Sir Mavis, the copper plated knight of the battle-axe order, unsheathed his girthy weapon and plunged it into the dry dirt, then rested his head upon it. He prayed, as the sky's tangerine sunset was slowly over taken by the night, and held firm the image of victory in his mind. A hand reached out and shook him, seeing that he was losing all track of time.
"My liege?" Pea-eater said. "Please, come look."
The knight awoke from his perfect Zen silence, and gracefully moved from his knees to his feet, picked his axe from the dirt and cleaned it with a single cleave through the air.
"It's the people, my liege. They're seeing you off."
From up here on Cemetery Hill, all of Kürbispfalz could be seen in it's entirety, from the northside river to the south side's markets, to the east farming hills and west side's twinkling tavern lights, and just behind it upon the highest sitting hill sat the castle, known as Kürbisburg. Mavis had lived here his entire life, and served as it's sworn protectorate for most. It had never before looked so fragile, or so beautiful to him, in all his life. From here not a sound from the town could be heard, until a small projectile whistled into the sky, launched from the town square, and popped in the air like an over filled liver. Then, a sizzle of orange sparks burned through the sky on invisible fuses made of emerald dust gunpowder.
The copper knight smiled at the edges of his mouth, and his face softened but for a moment. It was well known how difficult and painstaking orange colored fireworks are to craft, especially in the summer time. He bowed his head and uttered a quite word of gratitude for their humbling gift, and promised he would do his best to honor it. Then, he sheathed his copper weapon once more, and finished his trek to the summit of Cemetary Hill.
At it's rounded egg shaped peak sat a tree, leafless and curving over a single headstone, marked with no words, but the dated year one-hundred and four, beneath the engraving of King Desiordaries III. Pea-eater stood and watched as Mavis heaved the enormous headstone three feet forward, revealing a wooden trap door underneath. Mavis fit his fingers through the door's wooden planks and pulled it open so fast he ripped it off it's flimsy string hinges, and then began to make his way down the rope ladder. He descended into the darkness, but re-emerged a moment later, poking his head just above the groundline.
"Pea-eater." He said. "If you don't wish to come, I will not blame you. I know in your heart, you are not a warrior. I may have begrudged you for that in the past, but now, as we march into battle . . . My heart would not allow you to be drafted."
Peter Pea-eater Pinkelberger stood three foot tall, shaggy brown hair, and always wearing over sized clothes, known especially for his green baggy hat, which was actually made from an old bag. He held that hat in his hands now, biting on it's raggedy ends, and pushing his eye brows up as they could go, then back down as low.
"But," Mavis put a hand on Pet-eater's over sized leather shoe. "If you do chose to come, on your own volition, I will not take that decision lightly. It will be recognized as a brave act of determination, and you shall be regarded as it's enactor."
"You mean?" Pea took the hat out of his mouth, followed by a trail of dribble.
"That's right. I will see to it myself that you enter into the page academy."
"The last time I was invited to the academy, it was only a joke. Everyone was laughing. I couldn't take that kind of humiliation a second time."
"I know, Pea. That was wrong. This time, it will be official, and under my direct tutelage."
Pea's eyes shifted in thought, and then focused on Mavis. "May I come, then?"
"You needn't ask if you may, Pea-eater." Mavis took out his hand to help his friend onto the ladder. "You know I want you to with me, very much."
The two descended into the darkness beneath the earth, the sound of the wind and rustling leaves replaced with the dull hum of the underground, it's humid warmth coating their pores.
"Sir?"
"It's alright, Pea. Once we get to the bottom there will be plenty of light. Just be brave until then."
"Ok . . . Sir Mavis?"
"Yes, Pea."
"Since the witch appeared at the pumpkin harvest, have you been scared?"
"Scared? No, of course not."
It was two weeks ago, during the annual Fall pumpkin harvest celebration that the old hag made herself known.
She appeared out of their man sized carrot cake, transported inside by her black magic, and leapt out from it's top so her hat was covered in it's icing. She lingered in the hair, just above the grabbing hands and swinging bread knives, kiting the angry mob.
"Calm down! Calm down!" She yelled in her warty voice. "I have a message for you, if you'd just calm down!"
"Then speak it, hag-witch!" Mavis stood upon the table and lobbed a plate of sausages her way. "Or begone from our town!"
"Your king, he is in far away lands fighting, and with him is more than half his forces. This town, which surrounds his castle home, should be most protected, and yet- If the enemy were to attack this instant, you'd be so out numbered, you wouldn't stand a chance!"
"Is this a threat, witch?"
"It is a dire warning, for my sake, I hope you listen! The monster army has split off a band from it's mother horde; I don't know when, or where, but they have nearly completed their march. Here."
The townsfolk ceased their yelling and grabbing at the floating witch, and began to listen.
"Here?" Mavis put down his axe. "When?"
"You have fourteen days, brave Sir Mavis, copper knight of Kürbisburg. Ready your forces, meager as they may be. For if you fail, all of the valley and forest and mountains here will be turned to monster land. Including my home."
The witch raised her fingers of petrified wood into the air and then pistoned her arms out at Mavis, shooting two intersecting bolts of purple lightning. They struck Mavis but did not knock him over or jolt him, but looked to empower him with some renewed vitality.
"What is this?" Mavis smiled as his felt his body armor.
"The copper you wear will protect you as if it were the strongest iron made by the greatest blacksmith, and shall not bend nor dent unless the moon itself is thrown at you. Your axe as well."
"Thank you."
"I only wish I could do more. For my sake." The hag clicked her heels, and from the tip of her hat to the bottom of her foot she twisted into a towel being rung out a hundred times, spinning and spinning around herself, until she was so taught that she vanished.
The mood of the celebration was now morose. The people began chattering, and bouts of crying could be heard, as were the sounds of men grabbing their families kicking and screaming and forcing them to leave town.
Mavis looked upon the crowing confusion and stuck his fingers into his mouth and whistled loud. "The King is not here, yes, and because of this some of you are feeling lost without his guidance. Your confidence is weak without his strong presence. Do not be afraid. We must be strong for our king!"
"But we lack our army!" A man called out. "They're off with the King, fighting a continent way! They'll never be back in time to help us!"
"Then, we fight. I was trained for this, under the hand of Sir Shmavis, the GREATEST knight the pumpkin order has ever seen!"
"Ah, you only say that cause he's your father!" Another man called out.
"Well, that, he is, but, he was still the greatest!" He stepped off the table and began walking amongst the crowd. "We will win this fight! Do not be afraid! For the safety of our kingdom, we shall rout these louts!"
The crowd cheered, and a moment later began to chant. "Rout these louts! Rout these louts!" Mavis chanted with them, and drank long into the night.
The next day, the training and planning began. Every man and woman in town regardless of their military training were given a weapon and taught the basics of tactical group warfare. Some became strong with lances, others, proficient with the bow, and even others, strong with the axe. In two weeks time Mavis had grown a gaggle of bakers and teachers into a gang of angry pirates, egged on by their unflappable captain. In truth, he was afraid, and unsure, just like the rest of them.
Every night after seeing the town off, Mavis drank himself to sleep. Ordinarily he was never a heavy drinker. In the mornings during the second week he began to throw up, but it did not deter his training abilities, nor his ability to continue drinking once he got home. His nerves, it was his nerves that killed him, made it impossible to lay down, to read, to do anything but pour more and more brown liquor til it all slips away.
Now, as Mavis and Pea nearly reach the bottom of the ladder, Mavis licks his lips and wishes for one last drop, before the battle.
"Captain?" A voice behind a lantern beckoned from below. "Is that you I see climbing down the ladder?"
"You do, Gerry." Mavis's copper armor glinted dully off the warm light of fire. "And with me is Pea-eater, after all."
"Ol' Pea! You actually brought the Pea-eater?" Gerry groaned in disgust. Once Mavis got all the way he down he picked his friend off the ladder and helped him to the ground.
"Sir Mavis asked me to come." Pea placed his hands on his hips. "He said I'm of vital importance, and that he's making me a page."
"A what!?" Gerry slapped his own head. "Aaaah, I could never get used to calling you sir."
"Gerry, you should be worried about making it through this fight, not about having to treat Pea with respect."
"I suppose." Gerry turned down the massive carved out tunnel lit by dozens of lanterns. "Follow me this way to the others."
They came down the hallway into an even more impressive dug out with a lantern chandelier hanging from the dirt ceiling. Along the edges were around eighty men, resting or tuning their weapons, and in it's center a catapult's wheel turned on it's side to be used as a table, and a sweaty man at each of it's spokes.
"Sir Mavis." The man had greasy locks of black hair covering his one good eye, the other covered by an eye patch, on the same side as his peg leg.
"General Hobble!" The copper knight clasped the man's hands in his and shook them affectionately. "I hope the humidity hasn't kept you stir crazy. You've been here a whole two days."
"It's nothing, sir. In fact, I would say-"
"Ah don't be modest!" A voice called out from the table. "The good general's been here for three days! One whole more day than the rest of us!"
"Three days?" Mavis looked astonished. "You always manage to surprise me, Hobble."
"What was the extra day for?" Pea-eater's voice crammed into the conversation like a misfit puzzle piece.
"Erm, excuse me?" Hobble said, almost disgusted.
"Pea." Mavis scowled. "You mustn't speak to the general so casually, you know that. Go and stand with Gerry by the others."
Pea walked away with his hands in his pockets, but his eyes stayed watching just below the brim of his floppy bag hat.
"I apologize, General." Mavis huffed. "I believe Pea might forget himself during burdenous times."
"It is understandable." The General nodded. "I hope that tenacity translates onto the battlefield, heh heh. Shall we?"
The General returned to the giant table wheel accompanied by Mavis, who greeted the other familiar faces; Red Dave, the greatest bowman in town. Stubbly Sara, the greatest shield maiden. Honest Bob and Liar Rob, the constantly dueling swordsmen always bettering their skills, and Sly Sickly Sam, who just was there.
Hobble pointed to the center of the table where a map was laid out and held down by a rock on each of it's four corners. "If you take a look at our map, you will see that extra day I spent alone was well worth it. Using my powers of stealth, I was able to sneak nearly right up to the enemy line, and hid behind a rock where I could listen to two monsters talking. They said, they would be attacking, Monday morning, at dawn."
"At dawn!" Mavis snapped his fingers. "But monsters always attack at night."
"They know that, too. Which is why they've decided to attack during the day, when we would least expect it."
"So, we return the favor, and attack them during night, instead!"
"Exactly." His finger landed on the red dot in the middle of the map. "They should move to hide just behind the western hill on the river, and launch from there at dawn, but, if we approach from the south west-"
"Then we'll catch them at their back flank, where they are most vulnerable!" Mavis eagerly pounded the table.
"Correct, copper knight. I predict our best time to attack should be at dawn, to best encounter them while they're on the move. They say an enemy in retreat is an enemy for the taking."
"No." Mavis rubbed his chin. "We shall go now."
"Now?" Hobble grimaced. "It's the middle of the night, and dark out. What if we attack our own?"
"Attack our own? Even in pitch black I could not mistake a Kürbispfalzian for a slimy, eight foot tall fang beast! Besides, if we strike at dawn, they'll already be on the march, with their weapons drawn and readied. If we attack them now, they'll practically have their pants down."
"Oh, I'm not sure." Hobble shook his head, but Mavis did not care. He turned to the surrounding soldiers lining the walls and raised his arms in the air. "I believe my plan to be the better one. I'm the strategic mind, after all. You're just the fighter."
"What say you, people of Kürbispfalz!?" Mavis climbed a top the table and pointed to his friends and allies. "Shall we attack at dawn, when the fiends are wide awake, or shall we attack tonight, as they rest and stretch their legs?"
The entire people cheered heartily, and stomped their feet, until bits of dirt began to fall from the top of the hollow.
"Then draw your swords from their scabbards, and follow me!" Mavis climbed down and shook the apprehensive Hobble on the shoulder as he helped him along to begin his march.
The group of them, only a little less than two hundred strong, continued down the hollowed out earth, stomping and hooting at first, and then as they approached the second trap door, quiet and crouching. It was a wooden door, just like the last, but was padded with dirt and grass from the exterior. Mavis took his thumb and stuck it between a wide space between two of the door's boards and pressed out a bit of the dirt so to look through.
There were towering, lumbering figures, sitting around campfires along the ground. How many campfires? Five, ten, fifteen, twenty. Maybe more, and with each one at least five or six beasts resting their legs, eating and telling tails. He could not tell of what variety they were, they only appeared as dark blurred masses. With his last moment he had alone with God, he uttered one last prayer.
"Sir." A small hand reached out and took Mavis's.
"Pea-eater." Mavis squeezed the hand back. "You know what it is, don't you?"
"I most certainly do, sir." The boy reached into his pants pocket and produced a green pod of spherical seed-fruit. He pressed one out with his thumb into the palm of his other hand, and held it up to his eye with a grin. "It's time to eat the pea."
"Well then." Mavis stepped aside, his back pressed against the wall with his hand still on the door. "Don't let me slow you down."
With a push of his hand he flung open the secret trap door, and like the legendary trojan horse bands of soldiers rushed out and began to flood the monster encampment.
As they started their rush, Mavis saddled upon Pea-eater as if he were a horse, then the boy took the seed-fruit and placed it between his back molars. He chomped the pea as hard as he could, shooting the earthy juices down his throat, followed by the slimy empty skin they came from.
Within moments Pea-eater's flesh began to change color, first yellowish, then orange, then green, and finally a warm tomato red. It became coarse and stubborn, like that of a mighty rhinoceros, and grew to three times it's size. His shape was that of a cannon ball, perfectly round and incredibly dense, growing, and growing, until Mavis rode upon a boulder, greater than any he'd seen, as Pea-eater's clothes stretched to fit his new enormous size. Pea wiggled his legs, which were almost entirely engulfed by his mass, and despite being the size of a small house, moved with the weightlessness of a egg in water. Mavis, gripping the straps of Pea's over-alls like the reigns of a wild horse, lunged forward on his mount to direct the boy's movements, and like a good stead he followed his master's directions.
Within seconds they caught up with their friends already hacking and slashing at the gibbering ghouls and yowling imps, caught in a maelstrom of confusion and death. Their bones and muscles could be seen through unhealed gashes in their flesh, and their eyes were yellow and brown with no iris or pupil. Their breath smelled of carpeted rot, and screams were feral and chimp-like.
The human soldiers drove their blades into the wide, goblinious skulls of their enemy, and then steered out of the way of the giant bouncing tomato, but the monsters now rattled by the attack honed in on it, raising their forks and rusted wilah blades into the air, so as Pea descended upon them they would stab and pop him, but as their points met with Pea-eater's flesh bent in on themselves into a spiral, followed by the monsters crushed under the weight of Pea's body.
Mavis and Pea hopped from campfire to campfire, smashing the enemies underneath, surrounding in a ring of protection by the soldiers, catching the monsters missed by the bouncing Pea, and fending off those bum rushing in. "Huzzah!" The Kürbispfalzians called out, and then again. The battle began in the favor of the humans, and it seemed at first as it all would be simple.
"What's that!" A pointed into the sky. A flock of birds, two feet long, flew in clusters of five or six and began to circle the encampment. They honed in on Pea and the soldiers and began to dive bomb, firing off pellets of feces before turning back up towards the sky. A dab of guano landed atop an axeman's helmet, splattering across his head in an undignified manner. A moment later, the splatter turned grey, and rocky, then spread across the metal until the entirety of the helmet was made of cold, sedimentary rock.
"Those aren't just birds!" Mavis called out. "They're Medusa birds!"
"My helmet!" The axeman called out, dropping his weapon amongst the chaos and grabbing at his head. "It's so heavy! It hurts, I have to get it off!"
"No!" Mavis called out, steering Pea in the man's direction. The man got the helmet off, dropping it to the ground where it was so heavy it splattered in the mud. He looked at it with brief satisfaction, that became indefinite. Another splatter of guano bombed against his left cheek, quickly spreading through his face, then entire body, turning him to stone and capturing his expression forever.
The bands of Kürbispfalzians became frightened and slowed their attack, instead crouching and guarding themself.
"What do we do, sir!?" A voice called out. Mavis, thinking quickly, pulled on Pea's reigns to stop him from moving. Then, stood on top of him like a balancing act, and began to wave his arms in the direction of the attacking Medusa birds, gaining their attention. Their eyes focused on Mavis and they swerved in the air, coming straight towards him.
"Ready . . . Ready." Mavis hummed, eyeing the birds as they dove closer and closer. "Ready . . . Now!"
Pea flapped his arms and stretched his legs, bouncing himself into the air. The velocity at which he rose and the speed in which he fell was unwieldly and intense, and Mavis despite trying his best to hold on lost posture at the apex of the jump, slipped off the side of Pea's enormous head and began plummeting twenty feet towards the earth.
The Medusa birds, though, were now just underneath Pea's body. They had timed it perfectly, and as the birds swooped down and dropped mass bombings of bird shit onto where Pea and Mavis had just been, they now became trapped under the gravity of Pea's falling body back towards the earth, and smashed in between the ground and the seat of his pants. Almost the entire flocked had been trapped and smashed this way, and the few birds who had avoided Pea's attack were now too shaken to continue fighting and flew East back towards their home.
"Huzzah!" The men called out, and Pea faced with him a tiny raised fist sticking out from his bloated mass, but then something was not right. Pea, if he could talk in his giant form, would have been shouting for his friend Mavis, who was no longer on his back. The crowd of soldiers parted and there was Mavis laying on the ground, grabbing at his ankle.
"I think it's broken." Mavis grit his teeth and trembled with pain. "Don't worry about me. Keep fighting."
(cont'd in next post)