meet, it will be as the bitterest of enemies. I see now that you are not the great man your father was. Perhaps I knew it all along. Be gone from my land.”

The King left under armed escort. He saw nothing of Axe Axewound or Astrid. He saddled up his armadillo and rode for half and hour before picking up the Magic Telephone and calling General Majesty. He hadn’t spoken to General Majesty for two whole years. He hoped that everything was still on for the attack on Winter. After what he had done, only the destruction of Winter could redeem him.

“Hello?!” said the voice on the other end of the line, too loudly.
“It’s the King.” Said the King.
Majesty: “Your Highness! How are you?”
KING: “Bad. I had the worst night last night”
Majesty: “Where have you been?”
KING: “I was in a Viking prison in a country called Belize. It’s on the southern continent of the United States.”
Majesty: “You were where?”
KING: “Jail. I was in jail. I was fighting Oranje again.”
Majesty: “Did you find Scruff?”
KING: “No.”
Majesty: “Aw, man.”
KING: “I know.”
Majesty: “You loved that dog. We all did. He was the greatest dog.”
KING: “I know. I know! But listen, it’s bad. Some bad stuff has gone down.”
Majesty: “Listen, Your Highness. I need to tell you something.”
KING: “No, I need to tell you something.”
Majesty: “Well, I need to tell you something.”
KING: “Okay. Okay. Three, two, one…”
Majesty: “Nickki not…”
KING: “Nickki not first!”
Majesty: “…first! Damn!”
KING: “That means that you are first.”
Majesty: “Okay. Alright. I’ll just say it and get it over with, okay?”
KING: “Okay.”
Majesty: “The fortress was destroyed and all of our men are dead.”
KING: “What?”
Majesty: “Mechanicus and I escaped into the future. But then Terrorthaw turned up and stole Mechanicus’ time-traveling spaceship.”
KING: “Huh.”
Majesty: “Yeah.”
KING: “Well, actually, that puts things in perspective.”
Majesty: “Why, what did you do that was so bad?”
KING: “I tried to kiss a girl that Axe Axewound was with.”
Majesty: “Yeah, that must have been embarrassing.”
KING: “Hmm.”
Majesty: “…”
KING: “So, you’re in the future now?”
Majesty: “Yes. Three years into the future, to be exact.”
KING: “So I have three years to prepare for a new attack on Winter before we catch up with you?”
Majesty: “That’s how I understand it.”
KING: “General Majesty, I will see you in three year’s time at the rebuilt fortress in the Chillinous Plains. In the meantime, I am going to assemble the mightiest army ever seen in the Medieval World and bring it to you. Then we’re going to take our army, General, and wipe Winter from the face of the Earth and clear my name. We’ll return to Europe as the heroes that we left it as. Got it?”
Majesty: “Got it, Your Highness.”
KING: “I’ll be in touch.”

And then the King hung up. And he rode his armadillo North. He had a plan and he knew exactly what to do. Everything that he had said on the phone would happen.

Almost.

End Of Chapter 67