by Adam Clark
Grigor, Chainsaw Boy, Napalm Explosionface, Illana and the Ty-Rap-o-Saurus Rex were sitting around a wooden table in the cramped wooden hull of the pirate ship, the only contents of which were five tankards of rum and an oil lantern. The aforementioned oil lantern swung rhythmically over the table in time to the hum and thrum of the hyper drive engine, throwing twice as many shadows onto the wooden walls as people in the room.
Grigor had taken to wearing a thick lion fur cloak, pinned with great gold medallions, over his fashionable suit. He had barely said a word since they’d left the Barbarian Planet, his stare had been focused three feet in front of himself whenever he sat and there was a whisper going round the ship that looking him in the eyes doomed a man’s soul to hell. They whispered in spite of the fact that everyone could feel the power he now possessed, there wasn’t a person in the room without a slight tingle or a few hairs standing on edge. This powerful aura became even more intense with his deep and brooding mood.
Chainsaw Boy was still trying to lighten everyone up with the occasional quip or witty joke, which usually dive bombed terribly and caused more angst among the group than it calmed. The main source of Chainsaw Boy’s alleviating mood abilities were entirely unintentional, watching him try to do menial tasks without opposable thumbs or hands made everyone feel much better about their own lives, apart from Illana. The supermodel, being a female, had these odd things called ‘emotions’ and ‘empathy’ which were rumoured to stem from a deep ancient magic. These magic powers made Illana feel sorry for Chainsaw Boy, and over the past week had helped him where others shunned him. Such as teaching him to mend clothes that inevitably got shredded, helping turn pages on books that would inevitably get shredded and even preparing for an upcoming montage sequence in which, through a repeated series of short everyday tasks, Chainsaw Boy starts off clumsily failing at each menial task, but eventually becomes a master at adapting to his debilitating prosthetic malady through the sheer power of trendy pop music, laughter and smiles.
Unfortunately, this montage sequence hasn’t happened yet, as such, Chainsaw Boy was precariously tipping his tankard upside down above his head with the tankard pinched between the ends of chainsaw hands, and subsequently drowned himself in cheap rum. Although Grigor showed no signs of even accepting Chainsaw Boy existed, everyone felt the tension in the room ease slightly.
Napalm Explosionface was sat with one leg crossed in the corner of the room, the crossed leg was his guitar leg, and he was playing a little instrumental ditty that, although cheerful, seemed to physically wilt as it floated through the air.
The Ty-Rap-O-Saurus Rex was sat quite awkwardly on the human designed chairs, his tail was pushed out behind him, and his feet were awkwardly placed on the floor in front of him. He had taken to occupying his time by polishing his many large golden medallions that hung heavily from around his neck. But the room was dark, and he was wearing sunglasses along with a trendy youthful cap, so he was still polishing the medallion he’d started with the day before.
Illana was sitting a low cut dress opposite Chainsaw boy and in between Grigor and the Ty-Rap-O-Saurus. She was staring down into the still full tankard, long dark ponytail hanging behind her. She was contemplating the numerous bad choices she’d made in her life up to that point that led to her hanging out in a cramped cabin with a dinosaur, a paraplegic, a psychopath and an undead pirate legend.
“How much longer will it be until we reach the Dagoba system? We’ve been travelling for 2 days now.” She said looking up from her tankard and breaking the uneasy silence.
Napalm stopped playing and looked up. “Another day I presume, is that about right Grigor?” He grunted in approval of this statement.
“So we’re going to find the Ice-Wolf and convince him to bestow us with the power of his cajones?”
“Well yeah, the only way to ensure Volkang doesn’t get all the pieces of awesome is to get them all ourselves first.”
“Ok, well, do we have a plan? I’ve never heard of this Ice Wolf before, and it’s not likely that he’ll just give them to us.”
Napalm looked at Grigor “Do we have a plan?” Everyone was now looking expectantly at Grigor, even the Ty-Rap-O-Saurus had stopped polishing his medallion.
“Yes, we go to the Ice moon of Tarth, find the wolf, and get the cajones.” The uneasy silence returned, Chainsaw Boy began to say something, but was silenced by the glint in Grigor’s eyes.
“Well, that’s the shittest plan I’ve ever heard.” Illana spoke these words with a strong air of impetuousness, throwing her head back and crossing her arms. Grigor was slightly taken aback by this, people rarely spoke back to him on a good day, and even then it was usually the last thing they ever did. “That’s all there is? Just get it? No other details in this plan of yours?”
“I, um, well… I guess there might be more to it? Maybe something’ll get smashed?” Illana gave him a stare to signify that this was not an adequate response. “And… maybe, stab some things? No… How about setting something on fire, that’ll work.”
“How exactly will setting things on fire help us?”
“No-one knows exactly how setting things on fire always works to resolve a situation, it just always does.” Grigor replied irritably.
“Ok, how about this, I propose we go to the Ice-Wolf and talk to him first, before setting everything on fire.” She gave a glare round the room inviting a rebuttal. The atmosphere in the room dropped considerably more than it did when Grigor was sulking, and no one replied.
“Sounds like a good idea” the rest of the group replied in unison, except Grigor, who had taken to sulking again, though it didn’t seem to have the same effect it had a few minutes ago.
“So what do we know about this Ice-Wolf?”
“I can tell you the story of him, the last time I saw him he was just a pup, and I believe his story may take the exact amount of time we have left until we reach Tarth.”
“It’s not a day long story is it? That sounds way too long.” Chainsaw Boy lamented.
“Space travel does odd things to time boy, you should learn some physics. But, after I’ve told this story.” Napalm cleared his throat, drunk his whole tankard of rum, wrung out his beard and nearly filled it back up again. “This tale starts a several centuries ago, I was a bit younger back then and was travelling around the galaxy working as a first mate. I was fed up from being a captain for half the previous millennia and fancied seeing some of the more remote parts of the universe. We were passing through the Dagoba system to drop off a collection of Dragon eggs to one of the outlying planets, so we stopped off on Tarth for fuel and supplies, I remember that day very well because I bought a fairly delicious pasty from the buy ‘n’ go shop there, also a fridge magnet, a souvenir novelty hat and postcards to send home. The hat was really cool, ha, literally, because we were on an ice planet, and it had a picture of Ice Cube, the rapper, on it saying ‘Tarth is the place to be!’ Man, I adored that hat, you know what, the hat story is far more interesting shall I tell you about that instead?”
He was answered with a resound no from everyone in the room. “Fine, suit yourselves, where was I? Oh I remember, Tarth. It turns out Tarth isn’t really a moon at all, it was actually a giant floating ice prison, built way back at the beginning of time and completely forgotten about. The reason it is planet sized is because it’s only inmates were two evil ice-giants, each as tall as a skyscraper. Just by co-incidence, as I left the shop a giant hole ripped through the ice sheet, and lo and behold, two horrendously massive giants climbed out. You couldn’t really make out their faces, they were that tall. We all thought we were screwed, even being immortal I would surely be killed if crushed into oblivion by one of them. No sooner had they climbed out, looked around and began stomping that a great white blur tore across everyone’s peripheral vision. The blur shot straight up the slightly less mean Giant’s leg and dashed across its throat. I couldn’t see this due to it being so high up, but the ensuing outburst of blood
was like a flood, spraying from the Giant’s throat and filling the ice plains. This blood filled an area the size of a small city, and drained off into the hole the Giants had made, creating a horrendously grim waterfall of haemoglobin.” By this point everyone in the room were edging forward in their seats, even Grigor had stopped feigning distraction and was attentively listening to every word the Pirate spoke.
“We were about 10 miles away, and up a snow rise, but the blood still created a small tidal wave that lapped against the base of the mound we were standing on like the sea would do to a beach. The giant staggered for a while and fell face forwards to the plains, which took an awfully long time, but when he eventually landed another tidal wave came higher up the snow mound, painting a water line of dark red around the base of our rise. The other Giant was much fiercer, and had swiped at the blur that had launched from the other Giant’s falling shoulder towards his person. This was agonising, the distances involved were staggering, but the Giant’s aim was dead on, but it still took 30 seconds for him to connect, this felt like an eternity, believe me, I would know. He eventually did connect however, with a clap that sounded like thunder, and the Great Wolf flew like a bullet directly from the palm of the monster and into the side of the mountains that surrounded the plains. The crash sent a cloud of debris high up into the air, and caused a giant rock slide that made the whole ground rumble like an earthquake, add to this the slow, deep laugh of the giant and several of our party fell over, along with several of the weaker buildings in the area.”
“But all was not lost, legendary creatures don’t die so easily, when the dust cleared, standing on top of the rubble was the Great Wolf, a wolf of pure white, a truly majestic creature, if I had to guess I would said it stood ten foot from paw to the tip of its pointed ears. It took a while for the Giant to stop laughing, but when he did the tension was unbearable, we could hear, and feel, him grinding his teeth, all the way up in the clouds.” Napalm took another swig of rum, and by now everyone was on the edge of their seats, eagerly anticipating the climax of the story.
“Now, the Great Wolf was a spectacular beast, and it’s only from the magic left over in Tarth that he became a legendary creature, he was not the warden of that long forgotten prison, just in the right place at the right time. As such he was severely outmatched by this Giant, he only managed to kill the first Giant by the use of surprise. And this Giant pair was rumoured to have eaten stars and destroyed planets without any apparent gain or motive. So we were all on tenterhooks, it was possible that this was end of the line for all of us, as majestic as the Great Wolf stood, it was apparent he was injured, as could be seen from the multiple patches of red smeared over the tufts of fur. The Wolf opened his maw wide however, and a great wind rushed towards him, as if the air was being sucked out of the planet by him. The lady owner of the shop was standing next to me at this point and I’ll never forget the hushed words she said: ‘The last howl of the wolf’. I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by this, and was not expecting what happened next. A white light started shining from the wolf’s open mouth, and grew and grew until it was difficult to even see the wolf anymore. Then, without any warning, a massive beam of light shot straight out of the mouth of the wolf. This beam hit the Giant straight in the chest, lifting him slowly off his feet. It looked like the Giant was being launched slowly off into space, only he completely disintegrated, starting from the point where the beam hit his chest, creating a hole right the way through, that expanded until the whole monster was gone. Looking back at where the wolf had been standing there was nothing. Tears of relief, joy and despair rippled through the crowd.” Illana sobbed a little bit, as did Chainsaw Boy, the Ty-Rap-O-Saurus seemed too shocked for words and Grigor smiled at the kindred warrior spirit he recognised in the acts of the Great Wolf.
After regaining her composure Illana asked a rather prominent question. “What happened to the wolf then?”
“I’m not actually sure, it’s most likely that he died. That wasn’t the Ice-Wolf but that day was first time I met him. As a group we hiked up to the point where the Great Wolf was last standing and found a small wolf pup curled up in rubble. No one really knows what was going on, I doubt any one person knows the whole story of the Great Wolf let alone anyone actually documenting what happened or why. There were only around 60 of us there to witness the event, and if we weren’t, then no one would’ve known it happened at all.”
“It sounds a bit like a phoenix rising from the ashes type story” Chainsaw Boy interjected.
“I agree” said Napalm, “this Wolf Pup seemed to be the Great Wolf reincarnate. What makes it more profound is that we found it in a ring of ice, that’s where the name comes from. A few other members of the crew and me stayed for a few years on Tarth, raising the Ice-Wolf ourselves until he was old enough to fend for himself. The last I saw of him he was running off across the Ice plains on a frosty morning a few centuries ago. I’ve heard he’s grown into a strong king of the animals that live on Tarth.”
“Do you think he’ll remember you?” Grigor said gruffly.
“I’m not sure, he should do.” At this point they heard a knock on the wooden door and it opened, showing the stairs up the deck and a small glimpse of the starry ever-night sky of space. A rather unwashed looking deck hand’s head appeared from behind the door.
“We’re nearing Tarth sir. We should be landing on the planet within a few hours.” The head then retreated back behind the closing door.
“What did I tell you son? Space does odd things to time.” Napalm said smugly to Chainsaw Boy.
“Seems awfully convenient if you ask me” he replied.
“Convenient or no we need to get ourselves prepared, for all those easily-killed by a bit of barbecue weather” he looked sharply at Chainsaw Boy and Illana “pack some warm clothes.” He then got up and led the way out of the small room.
brobaham lincoln