Chapter 13: Meanwhile, in the Dimension of Food, Licorice Vs. Icecream

While Eadam was straining himself, risking becoming horse pudding, the food dimension proceeded as it always did.

The food dimension is made up of many regions, each composed of different foodstuffs. The breakfast, lunch and dinner kingdoms are of course the more commonly known regions. However, there is one region that is particularly deadly. The foulest of realms, the most seductive of realms, the sweetest realm, the Dessert.

Rivers, seas and oceans of milk, honey, syrup and even sinister floes of treacle. Wobbling mountains capped with icing. Snows of sugar, hailstorms of gumballs, and rains of, well anything that the rivers, seas and oceans are. This of course includes the dread liquids from the great curdle maelstrom!

It was a dark and foul day amid some sorbet dunes, a fierce battle had marred these multicoloured dunes, blending them into a mess and making small lakes of sherbet. At this time, two great powers of the Dessert were locked in bitter mortal combat.

Shining amid the heavy syrup rain, was the object that was the source of this conflict, it was as a star, filled with blinding light!

“HUUUUAAAAARRRGH”

There was a roar from one of the combatants as a rainbow smashed out of the sky.

“Ahhhhh!!!! Curse you, Licorice Brave! By the Treacle Tsar’s black heart, I swear I’ll never forgive you for this!”

A massive form crashed into the sorbet dunes, ploughing through them, leaving them juiced in its wake. It was remarkably like a massive icecream cone. However, the ice cream had a mouth of evil looking raspberry syrup and chocolate wafer fangs that continually shed deadly chocolate fragments. It had six limbs of wafer, these it used to fly and hold things. In the grasp of these wafer limbs were what had once been six swords of hardest mint, but now they were chipped and shattered. Embedded in its head were a pair of candied cranberry eyes, but these eyes were filled with wickedness, rather than sweetness as they should have been.

A laugh came from the ice-cream cone monster’s foe.

It was a tall knight, decked in armour of the finest licorice! Round pauldrons and smooth greaves, his helm was a layered cube from which sprouted two horns of licorice. He cut a valiant figure, and in his hand was a rod of licorice, the end of which was some kind of clear licorice studded with round blue balls.

“Forgiveness, O Berrycold Calamity, were you forgiving when the Dolly Mixland could not pay your insane taxes, when they could not obey your laws that change with the dawn of each new day? Where was your forgiveness when you sent them all to the sugar mines? When you even sent them to extract burning hot caramel! Where was your forgiveness? You have no forgiveness!”

The Licorice Brave and Berrycold Calamity clashed again. The monster’s chocolate shards and raspberry hexes could no longer stand before the Brave’s hundred and thousand smashes. The icecream beast found itself further and further suppressed. It could not find stable footing on the sorbet, and further it was better at fighting in the air, yet the brave would not allow it to ascend to the skies again.

“You are no hero, Licorice Brave! If not for the Sucrose Hexahedron above us, you would have not lifted your mace! You are no different from me, seeking to steal the labours of the common folk!”

The brave snorted and smashed a lattice of raspberry hexes that had swirled about him like snowflakes.

“No different? I like to serve justice even without reward, but there are few things I like better than justice and a reward! I’ll take the Hexahedron and continue to dish out a serving of heroism to this land!”

The brave rolled past a torrent of chocolate shard and landed a smack on Berrycold to keep it from flying upwards.

Laughter came from the brave again.

“Even if we were the same, would that get me to stay my hand? No you vile creature! You know I am not as you are, that mercy still beats within me, but why should I give mercy to you, who has shown none, who regrets nothing but being defeated by me? You have no remorse, and so I shall have none. I’ll not leave you to terrorize the Dessert!”

Berrycold tried to block the brave with its swords of mint, but to its horror, the swords could take no more, and they shattered and so the brave scattered the icecream head to the sorbet dunes. The monster’s body slumped, and the candied cranberry eyes rolled away, an unwilling look in them.

A cry of triumph ripped itself from the mouth of the Licorice Brave, and as he was sore tried from the battle, which had gone on for three days and three nights, he fell to one knee. He stared upwards at his spoils of battle.

The Sucrose Hexahedron.

An object of surpassing and pure power. It was this that was dug from the mines. Cold to the touch yet surrounded by bubbling caramel. The miners had sought to lure bandits and mercenaries with the promise of the treasure, perhaps they would only replace one tyrant with another, but instead they got the attention of the Licorice Brave.

“They can return to their ancestral lands and rule themselves once more, and me? I can take this now…”

He took off his helmet, revealing a pale puffy misshapen head, one which only had depressions in it for a mouth and eyes. He was one of the mallow-men! The brave reach his hand skyward.

Yet, before he could call the treasure down to him, the sky distorted and a horrific otherworldly neigh like the Treacle Tsar’s own pudding steed sounded out. There was a tear, and the Sucrose Hexahedron was sucked up into and the Licorice Brave was thus deprived of his spoils.

Yet, this hero, he did but frown for a moment, before laughing and shouldering his mace, he wandered off into the Dessert.

Back in Elcon…

Eadam was looking glumly at something he was holding.

“oh its a sugar cube” Kepo said.

“Well, better than nothing on a first try Mr. Horse”

“At least you didn’t become pudding” Waufronk comforted.

“Cube funny?” Spongy wondered.

The leader of the merry band of misfits, Ulex, was however, genuinely proud of Eadam!

“Well done! I wasn’t expecting anything to come out, but you did it on the first try Lad!”

The long face didn’t grow shorter, but Eadam cheered up a bit.

“I did, didn’t I?”

“Yes, and not a waffle horror to be seen!” Waufronk exclaimed gladly.

“yeah… wait. what’s this about a waffle horror?”

Waufronk guiltily looked away.

“Well, back in the Great Attic, I once saw an instirrer’s magic go awry, and well there were waffle horrors everywhere, eating everyone”

“What waffle ‘orror look like” Spongy Snaps wondered.

Waufronk shivered and ignored Spongy Snaps’ question.

“The whole attic had to work together to drive the ghastly things back into the food dimension”

Everyone just stared accusingly at Waufronk for a few moments, then Ulex spoke.

“So, why did you only tell us this after we tried getting Eadam to meddle with the forces of food?”

Waufronk gave a helpless shrug and shake of his head.

“Well, I had blotted it out of my memory to be honest. They were really horrific you know”

Ulex rubbed his forehead.

“I know I said adventurous camping… oh whatever, it all ended up ok. Eadam, just be careful when messing with food, ok?”

He looked about at everyone.

“We’ve been through a lot, we should get some rest”

This suggestion was met with approval and nobody wanted to think about how they might have gotten eaten by waffles.

Lying in a hooded cloak, Eadam stared again at the sugar cube from another dimension. After some consideration, he gave in and ate it. He almost let out a yell. It was the tastiest cube he had ever had.

Still, he was tired, and even a really good sugar cube wasn’t going to change that. Eadam settled down to sleep, and for once, he was feeling a bit better about himself.

Waufronk, hanging upside down in the tree alcove was wide awake. He had the horrible feeling he was going to have a nightmare about waffles.

Spongy, Ulex, Gheel and Kepo had all already begun to sleep like the dead. They weren’t usually the kind of people to ever have trouble sleeping.

As awake as Waufronk was, he didn’t notice a small crescent moon-headed being slip into the alcove, nor did he notice it scattering sleeping sand from a bag on its back. As Waufronk fell asleep he thought he heard someone grumbling about having to haul sand to ‘this corner of the woods’

If he had known it was one of the wandering sandmen of Elcon, who aid the troubled in sleeping, he might have felt grateful.

Well, grateful until he finished sleeping and woke from a waffle nightmare. That and the sheer quantity of grit in one’s eyes from sandman induced sleep is absurd.