Rainbow Ranch, Chapter 3

Even though Lucy’s metal armor provided most of her warmth, the chilly air of the mountainside nipped at her skin like a predatory case of fleas, each with meat grinder teeth. She hugged herself for extra heat, but the incoming snowflakes made her shiver nonetheless. In such a short amount of time, one snowflake on her canine nose turned into an entire winter of defeat and agony. Without her war hammer and tennis ball, she might as well have been the most naked being in the entirety of Rainbow Ranch. How was she supposed to fight Loki the Skull now? Barking and clawing could only do so much against a sorcerer who flashed in and out of combat as he pleased. Lucy became jealous of Callie the Wildfire for having any kind of weapon at all, the golden knife in question.

 

“Get a move on, Lucy! Ozzie is vulnerable out here!” roared Callie. Toughness would have been an admirable trait during these times, but all it did was make Lucy’s eyes water, which in turn hardened into icicles that shattered on the ground. It was completely normal coming from Razor Ripley, but Callie was a stranger who appeared unsympathetic to Lucy’s struggles. Then again, Callie had little to worry about wrapped up in the warmest orange fabric. Why burden herself with an annoying Chiweenie’s suffering?

 

The mountainside trek weakened Lucy’s legs to where they were trembling with or without a freezing temperature. She was used to scampering up to any challenge, but such athletics were punished with a painful gut and sour breathing. There were many times when Lucy wanted to just plop over and allow whatever was going to happen to happen. No weapon, no bravery, and no help beyond someone who couldn’t stand her to begin with. This was a losing battle against an opponent with seemingly endless magical energy. Lucy’s head swirled with dizziness and hopelessness. Why not just lay down and prove her abandoners right?

 

“We’re here! And no sign of Loki!” Callie’s grumpy demeanor was masked with a tiny smile, but only for a little while. “Come on, Lucy, let’s move it!” She grabbed the Chiweenie’s trembling paw and dragged her up the mountain, where a comforting orange light shone from a lone cave entrance, flanked by two scarecrows with rotten pumpkin heads. “His place must be a pigsty. I knew he was out of his gourd.”

 

Lucy and Callie scampered past the scarecrows and into the brightly lit cave. Sure enough, this was the home of Ozzie the Wise, whose days of wisdom and intense thought had long abandoned him. Sitting at the table next to a glowing metal stove (the source of the gentle light), the elderly gray and white cat man tenderly ate cold turkey scraps from a plate that had seen better days. Nibble, nibble, nibble, gulp, gulp, gulp, all with teeth that smelled worse than the pumpkins outside.

 

The messiness of this home could give his dental work a run for its money. Torn blankets strewn every which way. A record player that hadn’t been dusted since the days of his youth. A sink full of dirty dishes that would have attracted flies if not for the freezing weather. A bookcase of cracked yellow paper, probably with spells written on them that couldn’t be studied with a forgetful brain. There was even a golden framed picture of Callie and Ozzie as a couple hanging on the wall, albeit at an awkward angle.

 

Ozzie peeked up from his dubious dinner and smiled at Lucy and Callie. “You look familiar.”

 

“Gee, I wonder why that could be,” said Callie with a sharp tongue. “See that picture on the wall? Any clues coming yet?”

 

“Yes…yes…it’s all coming back to me now…” Ozzie stood up and cracked his spine over the back of his chair, causing Lucy to twitch in disgust and Callie to reprimand her for it. The old man cat trudged over to his two guests with Callie looking hopeful that she might be recognized after all of these years. But instead, Ozzie ruffled Lucy’s ears and said, “My granddaughter! My precious little granddaughter.” Lucy looked confused at first, but then chuckled as Ozzie groomed her face over and over again.

 

“For Pete’s sake, Ozzie, it’s me! Callie! Your ex-wife!” protested Callie. Ozzie continued licking Lucy’s cackling face while running his claws through her fur. The tough facade had melted away when Callie sighed and tucked her head in defeat. “He’s forgotten me…Ozzie has forgotten me…”

 

“Oh no, I haven’t,” said Ozzie. “My other granddaughter! You’ve come to visit me after all these years! Come here, you!” He gave Callie tummy scratches, which earned him a swat for his troubles.

 

“I’m not your granddaughter, you old coot! I’m your wife! We shared a house together! We chased balls of yarn together! You used to cook tuna fish every night and it was delicious! Don’t you remember?” Callie’s elderly anger turned to sorrowful word salad as her voice became increasingly jittery.

 

Ozzie placed a tender paw on Callie’s shivering shoulder and said, “Now, now, now…you know I can’t marry my granddaughter. But I’ll be there at your wedding when you’re old enough.”

 

Callie held her face in her paw and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “There’s no hope. He’s gone. He’s all gone.”

 

Now that she’d established some rapport with Ozzie, Lucy suddenly found her confidence again, which was definitely helped by the warm breeze blowing on her from the metal stove. “Mr. Ozzie, I’d love to stay and eat turkey with you, but there’s something we have to warn you about. There’s an evil sorcerer coming up this mountain and he says he wants to hurt you. He’s too powerful for any of us to fight off. The best thing we can do is get you out of here and to a safe place.”

 

“A sorcerer, you say?”

 

“Yes, Mr. Ozzie. He’s someone you used to know, I mean, once knew…” Lucy let out a phew at almost appearing insensitive towards Ozzie’s forgetfulness. “He’s an old rival of yours. You were the one who defeated him in the first place. Now he wants revenge. He’s come back to life in a dog’s body and he wants to…”

 

“Old rival? Hmm…” Ozzie scratched his own chin looking for answers. “Is he another one of my grandchildren? I’d love to play some fetch with him and tell him all about my record collection. These young whippersnappers could use some good music these days.”

 

“He’s gone, Lucy,” said Callie in an uncharacteristically low voice. “He doesn’t remember me or anyone else. All that magic use turned his brain into mush. He’d be better off in retirement care instead of this disheveled cave.”

 

“Wait a minute…” pondered Lucy. “If magic use can turn your brain into mush, then Loki the Skull…”

 

“You just now figured that out?” The fire and spunk was back in Callie’s voice, her knife raised in the air, much to Lucy’s cowering terror.

 

“Put the knife away, you old bat. I’ll finish the job for you.”

 

Lucy, Callie, and Ozzie’s eyes widened at the demonic voice haunting the once warm and cozy cave. The stove’s glow was slowly dying down and the only neon flash that appeared this time came from Loki the Skull’s eyes. Bright red horror enveloped the room, followed by the poisonous green of the sorcerer’s aura. Lucy gulped as hard as she could while hugging Callie for comfort. She tried to push her off, but Lucy was too strong and it was the only strength she would exhibit for a while.

 

But then, Loki waved the war hammer like a pendulum and taunted Lucy. “Looking for this? It’s the perfect tool for smashing, let’s say…tennis balls!” He then pulled out said tennis ball, this time deflated and dirty, no longer fit for an hour of friendly roughhousing.

 

“What are you going to do, Lucy? Are you going to snuggle up and cry like a little cherub? Are you going to howl to the night moon like a lost wolf puppy? Are you going to run back into your mommy’s arms? Oh wait…that last part isn’t an option anymore.” Loki laughed at his own callous joke.

Bulletproof Bikini

Marguerite Macintosh may have been wandering around Helgor City in little else than a metal bikini, leather boots, and a furry cloak, but this chilly weather should never have been confused for the “dog days of summer”. The only things keeping her warm were the burning pain radiating off of her fresh scars and her boiling blood over this wardrobe fiasco. Her bastard sword was sheathed on her hip; she kept a firm grip on the handle while her other hand carried a mysterious leather sack. She heard enough testicle jokes in her lifetime that they were to be expected when she carried around a package that big.

As she trudged down the sidewalk of this vast city with bustling marketplaces and massive architecture, Marguerite made sure to give stone cold glares at the various men who passed her with dirty thoughts racing through their melon heads. The smiles they gave her, the whistles, and the chuckles were enough to boil her blood even further. The women were equally worthy of her scorn; they twisted their faces in disgust, as though Marguerite was going to steal their husbands right in front of them.

Because the streets were so jam-packed with horn-dog men, racing children, and jealous women, she couldn’t help but bump into a few of them, though she wondered how much of that contact was on purpose. There were a few hands here and there and in an ideal world, those hands wouldn’t be attached to their owners’ arms anymore. The bastard sword was right there, yet she kept it sheathed the whole time.

“Just a few more blocks,” she muttered to herself. The frosty weather nipped at her flesh almost as harshly as the poor sucker she had been in combat with only an hour prior. Those razor talons and blade-like fangs were far from Marguerite’s idea of a fun time. But a payday was a payday and a meal was a meal. “That son of a bitch better not stiff me this time,” she said, referring to her mercenary boss Goldsmith Kingsville.

“You said stiff!” said a giggling teenaged boy as his father pulled him away, also in a chuckling mood.

Marguerite’s knuckles had turned as white as the frosty weather at the strength she was gripping her hilt. She could cause a city wide bloodbath that could only be written about in holy scriptures. She could leave heads rolling down the street like the beer barrels the men probably consumed by the gallon. She could leave intestines strewn across the cobblestones while the diarrhea they contained painted an accurate picture of all the bullshit this place was known for. She thought better off it and continued down the sidewalk. “The real battle…” She stopped herself before her words could be misinterpreted again by snot-nosed kids.

A few more bumps, gropes, and hee-haws later, she finally arrived at the steps of the Kingsville Combat Club. They would prove to be a long climb, not because of the distance, but because of the sharp pains in her leg scars with every step. She sucked it up and pulled herself up the stairs into the stone-carved barracks. It was somehow less painful than being leered at by horny men and scowled at by jealous women. And then she remembered that the cycle would begin all over again once she walked through the doors of her workplace, which she did.

Just as she had predicted, the sparring orcs, in metal armor much more protective than hers, took a break from their exercises to evilly-smile and snort at her. Some of them swirled their tongues around like they were about to eat a delicious roasted ham. Others wiggled their fingers in anticipation of a hard grip. One of them whistled like his voice was a jazz instrument, much to the hee-hawing delight of the other mercenaries. Again, Marguerite could turn this entire room into a farmhouse slaughter fit for oinking pigs. But she thought better of it and picked up her walking speed towards Goldsmith’s office. She slammed the door behind her and the sounds of sparring continued.

And there he was, his booted feet on the desk, his velvet purple suit on, a cigar smoldering in his mouth, and his eyes pasted to his magazine. His entire room was decorated with artwork of half-naked models and leopard print rugs. Marguerite had her angry eyes locked in not on those, but the pervert who hung the pictures there in the first place. He peeked out from his magazine and waved at her before blowing a drooling orcish kiss.

Marguerite marched up to Goldsmith’s desk and slammed the package on the wooden surface, almost creating a few splinters. She pulled the draw string on it and revealed the head of a rival orcish warrior, which made Goldsmith’s eyes light up like a shooting star. He grabbed the head by its hair and examined it further to make sure everything was on the up and up. “Fine job, Margueritie-Sweetie.” She cringed at that nickname. “Our client will be very happy with this!”

Marguerite then slammed her coin bag on the table with equally brutish force and opened it. She pointed inside and said, “Karma. Karma!”

“If you insist.” Commander Kingsville pulled a metal box from underneath his desk, unlocked it with a massive key, and scooped up handfuls of gold coins to put in the Marguerite’s bag. She closed it up, jiggled it next to her ear, and stuck it on her belt, ultimately satisfied with her payday. Goldsmith put the metal box away, but she was still there with her arms folded and a murderous look on her face. “What? You got your payday, now get lost.”

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Commander.” Marguerite cleared her throat. “Are you okay?”

Goldsmith throatily laughed and slapped his desk a few times. “Are you kidding me, babe? Business is booming! I’ve never felt better in my life! Are you okay, my ass!” He laughed some more.

“That’s not what I meant, Commander. What I meant was…are you okay…as in…what the hell is wrong with you?!”

“Huh?”

“These other mercenaries, all of which are men, get to walk around protected head to toe in armor while I’m stuck out in the cold-ass weather in… whatever this is! You say business is booming, yet you can’t afford to get me some halfway decent armor?!”

Goldsmith placed a hand on Marguerite’s shoulder, which was instantly swatted away. “Listen, lady. Walking around in a metal bikini isn’t so bad. It’s lightweight, so you can move around easier. You have any idea how heavy those other suits of armor are?”

Private Macintosh grabbed her boss’s jacket and snapped, “Cut the bullshit! This skimpy armor isn’t going to protect me from anything! Look at all these scars! Look!”

Goldsmith pulled on his own collar to signify discomfort. “Trust me, I’m looking.”

“Exactly! You didn’t buy me this piece of crap armor because you wanted to protect me! You certainly didn’t want me to move faster, because let’s face it, fast-moving women make it impossible for you to do your little thing with them. This isn’t protection, Commander! This is fantasy!”

Goldsmith shoved her to the floor. “If you want real armor so badly, then use your payday to buy some! There’s enough in that coin bag to get you at least…”

She got up and got right back in her boss’s face. “You paid for their armor, now pay for mine! You just said yourself you have the money to do it, now quit stiffing me and…”

“Stiff this, you dumb bitch!” Goldsmith tried to slap her with the magazine, but she caught it just in the nick of time and started poring through it.

This wasn’t a literary publication at all. Not a single poem about flowers and shit. Not a single piece of prose about gallant battles. Not a single epic about conquering giants. Just pictures. Pictures of women wearing the same metal bikini as her. Just when Marguerite’s stomach couldn’t twist and wind any further, the final picture in the magazine…was of her. A realistic drawing of her wearing that same bikini, posing seductively at the reader, and blowing a kiss.

Marguerite’s breathing hastened. Her heart thumped in her chest while an icy river of anxiety cooled her burning scars. She dropped to her knees and vomited on the magazine, completely undoing her entire nutrition for the day.

“Oh, don’t act so disgusted! That’s the best art you’ll ever see in your lifetime! He’s great at what he does!”

Marguerite wiped the vomit from her lips and slowly rose to her feet, her trembling hand gripping her hilt even tighter than before, to where her palms were beet red. She angrily whispered, “Did you just say…HE’S great at what he does? He? As in…the male gaze?!” She finally pulled out her bastard sword and sliced Goldsmith’s desk in half, causing the boss to jolt backwards in fear. Sure enough, he had other magazines of half-naked girls stashed in there as well as his cash box.

Goldsmith pulled his collar in discomfort again. “I can explain!”

Not giving him a chance to do so, Marguerite threw a thunderous slash his way and sliced his massive head off, the last of his fucked up mind oozing on the carpeted floor. She dropped to her knees again, shaking in a combination of anger, disgust, and fear. Commander Kingsville had been masturbating to her this whole time. He had thoughts about her. He wanted to be with her. That metal bikini wasn’t practical in any way. It was all a perverted fantasy. Marguerite threw up yet again, this time loudly enough to draw the ire of someone knocking on the door.

“Hey! What’s going on in there! You alright, boss?!”

Thinking quickly, Marguerite took her bastard sword and wedged it between the double door handles. She didn’t know how long the lock would last considering how hard the orc was knocking. The sword even bent a few times like it was made of rubber. Marguerite took the cash box, grabbed Goldsmith’s head, and chucked it through his stained glass window, giving her an easy escape and the orcs enough reason to slam even harder against the doors.

Once the doors broke down, Marguerite, with cash box in hand, ran like the wind. Her leg scars flared up to where she was begging for an amputation. But she kept running through the back alleys. She kept hearing the sounds of orcs grunting behind her. Those throaty screams and curses, as much as they pounded against her eardrum, they softened the further she ran. And then she took a sharp turn into another alleyway and her legs finally gave out on her. Blood running from the wounds made her dizzy. The burning sensation caused her eyes to well up in pain. She was certain the orcs were going to chop her up and have her for lunch…or have her for lunch regardless, which made her gag even more.

But then the orcish voices were gone. She couldn’t hear them anymore. If she was dead from her wounds, then heaven looked an awful lot like Helgor City. It wasn’t heaven at all. Maybe it was hell. Maybe it was some unseen god punishing her for murder and theft. Speaking of theft, the cash box was still right there by her side. She patted it and breathed a sigh of relief once she knew it was safe.

“You know…maybe I will buy my own armor…and a vacation…I wouldn’t mind a vacation right now…”

Deviant Artists

A rainy night had fallen upon the Crystal Hill Art Gallery long after the last staff member locked up the building. Ironclad doors with heavy bolts sealed off the front and back entrances as well as the individual rooms where art was displayed. Discouraging thieves became even more of a requirement as the double paned windows were guarded with steel bars. If this wasn’t already a museum for art, it could easily double as a prison for the worst kinds of criminals.

Even the dark of night couldn’t suppress the shimmering beauty of the pearlescent marble statues. Curvy goddesses barely covered in silk tapestry. Armor-clad warriors carrying the heaviest weapons. Seductive mermaids with the sweetest grins. They all shined and reflected off of one another in the moonlight pouring through the stained glass windows. A dark paladin covered head to toe in spiky armor stood angrily across from a thickly muscled female orc warrior, who also looked ready to rip someone’s head off.

A bolt of lightning flashed in the night sky and as if on cue, the dark paladin and orc statues cracked and splintered, shedding large chunks and spraying specks of dust across the room. The cracks became deeper canyons until their marble coating was completely destroyed, revealing living versions of the warriors the art portrayed.

The dark paladin, Golo Quinn, dusted his hands and armor off while Junie Axel, the orc, kicked pieces of marble across the room like soccer balls. “Goddamn, am I glad to be out of that,” she said.

The two of them met in the center while Golo summoned a glowing orb with his palm and gazed around the room they successfully infiltrated. “Look at all of this crap…Look that this!” he growled. He shined the ball of light towards the goddesses and mermaids in particular. “Who in the hell wants to pay thousands of gold pieces just so they can have women in their rooms they’ll never be able to fuck?!”

“I bet if we found that Golden Dagger, we could carve better statues out of our own shit. Where the hell is it, anyways?” complained Junie as she dusted her leather armor off.

“Beats me. For all we know, the fuckers who built this place could have hidden it among one of the ‘masterpieces’. It could be in one of the mermaid’s bras for all I know. Or it could be up somebody’s ass. I guess we’ll never know until we start looking.”

Cracking her neck in both directions, Junie asked, “How do you want to do this? Should we sneak around like cat burglars or should we just wreck the shit out of everything?”

Golo shook his head. “It’s a little late for the cat burglar shit considering how we got here. I say we just smash everything to pieces. The art sucks anyways, so who’s really going to miss it? Plus, if we actually find the goddamn dagger, we could make our own pieces and sell them to the stupid curator for a cool payday. Come on, help me with this door.”

“My pleasure,” said Junie with a vomit-breathed smile. She effortlessly yanked one of the warrior statues off of its pedestal (while accidentally tearing its leg off) and started ramming it against the iron door. Though the dents in the door resembled meteor craters, the statue was just another worthless pile of dust afterwards. “Looks like it’s going to be harder than we thought. I wonder if any of these jerk-offs in armor are really that tough.”

“Only one way to find out.” Golo sent the ball of light floating overhead while he wrapped his arms around a mermaid and yanked it free, also with little effort. This time, he swung the statue like a baseball bat against the door, detaching its head, then its torso, then crumbling the flipper into powder. The door had even more massive dents, but it still wouldn’t budge. The dark paladin growled like a beast.

The two would-be thieves continued this process of ramming and smashing statues against the door until the entire room was caked in dust, causing Junie to sneeze a glob of yellow slime all over one of the goddess’s detached breasts. “Now that’s what I call a money shot!” she chuckled before burping loudly.

The iron door resembled a battered semi-circle rather than a symbol of security. All it took after every statue was desecrated was a spin kick from Golo’s metal boot. The twisted door crashed to the ground while Junie coughed and waved the smoky air out of their solitary confinement.

“Quit being a wuss and help me find the damn dagger,” said Golo while marching over the fallen door. He held out his palm and brought the ball of light back into his grasp, shining it over various paintings with nature scenes. Snow-covered mountains, enchanted forests with faeries, relaxing beaches with nude models, they all made Golo cringe and curl up in his suit of armor.

“If you spray some more dust in my face, I could sneeze again and create better paintings than these pieces of trash,” joked Junie while wiping her nose with her finger.

“Or you could jerk me off over a sheet of paper, either one sounds more profitable right now. Why would anybody think that painting trees is interesting?! They’re trees! They’re goddamn trees that don’t do a damn thing!” yelled Golo, who then punched one of the paintings and ripped it off the frame.

“Allow me!” said Junie as she and her accomplice went around ripping up paintings and cursing at them. Shredded canvases lined the floor and raging attitudes had the burglars banging their fists against the wall. They were no closer to finding the Golden Dagger. “This is horse crap!”

“Yes, I know how badly these paintings suck.”

“No, Golo, this is actual horse crap! Where the hell is that dagger?!” Junie folded her arms in frustration and slammed her back against the wall. The ridged frame of the picture behind her sent shockwaves of pain through her spine. She roared and held her wound while Golo pointed and laughed at her.

“Why, you little!” Junie turned around and started punching the hell out of the painting, bruises the size of molehills forming on her knuckles with every strike. Ignoring the pain in her hand, she ripped the picture off the wall and revealed something that instantly calmed her anger. “Oh my lord.”

Golo’s laughter turned to confusion. “What?”

“I don’t believe this. I knew it! I knew it was hidden among one of these pieces of garbage!” Junie stuffed her non-aching arm into the hole and pulled out a source of brilliant light that rivaled Golo’s fluorescent sphere. A pearl handle poked out of a leather pouch that the orc held in her hands like a kid receiving a Christmas gift. After a while of trying to contain her giggly fits, she pulled the handle and revealed the source of her and Golo’s greed: the Golden Dagger. The one artifact that could create pieces of art out of stone despite the user’s underachieving skill level.

Junie dropped to her knees and gazed upon the dagger with neon eyes. “This is beautiful. This is a work of art on its own.” Even though Golo wore a horned helmet that covered his face, the orc could tell he was smiling too. “We’re going to be rich…we’re going to be bloody rich!”

Holding the dagger like she was about to murder somebody with it, she tested its powers on the wall next to the mini-vault. Instead all she ended up doing was ripping a few chunks of wood. Nothing artistic, nothing glorious. “What the hell’s going on here?! Is this stupid thing just as worthless as the rest of the crap in here?!” She tried stabbing the wall again and had the same result: a whole lot of nothing. “This thing sucks! We wasted our time in here!”

Junie threw the dagger to the floor only for the magical artifact to float in the air before it had the chance to crash. The wide-eyed, shaky thieves slowly backed away from the artifact while it danced and spun around, shooting golden dust every which way and rendering the ball of light redundant.

With a mind of its own, the dagger stabbed itself into the wall and carved a proper piece of art within seconds. It was detailed. It was lifelike. It was…a mosaic of Junie Axel crapping her pants, to which Golo Quinn laughed himself into soreness yet again. The orc stomped her foot and complained, “Really funny, smart ass! Really goddamn funny!”

Junie lunged for the Golden Dagger’s handle only to have it fly away and carve yet another masterpiece out of the wall: Golo doing a striptease with a saggy gut hanging low. The dark paladin threw his gauntlet to the ground and shouted, “What the hell is going on here?! Is this some kind of joke?! When did a shitty piece of art become such a smart ass?!”

The anger tapered off into shaky fear as the dagger pointed at both Junie and Golo. Was the maniacal artifact going to fling itself into one of them? Was this how they were going to die? At the blade of a dagger with a sense of humor? Not yet. The dagger found more empty wall space and carved out a message for the intruders: “Frauds”.

Golo gazed at the message with hatred while Junie’s body convulsed in the corner. The dark paladin threw down his other gauntlet and yelled, “Frauds?! We’re frauds?! We’re not the ones carving these ridiculous-looking statues and painting these faggy pictures! We’re not the ones who suck! I purposefully stayed away from art class so that I wouldn’t have to make these pieces of shit!”

The dagger carved out another message on the wall: “Lazy”.

“Why you!” belted Golo as he chased after the floating dagger with his footsteps quaking the ground beneath him. The chase led him around the entire gallery, his legs aching and his heart thumping like a war drum. He jumped in the air whenever the dagger soared too high, but his heavy armor caused his shoulders and legs to burn with pain afterwards. He hunched over for a quick breather and even ripped off his helmet, throwing it to the ground and cursing.

The Golden Dagger spun around in the air before finding another empty space to carve a message into. All the weapon could muster were the letters L-O-S-E before Golo found a second wind and lunged at the blade with the last of his rage. His hands gripped the pearl handle with such force that he almost broke it off as it struggled for freedom. “I got you now, you little prick! Hold still! Junie, get your big ass over here and help me!” The orc remained cowardly in her corner. “Now, damn it!”

The orc took her time in getting up while Golo wrestled with the struggling blade on the ground. Junie slowly tiptoed towards the scuffle and hunched over her cohort, not wanting to jump in too soon. And then the blade jerked upwards and brought the dark paladin to his feet. Now it was Golo’s turn to hold the weapon like a murderer. “Wha…what are you doing, buddy? Golo?” pleaded Junie.

With a complete loss of control over his hand, Golo brought the Golden Dagger down upon Junie in a series of rapid-fire stabs that decorated the walls and shredded paper in blood. The dark paladin screamed, “No!” as his friend was being mutilated, but he couldn’t even release his grip. The blade kept raining down upon the orc until she was nothing more than a pile of broken bones, shredded skin, and pooling blood. The knife flew freely from Golo’s grip while the dark paladin pounded the floor repeatedly, tears welling in his eyes.

“What the hell did you have to do that for?!” Golo screamed, wiping an angry tear from his eye with his finger. “She was my friend, damn it!” The dagger lowered itself down into Golo’s field of vision and illuminated it with its golden glow. Dancing and prancing in front of him, the dagger’s light showed him a vision of beauty created from the madness of violence. Junie wasn’t just a mere corpse. She was a sculpture of something more beautiful than her wicked soul could become. “A mermaid? Seriously?! You…you made a mermaid out of my friend?!”

The Golden Dagger carved out another message on the wall: “Profit”.

“I…I don’t understand…you want me to sell this to the curator?”

One final message was sent loud and clear to the boohooing knight. It wasn’t he message he wanted to see carved out. It was the message he needed to see: “True art!”

Charles Goodhorn

My older brother James has this habit of introducing me to certain media and then years later losing interest in it himself. He did it with the bands Crossfade, Nightwish, and Limp Bizkit. I still love those bands and James thinks they’re a bunch of big babies. In the late 90’s, he introduced me to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (second edition). I became addicted to it and he now thinks D&D players have no life. James changes his interests more often than he changes his underwear (not that I would know anything about his underwear habits).

But if it wasn’t for him, two things would have happened. One, I would assume RPG’s are all hack and slash and no role-playing or puzzle solving (like the Final Fantasy franchise). And two, Charles Goodhorn would be an afterthought. I originally wanted to call him Charles Goldhorn (because I had a Lego piece that was a golden trumpet), but James advised me to tweak it to Goodhorn to fit Charles’ paladin class. That ended up being good advice.

As a D&D character in the late 90’s, Charles Goodhorn, a human paladin, reached level eight before he was never used again. Throughout those eight levels of awesome adventures, I learned what it meant to be a true good guy. Paladins have a strict code of behavior they need to conform to lest they lose their magical powers and become fighters without weapon specialization. They have to have a lawful good alignment, they have to donate money to a church or to poor people, they have to help the weak whenever in danger, and they can’t have henchmen who deviate from lawful goodness. I followed this code of behavior to a tee until one day at level eight, he broke the rules by assaulting someone of good alignment (at the time, I thought the guy was evil). While Charles never actually made the transformation into a fighter, he was never used again.

In 2010 when I was still writing movie scripts, Charles was revamped into an orc paladin and became a sheriff in the D&D-style fantasy movie Gangs of Kingston. He was basically one man trying to keep order in a town highly populated with criminals and sociopaths. The streets of Kingston were piled high with dead bodies and blood pools. That’s not an exaggeration, that’s what Kingston looked like.

After a while of being overwhelmed by his duties, Charles became apathetic over time and doesn’t reconsider his disposition until the main character, an elf warrior named Jonah Jeriqee, immerses himself too deeply into the gang system of Kingston and almost gets himself killed. This would have made an awesome movie, but unfortunately, I don’t live in Hollywood, so there’s no way it would have made it onto the big screen. Plus, 2010 was a time in my life where my writing had no literary influences and therefore suffered greatly.

That’s two times in a row where Charles Goodhorn has been overlooked, both as a human D&D character and an orcish movie character. If I ever do recycle him, I’d want him to be done right this time. He’s not going to be an apathetic sheriff nor his he going to get somebody’s alignment wrong and almost kill them. He’s going to be the perfect good guy until the very end. He can have a few flaws, but not so many that it changes him into a sociopath. If ever becomes perfect, he can be a side character. Either that, or he can be the lead character who earns his way to becoming perfect. Sounds like a perfect day for a D&D story. Sounds like an even better start to the third act of Fireball Nightmare (if I have one). My spine is tingling with delight! Either that or I need to see a chiropractor.

　

***JOKE OF THE DAY***

Q: What does a futuristic police officer produce while he’s in the bathroom?

A: Robo Crap.

Karlos Ludwig

Okay, so maybe I already have a character named Karlos Ludwig. He’s the guitarist in the title band Death Blade. He’s got dreadlocks, a fluffy beard, and badass shredding abilities. Even so, his role was very small, because there were other characters who easily outshined him and his name was only mentioned a few times within that short story. Before the guitarist version of this character was created, Karlos Ludwig was an entirely different person in a Good Reads fantasy RPG called Medieval Magic. In that storyline, he was an introverted knight who didn’t like taking crap from authority figures. Being introverted works for a lot of people in real life, but unfortunately, aggressively seeking privacy from the other players doesn’t work so well in an RPG setting. Nobody can say he didn’t try, though. He ordered a big ass pizza at a bar known for brawls. He took a swim in a fairy lake. He trained in an open field known for being hunting grounds. How could this guy not be obvious to everyone after all these things? It’s probably because everyone was so scared of Karlos that they were afraid to approach him. Due to a lack of human interaction, I had to permanently disable him from game play and when I tried to make a more extroverted character, that didn’t work either. Eventually, I parted ways with Medieval Magic and went on to bigger and better things. Despite having already used Karlos as a character in Death Blade, I feel like he didn’t get enough of the spotlight and that he needs more. I’m more than willing to recycle his name into a more prominent character. What kind of character will that be? Karlos Ludwig is a very intimidating name no matter what occupation he undertakes. Hey, he could be an undertaker! Nothing strikes fear in the hearts of others quite like burying dead bodies. But what if he was actively seeking “clients”? What if he was cruising the neighborhood looking for young girls to put in these graves? Alive, no less! Karlos Ludwig is already sounding like a creepy psychopath. But he doesn’t necessarily have to be. In Medieval Magic, he was a dark knight similar to Cecil Harvey’s first incarnation in the videogame Final Fantasy IV. What if Karlos was Cecil Harvey on steroids? Maybe instead of dark blue armor, it could be all black with poisonous spikes. Instead of a long sword, Karlos could carry a glowing green battleaxe to signify even more poison running through his veins. Whether he’s an antihero or an ant villain, the one requirement I would have for Karlos Ludwig is that he’s the scariest motherfucker in the entire prose. He’d have to have a face only a mother could love, provided that mother also gave birth to either Jeffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson. I think we can make this work, people. I’m not ruling it out just yet!

　

***TELEVISION DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

VIC MACKEY: You want us to catch this killer or not?

DAVID ACEVEDA: Going undercover as dirty cops. You think you can pull that off?

VIC MACKEY: We can try.

-The Shield-