Happily Ever Awkward

by T. L. Callies

  Paul approached the sword reverently, the sword of the greatest knight who ever lived, and reached out to clasp its handle. With one easy motion, he drew the majestic Judgment Blade from the stone.

  Choirs of angels began to sing — although that was really just the Singing Sword feeling inspired by the moment — and a holy light bathed him — although that was really just the wild green lightning buzzing along the length of the blade — and a tidal wave of shadows tackled him — although that was really just Fear Incarnate come to finish the job it had started.

  Paul rolled away from the stairs and Judgment clattered from his hands.

  Smearing the blood from his nose, Seeboth picked up the weapon and pointed it at Paul. “Enough of your heroics! Demog, finish him! I have a spell that’s boiling over!”

  Seeboth wheeled up the stairs and left Demog’s Fear Essence alone with the prince. The cloud of darkness swooped in on Paul before he could rise, the shadows congealing into Fear-Luscious once more. Paul tore out the Singing Sword, but Fear-Luscious just sneered and jammed her shadow fist into his face. Her ghostly cold fingers sank through his eyes and fanned out into his mind.

  FAILURE!

  WORTHLESS!

  NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

  NEVER GOOD ENOUGH!

  Paul plunged through a vortex of mocking voices and jeering faces and the terrible, poisonous laughter that sent sweat racing down his spine and his heart racing into his stomach.

  Worse than before, the weight of his shame crushed him to his knees and when he finally reached the end of his fall, he landed at the feet of Fear-Luscious. She towered over him while shadows swirled and swallowed him into his worst nightmare.

  “You again?” she scoffed.

  Paul bowed his head.

  “I thought I told you I never wanted to see you again,” she said.

  Paul looked up through thunderhead brows.

  “Why do you persist in wasting my time?! You can’t have me!” Fear-Luscious said, not noticing the change in her victim.

  At least not until Paul tried to cut off her head.

  Back in reality, though Fear-Luscious continued to pour her shadows through Paul’s eyes, he didn’t seem to mind. Without hesitation, he swung the Singing Sword at her head.

  Quick as thought, her free arm transformed into a sword, which she used to deflect the blow. Ripping her other hand from his eyes, the remainder of the princess instantly deformed. Like black clay in the hands of an invisible sculptor, she took on the aspect of a terrifying warrior in spiky black armor. It shoved Paul back.

  The prince quickly regained his footing, and a cocky smile crept across his face. “Is that the best you can do? Maybe it’s time for us to talk about what scares you.”

  “That’s what you get!” the Singing Sword cried, unable to contain its enthusiasm. Then, feeling embarrassed, it said, “Don’t mind me. I’ll just get back to the music.”

  A vicious tribal drumbeat thundered from the Sword as the midnight-armored Fear-Warrior charged forward and Paul met it halfway. The fighting was furious, more furious than you can imagine on your own. To help you imagine it, allow me to make this suggestion: picture the most brutal sword fight you have ever seen. Now multiply it times seven. That was this sword fight.

  Paul fought the way his father had always hoped he might fight. He fought with all the strength and ferocity of his lost barbarian heritage. There was nothing halting or awkward about his technique anymore, and he began to prevail. He had become a warrior, fighting for what was right, and—

  The Fear-Warrior shivered, causing additional limbs to sprout from its sides. Paul suddenly found himself defending against four sword arms.

  “That’s what you get,” growled the Fear-Warrior.

  49

  CHAINS OF LOVE

  “What is the point of all these chains!”

  Princess Luscious and Laura retreated toward the edge of the platform, dragging four lengths of chain behind them. Each chain was shackled to one of the princess’ wrists or ankles and made it very difficult to move quickly.

  “This is ridiculous,” Princess Luscious continued to rant. “They’re too long and they’re too heavy!”

  “Just keep going!” Laura said, yanking the bulky chains forward to create more slack.

  The chains were indeed long. Seeboth had coiled them beside the altar, and so far the girls’ frantic flight had unspooled at least twenty-five feet from each pile. The coils had collapsed, spilling knotted loops across the platform. The problem was, no matter how much they spilled, the girls couldn’t move any farther. Although a great deal of chain still remained, the platform had come to an end.

  Glancing over the edge, they could see nothing but a significant amount of absolutely nothing followed by a beach and its festering lagoon far, far below.

  “So now what?” Princess Luscious asked. When Laura made no response, the princess said, “Laura, I command you to answer me — what do we do now?” She wheeled from the edge to find Laura staring back across the platform.

  Seeboth had returned, advancing toward them with the Judgment Blade flickering wickedly in his hands.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this, my sweet,” he said.

  “Stay back,” Princess Luscious warned.

  “You know I can’t do that,” he said.

  “Laura, stop him!” Princess Luscious cried.

  Seeboth shot a glance at Laura that lasted only one eighth of a second, but within that span of time he was more than able to get his message across. Laura slowly backed out of his way until she stood to one side of the princess.

  “Laura…?” Princess Luscious didn’t know what else to say.

  The handmaiden just shook her head without looking at her princess. In part, this lack of eye contact could be attributed to the fact that the princess still glowed like a woman-sized sun, but mostly it could be attributed to the weight of Laura’s shame.

  “Fine, I don’t need you, I’ll do it myself!”

  Princess Luscious grabbed one of the chains with both hands and tried to whip it at Seeboth. “I’ll… just… I’ll beat you with your own horrid chains!”

  She swung it up and down, but her best efforts did little more than launch a ripple about ten feet along the bulky fetter.

  Seeboth easily sidestepped the clanking gyrations of the iron links as they slithered about his feet. “It hurts to hear you say such things, dearest. These chains — don’t you realize? They symbolize my love.”

  “They symbolize your perverted… perversion!” Princess Luscious spat, wrenching the chain toward Seeboth with even greater force.

  As it jumped toward him, the dark wizard planted a foot on the chain and pinned it to the platform. “Hear me, Luscious. Please, just hear me. These chains, I forged them myself. One link at a time, to remind me. One link for every year I sought the Spell of Unmaking… which is really to say, one link for every year I sought you. Can you not see how long I’ve been waiting for you? Have you not realized that without you and without your love, my princess… I have no magic.”

  Princess Luscious froze. Seeboth’s words had almost sounded… romantic. And that triggered her Princess Reflex.

  One must not judge Princess Luscious too harshly for her reaction at this moment. Royal daughters are trained even more strictly than royal sons, drumming the Princess Mindset into them until it becomes pure reflex — even though that reflex often works to the detriment of the princess.

  One such Princess Reflex is Victim Mode, which strikes whenever she is threatened, inconvenienced, or simply too lazy to do something herself and subsequently requires a Prince Charming to save her.

  Another such reflex is the Swoon, and it strikes whenever she is confronted by either True Romance or Very Cheesy Pickup Lines. Because a princess often has a hard time telling the two apart, the aftermath of a Swoon may trigger another round of Victim Mode, which will then lead to another Swoon, and so on, and so on, in an endless loop.

 
This loop is called Dating.

  Dating, however, does not usually involve being killed to end the universe.

  “Do you really mean that?” Princess Luscious asked softly. “Do I bring magic into your life?”

  “Of course you do,” Seeboth said. He moved the last few feet toward Princess Luscious, stumbling through several treacherous loops of chain as he went. “Why, without you, I would have no one to sacrifice.”

  As quickly as it had started, the Swoon reflex ended, and Victim Mode resumed in full force.

  “What? Wait, no! Stay back! Someone help me!” She started swinging the chain again, but it was too late. Seeboth was already in stabbing range.

  “I just want you to know, I’ll never forget what we shared,” he said. “Now don’t move—”

  He jabbed the sword at her, but at that moment Laura suddenly made her move, shoving Princess Luscious from the platform!

  As the startled princess plunged with a shriek, her chains slithered over the edge of the platform and pulled a loop of chain tight around Seeboth’s ankles, jerking him past Laura and whipping him over the edge as well.

  In the moment of his whisking past, Laura grabbed the shackle key from his belt. Everything had gone according to plan.

  She snorted. “Not so hard being a hero—”

  That was the precise moment a loop of chain tightened around her ankles and yanked her over the edge of the platform right after the others.

  The trio jackknifed toward certain death. Fortunately, the chains were bolted to the altar, so the slack quickly ran out and jerked them up short.

  Princess Luscious dangled like a marionette from her shackles. Above her, Laura and Seeboth tangled among the four chains that stretched upward from the princess’ wrists and ankles. Together, they all swayed in a pendulous arc, thirty feet below the platform and one hundred stories above the ground, hanging from the full length of Seeboth’s “love”.

  50

  THE LONE ARCHER

  For an overweight, middle-aged pirate who wore an ill-fitting cannonball as a prosthetic skull, Captain Head could certainly swing a cutlass. Each blow sent shockwaves quivering along Jack’s sword and up his arms like the impact from a charging bull.

  The pirate’s considerable bulk also provided him with certain wall-like qualities that made it virtually impossible for Jack to budge him from his stance upon the uneven stairs. Jack, on the other hand, found himself battered left and right, always in danger of toppling down the central shaft, but this time without the aid of a severed Zombie arm to save him.

  Jack’s swordplay devolved into a sad display of flinching and flailing, rather like watching a clumsy man trying to fend off a swarm of bees while dancing on spilled marbles along the edge of a cliff.

  As Captain Head continued his hammering assault, Jack flailed a desperate, careless blow that did nothing more than glance harmlessly from the pirate’s iron cheek. But, in the process of glancing, it flipped up the eye patch over Captain Head’s left eye and revealed a lightning-bolt-shaped impression cut into the iron of the pirate’s brow.

  Jack’s eyes opened wide because the sight before him was so utterly and overwhelmingly surprising that wider openings in his face were required to allow all of the surprise to fully flow into his brain.

  Without thinking, Jack’s hand snapped to the chain around his neck — to the lightning-bolt arrowhead he wore there.

  You may recall many chapters ago when Jack showed Paul an artist’s rendition of Sir Whitethorne’s assassination. Little more than a charcoal scribble, it purported to capture the assassin, a lone archer on a hill, at the moment he fired the fatal, lightning-bolt arrow.

  I thought you might appreciate being reminded.

  As a wise Ogre once said, “A timely reminder… reminder me… time.”

  Which just goes to show, there’s no such thing as a wise Ogre.

  “It was you,” Jack said.

  Captain Head noticed the distinctive arrowhead in Jack’s hand and smirked, which is to say, his steam-shovel jaw took on a lopsided tilt and grated rather irritatingly when he spoke. “What better way to get revenge on the man who cut me real head from me shoulders? Just gave him a piece a’ me mind, I did. Even you oughta be able to appreciate the irony in that.” He flipped the patch back down. “Now get ready to kiss yer blowhole goodbye!”

  Jack’s face suddenly became as serious as granite, which is obviously quite serious, as any person who has ever attempted to negotiate with an avalanche of granite can attest. He tucked the arrowhead under his tunic and assumed a granite-hard combat stance, which was also quite serious. He looked like a hero made of very serious granite.

  Jack’s sudden resolve gave Captain Head pause. The two adversaries stared at each other for a long moment, then Jack charged down the stairs and their blades rang against each other.

  The final duel between iron and granite had begun.

  51

  JUST A SCRATCH

  The relentless onslaught of the Fear-Warrior’s four sword arms battered Paul like a hurricane of reaper’s sickles.

  “You fool!” it roared. “You cannot conquer Fear — I am eternal!”

  It smashed all four arms down upon Paul’s head at the same time. Paul managed to block the attack, catching the four blades on the edge of his Singing Sword, but the force of the combined blows drove him to his knees.

  “I am defeat!” the Fear-Warrior rumbled as it tried to crush Paul beneath the weight of its blades.

  Beyond the shadow-armored monster, Paul glimpsed a flicker of light rising above the edge of the roof. Chancing a second glance, he realized the flicker he’d seen was actually the Flicker.

  Indulge me in one additional bit of time travel. I promise it will be brief.

  Just moments before, Flicker had finished her battle with the Zombies down in the torture chamber, but she was far from satisfied. Looking for another fight to get into — or at least something else that could be vandalized — she and the rest of her gang flew from the hole in the side of the Shadowkeep and made their way toward the sound of swords.

  I told you it would be quick.

  Flicker locked eyes with Paul.

  “I am death!” the Fear-Warrior proclaimed.

  The prince swung his gaze from Flicker to the Fear-Warrior as if his eyes were a mace. “And I’m not scared of you anymore,” he growled. “Flicker! Sword!”

  Flicker hurled her saber. Just like her knives had done, the miniature weapon grew as it boomeranged through the air until it smacked, full-sized, into Paul’s free hand.

  Shoving the Fear-Warrior’s sword arms away with his Singing Sword, Paul wheeled about, sweeping Flicker’s saber in a ferocious arc that shattered all four of Fear’s blades in one heroic stroke.

  The Fear-Warrior staggered back. “Your fears… gone?!”

  The beast collapsed. At first Paul thought it had simply lost its balance and dropped to its knees, but then he realized its legs were gone… and its hips, too. The torso and neck and all the rest were soon to follow as the foul creature dissolved away into a puddle of bubbling black ooze.

  “Now it’s time to be scared of me,” Paul said.

  At last! This is the Paul you paid your money to read about!

  …

  …Um…

  …I…

  Oh, how embarrassing.

  How completely unprofessional!

  I allowed my emotions to overwhelm me and I sounded no better than a common Story Gnome.

  Please, please, pardon that.

  I must confess, I’ve always had a soft spot for Paul deep down in my index, but that’s no excuse for me to read between my own lines.

  I am your Book.

  You are my reader.

  I provide the words.

  You provide the soul.

  Please, continue reading. I promise I will leave the rest of the emotional interpretation up to you.

  “Help me!” Princess Luscious screamed.

  Paul real
ized something about her voice didn’t sound right — besides the screaming, that is. Her voice hadn’t come from the sacrifice platform.

  It had come from beneath it.

  Spinning toward the scream, Paul saw the lengths of chain stretched tight and swaying below the platform. Princess Luscious dangled from her shackles at the very bottom of the chains, hanging well below the level of the Shadowkeep’s roof, upon which Paul stood. Seeboth and Laura hung within loops of chain higher up, but already Seeboth had untangled himself and started shimmying down toward the princess. And still he carried the Judgment Blade sheathed within its terrible cocoon of green lightning.

  Without hesitation, Paul sprinted to the edge of the Shadowkeep’s roof and hurled himself into open space. For a moment, even the Singing Sword held its breath, for Paul’s trajectory had far more to do with exuberance than it did with accuracy. Fortunately, he had aimed his exuberance with just enough accuracy to catch the chains on their backward swing. He collided with Seeboth and clutched the back of the wizard’s robe.

  The impact broke Seeboth’s grip on the chain and sent the two men plummeting toward Princess Luscious, the deadly point of the Judgment Blade spearheading the way. At the last moment, Paul managed to hook his legs around one of the chains and jerked them to a stop, the sword tip just an inch above the princess’ glowing breast.

  “Be careful!” she cried. “He just needs to scratch me with that!”

  Attempting to prove her point, Seeboth swiped at her with the blade but she stretched out of the way, just barely. Before the Lord of Shadows could make a second attempt, Paul hoisted him up and wrestled for control of Judgment.