Magorian: Wait! Don’t start to the opening author’s notes yet! The makeup artists are still trying to attach the fourth leg!
The Savant: Late again? You’re to come in to work at 9:21 sharp every day.
Magorian: I’m sorry, boss, but there was this pet shop on the way to the studio”
The Savant: You binged on birds again.
Magorian: I-- I couldn’t help myself! The parrots in the display window looked so… tender… and the thrushes-- oh the thrushes!-- their aroma was overpowering! And who could forget the meadow larks? Who? NOT YOU!
The Savant: Magorian, buddy, there’s no need to shout. The first step to recovery is admitting there’s a problem, they say.
Magorian: I don’t have a problem!
The Savant: Then put down the cockatoo and step away from it slowly.
[Magorian stares blankly]
Before I call Bongo over!
[Magorian lets go of the bird in surprise, unaware that he was about to eat it.]
Magorian: I…I didn’t…Just start the chapter.
The Savant: Get to work! Ahem. [Turns to readers.] Remembers that verse I wrote that explained that the next chapter wouldn’t be as long? It seems I lied. Horribly. Look at the little bar thing on the right of the screen. See how super small it is? Yeah, that long. Just grin and bear it. Nod like you’re interested and post a nonsense review if you want to. I’m going to sleep.
Poor old Lucius Malfoy was poring over indexes and glossaries, looking, searching for anything that might dissuade a Dark Lord from embarking on a suicide mission. He and his fellow Death Eaters had convinced Voldemort to “take a break from plotting” to go on a leisurely stroll through the forest a day’s walk away, collecting buckets of sap for the “missus”, which he did not yet realize he didn’t have. But they knew that his thoughts would eventually return to the maniacal desire to destroy MagiVision and everyone who didn’t watch his movie. They had to find some sort of spell or charm powerful enough to change their master’s mind, and fast.
And they had to do it in a Muggle library.
I wish I were back in Azkaban, thought Malfoy ruefully. He hated all the stares they were getting. As if six cloaked and masked grown-ups sitting at one table rifling through copies of The Power of Inference by Marco Ceftialli or Sanctions of the Shifting Psyche by Flo Rogers wasn’t something you saw everyday! Why, oh why, did they ever change Apparation points? Lucius looked up from Cave to Conclave: the Diabolical Mind in Anthropology and stared at Rookwood, despite the poor peripheral vision his mask provided.
Wasn’t it his idea?
At that moment, Voldemort burst through the revolving doors and walked toward their table (but not before spinning around in the doors for a few minutes yelling, “Wheeeee!”).
“Good news, my fellows!” he exclaimed cheerfully.
“Did you get a good amount of sap, Master?” asked Jugson, still reading. “We understood that it was VERY, VERY SLOW and would take a VERY LONG TIME to fill the buckets.”
“Well, I did,” said Voldemort sheepishly, “but I exchanged them for information from those lovely people living by the swamp. Apparently, there are some MagiTech cameras floating around the place; they must be filming near here. If we get rid of the means to broadcast their highest rated show, we are sure to destroy MagiTech for not broadcasting my movie- FINANCIALLY!”
He then emitted the obligatory super villain evil laugh (which, in his case, sounded remarkably like a constipated Occamy), prompting the librarian to finally shoo them away out through the revolving doors, where He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named spent another few moments of fun spinning around before exiting.
“Sir?” asked Mulciber, “Why didn’t you just use the Imperius on them?
“On who?”
“The nice folk by the swamp.”
“I left my wand at the cleaner’s.”
“Oh.”
There was an awkward silence. Lucius was the one who broke it after what seemed an age of pointlessly fidgeting and averting glances. “Sir, shouldn’t we be amassing the hordes?”
Voldemort instantly reassumed his confident overlord mantle. “Yes! Death Eaters, assemble!” The Dark Lord was so fired up he was threatening to grow hair again.
“We’re all right here,” Bellatrix said, puzzled.
“Then what are you waiting for?” He looked at her with contempt. “AMASS THE HORDES!” Voldemort spoke with the power of about nine and a half megaphones, and the hordes started to amass.
"Blimey, look at all the frickin' hordes we've amassed!" praised Rabastan in amazement.
"That is a respectable mass of hordes," commented Voldemort, looking lovingly at each and every one. "I knew the alliance would pay off."
The Death Eaters all cheered and played Connect Four with floating Dark Marks before rushing off towards Duirop Swamp behind their leader, riding Nagini with the excellence of a thoroughbred racer. And of course, the hordes were in tow. But telling you what they were would just detract from the dramatic suspense.
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The Caivorid leapt on the pink girl’s head in louse form. The French man’s pathetic attempts to get rid of it did nothing as it pulled back its arachnid mandibles and prepared to give the girl her second life. And feed on some of that free will of hers. Hungrily, it plunged its fangs.
“Come… Come away… Come to me…”
The Caivorid stopped- something was calling to it. The sound was unique... alluring, even... he heard the power of life incarnate in a single voice.
“Come… Come to me… Come to the bringer of the verdant plane…” It spoke again, this voice, so close yet so far away. It wasn’t so much an earthly noise than lyrics in wind form, if that made any sense. Even if it had wanted to resist, it couldn't, and the ghostly louse jumped off her head as if manipulated by otherwordly marionette strings.
The Caivorid was unused to being the one that was enslaved, but Gaea's voice was not to be ignored. Quickly it scurried away towards Magorian and his flute, through marsh and briny water.
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The flute emitted more of a feeling than a sound; it whooshed around them in ripples and waves of wind. A sphere of speeding air dispersed from the mouth of the instrument.
“Whoa,” said Magorian, taking the flute out of his mouth, “Have I had too many mushrooms again?” The flute’s wind got thinner, but didn’t subside, as it spread away from them.
As soon as almost no trace of the sound-wind could be felt anymore, Tessen the falcon began screeching incessantly, trying voraciously to escape Nast’s shoulder strap. Tiny insects crawled out of the nearby trees in droves toward Magorian, and the skeleton fish below jumped out and glistened in the pale sun above their knees. Brown jellyfish floated to the surface of the mud, wishing to get as close to the flute as possible.
“What’s going”heel, Tessen, heel!”what’s going on?!” yelled Nast, covering his ears.
“SCREEEEEE! SCREEEEEEEE!” The bird redoubled its efforts to break off from its thick leather bonds and get to the hand holding the flute.
“I think it’s the Call of the Wild!” Obsid tried to explain. “I’ve heard of it before! It beckons all nearby animals to wherever it was played last!”
Dodaru was animating the shadows of the willow branches into walls, but she could not hold the raging droves back for long. Now the Duirop lice hidden in the distant yellow blades were emerging and coming at top speed, driven by an unknown force to their muddy strait, and all the insects were piling on top of each other to get over the walls.
“Make it stop!” she yelled.
“I can’t, I don’t know how!” Magorian tried to shake the flute, but the only thing that did was drive Tessen even more desire-mad. Then he thought of something that might save them.
“Leotards of Deflection!” He waved them in front of him. Nothing happened: the blunt earth colors of Duirop muted the color of the pants and disallowing the dimensional warp the contrasting hues created.
He was disappointed- they had worked well for him in the past, such as when he had stolen a bit of the Triforce and needed to ward off an anrgy Link. He would never forget how they had helped him wander around Outworld unhindered and come off better in a duel with Raiden. Also, the time when he saved Mozambique from the reanimated remains of Pippi Longstocking and the motorcycle guy from Tron might’ve been a lot different if he didn’t have his trusty leotards with him. The best instance had to be the day when he used the pants to dig deep into the core of the Earth and uncover the secrets of the civilization of Moletopia, city of mole men.
The bugs were crawling all over the other three, whose swatting only hurt themselves, in fervent desperation to get to the flute. There was nothing anyone could do; Nast’s smoke bombs were only hurting the situation, and Obsid’s stomping could not beat back the rush of nightcrawlers coming their way”they were overwhelmed, and there was no help in sight.
Then they felt a tremble and heard a large thud behind them, and the murky water splashed in every direction. Every living thing, once adamant to get to the flute, stopped their skittering and cawing, turning their heads as one to see the hulking figures before them. What they saw astounded them.
They were the abs of two towering, proud American sasquatches. Their presence struck the rabid animals with awe. Then the bog bugs about-faced and ran off, the skeleton fish scattered, and the jellyfish returned to their underground nests. The hawk quieted and hid behind a wing. Both of them smiled.
The Caivorid stopped just as it began to see its quarry in the horizon. The voice that led him here diminished; a loud tremor had disrupted it. It dug-swam into the water, surveying with a mixture of alarm and relief.
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None of the contestants or their searching parties had had any success in finding alternate sources of food, coming back to the campsite emptyhanded at different times. There they met the two bigfoots, who had been bored in their travels through the samp when the Call was sounded, and came to investigate to where Magorian was playing the flute. He gratefully led them to the camp and told them to make themselves at home. The sasquatches were having a great time chatting with everybody by the enormous magical bonfire.
“So, how come Muggles don’t notice you lot running all over the place?” asked Horace, a bespectacled old antique shop owner who had entered the show in hopes of buying the Mona Lisa.
“Sheer luck,” Vance, the one on the right, told him, as he scratched his furry back with the bones of a dead swamp troll. “There are about 30,000 of us in Central Park alone.”
“Wait,” replied Horace, who had expected an answer somewhere along the lines of “government reservation”, “are you saying you don’t get discovered because of pure coincidence?”
“Ever since we stopped to pick up a hitchhiker in Montreal and smuggled her through the border, we’ve been a bit lucky,” spoke up the sasquatch to his left, heartily feeding the flame with his rancid breath.
“Why’s that?” cut in Magorian, whose speech was only slightly slurred by the great big piece of ostrich leg he was chewing. (Vance and Lance kept lots of exotic food in their enormous wicker baskets for such occasions, a strange yet effective choice of baggage. The grateful centaur made a mental note to put the remains of the gourmet ostrich leg into his saddlebag for safekeeping and preservation.)
“The chick we picked up was Fate,” bellowed Lance’s simian face from above, canines tearing off a large hunk of curassow. “Now she smiles on our kind.” Magorian looked up at the starry night sky just in time to see the bigfoot’s toothy grin appear.
“This was back when she didn’t have those kickass gravity boots of hers, mind you.” He too looked up, reminiscing. “She probably still has that loom she was toting around.”
“When was this?” queried Horace, sitting in between the two and basking in the warm firelight. “How long ago?”
“Hmm… I don’t really remember…” He belched, and the flames shot higher (the mariner mage sitting across from him had to douse down with an impromptu rain spell.) A giant hairy hand smacked its owner’s brother on the shoulder blade over the frightened old man’s head. Vance spat out his draught of fine Cognac all over poor Michel at the impact.
“What!?” he roared, disgruntled.
“When did we hitch Fate a ride in our Viper?” he shouted over the Frenchman’s cursing.
“I think it was 1962.” He chugged down the rest of the bottle and added, “I wonder whether she remembers us pretending to be Canadians with gigantism.”
“No, I don’t think she does. She has too much on her mind lately, what with this fic and whatnot.” He sighed, and looked down at his hosts. “It was a disaster.”
Vance let out a genial belly laugh. “We can’t do Canadian accents for the world.”
“That means it was only thirty-four years ago." Despite being desensitized to many things in life, such as haywalking, holy matrimony, square-dancing bears, and modern art, Magorian was amazed. “How did you reproduce so quickly?”
“I’d rather not know, chieftain,” Dodaru snarled next to him, continuing to devour her troll steak, which she used the fire to make extra-crispy. She was no lady when it came to dining, Magorian soon found out.
A look of confusion spread over the sasquatch's face, followed by one of sudden understanding. “Oh, we didn’t reproduce quicker! We just moved. Life in the Rockies is a lot tougher than it looks. There’s always the snowstorm or two, and keeping up good relations with the goats can become tiresome after a while”
“Yeah, and I hated having to eat those endangered eagles for sustenance. When we left the Rockies in favor of more suitable terrain for today’s day and age, some people saw us. It was okay- Fate made sure they were only people nobody would ever believe: mimes, pizza delivery men, the cops, busboys…” said Lance. Magorian was having a hard time pretending not to be visibly aroused at the prospect of eagle meat.
“But then one of those jokers got a tall friend to don a stupid-looking costume and pose for a picture in the woods while he fabricated some faux footprints,” declared Vance. “Hey, I just alliterated! ‘Fabricate faux footprints.’ I love it when I do that! Save that one, would’ya, Lance?”
“I know what we could do!” said Lance a bit evasively. “Let's do a word game! Name weapons that start with the letter ‘S’!”
“Other than sword, spear or spike,” joined in his brother, excited. “We’ll take it in turns. When we come to a person, and he or she can’t think of a word, he or she is out of the game. The last person standing wins!”
“I’ll start!” said hyper-perky Fuchsia. “Scimitar!”
“Sole of a shoe!” someone else shouted.
“Sombrero!”
It watched.
“Serrated edge!”
“Sharp object!”
“Syringe!”
It waited.
“Shuriken!”
“Slingshot!”
“Slug!”
“Scythe!”
It gauged.
“Scud Missile!”
"Chakram!"
"Sorry, that starts with a C."
“SOCOM!”
“Shield!”
And mostly, it was disgusted.
“A shield’s not a weapon.”
“You can bash someone’s head in real good with one.”
“You can do that with a pineapple, too. I haven’t seen anyone campaign for the right to bear pineapples.”
“There are over two hundred and twenty nations on the Earth. There must be at least one country that outlaws the possession of pineapples.”
“That’s like saying there are lots of banjoes, so one of them must have been stuffed with marigolds and pushed to sea.”
“The odds aren’t too long on that.”
“Oh please. You know a banjo is much more likely to be stuffed with poinsettias and get beaten in with a tungsten hammer.”
Jesus, I’m not even sure I want to take their souls anymore.
The green, ghastly, grisly, gargantuan louse shifted its position to be more comfortable: four legs splayed in front, two bent sideways in the middle and two placed in the water to steer. It had made a lily pad out of ectoplasm to survey its prey in style.
Maybe I should be happy with the slaves I already have, it thought. They’re all waiting to serve me in the Black Turf. What did I ask them to do today? Ah yes, I told them to fix a nice, hot, relaxing bath for me by tonight. I don’t know exactly how they do the things they do in the middle of an Unplottable wasteland. Or in Pennsylvania, for that matter! They just do it. Gee, this thought sounds like one an author would use to explain his or her story a bit more.
Or maybe I’m just overly self-aware. My psychiatrist did always say that about me back in ’Nam. I wonder what he would say if my favorite form was a louse? I digress. I should do something good for the slaves today. It’s been so long since I got caught in that freak nuclear reactor accident, so long since I did anything but munch lustily on people’s minds. . I miss being Harry Potter fanfic author spy! But how was I to know that one of the rooms in the volcano-cloud I discovered would blow up the instant got around to infiltrating the place? The odds of that are, like, longer than the pineapple thing. Great, now I’m starting to sound like one of those retards. I should just steal their food and give it to the slaves. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.
The bug evaporated into gaseous form, then coagulated into a dozen floating, breadbox-sized hands. They whizzed around the campsite, grabbed the food and, with an odd ca-ching sound, left as soon as they had come.
To say that the group at the fire was befuddled at the sudden disappearance of their food would be an understatement.
So would the sentence: “‘Count Cornelio Wolfe von der Schmütt II’ is a slightly awesome name”.
But that’s really not important to the story.
“Well, that was… strange,” huffed a sasquatch in disappointment, which in front of the fire came out as steam. “And I was having such a well-cooked flank of quail, too.”
Why do the old men always get the short end of the stick in this fic? thought Magorian angrily. But his anger dissipated at the mere mention of quail flank.
“Versailles time slip?” suggested Lance. “No, I guess we’d have to be in Versailles for that to work.”
“Who’da thunk?” said Vance sarcastically, making a stupid face.
“That hurts!” exclaimed his seething brother.
“Where did the food go!?” stood up Locky the Patron of Plaid (He attributed the invention of the fabric design to himself). “I was just scarfing down some haggis and drinking some of me Dickens Cider!”
Everyone except Dodaru temporarily forgot their troubles and with all their might tried to fight the urge to snigger. They failed.
Dodaru was glad the cameras removed themselves from her to film the idiots guffawing like blasted banal banshees. Eluding the cameras, she stealthily stooped out of sight behind a dreary, drooping quagmire tree.
“Wendigo,” she said lightly, her palm outstretched before her face. “Wendigo.” It was as if she was blowing it softly into existence.
It materialized there, hardly larger than a half a breadbox, the bells on its tails obscured by night’s shadow but shining brightly nonetheless. It looked up to her, waiting for her command.
“Our nemesis must be close at hand. Track the ghost. Follow the scent of a moving banquet. Once you find where it is, return to me and show the way.” The small fox nodded and floated up from her palm.
“Good. Do not be seen. Do not be heard. Do not be felt. We cannot afford it the knowledge of our whereabouts.”
Wendigo nodded again and jetted off.
“Wait…” Dodaru called after it weakly, not really trying to stop it.
Sorry, she thought mournfully to herself, as if hoping that her familiar could hear her.
------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Death Eaters advanced further and further into the swamp, making good time. By evening’s light, they neared their destination.
“Follow your nose!” Voldemort kept reporting to his steed, patting it on the head as if to speed it up.
Nagini left a clear trail in the mud, blazing on through it with its sensational serpentine celerity. Though it quite liked carelessly speeding away like this, it was very annoyed at the moment. Voldemort was issuing a stream of nonstop puns to remind everyone that it was his snake doing all the tracking, such as
“The nose knows!” or “I won’t say no’s to using his nose!” or the especially dreaded limerick “He’s using his nose! Where will he goes? Nobody knows!”
Not only was it grating, it was erroneous. It used its tongue to smell, not its nostrils. Nagini killed the time by indulging its cynical side.
What if Sssmokey the Bear iss the one who caussess the foressst firesss? There ssseem to be a lot of them when he’sss around. It would give him a purpossse. What elssse would a talking bear have to do anyway? No cognitive powersss. Or maybe he jussst got up one morning after mauling a ranger for hisss hat and sssaid, “I feel bad, I’m going to channel his ssspirit.”
*The snake’s internal diatribe eventually led to several important revelations. Unfortunately, its thoughts were cut off in the editing process and we never got to figure out who the Half-Blood Prince was, or why having Lily’s eyes matters, or indeed, why everyone seems to name their children knowing what they’re going to grow up to be.*
The Death Eaters flanking Voldie didn’t have it any easier. Here they were, wading through endless water and wetting their favorite scrubs in the dead of darkness chasing after midges and buzzards, when there was important spywork to be done elsewhere! Macnair had bought a self-cleaning dagger whose blade disappears at will to null and void any proof of murder just the other day at the Spy Emporium in Liverpool!
Lucius, especially, hated to soil his fine sixteenth century “Asian evil advisor” Wizard robes. Also, he had had a bit of a phobia of swamps since his third-year in Hogwarts when a lesson in Potions class, then taught by Professor Connor, had gone awry and he was exposed to exploding sacks of ground Bubotuber powder. (Unbeknownst to him, Hogwarts had recently been officially renamed Hogw-stra since Magorian’s last visit.)
Why this gave him a fear of wetlands instead of a fear of explosions or of powder, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that those creepy trees were really creepy and that the haunting laugh he was hearing was awfully haunting…
A laugh? No, wait, there’s more than one… It sounds like idiotic guffawing! We must be close!
Sure enough, seven more paces led them in clear sight of where the cameras were filming, off in a circular clearing in a shallow, flat valley, a half-hour’s walk away. There was a large bonfire made… about a dozen people were sitting and eating by it.
Must be some nature show, thought Lucius. No matter. Once we exterminate this lot, we’ll make Voldie satisfied. Until then, we cannot carry out any of our plans.
As the Death Eaters surrounded the clearing and began to close their ring in, Lucius started to take heart. Not only would we rid the opposition of a formidable adversary (he could now see the silhouette of a centaur), they would get to show the entire Wizarding populace that they meant business once more.
Fear will consume the fools, and they will submit to our New Way. None shall endure us! Even the calculating and shrewd Malfoy patriarch was getting lost in the excitement. The thrill of the hunt. The intensity of the chase. The pleasure of the catch.
None shall endure us. None shall endure us. None shall endure me!
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Lovely, thought the Caivorid, rifling through its bounty on its way to the heart of swamp. Just excellent. Meat and more meat! Nothing but meat. The slaves are on their new low-protein diet, and I go off and steal meat.
He morphed into a wavering, transparent wolf with a sac in its muzzle to hold the food and a little surfboard to traverse a hard-to-find rivulet of brine, now minutes away from his homebase.
Wendigo had stopped dogging its trail when The Caivorid phased through an impenetrable wall of willows. Instead, it went back to Dodaru, not knowing the green wolf reached the gigantic clod of dirt that constituted as an island in the deep trenches and rivulets of water. It turned into a giant dragonfly with a smaller bag of food on each hooked leg.
It noticed the unusual lack of fleeing animals as it flew through the rocks and mounds of soil to where its home lay- it supposed that the enchanting voice he’d heard earlier had driven them all away. Crude stone tents dotted a clearing in the reeds the Caivorid had flattened himself. It entered each one and left a drumstick over the wooly covers of the sleeping occupant’s bunk. (Each of its slaves had a small sapling growing out of their forehead, which the Caivorid planted there to signify the end of his or her old life and the beginning of their second one.) It had forgotten how late it was. It took its bath and went turned into lime wisps of stagnant, ephemeral smoke, the ghost equivalent of sleep.
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Voldemort peered over his patch of tall-grass, practically out of his skull with anticipation. They were approaching their prey, ever so slowly to avoid detection… they were nearing the precipice that led to the valley...
Me and my hordes will eradicate those insolent vermin!!11!!!1! His thoughts at the moment were so hyper that they usually contained an average of nine and a half exclamation points and ones. So it came as a significant surprise to him when one of his loyal minions suggested to him they go to bed before the attack.
“WATT!1!!1!!” he exclaimed.
“Actually, sir, that’s ‘what’. W-H-A-T.”
“Oh, sorry. WHAT!1!!1!”
“Actually, sir, I was hoping you’d keep it down that second time. They might hear us.”
“Okay, okay, I think I’ve got it now. What!11!!!”
“That’s good, sir, now just replace the exclamation points and ones with a proper question mar””
“Get on with it, Avery!” snapped Bellatrix. “Explain to your Dark Lord why you would have him change his brilliant plans!” She honestly didn’t know if she was being sarcastic or not anymore, but she didn’t let that show in her gaunt, Azkabanized face.
“Well, now, don’t get me wrong sir, we would gladly fight to the death for you and enjoy every second of it. In fact, I loved that scene in the movie where the elephants were playing football with my head, and I couldn’t get enough of the parts where you use my body to break all your death-defying, spine-breaking, exorbitantly painful falls. I seem to recall a scene that had it happen three times. In one minute.”
“Avery!”
“Yes, yes, yes, alright, Bellatrix. The point is, we’re all a good deal tired. I expect that if you order us to attack right now, we really will die for you. A bit of shuteye won’t hurt us- we’ve got them surrounded, remember.”
“And there’s no such thing as too much beauty sleep,” butted in Rabastan. His eyes had bags and he slumped when he crawled to a more comfortable place in their bushy cover- he prided himself on being a great Apparator, which made the trek through Duirop particularly wearisome for him. “By the way, have I ever told you how pretty your lips look in the moonlight?”
“Well, I have been applying some cream on my face,” admitted
Voldemort with a bat of the eyelashes. “Do you think it brings out the color in my eyes?”
The cream he was referring to was the gift Goyle had given him at one of the more memorable Christmas of Doom bashes back in ’77, which was nail polish remover with the label torn off and a sticker attached reading in orange crayon, “Magic Moisturizer: Make you gorgeous in minutes!”, complete with a backwards Z.
“Oh, definitely. Your peepers have never looked more… er, more… ruggedly beautiful. I say hitting the sack is a splendid idea, if nothing other than to see even more handsome tomorrow morning, you big sexy lug you!” yawned Dolohov, desperate for some rest. He swore his legs were swollen to nine and a half times their normal size.
It took lots more flattery and persuasion to get the Dark Lord to relent. “Alright, but we attack first thing tomorrow. And no talking! Malfoy, put the hordes to sleep.”
’Twas a shame, in Lucius’ not-so-humble opinion. He was raring for heads on platters and severed torsos; the more blood, the better. But there was no doubt he was exhausted.
“Oh, and I decided it on my own, not because you guys told me to or anything!” Voldemort told the rest before closing his eyes. He fell asleep trying to make the imprint of an angel on the ground, and listening to the soothing melody of the roaring flame in the distance.
At the bonfire, the laughter had soon subsided and they all agreed to search for the sasquatches’ missing goods early the next morning, since it was nearing two o’clock in at night, and everyone was tired from searching fruitlessly for food. They quickly fell asleep around the controlled Gubraithian flame. The cameras slowly veered away from the dreamers and looked around the place of their own accord. It wasn’t long until their lenses discovered and fixated on the hidden fugitives, whose camouflage of tall grass and black cloaks was flimsy. Really only the distance and their elevated altitude had prevented the group they had been stalking from seeing them.
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Snape stopped in front of the gargoyle statue that led to Dumbledore’s office. He found himself reluctant to utter the password needed to advance into the headmaster’s chambers.
C’mon, just swallow your pride and do it, he found himself thinking. Move your lips… that’s it, now shake around your voice box a bit…Good, time to articulate the sentence- no mumblings! It’s not that hard. Merciful Minerva, just bloody say it!
“Harry Potter is… he’s a…ach! Harry Potter is a good person,” he told the sidestepping gargoyle, immediately regretting it. He would have to slip in something about the password in today’s early meeting. He was starting to suspect that Dumbledore had changed the password to his office just for him.
He walked up the spinning escalator and knocked on the headmaster’s door with the griffon knocker.
“Yes, Severus, come in.”
Snape strode to the trinket-desk and sulked into the seat next to him, resisting the urge to rub his eyes. Some of the trinkets on Albus’ desk had already begun to operate. The one invention that had always fascinated Snape was the Pensieve, but Dumbledore kept that inside a cabinet, and it was of no concern to him at the moment.
“Any news?” Dumbledore asked wearily. “What information have you gathered as of late that I don’t yet know?” He poured some hot chocolate into the two mugs (one plain, the other with red and green diagonal stripes) and took a sip.
“Yes,” he chose to reply, “I have obtained extremely valuable information indeed.” No elaboration followed. He was feeling cheeky, and it had nothing to do with the fact that it was only six o’clock in the morning.
“Tell me about it,” instructed Dumbledore, the sarcasm whizzing by his head as usual. “The rest aren’t here yet.” He took another sip.
Snape pursed his lips before taking in some delicious Swiss Miss, nutritious and delicious, hailing from the heartland of the Alps and delighting oodles of lovely people for generations.
“They’ve changed their Apparation point. They are now meeting regularly at Perrington Library, Pennsylvania. It seems the Dark Lord is in a rage because his so-called ‘movie’, The Great Refrigerator, was canceled during its scheduled airtime. He will stop at nothing to destroy the MagiVision company that ruined his so-called ‘greatest epic of our time.’”
“What!?” Dumbledore put his hands on his desk and sat up, the chair he had been sitting on tipping backwards with a splintering crash on the floor.
"Yes, I know. Such trivial matters for the sixteenth Scourge," scoffed Snape.
“I had no idea! They’re in a library now, you say?”
“No. They’ve ventured into nearby Duirop swamp. I would’ve followed them, but I remembered that one couldn’t Apparate in or out of Unplottable places like Hogwarts. And I knew it was Unplottable since the only thing the Muggles talked about was an islet of mud in the middle of the swamp they called the Black Turf- I guess no one bothered to Unplot the place, or maybe they couldn’t. They weren’t headed north, because they weren’t going towards the islet.”
"Did you say Duirop? Dear me!” Dumbledore’s eyes sparkled so much behind his half-moon glasses that they turned into broken JPEGs. He sighed and repaired them, snapping his fingers rather theatrically. A flick of his wand had the cabinet on the far side of the wall adjacent open, the MV inside it flashing on. Snape rolled his eyes. Using voice commands, Dumbledore passed through various opening menus and flipped on channel 34, MagiTech. Sure enough, footage of the swamp was being broadcast live nationwide, and clearly visible was Voldemort’s dozing face, to which the camera added nine and a half pounds.
“I knew reality MV is useful,” Dumbledore assured Snape. “The show I have been watching was not an outlet for escapism; it was an essential strategy to get Voldemort out in the open,” he said untruthfully.
“How do you know that it’s really him? It could be a fake, a decoy to lure us away from his wheel-and-dealings in the Knockturn underworld. Order information is not to be so casually ignored, Albus.”
“Wait for it…”
A high, cold voice entered the room from the box; Albus lowered it with his finger a few yards away, afraid it would wake the children.
“A CARRION FEEDER’S NARCOLEPSY CRACKS DOWN ON FEW POLYPS, AND MANY HOURGLASSES WERE DAMAGED IN THE AUTUMNS OF YALTA! RETRIEVE THE KEVLAR INNER TUBING AND GAS ALL THOSE THICK MATRONS, JUVENILE SOMERSAULTER! GOOD WILL HUNTING EQUALS AN EPITOME OF LASCHIEVOUS HANKERCHIEFS AND ITS AEROSOL BRETHREN! THE HAVE-NOTS CAN INGEST THE MORTAR AND SHRED THE FJORD INTO LITTLE SLICES OF PITHY ETYMOLOGICAL STETHOSCOPES!”
“Yep, that’s him,” admitted Snape.
“It’s the perfect opportunity to strike!” replied Dumbledore.
“But I thought only Potter could kill him.”
“”Yes, but he doesn’t know that, does he? Does he, Winifred?” He held up his grotesque sock puppet and mimicked through it, “No he doesn’t, you innately lovable genius, you!” with a mock-girlie voice. “Your logic is infallible, Dumbledore!”
“I’m glad you think so, Winifred!”
“But of cour--”
“Where in the swamp are they, though?” interjected Snape; one more second, and he thought he just might have vomited into his mug, even though he hadn’t had anything to eat since three nights ago. “How will we ever find them? Magic and mist fester about the place, making all who dwell grow more dependent on the swamp the longer they stay. I’ve heard many nasty rumors telling of monsters that have sought refuge in the thick obscuring crevices of the bog as well.”
Dumbledore looked at the MV again; Voldemort had returned to sleep and his outburst had woken no one around him, not even the Eskimo hordes. Then he noticed a slight red tint on the lens of the camera”there had to be a roaring fire nearby, or at least a Gubraithian one in a two-acre radius.
Dumbledore shared his theory with the Potions Master, and he agreed he could hear a faint crackling. It was lucky that no one watched MV during the early morning hours; it was expensive to watch and there was simply a lack of good shows on other than cheesy infomercials. Snape especially hated the one with that stupid Channel 23 soap opera vixen (Angelica Beatrice on "Show and Spell") promoting charity giving aid to a country she had probably never heard of before. “All we have to do is look for a fire, and we’ll have spotted them.”
They looked at each other for a split-second, and then dashed out of the office towards Hagrid’s stables, Albus hastily making an illegal Portkey out of his mug.
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Magorian awoke with a note wrapped around one of the arrows in his quiver. He was one of the first people to get up; only he and his fellow archer were awake.
“It’s ten o’clock,” Nast told him.
Magorian shrunk away from the sunlight and washed his face, allowing some of the water to drip down his beard. “Erg,” he grunted. Everyone knew Magorian was not a morning person.
“Any eats?” he demanded gruffly. The bird perched on the falconer’s arm looked particularly delectable today. He tried not to think about its thick, fibrous wings or how tasty its thighs would be if they were in his mouth.
Nast grinned and showed the chieftain a large, green insect bleeding all over the wet twig it was impaled on. “I caught a louse just before you woke up, but I don’t suppose you’d want it.”
“God, I’m starving. Hand it over.”
“Merlin, Magorian, we had a banquet last night and now you want an insect on a stick?”
“You’re right. Eating insects is just low.” He eyed the falcon again.
Nast hastily changed the subject. “Er, ahem, do you think we should wake the others?”
He turned to look at all the other contestants, still lying down and dozing on the driest grass around the Gubraithian bonfire. “Nah, they all look so peaceful. A decent morning’s sleep will do them good.”
Nast agreed. “Besides, I don’t want to search for food again just yet, let alone food that doesn’t belongs to us.”
“By the way, where are the sasquatches?” said Magorian. There was no sign of Vance or Lance anywhere.
On cue, two speedy Thestrals flew down, each with a human at its reins and a sasquatch holding on to big bags of food in back of them.
Nast covered his eyes from the glare of the sun and looked up at them. “Back so soon!?” he yelled over the swishing of leathery wings. They landed and as Dumbledore, Snape and the sasquatches dismounted, Nast offered a brief explanation. “The two of them Portkeyed to the edge of the swamp and used Thestrals to look for a fire and find Voldemort, who’s, believe it or not, not terribly far away.”
Magorian smiled. He loved crazy situations, and could guess what had happened next. The sasquatches had awoken just when they’d arrived. They conferred about what to do about Voldemort, and decided to wait until he woke up. All the Order knew that whenever Voldemort was given a rude awakening, his blow-up event would occur and he’d turn into an unstoppable juggernaut of infinite rage.
(Every person has a blow-up event” a pet peeve or grudge so large, upon its presence the person instantly turns into a hulking mass of pure venom and carnage. Motm’s blow-up event was rejection. Mine is probably thinking about Bush. Or listening to any contemporary radio station.)
The bags of food turned out turned out to be bags of Portkeys, brought to carry all the contestants to safety. One by one, each snoozer around the fire was sent back home, along with the item they had chosen to bring along. Only Magorian and Nast were left.
Magorian read the note on his arrow aloud, wondering in his semi-sleep if it was edible.
I’ve gone after the Caivorid. Wendigo and I have ascertained its location in the Black Turf and we plan to kill it while it’s asleep.
Dodaru
Magorian would’ve kicked himself if he could. He had forgotten about her. Who knew what kind of peril lurked in the Black Turf?
On cue, the ground rumbled and Dumbledore stepped away just in time as a gigantic, coiling worm ruptured the surface and started writhing, Dodaru grasping desperately on the back of its head and hanging on for dear life. It was transparent and had a greenish tint and a wavering, wraith-like aura enveloped in wisps of smoke”the Caivorid wasn’t a morning person either. The ghost decided to stop trying to buck her off and become intangible; she fell through its ectoplasm and was only saved by a lunging sasquatch.
The worm transformed into a toothy maw-wyvern and beat its wings into a whirlwind gust to prevent her from getting up again, but she stood her ground and retaliated with a black ball of shadow aimed into the air; in response, the scaly drake morphed into multiple floating mirrors to reflect and rebound the attack to her. She canceled it before it could hit anyone with a wave of her divining rod. Meanwhile, Magorian was vainly trying to pick it down with his bow, the sasquatches were lifting giant boulders and trying to gravel it down, and the Hogw-stra emissaries were standing idle in shock, not knowing what had just happened or what to do. The Thestrals had already been timid due to the proximity of the fire, and the spectral shapeshifter’s untimely arrival caused them to stretch their wings and take off in fright.
Needless to say, all the commotion woke up Voldemort and friends.
Crabbe stretched from off the floor. “I was having such a good dream,” he mumbled to himself, “I was saving the world from alien rectangles with pair of headphones, a lock of hair, and a picture frame.”
Another one of his minions had awoken quicker. “Look, something’s happening in the clearing!” pointed Dolohov, who promptly got hit in the face by a stray Stunner and fainted, tripping over Jugson, who woke with a start and blasphemed shrilly, which woke everyone else. Luckily, Voldemort had just been waking up the moment Jugson’s shriek filled the air.
Voldemort was quite incensed that he and his Badness Brigade (he tired of the term “Death Eaters”) were getting no attention whatsoever, and his immense evil demanded that he eviscerate Dumbledore, the traitor and the impudent half-breeds anyway. So he changed his plans and chose to kill them instead of capturing them for ransom. (Even he realized that ten million Galleons was a hefty sum of cash, and he needed funds for a new, permanent headquarters.)
“I’m changing my plans,” he shouted to the Legion of Loathing behind him, “We’re gonna kill them instead! Fetch the secret weapon!”
The Eskimos lugged into the clearing the secret weapon: A giant household appliance of some sort, standing eighty stories tall and three city blocks wide.
“BEHOLD!” screamed Voldemort triumphantly, and even the Caivorid stopped attacking Dodaru to listen. “I have made a pact with the Nihoth Inuits of Motm’s Mountain, and TOGETHER we have made a weapon of such devastating power and awful potency that its mere presence turns chalk black and hearts to cinders! Its horrifying ambit reaches nimbus and deep roots alike, and nothing can withstand its mighty brink! The threshold of stars and sky will have absolutely nothing on the dominance my automation shall reap! The children of the future shall look back in wondrous, marveling terror at the--”
“You might be going off on a bit of a tangent, there, sir,” said Avery.
“Ahem,” he scowled at him.
“Go on,” Avery conceded.
“Where was I? Ah yes! Behold… THE GREAT REFRIGERATOR!”
That doesn’t start with an S, thought Magorian listlessly.
“Yes,” he exulted, “Yes! My fiendish, frigid friends and I have created this devilishly malicious construct out of a mixture of snow, ice, and the serum of evil incarnate in my very veins! It really hurt, too! Seriously, look!” He showed them a practically microscopic paper cut on his ring finger, which was covered up with no less than nine and a half Band-Aids, expecting utmost sympathy. He sucked on the boo-boo and then ensued with the speech.
“Witness this grandeur now; else you shall never see it again. Tekkulat, open the Great Refrigerator and unleash the chaos!” His right hand Eskimo did as he was told, anxiously awaiting the decimation of the centaur that had destroyed the region he had presided over for over sixty-five years. It was their payment for having to build him the device. Nothing would have prepared Magorian for what he saw behind the enormous refrigerator’s opening door.
Hundreds of refrigerator shelves housed lines of one-seat buggies, each fashioned in the shape of a different kitchen utensil. Each buggy had an Inuit at its mantle and cannons attached to each side, capable of firing measured rounds of highly explosive cannonballs a distance of over thirty meters. The Eskimos bounded off the shelves with a multitude of big fetid splashes and wasted no time running amuck and shooting things in wild revenge. The spoon-trebuchets and fork tanks were the hardest units to destroy.
“Fire!” yelled Bellatrix. The fridge kept generating more and more assailants, and the stream of cannon-buggies coming out of the refrigerator seemed never to end.
“Wait wait wait! Hold on!” said Voldemort indignantly. The line stopped. “That’s my line!”
Bellatrix sighed in submission. It had always been her dream to yell “Fire!” and have it actually mean something.
“Fire!” yelled Voldie, scowling at his left hand woman.
Scores of Eskimos manned their utensil-cannons and had at it, pelting the morning sky with bombs. Others laid caltrops over and around Magorian, some of them floating. They weren’t about to give their nemesis a chance to escape. Pacts with Dark Lords weren’t made lightheartedly: they desired nothing but a sweet, prolonged payback for what Magorian had done to their ancestral home.
The Caivorid morphed back into a maw-wyvern and tried to beat the bombs back, but their momentum was too great, and it got hit several times. Lance, Vance, Dumbledore, Dodaru, Snape, Magorian and Nast all evaded the bombs by running around and screaming, and mostly succeeded, as they weren’t being aimed well. Then Magorian got a great idea. Taking out his flute, he played his favorite tune (In-Da-Gadda-Da-Vida) with sudden, unexplainable flute-playing skill. It seemed crisis really did bring out the best in him, and soon he was blowing out a perfectly in-tune neo-Fur Elise, perspiring profusely even in the cold daybreak at the exertion
With ridiculous, impossible speed, a legion of chickens started storming the battlefield, straight from the dark heart of Styjikuhler, shepherded by the centaur’s favorite pet bear, Ganglia. Immediately, they lunged at the poor Eskimos’ necks with frightening ferocity. Tooth and nail were keeping them in check.
What were the chances I got the right notes for 5,000 chickens and one bear? he mused.
“Haha!” encouraged Voldemort with a proud clenched fist, apparently unperturbed at the appearance of the new enemies. “Keep shooting! Keep firing! We’ll have them before long!”
“Er, sir?” whispered a voice in his ear tentatively.
“What is it, Wormtail?”
“Er, actually, that’s Avery, sir. A-V-E-R--”
“Yes, yes, what do you want!?” he dismissed, still looking forward at the wonderful carnage he was hewing. The centaur had already stepped on a number of caltrops.
“You…” He looked back and gulped. “You may want to look behind you.”
“What?...” He turned around. “Bloody hell,” he cursed under his breath.
Floating before him was destiny personified. Her face was long and agelessness, with pert sallow bangs and long straight locks to match. She had a smooth, lithe frame, easily capable of the most daunting physical contortions, making her a skilled fighter. The clothes on her were a little androgynous; her short-sleeved green tunic fit loosely over her modest bust, and they came out in the back in two tails. She wore silken red pants and gilded gravity boots to help her fly, and she carried a special loom that doubled as a bow and as a harp. She is by far the most powerful character you’ll see in this fic. Her eyes were fury and her breath magic. The ultimate Mary Sue.
“Fancy meeting you here, Fate.”
“Shut up, Riddle,” she retorted. “It’s too late to reconcile what you’ve done, and you’ll be staring down through my eyes the day of your reckoning in no time. Balancing the scales of the universe is an intensive task,” she looked down at him with condescending eyes and crossed her arms, “but one I am not unwilling to shirk it to deal with you.”
Voldemort feigned nonchalance and signaled the Eskimos manning the refrigerator cannons to stop their attack, which they did with reluctance. They had successfully knocked out Nast with a cannonball to the head and three of the Eskimos had cornered Magorian with their bloody fishing hooks before Dodaru had the sense to stop fighting the Caivorid and make a fleeting shield shadow, in classic Aerish style, to protect them. The Caivorid then turned into a giant battering ram and made the shield shatter, allowing the hordes to get in some hits again. Only to be called back by their idiot benefactor!
“So you’re not here to kill me?” asked Voldemort.
“No.”
“It’s because you know I’m unkillable!” he cried ecstatically.
In response, she held up an antique box with Greek inscriptions lining its edges for him to see. “Even if you were, I’d be able to destroy you,” she explained, “but one isn’t to toy around with the threads of providence already sewn. Today is not the day.”
Observing the battle, the child inside Fate lit up. There was a giant ghost-ocelot swiping its paws at a beleaguered party of seven. A new exotic monster to add to her collection! She was expecting business, and instead she got pleasure. Sans hesitation she whipped out her Pandora’s Box again (not the actual box, mind you; it’s the name given the apparatus) and opened it, making a larger creaking sound then one would expect. “The green spirit thing,” she whispered to the box, and instantly the Caivorid started to degenerate and whirl in a rushing beam of wind into the box. The lid snapped shut, and it would lay trapped in the Box forever until she chose to let it out, in which case she would not be able to capture it again. Dodaru looked a bit angry, but the rest, including the Amerind hordes, sighed in relief that the monstrous specter had been taken down. (Meanwhile, in the Black Turf, the slaves withered away into ash, spiraling into the sky, and the zombies held up on stakes in Andaeneth met the same fate.)
Finally, the fight was fair for Magorian and his comrades, and even though the Eskimos had formed a blitzkrieg line and started plowing down some of his specially-bred super chickens, he was having fun leaping on to enemy tanks and trampling them underfoot while shooting down eggbeater-helicopters with his trusty bow. He leapt off and stopped another buggy by lodging his spear into its axles and yanking with a hearty heave. Finally, some action!
Dodaru had revived Nast with the help of the Wendigo’s healing powers, and without the help of the sasquatches’ advice (“Rub the holly over his left ventricle, Dodaru!” “Wait, isn’t he supposed to ingest it?” “No idiot, that’s pie. You’re supposed to ingest pie. And watch out!”). Lance ducked to avoid a chicken that had been stuffed in Takkulat’s fork tank and fired, then spun around with a swing of his massive arm to deflect an uncoming cannonball right into another buggy, causing it to lose its front wheels and derail into the swamp water. Nast was now exercising his skill with the bow on the Great Refrgerator, trying to shut it down- Their guile and valor would keep them alive for a while, but he realized that in the end, only sheer numbers would matter. It would be so easy to arrow the switch marked “SHUT OFF BUTTON- GOOD GUYS CLICK HERE” if there weren’t so many cannonballs whizzing past his head, and he tried not to focus on the sound of chickens tearing out peoples’ esophagi. Briefly, he thought of getting out his wand and trying to Summon some diazepam, or have Tessen search some for him.
Meanwhile, away from the battle, the Death Eaters all looked up at Fate in amazement. She had gotten rid of a spirit with no effort at all! She looked at them with her disparaging gaze and asked them for the location of “Magorian, son of Deigorian of the Forbodden Forest.”
Rookwood stepped on Dolohov’s face and tried to answer her first, but Mulciber clapped a hand on his mouth, muffling him. “He’s over there!” he shouted. Fate smiled, and he blushed. She rose higher and sped off into the battle taking place in the middle of the clearing. Rookwood pried Mulciber’s arm off his mouth and glared at him scornfully. Then they all viewed Fate flying off into the distance, and they all let out a big droopy-eyed sigh.
“We don’t have time for this!” bawled Voldemort. “Protect the Great Refrigerator!” He giddyapped Nagini and they followed him following her into the battle. As soon as they started to form ranks around the enormous fridge, barring any hope of flicking the fatal button, they began to systematically stun the torrent of chickens raining down on their Mt. Motm allies.
Fate, stationed above the wartorn swamp, started skimming for the lone centaur in the increasingly massive throng of chaotic warriors. Imagine Where’s Waldo times ten. The MV cameras circled around her, adjusting their zoom against her radiance to keep her in focus. Narrowing her cruel eyes in disgust, she stretched back the nearest string in her lyre, fitted it with an arrow from the quiver attached to its prow, and let the shot ring with a sonorous twang. The dart took them both down, veering and swerving to reach its targets. In hardly the space of a picosecond, each camera plummeted down with a smoldering hole in its lens.
Loath to waste time, she nevertheless hesitated a moment before plucking out one of her eyeballs and holding it down to see the scene more accurately. When she saw what she was looking for, the iris she held aloft turned an iridescent violet and the pupil dilated. She put the eye back in her right socket and lowered herself gently, entering the roaring skirmish taking place below.
Dodaru lifted a nearby log and threw it at an infantryman Inuit charging at her with abandon, effectively breaking his hook-wielding arm. A ball of shadow finished him off, and he flew into the rubble that was his spatula-ship. Magorian parried a carving knife soaring straight for the back of her head with his spear and swung it back at him with a virile “NEEUURGH!”, but the Eskimo dodged it by making a sharp turn. Another guy tried to hook Magorian’s horseback, but a swift Mega Horsekick had him seeing stars, and an insane chicken devoured his limp form. Dodaru had his back by winnowing two buggies bound for him together and choking them in shadow. They made quite a fighting team, he the brawn and she… well, she was also the brawn.
But they still made a good team!
Indeed, it was only when the Fridge-Magnet Cars started emerging from the tops shelves of the Great Refrigerator that things started to take a turn for the worse. The mail under her billowing robes made her fly into a silly duck-shaped magnet, and her legs were about to be crushed under the tires of the car when Lance stopped it with a karate chop to the cockpit. Meanwhile, Nast was still trying to shoot the button at the top of the eighty-story “Icebox of Iniquity” (Voldemort had decided to change its name again. It had been just a minute ago, Nast could swear, that he had shouted out that he couldn’t decide whether its new name was to be the Device of Devastation or the Reticule of Ruin.), but this time he was standing on the centaur’s sturdy back, ducking and jumping to avoid the defenders’ Unforgivables, Tessen all the while cawing its encouragement safely on his shoulder.
It was a bit of a stalemate, so, tiptoeing around some new spiked caltrops and removing the arrow lodged in a drifting corpse’s 2nd vertebra to shoot down the engine of an eggbeater-helicopter already getting pecked out savagely by a trio of belligerent death-chickens, he thought of what to name the historic battle he was participating in.
The Battle of Duirop Swamp? Nah, too unoriginal… The Skirmish of the Sixteenth Scourge? Catchy, but overly vague. How about The Clash of the Inuit Hordes and Their Refrigerator of All-Encompassing Evil Versus The Fellowship of Magorian? Nah, some people might object that it’s too long. He saw Dumbledore leap over a pile of corpses to Incendio down the ground a fork tank that had injured Snape. He was helped up and, taking back his wand, he joined Vance in pummeling a Toaster Truck with a few well-placed Reductor Curses. I’ve got it! “The Battle of Duirop Swamp!” It’s perfect!
Grinning, he trotted ahead and landed a clean strike to an Eskimo’s navel with a plunge of his spear, twisting and releasing. He let out a gnarly sylvan war cry and beat his chest like a gorilla on crack; Magorian’s adrenaline was even higher than usual, and the level of endorphins in his blood stream hadn’t stopped increasing. But not all was fine and dandy. Goyle struck Nast with a nasty Conjunctivitis Curse, and he spilled over the horseback into the water, clutching his eyes in agony. Dodaru had narrowly escaped a serious braining by Tekkulat, the Nihoth tribe elder and most fierce of his comrades, who was brandishing a lean, ornate trident, but had not fled from the encounter entirely unscathed. And, most importantly, Fate descended in front of Magorian, stopped time, and asked if he was Magorian son of Deigorian.
“Well, see, which father would you be talking about?” asked Magorian. He looked around, and everything had stopped. Chickens, spears, and kitchen-themed vehicles all were frozen in midair, and motion and sound ceased, giving all matter a funny unreal feeling. Even the ankle-deep water had halted, effectively keeping Magorian’s legs where they were.
“Never,” answered Fate angrily, “speak down to me, for it would be the very last thing a lowly animal such as you would do!” She dropped all the way down, and walked on the water until she was a hairsbreadth away from the helpless centaur. “Fool! I can befoul you with but a thought, and you’d be gurgling and choking on a spurt of your own life force in the blink of an eye. My eye.”
“What do you want with me?” said Magorian, staring into her eyes with a sort of enthralled terror.
“I offer an ultimatum. You must denounce your place in fanficdom forevermore. You are to step down from the post of main protagonist, and I want never to see you in any writing from here on out.” She stepped back and aimed an arrow between his eyes. “Else you shall die.”
“But what have I done? Why do you desire this?”
She sighed. “Ever since the fanfic-making robot I sold to The Savant blew up, he’s been bombarding me with requests to help out his fic. He’s flat-out broke and can’t buy a new one, whereas I’m sold out anyway. So he won’t stop calling me for advice. ‘What color shoes should this character be wearing?’ ‘What should this character say?’ or the oh so dreaded ‘I’ve thought of a new character, I just need a new name!’ So I’ve come to eliminate his favorite character.”
“Why not just talk to The Savant and explain to him how much he’s annoying you?”
“Because of this stupid indestructible contract he had me sign!” she yelled, gnawing at the paper in frustration. “I’ve tried everything! Laserbeams, Avada Kedavras, nuclear fission chambers, waiting out its eventual deterioration, giant hammers… But nothing works!” She dropped to her knees on the stationary slush and gnashed her teeth, pulling at her hair in irritation. “The contract says I can’t do anything to harm and/or maim The Savant, regardless of what he does or where he goes. And plus I have to make him a chicken parmigiano sandwich for him everyday. He’s got me doing his bidding! Every whim and frickin’ fancy!”
Chicken-ptarmigan sandwich? thought Magorian, his mouth watering. No, Magorian, NO, you must stay focused! Your life is on the line here! Just think of the three people you would disappoint if this fic was discontinued! He smelled a familiar fragrance coming from out his saddlebag. Mmm… ostrich leg…No! He shook the thought out of his head. Then he thought of a good idea. “Why don’t I take him down a peg or two for you?” He flexed his bicep and grinned.
At that, Fate fell face up on the floor and laughed her head off, banging on the time-stuck marsh water with her fists hysterically. “Granted, your 110 and he’s 16,” she managed to say between throes of laughter, “but he practically controls you. Not only that, but he resides in an impregnable chamber inside a heavily fortified palace situated in an ACTIVE VOLCANO on top of a CLOUD.” She succumbed to another fit of laughter before adding, “to the best of my knowledge, only one person ever reached his headquarters, and they only reached as far as the Taleweaver’s Domain before disappearing, never to be seen again.
“Y’know, Magorian, I kind of like you,” she said, finally standing up again and brushing herself off after what seemed like hours. “Nobody ever has the unbelievably huge balls it takes to negotiate with me. I give you the chance to say anything that might dissuade me from killing you, should you decline to abdicate this fic. You have five minutes. Go.”
Magorian tried his damnedest, eyeing the warriors frozen in time and wondering if that would be his fate.
“Er… I make an awesome piña colada. I’ll give you the secret recipe!
How would you like to meet a square-dancing bear?
Le me live, and I’ll wrangle exotic monsters all over the universe for you!”
“I make a better piña colada. I hate square-dancing. I don’t need help to capture monsters.”
“Erm… I could create a new robot for The Savant to work with!”
“Pshaw. If I can’t make any more with a PepsiCo budget and my ageless wisdom, you definitely can’t make one with your folk-astrology, mysticism, and Swiss Miss budget.”
“Er, uh, hold on, I’ll think of something!”
“Five seconds. Five, four…”
“Erm…”
“Three…”
“Um…”
“Two…”
“I’m friends with Vance and Lance, the sasquatches that hitched you a ride when you didn’t have gravity boots!” he blurted out. He would’ve waited for the last second, but he figured that the whole last-second thing was much too cliché.
“You are?” she said in wonder. “Where are they now?”
“Down over there,” said Magorian, pointing north-northeast.
She glided in the direction, unfroze them, and they agreed that they were friends of Magorian. “By the way, have you seen our food baskets?” asked Lance, whose legs were also stuck in the unmoving current. “They were made in the finest Dutch wicker, you know, about yea big, with big loopy ribbons on the handles?”
She smiled and returned. “You have earned my favor, Magorian son of Deigorian. A fraction of my essence shall be absorbed into you, and good luck shall be your grace wherever life may lead you.” She opened her mouth unnaturally wide, her lips curling behind her teeth, and a beam of vitality shot through it straight into Magorian’s mouth, reinvigorating his internal life force. He felt 23 again.
“So long, wayfarer.” She winked, and time unfroze. The battle resumed as if nothing happened, and she spoke louder over the turmoil. “I pray we shall meet again some day, but for now I must depart! Farewell, and may your footsteps herald greatness for all to adore!”
“Wait!” gasped Magorian, after drinking his full of her greatness, ducking another tossed chicken, and looking up to her leaving form in the sky. “Might you give me a monster so that I can win this thing!?” he yelled up at her, making sure even in his panic to remain formal.
“What?!” she shouted down.
“I said, ‘might you give me a monster to win this thing?!’”, he repeated, cupping his mouth.
She flew down to him again. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Might you give me a monster to win this thing?”
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Of course not.”
Magorian deflected an airborne cannonball with one of his special rubber ducky hand grenades and asked “Why not!?”
Fate did a handstand whirlwind-kick, felling five feral fiends with one attack, and then shifted into a crouch stance, sweep-kicking one Eskimo and uppercutting another. She quickly followed up with a sideswipe chop to the face of a hook-soldier that had been trying to sneak up on her, and he flew over a hanging willow, his parka getting hooked onto a hanging branch. Nearby Dodaru tossed Tekkulat into the lynched Eskimo and chanted a little song of retribution in her breathy native tongue, Gothrefi. (“Ahdethi-aios, chrat, dur hal migdoschas etthoset dejhraktath.” or, very roughly translated, “Enemies of Aios, beware, for his sons’ wrath shall be insurmountable.”)
“You’d never be able to control it! It’d go amuck and kill everyone, not just your enemies!” She elbow-jabbed another Eskimo into the burning wreckage of his trebuchet. Dodaru barely dodged Voldem