#124: Untold Tales of the King of Stories: How I Destroyed The Lair Legion

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusky death. The King of Stories sat on his bloody throne carved from the meat and bone of children that had not eaten their greens or who had bitten their nails. He supped from a goblet that was once the skull of a woman butchered by her true-love, quaffed deep of wine pulped from broken dreams. He leaned forward, his eyes literally burning in the skull-sockets of his crimson flame-ruined face. And he watched… The three bears had finally caught the thief and were feasting on the rich tasty entrails of Goldilocks’ bloody body.     “Leave it,” the Dark Knight retrained Fin Fang Foom. “This is a reflection of the psyche. You can’t fight every dark nuance of human nature.”     “I can try,” the Makluan dragon growled angrily.     “We wanted to get to faerie. Somehow we’ve all got pulled here. This is just a show for our benefit. Someone’s trying to scare us,” DK explained. “I don’t do scared.”     “They’re using symbolism from your peoples’ collective unconscious to set your frame of reference here,” Ziles reported. She stared down at the scanner in her hand even though it refused to do anything but spout nursery rhymes. “You should expect it to be disconcerting. It’s meant to be.”     Finny led his companions further along the red forest road. “And you’re not affected by this… frame of reference, Ziles?”     “Well, its gory. That thing the wolf was doing to that little girl in red? Eew. But it’s not my childhood they’re using against us. Now if there was a glarch trying to infimble two little sturriges…”     “Your translator’s not keeping up again,” the Dark Knight warned.     “Probably just as well,” the Xnylonian exile admitted. “How much further are we going? We seem to have been walking for days.”     “Not much further, I’d say,” DK opined. “Now that we’ve all rumbled the point of the grim fairy tales they’ll probably want to get us on to the next phase of their attack.”     “Like getting us to siege a castle of bones?” Foom wondered, raising his neck and pointing one massive talon to the west. Before the setting sun a fortress of white and grisly red rose up from a chalk crag like a challenge to every decent feeling the dragon had.     “Something like that,” agreed DK. “We’d better hurry. They’re making the sun set, and I don’t think we want to meet the wolves around here in the dark.” “Where are we?” worried the Librarian.     “Off the map,” the Manga Shoggoth replied. “Off all the maps.”     “Yo is not liking this place. Yo is feeling as if little parts of Yo are drifting away never to be coming back.”     “That’s right,” agreed the Shoggoth. “This is death.”     “Is not death. Death is to be happy place with kindness and bunnies. This is to be dark misty endingless nothing with just thing black-ribbon path looping on and on.”     “Is there a reason we’re here?” the Librarian asked nervously. “Only I thought we were going to faerie, to look for the Hooded Hood?”     “The fey realms have always been linked to the lands of the dead,” the elder beast that guided them replied. “And there’s a tradition of people coming along this path to try and bring back someone who they loved.”     “Trying,” L noted nervously. “So why are we here again?”     “Visi!” beamed Yo happily. “We are to be going to find Visi!” “Gaaah!” Falcon woke up suddenly as the fizz-bang whiz-bang exploded beside his ear. “What the hell was that?”     “Just a bit of combat candy,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! assured him. “We were having a bit of trouble waking you up.”     “I still say we should have tried it my way,” sulked Lisa.     Sam Wilson looked round him at the gloomy swamp. He tried to get up but something was pinning him to the bank.     “Don’t move yet,” advised Dancer. “We have to find a way of getting those little tree roots that are growing under you skin out without hurting you.”     “Aaagh!” screeched Falcon. He activated his jet pack and flew straight upwards, ripping himself loose from the vampiric vegetation that he been leeching him while he dreamed.     “Or we could do it that way,” Dancer sighed.     “What happened? Where am I?” Falcon demanded, hovering unsteadily and trying to clear his head. The last he remembered he’d been in Hell’s Bathroom with somebody who claimed to be his sister. Then he spotted the Hooded Hood. “What’s he doing here?”     “First I’m here to rescue you from the dreaming grass,” the cowled crime-czar explained.     “Waitaminute! You were there, you sonofabitch, there in that memory I was dreaming. You retconned me!”     “I assure you I have never retconned you,” the Hood told him. “Yet.”     “But it was the past,” Sam remembered. “Nearly ten years ago, and you… aw hell!”     “Old Hoody doesn’t need to work linearly like the rest of us,” admired CSFB! “All it means is he’ll come and screw you up at some point in his future, your past, after he gets his powers back. Yay!”     “Oh yes, Yay,” answered Pelopia flatly.     “As I was saying,” the Hooded Hood continued, “First I’m here to rescue you from the dreaming grass. Then I assemble your scattered comrades from the four corners of the infinite realm of Faerie. Then I defeat the conqueror of this realm and win our passage home. And then I take over the Parodyverse. Any questions?” “Sometimes you’re your own worst enemy,” Ziles complained to the Dark Knight. “Why can’t you admit that you’re hurt?”     “Because I don’t hurt,” answered the urban legend coldly. “Those clockwork soldiers nicked me with their bayonets, is all. A little more blood on this floor won’t make a difference, and I don’t feel any pain.”     “Because it doesn’t hurt or because you won’t let it?”     “Because I’ve died more times than I can easily remember, and every time I claw my way back I leave a little bit of humanity behind. There’s not much left now.”     Ziles stared at those dark, shadowed eyes. “And… you want that. You actually want to feel nothing, so you can’t hurt ever again! Oh DK…”     They’d battled the corpse marionettes, and the taselvurm, and the graveyard lanterns. The ogre who’d wanted to grind their bones to make his bread and wanted to do something obscene with Ziles and a harp had been a challenge. But the clockwork soldiers had been the hardest, and the ones that had got to Fin Fang Foom the worst.     “These aren’t faerie creatures,” hissed the battered Makluan. “These are humans, real people from our world. They’ve been… hollowed out to make room for the clockwork, then dressed in these funny tin soldier costumes to parade and prance!”     “There’s a price for having your wishes granted and your dreams come true,” the Dark Knight said, drawing his long coat closer about him. “You don’t think Camellia and her drug connection have been performing a public service out of the Willow nightclub, do you?”     “Is she behind this, then?” Finny asked wrathfully. “When I find out…”     “She’s just a local agent,” spat DK. “She buys a little autonomy by supplying fey-addicted humans to her masters here. We’re going to the source.”     They were within the Castle of Bones, at the throat-like entrance to gullet-red tunnels that snaked their way deeper in. “A source that thinks this is good decorating,” Ziles noted.     “A source that thinks this will give him a psychological edge,” the Dark Knight replied. “Like that’s going to save him.”     A dozen eyeless humans stitched into the walls watched them pass to the interior. The gates were flanked by two giant guardians, statues of some immortal black stone or once-living creatures petrified into eternal vigilance it was impossible to say. They didn’t move as Yo and the Manga Shoggoth approached them; not even when the Librarian took a rubbing of the Latin inscription on the base of their plinths.     “Death is but a door,” he translated unhappily. “That big black door there, I’d guess.”     “Yes,” agreed the Shoggoth. “You must go through it now. I can guide you no further.”     “Cute oozy-Shoggoth is not to be coming with us?”     “I can’t come any further,” the being of protoplasm told them. “I can’t die. Not like you can, anyway. I was made differently, by different masters, under different laws.”     “But we can go in?” L noted. “Into the realms of death. Just like that?”     “Just like that,” bubbled the Shoggoth. “Getting in is easy. It’s getting out that’s the hard part.”     “Ah, a catch. Now I feel better.”     “Your other guide should be waiting for you just beyond these doors,” the Shoggoth said. “You should go on now.”     Yo tried to hug the elder beast, but he was really too squishy. S/he gave up eventually and padded after the Librarian into the darkness. “This mirror maze seems to go on forever,” ManMan commented…     “That’s what y’said about the hedge maze too,” dull thud pointed out again. “And we got out of that alright.”     “Oh, pull yourselves together, Manny, thuddy,” Dancer told the heroes trapped in the recursive loop. “We need you to die with the rest of us. Come on.” The Manager of the Theatre of Despair looked up smugly as the heroes climbed onto the stage to stop the performance. Soon enough they’d be part of it. “So you’ve come to fight to free your little friends, is that it?” he asked, gesturing to where Goldeneyed and Lisette dangled limply on the end of their magical puppet strings. He glanced contemptuously at CSFB! and Pelopia.     “Not at all,” Lisa Waltz told him viciously. “We’re not here as their friends. We’re here as their agents. We’ve come to discuss their commission fee.”     The Manager of the Theatre of Despair winced, his smile wiped from his face.     Lisa smiled instead, and went for the kill. The last of the microwave foetuses was pulped. Ziles dragged herself painfully to her feet and examined the bite marks on her shoulder. Nothing was supposed to be able to tear through her silver-mesh jump-suit, but it bore gashes and rips in a dozen places by now. Worse were the tears in her psychic defences, deliberate holes made by the constant assaults of the beings within the Castle of Bones.     “Very good. Very good!” applauded the Blood Countess from her deep red bath. “And still mostly sane afterwards. I’m impressed.”     Fin Fang Foom loosed a blast of nuclear fire to boil countess, bath and all, into vapour. “Enough!” he shouted. “If there’s somebody in charge of this fun house you can come out now! I’m done with games!”     “You’re not done until I decide you’re done,” the King of Stories assured him. The tall figure swathed in a black mantle had a polished burning skull for a head, but his eyes were human and malicious. He gestured and the full-sized dragon was slammed up against a rib wall unable to move.     The Dark Knight hurled a spread of knightarangs at the newcomer, each set to neural disruption. The King of Tales disrupted them with a glance. Some of the flying weapons screamed as they disintegrated.     But that left Ziles her opening. Using the psychic frequencies her equipment had determined through the countless assaults, she triggered a counterwave that disrupted the King’s plasmic form and left him vulnerable to a final attack.     The King of Stories laughed. He shifted to an entirely new set of psychic frequencies with casual ease, and the scanner in Ziles’ hand became a slimy basilisk serpent that bit her before crawling off under a mound of corpses. Xnylonian and Dark Knight joined the dragon pinned to the fleshy wall. “Better,” the King decided. He gestured again, and Andy Dean was in human form. Another hand movement and all three of his prisoners were hanging spread eagled before him. “Much better.”     “We’ve taken down enemies that were more powerful than us before,” Finny pointed out. “Lots of them.”     “Of course you have,” the King agreed. “You wouldn’t be of interest to me otherwise.” Yo and the Librarian passed the Portal of Death and found themselves in Death’s Dining Room.     “Hi guys,” called Nats, pushing aside the cheese board. “Really good timing.”     “Nats?” L frowned. “What are you doing here?”     “I mean really good timing,” Nats went on. “We were just at the coffee and couch stage, if you know what I mean?”     “Yo is not really knowing what you are meaning,” Yo admitted.     Just then Temporary Death bustled back in with two steaming cups of Turkish coffee in her hands. “I thought we might take this over to the sofa to drink, William,” she began. “After all, we haven’t… oh! Guests!”     Temporary Death hastily set the cups down on the dinner table and adjusted her housecoat. “I was, um, I spilt some coffee on my evening gown,” she explained, blushing.     Librarian raised one eyebrow at Nats. Nats winced.     Yo smiled. “Yo is thinking maybe some bicarbonating of soda might be to getting the stain out?” suggested the pure thought being. When Deadshot took the arrowhead out of the makeshift brazier it was glowing dull red with the heat. He squatted down beside his former wife and held the searing shaft a half inch above her cheek. “I don’t know where to start, Talia,” he told the captive Contessa. “Do I burn off that deceiving face that made me fall in love and let down my guard, or that lying tongue that set me up to be murdered by Baron Zemo? Or do I scorch out those spying eyes that fooled me into ever thinking I was anything but your patsy?” Natalia Romanza did not flinch from the scorching metal, but her moistening eyes already showed a world of hurt. “Whatever you want,” she answered him in a whisper. “I deserve it all.” “No!” shouted Deadshot, slapping her hard across the face. “No, damn it! You’re supposed to beg an’ plead, you bitch! You’re supposed to grovel and scream!” The Contessa shook her head. “I’m so sorry for what I did to you, Carl. I was young and foolish and I didn’t even know I’d fallen in love with you until it was too late.” “Don’t call me Carl!” screeched her captor, brandishing the heated arrow like a knife. “Don’t say that. I’m not Carl now. You murdered Carl. I’m Deadshot! Deadshot!” “What’s happened to you here, Carl?” Natalia pleaded. “Please tell me? What have I condemned you to?” The Carl Bastion that Natalia Romanza had married as part of an espionage mission had been slaughtered by the man she then worked for. He had been a brave man, a good man, a hero. What terrible afterlife had so twisted him as to turn him into this? “You? You figured I was dead and forgotten, another dummy that fell for your charms! And I would have fallen into eternal death if it hadn’t been for my patron, who dragged me back and gave me a second existence in this place of temporary death.” “I never knew Zemo would kill you, Carl.” Another blow. “Not! Carl! And you already killed me inside when you betrayed me like that. I never loved nobody but you, Talia, and all along you wus just using me!” “I confess it,” The tears were coming now, not from the blow but from that long-held guilt. “I never realised what you meant to me until you were taken from me. I know I can never set that right, but…” “But my new boss did!” gloated Deadshot. “Th’ King of Stories, he fixed me up to be undead, just like in th’ movies. Better than ever. Even if you hadn’t tumbled into the place of the maybe-dead I’d soon have been strong enough to come to the mortal world ta hunt you there, baby. But now I got you an’ the fake me from some second rate alternate dimension and the whole of eternity to show ya what I think of you. I got me some big, nasty plans, princess.” Natalia stifled a scream as he reached for her. A silver-tipped shaft pinned his hand to the wall. “I can’t believe I could become this big a bozo,” growled Trickshot. Deadshot ripped his hand free and nocked an arrow with lightning speed. “How’d you get free? I took your weapons.” He loosed the missile. Trickshot diverted it in midair with a shaft of his own. “Ah, you died years ago, ya whinin’ clown. You don’t think I been practisin’ since then? Plus, I made it inta the Lair Legion, which you never did, loser, an’ they helped me with some hidden weapons an’ stuff you never dreamed of.” Plus escapology training from the Dark Knight, he didn’t add. “Take your best shot,” Deadshot boasted. “I can’t be killed here.” “Okay,” Tricky agreed, firing his glue arrow then following up with an explosive blast that brought the wall on top of his enemy. “Can you be made to look like a gomer, though?” “Carl,” whimpered Natalia as he helped her to her feet, but whether she was speaking to her rescuer or her former husband was unclear. “We gotta get out of here, Talia,” Trickshot told her. “’Fore corpse-kid there digs his way out and calls in that boss of his.” “No. I deserve to be here. I deserve to be punished.” “If we all got whut we deserved we’d all be in a sorry state. Now c’mon and let’s make some tracks, okay? I’ll deck you and carry you if it makes you feel better.” “As if you could.” That stirred an echo of the Contessa Trickshot knew. “Right. C’mon then.” “Which way though?” “I believe I may be of some assistance in that matter,” suggested the Hooded Hood, emerging from the shadows. “This way, if you please.” “What to do to you,” the King of Stories considered. “There are so many possibilities. Such a complex, repressed tangle of mutual feelings here to explore. Shall I turn the dragon into a monstrous toad that can only be cured by copulating with the alien girl? Or release all that pent-up emotion buried in the Dark Knight’s dead flesh and see what happens? Or swap your eyes over so each sees the world from the other’s grim corner? Or turn you two into hungry maggots and set you loose in the girl’s womb? Or bring back the spirits of all those enemies you have slain and give them power over your flesh to work their wills in bitter revenge?”     “Don’t listen to him,” DK told the others. “This is just another attack, trying to scare us like with the twisted fairy tales and the bloody castle.”     “That much is obvious,” Ziles answered. “I’m just wondering why he needs to do that.”     “Or perhaps, ‘Ziles’, I should simply send you home?” suggested the King of Stories. “To the Gahream? That would be an interesting narrative – if a little perverted.”     The Xnylonian’s resistance crumpled like tissue paper. “No. Don’t do that.”     “Leave her alone!” shouted Andy Dean. “Who the hell are you, anyway? The biggest fairy in the land?”     “Ah, the noble leader of the mighty Lair Legion steps in to rescue the lovely terrified exile from a fate considerably worse than death,” noted the King. “Do you wish to know where your team-mates are just now? They’re with the Hooded Hood, gathering together to assault this place so they can leave over my broken, defeated corpse.”     “Sounds like a plan,” Finny agreed nastily.     “Unfortunately, the Hood has seen better days. He no longer has his powers, and without them all of your teammates, your only friends, will fail and perish. I guarantee it.”     “There are some pretty powerful members of the LL,” Andy boasted.     “Not as powerful as me. You still haven’t worked out who I am yet, have you?” he glanced over at the Dark Knight. “I’m hurt.”     “You’re not that interesting that I want to know you better,” DK scowled. Somehow all the automatic weapons systems and hidden contingencies in his costume were gone, preventing his escape. Tendrils from the wall were burrowing beneath his flesh to hold him all the tighter.     “You know who your Dark Knight really is, of course,” the King of Stories said, dragging DK’s mask off.     “Yes,” snarled Finny.     “No,” admitted Ziles, curiously.     “In another possible reality, he is the man who became the current iteration of the Chronicler of Stories, the cosmic-office keeper responsible for herding the narrative strands of the Parodyverse.”     “That’s who arranged for him to come back from the dead if his will was strong enough,” Finny agreed. “So?”     “Shut up,” DK snapped.     “The current Chronicler is under Ultizon’s control, though,” the King of Stories explained. “His original genetics still had the Celestian obedience trigger in them, and none of the Triumverate had altered their plasmic avatars to eliminate the flaw. The Chronicler might have foreseen what was coming and done so, had he not been distracted by being assassinated a short while ago.”     “You were behind the attempt on Chronicler’s life in that Kumari-as-Hooded-Hood business!” Ziles realised.     “Now the Chronicler cannot interfere with me. It was simplicity itself to walk in and establish a beachhead power base in Faerie. Can anybody tell me why?”     “Because you can manipulate the tales yourself,” DK reasoned. “You’re a former Chronicler.”     “Yes.” The blazing skull turned towards the Dark Knight with a burning malevolence. “I am the first Chronicler.” It was quite a reunion. “Visi!” squealed Yo, leaping into Visionary’s arms in delight. “Hey, Yo,” wheezed the possibly-fake man from the floor. “Next time you do that, think about shifting to female form?” “Good job he’s still technically dead, what?” snorted Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “Did we ever sort out whether he was fake or not?” “Ah, now that’s an interesting question,” Xander the Improbable explained. “You see, if Visionary was fake, a synthezoid created with engrams implanted by the Omega Codes that program Ultizon, then Ultizon’s reign is unstoppable.” “I’m real dammit!” “If you’re real, you died on the dissecting table,” the master of the mystic crafts went on. “But you saved the world by not having the codes to be used by the Shadow Cabinet.” “You guys really died so you could find Visionary and get him here for this meeting?” the Librarian wondered. “That’s job dedication.” “Actually, if it turns out that Visionary was real then they never died, and everything’s alright,” Temporary Death explained brightly. “If he’s fake, then they’re dead for good, and they go to my sister’s domain, where death’s door isn’t a revolving one.” “But Vizh is still dead, right?” Nats worried. “I was a bit unsettled by that, too,” admitted Visionary. “Is not to be right,” complained Yo. “It’s a bit rough on Visionary, poor old chap,” agreed Mumph, “but sometimes these kind of heroic sacrifices need to be made, I’m afraid, dash it all.” “No. Yo means is not to be right is Visi being here at all. If only two choices are Visi to be fake and die or Visi to be real and die, why is to be Visi in land of cute Temporary Death?” “That’s… a very good point,” conceded Xander. “It is indeed,” agreed Death, Temporary Death’s older, thinner sister, appearing from nowhere at the moment she was needed. “Come with me please, Visionary. It’s time for you to go.” The Pegasus launched herself forwards shimmering with cosmic power, scattering hell-hounds across the blood-stained ice, and smashed into the Wilde Huntsman with an impact that would have toppled a mountain. “It’s me you want!” she shouted. “So let’s leave the others out of this.” The Huntsman staggered back a pace, but he caught his prey by the throat, butted his stag-horned head forward with stunning force, and hurled Penny Christapolous to the ground. “I wondered how long it would take for you to turn, victim. Once you would have attacked long before this. Or fled and abandoned your comrades.” De Brown Streak swerved through the pack and tried to catch the fallen Pegasus up in his arms. Black lightning from the Huntsman’s spear lanced around him. He stumbled and rolled, twitching to immobility. “Take me, then, and leave them alone,” Pegasus asked the implacable ancient force that had trailed her for nine days across faerie and for countless centuries before that. “It’s only me who was named when you were summoned.” “True,” agreed the Huntsman, grasping spiffy’s fern and swinging him in a savage arc down onto the jagged glacier. “But they chose to inconvenience me. And hurting them will hurt you.” He watched as the hell-hounds tore NTU-150 from his feet. “After all, I have to find an eternity of ways to torment you once you are my captive, and there’s only so many ways to make someone plead for themselves.” “Who the hell are you?” Messenger demanded, dropping the carcass of a hound at his feet and moving close to the Huntsman, razor-letter in hand. The Huntsman moved so fast that the postman didn’t even realise at first that he had a spear through his stomach. The Huntsman raised him up, impaled so that Messenger was slowly sliding down to face his enemy. “I am he who is tasked with bringing vengeance upon the wrongdoer, through the Hunt and the Horror that follows,” he proclaimed, and the skies rumbled with thunder in agreement. “And I love my work.” Pegasus rolled over on the floor and blasted upwards with her cosmic bolt. She’d let this one brew for nearly a minute, and this one could have carved a chunk out of the moon. The Huntsman was thrown from his feet. Pegasus was upon him in winged-horse form, her glowing hooves trampling, her energy-sheathed fists pounding. She knew she couldn’t win the battle. She was just hoping that the delay would allow her allies the chance to get away. It was a noble ploy, but nobody was in a fit state to rise. Messenger was bleeding to death, NTU-150 was being savaged by hounds, De Brown Streak and spiffy were down. Sorceress could hardly stay conscious from her earlier wounds. Already she was circled by hell-hounds, huge slavering creatures with glowing saucer eyes and fiery breath. She saw through dimming eyes the fall of her friends. She felt in her heart the absence of her lover Hatman, lost in the chase. She shuddered once and summoned up her dying curse. “Huntsman!” she called savagely. The Wilde Huntsman felt the power and looked over at her. He caught Pegasus again by her hair and smashed her down so he could turn his full attention on the Sorceress. Then the ice field exploded. The thick plate on which the battle was taking place shattered into fragments, spilling heroes, hunter, and hounds alike into the icy waters below. From the depths of the dark troubled sea flew the Falcon, whose weaponry had caused the destruction. Sam Wilson didn’t have much time. His automated tracking systems led him to spiffy and Sorceress and he seized them as he flew over the waters then powered away at full thrust towards the exit portal the Lady Mab had created for him at the Hooded Hood’s request. Given a moment’s respite from the savage jaws of the hounds, Jamie Bautista was able to cobble a reboot on his battered NTU-150 battle-armour. His gyros and boot jets sputtered back on line and he was able to prevent himself sinking any deeper into the unlit sea. He detected Pegasus and DBS floating in the water sixty metres away at 290 degrees and powered himself towards them with the last of his energies. The Wilde Huntsman realised that a new player had become involved and rose up to stand on the water’s surface and survey the scene. He was too late to stop NTU-150 carry Pegasus through the same conduit that the others had escaped through. He made to follow but it winked out like a soap bubble. The hounds howled. But a pair of them snarled at each other and wrestled with the limp bloody rag torn between their jaws. The Huntsman smiled when he saw that Messenger had been left behind. As for the Hunt, the Huntsman already sensed where Pegasus had gone, and knew how to get there. It was only a matter of time. “All Chroniclers are one Chronicler,” the King of Tales proclaimed as he ran his fingers through Ziles’ hair. “The teller changes but the story remains the same. So Dark Knight’s feelings for this woman are a part of me.” He suddenly wrenched Ziles head round to face him. “Shall I show you what he’d like to do with you, in his deepest most repressed fantasies?”     “C-could you floss first?” Ziles answered, trying to cling onto her defiance. The threat of the Gahream still froze her heart.     “If you’re a Chronicler, or were one, why are you such a nutjob?” demanded Fin Fang Foom.     The King turned his attention to the captured Makluan. “A Chronicler represents the Parodyverse,” he answered. “Who wouldn’t be? The human mind had many dark alleys, and the Chronicler of Stories must explore them all. We all go insane the moment we take the job. Some just hide it better than others.”     “Got to say, you’re not doing such a brilliant job of hiding it,” Finny told him.     “Why would I wish to hide it? Insanity and genius run together, and the oldest stories began before humans ever managed to even get two cells to combine together. That’s why Ultizon’s call meant nothing to me. I was never human.”     “Explains the eighties’ villain appearance then, I suppose,” the dragon mocked.     The King raked a burning hand into Andy’s chest. “Do you know what your best friend thinks of you? Really deep down? Do you know that he believes that one day you’ll turn on him and he’ll have to destroy you? Do you know the Dark Knight has plans for it? Do you?”     Finny shuddered as the cold fire lanced along his nerves. “I know… one thing…” he gasped in agony.     “And what is that?” seethed the King of Stories.     Andy nodded feebly to the next section of wall. “The Dark Knight is gone.” “We’re not all here!” spiffy shouted as Dancer tried to bandage his injuries. “We left Messenger behind!”     “And Jay,” pleaded Sorceress weakly. “We have to find Jay.”     “We had to shut down the portal then or the Huntsman would have got through,” answered the Faerie Queen coldly. “It was dangerous enough to interfere with the Hunt anyway.” She looked at the battered prey they had rescued. “And hardly worth it. Do you really believe these poor wretches can help you against the King of Stories, Ioldobaoth?”     The Hooded Hood looked towards the distant Castle of Bones. “It is rather for them to decide if they wish me to help them,” he answered.     “Hey, we did come all this way just to get you ta do somethin’!” Trickshot complained.     “Indeed,” the Hood agreed. “But there is a price for that assistance.”     “Isn’t anyone bothered that we found the Hood but he doesn’t have any o’ his powers at all?” dull thud pointed out.     “Jay!” Sorceress called feverishly, trying to rise despite ManMan’s efforts to comfort her.     “Relax, my love. I’m here,” the changeling that had taken Hatman’s shape assured her. “Lisa and the Faerie Queen came and found me.” He placed a comforting arm around Whitney. “I’m so glad to be here with you at last.”     “What price?” Lisa demanded of the cowled crime czar. “I’m willing to do a few things that…”     “This has all gone too far to fully reset,” the Hood explained. “Even if I had my retrospective continuity abilities, even if I can defeat the King of Stories, then stopping him and then stopping the entity you call Ultimate Ultizon would require… sacrifices.”     “You’re trying to turn the upcoming end of the Parodyverse to your profit?” objected Dancer.     “Well, yes,” agreed the Hooded Hood. “But that is not what I refer to. I mean that certain events would have to be set in motion, or existing plots would have to be perpetuated to their unpleasant conclusions, things which would cost some of you dearly and would shatter your Lair Legion.”     The words spread a sombre gloom on the tattered band of heroes. Except for CSFB! “We get to die saving the Parodyverse? Yay!”     “Ultizon offers a kind of paradise, for a while,” the Hood pointed out. “You may want to accept it. The consequences of thwarting him are unpredictable, dangerous, and tragic.”     “But we’d be free,” argued Goldeneyed.     “Yes. So knowing that seeking my help will change almost everything, do you still want to enter into this venture, heroes of the Parodyverse?”     Lisa looked round at the wounded, shattered, exhausted band that was strewn across the red grass of the bleeding forest. She took the time to look into each of their faces and to read their souls.     The first lady of the Lair Legion took the Hooded Hood’s hand. “Yes,” she said emphatically. “Let’s do it.” Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player Who struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing. Predictions for Next Time: The seers tremble and foresee a clash of the great. Without his powers, the one cowled in plots enters the bleeding fortress to face the ancient monarch of narrative. The reason for the Wild Hunt shall be made known. The secret at the heart of the King of Stories’ kingdom shall be exposed. And Death shall demand a price before any may leave her darkling realm. All this plus tides of blood, rains of fire, stars tumbling from the heavens, and diverse dire omens, in Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: How the Story Ends Notes and Credits: First I'd like to thank my collaborators: Greg Burch, for donating the use of his striking character the King of Stories and for tipping me off as to whom he intended him to be; a dark reflection of the nastiest parts of the chronicler's psyche, and perhaps the first, oldest Chronicler; and also to William Shakespeare, whose Macbeth provided the verses at start and finish of this narrative. One couldn't wish for better colleagues. I hope this issue is fairly self-explanatory for those who've been reading the last few episodes, so I've not added any footnotes this time round. I don't really know who Ziles' Gahream are, only that she doesn't like them; but I intend to find out, because exploring that issue was a very popular option in the recent Untold Survey. Finally, readers may have noted the somewhat elaborate layouts in the last three issues. Don't get too used to them, because they're a lot of work to create. However, I wanted the four-part faerie story to have an otherworldly feel to it, so I thought it worth making an effort for these issues at least. Look for another layout next time in the concluding section of this part of our story. I wonder if people think I should adopt one kind of "fancy" background layout to use all the time, or if it distracts from the story? Which one? Answers on a postcard. HH Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2003 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2003 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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