Saga Of The European King

The city on the Moon began to quake and break apart. It did this because it was made almost entirely from shards of Ric’s sadness. Since Ric and the King had teamed up, the sadness was being dealt with. The King was dealing with it. He dealt with sadness every day. He felt it whenever a European was unhappy or hungry or cold or dying. If the King couldn’t deal with that, Europe itself would just fall apart. Ric’s sadness had been pretty major – it had built and powered a whole city, after all – but it was nothing compared to what the King was used to.

Even so, when the King saw that city begin to fall down, he wanted to stop it. He didn’t want a bunch of homeless people hanging out on the Moon. He couldn’t bare the thought of so many innocent people being cold and poor and dirty for the rest of their lives. He knew that he had to save them. He would do everything he could. He was the King.

The King searched around for Gappy. Gappy was no where to be found. He was miles away, with Colonel Glowfist and Roxy Tripfoot. Gappy was licking Colonel Glowfist’s face, because Gappy was relieved that the Colonel was okay after his heart attack. Roxy took some supplies off of Gappy’s back and fed Colonel Glowfist some soup. It was good soup – thick and creamy. It even tasted nice while cold, which it was. Just while she was doing this, Gappy looked up. He had heard the King whistling. The King had the mightiest whistle in all of Europe which makes sense because he was the King. Gappy looked over at Colonel Glowfist and Roxy. There was pleading in his eyes. His eyes said, “Come on guys. Roxy, you need to find a way to get Colonel Glowfist on my back. I’ve got his demon Awesome Horses riding on me, you’ll need to get them off so that they can lift him. Colonel Glowfist is so fat now.” Roxy nodded. She had heard what Gappy’s eyes had said. Gappy lay down there in the moondust and she carefully pulled one of the Awesome Horses off of Gappy’s back. The Awesome Horse didn’t really want to get off of Gappy’s back, so Roxy had to feed it rabbits whenever it moved towards her. Gradually, step by step, the Awesome Horse came off of Gappy’s back. Roxy took some rope off of Gappy and began the tricky business of pulling Colonel Glowfist up on to Gappy. Gappy snicked and falloped, egging Roxy on.

By the time the Awesome Horse, fat and burping on a feast of rabbits, had pulled the Colonel’s massive, massive bulk up on to Gappy’s back, the city on the Moon had almost completely collapsed. The King was in a real state when Roxy rode Gappy back to the city. He was running all around the city, carrying people out of collapsing buildings and hugging people profusely. He was sweating heavily. The Adventure Friends who had healed up after the battle were helping, too. David was handing out mugs of warm milk. Leonard Cohen was singing a soothing song about a girl. Michael was holding a building up on his shoulders while everyone who worked in the building ran out to safety and the King’s hugging arms.

When the King saw Gappy arrive, it was the reindeer’s turn for a hug. The King wept. He wept for the city on the Moon, he wept for all of the people who were now homeless, he wept for Colonel Glowfist’s fat, he wept for Carolyn and he wept for Oranje. He was deeply troubled that Oranje had not only turned her back on him and David, but by becoming a mercenary for Carolyn on the Moon, had turned her back on Europe itself. When Oranje left, the King had sometimes paused from his tears for her to reflect that she would make Europe happier in some way, just by treading on its soil and hanging out with its citizens. But she had not given anything to Europe. She had taken, she had left and she had forsaken. That made the King cry most of all. Oranje herself had made a fast getaway after the fight. She had stolen Carolyn’s spaceship and blasted off to parts unknown. She would fight the King many times more. She would be a reoccurring villain.

The King ordered everyone who had lived on the Moon to mount Gappy. People were confused at this. They pointed out that Roxy was already on Gappy and that there didn’t seem to be much space. They didn’t know that Gappy was magical. Gappy snockered with good humour at the people who didn’t know about magical reindeers. But the King showed them how Gappy could carry just about everyone and, one by one, the people of the Moon climbed on top of Gappy. There were several thousand of them. Gappy didn’t care. He was magical.

So, once everyone had been loaded up onto Gappy and the King had checked out the collapsing city three times to make sure that no one had been left behind, the King was touched on the shoulder by Leonard Cohen.
“How’re you planning to get everyone home, Your Majesty?” asked Leonard Cohen in a friendly but knowledgeable way.
“I’m going to hurl Gappy out in to space. Then I’m going to search the ruins for some way to get home myself.” Said the King, without a pause. He meant it. He really was that nice.
“Sorry to be saying this, Your Highness, but I can tell by the look in your eye that you didn’t find hide nor hair of any kind of space craft or rocket pack in the city when you ran around it all those times.” Said Leonard Cohen. “Is that true?”

For the first time in his life, the King didn’t know what to say or do. Let’s just say that this was a special case because Leonard Cohen was involved. Leonard Cohen now put a hand on the King’s shoulder. They were equals, dude.
“The Moon is falling apart, Your Majesty. It aint just the city. I can feel it.” The King knew that that must be true. “I’m going to stay behind to sing to it, see if I can’t calm the good lady down some.” Leonard Cohen said nothing for two seconds, then: “Europe needs the Moon, Your Majesty. We all do. It’s not just where the lonely end up –“ Leonard Cohen then tilted his head, meaning that he was talking about Ric, Carolyn, Oranje and everyone who lived in the city on the Moon, “but it’s where Love comes from. That’s why they all came here. They couldn’t get it from people, so they came directly to its source. Only Love don’t work like that. We knew that, they didn’t. Getting these folk back to Europe, where they belong, is the least we can do for these poor souls.” Then his voice became heavy. “Leave me. Put Gappy on Axe’s returning axe. I’ll throw the axe. Let me talk to Burzum.”

The King walked slowly away from Leonard Cohen. He wanted to talk to Burzum alone, and the King respected that. It was just that he couldn’t get over the enormity of what Leonard Cohen had just said to him. He was going to stay behind. There was no way back. The King was so afraid for him.

“Don’t worry about me,” called Leonard Cohen from over the way, “I’ll be fine.”

It took a long while for Leonard Cohen to finish his conversation with Burzum. When they had finished, Burzum was no longer a sludgy orange. His clothes and his guitar were all white. Everybody said their goodbyes to Leonard Cohen. Leonard Cohen was acting like nothing was wrong and that they’d see him soon. But even he, for all his wisdom, could not stop the tears rolling down his face and in to his smile. He was even acting cheerful when he threw Axe’s axe. He waved as he grew smaller and smaller. When he was gone from sight, and all that the Adventure Friends could see was the city on the Moon falling into the dust, the King bellowed as he had never done before. He bellowed so hard in his sadness and his fury that he knocked Gappy off course a little bit. Leonard Cohen had thrown them directly at Winter’s lair so that they could complete the quest they had set out to do so many months ago. But the King’s bellow steered them somewhere else.

The first thing they did when they landed was to demolish the first forest they saw and build a new city for all the people who had lived on the Moon. They called the city Ric. The citizens of Ric were as happy as could be to be part of Europe and its newest city. The very presence of the King lifted their hearts and set their souls. They were no longer so lonely that they did weird things and acted strangely. Now they were European, and Europeans were good people.

When the city was built and the King had cut the ribbon and there first feasts were held, Burzum came up to the King while the King was sitting away from the party, looking at the Moon. To the King, Burzum looked different than he had before: older and wiser. He had more lines in his face, but they didn’t make him look old and stupid. They made him look hardcore. He also looked bigger.
“You look like Leonard Cohen now.” Said the King. He meant it.
“There must always be a Leonard Cohen.” Said Burzum. “He told me that himself.” The King looked him in the face, hard but warm.
“He chose well.” Then they hugged. “He chose well.”
Leonard Cohen left that very night. He traveled far up into the mountains on Europe, where he found a little wooden hut. The door was open. The hut had been waiting for him. He went inside, but the kettle on to boil, sat in his favourite chair and started writing his next song.

End Of Chapter 43

Look at this, Roxy is riding Gappy as fast as she possibly can. Colonel Glowfist and Carolyn are really far away. Their fight only lasted a few minutes, but it landed them miles and miles away. Even with the gravity being set so low, Roxy knew that it would take a while to reach the archmage. She could see the site of the battle, far off in the distance. She knew that Colonel Glowfist would be back to normal and that he would be having a heart attack. She knew that she was the only person on the Moon who could help him. She knew that she wouldn’t make it. It was too far. Gappy could ride fast, but not that fast. Roxy was crying and the tears were turning into ice as they zipped off her face. She was leaving behind her little spheres of ice. Each sphere contained a thousand units of sadness.

Roxy dipped her head for a while, overcome with the idea that she had failed and that Colonel Glowfist had died, alone and obese on the Moon, and when she raised her head and blinked her tears away, she saw that she was about to run in to a herd of goats. She slammed on Gappy’s brakes and screamed a gypsy curse on goats that caused a thousand birth defects on goats all across the Earth. It didn’t hurt these goats one bit, though. They just stood there, in the way, chewing on dust. Roxy looked around in confusion. She didn’t know where the goats had come from. Why would there be goats on the Moon? When she looked back, she saw an old man standing among the goats. He was sad, but she reckoned she was sadder and besides, she was in no mood to deal with old men.

“GET OUT OF THE WAY!” she screamed at the old man. “MOVE YOUR GOATS! HE’S DYING!” The old man did nothing for a while. Roxy muttered some bad words under her breath and moved to turn Gappy around. She was going to go around the goats, if the goats would not move.
“This is my last chance.” Said the old man. He said it slowly, which angered Roxy Tripfoot even further. Before she could scream at him again, he said, “If you go to him, many people will die. The traitor will gorge himself in blood. Europe will be shaken to its very foundations.” Roxy had had enough. She drew her sharp hula-hoop out of its scabbard. She was angry enough to cut through the goats and behead the old man for standing in her way. The old man held up his hand.
“Your mind is set. I will take you to him.”

Before Roxy could respond, she was at Colonel Glowfist’s side. His eyes were bulging. He was red all over. He looked even fatter than normal. Roxy almost changed her mind to let him die, such was the sight of him. But then she remembered what he had looked like only minutes before – all thin and kicking ass. She pulled some surgical rabbits from her sleeves and began to steady his heart. She sang an old gypsy healing babble. It was old, back from the days when the gypsies were a force for good, being friends of Europe. Colonel Glowfist’s breathing grew steady. He came out of shock. His heart returned to normal. He was sleeping peacefully now. Roxy Tripfoot kissed him, even though he was fat.

The kiss was interrupted by Carolyn clapping really slowly. It was a sarcastic clap. It was intended to make people feel stupid and clumsy about something they’d just done. As she clapped, her hands glowed red with evil magic. She was walking towards Roxy and the Colonel. She was not defeated.

Back at the ruins of Leonard Cohen’s flying house, the King awoke from his week-long slumber. He woke up the instant Ric set a foot inside the house. As the King sat up, hurried and full of purpose, Ric walked slowly into the King’s room. Ric was still wearing his space suit. He was moving slowly. His breathing was mechanical and loud. The King didn’t even have to look at Michael, who was sitting cross-legged in the corner, having just come out from the Astral Plane himself. He didn’t even have to look at the two Jerusalem girls, who were very hot. He knew exactly what to do. Ric knew it, too. That’s why he had come inside.

The King jumped right out of bed and grabbed Ric around the chest. He was hugging him, but also tackling him to the ground. Ric didn’t resist. He just fell. When they were both on the ground, Ric hugged back. They stayed that way for a just a few seconds, but those few seconds were like a lifetime of happiness to Ric. He whispered in the King’s ear. Michael heard it, and he agreed. He had whispered, “Thank you. Thank you.”

Then the King tore off Ric’s spacesuit from his body, and all the sadness that was stored in the spacesuit scattered across the room and froze into tiny, perfect spheres. Ric was crying perfect spheres too, but he wasn’t making any noise. The King wasted no time. He bit down on Ric’s leg and tore out a chunk of flesh. He chewed it in his powerful jaws, swallowed, and ate another chunk. He ate another, then another, and kept on eating chunks of Ric until both he and Ric were one. Ric could feel the pain, but it was nothing compared with the feeling of being all alone on the Moon. He kept telling the King that it was cool, that it was okay.

Ric wasn’t strong enough to handle the loneliness, even though he was better qualified for it than anyone else in the world. All he could do was keep being sad and whistling and talking in opposites, making no sense at all. NASA wouldn’t help him, Burzum wouldn’t help him and Carolyn certainly wouldn’t help him. She liked him being lonely. Carolyn thought that nothing could compete with her emotions. She was wrong, of course. She didn’t know what would happen if the King and Ric teamed up. Ric’s sadness had built and powered a whole city. Now the King was using it, but unlike Ric, the King could control it.

The instant Ric and the King teamed up, Carolyn felt it. She was far away, slow clapping at Roxy Tripfoot, but she knew what had happened. She felt like such a fool for not figuring it out before it had happened. She should never have allowed the King to even know about Ric. Now her power source was under the control of another, who could use it far better than she ever had. She stopped slow clapping at Roxy and started slow clapping at herself. Tears ran down her face. Her mouth was open just a little bit.
“Bravo,” she said. “Well done, chugger.”

Roxy, still leaning over Colonel Glowfist, stood up then. She saw what had happened to Carolyn. She saw that she was slow clapping for herself. Carolyn was telling her that she had failed. Roxy pointed a finger at her and said, with all the truth in the world, “You’re fat, Carolyn. You don’t even try. You use people for their emotions just because you don’t like yourself and are ashamed to even get out of the apartment.”

Carolyn looked at Roxy and nodded. She turned around and walked away. Roxy kept on saying truth at her the whole time. She just disappeared. No one ever saw her again.

End Of Chapter 42

Leonard Cohen’s house, which was loaded to the gills with the King’s Adventure Friends, smashed into the Palace that sat on the edge of the city on the moon at around three in the morning. Nobody was expecting something like that to happen so early on, while everyone was still asleep.

Burzum and the hot Jerusalem girls from Michael’s band had spent a long time setting up the cannons on the house’s porch. They were firing them now. They broke down walls that were part of the Palace. They shot out the Palace’s cannons, even though nobody was manning them at that time. Everyone was in bed, where it was warm and there wasn’t any fighting going on.

What I’m trying to say is, the first part was a breeze. The guards and the easy monsters were dispatched of pretty quickly. Nobody even had to leave the house. Between the cannons, Axe Axewound’s mighty axe, Leonard Cohen’s good vibrations and Sally Minefield occasionally shooting out a crossbow dart, the Adventure Friends did a lot of damage. But then they flew the house up to the roof of the Palace (they knew that the boss would be on the top floor or the roof), they found Oranje, surrounded by green Moonmen and a few Moonlions. She was waiting. She pointed at the flying house and the green Moonmen jumped and floated towards it. They had knives. Oranje didn’t care about their lives.

The Moonmen’s knives had been made out of slivers of Ric’s sadness. Ric’s sadness had built this whole Palace and was the energy which kept it going. The knives could even pierce the good vibrations that kept the flying house together, even though the house had been strengthened by lovemaking. It wasn’t long before the green Moonmen got inside the house. That wasn’t so much of a problem at first, since Axe Axewound could chop them into pieces as soon as they got inside, but the house was still crawling with them. There were too many to fight. There wasn’t enough space. Leonard Cohen gave the order to abandon the house while he set a collision course with the Palace. Everyone jumped out of a window or a door or a hole made by Moonmen and floated outside. Burzum picked up the sleeping King and the meditating Michael. Michael was so into his meditating at this point that he didn’t even notice. Then came the part where everyone had to jump from Moonman to Moonman so that they could safely get to the ground. It was pretty tricky, but everyone managed it, even Sally. In fact, Sally was quite good at it. She hadn’t even been stabbed all that much by the green Moonmen. She had a high Agility.

When they all hit the ground (which was the roof of the Palace), it was time to fight Oranje and her Moonlions. There were also a load of green Moonmen still alive. They floated around. Green Moonmen took a few more hits to kill than normal Moonmen, so that was something to consider.

This is who fought in that battle:

Leonard Cohen (Field Commander, Level 99)
Equipped: Good vibrations +3
Item: White suit

Axe Axewound (Axe warrior, Level 40)
Equipped: Magical Flaming Axe
Item: Amulet of Returning Axe

Sally Minefield (Thief, Level 3)
Equipped: Sneaky knife, Stealth Crossbow
Item: Amulet of breathing underwater (it’s blue)

Gappy (Reindeer, Level 13)
Equipped: Reindeer antlers
Item: Magic glittery reins

Burzum (Sludgy Orange Musician, Level 99)
Equipped: Sludgy Orange Guitar
Item: Sludgy Orange Leather Jacket

Ba’al (Desert God, Level 6)
Equipped: Storm cloud
Item: Lightning moustache

David (Child, Level 2)
Equipped: Nothing
Item: Chinese Belt Of Invincibility

Hot Jerusalem Girl 1 (Guitarist, Level 5)
Equipped: Awesome Electric Guitar
Item: Charm bracelet

Hot Jerusalem Girl 2 (Bassist, Level 5)
Equipped: Rocking Bass Guitar
Item: Hot t-shirt

Carolyn (Naked woman, Level 10)
Equipped: Emotional manipulator
Item: Despair

Oranje (Evil ex, Level 34)
Equipped: Crazy scythe
Item: Gypsy headband

The first thing that happened in the fight was that Ba’al made it rain so that the fight would look a whole lot cooler. Making it rain on the moon took some doing. Then Burzum looked at Carolyn and Carolyn looked at Burzum. They knew what they had to do. They held hands and then they opened up with their Extra-Marital Tackle Attack. This was a powerful attack that had all kinds of residual effects. It was a good thing to use at the start of a fight. They had practiced it many times, usually after psychoanalysis sessions. Burzum was Carolyn’s psychiatrist, after all. He had worked on the psychological side of the attack. They had known for a long time that they would some day have to fight to save Ric. Even though Burzum was profiting from Ric’s absence because it meant that he could spend time with his wife, he missed Ric and he forgave him. He didn’t want Ric to float in space, alone, forever, his sadness filling up special pockets in his spacesuit that would be radioed back to the Palace so that the mysterious woman and her spy-bird could keep the whole city running. It hurt him that Ric was made to suffer just so some assholes could build a city on the Moon. He’d tried calling NASA, but NASA was okay with the whole thing. They were letting these things happen to Ric so that they could monitor the science. They were going to bring out new products.

Oranje got hit full on with the Extra-Marital Tackle Attack. She didn’t have time to block. She was stunned and frozen and confused and blind. The Moonlions had to attack instead of her for a round. They made short work of Sally, who had been doing so well up till then. Then the Moonmen attacked, so there was a shower of knives. Everyone had to take up defensive positions. Leonard Cohen put up a shield that helped everyone out a bit. But by the time everyone had got back to their feet, Oranje had recovered and jumped right in to the group and attacked Axe Axewound. Axe wasn’t quick enough to dodge or block that scythe and got hurt quite badly. Fortunately, he had some herbs, so he rubbed a few into his open wounds while Oranje jumped back to her original position and the Moonlions charged up their attacks.

The fight went on like this for a while. Leonard Cohen’s strategy was to eliminate the Moonmen first, so that he wouldn’t have to put up a shield every round. After that, they would take on the Moonlions with splash attacks, and only then would they go for Oranje. Ba’al came in really useful, even though he wasn’t quite as formidable as he had been when the Adventure Friends had fought him. His storm magic could damage Oranje, the Moonmen and the Moonlions all at the same time. This was good, because it meant that Oranje had to keep on stopping to heal. Oranje was wise to this, though. When all of the green Moonmen had been beaten, she turned her attentions directly to Ba’al. He kept on getting mauled by Moonlions and slashed with Oranje’s scythe. Leonard Cohen and Burzum’s magic couldn’t keep up with the damage Ba’al was taking, so he went down. Leonard Cohen ordered Axe Axewound to switch weapons and use David instead of his axe. David had a higher chance to stun than Axe’s axe and Oranje had resistance to fire, so it was a good move. David, however, was still too traumatised to be thrown at either of his parents again. He just ran away and hid under a chair. So they were down another fighter. Oranje’s attack was focused on Axe next, but her Moonlions were weakening. She didn’t bother to heal her Moonlions, she kept all the herbs to herself. Eventually, the Moonlions went down, but so did the hot Jerusalem girls and even Burzum, and Axe was on low health. Leonard Cohen realised that he would have to sacrifice a few rounds to charge up a really big spell. He closed his eyes and composed a song in his head that would damage Oranje so bad that anyone could pick her off afterwards. While he was doing that, Oranje kept on slashing and kicking Axe Axewound, who was nearly out of herbs. Gappy was the only one not defending or healing, but even his mighty antlers didn’t do much damage to Oranje. It looked as though Axe might fall. He was wobbling and out of breath. He had been slashed with Oranje’s scythe two dozen times. He would have been dead long before if he hadn’t had those herbs. Then Leonard Cohen opened his eyes, and they were shining blue. He sang about every emotion there was all at once. Oranje knew that every word he sang was true and she couldn’t help but cry, because she knew that she was the person in the song and it was exactly the story of a breakup she had went through. Leonard Cohen kept on singing. Oranje knew that she would melt if she carried on listening and being exposed to truths, so she jumped away. She was gone. The Adventure Friends had won.

Leonard Cohen surveyed the battlefield. He found 500 gold, which was sweet, but he was saddened and irritated by how many of the Adventure Friends had been knocked out in the fight. He helped them all up to their feet, but they weren’t looking too good. They needed a healer, but Roxy Tripfoot still hadn’t turned up. He wondered if Carolyn could do any healing magic. She was a girl, after all. Carolyn hadn’t done much in the fight. Oranje had ignored her and after Burzum had been knocked out, her attacks didn’t do much damage. He turned to talk to her, but she was walking towards the Palace, past the ruins of the once-flying house. It had exploded on impact and made a hole in the roof. Rising out of the hole on a cushion of magic was the mysterious woman. Flying by her was the zombie of her spy-bird. It had been reanimated by dark powers. A whole bunch of Moonlions were coming out of the hole, too. The Adventure Friends had learnt to hate Moonlions by this point, so that was bad news. The mysterious woman hovered many feet above the hole in the roof, glowing blue.
“Leonard Cohen, ally of the King Of Europe, I am Carolyn. Your infractions against the people of the Moon have earned you and your disciples a terrible death.” Said the mysterious woman, who was actually Carolyn. As she was saying this, the normal Carolyn who we knew was coming apart and her essences were swirling up into the air around the evil Carolyn and becoming part of her.
“Ric is almost used up,” said the complete Carolyn, “I need a replacement. You have brought him.” She held out a finger towards the sleeping King, who was safe.
“You’re after the King,” sang Leonard Cohen. “The soul with the heaviest sadness of all.”
“Yes!” screamed Carolyn, with delight. “Do you know that he once ripped the jaw off his best friend? Can you imagine? The man must have really complicated feelings. I can build cities across the whole Moon!”
“The King has a destiny.” Drawled Leonard Cohen. “I have seen it. I have sang it. You will not take him.”
Carolyn responded by shooting out green magic at Leonard Cohen. Leonard Cohen had never known power like it, except from the sadness of a girl leaving you. Axe Axewound leapt to his defense and hurled his axe at Carolyn. The axe hurt her, but it only made her turn her attentions to him. Axe was low on health, so he went down almost as soon as the green energy hit him. Gappy growled and leapt gracefully and beautifully at Carolyn, brandishing his mighty antlers. Carolyn hit Gappy so hard with the back of her hand that Gappy flew almost halfway across the Moon.
“Fools!” she laughed. “While sadness makes you and every other creature weak, it makes me strong! Only the King can match me!”
But then the King’s voice rang out across space and made the Moon shake. It was a scream, a scream of total anger. Carolyn looked again at the King, who was being carried off to a safer place by the two hot Jerusalem girls and David. The voice wasn’t coming from him. She had one second to be confused before Colonel Glowfist dropped the sky on her and punched her so hard in the head that her Moonlions disintegrated and she was smashed downwards through every level of the Palace and bounced off the bedrock of the Moon itself, whereupon she was struck by lightning fifty seven times every second for fifteen minutes by a thunder cloud that followed her around. Then a dragon made of energy breathed yellow fire at her, then bit her in two. As she charged up her healing spells, the dragon made of energy turned back into Colonel Glowfist. He was fat again. He was naked. He was having a heart attack. They were both miles from the Palace. Carolyn was shaken and weakened, but she was on the way to recovery. Colonel Glowfist was shaking and gasping for air.

The two hot Jerusalem girls and David had dragged the King and Michael into the remains of the flying house. They had put him in a mostly-intact bedroom and tucked him into bed. He needed rest. Outside, a figure had floated down onto the roof. Roxy Tripfoot ran past the figure. She was following Colonel Glowfist. She knew that his License To Kick Ass would run out and that she would need to stop his heart attack. Just as the figure touched the roof, the King opened his eyes.

He knew what to do.

End Of Chapter 41

As the house flew over the city on the Moon, Roxy Tripfoot and Colonel Glowfist looked over the side of the house. They saw the city and they got a little look at the NPCs who lived in it. They had seen NPCs lots of times, back in Europe and on their travels and adventures. Roxy had seen pretty much nothing but NPCs in Hell for hundreds of years. The point is that they knew NPCs. They knew how NPCs act, how they move, what their walk cycles look like. They know what kind of stuff that NPCs say to each other, and how often. They knew what kind of items NPCs would drop if you accidentally killed them, or if some evil mage you were fighting went nuts with the magic.

So, with their working knowledge of NPCs, they instinctively knew that something was up with these cats. They didn’t move right. They said odd things at the wrong times. They bumped into barrels and buckets and bushes and things. They couldn’t seem to open doors. Something was up. Colonel Glowfist and Roxy Tripfoot looked at each other. They hadn’t said anything to each other the whole time they had been looking. They held hands. They smiled. They knew what was going to happen. It was in their blood. They jumped over the side of the house and Colonel Glowfist used magic so that they didn’t suffer any fall damage. They ran around the town, holding hands. They spoke to the NPCs. They fished around in barrels. They found a secret room in this one guy’s house that had some weapon mods in it, but the weapon mods were for weapons they didn’t use. (Colonel Glowfist had his Infernal Gauntlet and a short staff, Roxy Tripfoot used a kind of sharp hula hoop.) They found one room that was just static and people walking in the air. The people were saying the same things that people had said in Terrorthaw’s town.

The NPCs all said weird things. Some of their sentences were incomplete, or they said things that they weren’t supposed to say yet. Some of them acted like Leonard Cohen had already fought Carolyn in the Palace, some of them got confused about gender. They called Colonel Glowfist a ‘she’ and Roxy Tripfoot a ‘he.’ Some of them even tried to attack the pair for no real reason. They only took a few hits to put down, though, and the other NPCs didn’t even notice, so it was just kind of annoying.

One of the NPCs in the town just whistled whenever they tried to talk to him. But they knew something was up, because he whistled something different every time they tried and walked in a particular direction. They kept on catching up to him and trying to talk to him, so he would walk off, whistling a new tune. They did this for a while, and the whistling man led them to a little cave. They had seen this cave earlier while they were exploring, but it didn’t look very important. There were just some rings in the corner and a few rocks on the floor. Nothing special. But when they followed the whistling man inside the cave, he had moved the rocks into a certain pattern. The pattern was magic. The magic made a hole in the floor. They could see the night sky in the hole – it was all stars and blackness. The whistling man had got a few spacesuits out from under a rock. He had put one on already. He gave the other two to Roxy Tripfoot and Colonel Glowfist.

“I can’t.” said Colonel Glowfist. “I’m too fat.” The astronaut nodded and gave Colonel Glowfist a mask that made him invincible. Colonel Glowfist picked it up and his whole body started blinking. That would protect him from space. Then the astronaut stepped into the hole and fell into space. Colonel Glowfist looked at Roxy Tripfoot with complete love, took her hand, and jumped into the hole. He knew what he was doing. He was magic.

The three of them floated through space. They were floating above the Moon. Colonel Glowfist knew that this was an illusion. He looked at Roxy Tripfoot so that she would know this too. The astronaut whistled still, but his whistling was everywhere now. It was even sadder, and longer. It filled space. It was like the opposite of the King’s laugh: everyone who heard it was sad.

Floating above the Moon, Colonel Glowfist and Roxy Tripfoot could see the Palace at the end of the city on the Moon. They could see Carolyn’s true form and Oranje’s barricades all of the Moonmen swarming around Leonard Cohen’s house. They looked up at Ric, who looked down at them. He stopped whistling.
“You can’t help them. You have to stay here and float in space with me. That’s all there is to do. You will never be together.”

Of course, they knew that Ric was speaking in opposites again.

Colonel Glowfist took out his License To Kick Ass. His robes and cloak grew back and they whipped in the wind, even though they were in space. He looked awesome. Roxy Tripfoot nearly died from desire when he grabbed her wrist and flew at supersonic speed towards the Palace.

Carolyn was going down.

End Of Chapter 40

They tried to shoot down the house. They tried, but they failed. The vibrations were too strong to penetrate with ordinary cannons. Leonard Cohen knew that. They were firing tiny moons at the house, but the tiny moons just bounced off of the bricks, because of the harmony.

This was the fourth day. The house was flying over the Moon city now and the Moon people had just freaked out and tried to kill it. The Adventure Friends were okay with that. They were just scared people. How were they to know that the flying house was harmless and that Leonard Cohen was awesome? They lived on the Moon! They had totally different perspectives on everything.

The mysterious woman, with the spy-bird perched on her shoulder, was worried about the flying house. Her spy-bird had told her the whole story. She climbed the rope ladder to the tower where Oranje lived. Oranje didn’t like to be disturbed very often, so she had built a huge tower in the garden. She was doing her hair. She was combing it with a special knife that she had got in China. The knife had a comb built right into it. You could stab people with it, if you liked. Oranje was patient with the mysterious woman, even though her womanly ablutions had been interrupted.

“You said that you had stopped them at the gates!” huffed the mysterious woman. “You said that the King was out of the game!” She was out of breath from climbing the ladder. It was very high. Oranje turned around and threw the comb-knife at the mysterious woman. It pierced the spy-bird’s eye and stuck the spy-bird to the wall of the treehouse. The spy-bird fought, but it was hopeless. It was already dead. The mysterious woman gasped. The spy-bird had been her only friend. She was paying full attention when Oranje said, “NO! The King is prey now to Inner Demons, but you must give me another contingent of Moonmen – green ones this time – so that I can finish the job. He must never be allowed to know the truth.” Oranje got up and retrieved her comb-knife from the wall and pulled the dead spy-bird off of its blade. “If his Adventure Friends reach the Palace, they will kill you all.” This was a lie. The Adventure Friends would probably find some awesome and clever way to save the day and would only really kill a few goblins or guys in boiler suits. But the mysterious woman was so upset about the spy-bird that she believed whatever Oranje said. She got on the phone and told the Moonman wrangler to suit up two hundred green Moonmen and three Moonlions for the coming attack on the Palace. Oranje snorted. Like THAT would do anything against Leonard Cohen’s flying house. She would have to do everything herself.

Back in the flying house, Carolyn felt a terrible sadness that eclipsed, for a moment, the sadness she felt for Ric. Something was going to happen. People would die in the coming battle. People she loved.

End Of Chapter 39