Saga Of The European King

The King had spent two years imprisoned in the belly of a really well-built stone temple. He spent the entire time in total darkness, with no one to talk to except the man who slid his food through the little door once every while. The man didn’t say much. The only food that he brought was all made of Maize, which was a new kind of life invented by Viking wizards. The King didn’t like the taste of Maize very much. It wasn’t European food. Most people would have thought that this was a bad situation. Not the King. On the first day of his imprisonment, he just looked around, realised in a second that the walls were so thick and well built that even his mighty wooden hands could not break them, shrugged, and started to meditate.

During his meditations, the King learned and rediscovered a lot about himself. The King was pretty old when compared to normal people. He was older than most of the people he had grown up with because he gained so many more experience points than anyone else and because he spent a lot much time logged on to the Astral Plane. Sometimes, because he had a lot to do, he lost track of some of the adventures he had had and would have to review them in a reduced, briskly-edited form so that he and everyone watching could catch up.

The King spent those two years of his imprisonment watching reruns of old episodes of his life. He paused only to eat a plate of Maize. You may think that this would have reduced the King in some way, or even made him weaker. You’d be wrong if you thought anything like that. Watching the reruns made him stronger and wiser and gained him even more experience points than before. Memories are powerful, especially if your memories are of truly awesome things that really happened.

A breakthrough occurred when the King remembered a whole section of his life as a boy in his mid-teens. He was still travelling with Father Dominoes at that point. Every week, the King, Michael, Mechanicus and Father Dominoes would travel to some new place that contained interesting facts and then the King would get in trouble or Michael would get kidnapped and then someone would have to save the day and Mechanicus would probably invent something and Father Dominoes would give out a lesson when it was all over. One week, while visiting Father Dominoes’ old friend, Father Christmas, up in Lapland, the King went out picking mushrooms by the Fungal Steam. Father Dominoes and Father Christmas were going to make a stew. The King thought that this was pretty boring. Stews are pretty boring, to be fair. So he wandered off into the woods looking for some wolves to kill. He didn’t find any, but he did hear a terrible crying noise coming from within the wood. He ran to the crying noise because he knew that something was in trouble and that it needed to be saved. He was right. When shoved aside a copse of tall grass and peered into a clearing of the woods, he saw a ferocious lion attacking a baby reindeer. The King knew exactly what to do. He ran right up to the lion and punched it in the face as hard as he could with his wooden fist. The lion was knocked unconscious and the King ran to the baby reindeer. It was not badly hurt, but it was very scared. The King hugged that baby reindeer with every ounce of his feelings. The hug was so intense and so magical that a good portion of the hug was transferred into the baby reindeer’s soul or whatever. The reindeer became a magical reindeer. There was no limit to the amount of people who could ride on him. The King called him ‘Gappy’ and they became friends forever.

But then the King looked over to the poor lion that he had punched in the face. The lion was crying and his face looked very bruised and sore. The King instantly felt sorry for what he had done to the beautiful creature. He was sorry for interfering with Nature and for injuring an innocent lion that had probably just tired and hungry and alone. He ran over to the lion and he hugged the lion just as he had hugged the baby reindeer. The hug lasted for twelve minutes. Just as before, some of the King’s magic leapt into the lion because of the intensity of the hug and of the King’s feelings.
“Thank you, Your Highness,” said the lion.
“Lion! You can talk!” said the young King, amazed.
“Yes, I can, young one. I am sorry that I tried to hurt the baby reindeer. You were right to stop me.” The lion said.
“No, I was wrong. You were just doing what you had to do.” Said the King. The lion began to cry.
“My pride is gone.” Sobbed the lion. “They died last winter. I am a sad old lion. I am so hungry. Lions normally hunt in packs.” He explained.
“I will call you ‘Trappy,’ lion. You can join my pride. We have adventures and learn important lessons. We could use a talking lion,” said the King. “And a magic infinite reindeer,” he said, looking over at Gappy.

And so Gappy and Trappy joined the King’s Adventure Friends and got up to all sorts of boyish fun. They traveled all around Europe and captured the hearts of everyone they met (except those nasty villains and crooks), and Trappy always to say his catchphrase in every episode. His catchphrase was, “Trappy to the ruh-ruh-rescue!” He even got his own single in 1991 – ‘The Trappy Rap!’ The lyrics to the song had Trappy teaching an ethnically-diverse gang of kids with baseball caps about being cool.

Eventually, though, when the King breached the next big age demographic, Trappy grew sick. He had been quite old when the King had met him. Father Dominoes and the King took him to the vet, and the vet said that Trappy had to be put to sleep. The King held the big old lion’s paw as he lay on the hard table and the vet gave him an injection. He softly and slowly sang the last verse of ‘The Trappy Rap!’ as the lion gently drifted away.

It’s really simple, just move and clap
From toe to toe and tap to tap
You wanna be cool? Do I hafta draw a map?
Just come on everybody and do the Trappy Rap!

Trappy!
Rap!
Trappy!
Rap!
Trappy!
Rap!

Come on everybody and do the Trappy Rap!

When the song was over. The King let go of Trappy’s paw. It hung limply by the side of the cold, hard table. The King closed his eyes as a boy. He opened them as a man.

He left Europe within the week. He left most of his supporting cast behind and wandered the fantastical lands beyond his Kingdom. He learned how to meditate, how to love and how to be the best possible person in the world. This whole period was called The New Saga Of The European King. We’ll get to that.

When the King, sitting there in that well-built prison, reflected on his memory of Trappy dying on that table, there was an audible click in the darkness. His prison cell was filled with light. Maize particles were scattered everywhere. The King smiled, but did not open his eyes. He knew what was up. Trappy had seen his emotions from Heaven. He had locked onto the intensity of the King’s memory. Everything was going to be all right.

“Trappy to the ruh-ruh-rescue!” said a ghostly voice. The King opened his eyes. There was Trappy, standing in the prison cell, wreathed in light. He looked younger and stronger than the King had ever seen him.
“What brings you to this neck of the woods?” said the King. It was the first thing he had said in nine months. Trappy’s reply was to lower his head and open his mouth. A pair of wooden hands fell to the floor with a heavy thunk. They were the King’s latest pair of hands. He had missed two birthdays, so Mechanicus had worked twice as long to produce a super-brilliant new pair.
“Thank you, Trappy,” smiled the King. “How is Heaven?”
“I sit at the feet of your father in his celestial throne room,” said Trappy, laughing. “We play golf every Sunday with Shaka Zulu. That crazy guy tells the best jokes.”
“And how is Sally doing? Is she settling in?” said the King.
“What you talking about, Your Highness?” said Trappy, suddenly worried. The King understood.
“Never mind. I am joking.” The King said. “Thank you for the hands, old friend.”
“Your Majesty, Mechanicus and little Brian Majesty are in a lot of trouble. You need to check if they’re okay as soon as possible.” Said Trappy.
“Will do, Trappy,” said the King.
“Be cool!” said Trappy, disappearing.

The King remained seated for exactly three seconds before he stood up, removed his hands, replaced them with the new ones, aimed his right arm at one of the prison walls and pressed a button on his outstretched wrist that fired his fist directly through the wall. The fist flew for one hundred metres under its own power before looping back around to reattach itself to the King’s arm. The King walked calmly through the gaping hole in the wall, waved the dust away and casually disarmed the three guards who had run to investigate the source of the explosion. He held a captured axe at the neck of one of the guards, with one of his powerful new hands squeezing the windpipe of another. He set his voice at medium intensity and spoke at the third. This is what his voice said:

“Take me to Erik Rage-Eater!”

End Of Chapter 57

Turns out that Erik Rage-Eater! wasn’t in that particular temple. That was okay with the King. It had been kind of a long-shot to ask the temple guards to grant him an audience with their leader right away. They would have to ride for three days on armadilloback before they reached the Parliament Temple, where Erik Rage-Eater! lived.

The King was also okay with that, too. Those three days on armadilloback gave him a good opportunity to catch up with Axe Axewound, who had met up with the King in a corridor. He had been on his way to rescue the King with two thousand forest animals at his back. Turns out that his whole trip across the greenlands of Europe and the badlands of the United States of America had been for nothing. Oh well! At least it was good for the King to see him again. He urged Axe Axewound to tell his curious story and explain the presence of the thousands of animals that were following them. Axe had not spoken European for two years, so it took him a while to work up to the telling, but he was eager to let the King in on his awesome solo adventure.

Axe Axewound had left the Adventure Friends in Romania because of urges. Ever since he had become a werewolf, he’d been coming to turns with the fact that his sex engines were all totally out of whack. He’d made wolf-love to Sally Minefield while they had both been wolfing around. That had been a big deal for him. Once it had happened, he couldn’t really get into the frame of mind that human urges were good and that wolf urges were kind of embarrassing. With his heightened senses, he could tell exactly where and when some wolves or other forest animals were having a good time within a one hundred mile radius. You have to remember that the King’s disappearance was a real low-down bummer for the Adventure Friends and Europe as a whole. There was no one left to fight in Romania with all the Draculas gone. The Adventure Friends kept on getting into arguments. Axe Axewound felt useless and fed up. Five months into the Adventure Friends’ journey to Portugal, Axe Axewound had caught a whiff of a big wolf sex party with flowers and dancing and everything and had disappeared to live a completely different life.

Let’s talk a bit about Medieval ecology. Basically, the King and his fathers before him made real sure that, no matter which part of Europe you lived in, there was always a forest handy. This was because forests were a useful source of adventures, dashing outlaw gangs, low-level monsters, witches and gold. All of these things were an important part of the Medieval economy, so people weren’t allowed to cut down too many trees or burn down these forests too much. A lot of the preserved forests linked up with each other, so they were like a parallel Europe, in a way, where instead of Italian and Spanish and Cyprian people, you’d instead get wolves and bears and mushroom-men. Make no mistake, the King still had ultimate jurisdiction in the forest-Europe, and it all definitely belonged to him and him alone, but he was pretty cool about it, on the whole.

Axe Axewound was an immediate and big hit with the wolves he met up with in the forest. They danced and ate and Axe challenged and killed the head wolf and became leader of the pack. The other wolves were pretty happy about this. The last leader of the pack had been a real asshole. Axe wouldn’t revert back to his human form for a long while, but he was able to think and act like a man when he wanted to. He used his human intelligence to forge alliances with the bears and the rats and the wildcats and the mushroom men and the insect unions all of the other forest animals. Before long, they were having parties every night. The forest creatures did their bit for society during the day and, because of the emphasis on logistics, had the whole night free to kick back and relax and not get eaten by anyone or anything.

Axe counted these days as the happiest time of his life. Everyone in the forest loved him and respected his leadership as being awesome and beneficial. He’d receive presents every day, and they weren’t the crappy kind of presents that you’d expect one to get from strangers, but gifts that showed love and thought. Axe even went so far as to dig a great hole and bury his flaming axe, symbolising his acceptance of his new life wherein axes weren’t necessary. It is quite difficult to bury a flaming axe, but this made the metaphor even more powerful. There were greater powers in Medieval Europe, though, powers that even Axe Axewound’s iron will could not ignore. The King was missing, and Axe had abandoned his Adventure Friends. Some nights, Axe would pad out to an isolated clearing or icy mountain peak, let his guilt take over and just howl and howl and howl until morning.

One morning, returning to his pack after a long howl, Axe found the familiar sleeping spots of his fellows were empty. He smelled that his pack had been absent for many hours. He noticed other things very quickly afterwards. The forest was silent. No birdsong, no chants from the insect unions, nothing. He realised that he hadn’t seen another creatures at all on his way back from the night’s howling. Then he smelled the explosions. They were old, but their olfactory presence was so troubling that Axe let all of his guilt and fear and shame well up all at once and he turned into a naked, ginger man and cried. His wonderful new life, for which he had sacrificed so much, had been stripped away in the space of a night’s howl. He cried for many hours, and was still crying when a baby fox crept up to him and curled in his lap for comfort. The baby fox was crying, too. He was the only animal left in the forest. Axe Axewound knew this instinctively, and this only made him cry harder.

By the time the night had come round, Axe Axewound had cried out all of his tears. He picked up the baby fox. He asked it what had happened.
“We were all just dancing around, having an awesome party like we do every night, being free and wild and happy, when his fat guy showed up in a rocket ship, threw some bombs around, then piled everybody into the back of ship before flying away, laughing.” The baby fox sniffed. “I didn’t get caught because I was hiding behind a rock,” he explained, sadly. Just then, there was a loud buzzing and Axe and the baby fox turned their heads to see three man-sized mechanical insects covered in guns fly right at them.

Axe dropped the baby fox, who scampered behind his legs. His axe appeared in his hand. It was still on fire. He allowed himself to look really mean for a few seconds before hurling the axe in an arc that destroyed all three of the mechanical insects at once. They exploded. Out of their husks fell a pig, a bluebird and a rabbit – one critter for each insect. Axe Axewound strode up to the dazed and slightly singed animals and interrogated them as loudly as he could.
“What manner of forest animal are you, who would dress yourself so fiendishly in this most dark of hours?” he screamed. Take note that, while Axe Axewound’s screaming was hundreds of levels below the King’s vocal abilities, it was still really intimidating, especially to the rabbit, who was shy. The bluebird was the first to answer, being the least concussed of the trio.
“We were dressed so against our will, sir, entirely! Last I knew, I was being put inside that thing, which had up to that point been an inert clump of metal. Once I was inside, it moved and shook something awful. I am so very grateful that you released me, and I should think that my also-fated companions are too.” Axe Axewound was surprised at this. He didn’t know that bluebirds were so good at talking Forest. But the bluebird’s words struck a memory in him. He thought of Terrorthaw and several of his evil schemes.
“I’ve seen this dark wizardry before. You were being used as a power source.” Axe Axewound paused for one instant, then, “I must put a stop to this. I must save my pack and I must save the forest.”
“We’ll come with you!” sang the brave little baby fox from somewhere about his ankle.
“Oh yes,” chirped the bluebird, “If anyone is to aid you in the evisceration of the devil that did this to us, I hope that I will get a good many pecks in myself.”
“Good.” Said Axe Axewound, somewhat impressed with this bluebird.
“i want to help,” said the rabbit, “but not too much.”
“I will help you because everyone else is doing it!” said the pig.

Oh man, did they have themselves an adventure.

End Of Chapter 58

When night fell, the King and Axe Axewound parked their armadillos underneath some tall trees in the jungle. They decided to climb up the tall jungle trees and make camp there, for the jungle was likely teeming with savage creatures that would interrupt their sleep looking for a fight. The only creatures that would bother them in the trees were monkeys. That was all right, because the King had hung out with monkeys during his travels around India and he learned how to secrete a musk that told monkeys to leave him alone. He could do it in seven different accents so that he would be unmolested by monkeys in any region of the world.

Kings of Europe and amazing Celtic werewolf axe-throwing people don’t just sleep on branches, though. They are way too classy for that. First, they had to build a cool treehouse in which to sleep. This was no problem for the pair, because they had built many treehouses together over the years. They knew what they were doing.

Building treehouses took time, though. But that was cool, too, because it meant that Axe Axewound could finish his story about his forest friends. His forest friends weren’t building the treehouse with them, by the way. This was because of two reasons: 1) Forest animals can’t build anything and 2) Forest animals can never enter the Jungle. They are completely different habitats. Axe Axewound’s forest friends were just hanging out in the clearing before the jungle. They were sleeping out in the open because they were animals.

Okay. So. The first part of Axe Axewound’s adventure was easy, because he was running through the forest and the forest was his home and it’s hard to get a drop on a werewolf in his own home. Some robot insects and robot crabs shot some glowy balls at him, but he smashed them right into pieces and rescued the furry animals inside of them. There were also some spikes just kind of lying around, but Axe Axewound knew the patterns of all the floating platforms in the forest and could cross the spike pits easily. So far, so good. The animal friends that he had rescued were following him, singing encouraging songs and briefing the newly freed on the situation. They also would hold all of the jewellery that Axe would pick up. There was a lot of jewellery in the forest. Axe had a hunch that it would come in handy later on. When he’d run through a good chunk of the forest, dealt with dozens of mechanical critters, jumped through tubes, run through hoops, smashed a television and generally tired himself out, Axe Axewound heard the anguished screams of one of his girlfriends.

Let’s have an aside here about Axe Axewound’s girlfriends. Axe had spent quite some time as an animal, and it’s a fact that animals have lots of girlfriends. Animals are also not very fussy, which is why they eat off the floor and crap in the house. Axe Axewound had girlfriends of just about every species there was to be found in the forest. He stuck mostly to mammals – hedgehogesses and she-bears and sows and bitches and vixens and does and sultry cat ladies – but he had girlfriends that were butterflies, mushroom princesses, penguins, geckos, aubergines, snowmen and big jugs of sake. This was the way of the forest creatures, and especially the way of the awesome leader of the forest creatures who could throw rocking parties. The screaming he heard had definitely come from a canid-type of girlfriend. They were probably his favourite type, depending on his mood.

He ran directly towards the screaming to find that his girlfriend was in the clutches of a tall, grey-haired, stocky man. He had dastardly facial hair and laughed all the time. The laughing man didn’t seem too perturbed to see a naked Celt run towards him brandishing a giant, flaming axe, for he was on a high platform and couldn’t be reached just yet, no matter how high Axe tried to jump.

“Hahaha! Who are you, Celt? Why are you so angry?” said the laughing man. His accent was that of the Kingdom of Sharing.
“Let her go!” screamed Axe Axewound, clenching his teeth so hard that he bit his tongue and got a mouth full of blood. He hadn’t spoken European in some time and found it really difficult. In contrast, the stranger with his girlfriend was eloquent and thoughtful. It was a stark dichotomy!
“Hahaha! No, no, my sweet Celt. I’ve bought this forest see, bought it from the local Lord. I’ve rounded up all the animals and I’ve upgraded them into mechanical insects and crabs and things. But I’m keeping the pretty ones for a special experiment in my lab, which is miles away, past the ruined city, the cave, the underwater part, the circus and the city. I’d invite you to come and watch with the rest of us, but you don’t look like you’ve a stitch to wear. Haha!”
“Grroooooaaaaaaarrrgggghhh!” said Axe Axewound, turning into a werewolf.
“Hahaha!” said the man who had bought the forest, raising his bushy eyebrows in surprise, “You’re an animal, too. A very special sort of animal, I see. Ha! I’ll present you to the Natural Philosophy community as a special sort of present, then – one we can experiment on all day and every day!” With that, the man ran away with Axe Axewound’s girlfriend. Axe was finally able to jump up at the platform where the man had stood and taunted him and he loped and bounded after the man’s scent trails. His tracking skills were quite unnecessary, though, as a tiny little rocket ship carrying the man and a giant, glowing metal ball whooshed over Axe’s head.

“Hahaha! Feel the wrath of Dr. Tchaikovsky!” screamed the man as he flew about, trying to bean Axe Axewound with the metal ball. Axe Axewound then beat the living crap out of Dr. Tchaikovsky, who dropped Axe’s girlfriend when he steered his damaged, smoke-belching rocketship right out of there. Axe ran over to his stricken girlfriend and licked her face until she was cool. Then all of the rescued animals did a dance around Axe Axewound as he struck a pose and counted all of the jewellery he had picked up.

All in all, a productive day.

End Of Chapter 58

The King could not sleep, even though it was really late. He was thinking about Axe Axewound’s adventure. He hadn’t finished the story yet – apparently the really good parts were yet to come. The King really wanted to know what happened after that first confrontation with Dr. Tchaikovsky.

The King was also a little jealous of Axe Axewound. Of all the adventures the King had been on and enjoyed, he had never become a werewolf and rescued a load of animal friends. He had been in the forest, sure, and he had befriended lots of animals, but he felt then that he hadn’t gone all the way with these things the way that Axe Axewound had. He was also kind of upset that Axe Axewound had seemed to accumulate more girlfriends than him. Then he remembered that he was the King Of Europe and that Axe Axewound was his subject and owed complete fealty to him. He jumped up, ripped the travel-blanket off of Axe Axewound’s sleeping form, screamed mildly (remember, this actually means that it was really, really loud) and demanded that Axe Axewound finish his story. Axe Axewound was groggy and confused, but he got right on it. The King usually did something like this when there was a story to be heard.

Axe picked up where he had left off. He’d just saved his first girlfriend and he skimmed over the part where there was some pretty chauvinistic sex with her while she was stricken and traumatised. The King had been kind of uncomfortable when Axe had told him about the anthropomorphic animal sex/gangrape that he’d indulged in the earlier parts of the story, so he decided to spare him the details that he just wouldn’t understand. When all that was over, Axe had decided to follow Dr. Tchaikovsky. He had flown his little rocket ship into a cave. Axe had expected to find the ship crashed in some dark corner in the cave and the evil doctor crippled and cowering in a pool of his own terrified effluent. He was looking forward to tracking him down and eating him. He decided then that it would only be fair if his animal friends could get a bite or two of their own in, but only after he had devoured his share. He motioned for them to follow him. They pulled away from Axe’s weeping girlfriend and they all picked themselves up and followed him into the cave, singing.

They were kind of surprised to find more mechanical animals in the cave. Axe Axewound made short work of them, of course, and the prisoners inside were added to his growing entourage of furry friends. Then they all rode a bunch of mine carts and swam through underwater parts and battled a giant mechanical cave-worm. Axe Axewound had adventured around a lot of caves, so this was standard to him. When they did find Dr. Tchaikovsky, he turned out to be perfectly fine. He was in the middle of repairing his rocket ship. When he saw Axe and the others, he laughed, jumped in his rocket ship and rocketed straight up. Turns out that the cave was really tall and went up for miles. Then the water in the cave started to rise. Axe was familiar with this situation too, even though his animal friends were not. What one did in situations like these was to climb up the walls of the cave, jumping from platform to platform (sometimes the platforms fall just as you jump onto them, so you have to be quick) and keep ahead of the rising water. If the water touches you, you’re basically dead. Axe Axewound knew that his animal friends weren’t as good at jumping as he was, so he crammed as many of them into his inventory as possible. This ate up precious seconds and the water rose nearly up to his shoulders, but it meant that only a few of his friends would drown. The birds and bats and insects he left alone, because they could fly. He even left his mighty axe behind. He had no doubt that he could summon it later on. Then he got to jumping. At first, he had to jump onto rocky platforms and outcrops and giant wall-hugging birds’ nests and the like, but before long, he was jumping from jutting bits of brick and marble and collapsed pillars and man-ventions. Looks like there was some ancient, forgotten city above this cave! Axe Axewound was catching up with Dr. Tchaikovsky – he could hear the rocket-ship’s engines over the rush of the water below. All of this jumping from platform to platform was tiring him out, but the realisation that he was near this guy he wanted to kill spurred him on.

It was becoming lighter. Axe Axewound was getting near the surface. With one final, almighty leap, he made it onto the final ledge. It was shiny marble and his claws did not find purchase. He slipped. He was hanging onto the ledge by his claws. He was so tired.
“My friends!” he coughed, as the water below raced up towards his feet. “I’m not going to make it. Climb out of my inventory. Save yourselves!”
“You’re not going to give up that easily, are you, chum?” sang the little bluebird, orbiting his head. As he said this, the shy rabbit and the adorable baby fox climbed out of Axe’s inventory “We’ll help you out, since you’re in a bind.” Said the bluebird. They each grabbed a claw and tried to pull Axe up over the ledge.
“We’re not good enough!” cried the shy rabbit.
“We are, we are! Keep trying!” said the baby fox.
“We’ll have him up in a jiffy. You there, the all of you down his vest, get out here and assist us, please.” Said the bluebird.

And so all of the animals that had not drowned crawled out of Axe’s inventory onto the ledge and dragged him up onto the solid ground at the mouth of the cave. Only, it wasn’t a cave any more. Axe Axewound, exhausted, breathless and safe, looked up to see a great hall, all covered in cold marble, with tipped over statues and overgrown staircases. The water from the cave stopped rising at the line of the ledge. Axe was glad for the rest.
“No time to rest, Mr. Wolf.” Said the shy rabbit.
“Yes, we’ve got to catch that kill that foul bespoiler of our home!” said the bluebird. Axe groaned. Not many people realise how tiring it is to jump around all day. I bet that you only jump about three or four times before needing a nap and a roast chicken. Axe Axewound had been jumping near constantly for seven solid hours. And he’d beaten a robot cave-worm. He stuck out his arm and, with a twinkle of his magic amulet, his axe appeared in his hand. It was still on fire.
“Listen chum, if your exertion is that bad, we’ll do your fighting for you. We’ll carry your big axe and quash our enemies. You just walk along at a leisurely pace and direct us.” Said the bluebird. It was a good idea. They set out into the mysterious ruined city. You can be sure that there were more mechanical monsters in the way. Instead of hurling his axe and getting even more tired out, Axe would have one his animal friends throw it instead. This worked out a lot better than you might think, since every animal threw the axe slightly differently. For example, the shy rabbit bounced the axe off walls. The bloodthirsty bluebird would lift the axe in a high arc that would fall to the ground a few paces in front of him (handy for flying bad guys). There was a squirrel who ran with the axe across the ground, taking out bad guys that were crouching or fairly small.

Once it was discovered that all of his animal friends could do something besides mess up the frame rate and make the enemies hard to see, Axe tried experimenting. It turned out that there was, among his contingent, a racoon who could pick locks, a cat who could heal him if he got hurt, an unhatched egg that could explode whenever he wanted, a penguin that let him walk on ice and slippery surfaces with ease, a bat that allowed him to see in the dark. There was a toad that made his axe poison, a polar bear that made his axe ice, a horse that made his axe even MORE on fire. There animals for jumping higher, animals for secret rooms and special moves, animals for beating specific enemies and animals for breaking down different kinds of walls, or for climbing over them. And every mechanical thing he killed added another friend to his crowd. So even though he had started out being hardcore, Axe Axewound was now infinitely powerful and awesome and could do anything, thanks to his animal friends.

Everything was going pretty good until Axe missed-judged a jump onto a platform, fell into a pit full of spikes, lost all of his jewellery and died.

End Of Chapter 59

“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