Saga Of The European King

Once the city of Ric was completed, with running water and everything, so the King asked Colonel Glowfist where exactly they had landed. Colonel Glowfist could read the stars. Astronomy was an important part of being an archmage. Back then, they reckoned that most magic came from the stars. They were wrong, but they figured out a lot of useful stuff anyway.

The King and Glowfist rode up to the peak of a mountain one night, where the smoke from the fires of industry would not cloud their sight. While Colonel Glowfist interrogated the stars, the King gazed up at the Moon. He couldn’t help but think of Leonard Cohen all alone up there, sadly singing to the Moon to keep Love together. But then he remembered that Leonard Cohen had gone home, back to his little hut in the mountains to write new songs. He wondered for a moment how both these thoughts could be true, then turned his attention to the landscape. The mountains in the distance were dark and jagged. There were castles in those mountains. Hundreds and hundreds of castles. He knew where they were. Colonel Glowfist hadn’t even told him yet. He knew where they were because his father had told him of this place. It was the scariest place in the world.

“We’re not in Europe,” said Colonel Glowfist, sick to his enormous stomach at the thought of being away from his beloved homeland.
“I know.” Said the King. They both swallowed.

They descended from the mountain in silence. They had seen a lot from up on that mountain. They had seen beasts moving around in the darkness. They had seen the unearthly light coming from those castles. They had both sworn they had seen some kind of giant snake exit one of the castles and slither into the cracks of the mountain. The King wasn’t scared, of course, but he was worried about his friends and about the nightmares that David would have. Colonel Glowfist was pretty scared. He would look like a pretty desirable hunk of food to the creatures in those castles. Turns out that everyone had pretty much figured out where they were anyway, as they had been attacked by werewolves while the King and the Colonel were away. It was okay, though. Sally got killed, as usual, and almost everyone got bitten, but Axe and Ba’al got the wolves smashed right into pieces. The King and Colonel Glowfist returned to the camp to find sizzling bits of werewolf everywhere and everyone looking at them with this look, you know.

“We’re in Romania.” Said Axe Axewound to the King. “Draculas live here.”
“Yes.” Said the King. “We are in Romania.” He was embarrassed that this had happened. They took turns to keep watch that night and in the morning, Michael had packed up his things and his two hot Jerusalem girls and was ready to leave.
“I’m sorry,” said Michael, “but the girls really, really want to get back to Jerusalem. They nearly got bitten by werewolves last night. They aren’t Adventure Friends. They’re not into it.” The King understood. He knew that Michael wasn’t scared of Romania because he himself was not scared. Everyone hugged Michael and he left. He promised to come and find them once he’d got everything sorted out in Jerusalem, but for now, he was gone.

The King wondered for a moment if he should take his Adventure Friends and just leave Romania. True, half of them had been bitten by werewolves and would need to get the curse revoked, but the King reckoned that he could haggle a good spell out of a priest for cheap. But then again, there was the European Law to observe that all adventurers and badasses had to kill at least one Dracula when wandering through Romania. His grandfather had personally written that law. His grandfather and his father had hated Draculas. When the King had been little, he had often been told by his father and his grandfather’s ghost that he would have to kill at least three dozen Draculas just to keep up. He had never figured out if they had been teasing.

The King’s decision became easier when Roxy Tripfoot came up to him. He was meditating in a tree when she approached him, but he had sensed her presence waiting around under the tree for quite some time. Roxy waited a full ten minutes under that tree before she coughed, and then the King jumped on her for a joke. She laughed. He laughed. It was funny the way he did it. He pretended to be a monster.

When they had stopped laughing, they got serious. Roxy told the King that she had been Queen of Romania at the time when the Draculas came. She had been killed by a Dracula, actually. The King had known this already. He had looked Roxy Tripfoot up while he had been on the Astral Plane. Everything she had said about being Queen Of The Gypsies had been true. What had happened was that the Roma had been really great guys. They hadn’t been part of Europe, but they spoke European and generally did their part to make Europe awesome by not messing with it. Everyone liked them. But then there was some deal with a demon or an alien or something and suddenly there were these Draculas everywhere, sending rats and frogs and bats and gorgons out at people and killing everyone. When they had killed enough people, the Draculas would build a castle and would fill it up with monsters and just hang out. One or more of these Draculas had enslaved a good portion of the Roma people and turned them into horrible monster-people. The King at the time had cut Romania away from Europe with his sword, so that he wouldn’t have to be responsible for all these monsters. He then led his massive armies to wipe out the Draculas. It took a hundred years, and they nearly did it. The former Roma who survived were scattered across the country and banded together into little groups and tribes. These roving bands became known as gypsies. The Draculas kept to their castles where they were basically unstoppable and eventually the King at the time grew old and became bored with sacking Romania. So the castles and monsters remained. A few abandoned towns on the outskirts became repopulated by pale, scared people. Every so often, a gang of adventurers would run into a castle and kill a Dracula and steal all of his gold. A new Dracula usually took over the castle within a few years.

Roxy told all this to the King, who knew it already. Then she got to the point: she wanted to lift the curse on the Roma people. She wanted to set the gypsies free. She said that she could find the Dracula who had turned the Roma evil and slay him in a particular, magical way and undo all of the spells he had cast in his lifetime. She wanted the King to go with them. ‘Them’ being her and Colonel Glowfist. They were going to do this together. The King raised his eyebrows and meditated for half a second. Then he said,
“It will still not be enough. The people of Europe have been terrorized by the gypsies for long enough. They will demand a political answer to this too.”
“I am still prepared to marry your son when he comes of age, Your Highness.” Said Roxy Tripfoot, with a heavy heart.
“Good! Good!” said the King, laughing. When Roxy heard his laugh, she couldn’t help but feel happy. She thought about how great it would be to free the Roma. She thought about how strong a female character that would make her. She thought about Colonel Glowfist being all thin.

That night, the Adventure Friends rode off on Gappy towards the nearest Dracula castle. Everything was going to be cool.

End Of Chapter 44

So here’s who got bitten by a werewolf: Axe Axewound, Sally Minefield, Gappy, David and Ba’al. All of them were cursed now and would turn into a werewolf when it was the least convenient, except for Ba’al, who was a desert god and didn’t have to deal with these things.

Gappy’s curse kicked in immediately, because that was the least convenient thing that could happen to anyone. Most people turned into wolves after they had been bitten by a werewolf, but not Gappy. Gappy wasn’t a normal person, he was a reindeer. Because of this, he didn’t turn into a wolf at all. He turned into a guy. This surprised everyone, mostly because Gappy’s reindeer magic stopped working and he couldn’t carry everyone any more. All of their stuff and their donkeys and Colonel Glowfist’s Awesome Horses and a few of the King’s soldiers that they had forgotten about, not to mention the Adventure Friends themselves, fell off of Gappy’s back when the change came. The soldiers’ names were Jacob Hillmounter and Timothy Clashradish. They were very, very hungry. They had been stuck on Gappy for quite a while.

When everyone got up, they found that Gappy had turned into a big, naked, blonde man. He was out of his mind with fear. He had never been a big, naked, blonde man before. He tried to gallop away and find a quiet spot to figure stuff out, but he nearly broke a leg in trying. The girls rushed to him to coo and calm him down, but everything looked so different and smelled so weird and sounded dull and meaningless, so he screamed. He had never screamed before. Not like this. Even Ba’al, who had once seen an entire tribe die of thirst over a period of twenty years, was surprised at the sheer terror and hurt that was in that scream. It was sadness and fear and confusion and pain all rolled into one terrible lycanthropic moment. The girls shrank back, the men just stood there, dumbfounded and Ba’al rubbed his chin thoughtfully. But the King was there and the King knew all about screaming. He was angry with his Adventure Friends that a scream like that had such an effect on them. He could have screamed like that without even trying. So what if Gappy was coughing up handfuls of blood and gore and snot? The King could scream better and harder than anyone. That is what he did. He screamed so loud that every Dracula in Romania woke up and immediately feared for their unlives.His scream travelled faster than the speed of sound. Sonic booms shot off everywhere. The scream smashed Gappy’s scream right back into his face and he was knocked unconscious. Gappy fell down to the floor and the King gave everyone this look. The look said that they shouldn’t be freaked out when people scream. The look went on to say that he, the King, could scream harder than anyone else in the world so don’t worry, you guys, he’s got it under control.

So now they had to carry Gappy, rather than the other way around. This had only happened once before. A long time ago, when the King was just a teenager, he and Michael had carried Gappy in a horse-riding race they had entered at Father Dominoes’ parish. Gappy was hung over because they had fed him beer the night before. So the King wrapped Gappy in a sleeping bag to protect him from the harsh Romanian winter and hoisted him onto his back.

After they had given some bread and cheese rations to Jacob and Timothy, they set on again for the nearest Dracula castle. The idea was that they would hit up the Dracula for information about the Dracula who had put the curse on the gypsies. Draculas were pretty tight with each other. They were all in touch with the Dracula community. They would get to the first castle the next day. They would reach a little settlement before the night set in too deeply. The King hoped that there would be a priest in the town who could remove their curses. As they marched, they updated Timothy and Jacob on their travels and adventures. They had seen most things from on top of Gappy, but they didn’t have the full story. They enjoyed the update.

They reached the town earlier than they expected and the King flew into a rage when he found that all of the priests in Romania had been crucified up on the hill. His rage was so intense to the pale and washed-out people of the Romanian town that they put him and the Adventure Friends up in the Inn for free, even though they weren’t technically letting people in at that hour. They also found some Romanian clothes for Gappy. Everyone had a nice sleep, especially David - who was a tired little guy – until Sally and Axe turned into werewolves and freaked out a little bit. They howled and whined and scuffed and tore their clothes.

“Go to sleep!” screamed the King from upstairs. Sally and Axe looked at each other, made a tiny little whine each, then lay down on their beds and went back to sleep. In the morning, they had turned back into people, and Gappy was a reindeer again. The King was mad at Axe and Sally at breakfast. He pretended that there wasn’t any strawberry jam left, only apricot jam. He hid the sachets of strawberry jam under his plate. But then David turned into the cutest little wolf-boy that everyone had to laugh. David got a big steak from the kitchen for being so adorable.

That day was spent hacking through zombies. The road to the first castle was clogged with them. They weren’t very dangerous zombies, they only took one hit to kill, but there sure were a lot of them. It was tiring work. When they got to the castle, it was evening already. As they neared the castle, everyone who could turned into a werewolf or a naked blonde guy.

The King rolled his eyes.

End Of Chapter 45

The King was angry about Axe Axewound, David, Gappy and Sally Minefield being werewolves. Werewolves were strong and tough, but they couldn’t use weapons and their inventories were tiny. Also, magic didn’t work on them the same way. The King knew all this because he had been a werewolf when he was younger. It was okay then, because he wasn’t carrying very much and Stacy Heroine could hold Cutty while he killed a bunch of monsters.

But now that Gappy was just a non-magical naked blonde guy, there was a severe lack of storage space. Axe’s flaming axe was difficult enough to stash on its own, but when you factor in all of his armour and healing potions and power-ups and enchantments, it’s enough to tax any party’s inventory. They were all carrying the stuff Gappy had dropped, in any case. The King stamped his feet. This wouldn’t do at all. He ordered everyone to stay put just outside the castle and watch the stuff while he went in and killed the Dracula himself. He grabbed a few fire bombs and boomerangs and ran off towards the castle. He managed to get inside the castle before the drawbridge went up.

The others all stood outside the castle, surrounded by mounds of stuff. They didn’t really know what to do. It was dangerous out there in the open, though they probably had the manpower to fend off any threat save a boss, if they were careful. They unfolded Axe’s axe into a tent and made camp there. It began to rain. Timothy and Jacob were told to stand guard because they were less important characters. Colonel Glowfist was covered in a rubber sheet so that he wouldn’t get wet. He was too fat to fit inside the tent. Roxy tried to teach Gappy, who was a blonde guy, and David, who was an adorable wolf-boy, and Ba'al, who was from another country, to play cards, but it didn’t work out. Axe and Sally ran off outside in wolf form. They were wild things now. They wanted to hunt. They didn’t find anything to kill out there in the hills, since monsters had picked them clean long ago. They instead decided to have wolf-sex. They were pretty embarrassed about this later. It was disgusting.

The King wasn’t doing so well, either. He was fine in the first courtyard – he’d chopped his way through stupid skeletons and a few fire-spitting monster skulls, but then a zombie dog had run right at him, stolen Cutty, and run away. Cutty screamed. He was terrified of dogs. The King tried to follow the dog, but was attacked from both sides by bats that were flying in tricky patterns. He then found that he couldn’t jump on these enemies to kill them, which is what he normally did when he was unarmed, so he avoided and dodged skeletons and bats and ghosts until he got inside the castle proper. He climbed a staircase and ripped a big, thick curtain off the wall. He picked up the curtain’s drawstring. It was a pretty thick piece of rope. He lashed it out, experimentally. It hit a candlestick that was illuminating the room. A big bag of money fell out of the candlestick. The King was pleased. Now he had a whip, and also some money. He whipped everything from then on. He whipped a bat and it exploded in a ball of flame. He whipped a wall and it fell apart. There was a turkey dinner inside. The King ate the dinner. Then he went back to whipping skeletons. It felt good.

End Of Chapter 46

Commander Flightfeather had been interim ruler of the Captial City Of Europe for a few months now. Everyone missed the King and had an intrinsic dislike of birds, but they warmed to Commander Flightfeather pretty quickly. He was a nice guy. He thought of others.

The first thing that Commander Flightfeather did after Terrorthaw’s attack was to set up caravan lines to all of the nearby Gateways into Hell. He had a garrison camped at every one and at least three Heroes in each garrison. The camps were set up so that they surrounded the Gateways completely. Whenever a demon spawned out of a Gateway, Flightfeather’s men would kill it before it had a chance to get its bearings or even tell everyone what kind of powers it had. When the demon was dead, a guy on a horse would take whatever jewels or gold it had back to the Capital City. Commander Flightfeather would then buy everyone jelly and ice cream or a turkey dinner, depending on the mood. Everybody got the idea that Commander Flightfeather was a cool guy pretty quickly.

This went on for months, and the people of Europe’s Capital City became fat and happy that winter. There was even talk of making Commander Flightfeather the proper Mayor of Europe’s Capital City. Commander Flightfeather politely declined these offers, since being Mayor of the Capital City was the privilege of the King and the King alone. Everyone understood and they went back to their meals of chocolate cake and soda. On the day that Commander Flightfeather turned down the position of Mayor, the messenger from one of the camps came by with a frown on his face. He had not brought jewels today. He had instead brought a note. The note was from the Devil. It said that camping out by the spawning area was cheating and that Commander Flightfeather was really lame for doing so. Commander Flightfeather was hurt. He didn’t know that he had been breaking any rules. He thought that he was being clever. Didn’t the Devil know that the people of Europe’s Capital City were eating orange-chocolate and toffees every day? Commander Flightfeather cried then, because he knew that he would have to alter his tactics. He hated unfair fights. He was sad that he had upset the Devil. He always liked to think of himself as a guy you could depend on to play fair.

Tears streaming down his face, he left the gates of the Capital City while everyone was still eating their ice-cream and wafers. He rode out to the nearest camp. He was whispering under his breath and under his tears the whole way. He was whispering, “Stop camping, guys. Stop camping!” When he arrived, the men were concerned. One of the Heroes, a Paladin, ran up to the stricken Commander.
“What is wrong, dear Flightfeather?” said the Paladin. “Can the magic of Jesus heal you?” Commander Flightfeather shook his head. He didn’t know who Jesus was. People weren’t really into Jesus in Medieval times. Why would they be, with the King around?

But before Commander Flightfeather could open his mouth, the sky became filled with beautiful shapes. There were so many colours and forms and songs in the air. The Free Birds had come. They were led by Gadfly and Formation, who had learned about sadness from the King himself and wanted to spread nothing but good feelings to the world.
“BROTHER FLIGHTFEATHER!” said the birds, as one. “WE HAVE COME TO BRING YOU INTO THE FREE BIRD BROTHERHOOD. EVERYTHING IS AN ILLUSION.” Everybody in the camp froze. They had heard about the big party in Jerusalem and how they should be nice to birds from now on, but it was hard to forget Terrorthaw and the Bird Wars that nearly destroyed Europe. It was hard to think of birds as anything except mindless vessels of murder.
“I can’t join you!” shouted Commander Flightfeather through his smile of utter joy. “My duty is here. You should see the Capital City, oh brother birds. It is the wonder of all of Europe.”
“COOL.” Said the birds. “WE’LL SWING BY AT SIX.”

Commander Flightfeather was ecstatic. He had been mistrusted and treated very tenderly his whole life because birds were inherently evil, and now here were all these good birds, beautiful to behold and hear, about to meet all of his friends and neighbours. Everyone knew that they were supposed to be nice to birds from now on, so they wouldn’t all freak out when they saw the birds coming. Commander Flightfeather rode home especially fast, but not before breaking up the camp at the Gateway to Hell. He didn’t need them there any more.

“Friends!” he shouted to everyone who was having a chat and a smoke after finishing off their supper. “I bring you gifts far greater than trifles and milkshakes. Behold! Wonderous creatures the like you have never seen!” And then all the birds flew over the city. Everyone was shocked, then they laughed. Birds were awesome! How great was it that they weren’t evil any longer? It was great. Everyone had a bird party and the birds got drunk and talked about their families. In the morning, the birds decided to stay a while. Everyone agreed that this was a better gift than the desserts and treats. The birds were bright and colourful and intelligent and some of them could sound like the telephone. Everyone in Europe’s Capital City had at least one bird companion from that day forth.

They also figured out that they could eat the birds and their unfertilized eggs, which was a bonus.

End Of Chapter 47

The King stayed inside that Dracula castle for a whole week. He kept on losing health and would then have to camp out for a day or so in a corridor he’d cleared of monsters. That was a difficult task in itself – often he’d kill a skeleton or something, walk a few paces, then turn around to find the skeleton alive and well again, throwing bones and the like. He would also keep falling down bottomless pits and would have to go back to the last door he’d went through. Sometimes, the pits weren’t even bottomless. He would climb up a short staircase to find a new section, but then if he fell down that very same staircase, he’d wind up back at the door. It was very frustrating. Also, the castle was huge. There were underground tunnels and rivers and outside bits and gigantic chandeliers that he’d have to jump across and crypts and towers and minecarts and everything.

It helped that there were candlesticks everywhere and that the candlesticks contained hearts and power-ups and weapons and sacks of money. He would have been pretty stuck without those candlesticks.

So eventually the King found himself whipping a Dracula in the face a whole lot. He’d just beaten four bosses in a row. The Dracula wasn’t letting on anything he knew about gypsy curses, not without a good face-whipping. He was teleporting around and shooting fireballs and generally being annoying, but the King was up to it. His reflexes were exact. Even if the Dracula wasn’t within whipping range, he would get a boomerang in the face for his efforts. The King was enjoying the whipping. It wasn’t a sexual thing. It was about violence and having fun.

By the time the Dracula turned into his final form (some kind of ghost-dragon), the King was enjoying himself so much that he was laughing out loud. He had enough hearts to keep flinging boomerangs all day. He had found the extra hearts in a secret room. He didn’t know why the possession of a human heart gave him the ability to throw a boomerang and he didn’t care. He was about to kill his first Dracula. He was dodging ghost-fire like a graceful deer. He was whipping until he couldn’t even feel it, even though the Dracula felt it every time. The Dracula was afraid of dying.

“Ready to spill the beans, you stupid Dracula?” laughed the King, whipping it in the eye and just throwing boomerangs everywhere. Boomerangs really were the best weapon. “Tell me who did the magic on the gypsies!”
“Draculas don’t rat out on Draculas!” sniffed the Dracula who was being a ghost-dragon. He was bleeding electricity. His health was low. At that, the King put away his whip. He was sick of whipping all of a sudden. He stopped throwing boomerangs. He put up his wooden fists. The King was the best prizefighter in Europe. He wanted now to box a ghost-dragon-Dracula. He did so. He punched that Dracula right in the face. He uppercutted and the Dracula went flying. It stopped being a ghost-dragon and went back to being a gaunt dandy. He picked up the Dracula and punched it in the stomach for fifteen minutes. The Dracula couldn’t do anything about it. The King dropped the Dracula to the floor. It was ready to speak.

“The- brother Dracula – who – cursed – the ugh- Roma cattle…” the Dracula began, but the King was in no mood for patience. He ran over the Dracula’s coffin and picked up Cutty. The Dracula had been sleeping with Cutty, which is disgusting.
“Chief! You rescued me! It was horrible, Chief. The things he did –“
“No time, Cutty!” said the King and hacked off the Dracula’s legs.
“DRACULA KING!” screamed the Dracula. “DEATHROCK PLATEAU, DEATH MOUNTAIN! PLEASE!” he moaned. “Please give me back my legs!”
“You’ll join your legs –“ said the King, serious, “in Hell!” and then he killed the Dracula. He wasn’t sure if Draculas went to Hell or not.

“Deathrock Plateau. Death Mountain.” Intoned the King. “I hoped he wouldn’t say that.”
“Jeepers, Chief.” Said Cutty. “I don’t think that even you can take down the Dracula King in his own castle.”
“I don’t think so either, Cutty.” Said the King, softly. Then he smiled. “I’m going to need an army.”

End Of Chapter 48