Chapter 17: Two Seemingly Abject Losses

Eadam had been feeling pretty good about himself. A whole new world was potentially opening up for him, maybe even a whole new dimension! With power success! With success, he wouldn’t be abandoned. That was what he felt.

Many people need food, and many desire food, and knowing that he had touched upon some power of food, Eadam had been feeling a bit more confident. Just a bit.

His life wouldn’t be threatened in the duel. After all, he could just admit defeat and it would end. That though… that was what he feared. Defeat.

“Go on Lad, you aren’t a bad hand with that pan of yours” Ulex encouraged.

-That‘s all well and good, but will a not bad hand be any use against an ominous robed person- Eadam thought.

“Don’t worry, you won’t die, and well, if an accident happens, I’ll take special care of your bones” Waufronk guaranteed.

“Spongy jealous, feel foe is fierce”

“Chahahaha” Chacha mocked, being the kind of being it was, it would never miss a chance to make fun of someone.

None of this made Eadam feel better at this point. Of course, it wasn’t as if he was going to be abandoned for losing this fight, but, how rare that our fears are sane and reasonable. If they kept him around when he was a wet rag of a horse with no particular talents, surely they’d stick with him as he touches the food dimension?

Alas, Eadam’s mind was still mired in a bad funk.

Lady Joykill, of course knew none of this.

“Come, are you not going to fight?” She asked haughtily.

Gheel clapped Eadam on the shoulder.

“I could lend you a chomper Mr. Eadam” He said.

Eadam almost cried, he felt touched. Comradeship was such a great thing! Yes, he had to fight, to put in a good showing for his boon companions! Eadam shook his head and then trotted forwards, he swung his mane majestically, sparkles (dandruff) flying wildly.

*Neeeeeeeiiiiggghhh*

“Thank you Gheel, but I must face this fight alone!” He said bravely!

He didn’t see Gheel frowning. Gheel had wanted to test another chomper out, it wasn’t every day that one got a safe fight to test a chomper, and everyone in the party had long since learned not to spar with his chompers. Having the chompers fight each other just wasn’t as effective.

Letting out a sigh, Gheel abandoned his desires. There were always other fights.

“Come, let us do honourable battle!” Eadam said.

At these hot-blooded words, Lady Joykill looked quite distressed.

“Don’t get so excited, It’ll be a big let down later!” Lady joykill muttered, twisting in place.

“I’m not afraid to lose!” Eadam said, thumping his chest and taking his shoddy battle pan from his side.

He really was afraid to lose though.

“Ugh, that wasn’t what I meant… oh bother, let’s just get this started”

The hooded head moved upwards, and a pair of leaf red and ruby red eyes stared at Eadam.

“Look into my eyes… look into my eyeeeesssss” Lady Joykill hissed.

Eadam, never one to turn down a pretty girl, obliged.

“They’re very nice eyes, but what am I supposed to be seeing?” he asked.

It was then not only her eyes that were red, but her face.

*Cough*

“Eh? It didn’t work, let me try again, EYEEEEEEESSSS LOOK INTO MY EYYYYYEEEEESSSS”

The world faded away from Eadam and Lady Joykill, as if someone was brushing it away. Only the two of them remained, standing in a room of blankness.

“Woah! What is this, what did you do to everything! Oh no, did you just destroy everything? Why would you do a thing like that?”

Eadam fell to his knees in despair.

“Calm down, I didn’t destroy anything. Since this is a friendly fight, I’ll explain. My battlefield is the mind, if someone or something looks me in the eyes I can fight them in this space of the mind and the… wait are you even listening?”

Still down on his knees, Eadam was babbling and wailing, oblivious to Lady Joykill.

“It‘s all my fault, if I was stronger, I’d have saved them, then I wouldn’t be alone! If only I was stronger…”

The blankness began to crack right above Eadam, and in turn as the crack grew, Eadam became fainter.

-Not good, I wouldn’t have fought him if I knew he was this unstable, I really should learn to stop listening to my senses. This nearly always happens when I get that sort of feeling!-

Eadam vanished, and the blankness shattered, spreading out into small shards, islands of blankness amid blackness. From the dark void of Eadam’s mind, it emerged. A huge heavy horse’s head all of lead. It was his own head. It was Eadam, it was not Eadam!

“Aw, you’re kidding me! A maniac!”

A maniac, is quite simply a negative mental construct they can most troublingly end up taking on a bit of a life of their own, or even suppressing their host mind. The head opened its mouth and let out a long doleful neigh, causing the mindscape to shudder.

“Well, looks like I’m going to deal with someone’s hangups again! A fight’s a fight!”

With a flourish ethereal spears appeared behind Lady Joykill, arranging themselves like wings behind her. The spearheads were as eyes. These then were Joykill’s mind weapons, honed through many conflicts! She was only able to briefly manifest one outside of mindscapes though.

Three spears shot directly at the maniac, while one could untangle the stresses and hangups that create a hangup, Lady Joykill had found that if you just relentlessly and mercilessly attack, the maniacs tend to self-rationalize themselves out of existence!

Nobody can argue with a fist if it is big enough! Lady Joykill firmly believed in this principle, especially if it was a mind fist.

A doleful neigh, one of the spears went flying off, one cracked and broke but the third struck true, producing a wave of multicoloured sparks! The head spun wildly smashing into islands of blankness.

“Everyone abandons me” the head complained.

It cried and the tears became bullets with lipless mouths!

-Aren’t those… explodahead heads?- Joykill wondered.

Indeed they were the heads of that strange being that can explode its head and grow new one with not a bit of harm to itself. Probably most elconic beings that have had a run in with an explodahead remember it somewhat traumatically. You know, since they explode their heads.

Joykill fled, bullet-heads raining down at where she was, exploding into flashes of colour. Unfortunately for her, these explosions spun into themselves and turned in to shining silvery balls with eyes and teeth. The traditional elconic discoball, a quite dangerous creature that in times past was used in the deadly game of disco.

Beating back the discoballs was the only thing on Joykill’s mind, since she had no idea about the history of discoballs. Before her time really. Before Eadam’s too, but he had the misfortune to experience the things anyway.

Leaping lightly from blankness to blankness, Joykill avoided both bullet heads and discoballs, never forgetting the throw the odd spear to stop the discoballs from becoming unmanageable in number. Still it was more resistance than she had been expecting.

“Well, if you are going to be like that, see how you face this, my VISION OF PREY!”

There was the howl of animals from the void, and then countless beings that Joykill had hunted rushed out, charging through both the exploding heads and the discoballs. They slammed into the Eadamhead maniac, and the maniac grew smaller though it was not destroyed.

“Why does everyone abandon me?” the maniac wailed

What came from the maniac this time was a storm of ripped pages, they slowly and sorrowfully drifted down, before they folded themselves into paper gliders and shot at Joykill!

“Why is it always things that shoot at me?” She wailed spinning spears into them.

-I’m going to have to actually try helping this thing, my spears aren’t that strong against it- she thought.

“Hey, maybe it is all your fault!”

“It is!” the maniac wailed and produced a heavier storm of paper.

“Ah, hey, no, I mean, you don’t have to abandon yourself, other people come and go, but you’ve got to live with yourself right! You can’t just run from yourself can you? You can’t really abandon yourself! You are always with you!”

It was half nonsense, but given that Joykill usually would just beat things into submission, it wasn’t half bad. It seemed to work somewhat, as the paper was no longer coming out in a torrent. Joykill destroyed the last of the discoballs and tried to press her advantage. She had not a clue in what way he was abandoned, but she figured she’d just say stuff until something clicked.

“People have their own dreams don’t they? So, instead of being sad about people following those, why don’t you hunt your own?”

“My… dream?”

The head cracked, and the attacks paused.

“I… do I have a dream?”

“I don’t care! DIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE!” Joykill screamed.

She saw an opening as the maniac was confused and slipped right up to the head. She jammed all her spears into the cracks in the head and tried to lever them open further. The head talked as she strained. She always hated the bit where they would talk the most. However, she was aware that the more they talked, the weaker they got!

“I… it was me. The old gang. I was the leader of it… but… I couldn’t live without it. I put everything into it. That was me. The gang was me. But it wasn’t. The gang wasn’t just me. It had a bunch of people in it. They didn’t just live for my sake… was I too selfish? Was it all messed up? We were comrades… but… was I just using them for my own sake? Was it just to make myself big?”

Lady Joykill twisted her spears.

“If you ask me, I think you are thinking too much! But I don’t really know, you can worry about it in the physical world!”

One last twist and the head shattered.

As the mindscape faded away the shattered maniac’s parts began to meld together to create something.

As for what everyone else saw, it was just Lady Joykill and Eadam twitching. It was very boring. The goadskulls and the adventures had taken to playing a dice game to while away the time. The dice instead of numbers had different symbols on them. Six symbols. Skulls, spears, trees, beasts, vegetables and shields. The game was a surprisingly complex game simulating a hunt. Game pieces could just be whatever was lying about, but many of the goadskulls had gamepieces carved from their birth materials.

Gheel out of all the adventurers had gotten quite into it, going so far as to carve, using a chomper, a little statue of a chomper as his hunter.

Everyone was shocked out of the game by a cry of joy from Joykill and the sound of Eadam toppling over. Eadam was unconscious and frothing at the mouth. The adventurers instantly grew furious.

Ulex’s muscled body bulked up further. Spongy slammed his gauntlets together producing sparks, Waufronk flew up into the sky and took his fishing rod out, while Gheel began to assemble a squad of chompers.

“Woah, Woah, he’ll be ok! Isn’t that right Joykill?” Triplefoot objected.

Joykill was hopping up and down excitedly, her aura of mystique and ominousness completely ruined. She paused and looked at Eadam.

“Uh… well, he’ll probably be fine.”

Triplefoot glared.

“I-i mean, he’ll be fine. He might even be more clear headed when he wakes up. Depends on him though. The horse has issues.”

Seeing that Eadam had stopped frothing and twitching, and was in a more gentle stable state and hearing Joykill’s persuasions. The adventurers settled down.

“Anyway forget about the horse, Footsie! Look, look I got a new mind weapon! One I can manifest!”

There was a flash and a startlingly Eadam-like neigh. Then ascending from her head, a spear arose from Lady Joykill. This one was not red with an eye for a spearhead. Instead it was the colour of lead, and gave a heavy feeling. It was also perhaps more on the halberd side of things than being a proper pure spear. The fat spearhead was in the shape of a crying horsehead.

“Right, real nice, now put it away and stop showing off” G Slayer chided.

A bit shamefaced, Lady Joykill returned the spear to her mind.

“Uh, sorry. Well it is my win, your pick this time”

Before anyone else could speak, Spongy spoke out.

“Spongy fight. Get Horsie honour back, for Stew!” He declared.

Mad-Cackletackle tumbled out of the underbrush, he had wandered off when everyone started playing the hunting game. He just didn’t have the attention or patience for it, since it had a great lack or ripping tearing or even more civil forms of violence.

“Me, oh, me, you are going to pick me aren’t you?”

The crazed goadskull hopped up and down in glee.

“Hold on a moment!” Waufronk’s voice cut across the boiling atmosphere that was being produced between Spongy and Mad.

As a wicked advisor does, Waufronk flapped over to Spongy and whispered into the gingerbread man’s ear.

“What? You can do that?” Spongy shouted, a little fearful.

“Shhh, shhh, yes I can”

Spongy’s malformed face twisted, as he was faced with a difficult choice.

“Spongy give this choice to Wa…wa… huuh… Fronk”

“What! But, I want to fight you! WHYWHYWHY! Oh whatever, I’ll chew you up fine enough ehehehe!” Mad ranted.

“Waufronk…” Ulex began, a bit worried.

“Oh, I’m not fighting you”

“Ah! No, I win, wait, no COWARD CHEAT FIGHT ME LIKE THE BAT YOU ARE FIGHTINGFIGHRAAGHGURLGH” Mad-Cackletackle began chewing the forest floor in rage.

“I’m going to fight you” Waufronk said, pointing a leathery wing at Triplefoot.

“Me?”

“Yes, you”

“Not him”

“Yes, not him”

“I don’t blame you, but Triplefoot is plenty strong too” G Slayer warned.

“Well, he agreed, so we are going to fight. Don’t think you can rely on flying to keep you safe! I can jump the highest out of everyone here, and I can even jump in mid air! Hahaha”

Triplefoot skipped out and stood front of Waufronk.

“Ahahaha ha… hey, Mad, can you stop rolling about there and eating the ground, we have pick next, so you can choose Spongy then. I gotta fight now!”

Soil pouring from his mouth, Mad sprang up.

“Really?” he asked, sending pebbles and bugs into Triplefoot’s face.

“Really, you can even watch this fight… you know, from over there” Triplefoot said, wiping his face.

Mad scuttled off to where everyone else was, everyone else scrambled to make room and not be close to Mad.

Triplefoot let out a long breath and gave a friendly nod to Waufronk.

“Sorry about that, we can start now”

“Well, I’m sorry too, well maybe not that sorry, well, I’ll end this then” Waufronk said.

It was an old bat trick, but Waufronk managed to click his wing.

“What? Isn’t that a bit arroahhhhh”

In front of everyone, as if he had gone mad, Triplefoot began dancing.

“W-whats happening, why am I dancing!?” Triplefoot wailed.

Doubled over with laughter, Waufronk explained.

“Well, you see, I’ve been working on charming your leg armour ever since we encountered you, don’t worry though. I’ll give them back to you after you admit defeat”

Rather than despairing at this, Triplefoot acted decisively, with a bit of a struggle he unclasped his leg armour and slipped out of them.

“Haha! What now you enchanter! I’ll have you know I’m the fastest of the gouuuffff”

Admittedly he had taken the armour off, but as displayed by the armour kicking him in the stomach that just made it easier for Waufronk to attack.

“I admit defeat!” he cried as he huddled up into a ball to protect himself from the kicking armour.

The armour collapsed on top of him as Waufronk relinquished the control he had gained over them. He wiped his brow, it had really taken quite a bit to control something to closely connected to somebody. Leaping over then was Mad-Cackletackle. Not wasting a moment of time he grabbed Triplefoot and his armour and tossed them both behind him.

“Now, now now Away loser!!! We fight, me and the sweetstuff, fight yayayaya THE FIGHT OF CHAMPIONS HAHA!”

Waufronk quickly retreated and Spongy Snaps stepped forward, excitement could be seen in his chocolaty eyes.