Happily Ever Awkward (The H.E.A. Files, #1)(17)
Paul was sitting quietly beside him, as Paul tended to do, when a brawny prince with thick, windblown hair stepped up to the table.
“We’re going to have a pick-up battle out back and we need one more man,” said the tousled prince. “Want to fight?”
Paul looked up. Then he looked down. Then he looked to the side. Then he gave up trying to point his eyes at anything and just said, “Uh, no, thanks. I think I’ll just relax… here… for a bit.”
The other prince shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said as he peeled off his shirt and revealed a washboard stomach that threw every single one of Paul’s inadequacies into very sharp relief. The shirtless prince grabbed his saber and jogged off to join his friends, calling, “Hey, we get to be skins!”
Watching him go, Paul whispered to himself, “Someone like me shouldn’t even be a prince.”
Down on the stage, the bard stepped up to a large chalkboard labeled “QUEST STATUS”. The board listed the disposition of every currently questing prince, chalked out in big, white letters.
Some were “Married with Children”.
Some were “Retired”.
Some were “Missing”.
And one was “Transformed into a Newt”.
Adding to the list, the bard chalked something beside Prince Hardbody’s name.
H. E. A.
Everyone in the room instantly cheered, “Happily Ever After!”
The sudden tumult jolted King Hofnar from his leisurely soak in the puddle of drool. As he blearily attempted to ratchet himself up into a sitting position, his son poured a fresh cup of coffee for him from the pot on their table.
King Sterling, Prince Savage, and the other popular royalty sat at an extravagant banquet table directly in front of the stage. King Sterling raised his chalice to Paul’s father in mock salute.
King Hofnar glared at his hated rival.
“Thou wilt live Happily Ever After, Paul,” he said.
“An H.E.A.? For me? I…”
King Hofnar pounded his mallet-sized fist against the table. “Thou wilt live Happily Ever After!”
Before Paul could say anything else, the door slammed open and an out-of-breath courier burst into the tavern.
“Hark!” He gasped for air as he pushed through the crowd and made his way to the stage. “Hearken to me! The Exalted Emperor Duncan of Theandrea begs you listen!”
By now, every voice within the Lottery had stilled and every eye followed the exhausted courier. With a helping hand from the bard, the courier climbed onto the stage and turned to address the assembly.
“I bring grim tidings from the emperor himself. His daughter, the Princess Luscious, was kidnapped during the night—”
The room erupted with wild cheers. “Princess Luscious?” called out someone from the crowd. “What a prize!”
Then the courier finished his sentence.
“—by Seeboth the Shadow Wizard!”
Dead silence crashed upon the Lottery. So utter and complete was this silence that even a cricket chirping in the corner became self-conscious and stopped what it was doing to slink off in embarrassment.
Who’s Who in Contemporary Alchemy and Necromancy has this to say on the subject of Seeboth, Lord of Shadows: “If you ever meet Seeboth, Lord of Shadows, in a dark alley… oh well.”
Seeboth is more than just evil.
He’s REALLY evil.
He’s so totally, perversely evil that adjectives swoon at the thought of conveying just how totally perverse his evil is.
He once sank an entire continent for bedrock to construct his hidden fortress because the stone was “an aesthetically pleasing shade of black.”
He resurrected all the dead from the Battle of Waterblack (may they have rested in peace) because he desired tax-free zombie labor.
And he even stole immortality from a Demon — a Demon he promptly dismembered and scattered across the reaches of time and space.
In summation, the best approach to Seeboth is a straight line in the opposite direction.
“Seeboth the Shadow Wizard?” cried Savage Sterling. Putting on a brave face, he leaned close to his father’s ear and whispered in a panic, “Father, that Quest is a death sentence!”
“I know, I know!” King Sterling hissed back. “Let me think.”
At that moment, the little pink Poxie who lived on the Lottery bin darted to the back of the room and landed on Paul’s shoulder. She held out her hand, but Paul desperately shook his head. King Hofnar pounded the table again, louder than the first time and hard enough to topple the coffee pot to the floor with a steaming hot CRASH! Wilting under his father’s glare, Paul reluctantly handed his Lottery token to the Poxie. With a kiss on his cheek, she swooped a crown of flitter dust about his head then winged away.
A smile crept across King Sterling’s face. “Leave everything to me.”
As the Poxie streaked back toward the Lottery bin, King Sterling stood and flagged her down. “Hello, little one.” He nodded at Paul. “How would you like to make him very happy?”
The Poxie nodded eagerly.
Thunder rumbled somewhere far away.
Everything within the tavern had changed. The atmosphere felt more like a tragic funeral than the drunken party it had resembled only moments before. Much subdued, the bard moved beside the bin and tried to rekindle some excitement, but even he was unable to inject much conviction into his words.