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Post By The Hooded Hood with plenty of fantasy violence and a two-and-a-half times normal size chapter Fri Oct 27, 2006 at 07:36:45 am EDT |
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#295: Untold Fairy Tales of the Parody War: The Ride of the [Spoilers], or the Return of [Other Spoiler] | |
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| #295: Untold Fairy Tales of the Parody War: The Ride of the [Spoilers], or the Return of [Other Spoiler] Previously: The Parody Master seeks to invade Earth through Faerie. His army of darkness is led by the necromancer Lord Slithis of Miserablegitheim and the powerful and fearsome Singularity Rider S’Chen the Empty. His forces besiege the White Gate of Aayesgarth, and once that has fallen all the Many Coloured Land will be overrun. A call for help has been sent out to the Lair Legion, and CrazySugarFreakBoy!, Dancer, Trickshot, and Donar have been sent to Faerie to join the fray. Some Legion allies are already there, and the Caphan Miiri now commands an army that is but five days’ march from relieving the White Gate. Xander the Improbable has taken Marion Nightshade, lookalike to missing Ausgardian Queen Annj, to view the battle. In projecting the heroes to Faerie, elementalist Liu Xi Xian became vulnerable to the Parody Master, and he has now snatched her psychic essence to a prison of his devising. The Doomherald appears to have gone after Liu Xi to face down his former master. Amazing Guy and Cody Harper are still trapped in Comic-Book Limbo. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse   The old man came to the camp at dawn, past the crow-picked corpses of the defenders who had fallen by night. The White Gate itself was battered and scarred, barely shored up now with fallen timbers and urgent patchings. The hinges were broken, the vast doors held in place by desperate temporary scaffolding. The men who guarded it were ragged exhausted scarecrows.It would have been easy for those wounded men to turn away the mendicant. Instead, as their captain had ordered, they led him past one of the remaining battle mages to check he was what he seemed to be then showed him to the chambers within the thick defensive walls where the refugees huddled and waited for the end. He was given a crust to eat and a pitcher of stale water, but that was all that any in Aayesgarth received now. The siege had bitten deep. It would not last much longer. Some said it would not last until tomorrow’s morn. The old man settled down and pulled his cloak around him and watched to see the end. Captain Arkenweald looked over the casualty lists while the medic strapped his broken arm. He’d taken the wound last night when the orcs had brought their siege engines to the very walls and the fighting had gone hand-to-hand on the ramparts. A great brute of a half-ogre with a massive club had shattered shield and arm alike before falling with Arkenweald’s sword embedded in his chest. “This many?” he asked in dismay. The barbarian from the Mythlands nodded. “It was a costly night. The magical defences on the wall are in tatters. Lord Slithis’ necromancers can pick our men off as soon as they see them now and send them rampaging as undead amongst our ranks. The wights can sometimes pass the very fabric to slip behind us and take us unawares.” “We need to send another message,” Arkenweald confessed. “To Baron Brass. To warn him that we cannot hold another day.” “You’re planning to retreat?” Exile asked in dismay. “To yield this gate to the invaders?” The acting commander of the White Gate shook his head. His young face was prematurely lined with care. He had been a junior officer when the siege began. Now all those who had outranked him were dead. “I’ll stay and fight to the last, to gain what time can be gained for others to make their preparations. But if you want to take your nomads… well, you’ve done good service.” “I’m not going,” Exile promised him. “You’ve met Valeria? She foresaw that if this gate was taken then all fell. My people, yours, Faerie, Mythlands, and even the world of my birth. No, I stand or fall here, with you.” Arkenweald nodded gratefully. “We’ve fought the good fight, Lord Rick. A shame the help we sent for never came. A shame nobody will ever know what we attempted.” The walls shuddered as the battery began again. A young hollow-faced soldier raced into the commander’s chamber. “My lords, they’re starting again. They’ve raised a storm and they’re sending forward the undead under its cover. The last of the catapults on the northern bastion is destroyed. They’re coming.” Captain Arkenweald painfully hefted his sabre, trying not to disturb his bandaged arm. Exile drew forth a great barbarian bastard sword. “Let’s go down fighting,” Arkenweald declared. “Come on!” Yuki called out worriedly as Hatman carried on mouth to mouth resuscitation on Liu Xi Xian. “She should have started breathing again by now!” The young elementalist was sprawled on the rocky mountainside where she’d projected a faerie fortress back into Faerie, a major feat that had extended her mind beyond the safety of the weakening Celestian barrier. Now her body had collapsed. “I’m doing my best,” Hatman said, pausing for a moment to readjust his nurse’s cap. “Al?” “I’m not getting any higher brain function readings,” the archscientist called urgently. “I don’t know what this is.” “Her mind his migrated elsewhere,” the Manga Shoggoth explained. “I am uncertain where, which is rather worrying.” The loathsome elder being thought a little more. “Migrated my be the wrong word. It may have been captured.” “Captured?” demanded Visionary. “What do you mean captured? Get her back!” “Working on it,” Al B. promised, frantically stabbing at his scanner array. “The others all seem to have got to their destinations safely, except for Vizh and Flapjack getting bounced, but Liu Xi… I don’t know.” “Er guys,” Flapjack asked worriedly. “Is she supposed to be melting?” The Lair Legion watched with horror as the young elementalist dissolved to goo in Hatman’s arms then boiled away into nothing. Lord Slithis’ necromancers slaughtered the last of the prisoners to raise the blizzard. The arctic storm burst down on the defenders of Aayesgarth, pelting the exhausted knights with fist-sized hailstones, buffeting them with gale force winds. The driving sleet made archery impossible. Nobody could even see the siege towers until they loomed right in front of the wall. S’Chen the Empty sent in the undead first. Mostly immune to the ravages of cold the army of the fallen was more than just the ragged zombies raised from fallen comrades of the besieged Elfguard. Ghouls and barrow-wights commanded them, and here and there a vicious vampire flitted amongst their ranks, secure under cover of the storm that blotted all daylight. Then the frost giants made for the White Gate itself, hefting a battering ram of a score of trees lashed together with bands of brass. There were no defenders free to stop them smashing at the temporary shorings that were all that kept the fragmenting doors in place. Then, to the remaining defenders dismay, a terrible form strode out of the tempest. It was sized as a giant, but it was stitched together out of human corpses, the men with whom they had served these past few weeks. Bodies were bound together into massive limbs, the torso bundled from all those who had died beneath the torturers’ hammers. Only its head was inhuman, a carved stone skull filled with unholy fire. Every corpse that made the monster was screaming. The shambling mountain of dead men came to the gate and began to pound. The fear woven round it paralysed the last of the gate guards. The White Gate shivered, then fell. And then the lightning came. It arced down through the snow-heavy skies and burned through the giants before the gate. It danced with electric joy, arcing down to clear the contested ground in clouds of steam. The monster of corpses staggered back, confused. The necromancers gasped as they felt the storm turn from their control, then screamed as hurricane winds buffeted them and their camp. They were hurled away like rag dolls as the tempest fell on them. A crack of thunder set every ear ringing and the sheeted falling snow hissed as it was separated like a curtain, spilling a dazzling flash of day across the walls of Aayesgarth. Undead flared to flame at the unexpected dawn, toppling from the ramparts like blazing torches onto the besieging armies below. “Something has gone wrong,” Lord Slithis snarled, sensing the change in the tide of the battle. “Send in the wyrms.” The storm clamped down again, but this was a different kind of night. Now the sleet hammered back on the attackers. And there, silhouetted by the lightning, trailing green witchfire and rattling across the heavens came a chariot drawn by two flying horned beasts. Upon its back came the champions of the world; they rode the winds of vengeance. Dolumniax the Ancient unfolded vast reptilian wings and pointed awkwardly into the storm to destroy the newcomers. “Ho, Elfguard!” echoed a cry above the howling of the winds. “Thou didst call for help in thine hour of need, and the Oldmanson hath heard thy call. Gird now thy courage and take up thy blades and let us strive unto the uttermost for all that ist right.” A bright neon streak toppled from the incoming chariot, seemingly blown by the storm; except that at the last he tumbled unexpectedly and landed deftly between Dolumniax’s wings, straddling the dragon’s back and harnessing the great wyrm with an unbreakable yarn from an extraordinary yo-yo. “Gee up!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! shouted to his new mount. “And yippee-ki-ay, motherf…” The rest was lost to the storm. The men on the northern rampart were almost overcome. The undead had fallen back now but they had done their work. Orcs and dark woses and ogres of the deeps were in possession of huge swathes of the battlements, allowing yet more to pour across from the huge wooden siege towers. Donar’s goat-chariot rattled low, sweeping two score invaders off the top of the wall before barrelling away again to dive at the main mass of ground troops. But another figure neatly somersaulted out, landed on a broken pillar of stone in a graceful arabesque, then turned and watched as the tormented stonework nearby collapsed, spilling a horde of invaders down onto their own troops below. “Hi boys,” the Probability Dancer called to the failing Elfguard. “Damsel in distress here. So I could really use a bit of help clearing these rude folks our of the no-baddies-zone if that’s okay with you. Just follow my lead. Except when I do the splits.” Baffled but somehow irresistibly compelled to follow the raven-tressed whirlwind who pushed ever forward into the enemy’s mass, the wall’s last defenders surged after the slim girl, close-fighting to keep the hordes from closing around her. “Thanx, fellahs,” Dancer grinned. “Now we get to do the whole heroic stand bit.” On the south wall the siege towers were joined by the greater war machines, massive frames of timber and enchanted brass the could shatter through stone. The defensive magics that prevented breaches of the high battered wall had long since failed. Now the huge machineries took their toll, drilling deep into the fabric of the crumbling defences, mining ever larger cracks until the wall was ready to topple. A hooded man in Lincoln green leaped from the ramparts and kicked aside one of the dark-gnome captains that was undertaking the work. He fired a high tensile cable to link two of the high towers together then used his bow to slide along it before the orc guards could tear free from the net he’d tangled them in. From there he fired another shaft to wind around the next tower, and so on, until all the war machines strained against each other, tangled together in a cat’s cradle of tensile steel. “And d’ya want to see the good part of this?” Trickshot asked the angry goblins that tried to swarm him. “Cuz ya see all’o those cables came from my auxiliary pouches, which means they were shrunk down with size-changin’ particles and stuff. I dunno the science, I leave that to the boffins. But it means those big strong wires all tanglin’ your doodads were once shrunk teeny-tiny small. Like this.” The irritating archer jumped, using the head of the nearest half-orc as a footstool to boost himself across onto the great wall of Aayesgarth. Meanwhile he activated the trigger that shrunk the cables back to a hundredth of their current size. The net effect was to drag fifteen two-hundred foot high towers from their current positions and crash them together. Some toppled. Others shattered. Then the munitions tower exploded as the alchemist’s fire spilled out, immolating the whole tangled pile of siege machinery in a vast fireball. Trickshot ducked low behind a broken parapet as the flames spiked out all around him. “Yeeow!” he called. “I hope you guys wus insured!” The blast rattled across the whole battlefield, distracting even the great wyrms in their attack run. Perhaps that’s why they were too late to spot one of their own, tangled in unbreakable yo-yo string, plummet down and smash into their formation. “Yeah!” called CSFB!, somersaulting free from Dolumniax and grabbing the horn of Vile Endruskial. “Hi, I’m CrazySugarFreakBoy! and I’ll be your superhero tonight. If you want to do some witty banter that would be just fine, but otherwise keep on going ape and trying to melt me with your flame breaths, because you’re doing a fine job of frying each other. Yeah, like that.” Dragons are not the best of companions at the best of times. Fried dragons tend to get testy with each other. A hail of crossbow quarrels from below rattled off the armoured scales of Endruskial. CrazySugarFreakBoy! barely avoided becoming a pincushion by slithering down the wyrm’s neck and grabbing a flapping wingtip. The battle had taken him over the encampment of the torturer’s guild, and since they had no prisoners left they were instead amusing themselves bringing down the menace overhead. “Okay, you asked for this,” the wired wonder snarled as he saw the pegged out remains of previous activities. He reached into his backpack and dropped the Pokémon egg onto his attackers below. “Chupacabras, I choose you!” The mythical being burst forth from its container and vented its insane fury. The stench of cooked flesh still rose from the charred giants at the main gate but that did not prevent the orc hordes rushing forward through the sundered gates. There they found the last desperate men trying to hold back the tide of darkness. Captain Arkenweald and Exile took the point, fighting an ever more futile battle as enemy after enemy passed over the rubble of the fallen doors to cut down the soldiers around them. “We tried,” Arkenweald gasped as he felt his broken arm splinter again. “Don’t give up,” Exile called back, his face bloody from the gash across his brow. “This isn’t over. It doesn’t end like this.” The giant of corpses righted itself, climbed to its feet, and stomped its way through the broken gate, heedless of whether it stepped on defender or attacker. “Then it ends like that?” Arkenweald gasped as the monster shambled forward. “I say thee nay!” Donar called out, impacting into the corpse-golem pulled by a massive swing of his enchanted baseball bat. “Thou didst call upon the Lair Legion… and now we art lined up!” “Donar?” Exile blinked, unbelieving. “That’s who Valeria told you to send for?” His bloody face broke into an incredulous grin, “Lair Legion, Line Up!” “Most verily,” agreed the hemigod of thunder. “Let the smiting continue for the nonce!” The corpse-giant caught him by the legs, heaved him through the air, and slammed him down with flagstone-shattering force onto the courtyard. Then again. Then again. “Gah!” shouted the Ausgardian, breaking the bodies that formed the monster’s fingers and tearing loose. “I dost mine best work whilst concussed!” And he jumped onto the monster’s chest and began to literally tear it apart. Somehow Donar’s actions broke the fear spell that paralysed so many of the remaining defenders. It was as if the Ausgardian’s wild courage leaped like wildfire. A fey mood came upon the Elfguard and they found new strength where they had thought they had none. With every blow that Donar struck upon the seemingly-invincible giant they found resolution to stand against the seemingly-innumerable horde. The hemigod clawed his way to the vast carved skull that blazed with eldritch fire. He recognised the stench. “Slithis!” he hissed. “I mightest have known. So thou didst crawl from under thine rock of imprisonment to trouble the nine worlds anew.” A flicker of intelligence appeared in the flesh monster’s eyes as its creator took personal control for a moment. “Donar!” it replied. “You have come here to your death.” The Oldmanson pulled back his head then smacked his forehead into the stone skull with mountain-shaking force. The granite shattered, sending bullet fragments down amongst the attacking orc mob. The flames of the great monster flickered and were doused. The body toppled backwards, down onto the raiders, crushing their vanguard. “Retreat!” somebody called in the ranks of the dark horde. “Fall back! Retreat!” Like a spreading cancer of fear the invaders began to falter, then to retreat. The storm hammered them as they fled. “North wall secured,” called Dancer. “These guys were absolutely fabulous.” “South wall clear,” Trickshot reported. “We got us a zero-bozo scenario.” “Skies clear,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! announced. “Well, except for the blizzard.” “Can somebody haul me out of this snowdrift?” asked Zebulon the elf in muffled tones. “And did we win?” “We beat them back again,” Captain Arkenwield admitted. “Thanks to Lord Donar and his paladins. But now they will bring their full force against us.” He shuddered. “Tonight S’Chen the Empty will come himself.” Liu Xi Xian had all kinds of conflicting feelings about Exu, former god of murder, former Doomherald of the Parody Master; but right here, right now, in the psychic plane specially created by the Parody Master to trap her, they were all boiled down to an intense relief that she wasn’t entirely alone with the enemy who intended to break her as his bride. “Exu!” she gasped. “How?” The Doomherald pointed to the Parody Master. “I can find murderers,” he noted. “They don’t come any bigger than him.” “You dare come here?” the conqueror of galaxies asked incredulously. “After turning on me? Betraying me?” “Ah, you heard about that,” Exu answered. “Yeah well. Sorry boss. But I couldn’t let you walk off with my lover, could I?” “Lover?” frowned Liu Xi. “Later, pussycat,” the Doomherald told her. “Like I said, you can’t make a bride out of the mother of my child.” The Parody Master turned to the young elementalist. “You are with child?” Exu shrugged. “What can I say? All those weeks alone in that lonely cabin. We had nothing else to do but go at it like bunnies.” He held out his hands in a calm-down gesture to his former master. “Annar didn’t always join us.” The Parody Master’s face coloured with rage. “Are you mocking me?” “Well, just a little bit,” the Doomherald admitted. “It’s a fear reaction. I can’t help it.” Liu Xi realised she needed to take some control. She pushed back her own horror at her situation and rose to stand beside Exu. “You’re not wanted here, Parody Master. Take your cruel games and go.” She nestled herself in the cradle of Exu’s arm. “Leave us in peace,” she bluffed. The Parody Master gestured and slammed them both spreadeagled against the grey wall of his psychic prison. “Lovers can be eliminated. Children can be terminated.” “Go ahead,” shouted the Doomherald. “Give it your best shot. You loser!” The Parody Master turned on the helpless Exu, drawing his screaming axe to rend the traitor’s soul. Then he paused. “Very clever,” he said at last. “Worthy of the man I elevated to be my herald. To try and murder the old god of murder, on a psychic plane, what power would that give you?” “Try it and see,” threatened the Doomherald. The Parody Master turned aside. “I think not,” he replied. “I think I’d prefer to keep you alive and helpless, to watch.” Exu realised his gambit had failed. “Well bugger,” he said as the Parody Master turned to Liu Xi. “I regret that I can offer you no proper welcome,” Captain Arkenweald told his visitors. His brow was sheened with sweat from a light fever. The healers had just reset his broken arm for the third time. “Our supplies are all but gone, our resources reduced to what you see.” “We didn’t come to have a party,” Dancer assured the tormented commander. “Well, maybe later. Right now we came to do the hero thing and help you heroes out.” “I’m amazed you guys managed ta hold out this long,” Trickshot admitted. “I seen the holes in your walls, the damage you’ve taken. My hood’s off to you.” “We received reinforcements three days since from Baron Brass,” Exile told his former team-mates. “If it hasn’t been for that extra couple of thousand men we wouldn’t have made it this far. But now we’re back down to less than a thousand able-bodied defenders for a wall that needs fifteen thousand when it’s in proper repair.” “We’ve got to have put a dent in the villains’ attack capacities today, though,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! argued. “Spaz – my chupacabras – isn’t back yet, which means he must be having a good time.” “Twas a mighty battle, and most joyous,” Donar agreed, “but so long as the vile Lord Slithis art there yonder, and yon Singularity Rider of the Parody Master, we canst not claim victory.” “I gladly yield command of this fortress and its duty of defence to you,” Arkenweald said gratefully. “I never expected to be in charge of something like this.” “Thou hast done right well in sooth,” the hemigod told him. “No man couldst have done better. But I accept thy charge and wilt defend yon gate with mine honour and mine life.” He glanced down at the splintered ruin that had been the White Gate. “Mind you, I couldst sorely use ten thousand Ausgardians right about now.” “Well, we should be getting some reinforcements from Captain Erundeus an’ his knights at Rath Askrigg,” Trickshot pointed out. “They’re be marchin’ here as soon as they can. But not soon enough, I’m guessing.” “I’m hearing rumours that Baron Brass’ army is also on the move,” Zebulon reported. “All of it. Twenty thousand men or more, coming to relieve us.” “From what I’ve heard of this Brass Baron I don’t think it can be more than camp rumour,” CSFB! warned. “That guy couldn’t find his balls with a magnifying glass and satellite guidance.” The elf nodded. “Yeah, but this is where it gets interesting. Scuttlebutt is that Brass isn’t leading the army. It’s a saint.” “A saint?” Trickshot puzzled. “What kind of saint?” “A green-skinned woman in a bright red cloak,” Zebulon reported. “Any ideas?” A slow grin spread across Dancer’s face. “Ooh. Wait until Vizh hears about this one.” “Waitaminnut!” Tricky objected. “You’re sayin’ there’s twenty thousand reinforcements headin’ our way led by Miiri? Caphan slave Miiri?” “It doesn’t matter,” Zebulon sighed. “They won’t be here for another five or six days at least.” “And we don’t have that long,” Exile admitted. “One way or another it all ends tonight.” Donar nodded. “Tis likely there wilt be an amount of smiting for the nonce.” “I am amazed at the reinforcements that you bring,” Captain Arkenweald confessed to the hemigod. “We live in a time of legends. To fight beside the Spirit of Chance, and the Hooded Man, and, and the Puck… But I fear none of us will be enough to turn back the Doomwraith.” “I’ve met them before,” Dancer admitted, “They’re tough nuts.” “And Dancer knows her nuts,” Trickshot added before he could edit his comment. “We have to do something else,” CSFB! plotted. “We have to take it to them before we have another major battle and even more people get killed.” He looked worried. “There are no extras in this cast.” A battered veteran poked his head around the scorched doorway. “Sorry to interrupt, sir, but there’s more refugees at the gate. Er, the gap where the gate was. But these have come from outside, not from inside the Realm. They want to talk with Lord Donar.” “Refugees?” Dancer asked with concern. “We have a hundred or more poor war-displaced wretches concealed in the chambers of the lower walls,” Arkenweald explained. “They are too young or old or sick to fight, but we shelter them while we can and they tend to the wounded.” “Well I approve of that,” admitted Tricky. “But folks from the bad guys’ side of the wall? Can we trust them?” “We have the battle-mages check them all before we let them in,” Exile explained. “Except I don’t think we actually have any more battle-mages still fit for duty, do we?” “They claim to know Lord Donar,” the veteran reported. “One of them says he is master of the mystic crafts and sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse. The other is a lady who says she is sorry she had to stand Lord Donar up last time they were due to meet on account of being waylaid by monsters.” Donar rose suddenly, sending the trestle flying, “Marion!” he shouted, racing from the room. “Annj!” Amazing Guy flew down to the ruined fortress of stories in the abandoned waste of Comic-Book Limbo. Cody Harper gestured to the rescued can of beef stew cooking over the impromptu barbeque. “How’d it go?” he asked. “Well, as far as I can tell this plane goes on forever,” AG admitted, grabbing a chipped mug and helping himself to something warm to drink. “But all the real estate the Parody Master shifted here seems clustered within a couple of hundred miles of here. I think I’ve found it all now.” “Austernia?” checked Cody. “Ausgard?” “I’ve found what I think is the city of the Austernals. It’s clogged by that stasis weed like everything else. But I can’t find Ausgard, and that disturbs me.” “We had another of those poor fading bums in here earlier,” Cody shuddered. “So faded he didn’t remember who he’d been in life, or anything he’d done. He could have been a great hero once, but this place just sucked it away and made him forgotten, even to himself. The poor guy just evaporated while he was stumbling around.” “That’s what happens to everybody who gets sent here sooner or later,” Amazing Guy warned. “And there’s no way out. Not from the inside. You have to be remembered, rescued. It’s the only escape.” “I’m waiting until dad comes to get me?” Cody Harper frowned. “We are so screwed.” The snows had all but stopped, save for a few wisps blowing in the dying winds. The battlefield before the White Gate was still stained red with gore. Exile and CrazySugarFreakBoy! stood on the battlements and kept watch on the distant encampment of the Dark Lord. “Hell?” Derek Foreman asked his old team-mate. “Nats became a lord of hell?” “Yep,” agreed CSFB! “Complete with incredibly hot demon temptress chick.” “See, I find the idea of Bill and hot chick in the same sentence even harder to believe.” “And then something even more mega-bad happened and now Bill’s completely disappeared even from the hells. The Librarian’s still trying to figure it out. I should ask Xander now he’s turned up.” “And Sir Mumphrey Wilton led the Lair Legion? Old dude with whiskers? Sort of polite eccentric Englishman?” “Hey, you should see him in badass mode against the Hooded Hood. Oh, and did I mention that Vizh has twins by a green-skinned alien slave girl and that Al B. Harper has alternate-future kids by Wang’s daughter? Oh, and I got Pelopia pregnant and we had Iris?” “You didn’t mention that, no. If anybody was going to spawn I’d have put my money on Finny and Ziles. Or DK and Ziles. Maybe all three.” “Finny’s also on the missing-and-we’d-love-them-back list. Dark Knight’s gone totally Frank Miller, except with Mark Millar scheduling. But Manny’s in the LL now, with Knifey of course, and also this spooky ice-queen called Citizen Z who nobody knows. Except I think she might be Pegasus come back from seeming death in #140, disguised to protect her loved ones. Or maybe a mirror universe Lisa.” Exile nodded. “Feels like I’ve missed a lot.” “You should totally come back,” Dream urged him. “You and Val both. At least for the wedding.” “Wedding? There’s a wedding?” “Sure. Me and April. April Alice Apple. You’re totally invited.” Exile rubbed his forehead. “I can’t leave the Mythlands now. People are depending on me. But thanks for the invite. Now who’s April Alice Apple?” CrazySugarFreakBoy! grinned. “Well let me tell you…”  “Stop laughing,” Trickshot told Dancer testily. “When I said I was out touchin’ guys’ shafts what I meant wus…”“I know what you meant,” Sarah Shepherdson grinned. “For some reason everyone here thinks we’re these big mythic archetypes. We’re like… fairy celebrities.” “Let me explain about the shaft-touching again. See they wanted a blessing from the Hooded Man to keep their spirits up in the comin’ battle and… will you stop giggling?” “Eventually,” agreed Dancer. “You wouldn’t believe the number of soldiers here who want a kiss for luck from the Spirit of Chance. I explained my powers didn’t work that way but they wouldn’t believe me. Seems that over here luck is a lady.” “Yeah. Those guys just wanted to get lucky,” agreed the irritating archer. He noticed the huge cauldron that his team-mate had Zebulon stirring. “What are you doing now?” “Melting snow, of course,” Shep replied for the elf. “For the stew. It turned out that there was a horde of food hidden away behind this crumbly old wall so we’re going to be able to feed all those starving refugees after all.” “What are the chances, eh?” “About the same as finding that the White Gates finally collapsed for want of one last bolt,” Zebulon complained. “Fancy the whole of Gramayre’s defences crumbling for want of a single enchanted bolt… or basically anything roughly the size of a spoon.” “Yeah well, I didn’t pack my spoon arrow on this mission,” Trickshot retorted. Then a thoughtful look came over him as he considered the idea for future adventures. “If we could only find another crumbling wall with a fully-equipped lab behind it I’m sure I could whip up a weapon of mass destruction,” offered Zebulon. “Especially if it’s equipped with those hair-eating dolls that Santa used to use to guard his workshop.” “That one’s just a bit too much,” Dancer apologised. “But hey, what were the chances of finding sixteen crates of Ramen noodles in a faerie fortress?” “I… I’m only here in mind,” Liu Xi told the Parody Master as he traced one mail-gloved hand over the curve of her cheek. “I’m willing my body to die right now.” The Parody Master chuckled. “Tell her, Doomherald.” “You can’t die here,” Exu confessed, his voice sounding sick. “He’s got your essence. He’ll just create a new body for you somewhere else. In his Discipline Pits, probably.” He turned back to the villain. “But only over my dead body.” “You will be long in dying,” promised the Parody Master, wise to that ploy. “Once she is worthy as my bride, it will be Liu Xi who delivers the final stroke.” “I won’t,” the elementalist answered. “I’m not weak like Annar. I won’t surrender to your tortures.” The Parody Master chuckled. “Annar was not weak. She resisted with all her might, the will of an empress born.” He leaned so close that Liu Xi could feel his stale breath on her lips. “I enjoyed breaking Annar.” A murderous rage welled up inside Li Xi Xian then. A string of Chinese obscenities poured from her throat, raw and ugly and filled with hate. If only she had been able to access her elemental gifts in this elementless place she would have tried to sear the Parody Master from existence again. She hated him. She wanted him to die. She wanted to kill him. “Excellent,” proclaimed the Doomherald. Suddenly he wasn’t pinned beside her on the wall; he was inside her, welling out from her into physical form to clutch his hands around the Parody Master’s throat. The villain toppled back, choking. For a moment Liu Xi thought the Doomherald might win. The will holding her immobile on the wall was gone, letting her tumble to the ground. Then the Parody Master let out a searing lance of energy. It hammered right through Exu’s chest and out through his back, shattering even through the grey walls of the psychic realm into the void beyond. The Parody Master tossed the Doomherald’s broken body off him and rose to his feet. Liu Xi grabbed the bleeding shell of the god of murder and leaped through the tear in the side of the psychic cage, not caring what was beyond. Before the Parody Master could halt her she fell, spinning into the grey oblivion below still clutching Exu’s limp frame, and vanished from sight. Xander sat in the ruins of the Gate Commander’s office and watched Donar and Marion try to come to terms with each other. “Well, I have good news and I have bad news,” He told them. “Which would you like first?” Marion tore her gaze from Donar’s face and glanced at the master of the mystic crafts. “The good news,” she said. Donar seemed to come out of a trance at the same time. “The bad news,” he growled. “Or, er, the goodeth news since mine lady wanteth it.” “Still not your lady, Donar,” Marion warned him. “Although you get big points for not being a creepy necromancer dude with wandering hands.” Donar’s lips pulled back into a snarl. “Yon Slithis’ hands wilt not wander more whenst I hath nailed them together and hammered them up his…” “The good news,” Xander interrupted, “is that you have now managed to temporarily halt the overwhelming assault on the White Gate. Of course, the Singularity Rider S’Chen the Empty will now take a personal hand, but at least we’ve managed to focus down a whole campaign to one decisive confrontation in one place. The war in Faerie is won or lost here.” “And that’s the good news, is it?” Marion frowned. “The bad news,” the mage went on, “is that Lord Slithis knows Marion is here in the fortress so he will want to take it harder than ever. And while she was his guest he managed to take a lien on her soul, and you know what that means.” Donar’s fist slammed down and shattered the table to matchwood. “He did what?” “He did what?” Marion echoed. “Seriously, what is that?” “He didst capture a portion of thine eternal essence with his foul sorceries,” Donar seethed. “Thy soul, if thou wilt. Without it you wilt wither and perish, and your shade shalt be enslaved by Slithis’ necromancies for all eternity.” “So, quite bad news,” Marion shuddered. Xander waggled his hands from side to side in a so-so gesture. “All it means is that we have another reason to try and resolve this situation by the ancient rules and limit further bloodshed.” Marion looked from mage the Ausgardian. “Ancient rules?” “Single combat,” Donar supplied, reaching for his enchanted baseball bat. “Unto the death.” Cody Harper and Amazing Guy stood in the web-choked wreckage of a top secret government base and looked up at the stasis-bound forms of Fin Fang Foom and Dan Drury. “Think you can thaw them?” Cody asked. “Maybe,” AG said cautiously. “I don’t want to risk it on Finny, He’s too big. But I might just be able to crack Drury free.” “But this is risky?” “Well, I might overload and explode, but otherwise no.” “I’ll just go stand over there.” The protector of the Parodyverse waited until Cody was clear then dug deep into his reserves of multiversal energy. This feat wasn’t about power, it was about precision. Control. Well, okay, it also required terawatts of energy, but that was just the trimmings. The flash was so bright it could be seen ten thousand miles away. “Ouch,” groaned AG as Cody helped him up off the floor. “I feel like I just went dancing with the Yurt.” He blinked through the haze of vaporised stasis web. “Did it work?” “What in the blasted name of Sam Hill am I doin’ here?” came a familiar voice. “You turkey-smoochin’ chicken-pluckin’ yahoos better have a good explanation fer all’o this.” “I’d have to say yes,” answered Cody Harper. Ten thousand miles away the ancient thing blinked at the distant light. Food, it thought. It was so hungry.  “An hour before sunset tonight,” Zebulon announced when he returned from Lord Slithis’ camp under flag of parley. “The big guy and Slithis’ champion. I mean his other champion, since Donar already broke the big zombie golem thing. Winner takes all, White Gate, soul-shard, the lot. Loser takes the dirt nap.”“I’m sure we could have found another way if I could just have talked to Slithis,” Dancer worried. “I don’t think so,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! contradicted her. “This is mythic. It’s Hector and Achilles. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. He-Man and Skeletor.” “It’s got to be a trap,” Trickshot pointed out. “Does anyone here think the bad guys are actually gonna fight fair? Hands up!” “That’ll be our job, then,” Exile pointed out. “We even the odds behind the scenes, give Donar a level playing field.” “It might work,” Captain Arkenweald admitted. “If Lord Donar can but prevail against Slithis’ champion then we might yet rout these invaders and save the realms.” Xander the Improbable looked uncomfortable and said nothing. “What?” demanded Donar. “What now.” “Er, I didn’t mention who Slithis’ champion was going to be, did I?” ventured Zebulon. “It turns out that the one you have to beat is S’Chen the Empty.” It was a broken fragment of an ancient temple. The statues had long since crumbled, leaving faceless effigies watching over a cracked stone floor and a long-dried sacrifice pit. There was no roof. The sky was dark with low seething clouds, the air was dusty. The lost temple clung to a fragment of stone dredged from an ancient world, tilted at a slight angle upon a desert of grey sand. A strange wind played across the basalt floor. The flagstones began to rattle. The dead vegetation, still preserved from a time long since when this place had been part of a real world, twisted and dissolved. The elements came from all over, ruthlessly plundered. Salts, iron, water, carbon, further eroding the landscape as it was robbed of its essence. Carbon twisted into pairs, then replicated proteins, then went to work. It took a long time; but then building a body of bone and flesh takes a long time. It hurt. But Liu Xi Xian was used to pain. She brought the vital essence of herself from the sad remains back on Earth, as much as she could extract through the Celestian barrier. The rest she built from what was available. At last she was whole, and flesh, a shivering naked emaciated waif, weaker than she could ever remember being; and terrified. It took her a while to remember who she was. Longer still to remember what had happened. She realised that the concatenation of circumstances that had made her transmigration possible were unlikely to ever happen again. She realised that despite her weakness she was alive and free. Her powers were still there, but exhausted. She was using everything she had to consolidate her body. She wondered how long it would be before it was stable enough to allow her to do anything else. She wondered how long it would be before the Parody Master found her. At last she forced herself off the cold flagstones to look around her. There, sprawled out beside the altar, lay the Doomherald. He wasn’t moving. His chest was a pulpy mass of gore. He wasn’t breathing. Liu Xi tried to remember if he usually breathed. He was her enemy, but he had faced his own worst fear for her. He had gone up against a master he admired and feared, and this is what had become of him. Liu Xi crawled over to where Exu lay and touched his face. He shuddered a little then went still again. “Don’t die,” Liu Xi whispered to him. She was as weak as a kitten but somehow she found new strength in another person’s need. “You saved me. Now I’ll take care of you.” The elementalist pulled the wounded god of murder to her breast in the temple that had once been his and prayed for him to live. Donar walked across the churned up snowfield before the broken Gate to meet the twisted being of darkness that brooded like a painful glaucoma smear at the edge of vision. “He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?” Marion checked with Xander the Improbable as they watched from the top of the wall. “I mean he fights things like this Doomwraith all the time.” “Not quite like S’Chen,” Xander admitted. “Take the tortured souls of an entire destroyed race, staple them together in eternal torture, compress them into humanoid form and set them at the gateway between life and entropy and you have a Singularity Rider, a Doomwraith. They’re the Parody Master’s masterworks, his most powerful shock troops, forged with the full fury of his almost infinite power.” “You haven’t answered my question. Not really. Can Donar… will he survive this?” The master of the mystic crafts sighed. “Too close to call,” he answered. “Ask again later.” “Donar Oldmanssson,” whispered S’Chen the Empty. “Lassst of the Aussgardians.” “Verily,” snarled the hemigod of thunder. “And now I wilt have from thee where it is thy foul master didst hideth mine Ausgard.” The Doomwraith snorted in cold amusement. “Ausssgard? Your realm, you people, they are no more. Asss they were transssported away they disssolved like the misssst. The Celessstian curssse.” Donar blinked. “The what?” he asked, going pale. Before the hemigod had even been born of the Oldman and Gail the Earth-Mother the old pantheon of the frozen North had warred with the Space Robots who guarded the destiny of the Parodyverse. In defeat they had been transported and imprisoned in the Mythlands Antipodes, becoming the Ausgardians, forbidden to return to Earth ever again. Could Celestian powers have destroyed Ausgard as it was shifted from where the Space Robots had ordained it remain? “It… it cannot be!” “All other placesss sshifted to confinement by my master’ss will arrived at the place of holding,” S’Chen whispered. “All sssave Ausssgard. It no longer exisssts. My master hasss looked far, and is sscertain.” The Singularity Rider’s black cloak flapped in an unearthly breeze. “We are both the lassst of our civilisations, and sssoon you will be gone.” “Nay…” denied Donar, tears stinging his eyes and freezing on his cheeks in the arctic cold. “Ausgard cannot be gone. Annj…” “Come now,” S’Chen challenged him, “and I will give you the oblivion of deathhh.” Donar raised Mjalcom and gave a terrible, primal roar. And he charged. The thunderclap smashed out across the plain, shaking the ground, toppling siege engines and scattering the dark host that watched the battle from a respectful distance. Fragments of broken masonry fell from the wall of Aayesgarth. The very clouds boiled as the pressure wave hit them when Donar and S’Chen came together. “Now,” smirked Lord Slithis of Miserablegitheim. “Unleash the necromancers. Let their magics bring the Oldmanson low.”  The warlocks had exhausted their supply of captured Elfguard and unlucky refugees so they were forced to conscript victims from the orc armies. The thirteen struggling kobolds strapped to the sacrifice benches on the perimeter of the great tridecahedron were poor substitutes for innocent souls but at least they would be good for a basic charm of wounding on the battling Ausgardian.“Except that’s cheating,” Trickshot pointed out. “Five penalty points. Miss a turn.” “The Hooded Man!” one of the necromancer’s gasped. “Stop him!” “C’yeah,” snickered Trickshot, loosing a sneezing powder arrow and barrelling into the cluster of magic-workers. “Good luck with that.” “You think you can stop us?” screeched the lead warlock. “Us? We are protected. Protected!” Trickshot broke his jaw with a roundhouse left, then jerked his silver-tipped bow into the chest of the vampire that was creeping up behind him. “Sthhop him!” wailed the necromancer. The undead seethed forward. Trickshot pulled out his holy water arrows and grinned. S’Chen the Empty leached the vigour from Donar’s thews and reached forward with corpse-thin hands to strangle the life from his opponent. Donar swiped with Mjalcolm, shattering the taloned fingers that clutched at him, breaking the villain’s clutch into oily black smoke until its hands reformed. “Die, abomination!” the hemigod shouted. The blood fury was rising in him, forcing him on despite the chill that sapped him; the berserker rage of a man already doomed, the last of his kind in his last ever battle. A fury that breaks worlds. “I am already dead,” the Singularity Rider hissed. He took a step back and suddenly he was mounted, astride some great black quadruped that was something between horse and dinosaur and nightmare. Donar moved too slowly and its frosty hooves lashed out across his chest. The Doomwraith pressed in for the kill. Donar ignored his shattered ribcage and hurled Mjalcom right through the beast’s head. “He’s hurt, lads,” the huge hobgoblin commander gloated, watching Donar struggle. “Look at the way he moves. At the way he’s struggling to take breath. It won’t be long now.” The Black Brethren Elite watched the battle avidly, enjoying this final destruction of their enemies. “But why should we miss the sport?” the commander went on. “Old pasty-face doesn’t care about this being a fair fight. Bows and arrows lads – enchanted curse arrows only, of course - and I’ll give the Ausgardian’s woman to the first one that brings him down.” CrazySugarFreakBoy! bounced a boot off the commander’s face, sending him toppling off the wagon he was perched on to drop into the slush. “You so won’t,” CSFB! told him. “Just lie there and you probably won’t get any more hurt.” “The Pan!” somebody yelped. “He’s nothing!” the hobgoblin commander snarled, rising up and pulling a seven foot bastard sword with one fluid movement. “A few chaos tricks and a smart mouth is all he’s got. He’ll not survive challenging the Black Brethren Elite of Captain Bloodhooke.” CrazySugarFreakBoy! stopped in mid-battle and gazed at his enemy with incredulous wonder. His face suffused with a beaming smile. “Did you just say you were… Captain Hook?” “Bloodhooke. Kill him!” “Not a chance,” grinned the wired wonder, springing into action. “Have at you, you old codfish!” The Singularity Rider was unhorsed. Donar pressed his nails into the bitter darkness under the Doomwraiths cowl, squeezing down into the numbing flesh of the composite horror. S’Chen’s own claws raked strips of flesh from Donar’s face and arms. The two of them were almost invisible in the darkness now, a turbulent freezing smog of screaming souls detached from the Singularity Rider, some of them still picking and clawing at their enemy. Donar ignored their subliminal suggestions to surrender and die and vented his anger and passion and fury on the agent of the Parody Master that had destroyed his people. Suddenly S’Chen rose, drawing on whatever reserves of horror gave him strength. He swatted Donar aside, then reached out to form a great sword in his left hand. Made of the same substance as himself, it tore at the eye like a black wound in space. Donar spat blood and stumbled to his feet. “To me, Mjalcolm!” he called, and his own enchanted baseball bat with a nail in it sped to his hand. The black blade swiped down towards his neck. Mjalcom caught the blow and returned it. The impact churned up the battlefield again and set the heavens ringing. “You weaken, Ausssgardian,” observed S’Chen the Empty. “Your fire ebbsss.” “I will not go down to darkness and death save your corpse is laid at mine feet,” Donar answered. “For Fey and friend, for Ausgard and Annj, for life and hope and all that art good, have at thee!” And still the enemies came upon each other. “Still battling?” Lord Slithis sniffed. “And his little friends out there in the field trying to hold the line? If it wasn’t so pathetic I’d be almost impressed.” He turned to the host-warden of his elite Draugr. “Break the truce. Begin the attack anew. Send everything we have against the White Gate. Bring me the mortal wench Marion Nightshade for my pleasure. Kill every other thing that lives on the Wall and everything that cringes beyond it.” The word was given. Discordant trumpets sounded. The hosts of darkness broke their word and attacked.  “They’re moving forward,” Captain Arkenweald gasped. “With everything they’ve got. But they made truce…”“Yeah, villains,” Exile answered, hefting his well-notched battle blade. “What can you do?” “Have we enough people to hold this gate now that it’s, um, less robust?” Dancer asked worriedly. “We hold this line to our last breath,” Arkenweald declared. “If we can hold it long enough… if Donar somehow triumphs over the Doomwraith… somehow…” “They’re coming,” Exile said. The ground was beginning to vibrate from the charge. The giants led the way, but behind them came the last of the wyverns and woses, then the still-countless hate-filled legions of orcs and kobolds and goblins and deep dwarves. Out across the battle plain Trickshot and CrazySugarFreakBoy! still battled to disrupt the charge, but they were only two and the enemy was countless. “How many folks do we have here?” Dancer asked. “To protect the old and the helpless and all the wounded?” “Fit to fight?” Exile answered. “Less than a thousand. We have no chance.” “No chance?” asked the Probability Dancer. “Or just a very small one?” “What do you mean?” puzzled Captain Arkenweald. Exile pulled him back to give Sarah Shepherdson space to move. “Oh, Dancer,” he breathed, “if you can pull this off…” “What’s she doing?” Arkenweald puzzled as the lithe girl became a fast-moving blur. “I have no idea,” Exile admitted. “But in a toss-up for who’s the most powerful Legionnaire to come to our rescue, it’s actually even money between Donar and Dancer.” “The girl? She is fair and moves divinely but…” The hordes of darkness reached the gate and slammed into the defenders with brutal force. A horn sounded in the distance and the first flags of the Elfguard reinforcements appeared on the high road to the west. The vanguard were already charging forward in relief. “Knights?” blinked Captain Arkenweald in disbelief. “Our knights?” On the ridge Barona Miiri of Perfectgaard looked down on the awful battle at the wall. She spurred her horse forward and called the charge. “See?” Dancer said, dropping exhaustedly to the ground and panting. “There was a chance.” Twenty thousand fresh warriors rode down to the gate, and the battle was joined. Somewhere behind them on the hill Con Johnstantine lit up a cigarette and patted George Gedney on the back. “Five day journey in a day and a night,” he observed to the exhausted Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity. “Not bad going.” At the front of the cavalry host, Tanner shifted shape and let out a howl that gave notice that there was a new top monster on the field and anyone that thought different was welcome to come and have a go. “Is that it?” a saddle-sore Ruby asked Asil. “Did we get here in time?” Asil Ashling cupped a hand over her eyes to stare down onto the dirty snow around the battle-plain. “We got here,” she admitted uncertainly. “But whether we got here in time, or with enough help… that’s still in question.” “I care not about their reinforcements,” Lord Slithis hissed, hurling aside his scrying crystal with a red fury. “I care not about their green saint nor their elder wolf nor their meddling jester nor their minor office holder. Overwhelm them all.” His face wrinkled into a mask of evil. “Awaken our secret,” he ordained. In the crumbling lower chambers beneath the walls of Aayesgarth, the old man pulled himself up on his staff and began to limp slowly up to the battlements. He had an appointment to keep. Donar slammed a raw bloody fist through the Singularity Rider, tearing at its Canian essence, pulling loose sprays of blackness. S’Chen closed in and wrapped his arms around the wounded hemigod, sucking more life from the dying warrior, clawing at the Ausgardian’s bleeding soul. There were no words now, only fury and determination and desperate need. S’Chen’s fingers passed through Donar’s skull to rake his mind. Donar gritted his teeth and slammed his forehead into the inky darkness of the Doomwraith’s face. The Singularity Rider punched through Donar’s chest and wrapped a death-cold hand round the hemigod’s beating heart. A scream somehow echoed across the noise-filled battlefield. “Donar!” A terrified woman clung to the crumbling battlements reaching out to him as if she could touch him over the distance between them; perhaps she could. Her long blonde tresses had fallen loose and whipped in the wind, trailing towards Donar Oldmanson. “Annj,” gasped the dying Ausgardian. “Mine heart.” “No more,” whispered S’Chen. “Now die.” “Mine heart,” repeated Dorar, dredging strength from deep inside himself; not strength from berserker rage or desperate need, not even from the tattered courage that had forced him on long after his flesh had failed him. Strength from love. Donar plunged his own hands into the Doomwraith’s chest and found the freezing lump where its heart should be. S’Chen and Donar squeezed their fists tight, together. The Singularity Rider made its only loud noise then: a screech like the genocide of worlds. And it evaporated into black smoke. And the black smoke faded into nothing. Donar took nine steps from the ragged cloak that was all which remained of his terrible foe, then fell. A silence came over the battlefield as orc and knight alike felt the change in mood. The Doomwraith’s oppression was lifted. Hope and life sprang up anew. And then they vanished again. Forming up from the blood on the combat ground, from the shadows in the hearts of the evil, from the casket Lord Slithis had laid open in his war-tent, arose the black silhouette of T’Vorkh the Cancerous, Singularity Rider of the Parody Master. “Aw that’s just cheatin’,” complained Trickshot as his heart fell. Donar tried to struggle from the ground. “I canst taketh him…” he gasped, unable to rise. “My turn, big guy,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! assured the fallen Ausgardian. “Hey, Ringwraith, I heard your action figure sucked!” T’Vorkh reached out a hand that didn’t even need to touch to close around CSFB!’s throat. “Hey, that’s ripped from Darth urk…” CSFB! gasped. Alarmingly, the cold began to seep through his silly suit. “Let him go!” Trickshot demanded, loosing a volley of arrows that the Doomwraith ignored. “Let him go!” “Kill them all,” Lord Slithis commanded. “Save their souls for later.” “Madame, we must retreat.” The centaur general told Miiri at the battle’s heart. “Have we won?” demanded the green-skinned Caphan woman. “No, madame. We are overwhelmed.” “Flee then,” Mirri told him. “I shall stay here and fight.” She stood in line with the Elfguard, mithrum dagger in each hand, and the men around her fought with animal ferocity for their living standard. “Hey, Miiri,” called Dancer, fighting her way through the press with Zebulon to join in the last defence. “Not retreating just when we’re getting to the climax?” “I have never missed a climax yet,” Mirri assured Shep. “We stay.” “We stay,” agreed Dancer. “Less bonding more fighting countless hordes,” growled Tanner, a red hairy rage atop a pile of dead. The T’Vorkh the Cancerous rode down upon them, CrazySugarFreakBoy! clutched in one hand, Trickshot in the other. The battle line faltered, then broke. The energy surged forward. Hope fled. “Donar is down,” Marion Nightshade cried, daring another glance over the broken battlements. “All the Legion are down, I think. And that… that thing is still coming on. “We need more reinforcements,” Xander agreed. “And something a little more durable than Elfguard, however valiant they might be.” He turned round to face the old man with the broad-brimmed hat and the walking stick. “Wouldn’t you agree?” he challenged the stranger. “I would,” admitted the old man. “It is time.” Marion eyed the stranger with alarm. “Time? Time for what?” She looked closer. “Do I… know you?” “You do,” agreed the old man. His single eye twinkled beneath the shadow of his battered hat’s brim. “And now it is time for you to remember.” “The translocation of Ausgard,” Xander calculated, half to himself. “Yes, dragging it through dimensions would violate the Celestian ordinance and would destroy it. That couldn’t be allowed. But it wasn’t time to face the Parody Master’s unlimited might either. Best for the nine realms to be folded away, hidden somewhere until they were needed. All that power left by the Oldman for Donar, then vested into Queen Annj while Donar was away. Power enough to take all of Ausgard and conceal it in a single mortal shell, to change time and space to make room for another human on Middlingaard. To leave things safe with the only person Donar would ever trust with such a vast responsibility. Very, very cunning. Very clever.” “Tis mine job,” agreed the Oldman, casting aside his cloak and standing straight. A pair of ravens alighted on his shoulders. Twin hoar-wolves stalked at his side. He reached a hand out to Marion. “Come to me, daughter. Tis time for you to be freed from your burden. This battle is in sooth need of valiant warriors, and you carry within you the host of Ausgard.” “I do,” agreed Marion, her face suddenly filled with wonder. “I am their Queen.” “Then set them loose,” The Oldman commanded. “And let the heavens ring with the return of Ausgard!” “Donar,” Lord Slithis hissed, leaning over his mortally wounded enemy. “Sorry you’re not well. But I thought it would be a nice tribute to your courage and honour if I finished you off personally. This obsidian dagger here is enchanted to end even a god’s life, and when I cut out your living heart I’ll be able to use this soul-shard I took earlier to create an enchantment that will bind your true love to me as my love-slave forever. Just so you know.” “Vile…” spat Donar, trying to find the strength to lift an arm. “Caitiff…” “Oh, by the way,” Slithis gloated, slowly pressing his knife into Donar’s flesh. “I win.” But suddenly there was a flash of light. The clouds parted, shedding brilliant sunbeams down onto the battlefield. There was a thunder of hooves, and a bright host fell upon the dark armies. “What?” gasped Slithis. Then came the charge of the valkyries. Queen Annj led them. Right at Slithis. “Wow,” gasped Zebulon. “Was this one of yours as well, Dancer?” “I don’t think so,” Sarah Shepherdson admitted as she watched the enemy hordes falter and fall back. “Although I really don’t understand how my powers work anyway. But I think this was mythic.” “It is not over,” Miiri warned. T’Vorkh the Cancerous was still approaching, and his tread was death. “Mythic indeed,” agreed the Oldman, suddenly beside them. He pointed his ash staff at the oncoming Singularity Rider. “Avaunt!” T’Vorkh the Cancerous vanished from Faerie, smeared as a spray of malice across distant worlds. “Now why didn’t we think of that?” asked Zebulon. “Milady?” Donar asked weakly as the blonde vision lifted him to her lap. “Marion?” “If you like,” Queen Annj told him, leaning over him on the battlefield to choose the worthy. “Marion. Annj. Just so long as you call me yours.” “Slithis…” “Is very sorry for what he’s done.” Annj pressed the recovered soul-lien to her breast and took it back to herself. “The valkyrior are making him stand in a corner.” “Brunnhylde always didst have a sense of humour.” Donar gazed up with tears in his eyes. “Tis good to look on you one last time.” “Hush, beloved,” Annj told him “I was all Ausgard for a while there. And what is Ausgard without Donar Oldmanson?” She leaned over him. “I find you worthy,” she breathed, then pressed her lips to his. The magic flowed between them; some of it was even enchanted. Donar found the strength and life flowing back into him, enough at least to sit up and grapple the woman down across his lap for a proper kiss. “Wow, get a longhouse you two,” Trickshot told them. “Oh, and by the way, we won.” Help for the wounded came from the mythlands nomads from the hills. Valeria of Carfax, Lady of Shandalor arrived at evenfall with her women and many medical supplies. She waved to Dancer and CrazySugarFreakBoy! then embraced Exile with the passion of lovers who had never expected to meet again. “Wow,” Dancer said through a teary grin. “I just love happy endings.” “There are no endings,” Tanner told her dourly. “Only pauses in the action.” “But people get to be happy for a little while,” Ruby ventured. “Don’t they?” Tanner considered this as the neowitch grinned at him. “Maybe,” he conceded. “Everybody’s pairing off,” Johnstantine told Dancer with a leer. “Are you doing anything special this evenin’ darling?” “I’m washing my hair.” “I’ll bring a sponge.” “Not everybody is pairing off,” Asil noted hastily. She glanced in panic at George Gedney and went to check the supply wagons. “What did I say?” puzzled the museum curator. Across the courtyard Zebulon was preparing a mount. “Ten days to the Seelie Court,” he estimated to Captain Arkenweald, “but I’ll tell the Queene what happened here. She’ll send reinforcements again, and smiths to repair the gates. You’re going to be a hero.” “I’ll settle for a night’s sleep,” answered the young soldier. “And so you show your wisdom,” declared Oldman. The All-Pappy watched as his people continued to pursue the rout into the distance. “Ausgard shalt return to the Mythlands,” he declared. “There we shalt stand watch and guard fast against the Parody Master seeking this route to your Earth or Faerie again.” “Shame you guys can’t come to Middleguard to fight beside us,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! said. “But the same Celestian power that’s shielding Earth prevents your power from working there. Still, you’ve got to admit we must have kicked the PM in the nuts with this mission. He’s not going to be a happy camper.” “Lord Puck!” someone called to him from the gate house. “There is a woman traveller here who desires speech of you. A Lady Bettie.” Miiri managed to get away from the cheering crowds who were carrying her round the battlefield and return to the others. “Is it strange that I feel homesick for Earth?” she wondered. “Not at all,” Valeria of Carfax told her. “I still miss that strange turbulent place sometimes as well.” The former Dreary Dimension slave reached out and clasped the former Caphan slave’s hands. “By the way, I’m Val. We really should talk sometime.” “Yeah, um, speaking of talking, Miiri” Trickshot broached, “We need to fill you in on a few things concerning your kid. Nothing to be alarmed about. But you might wanna sit down.” “Naari?” The Caphan’s face was a mixture of hope and fear. “What of her? Is she safe? Is she well? Does she prosper?” “Okay,” breathed Dancer. “You know you wanted a girl and Visionary wanted a boy…” Next time: Back to Earth for another desperate showdown. The Lair Legion needs to take down the Avatar and win back China. Hatman has a half-strength team and needs to draft some ringers. Eloise Shellett vs Citizen Z. G-Eyed and AG and Cody and Dan Drury and Liu Xi and Exu. A giant robot arm. More special guest stars I hope you won’t expect. A really big fight. Untold Tales of the Parody War: Big Trouble in Big China. Tie Ins: For more on who this Bettie seeking CSFB! is, read Lost Girls by CrazySugarFreakBoy! and for the follow-up go to The Other End (of the Telescope) by CrazySugarFreakBoy! For what happens next to Miiri and the others read An Untold Tale Tie-in of the Barona Miiri and Friends by Visionary. Images by Visionary, of course. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2006 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2006 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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