by Simon Archer
I couldn’t help but feel the knots tensing up in my back and neck, rubbing the side of my shoulder as I put my finger on the thick nodes of stressed muscles. All the angst and strain from this trip over the past two weeks had finally shown its ugly face, patiently waiting for me to be relaxed to make its move. With the bulk of the craziness finally passed, I could finally rest for a couple of seconds. I mean, yes, there were still things to do. They could wait the few seconds I needed to just take a seat. Or maybe lie down. Or maybe take a nap. No, I hurt too much for the wood deck to be comfortable, and I didn’t want to be mistaken for dead and eaten or something. I sat back up with a groan, thinking about how long I could stay here before I had to get up and do more things.
After not too long, Hopper came bounding over, charging me with a tackling hug. I didn’t have near the energy to react properly, just letting the hug happen. Hopper kissed me over my cheeks and across my face, smothering me with affection and hugging as she snuggled into me. If she pressed any harder against me, I swear I’d be absorbing her just like Timberpine’s wizard staff things. She rubbed her nose against mine, looking me in the eyes.
“I knew you could do it, my lord.” Hopper sat on my lap. God, that hurt, but I was happy she was there. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“Do what?” I asked between breaths.
“Make me leave you alone like that!” she shouted. “You could have died, Hank!”
“Didn’t you just say,” I sighed out in a labored effort, “that you knew it could do it?”
“That doesn’t mean I want you to try!” She rested on my aching shoulder. “That was the scariest thing I ever had to do.”
“What about when you ran,” I pointed out, taking a breath, “through a dark would, chased by giant hungry Wolves, then jumped to a brand new world, and ran into a fantastic new wild creature, who tried to eat you?”
She hid her eyes in my neck. Scarier than that, huh? My skills in the emotional awareness during combat could use a little work, I guess. Or when I’m tired. Couldn’t go to any school to learn that. Just had to have people who loved you keep you grounded.
“I’ll try to keep that to a minimum,” I said. “But I’ll have to do that sometimes. He was my fight. I couldn’t let you get hurt. That’d be the scariest thing I’d ever have to risk.”
“You’d never do that if you didn’t need to,” she whispered. “You’re a good man.”
“That’s a strong word.” I disagreed a bit. Not like I didn’t want to be one. Just had a lot to do to get there, is all. “I try to do my best. Guess it was enough today.”
“It’s enough every day.” She kissed me on the neck. “You make it happen, no matter what kind of disaster is happening. You got us out of being stuck in a whole other world.”
“That was you,” I corrected her. “I didn’t do anything. You’re the superstar.”
“That was you.” She corrected me again. “I would have been stuck there forever without you to give me a way home. Well, a way back here. Home’s somewhere else.”
“That’s right, we have an estate, now,” I remembered. “With a bathhouse! Oh, god, a bathhouse. That’s gonna hurt. So good. Home sweet home.”
“The bathhouse is nice,” she said. “It’s a very noble abode, but it wasn’t home, either.”
“It’ll be great,” I assured her. “We’ll get it all nice and cleaned up, scrub out all of the nasty Timberpine smell, then it’ll be the best home you’ve ever had.”
“It’ll be home when my home gets there.” She looked me in the eye. “And he’ll get there once I get off his lap, and we can go tell everyone he claimed Timberpine’s estate.”
I kissed that sappy romantic right on her lips, craning my neck from the aches.
“Then get off me!” I told her with one last peck on the cheek. “I got an estate to claim, a home to make, and a bathhouse to soak in!”
She pouted, begrudgingly getting up even though it’s what she wanted. With only reserve muscle and energy to spare, a regular sitting up to a standing position became a struggle for the ages that Hopper helped me succeed in, keeping me on my feet.
“Where is Timberpine?” Hopper asked as she held onto my side and stabilized me.
I pointed at the shredded skin bag with the bones inside it, surrounded by wet deck and powder.
“Ew.” Hopper shriveled her little nose at the sight. “Are you sure?”
“Unless a different magic monster popped out of where he landed,” I answered, equally revolted. “We’ll have to hope his pack believes me. I’m running low on asspulls for today.”
“I can pull anything from your ass if you need it, my lord.” She commented loyally.
“Do you see a lord’s coat in there?” I chuckled. “I left mine in the alley.”
“Hey, boss!” The familiar voice of Old Yeller came bounding in from a street from the city. “Look what Shepherd and I found!” He held up my blue lord’s coat in one of his hands as Shepherd caught up to him.
“It was just lying in some alleyway!” Shepherd added.
“Good work, boys.” I commended them, a hand out to grab the coat.
“Now, you can have two of them!” Old Yeller happily reasoned as he handed it to me. Oh, boys. What absolute treasures of knowledge and common sense, they were.
“Sure thing, bud.” I winced as I put the coat on. “Find someone from Timberpine’s old pack and bring them here. We gotta show them that--”
“Hey, boss!” The other familiar voice of Poodle came rushing in from a different street. “Me and Toby found these guys from Timberpine’s pack.” Old Yeller came pouncing in as well, leading the two bodyguards from before with him to us.
“They said they were looking for him and wanted to know where he was,” Toby called out. “We figured you would know since you guys were fighting in that challenge.”
“Good work, boys.” I hid a disbelieving chuckle. “What a beautiful coincidence. You two used to work for Timberpine?”
“Yeah, sure,” one of the bodyguards said. “We still do, but I guess we used to, too.”
“You no longer work for him.” I amended his statement. “He’s dead, and I won the challenge against him. You work for me.”
“What?” The other one said skeptically. “That doesn’t make sense. Timberpine can’t die.”
“He told us that himself.” The first one continued. “That’s why we’d always be working for him, he said. Very loudly, too.”
“I found out how to kill him,” I stated, struggling to bend down and pick up the meatsack that used to be Timberpine and hold it up for them to see. “Here he is, dead as a doornail.”
“That’s a meatsack,” the first one said.
“It’s Timberpine’s meatsack,” I clarified.
“That could be anybody’s meatsack,” the second one argued. “Why should we believe it’s Timberpine’s?”
“Oh, come on!” I cried out for a break. “This is his actual body! I know it doesn’t really look like him right now, but I swear it’s him. You guys can smell it, right?”
“Well, it does smell like him.” The second one surveyed the smell like a wine connoisseur. “But it also has a gunpowder afterscent, with a hint of hot wetness. A little breezy, but distinctly Timberpine’s coniferous odor, nonetheless.”
“You still could have just put the odor on a meatsack,” the first one argued. “You could have just rubbed the meatsack on him a lot.”
“Wouldn’t that mean I’d have to get close enough to do that?” I reasoned. “You think I could get close enough to a noble of Timberpine’s strength to rub him with a sack of meat just so I could steal his estate from him? He would just let me do that?”
“Well, he was in a wheelchair.” The first one pointed out. “It’s not like he could move away from you to do that.”
“Hey, boss!” Foxhound interrupted the debate with his entrance. “Me, Lassie, and Scooby found Timberpine’s wheelchair!” On cue, Lassie and Scooby cam
e in together, holding both sides of Timberpine’s special ‘throne.’ They came up to me and sat it down, coming behind me.
“He must have left it when you two were fighting,” Lassie said. “We thought you might want it since you were going to claim his stuff. One of us could wheel you around if you need it.”
“The implications divulged from the evidence of missing persons from the wheelchair in question may call into question Timberpine’s supposed immobility and his current whereabouts,” Scooby started a long-winded explanation. “The possibilities available within an environment employing arcana and supernatural forces could fabricate phenomena capable of providing the subject ample circumstance for his ability to maneuver beyond the confines previously proposed by his position in the wheelchair. The likeliness that an individual attempting to counterfeit the impairment inherent to the disability he built his falsification upon would implicate himself so drastically in vacating the predicament that supplies the illusion unless the repudiation of the falsehood was calculated to ensure a function of greater importance was instated, such as martial effectiveness in a confrontation with fatal intent for both parties. Unless anyone who hesitates to recognize the current delineation of the personage of the noble’s location submits further evidence to invalidate it, the extant supposition demands general acceptance.”
Everyone stared at Scooby, who, as usual, wore the blank expression I’d come to accept from him after his vocabulary outbursts. He could never repeat himself if he even tried, and yet, somehow, once you sifted through the big words, it always made sense.
“Does…?” The first bodyguard tried to piece something together. “Does that mean Timberpine was a ghost the whole time?”
“That explains why he couldn’t die.” The second agreed. “Ghosts are already dead. Guess now that he’s gone, we gotta kill each other until the estate’s stuff is all claimed up.” Without hesitation, the two of them were clawing and biting at each other with no regard for anything around them.
“No!” I put a stop to them right as they had the other’s throats. “Timberpine is missing from the wheelchair, so he had to have gotten out, meaning he probably wasn’t as stuck in it as you thought. Since we live in a world of magic, it’s possible that he could have used that to move about, and if he was faking with the wheelchair the whole time, he would have only gotten out and exposed himself to fully engage in a challenge. Unless you guys have any evidence to go against me, my explanation is the only one we’re going with. Deal?”
“Oh, that makes a lot more sense.” The first bodyguard gasped out as he nodded his head, still holding the second’s throat.
“Yeah, I can agree to that.” The second wheezed. “That’s a nice summary of what the other guy said.”
“So…?” I prompted them to speak the oath, so I knew they were on board.
“Oh, right,” the first one remembered, still frozen in his intertwining clutch. “Our strength recognizes yours as superior. We will follow you until one of us dies.”
“Perfect.” I sat down in the wheelchair. “You are now Tweedle Dee, and you are Tweedle Dum. Hopper can explain the names for you. Follow me to the estate. Scooby, wheel me around. I’ve got a whole bunch of new Wolves to name.”
20
“That was horrifying,” Hopper commented on the story back in the catacombs. “But yay! After all of that time, the estate is yours! I’m glad Timberpine’s dead now.”
“So is everyone else who’s decent in this world,” I added. “Goddamn, was that the absolute worst fight I’d ever been in? I couldn’t get a fix on how to deal with him to save my life. Almost literally, in that case.”
“That was an amazing fight.” Tinker hugged my side. “Just like the Hunter of legend. How do you stay so calm in those fights? It’s like you found a way to kill a god.”
“Let’s not get crazy, girl,” I said to her. “He was crazy, magical, and hard to kill, but he wasn’t a god. I’m certain any god could smite me with a thought if they were so inclined. He was an asshole who glued some magic wands to his legs to fly around. Just because they’re hard to kill doesn’t make them worth any admiration like that. I don’t need him propped up to be one just so I sound more impressive. Rabid dogs get put down, no matter how big they think they are.”
“So you just treat them like they’re inferior to you?” Tinker asked, looking up from the hug she was still giving me as we walked. “You’re not scared of them because you know you’re better than them.”
“It’s not that at all.” I expounded my statement. “Of course, I’m scared. It’d be stupid not to be. Fear’s good in a fight. It keeps you from doing something stupid if you work to let it guide you where you need to be. You can’t let it freeze you up, or it’ll kill you. Timberpine had every edge on me. I didn’t know anything about his arsenal, and I didn’t have a lot of an arsenal to match. If he wasn’t fighting like an animal, he probably would have killed me. That’s why I had to rile him up first, get him emotional. Even the smartest people give up a smart decision for a chance at a little catharsis. That’s why you gotta let your win be in getting justice, making things right, not in making people suffer all the time.”
That being said, when I was cutting off Timberpine’s last leg, I was indulging my primal side a bit more in taking my time with it. It was bittersweet to hear him beg for his life. I wanted his pride to break, to peel away all of that facade he was using to bleed everyone out, especially his own people. But then I saw what he really was in the deepest part of himself, and it made me wonder how something so horrific and pathetic ever got his hands on so much power to abuse.
“Still, it felt good for me that he finally got what we came here to do.” Hopper wrapped an arm around me, above Tinker’s. “Taking Timberpine’s estate was the goal that started Lord Hank on the quest in the first place, and now he’d done it.”
“But we weren’t done yet,” I finished. “With a growing estate inside of the city, and the chaos from fighting Timberpine, it was only a matter of time before the Baron decided to do something about me, and we had to prepare for that.”
Back in the story, I’d finished naming my new sailors after their strange colors, learned nothing about the reason for that from questioning them, and left them to their fishing after taking their slaves to the Timberpine estate. While the rest of the boys herded the ship slaves, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum stuck around with me while Scooby huffed and puffed as he pushed me up the hill towards our destination, and I felt a little bad not getting out to walk myself. I also felt bad since I let Hopper fall asleep in the wheelchair on my lap, so Scooby was carrying two people now. Including himself, that was three bodies he was lugging up that hill.
“I’m just getting pumped, boss,” he said to my concern as he kept trucking along. “You stay in that seat. I can do this job. I’m Scooby-ing like I’ve never Scooby-ed before.”
“Well, alright, then.” I leaned back into the chair and let Scooby do his thing.
“We used to do that job, boss,” Tweedle Dee said. “We can do it again if you want.”
“Yeah, we were his chairpushers,” Tweedle Dum added. “If you don’t think he’s doing a good job, boss, we’ll take over for him.”
“That’s up to Scooby,” I told them.
“What do you mean?” Tweedle Dum questioned me. “Are you saying you want me to move him because you can’t be bothered to?”
“No, I’m saying that it’s Scooby’s decision to make,” I told them flatly.
“His… decision?” Tweedle Dee tried to grapple with the concept. “You want him to give an order to do something?”
“Sure,” I answered, maxing my relaxing in my seat with Hopper. “In this specific instance here, I’m giving him the authority to give a command about it if he wants to.”
“But he’s not the pack leader.” Tweedle Dum exposed the obvious. “You are. You give the commands, not him.”
“Yes, I know.” My eyes closed as I leaned my head bac
k. “And my command is to give Scooby the authority to command either of you to take over his spot in pushing the chair up this hill. If he wants to use that authority or not is up to his discretion.”
“So is he the chairpusher now, or are we?” Tweedle Dee asked, still unable to process the dynamic shift he was experiencing. “If we’re not the chairpushers, what are we supposed to do?”
“Whatever I tell you to do, Tweedle Dee,” I said, falling into a serene groove. “That’s what having a name means. You do everything I want you to do. You do the jobs I want you to do, and you listen to the people I tell you to listen to.”
“So, are you putting us in his pack?” Tweedle Dum kept sharing the same mind with his counterpart. “Can you do that? He hasn’t earned the win, though. Do you want a pack of chairpushers?”
“Nope,” I said. Anger with them wasn’t helping, and I didn’t have the energy to try to work it up. “You’re still a part of my pack. I’m just telling you just listen and let him exercise his free will as he makes a decision on my behalf. What do you want, Scooby?”
“I want to keep pushing,” Scooby said. “I know I can do this well. I can get you up this hill. I’m a good Scooby.”
“You sure are, Scooby.” I applauded him softly. “Good job. And there’s your answer, boys. He’s gonna keep pushing for me.”
“So…?” Tweedle Dee started to ask. “Are we not the chairpushers?”
“Yeah, what do we do now?” Tweedle Dum finished for the other.
“Right now, just follow,” I told them. “You’ll be given more to do later.”
“More chairpushing?” Tweedle Dee asked, almost excited at the idea.