Chapter 18: Air castle? More like SPACE Castle, amirite?
“Well, I guess we’re all out of sidequests.”
“Yep. We’ve spent all our distractions. Nothing left to do now but the main quest.”
“Good luck with that. We’ll just entertain ourselves in the mean time.”
“Did anyone bring a deck of cards?”
“I want to play Trivial Pursuit.”
“If it’s alright, I’d rather take a nap. Haven’t slept in days.”
“GAH!”
“Already? But I wanna sleeeeeeep.”
“No can do. We take off immediately.”
“It looks like the castles in my old bedtime story books, it’s making me even more sleepy.”
“Aw, Kyra, don’t cry. I’m sure we’ll meet unspeakable horrors inside. Then you won’t have to worry about sleep for a long, long time:”
“Um, Chaz, that’s… that’s not helping.”
“Wait, did… did they just swap moods?”
“I’m not sure what just happened.”
“Well, it’s still going to take some time to get there, so you might have time for an hour or two of shuteye. Do you want to-..”
“CAN DO!”
“…go have a.. right. The bunks are in the back.”
*and so, a little past two hours later…*
“And there we have it. Air Castle, the main spot for the Intergalactic Air Guitar Championship, as sponsored by our two main ambassadors from Awesomia; Ted Theodore Logan and Bill S. Preston, esquire.”
“And they are….”
“……”
“Why are you look at me like that?”
“I’ll… uh, just go wake up Kyra.”
*yawn* “Oh man, I really needed that. Anyway, what’s uGAH! THERE IS A FLOATING CASTLE ON OUR RIGHT!”
“Yeeees. That’s the Air Castle that we told you we were going to.”
“Right. Um… let me just go throw some water in my face to wake up fully.”
“I got a WAT spell… if that’s more convenient.”
“Dooon’t even think about it.”
“Well, they did steal the only thing we need to move on with our questline and dared us to set foot here, so… YES!”
“Exactly. That’s just what I said.”
“Well, either someone rolled out the red carpet in the wrong place, or this castle’s got some carpenting issues.”
“Uh… Wren, are you OK? That was kind of… painful.”
“Don’t listen to her, Wren. That was puntastic. Raja would be proud.”
*whirrwhirrwhirrwhirr*
“Oh great. Now he’s crashed. I hope you’re really proud of yourselves.”
“Uh… I’d make a comment on this, but I’m all out of weed jokes.”
“They need two per head too.”
“Hey, look; it’s Blinky, Blinky and Blinky. I guess they got tired of being Pac Man ghosts and sought a new job.”
“Yeah. ORB stealin’.”
“Um… so… we’re fighting Spector now? Did he get tired of kidnapping stars and murdering women?”
“Yes, that’s why there’s nobody here. He’s already serving life in jail.”
“I… guess we can just go, then.”
“Check… mate?”
“Or… cash mate?”
“Put it on my MesetaCard.”
“Frostsabes to the left of me, bladeright to the… uh…”
“Yeah, that’s not going to work, is it?”
“If only we had the Necronomicon. NATHU VERATA NICTU!”
“Well, either this floor is broken, or someone here is a fan of Minecraft.”
“If only we brought some stone blocks. Damn those Creepers.”
“Dimensworm? Is that like a tapeworm that stretches between two guys?”
“Dude, ewww.”
“It’s even fighting beside that two-headed thing. Yeah, I think I can see where this is going.”
“Not me. I’m going to turn my head around.”
“My biological compendium says it prefers to go in the back door.”
“EWWWW!”
“BAD TOUCH! BAD TOUCH!”
“Awww. He’s only trying to high-five you.”
“Keep an eye out for the next level of this spell; ViaGra. It’s a wood-based spell, or so I hear.”
“Don’t let it reach the level of PodaGra, though. That one kind of hurts in the… big… toe.”
“Looks kind of like the ESPer mansion, except their yard is all tiny and has no building in the middle.”
“Yeah, our trio is a bunch of cheapasses.”
“I bet they even got this prime piece of real estate really cheap too.”
“Tic-Tac-Two thousand Meseta.”
“Alright, enough fun and games.”
“Alas, while going down here might give us a different perspective of this crevasse in the castle floor, it does not bring us closer to our goal.”
“Hey, don’t blame me for this castle’s confusing setup. Blame the trio for forcing us to go this ridiculous path.”
“They even want us to come too, yet they force us to take the full route. That makes no sense.”
“Bloody hell, we go all the way around there, and yet we end up where we started. We’re walking in circles. Our trio must be getting quite the larf out of this.”
“It’s like the Mobius strip from hell.”
“Nice view. Well, if we weren’t providing the fight, it might’ve been worth watching it from here.”
“THUMBS DOWN!”
“Et tu, Brute?”
“LET US LOOT WITH SWIFTNESS!”
“I think this helmet is for you, though. Put it on swiftly.”
“And then we can leave this room in haste.”
“The view is not quite as nice here, even if you just want to watch the stars.”
“I think the bottom is falling out underneath the housing market.”
“Well, it’s not easy to get a good price for your home if it’s in space. The commuting expenses are hell, to put it mildly.”
“…uh.”
“That is a nasty-sounding claw.”
“A claw? Give it here, then.”
“Um… OK, but… yeah, it almost sound like… if you kill something with it, you are bound to find every single other example of that fiend and kill them too.”
“Oh, balderdash. It’s most likely something far more mild than this.”
“And it really IS invisible this time, eh, Chaz?”
“Oh, lay off.”
“Ye-.. wait, ‘real THING’? ‘Them’? GRAMMAR GRAMMAR GRAMMAR!”
“Oh, sue me. Like I care about those three. They’ll be dead soon anyway.”
“BRIGHT LIGHT BRIGHT LIGHT!”
“A healing circle? That’s… not the same design as those space station circles.”
“Who cares. They heal us, and that’s what’s important.”
“First, they make us go the full route, then they heal us up again. This place is confusing. Or the trio are quite sporting fellows.”
“Their funeral. Literally.”
“Um…”
“…yes, you already established that, you dialogue-repeating hooligans.”
“I like sw-..”
“SHUT UP! THAT IS THE OLDEST JOKE EVER!”
“..-ordchucks.”
“Would you like a round of plasma to the stomach, maybe? Don’t you think that will be fun?”
“Um… no, not really.”
“However? However what? You stole the sacred orb, and we’re here to stab you over it. There are no variations to this equation.”
“Fanboys!”
“Well, at least they’re a cheerful bunch. Ha, ha, ha, ha!”
“And so dapper too. Ha, ha, ha, ha!”
“Ha, ha, ha, ha!”
“You’re supposed to say something before laughing, Wren.”
“Well, I… didn’t have anything to add. Ha, ha, ha… ha?”
“STOP MAKING FUN OF US! HAaa..dammit!”
“HA, HA, HA, HA!”
“Gnrrrgh!”
“Well, that’s just playing favorites. But OK, fine. You mutilate him all you like, but I think you could at least harvest our organs or something.”
“Chaz, I don’t HAVE any organs.”
“Maybe they’ll pull out a few cards or uninstall some files on you if you ask really nicely.”
“Yes. As evil minions, that’s the least they could do.”
“Now you’re just being mean.”
“Well, they say all good things come in… uh, threes. Or maybe that was trees.”
“Who said that?”
“Probably some hippie.”
“SHUT UP AND DIE ALREADY!”
“YEOW! That actually kind of hurt.”
“To think a combination attack would cause so much pain.”
“Let’s try that ourselves. All together now…”
“Um…. right.”
“Well, the second we took care of one of them, their combination attack kind of fizzled out. So… I guess that’s how to handle that.”
“They even had a healing circle behind them. Why they didn’t go back and heal themselves mid-battle is anybody’s guess.”
“Like I said; sporting.”
“Still no orb, though.”
“I guess we’re just going to have to go and speak to the manager of this place.”
“OK, so we have Moon-Dew, we have Star-Dew and we have Sol-Dew.”
“….yes. And?”
“It just makes me wonder… do they have any Mil-Dew.”
“No! Ew! Why would you want that?”
“I didn’t say I wanted it. I just thought it sounded interesting.”
“….you’re weird.”
“…and underground lair. Of course.”
“And even though we’ve got solid walls around us, we can still partially see the floors below us. CRAZYTOWN!”
“Castle.”
“Whatever.”
“What… did we just defeat? And what the hell is a ‘negatis’? It sounds kind of dirty.”
“Sounds like a spell that causes vasectomy.”
“AUGH WHY WOULD YOU EVEN WANT TO CAST THAT! THAT’S JUST TOO EVIL!”
“Dead end.”
“D’OH! I don’t think we saw that from above.”
*sigh* “So… now that we’ve reached the bottom, we’re being lead to the left side of this and has to ASCEND again? Where’s the sense in that?”
“I can only draw the conclusion that our host is an exercise nut.”
“He’s like an evil Richard Simmons in ‘Sweatin’ Through the Cosmos’.”
“AAAARGH! Christ, Rune. They might’ve been evil, giant knife-wielding monsters, but even they didn’t deserve having their crotches disintegrated.”
“Oh man, that looked painful, and I’m not even a guy.”
“OK, I think we’ve reached something here. A gate leading straight into… nothing?”
“Oh! It leads into a room with… another gate.”
“And some pillars.”
“Kind of redundant, though.”
“Ah, looks like we interrupted our host and his game of Minecraft. He’s barely even had time to get started on the floor in here before we came in to blow everything up.”
“Well, boo hoo for him, then. If he wanted to dedicate his time to this hip to be square world, he shouldn’t sent his evil trio down to steal stuff. That’s just not right.”
“That’s a sha-..wait, what? A fake? He’s got time to MAKE that, even? That’s it, Rune. You will Negatis his balls out of existance the second we see him, OK?”
“Eesh, Rika. You’ve got quite the yandere side to you at times.”
“Spector again. And we could see him this time.”
“Emphasis on ‘could’.”
“Well… yeah. He died rather easily, didn’t he? Rune didn’t even have to Negatis him.”
“That was most likely not our ‘landlord’ anyway.”
“You DO know that I’m not REALLY Lutz, right? I may have some arbitrary memories of his, but Lutz is long dead, pal.”
“I DO NOT CARE! MY VENGEANCE WILL BE UNLEASHED ON SOMEONE!”
“Now there is a guy with some severe anger management issues.”
“And why not? Your minions sure came here easily enough. Presumably even without a spaceship. What’s stopping you?”
“REVENGE, I SAID!”
“Yeah, you got issues.”
“Ew!”
“So you waited for twice as long as even the most long-lived of us has existed?! How do you even do that?”
“I think it’s called ‘rationalisation’.”
“Shut up and eat this!”
“BLARGH!”
“Oh no, that fiend. He gave Wren a goofy mask.”
“Doesn’t waste any time in making a fool out of us, does he?”
“Well, two can play at that game. Shall we?”
“HOAAAARGH! That’s no fair.”
“See? I told you TWO could play at that game.”
“What does… OW …a burning inferno… OW …have to do with… OW …goofy masks?”
“We’re flaming you.”
“You’re dead, and you smell bad. Noob.”
“……”
“Well, we’ve mastered ‘explode’.”
“Not to mention ‘meat chunk rain’.”
“Well, he had it coming.”
“HEY! Stop finishing….”
“…your sentences?”
“YES! It just pisses me…”
“…the hell off?”
“AAARGH! I WILL NOT DIE WITHOUT…”
“…getting the last word?”
“And he failed even that. Chaz, you’re kind of mean.”
“SLAAAAAM DUUUUUNK!”
“AAAAH! RIKA, WAIT!”
“Juuust kidding.”
“…..”
“And Lashiec was supposed to be the evil one? Heh.”
“Well, whaddya know. He managed to get in the last word anyway.”
“Word? That was a whole paragraph.”
“And what was up with that ‘I must work for him’ part? Lashiec, evil mastermind or evangelist?”
“I guess we’ll never know.”
“Well, then take us out of here, Mr. Hinas McObvious.”
“Hey, I’m not the only one who know this spell.”
“So we’re all going to die because they can’t make up their minds about who will get our HINAS out of here?”
“Erm… Wren, that’s… a really bad play on words. Update now!”
“OH GOD, WREN, YOU WERE RIGHT! THIS IS A HUGE SHOCK!”
“No, I meant… that’s not…”
“I don’t think it’s going to be quite as easy as that.”
“Planet Dezolis in sight.”
“Time to go start a forest fire.”
“We should probably go visit the temple first, though. Let them know the Eclipse Torch is safe.”
“Oh, fine.”
“It’s time to give them their last meal.”
“Make ’em see the light… so to speak.”
Having regained the holy light, our heroes set off to rescue their friends and, of course, the whole planet. But before they go to the dread tower, they have to know just one thing….
“Yep. He’s still alive.”
“And singing.”
“Did did did did did you see the frightened ones…..?”
“Sounds like they’re both in their own concert world.”
“Well, it’s time for us to go, too. You know, to break down the wall… of TREES!”