In Which A Great Deal Of People Are Eaten
It’s a curious experience, having your hand neatly clipped off by a mythical creature. The bird barely seemed to move; its feet stayed planted on the ground, its feathers never ruffled. Without a sound its gyroscopic head simply pecked at me, and its beak snicked off my left hand with all the clinical efficiency and utter nonchalance of a barber’s scissors. A millisecond later, the bird’s head was back in place, its eyes watching me with faint curiosity.
Such was the incredible speed at which my beloved left hand was severed, I didn’t immediately register the wound. I instead continued to lecture the bird on the social faux pas of eating my plump acquaintance. It was only when I went to wag my finger at it that I spotted, or rather didn’t spot, my missing hand. And then my adrenaline went haywire and I ran screaming and bleeding through the middle of the raging debauchery of Inebrium.
Despite the fact that I was bleeding profusely and shrieking and waving a sword with a bit of leg on the end of it, the drunken mud-crusts of Inebrium paid no heed to my hysterical warnings of doom. To my great exasperation, they thought I was attempting to join the revelry, and instead of providing me with immediate medical attention, they pushed me into the centre of a dancing circle.
I tried to leave, and even waved my sword around, but they were having none of it. And lo, the newly-mutilated king of the realm was forced to do a little jig by a jolly mob of boozesoaked hair clumps. It was almost a relief, then, when the murderous thunder bird barrelled into the crowd, a-snickin’ and a-snackin’ and a-fizzlin’ and a-gobblin’.
“Oh thank goodness,” I muttered, slipping away from the bloodshed to find Edgar and Glob and that jangle-eared old woman whose name I had long since forgotten. She had that kind of ‘magical elder’ aura about her that led me to assume she would be able to heal my wound and give me my hand back.
I found my two companions slumped beside one another, snoozing against a keg of wine. I shoed them awake one by one. Edgar blinked up at me, his eyes bleary.
“Oh, hello Sire,” said Edgar. He noticed my blood-gushing stump and his eyes widened. “Blimey your Highness, you’ve not got a hand!”
“Edgar, thou would lose a game of chess to a bumrag,” I sighed. “We cannot tarry. A big massive bird is gobbling everyone up. Where is the jangly earring lady? I must be healed.”
We found her in her little big tent, smoking a shisha pipe and enjoying a sensual foot massage from a nude oily man. It was apparent that word of the rampaging death bird had not yet reached them. I dropped to my knees before the woman.
“O fair party woman, wilst thou heal mine arm?”
She coughed on her pipe as she observed my un-hand.
“What on earth happened to you?”
I must confess that at this point I was not entirely honest; had I informed the jangly woman of the mythical death-beast that was presently tearing through her campsite and devouring her friends, I imagined it would have delayed her tending to me, and time was of the essence. So I told her I tripped.
“Tripped!?” she cried, rushing over to me across the very small room.
I shrugged in response. She waved her hand over my lack of one and the dangling nerves and veins began knitting themselves up. After a moment the bleeding had ceased, and the area went numb.
“Is that it?” I asked, crestfallen. “Thou cannot grow it back?”
“Grow it back? You’re lucky I can do anything at all, you ungrateful sod!”
“It’s fine… I suppose,” I sighed, rolling my eyes.
During the somewhat disappointing miraculous healing of my arm, unnoticed by our party, a very long beak had slowly and soundlessly nosed its way into the tent. A sudden snick sound caused our party of five to snap to attention, whereupon we discovered that we were now a party of four and a half. The nude masseuse had been forcefully metamorphosed into a nude pair of legs. The woman whose name I had forgotten screamed, and I considered mentioning the murder bird, but I supposed that at this point its existence was quite self-evident.
The magical shrinking tent was split open with another snick, and we found our assembled selves stood helpless before the towering hell-fowl. It didn’t take a lengthy internal debate to decide that attempting to reason with the bird a second time would likely find me shorn of subsequent appendages.
“Old woman, quickly, how do we slay this big horrible thing?” I called.
“We can’t!” she cried. “Only a sylvion blade can repel its onslaught and pierce the bird’s armour!”
I gasped, remembering the wizard’s prophecy. “Glob, quick! Toss me Chekhov’s sword!”
The bird crouched, preparing to lunge towards us for the killing strike. Glob ripped open her satchel and began hurling its contents out, my underpants and socks billowing around her.
“Glob,” I shout-whispered, staring down the barrel of a very large beak, “the sword, please. Quickly. QUICKLY.”
“I think we left it in them magic woods,” said Glob.
“BOLLOCKS!” I shrilled.
I picked up a fistful of sand and hurled it into the hell-bird’s darting eyes. It let out an almighty squawk and staggered into our midst, snapping blindly. It happened upon the severed legs of the nude half-man and began to gulp them down. While it was distracted I hastily gathered my scattered underwear and together our band sprinted to our steeds, tied up by the oasis.
“Old woman,” I called out, “willst thou join us on our quest to find mine wife?”
The old lady whose name I had forgotten looked around her at the carnage; the blood soaked sands, the severed limbs strewn across the dancefloor, the twisting fires of ransacked tents, the battered gremlins, and the atrocious amount of spilled beer. She shook her head.
“My fate lies elsewhere. I will rebuild Inebrium. The party will never cease, as long as I draw breath.”
A gremlin with both arms missing and its hair ablaze staggered screaming through our midst and collapsed face down in the pool, where it sizzled and lay still.
“I will probably just research the area a bit more next time before deciding to set up camp,” she added. ”We live and learn.”
We bid the jangly lady farewell. She mounted her horse, and with a final wave, rode away at pace into the western desert. With my good hand I heaved myself onto Margaret’s wide back, and together our bold trio galloped away from the carnage of Inebrium and headed south, to be claimed by the darkness of the dunes.