Saga Of The European King

Okay, so the King ran from Old Mexico to New Mexico, through Arizona and up into the mountains. He did this in a matter of months thanks to Ba'al's spells and ability to scout out the terrain ahead of him. He was awesome at living out in the wild now. He could eat anything. He could even identify the right kind of soil to eat. He could discern it by its colour.

You could tell that things were sad though because the King would stop every day at around the same time and weep. He wept for David and for his dear friend, Colonel Glowfist, though he was a little relieved that Colonel Glowfist had been put out of his misery. He knew enough about Heaven to know that you didn't have to be fat there if that was your wish. You could be fat for a day or so, for a joke, but you weren't ever ever ever forced to be that way. It was Heaven, after all. The King knew that he would see David and Colonel Glowfist again in Heaven, but he was worried in the pit of his heart that he would be too busy running the place and not have time to hang with his dead loved ones too much. He wasn't too sure how Heaven's administration was run. He hoped that there would be guys to tell him the score and what's what. His father wouldn't be around to give him the tour since his father would be automatically upgraded to some other plane of existence the moment he himself arrived in Heaven. Everyone wondered where it was that the Kings of Heaven went to when they were replaced by their son. The King knew it was somewhere cool but that was it.

Colonel Glowfist and David aren't dead, by the way. They were on the move again, trying to catch up with the King. They had spent some time with the Tocobago – mostly hanging out with their quite magical medicine man and helping to put the body of the alligator chief they had killed into jars. David was taught bit of American magic. American magic is mostly about smoking. David wasn't old enough to smoke yet, but he would get into it in later years. The Tocobago were very impressed with Gappy. They thought he was some kind of god-spirit. They didn't care that he was a naked blonde guy at inconvenient moments. They thought that was the coolest thing about him. They promised to take care of him forever and attend to his every need. That was fine with Colonel Glowfist and David, so they left him there in their care. Gappy was happy with this decision. The Tocobago loved him for who he was.

Back to the King. The King had spoken to a lot of tribes and villages and wandering dudes on his run across the country. He had spoken to groups and representatives of the Hohokam, the Anasazi, the Apache, the Pueblo and some Navajo. Everyone he had spoken quickly understood why they needed to be on the King's side. The King needed only to do some coin tricks, talk for fifteen to twenty minutes and then roll his slide show for them to be convinced that he was the one to overthrow the President and make the United States a good old place again. The President Of The United States had done some bad things to these people. The King was pretty excited by all this. In his head, he was figuring out exactly how Europe would be expanded into the former United States. He'd rename a few rivers and things and build a lot of courthouses and parliament buildings and restaurants and stuff. The tribes could work in the restaurants as waiters or clean the courthouses when they needed cleaning. It would be new and interesting to them.

So there he was, running up towards the mountains so he could talk to the Ute guys who lived there. The Ute would be tricky since the President employed them to professionally hate the Navajo and there was a lot of understandable conflict there. Ba'al said that the way was clear but that he had to consult the local gods about some god business that didn't make a whole lot of sense to the King, so the King was on his own for a while with just the wind in his face and the whole world ahead of him. He was growing quite fond of Ba'al. How far he had come from being some annoying demon hiding out in a cave in Jerusalem! Since he'd become an Adventure Friend and had got back into the god racket, he had become a real good egg. The King was glad to have him around. He couldn't help but note that gods both do magic and also can not possibly become stupidly obese and depressing and unable to walk up the stairs without making a big show of everything. He was thinking something along those lines when a melon-sized ball of incandescent light floated over to him. He stopped. As the ball glided closer, he felt a terrible and paralysing fear grab hold of his spine. Cutty began to scream. The ball came very close. The King knew that he, the King of Europe, could not be afraid in a foreign land. He grit his teeth and squinted his eyes and forced the fear out through his feet and into the ground. The ball flew right up to the King's face so that he could see the milky liquid sloshing around within it and the waves of fear that travelled through the King's body into the ground became so intense that the Earth shook and rumbled and groaned. Perhaps rattled by the commotion, the ball shot off into the sky. The ground grew still. The King remained in the same spot for some time, breathing. The ball did not return. Cutty would not talk for a whole day.

That night, the King camped near a herd of bison. He found their lowing and trotting to be soothing on the ears. He said 'goodnight' to Cutty, who remained silent, and slept under the stars. When he awoke, every head of bison was dead. The King was an expert tracker. He looked around for the tracks of predators and found none. He examined the wounds of the bison and found them to be odd and bloodless. He did not eat any meat of those bison. He walked far from them and ate a small lizard. He found no other food to eat that day. He found a source of water, but it tasted metallic and bitter. He was awoken in the night by a mocking voice in a strange tongue. At first he thought it was Cutty playing around, but the sword was innocent and the voice seemed to be coming from the sky. By morning, it had stopped. The King travelled on.

On the next day, the King's path was interrupted by a man-sized orange dish that appeared in front of him. Sensing trouble, he drew Cutty, who gibbered momentarily but then pulled himself together, and stood in all readiness for battle. He could see a different landscape within that dish. Dark shapes were moving within and it exuded a smell that was foul and rotting. The dish disappeared. The day continued but, before it was over, the King encountered another herd of bison. These were unmolested but where standing unnaturally still, making no noise at all. When the King approached them for a closer look, the apparent trance was broken and the herd scattered. The ground where the herd had stood was peppered with small, perfectly circular holes. The King pressed on before resting. The sky that night was alight with flying lights. The King didn't like that one bit. But what happened the next day really took the cake.

Upon waking, the King was followed everywhere by a black triangle that hung high in the sky, hovering ominously and occasionally disappearing for short lengths of time. When the triangle at last left him alone, he noticed a dark-haired and very large wolf tailing him at some distance. He took the wolf to be injured or lame by the way it moved, but it turned out to be able to cover ground so quickly that it had to be in high health. A long and tedious game of catch-up was played over the course of the day. The King tried to follow the wolf while the wolf tried to follow the King. When dusk set in, the King feigned sleep. He waited for the wolf to come to him. It did. The smell was abysmal. The wolf shambled right up to the King's camping spot, undeterred by the fire or the King's regal aura. The King watched the wolf through one half-closed eye. In the firelight, he saw that the wolf had the eyes of a man. That was enough. He stood up, roared, and rocket-punched the wolf so hard that it flew some distance. The King was upon it before it had a chance to recover. He beat the living hell out of that wolf. He beat it until it begged him to stop in plain European. He beat it until it pulled its wolfskin off of itself and dropped its weapons and said, “Your Highness! It's me! It's Cajun!” The King beat Cajun for a little while after that. When he was quite finished, he dragged Cajun over to the fire, dressed him many wounds as best he could and gave him one chance to explain himself.

“I was stationed here to test out these new combat systems,” said Cajun once he had calmed down. He waved a hand towards the invisibility cloak, the shapeshifting wolf skin, the orb-gun, the bo-hyno amulet, the portal device and the laser gun that shoots sounds into a person's head. He explained that he had used a special kind of advanced Chinese kite to get around and a trackless bicycle to get close.
“Dragon tech,” muttered the King. He had looted the hordes of dragons before. This was the kind of stuff they got up to.
“When the word came in that you were passing through, I was ordered to engage you in psychological combat.” said Cajun. The King understood. He used psychology all the time. It was a powerful weapon and made sense. It might have worked, too. If Cajun had been a little more skilful with that shapeshifting trick, he might have eluded the King long enough to get him really angry and he might have made a mistake and fallen off a cliff or something.
“You're a smart kid, Cajun. You've been spying on me for the President for nearly your whole life. You know what I'm going to do when I get to the Potomac River, don't you?” said the King firmly. It was true that their relationship was more like that of a distant but helpful father and his unapproachable but admiring son than that of a CIA spook who spies on a foreign head of state. They had never actually fought before, but Cajun had brought some nasty stuff down on the King in the past. When the King had disappeared in Jerusalem, Cajun was retrieved by the President and given menial and almost-demeaning jobs to do to fill his time. This encounter out in the desert would have been a half-touching reunion if Cajun hadn't been in so much pain.
“You're going to overthrow the President and create turmoil in the region,” responded Cajun.
“I am going to kick his butt,” murmured the King as the firelight played across his face. “You know that it is going to happen.”
“You're going to offer me a position among your Adventure Friends. That is your modus operandi.” said Cajun. He was right, but the King had other plans.
“I'm going to leave you here, tied up just firmly enough so I can get away. You'll escape eventually and you'll follow me all the way to the President's lair, seeking to settle the score. You'll appear at a crucial moment in the fight and I will say something to sway you over to my side and you'll strike a decisive blow and the day will be won. Then,” said the King, licking his lips, “You can become an Adventure Friend.”
“Yes, that appears to be the optimum procedure.” said Cajun.

They parted on amicable terms.

End of Chapter 72