Arthur Triscloud stared at Raven and Shawn with intense neon
fury, his sword gripped tightly by his side, his other hand stretched out like
a monster’s claw. His daughter and her cop friend held their ground with their
own weapons in hand, though they secretly hoped they wouldn’t need them in this
unnecessary battle of family bloodlines. The elf princess and the cop nodded at
each other and made a mad scramble towards the once noble king.
Arthur held them back with quick and technical swings of his
sword, but Raven swung back even harder in an attempt to knock the weapon out
of her father’s hands. Shawn tried circling around his opponent, but he was met
with wild slashes as well, which he barely dodged. The only thing Mr. Triscloud
managed to hit was a piece of Shawn’s black T-shirt. A conservative amount of
blood trickled down, but the hardnosed detective brushed it off all the same.
Raven tried to enter her father’s range with more aggressive
swings of her blade, but her weapon was chopped in two by the king’s mighty
sword. The zombie-like warrior held his blade against his daughter’s throat
with her hands high in the air. Shawn ran in from behind and bear hugged Arthur
around the middle of his arms.
“Get the crown! Get it off his head!” shouted Shawn, who was
being tossed from side to side by Arthur’s thrashing. Raven rushed up to her
father with her chopped up blade in hand in an attempt to pry the thorns loose.
After one lethal spin from the monstrous king, both of his assailants were
chucked through the air and down the steep hill. The two of them lost their
weapons along the violent roll down, which left them with bumps and cuts
everywhere. They didn’t stop rolling until they were halfway down the hill,
where the animal skeletons halted their momentum.
The two fighters felt sore enough to barely move after such
a rough tumble. Shawn slowly reached for his shotgun, his lack of speed the
result of not wanting to aggravate his injuries. He had his fingers on the
barrel when Arthur appeared out of nowhere and stomped on Shawn’s hand,
creating a cluster-fuck of popping sounds and getting a painful cry out of the
detective’s voice.
Arthur picked up the shotgun and aimed it at the fallen cop,
still with his foot on Shawn’s hand. A resounding pump-action later and Raven
yelled, “Stop! Stop it, Father!” The king looked at her with deadly hatred in
his eyes, but she stood firm with a human arm bone in hand. “That look you’re
giving me doesn’t mean shit right now! Roger Zee is out there somewhere and
you’re just halting progress!”
“Progress? Progress?!” bellowed Arthur in his demonic voice.
“Master Roger hates that word. It’s a word associated with fruity values. It’s
a word associated with reverse discrimination. It’s a word associated with
disdain for traditional beliefs. Come to think of it, I hate that word just as
much as he does!”
Raven raised her bone club and threatened in a low voice,
“If you hurt my friend, I swear to god, I’m going to…”
“You’re in no position to be making threats, my dear
daughter!” shouted Arthur. “I am the king around here and Roger is going to be
my successor! If you take another step closer, I’m going to blow this faggot’s
head clean right off his shoulders! Your friend knows exactly what kind of
danger he’s in. Look at him shivering like a little bitch!”
Shawn had had enough of being talked down to by a guy who
was clearly brainwashed by a torture device. He wanted to restore the dignity
of the Paulson City Police Department to its former glory. He wanted to be the
hero that he couldn’t be to his wife and daughter. With clenched teeth and
trembling muscles, Shawn whispered, “Go fuck yourself, you demagogue piece of
shit!”
With one jerk of his hand, Shawn pulled King Triscloud off
his feet and caused the shotgun to fire a round into the sky. Raven used this
opportunity to run up to her fallen father and perform a body splash on his
torso. Both Raven and Shawn pinned the corrupted politician to the ground while
the former lodged the bone club into the base of the thorns. The more she
pried, the louder Arthur’s screams became. Thrash around with newfound strength
he might, he still couldn’t get all of that weight off of his chest and legs.
Arthur managed to free one of his legs and kick Shawn in the
face hard enough to break his nose. With nobody to hold his legs and the
detective grunting in hardcore pain, the king’s leg thrashing gave him more
power to toss around Raven while he was on his back. And then the sound of wood
snapping echoed across the Holy
Mountains. As Arthur laid
still and bellowed in agony, Raven jammed the bone club in further and pried
even more pieces out of his head until the crown was completely broken.
With a bloody ring around his skull, Arthur’s demonic eyes
slowly began losing their glow. Raven stood back with Shawn as her father made
the transformation from brainwashed zombie to regal king once more. His eyes
dimmed some more and he tossed and turned until he ran out of energy and passed
out. His body was as limp as lifeless as any corpse found on the mountainside.
For the longest few seconds, he didn’t move a muscle.
With Shawn still holding his broken nose, he and Raven
approached the elven king for fear that they might have inadvertently killed
him. “Come on, Dad! Breathe! Breath, goddamn it!” roared Raven with tears in
her eyes. Her father still didn’t move and even more tears poured down her
cheeks while Shawn used his free hand to comfort her shoulder. Another death in
Roger’s long and torturous campaign of slaughter.
And just as the sun rose over the mountainside, Arthur’s
fingers twitched slightly. His eyes slowly opened. He stretched out as if he
had taken a long nap. Raven and Shawn pulled him up in a seated position and
then the elven princess hugged her king with all the tightness and tears she could
muster.
“Raven, I’m sorry for any pain I’ve caused you, my dear. I
never would have dreamed of doing this to my own flesh and blood,” said Arthur
in his warm and loving elderly voice. The father and daughter duo hugged it out
for the longest time while Shawn stood up and watched with a smile on his face
despite blood pouring down his lips. Arthur then broke the embrace and asked,
“Where’s Daniel? Did Roger take him?”
“He pulled Daniel underground once the battle began,”
explained Shawn. “Where the hell’s my shotgun; I want to blow this cocksucker’s
head off!”
“Did you say you were looking for a cocksucker?” asked
Roger, who appeared out of nowhere with a sick grin on his hideous face, his
machete in one hand, and Daniel’s microphone in the other. Shawn, Raven, and
Arthur gazed at the zealot with horrified eyes as he reached down and pulled
Daniel out of the ground by his hair like a vegetable. “Your cocksucker is
right here.”
Though still alive and breathing, Daniel was curled up in
the fetal position with his shorts and underwear around his ankles and white
and red fluids coming out of his mouth and anus. The once intense heavy metal
singer was reduced to a thumb-sucking mess who rocked back and forth and held
his broken ribs like a mother cradling a child.
While Shawn and Arthur’s eyes grew even bigger and more
horrified than before, Raven had a new reason for tears to pour from her eyes
like waterfalls. “What have you done to him, you monster!” she shouted at Roger
before rushing up to cradle Daniel’s traumatized head in her arms.
“Nothing you wouldn’t have done on your honeymoon,
sweetheart,” said Roger in a cold tone. Raven could do nothing but sob for her
sodomized boyfriend and rock him back and forth like the baby he felt like
being. Even Shawn and Arthur had tears in their own eyes after watching such an
evil display of control.
Roger lifted his machete over his shoulders and said
nonchalantly, “Well, I had my fun for the day. Should I just kill all four of
you now or should I wait until your so-called friends get here, my liege? Heh,
some friends they are. What kind of people leave their bestie high and dry like
this? Reminds me of someone I know, someone who’s weapon of choice was the
almighty Demon Axe. But hey, Daniel, don’t worry about a thing; I’m sure your
old band mates forgive you, right? I bet those two blowhard wrestlers forgive
you too, considering they come from an industry that just bathes in friendship
and love.”
Daniel didn’t respond to these slanderous accusations. He
just curled up and allowed Raven to mother him during his moment of
psychological numbness and infinite terror. Right or wrong, Roger Zee made more
sense to him than anybody telling him it wasn’t his fault. It was always his
fault. Anybody who said differently was a bigger liar than any politician on
TV.
The sun continued to peak over the horizon, but none of the
four heroes felt like fun in the sun. They could do nothing but stand there and
watch Roger laugh like a psychotic hyena. They could have just as easily picked
a fight with the guy, but what power did they really have? They were just four
guys and Roger was the ultimate fighting machine with a penchant for rape and
“fun”.
By the time the sun flooded the clouds with intense color,
Roger’s laughter mysteriously came to an end as he saw something in the
distance. He didn’t know what it was, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to
like it.
