Chapter 1: Sealand's POV
Life as a tiny country gets boooooring sometimes! However, one day all our lives changed forever. I was busy riding my goat while swabbing the deck, which is not a euphemism for anything, when suddenly out of nowhere this portal appeared! At first I thought it was just a really dirty place so I scrubbed at it with some of my cleaning supplies. Instead of scrubbing it away, my hand was sucked in.
"Whoa, cool! I have a portal!" I thought to myself, and then suddenly tumbled head over heels into it. "AUUUUGH!"
I landed on my bottom in front of a girl in black and a tall, skinny man. The girl had long raven hair and wore a black ring on her hand. The man wore a wide-brimmed hat, a perfectly tailored suit, and gloves. Tufts of flaxen hair peeked out from under the hat and light blue eyes glared at me.
"Welcome, Sealand," he said in a voice like the smoothest velvet. "I'm Detective Inspector Me."
"Me?"
"Not you, me."
"You're me?"
"Oh forget it..."
"Well listen You, why am I here, exactly? Where am I?"
"Good question," said the man in the suit. "You're in Ireland. Miss Cain and I," he said, gesturing to the girl in black, "brought you and your fellow countries here using a portal we constructed."
"Can we trust her?" the girl, Cain, asked.
"I think we can, Valkyrie," said Me, and his hands went to his collarbones. The face flowed away, revealing a grinning, chalk-white skull. I stifled a shriek.
"You're a skeleton."
"That's true."
"But you're alive."
"That's also true."
"But you're a skeleton."
"Look, can we stop talking in circles, please?" the skeleton said, exasperated. "It wastes time, and I hate wasting time. This is my assistant, Valkyrie Cain. My name is Skulduggery Pleasant."
"But... skeleton..." I spluttered. Skulduggery sighed.
"Valkyrie, please show young Miss Sealand to China's library before she must re-inform me of my skeletonhood." Miss? Does he think I'm a girl?
"OK, Skulduggery," said Valkyrie. She gripped my arm and led me to a longish corridor.
"But he's a skeleton," I babbled.
"At some point, you'll have to stop saying that," she said. Finally, we came to a door at the end of the corridor. Valkyrie opened it up. Inside, I saw some of my friends as well as people I'd never seen. Italy sat on a beanbag chair, reading a book called 1,001 Ways to Make Pasta Using Magic. England snapped his fingers and a fireball appeared in his hand. The most beautiful woman I'd ever seen stood in a corner, and France was attempting to flirt with her by slowly removing his clothes.
"Ugh," I said, turning away.
"Welcome," said Valkyrie, "to the world of magic."