A Bewhiskered Bargain

“I call this unholy farce to order!” Barked Calacas, his great whiskers improbably lush in undeath.

“Who appointed you the chair of this parlay, old skulldugger?” retorted Gaspard, the Ghost King, as he stroked his ethereal and bafflingly bounteous beard.

“Gentleman, please!” said Muldorf, feeling very much the odd one out. “This is no time for petty quarels. We can argue about who has a claim on which bones and souls to our hearts’ content - sorry, no offense intended - once we deal with the Uberlich. Otherwise, there won’t be any to argue over.

“Hmmmph. Well, clearly my claim as skeletal sovereign is paramount -“ Calacas replied, “but, it must be said, the Uberlich’s antics are severely limiting my supply of new thralls.”

“Far be it for this boneheaded bastard to know his place,” Gaspard said, his beard caught momentarily and inexplicably in a passing breeze, “but he’s right about the Uberlich. My dominion over the soul realm is growing more paltry by the week. Something must be done.”

“And I have just the plan” said Muldorf, uncorking a fresh bottle of Djinni-gin - and absently mindedly setting out three glasses, before withering glances from his two uneasy table-mates bade him fill just the one. “But it will require a single hair from each of your beards by way of surety…

The Bravura Bard

Bruno trudged through the fetid marshes of the Slithering Swamps, muttering to himself the while.

I’ll show that jumped up twit at Barding & Scribe Monthly what’s what - inauthentic? Hopelessly naive romanticisation of the brutal nature of the world? Childishly frivolous similies? My next submission will pierce his cynicism like a valiant sword thrust through the still-beating heart of a… of a…

Of a giant serpent, yes, that’ll do –

Bruno stopped muttering. The ground beneath him was slithering. It shouldn’t have been doing that. A few metres away, there was a shiny green hill that hadn’t been there for a minute ago - and where was such a loud hissing coming from?

If I wasn’t mistaken, I’d say I’d chanced upon the Great Slitherer! Of course - such a thing is only an invention of bards and storytellers such as I…

Bruno decided to begin running, fast, in the direction of the Screaming Hills and their yawning caverns, just in case. He reached the foothills and made for a small cave, his breath coming in ragged gasps, and he looked behind him. There was a bloody great snake hurtling at him, mouth agape displaying fangs like battle-lines of cruel spears. The cave was so near - so inviting in its cool, dark safety - but would that really make for a poem of a kind that Editor Erglebod Blowski wouldn’t call ‘bloated with self-pomposity and less soul-nourishing value than a tankard of toilet-water?’ No…he would stand, and show this serendipitous serpent why he called himself Bombastic Bruno The Bravura Bard. So he stood, and yelled his fiercest battle-cry. The snake, not a jot impressed, swallowed him whole.

And then regurgitated him, finding the pointy bits on his helmet and the coarseness of his bushy beard highly irritating to its throat. Bruno was expelled from the serpent’s maw with force enough to send him hurtling into the small cave he’d so nearly - and wisely! - considered cowering in. There Bruno sat, snake saliva running down his face, and there he composed the first of his now-legendary epic Adventure Haiku compendiums:

The Great Slitherer!

I saw its heart of darkness

But emerged a-new!

Bruno wiped a few drops of snake juice into a stoppered bottle for proof, and considered the next destination on his journey.

Oh Erglebod. You aint seen nothing yet.