by Adam Clark
***
The next day Magnus was up at the crack of dawn, Harvey found him in the middle of their campsite doing push-ups.
“4, 5, 6, uh, uh, 7!” He jumped up and fist pumped the air. “7 push ups, boom! I’m going to ruin this jump today.” Harvey looked out across the landscape, the endless sea of trees waved in the wind, it seemed like they were whispering with anticipation. Ginge came out of her tent and sat down next to Magnus as he was getting his breath back.
“You don’t have to do this. Seriously, like I told you, he’s willing to just give us the motorbike as long as we fill it up, don’t scratch it and you don’t do wheelies.” She stared at him incredulously.
“No, that’s not possible, you don’t understand Ginge. If I don’t do this jump, we can’t get the piece of awesome and we can’t save the universe.”
“You have a deep seated ego issue Magnus.”
“You have a deep seated um… face issue, or something.” He replied childishly, “if you’d excuse me I’m going off to do a montage.”
Ginge and Harvey watched Magnus run off down the outcrop and disappear into the tree line. Harvey watched curiously after him, and then turned to Ginge.
“I don’t get it, is he really stupid? He didn’t seem too stupid before.”
“Pah, it’s an ancient barbarian genetic attribute passed down from male to male. If a barbarian gets challenged to do something, they have to do it. Watch this.” She leaned back and faced Leo’s tent. “Oi, Leo.” His head popped out of the front of his tent.
“Yeah?” he called
“I double dog dare that you can’t lick your own elbow.” Ginge shouted at him.
“But, that’s physically impossible” Harvey said.
Leo came striding over to the middle of the campsite. “Oh yeah? Well check this out.” He then proceeded to try and lick his own elbow, unsuccessfully. Harvey watched him, determination wracked his face while he tried to contort his elbow towards his face.
“How long is he going to do that for?”
“Oh, a few hours, mainly until he gets tired.”
A few hours later and everyone was finishing up lunch at the campsite, Leo woke up from his nap and stretched. “Did I get it? I totally did it.”
“Yeah, you did it.” Ginge lied to him.
“Awesome” Leo said while yawning.
Alex collected the leftovers and fed them to the various dragons leashed to different trees around the outcrop. Magnus was fidgeting nervously.
“Let’s get going now, we need to go kick some ass.” He got up and jumped on his great red and black dragon, everyone else followed suit. They launched up off the outcrop and flew over the forest to the Great Bear’s clearing, they circled around it and landed on the edge of the grassy area. Dismounting, Eragor came over to welcome them.
“Hello, I hope you’re ready for amazing motorbike jump, but I, unfortunately have bad news.” Magnus looked distraught, “there’s another quest to save the universe going on at the moment as well, and they dibbed using the chasm of doom to prove their protagonist’s worth first.”
“Noooooo” Magnus cried in anguish.
“Don’t worry, we have the Pit of Death though, right over here, we can inspect the jump before you jump it.”
“Yeah ok, it’d had better be really dangerous though.”
“Oh yeah, it really is, super dangerous, it’s still got nuclear snakes and land sharks in it.” Eragor looked slightly uncomfortable as he led the way across the clearing.
At the other side of the clearing was a small hole, about a foot deep and two foot wide. On either side pieces of plywood were propped up on small boxes to create makeshift ramps.
Indy looked inside the pit, “I thought you said there are nuclear snakes and landsharks in here. All I can see are two green pipe cleaners and a trout.”
“Never seen nuclear snakes before eh? Or land sharks?”
“They’re just pipe cleaners and a trout.” Pierre added in a dry tone before walking off to the leave the clearing.
“Shut up,” Eragor kicked him. “This is the Pit of Death! If anyone fell in there they would surely die in seconds.”
“Doesn’t look like it.” Indy replied, Magnus however stood tall and proud, then began a motivational speech.
“I don’t care about the dangers, you can’t live an entire life without risks. We all die sometimes, and if my life needs to be sacrificed to save the universe, well so be it. I lived my life, had ups and downs, now it’s the turn for the next generation to live a truly free life, free from slavery, free from evil and free from Volkang’s wrath. Universe!” he called out. “I will save you!” Everyone stood awkwardly watching him. A few mumbled words of half assed encouragement were murmured. Eragor clapped briefly, but soon stopped.
Pierre came back wheeling the flaming motorbike, it was like a normal Harley Davidson style chopper, but almost completely on fire. An awed woo rippled through the group. He handed it over to Magnus.
“Try not to die” he added, sarcastically.
“If I die, it’s because my time is up, you’ll learn the harsh reality of life when you grow up young one.” He put on his helmet, strode across the bike and rode over to the edge of the clearing. He then turned the bike around to the face the ramp over the pit of death.
Magnus raised his hands in the air for applause, however, only Harvey, Ginge and Leo were watching. He then looked up at the sky, asked the spirits of his ancestors to protect him then revved the motorbike.
The motorbike wheels spun on the grass for a second, before launching the vehicle forward. He sped reasonably quickly across the clearing, launching rather un-impressively over the jump. He parked the bike, jumped off and threw both his hands in the air.
“Woooah, I did it, did you guys see that? That was amazing!” Magnus shouted, jumping around. Indy leaned over to Harvey.
“Didn’t we do a backflip yesterday? I think that was more awesome than this.” Magnus pretended not to hear him.
“Well done Magnus! I’ll now let you borrow the motorbike. If you hadn’t done that jump, I would have never lent it to you.” Eragor rolled his eyes.
“Thanks for the chance to prove myself. We’ll bring it back once we’ve beaten Volkang. As a thank you, I’ll give you my dragon for the time being.”
“Why, thank you. I’ll take good care of him.” The great red dragon roared and shot a fountain of flame into the air. “I think we’ll become good friends.”
“Brilliant, now we must go find Grigor and help him.”
“I’ve just found him, he’s about an hour away from the planet!” Leo shouted, looking up from a handheld computer unit.
“Ok, let’s go! Thanks so much Eragor, we’ll see you soon.” Magnus kicked the motorbike into life, rode it forward and began to fly upwards carving a line of fire into the sky. The others got on the dragons and waved goodbye to Eragor. The dragons also roared their goodbyes to the great red dragon.
Magnus spearheaded the venture into the sky, drawing a line of fire flanked by the rainbow colours left behind the dragons.
everyday I’m hustlin’