Dropped off the face of the planet - sorry ^^;;

Sorry you guys! I know I went a little AWOL there, but I lost a day of writing and I've been writing a little furiously to get back up to par. Fear not! I am at the prescribed 16,667 for today. So, without further ado, extra-long blog post GO!!

Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants blinked slowly and insolently at the man, who didn’t really understand what was going on anyway, then turned indolently away from him and sauntered over to Polo, who was the most accessible looking person in the party; Someone was blissfully unaware, completely absorbed in music; Last was in a similar state as she sampled the tavern’s specialty, a dormouse stew; Charlie was becoming amazingly raucous as he sung along with Someone, absolutely wasted on the pale ale he had purchased at the bar; and Mr. Ian Woon was absorbed in his own thoughts, similar to Last and Someone, only his thoughts were quite clearly not ones of any kind of bliss, as his face was about as stormy looking as a face can get without growing some cumulonimbus and shooting out lighting bolts (the source of his irritation was unclear; Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants was beginning to formulate a theory that Mr. Ian Woon created his own dissatisfaction field from inside, much as a slug creates a trail of slime). “Polo,” Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants said, turning on his charm in an effort to confuse the already befuddled young man, “Sorry my comfortably worn undershirt of softness, but I’m afraid the biggest room they’ve got is a five man room, and we’re six, see? So you, the elf twins, that overly muscled chap, and the unpleasantly grumpy fellow all share that room, and I’ll just … suffer alone, shall I?” Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants looked at him in a manner he had used to great effect on the innkeeper only a paragraph ago, but as Polo only suffered from chronic confusion, and not stupidity and greed, he wasn’t quite as affected as the innkeeper had been.

“But … isn’t that elf a woman? She shouldn’t ought to sleep wit’ us /men/ --“ He was cut off by Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants hurriedly speaking after glaring at Polo for half a second in the anger of realizing that he wasn’t falling for the conspiratorial attitude.

“A /woman/? Polo, polo, Polo! I know all those elves look like women, but really! That’s terribly rude, you know.”

“No, no, I’m sure of it – she’s got, you know, breas –“
“Nonsense! Your unfamiliarity with elves is clouding your judgment! Now, now, no more protests. Here is your key –“ Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants deposited the key which he had gotten from the innkeeper in the very short time in which the spotlight had been off him into Polo’s unresisting hand “—now, don’t forget to tell the others! I’ll just … mosey, you know? Ta!” Lord squigglebottom fancypants wiggled his fingers fruitily at Polo and melted into the crowd in a manner that had taken him years to master. Polo stared after him with an amazingly confused expression, then stared at the key in his hand. His eyes unfocuswed and glazed over as he accessed a peculiar part of his mind, thinking, /What do/ you /think is going on?/

/I think he’s tryin’ ter pull the wool over yer eyes, is what I fink is going on,/ a belligerent voice snapped. /’e’s playing you for a sap! Look, you know that broad is a broad, yeh? An’ you know he’s up ta no good, don’cha? Hark at ‘im, won’cha! White as a sheet, ‘e is, and don’ act half posh! And hark at my dreadful accent, won’cha! What, am I supposed to be some kind of Cockney urchin? You carn’t write a Britishman ter save yer life! An’ what’s the obsession wit’ Britain anyroad? What’s wrong with America, eh? EH???/ There was a sound of frenzied panting in Polo’s brain, form a personality which certainly didn’t belong to him – that much was certain.

Polo also mentally panted, nervous – he knew Marco couldn’t and wouldn’t hurt him, but his occasional blasphemous outbursts made him nervous, and anyway violence and anger were the two things he feared most – which was why he was glad to have Marco around to protect him, though Marco’s own truculence and belligerence and hostility and antagonism were frightening enough at the best of times. /Marco, you shouldn’t talk like that! You know it’s forbidden to refer to …/ her.

/her? ‘oo is this ‘she’ then, eh? An’ why does I still sound like some twisted, misshapen lump of arccents, yeh eejit?/

/Marco!/ Polo’s “voice” was quavery and even more nervous than before. /You know! She of the Spork! She of the Letter Keys! SHE!/

/Whatever, mate. Why am I from Australia now? I hate you SO MUCH. Now, polo … I knows this Lord Squigglbottom Fancypants feller is really suspicious and bad news all the way round, but we carn’t zackly DO anything bout it right now. So I guess we jus ort to do what the man sez, an’ sleep together in the five man room tonight. ‘s better than sharing a room with that stiff, anyroad./

Polo was shaken enough that he didn’t argue with Marco, even though it seemed he was being hotheaded and irrational again (Marco never thought things through). He got up and went over to where Sommeone and Charlie were warbling, joyfully singing songs that were slowly becoming more raucous as Charlie fed Someone liquor when he wasn’t looking. Polo came up behind Charlie, paralyzed by indecision – on the one hand, he needed to tell him about the room arrangement before he was too drunk to remember, but on the other hand, Charlie was right now nearly the embodiment of what polo feared. However, as Marco roase to ascendance, polo pushed him down in panic. The very last thing he needed was to be involved in a bar brawl with Charlie of all people. The man was built like gaston from beauty and the beast – lasrge amounts of muscle all over, concentrated in the pectoral, upper back, neck, and thigh areas, although there was certainly prevalent everywhere else (including, in both cases, between the ears). The only difference between them, really, was that Charlie’s face was much more simple and honest looking, with small eyes, a large nose, a silly grin, an his entire head shave except for a shock of hair on his forehead. If he could make his hair somehow stand straight up in a spike, he would look like a human unicorn. (OH GOLLY GUYS WHO COULD HE BE BASED ON I HAVE NO IDEA.) although charlie seemed to view the world through a pair of rose-tinted lenses, with him as drunk as this, there was really no telling what he’d do – and as polo was actually rather attached to his limbs in every sense of the word, he wasn’t exactly anxious to have them removed. And he was pretty frightened of what lord squigglebottom fancypants’ reaction would be, if a few gouges on main were enough to make him go a little AWOL.

Lord Squigglebtoom Fancypants himself was actually not too terribly far away. He was hungry and on the hunt – he knew when he killed them that those rabbits would not be sufficient to quench his thirst, and he intended now to rectify this redoubtable situation. It always caused problems when he attempted to drink men; humans always mistook hunger for arousal for some reason. Normally he didn’t mind in strange towns, which were the places he did all his major feeding. Although slaves were useful for keeping one sated in the interim between major meals (usually months or even years apart, depending on the hardiness of your slaves and their numerousness), they were such a pain to drain because then one had to dispose of the body, which always caused a fuss amongst the slaves, even in their anemic state; it was always a better plan to preserve the fiction that he was in some way “good” and didn’t kill humans, and find his meals in distant towns while snacking at home. Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants smirked to himself as he hungrily surveyed the tavern common room, swarming with prey. Silly humans nowadays, trying to reassign labels of “good” and “evil”; except on the part of the muddled humans themselves, none of the races did any soul-searching as to what side they were on. Of course, this was probably due to the fact that mucky humans bred like flies, whereas every other race in the world was practically sterile, to go along with their being completely immortal. They had all chosen their sides long ago, and a new immortal hadn’t been born for five hundred years. Even the vampires’ society wasn’t growing, due entirely to the shortage of spirits to inhabit newly dead bodies; a vampire’s host cadaver didn’t decay like a zombie’s did, although unlike a zombie a vampire needed blood to remain reanimated, and so when the number of spirits to inhabit bodies ran out, the population of undead was fixed. The only time a vampire needed a new body was when his (they were nearly exclusively men, for some reason) body was destroyed by some overzealous hero or by a rampaging mob, and for some reason the idiocy of humans had increased in recent years, causing them to think perhaps vampires were really only misunderstood, depressed immortals, instead of malevolent, possessed cadavers out to kill humans. Lord Squigglebotton Fancypants shook his head and turned his attention to his attire, making sure he was arrayed properly to feed. The most important thimng was the pair of thickly padded drawers, painstakingly created to provide protection while hiding the fact that he was, essentially, wearing a man sized diaper (these were necessary, because of course a diet completely composed of liquids, namely in this case blood, is going to create quite a spectacular amount of urine, which in the natural course of things needed to be voided before he was quite finished feeding). He had other clothing needs, of course – easily cleaned collar, dark suit, handkerchief, and of course, a dagger the length of his foot. It was amazingly hard to bite people properly without getting flesh all mixed in with your nice blood, and it was simply amazing how well people put together two and two when a slick, pallid gentleman was seen carrying off a woman and she’s found the day after, completely drained of blood with only two tiny puncture wounds to show for it. Nowadays, vampires had gotten wise – they slit their victims’ carotid arteries, drank their fill, and then made the body look like an ordinary murder. Lord Squigglebtoom Fancypants smiled as he singled in on his victim, a strong looking, rather plain woman wearing a russet turtle necked robe cinched in with a yellow sash, and carrying a rather large tome under her arm. A woman like that would be more than enough to sate his thirst, and would be too flattered by his interest to question his motives. The large, leather and wood bound tome bound in silver claspos that she carried worried him, but he was confident that having the strength of five men and no invulnerabilities would probably help out if she tried to do anything like throw the book at his head.

Suddenly, something came careening across the room and hit Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants in the back of the head. He made a weird sound that sounded like “Guh!” and his head shot forward, carruing the rest of his body with it. Rubbing the back of his head in a good imitation of pain (because in reality all he had felt was the momentum transfereed to his body and the initial surprise; vampires are dead and they learn to turn off their pain receptors after a while, because someone who’s only going to die if you cut off his head, stuff his mouth with garlic, stab a stake in his chest, bury him in pieces at a crossroads, and exorcise him regularly is not going to bother with paper cuts or even things that would bruiswe or even maim regular, living humans)
--
, Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants turned slowly, fury growing in him. Just because he was invulnerable didn’t mean that he didn’t feel the pain of insult (ooh symbolism!), and Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants felt that having a heavy object chucked at the back of his head probably constituted insult. He looked around on the ground and located the projectile that someone had attempted to take him out with. He picked up a heavy wooden plate, which still had a little stew in it, and looked at it with scorn. Looking around, he saw that the only people who could have thrown it were Charlie (who was, by now, completely roaring drunk), another, equally wasted hunk of hired muscle, and a cloaked man who was haunting one corner, as all of them looked strong enough to hurl a plate with some force, and none of them had a plate before them. After a short period of deliberation, Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants decided to leave the woman with the tome alone for now; although Charlie was out as a potential blood slave, and the cloaked man looked sinister enough that Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants decided to pass him by (it wouldn’t do to lose another player for the Evil team to friendly fire, as it were), there was still the other drunk hulking brute to punish. He looked like he had quite a lot of blood in him, and although he was pretty drunk, it would probably only give lOrd Squigglebottom Fancypants a slight buzz (numerous experiments with his human shell over the centuries had given him an idea of how intoxicants or other impurities in the blood affected him; as he was dead, things like diseases in his victims didn’t really hurt him, though he had learnt to keep away from them regardless, because they tended to do gross things like vomit or sneeze mucus all over him in their fear or just out of general wretchedness; alcohol only affected him slightly, and was more of an automatic reaction than actual, chemical changes, upholding the hypothesis that drunkenness is a state of mind as well as a state of body). He took one more look at the tall woman and made up his mind. She was smaller, sober, and armed, however dubiously. He would be more filling, just as easy to overpower, and would titillate him a little. True, he would be looked at with some suspicion and curiosity, but he could easily make up an excuse and a front. And anyway, this was war. He would pay for that plate, regardless of whether or not he had, in actual fact, thrown the thing.

Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants, his mind made up, stood up abruptly, tossing aside the trencher as he made his way over to the drunk man. As soon as he got close enough, Lord Squigglbottom Fancypants bowed slightly, murmured a social nicety, and then slugged the man right across his jaw. The man’s head snapped back for a moment, his wide arc down saying he hadn’t been ready for Lord Squigglebotom Fancypants’ punch at all. The man ooked blearily at Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants as he cam up, clearly not realizing that the two were antagonists quite yet. Lord Squigglebottom Fancypatns made sure this concept was good an firm in his mind by punching the drunk man savagely in the gut, then straightening his cuffs as he he stood straight upright once more, quite as if punching a man while he was down was quite the regular activity for him.

This time, when the man got surfaced, he knew just what was going on. He punched at Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants, a wide hook that carried him all the way around, but that ufortunately missed his opponent altogether. Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants, moving nimbly, had sidestepped out of the way of the ham sized fidst, then gently pushed his antagonist so that he continued twirling in a circle. The backs of Lord quigglebottom fancypants’ thighs touched the table behind him, and he mentally set a limit to his movement backwards – it wouldn’t do for him to be bested by a man too drunk to see straight because he was tripped by a table!

The drunk man threw a few more punches, all laughably off target, and Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants danced around them all, trying to seem as if he were as skilled as his opponent, just … less drunk. It did mean that he had to let a few punches at least come close, though it hurt his pride. Finally, he was done with thiese preliminaries, and landed a punch squarely on the man’s nose, which broke with a satisfying crunch and an impressive spray of blood. Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants almost froze at the sight of it; it reminded him forcefully of his hunger, and it took quite a feat of self control not to attack and drain the man right there. He almost licked the blood off his knuckles, daring the man to attack, but with herculean effort, he merely mopped it off nonchalantly with a pristine white handkerchief, acting unfazed. He looked insolently at the man, his eyes half lidded, as the man wiped off his face, then held out his hand, seeing the blood on it. The drunk man, glared up at Lord Squigglebottom Fancyoants, then bellowed wordlessly and launched himself at his opponent.

However, it seemed as if Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants was going to have the last blow. As he had planned on when he began, the innkeeper’s bouncer finally decided it was time to add his two cents to the pot. He waded it amongst the onlookers, saw the drunk man’s charge, and grabbed him around the midsection halfway between his original position and Lord Squigglebottom Fancypnats, making the man say “OOF” in all caps with no punctuation. Lord Squigglebottom acted as if he was pleased he wasn’t being nabbed in an effort to misdircert the onlookers, then put on a very convincing facsimile of shock as the bouncher grabbed him by his collar and dragged him along with his drunken mark out to the back door and tossed them outside wordlessly. Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants was forced yet again to sacrifice his dignity in the name of food as he allowed himself to sprawl in the ground while the bouncer closed the door to the alley with a slam. As soon as light left, though, Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants stood and brushed himself off spotless before advancing on his stunned victim, his dagger appearing in his hand as if by magic (and knowing Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants, who’s to say it wasn’t?). The a cloud passed over the moon, and now only a slight glint betrayed the presence of the knife.

There was not a sound until, a few moments later, the man’s body fell to the cobbles with a soft thump. Another gleam: blood on sharp teeth as Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants grinned. He hefted the body once more with nary a grunt, and jumped eaily to the roof. Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants looked to the sky while bearing the pallid corpse of his prey, then smirked as he noted that the moon, which was far from even half full, was and would be covered with clouds for most of the remainder of the night. He crouched to spring, then off he shot to hide the body, another tactic he had picked up along the centuries to help misdirect attention form himself (ofr although it was possible to get a new body simply by contacting another one of his undead fellows, he would be partially under their control ever after – and that assumed that one of his fellows would even be willing to do the deed. Many vampires were of the opinion that the less competition there was, the better, and that faction was growing); Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants’ strategy was to lie low and attract as little attention as possible, while living in an area that was so used to being under vampires’ thumbs that they didn’t even bother with attacking castles with pitchforks like other areas’ peasants were wont to do.

***

Back in the tavern, Polo had finally screwed up his courage and notified the rest of the party of the sleeping arrangements, due in no small part to strangely accented prodding from Marco. He did, as he feared, run into trouble when he nervously told Last that she would be spending the night with the rest of them while Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants spent the night doing who knew what; she stared into the remains of her stew for a full thrity seconds until she stared up belligerenly at Polo, saying, “That’s ridiculous. I refuse to spend my nights with four men, only one of whom is related to me, and none of whom are entirely or even remotely sane. I’m getting my own room.” She stood decisively, adjusted her neckline to display the maximum amount of bosom without being indecently exposed, and sauntered over to the innkeeper to flirt her way into a single person, which knowing her would either be full of food or men by the time she vacated it. Polo watched her go nervously, then deciding that regardless of the outcome of her little escapade (which, as she was really exceptionally beautiful and adept at flirtation and manipulation, was looking pretty hopeful for her) it was No Longer His Problem (due in no small part to Marco yelling, “It AIN’T YER PROBLEM, POLO! If tha’ fat innkeep wants ta give that hussy a room, LET ‘IM! TURN AROUND, YA BOLLOCKS!”) and turned to go. Polo got tired out easily, due entirely to the fact that the small rodent that lives in everyone’s brain was on the ascendant in his, and kept Polo on full, supercharged alert at all times; it had been a long day for him, in the presence of a man that put all of his already preternaturally high defenses on overdrive, constantly trying to keep Marco from preemptively attacking in the perfectly rational belief that Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants would bnot hesitate to kill him (them), and walking for a long ways besides. He would get a plate of stew from the serving maids, hope they didn’t accost him or anything of the sort because it would absolutely kill him with nervousness, take it up to the room, and eat it before sleeping.

Mr Ian Woon had similar plans for the evening, although he did have a rather ambitious period of sulking planned before retiring. Mr. Ian Woon was of the firm belief that the only way to end one’s day was to muse on its events, in order that no experience of the day went unsavored. Of course, in Mr. Ian Woon’s case this translated to large amounts of sulking and bemoaning the fact that the entire world seemed opposed to him, and rather small amounts of anything resembling savoring (in fact, if someone were to analyze this practice of Mr. Ian Woon’s, one would be tempted to conclude that the entire point was not, in fact, to savor a thing, but to catalogue in his mind e ery grievance that anyone had committed against him during the day, for the purpse of getting his own later. Due to the long day, this particular evening Mr. Ian Woon was combining his evening sulk with his dinner, which did dim whatever enjoyment he may have gottem out of it, but since the food was unfamiliar and therefore detestable, there wasn’t much enjoyment ot be had for him this night.

Charlie and Someone, in contrast, were expereinecing perhaps a little too much enjoyment. They were by this time so thoroughly drunk that they had lost not a few brain cells, and had their memory making functions erased temporaritly by intoxicaiont. They continued to sing, however, belting what were by now rather thoroughly crude songs while snacking on the salty little dishes the innkeeper’s wife made for drunks to eat so they would buy more beer.
--
Mr. Ian Woon looked over at them with an extremely miffed expression, irritated at the amount of noise they were able to create.

****

When Polo, Mr. Ian Woon, and the very drunk Someone and Charlie had all crashed in their room, Polo lay in his bed, thinking about the events of the past few days. Just three days ago, Polo had been a regular farm boy – well, perhaps not quite so narmal as all that, what with having another personality that he could talk to in his mind who would occasionally take over – and now, here he was, adventuring with his crown prince and perhaps saving the entire populace from this overlord person, who was apparently causing all the chaos that had been plaguing KPnicplace for the past fortnight since the overlord had arrived. When he saw the ad in the tavern for Main’s traveling party, well – he didn’t know what possessed him to apply, though he had a niggling suspicion that it had been Marco (Marco was mum on the subject). Now, he had traded his quiet life for trudging along a dark road with suspicious characters by, sleeping next to drunk men by night, and the constant fear that Lord Squigglbottom Fancypants was going to kill him. Was it worth it? He wondered. He was unable to waste any mnore sleep over his philosophical musings, however, as the strains of the day caught up with him and he fell into a sleep that, while not resembling that of a log, a baby, or a dead thing, was still restful.

CHAPTER 5
>In which Main wakes up, eavesdrops, gains a new party member, and finally gets himself some pants.<

Main woke up, and for the first time in three chapters, sat up and rubbed his head and his back in pain. The only differences between now and Chapter 2 were that a) it was dark, b) he was lying on a table and not the ground, and c) instead of being hung over, he had been mauled by a crazy woman. Alright, those were actually pretty major differences, but that was okay because what was really the same about this moment and the same time yesterday was that Main was confused, out of the loop, and in pain.

“Ohhh … what happened? Where am I?” Main groaned. He put a hand to his forehead and noticed that one of his fingers had been splinted in the time between when we saw Main last and now. He looked at it confusedly, then suddenly remembered the woman who had attacked him completely out of the blue the day beofer. He remembered the cuts and gouges she had given his chest and looked down concernedly, especially worried that the perfect skin of his pectorals and abdominals would be ruined by infection and unsightly scars. Small, narrow scars were okay, because they made a man look strong and … weathered, he supposed, but larger scars were only disfiguring. Main was relieved, therefore, to find his wounds cleaned competently and wrapped with clean linen. If tended properly, all Main would have would be the masculine, strong scars he approved of, and none of the unsightly things that were due to infection, burns, or messy wounds. When he moved further and felt stitches pull, however, he looked down in panic. Who had approved stitches on his pristine body? Stitches were terribly disfiguring! They made a man look like he had been stitched together even when the stitches had been taken out, and besides, they made a scar look twice as big as it would have if it had been left alone! This was a DISASTER!

“So, you’ve woken up, have you? Yes, yes, I’ve stitched you up. I’m sure you’re terribly concerned about the state of your poor, beautiful, defiled flest, but don’t worry. It’s not going to FALL OFF YOUR BONES like it would if I had let it fester, which I’m sure you’re grateful for.” The wman the voice belonged to moved out of the shadows in the corner, light from the sun lieaking through te thatch of the roof and glinting off the woman’s white teetch, exposed in a wide, mad grin. Main’s eyes, accustomed to the darkness, widened, and he scooted backwards on the table, taking the thin cloth covering of the table along with him, until his hands couldn’t find any more table to scootch along. He compromised by clutching the back of the table surreptitionsly and staring at the crazy woman.

“W-who are you? Why am I here?” Main’s eyes darted aroung the room, noticing that he appeared to be in a rather sizeable wattle and daub one room cottage. There sadly, however, did not seem to be an avenue of escape that hadn’t been blocked by the crazy dark woman. He knew an amazing amount of strategy ofr the once a week strategy and swordplay classes he had been engaged n when he had still been ensconced in the castle in his hometown, and he oculd tell that at least in this circumstance, the womane had the upper hand, having access to weapons (theoretically), superior knowledge of the terrain (theoretically), and superior physical health (thoretyically), in addition to certainly being crazy enough to try any dirty fighting tactic you cared to name. Main decided that in the absence of a violtent attack that was possible for him to take [awk],he would be forced to negotiate. “Are you a healer, woman? Is that why you’re here?”

“Healer? Aye, young man, I am this town’s herb wife. And I cleaned you up and stiticed you up, yes I did. You were in a rather bad place, bleeding all over and in fronto f /that/ man. But no matter! I cleaned you upk, I did! But now I have to keep you under tight watch, yes, yes! You are hurt, sir, and you do have limited amounts of strength. I knows you kind, yes I do! You would be up and travelling in a heartbeat! That is nbot to be borne, no it is not! You need to stay here! You need to REST. And rest you will, oh yes yes! I will be watching you, and I will make sure you rest if I have to feed you full of drugs to do it! And I can do it, too,” she threatened. “I know enoought herb wifery to drop a horse in a minute and a half if I have to! And II will not squabble if I need to do the same to you. So sit down, sire, and I will make you some tea.”

Main watched the woman, thoroughly terrified now, as she bustled around, still grinning in a disconcertingly insane way as she took a few leaves out of this jar, a couple dried flowers out of this sack, and a dash of powders here and there, combining them all in another square of the linen gauze hse had used to bind Main’s wounds. Main looked puzzledly at that last – he had never seen tea being treated in quite that way. Usually one would simply take some predried leaveds from a tin, put then in a kettle or teapot, and boil water for them. All this nonsense with herbs and linene was rater unfamiliar for him. Fianllay she produced a cup and some boiling water and poured it over the linen square, which she stretched over the mouth of the cup. She swirled the tea a few times to make sure any sediment was properly included in the drink, then handed the steaming cup to Main, ordering him, “Drink.” Main looke at the cup distrustfully, looked up at the firm face of the dark herb wife, whose grin was gone to make her face truly siister, and took the cup with a gulp. He looked at the tea – it was a worrying shade of purple – and took a sip cautioslu. When it didn’t cause him to die, transmogrify into anything strange, or to do something else distressing, he looked again at the violet drink and sipped it warily. When he had finished it, he patted himself down cautiously, and noticing not changes, he said in an increasingly happy voice, “Hey! I actually feel a bit bett – “ he stopped abruptly and flopped over, fast asleep. The herb wife looked at her handiwork smugly, her mad grin slowly coming over her face like an extremebly disturbing sunrise.

“I told you I’d do it, dod I not?” She said quietly. “you need the sleep, boy, shile you still have the ime t osleep in. For there is coming a time [oooohhh foreshadowing] when you will not have much time for laying about – a time when you will be fighting for your life.” She patted his head, solemn again, then grinned amdly again. “And I got you pretty good there, didn’t I? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

****

Charlie was awakened with a horrible pounding headache as Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants said loudly and with obvious relish, “Wakey wakey! Come on, you strapping young lads! It’s the dawn of a lovely new day!” As Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants muttered indistinctly about how days weren’t really terribly lovely at all, Charlie groaned and blearily rubbed his eyes. HE smacked his lips and blinked indistinctly a few times, then said in utter misery from the terrible pain stabbing him between the eyes, in the eyes, and generally all around his head, “Lord Squigglbottom FAncypatns … wha … wat’re you doin’? We’re … we’re sh-shleepin’ here, man. Go ‘way.”

“Go /away/? My dear chap, are you going to lie abed all aday? Come on! Wake up and smell the … er … what is this black stuff anyway?” Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants shook something in his hand that appeared to belong tpo the breakfast tray that was laying on the table that all five beds shared. Someone immediately shot upwards.

“COFFEE???!!” he shouted. Lunging towards Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants, he wrenched the black whatever it was out of the rather nonplussed man’s hands. He looked at the blackened piece of toast in his hand with supreme chagrin and looked at Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants with an expression of disappointment that would have made anyone less granite hearted than Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants weep with regret. “It’s toast,” he told Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants flatly as he handed it back, then flopped back down to his bed, clutching a head that ached just as much as Charlie’s (for he had become drunk, inadvertently as it was, at least as much as Charlie had been last night). Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants looked down at the burnt toast in his hand and shrugged.

“I was just wondering. No need to get all defensive.” Lord Squigglebottom Fancypats shrugged in that nonchalant way that really mean people do when they know they’ve just done a supremely mean thing, and they know it, and pretend like nothing they’ve said was cruel in the slightest. He tossed the toast back to Someone, saying, “Go ahead and keep it. You’re skinny enough to need it. There’s extra butter.” This was another time honored mean person tradition, namely the little witty thing they say after their particularly cruel trick just to rub salt in whatever wounds they can reach. Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants, on this particular occasion, knew he had struck a nerve because Someone reached out his hand, caught the toast slice in midair, and crushed it to crumbs with his fist. Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants wasn’t affected by this gesture, in the manner of bullies everywhere, but only raised an eyebrow and said enigmatically, “Excitable.”

Polo chose this moment to get up – he had been awake for a little while now (actually, since the moment Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants decided to be obnoxious), but he figured he ought to get up and dispel the awkward moment before it got so amazingly awkard that bad things happened. “Um, well, er, hey, um, Lord, er, Squigg … Squigglebottom, er, Fancypa - pants, er, sir, could I, um, have some, um, some of that, er, um, food, er, please?” Marco cringed inside Polo’s mind; for a guy who was trying to dispel awkwardness, that was the most amazingly awkward sentence he had ever heard uttered, even by Polo. Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants turned the awesome power of his raised eyebrow to Polo after he heard this rather impressive string of ums, ers, and heys; what wasn’t immediately evident was that what with having rather a nice meal last night, complete with some pretty nice alcohol (everything tasted nice when in the bloodstream), Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants was having a pretty nice day, and being hiself, this basically translated into him enjoying himself by torturing everyone in his general vicinity with more physical jokes than he usually indulged in. For a person like Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants, it could be at times difficult to discern whether or not he was in a good or bad mood, because his stress remedy was basically the same as the outpouring of his good humor; it was best simply to assume to that he was in a bad mood all the time, because if you angered him in a good mood, you’d only get maimed a little or put on his “enslave later” list, if you angered him when he was already having a bad day, it was preactically a one way ticket to a shallow grave.

“Food was it? Would you like some toast? I’m afraid our mutual friend Someone wasn’t terribly enthused about it.” Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants got another slice of the amazingly burnt toast (the bread it was made from was black already, but the burnination that these slices of toast got was simply phenomenal. They really did crumble into, er, crumbs if you squeezed them hard enough) and chucked it at Polo, much like he did to Someone. Someone still won the prize for awesome catch, however, because while Polo was all the way awake and not hung over, Someone was still an elf with reflexes that, while not as fast as lightning (which travels at the speed of light, which even elves cannot even attain), were still pretty darn fast, and certainly were faster than Polo’s feeble human ones, especially considering that Polo was kind of a loser and didn’t expect anything of the kind (and Lord Squigglebottom was really going for the gold on this one, and actually chucked the piece of toast a Polo’s face instead of tossing it nonchalantly as he did in Someone’s case). Polo actually lost the unofficial toast catching contest mostly because he did not, in fact, actually catch his slice of toast at all; it hit him squarely in the face, bouncing off his nose with a dull, crumby sound, and leaving a smear of butter on his cheek. This caught even Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants off guard (he had been expecting Polo to duck or something); he lost control of his face for a split second as an expression of pure delight and glee, before he coughed embarrassedly and set his face in the usual sardonic expression he usually wore. He held up a mug and said cheerfully (for he was about to mess with Someone some more), “would you like a little coffee with that?”

Someone shot up again. “COOFFFEEEEE???!!!!!” he shouted even more wildly and excitedly than before. Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants looked dwon in the mug and smirked.

“I hope not,” he said, “because the innkeeper only gave me this tea junk.” He looked up slantwise at someone, just in time to catch the face like death warmed over that Someone now wore.

He looked wild eyed over at Lord Squigglebottom Fancypants and said pitifully, “Cooooooffffeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee … coooffffeeeeeeeeeeeeee …” before collapsing yet again with his hands clutching his aching cranium, which was suffering badly from all this shaking about it was getting. Lord Squiglebottom Fancypants smirked at Someone’s prone figure before carefully cracking two eggs into the glass of milk he had expressly ordered, trying to figure out which of the two hung over men he should try his remedy on.