Saturday, November 19, 2005
The rest of chapter four, and most of chapter five. (grins) Meet Lyrane, humans.
WOO!
**
Trailing through the dusty streets of Serenor, the elf queen sought a merchant selling chocolate cake. Cake felt as if it would be a good idea. At least her stomach agreed avidly that it felt like a good idea to balance off the apple, which had been the last thing she had ate. And that had been at least an hour ago now.
And perhaps some tea to go with it, she thought. Some nice herbal tea.
Naraqe was a bit satisfied that Leron had agreed to come with her. At least, that was the impression she had gotten from the dialogue with him. And she doubted that he would insist on trying to deny his agreement to go along with her into the Inner Realm Archives if she gave him a nasty enough look.
Leron and Naraqe were not related, married, or otherwise very close significant others to each other. He was not her mentor, nor was she his servant. Their relationship had been merely a business relationship between two royals at one time. And then it had expanded into a slight friendship between the emotionless Leron and the hopeless romantic Naraqe. They didn’t like each other much, but they did both trust each other.
And it wasn’t as if either of them had never saved the other’s life. She owed him her life ten times over, and he nearly as likewise to her.
The elf nearly crashed into a rather tall metal pole with several dints in it, one of which looked remarkably like a little ‘; P’. She found that almost weirdly amusing. But pausing from the near collision with the strange pole she glanced over and observed with great joy a merchant selling various tea cakes of interesting colors and flavors. A strong feeling of elation settled over her heart, and she grasped her purse as she walked over to him.
Her purse was magically protected by a series of fire runes, threatening the hands of anyone who would’ve tried to pickpocket her. This was affirmed by the smoking fingers of a nearby human boy, shrieking about his fingers being eaten alive by a rogue leather handbag.
Naraqe nodded once, and turned to the merchant to buy a chocolate cake. Five minutes later, after an interesting dialogue concerning why the merchent’s fingers were slightly shorter than normal, and clearly burnt, she found herself walking away cheerfully with a chocolate cake. I will have your cake, humans...
“Wait!” She turned at the frantic cry of the merchant behind her, having just glanced down at the markings of the packages of the cakes, and noticing one certain pattern missing in his sudden nonplused reaction to her interrogation about his smoking fingers and her purse.
“Ye-e-e-e-e-s?”
“That cake... it’s... it’s...”
“It’s?” she inquired, taking on a fragement of Leron’s tone for a bare moment of her inflection. She glanced down at the cake, having already licked off some of the icing.
“It’s... er... never mind,” he muttered.
Naraqe nodded and turned to carry on walking. About twenty seconds later she found herself nearly choking on a very non cake flavored object as it connected with her teeth and refused to crush. The elf narrowed her eyes, and carefully fished a little box out of her mouth from the back of her molars.
That’s not cake.
Or incredibly edible cheese either, she thought wryly. Glancing around to make certain no one was attempting to shadow her at the moment, she pried it open and revealed a message scribbled in very tiny runes.
Very likely a horse rental contract paper writer wrote this, Naraqe reasoned, squinting at it. The elf didn’t have any dramatic and incredible vision advantages just from her race. In fact, she was slightly nearsighted. The page was just as hard to read as it would’ve been for everyone else. But after a little bit of deciphering around the places where saliva had worked its way in around her tooth shaped indents, she managed to make out the following message.
1138 Westmark Avenue
1400 hours
Secret Password
She considered this, and decided to guess that it was a location, a time, and a secret password. Swordfish was the most often used secret password when someone wanted no one to guess, it seemed, so clearly someone had decided to be smart for once. As everyone would clearly decide to guess the obviously unobvious password first, why not go with the totally obvious password that no one would ever guess. I like whoever wrote that, she decided.
Contemplating it for a moment longer, she decided that it was obviously meant for someone involved in the heart of a top secret conspiracy in an attempt to overthrow the present government and set a cruel Overlord in command with all his Legions of Terror to control the population. Obviously meaning that everyone would suffer. And I’ll probably be killed, since I’m part of the present government, even if the king’s far more important...
Naraqe considered this.
She didn’t think it would be particularly fun to be killed off just because of an evil and top secret conspiracy to set the Overlord of All Evil Power on the throne. For that matter, it didn’t feel like it would be fun to be killed for any purpose, malicious or otherwise. Considering that the clue had just fallen into her hands, she decided it would be a good idea to go to 1138 Westmark Ave. and see what was going on.
But after she ate her cake.
She considered the rest of the chocolate cake, and sat down to finish eating it. Chocolate cakes were good. Far better than ridiculously named chapters about cheese which had absolutely nothing to do with cheese!
**
Chapter Five: The Overlor...er?
**
1138 Westmark Avenue, Serenor
**
An annoyed Lyrane stared at the object in her hand. “A ball of wool?”
“Why yes, Overlor...er...” Her companion hesitated. “M’lady.”
She sighed aloud, and handed it back to him. “A ball of wool? Why?”
“Well, you wanted your weapon to look inconspicuous, did you not, m’lady?” he asked hesitantly.
Lyrane stared at the ball of gray wool. She wore light pink robes, a tunic and pants of a similar shade. Her hair was loose, and looked as if it could’ve used a bit of hair gel to keep it from falling apart. Her eyes were a deep brown, and she wore fluffy bunny slippers on her feet. “Well, of course I did,” she growled.
“So thus I have created the Wool of Doom!” her companion exclaimed, waving one hand melodramatically into the air and humming a few bars of melodramatic theme music.
“That’s just wrong, you know,” she noted dryly.
“Why, yes,” he said agreeably, backing towards the door. “Now if you’ll excuse me, m’lady, I have to get back to my pizza business...”
“Pizza business,” she muttered, and held her hand out for the Wool of Doom. He handed it over to her quickly, and whirled for the door. As ultimately evil as she was, Lyrane just let him go, to a very relieved expression from the wizard, turning the Wool of Doom over in her hands.
About five seconds later, there was a loud clonk, and the wizard fell backwards, half of his body in the room, and the other half on the other side of the door. A rather large lump throbbed on top of his head, and he moaned before twitching a couple times and lying still.
“And that is my Medal Pole of Terror,” Lyrane said cheerfully. “The rather large metal object that just met up with your head.”
The wizard stirred, and groaned. “Metal.”
“What?” She placed the ball of wool down and stood up to a full and dramatic height of five feet, one inch.
“It’s metal,” he muttered.
“What?!”
“Medal is one of those things you hang around your neck...”
“Maybe that’s just what I want you to think,” she said flatly, and grabbed his arm. No one knows what would’ve happened after this point had not a shrill buzz carved its way through the tensely thick air. Lyrane immediately reacted, pulling herself upright and whirling towards a partly open door. “Blast!”
The wizard sat up, rubbing his head. “Blast what?”
“My cookies are done! Stay right there!”
He didn’t, of course, immediately dashing for the door. Another five seconds later he connected to the Medal Pole of Terror again, and fell over, completely unconscious this time. One of Lyrane’s Legions of Terror dashed in and dragged the wizard off. As he was the founder of the Runeite Pizza Parlor (delivery in thirty minute guaranteed, or your money back), and one of the most powerful wizards in the entirety of Endyr, she was rather torn on whether it would be better to kill him.
Considering that magical artifacts had this tendency to backfire as soon as their creator was destroyed, she reasoned that it would be safer to leave him among the living until she figured out how to create zombie anything’s beyond kittens, gerbils, small mice, and parrots. And she didn’t have that many incredible magic users working under her. Magic users tended to immediately rebel and attempt to overthrow you as soon as you had done all the dirty work.
No, mercenaries could just be paid off, and they sometimes had a few decent magic users. And peasants would often work for decent living quarters, fresh food, and no evil slave masters over them to keep them “in line”.
Removing the cookies from the oven, she left them to cool down as she contemplated world domination. At least, she would have, had not a cute little kitten appeared in the corner of the room, and latched onto her ball of wool. Or, more rightly, the Wool of Doom.
Within 2.333333... seconds, the world had reached an instable point due to an impossible repeating number bringing about an infinite number of repeating paradoxes, and reality grew blurry. Reality exploded, bringing about the end of everything sentient kind had ever known.
THE END
What? Why are you all looking at me like that?
You didn’t want it to end without knowing why they were after the sleeping princess?
You wanted to know if Essar and Amber fell in love in the end?
But why?
Oh, sheesh! Stop waving that sword around so threateningly.
**
However, as it wasn’t the story’s time to die out, time winged backwards about 2.333333... seconds, and the kitten vanished with the Wool of Doom, leaving a horrified looking Lyrane to stare at the space where the kitten had once stood.
She let a moment stand for the occurrence to sink in. Then she whirled towards the door and dashed after the kitten with a small dagger in hand.
It wasn’t exactly something easy to do, to run in bunny slippers. But somehow Lyrane managed to pull it off.
***
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