War
Jake the Dog ploughed through the gentle waves at a steady pace. He had morphed his body into a small paddleboat and his flattened feet were kicking, rhythmically propelling him through the water. On his back, sitting on a "bench" made from his flesh, was his seventeen-year-old human brother, Finn. The previous few years had been kind to Finn. Asides from his increased height and a thin, blonde moustache, he was almost indistinguishable from his fourteen-year-old self. His white bear hat obscured most of his head, and his emerald-green backpack sat securely on his back and set in between the two was his blood-red sword, with a circular hilt.
"Hey bro, you better call PB." Jake called, moving his mouth round to his back, to avoid a mouth full of water. "She said the signal might floop up when we get close to the well."
"Oh yeah…" Finn said. He reached into his shirt and pulled out a pink crystal, on a string around his neck. It projected a pink cube of light in the air, with an image of the Princess' shoulders and head inside it. "Hey Peebles. We're almost at the Lich's Well of Power."
"That's great Finn, but be careful." The candy princess' warning was grating and muffled. Her image flickered slightly as she spoke. "My sensors are going floofloo banaynays. Something cra… cra… cra…" The image flickered and disappeared.
"You hear that man?" Finn asked Jake, putting the crystal back under his shirt.
"Sure did. We better be super MEGA careful!" The orange dog confidently declared.
"Bro, I'm gonna make careful circles around you!"
The two brothers laughed loudly as Jake hit the shore of the tiny island and, once Finn climbed off his back, reverted to his normal form. The two of them began to walk through the derelict wasteland that awaited them. The Lich's island housed some of the most intact ruins of the world before the Great Mushroom War in all of Ooo. All around Finn and Jake, crumbling skyscrapers towered and cracked streets stretched off into the distance. If it wasn't for the unearthly chill that hung in the air, they'd probably go adventuring there all the time. That, and their recollection of what had happened on their last visit, four years ago, when the Ice King had carelessly dropped Princess Bubblegum into the Lich's Well of Power, allowing it to come back to life and posses her, almost killing her in the process.
"Hey Finn. If this is Lich biz, we should probably put our anti-mind jack gems on, to keep him out of our noodles." Jake suggested.
"Dude. The Lich has been gone for like, three years!" Finn reminded him. "You remember? Prismo sealed him away in the Time Room, and then Peebles and Pep But did that funky ceremony to lock down the walls between dimensions."
Jake gritted his teeth and groaned. "I know man, I'd just feel a whole lot better with the gems on. I got some private junk up here I don't want the Lich getting his bony mitts on." Jake tapped the side of his head.
Finn sighed and chuckled. "Fine, if it'll make you feel better."
He reached around to his backpack and pulled out two purple gems on golden strings. Jake took his and placed the string around his ears, resting the gem on his forehead. Finn removed his hat and allowed his string to get tangled in his flowing, golden hair. The two gems glowed, and then projected a bubble around Finn and Jake's heads, which slowly faded away.
"Happy now?" Finn smiled patronisingly.
"If the Lich is down here, I'm gonna give you such a pinching!" Jake warned.
The two of them arrived at a set of steps, which led down to a gloomy subway station. Even now, so long after the Lich had activated it, toxic-green wisps of smoke with distressed faces on them still drifted out of the cavern-like station and floated into the air. As they walked down the steps, Finn instinctively drew his sword. Jake reached into his backpack, produced a flashlight, switched it on and jammed it into his own forehead.
The station seemed to stretch down for miles. Derailed trains were piled up around the tracks, and under their feet, crunched the bones of the undead humans Finn had destroyed the last time they were there, with Billy's power gauntlet.
"So if you think the Lich is still locked up in Prismo's closet, how do you explain PB's sensor flimflam?" Jake pointed out.
Finn shrugged. "I dunno, could be zombie karaoke night down there. Remember that time she sent us to the Ice Kingdom to defuse a chemical bomb that turned out to be one of Ice King's socks?"
"Oh yeah… Well you should still be careful! If this place is fine, then how come you never see little peeps living here, like everywhere else in Ooo? There's no kingdom here, or nothing!"
Finn frowned and didn't respond to Jake. The dog had a point. It was almost as if life itself couldn't exist down there, whereas if you went almost anywhere else in the world, everything and its mum could grow a mouth and legs and break into song and dance at a moment's notice. Even fire had come to life and formed its own kingdom.
After what seemed like hours, Finn and Jake found their way to the final set of stairs and descended to the subway station's lowest floor. It front of them, the hauntingly familiar pool of green, glowing liquid bubbled ominously. The steady green glow illuminated the chamber, allowing Jake to remove the flashlight from his head and return it to Finn's backpack. The two brothers stepped towards it carefully. The bubbles raged across the surface like a pot of boiling water.
"Ooh!" Jake exclaimed, making Finn jump. "Use that Stuffometer PB gave you!"
Finn raised his eyebrows as he remembered the device the Princess had armed him with. He reached into his backpack again and pulled out a machine shaped like a brick with a small radar dish at the top of it. On its front, was a small, triangular screen, with a needle and colour-coded segments that, from the left, read, "Nothing, Some Stuff, A Fair Amount of Stuff, and Hot Daniel that's a lot of Stuff!"
Finn waved the device around the station, the needle jittered around the middle of the display, flickering between 'Some Stuff' and 'A Fair Amount of Stuff'. Then, cringing, Finn set out to confirm what they both already feared. He sheepishly pointed the Stuffometer at the Well of Power. Instantly, the needle shot across the display and went as far right as possible. The device rattled like there was a giant bee trapped inside, and then exploded with a shower of sparks.
"Ow!" Finn cried. He tried to shove his entire right hand into his mouth to soothe the angry burn marks that had ruptured all over it.
"I told you!" Jake sneered. "Lich City, Population – Us!"
"Gaaahh gaarrr oooof aaareee!" Finn spluttered through the hand in his mouth.
"What?"
Finn spat out his hand. "That doesn't prove anything!" He repeated. "Of course there's stuff in the Well of Power! Doesn't mean that stuff is the…"
In a flash, a mighty skeletal arm with clawed fingers burst from the pool and swiped at Finn. He jumped back, just in time to escape with nothing more than four hefty scratches in his shirt and belly.
"LICH!" He cried, as the arm clawed at the side of the pool. "Ow! OW! Dude, cut it out!" He snapped, as Jake stretched his arm over and repeatedly pinched him.
The boys stared in terror as a colossal, skeletal husk dragged itself to the surface of the pool. Two spiralling horns crept out first, followed by a face, covered in rotting, putrid skin, that may as well have been ripped off a corpse and carelessly superglued to a skull. Its eyes were black voids with eerie pinpricks of green light at the centre. A heavy-built body followed, wrapped in a grey-green cloak, with a cape that billowed despite the utter lack of wind in the subway station. Two monstrous skeletal arms crept out of the cloak, including the one which had hauled the beast from the well.
The Lich's chest heaved and its head bobbed back and forth as it laughed menacingly. The gems on Finn and Jake's head blotted the sound out, thankfully.
"Lich! You get back in that well and stay there!" Finn warned, like a parent scolding a toddler, pointing at the well with his burnt hand, while holding his sword in his equally strong left hand.
"Bro, be careful…!" Jake mumbled, both his voice and his body trembling in fear.
Suddenly, the skeletal terror lurched forwards and swung at Finn with a set of claws that could cut him to shreds. Finn dived out of the way, and the Lich's head swivelled freely around its shoulders, following Finn's path, but taking its eyes of Jake proved to be a bad idea.
A ribbon of orange spiralled into the air and wrapped around the Lich's face, pulling it back. Two lengths of orange reached across the station, where Jake's head and legs wrapped around a pillar, desperately struggling to keep the undead monster from breaking loose.
Screaming as he did, Finn flew into the air and descended, sword first, upon the Lich's chest. Finn's sword buried itself in a hollow ribcage, right up to the hilt, but the Lich didn't even seem to notice. It tore Jake off its head, then seized Finn by the torso and hurled him across the station like a baseball.
Finn's head slammed into the side of a train and he fell to the ground, his vision spinning like a carrousel. He barely even noticed the Lich looming towards him. Jake's arm stretched forwards and his fingers dug into the Lich's shoulder.
"Hey pal!" He jeered.
The Lich turned around, only to see an orange fist the size of a truck hurtling towards it. The Lich shot across the room, and when it came to a stop, it became apparent that it was silently screaming, steam seemed to seep from its bony arms and head. Rapidly recovering from his concussion, Finn ran over to Jake.
"Dude, what did you do!?" He asked in awe.
Jake grinned. "Fought this big nasty with the power of love."
He showed Finn the hand he had punched the Lich with. On one of his fingers, (a finger he had simply elongated instead of enlarged.) he wore a silver ring with a diamond that gleamed in all the colours of the rainbow.
"Hey, do me a solid and don't tell Lady I used my wedding ring to fight ancient evil?" Jake pleaded. "Promised her I wouldn't do that…"
On the other side of the well, the tiles that lined the floor began to crack as the Lich climbed to his feet. Green fire began to burn angrily in his eyes. Sharing his brother's confidence, Finn reached into his backpack a third time and pulled out a raggedy, sloppily made bobble hat the Flame King (former Flame Princess) had very carefully knitted for him out of regular wool, and wrapped it around his fist like a boxing glove.
"Let's finish this, with the power of LOVE!" Finn cried.
He and Jake charged towards the Lich, each of them running around the Well of Power in an opposite direction. In unison, they jumped into the air, fists poised. Their plan would have been without flaw… if it hadn't been for the Lich's speed…
With a determined blast of green fire from its eyes and mouth, the Lich's head spun around to face Jake and its right arm shot out like a bullet. It punched Jake square in the chest and sent him flying across the station, where he splatted into a wall and trickled feebly to the floor, like a handful of paint. With its left hand, the Lich caught Finn's fist, stopping him in his tracks and holding him in the air. Flame King's bobble hat burnt the Lich's hand but, although it was visibly trembling, it seemed to be tolerating it, like a human might temporarily tolerate holding the business end of a hot poker.
Suddenly, the Lich's hand and Finn's entire right arm burst into green flames. Finn flailed all three of his free limbs and shrieked in pain. As it turned out, Finn's high-pitched wail might have ultimately saved his and Jakes lives.
With all the willpower he could spare, Finn drew his sword with his left hand, swung it over his head and cleaved through the Lich's arm, shattering it like plaster. Finn fell to the floor and tearfully clutched his burnt and blackened arm. The Lich sank down and kicked him across the room, sending him slamming into Jake with a ripple of orange flesh. With the effects of Flame King's hat catching up to it, the Lich collapsed to its knees and wearily reattached the two halves of its left arm. They fused together with a dull green glow.
Finn struggled up to his knees and the misshapen blob that was Jake wearily rose into the air.
"Let's… waste this dingus…!" Finn wheezed.
"You know it… bro…" Came Jake's equally winded reply.
The Lich menacingly rose into the air. For all the damage Finn and Jake had taken, it might as well have been fresh out of the well. With a grin of victory on its rotting face, the tyrannical skeleton blasted across the room, claws first. But a hazy, black blur later, it was imbedding its claws in the stone wall.
As it retracted its claws, the skin around the Lich's nostril holes flapped as it drew a deep breath. It knew what kind of creature had done this. It always annoyed the terrible beast when its fellow undead turned on their own kind…
Several floors up, Finn blinked the roaring wind out of his eyes and tried to come to terms with what had happened and why he hadn't been impaled by the Lich's claws, assuming of course, he hadn't. But Finn didn't suspect death would feel like being lifted into the air by the torso and flown rapidly through a musty subway station. Eventually, his head snapped in gear and he realised what was happening.
"Marceline!? What are you doing here?"
The Vampire Queen had her arm wrapped around Finn's chest and had his canine brother wrapped around her neck like a scarf. Strapped across her torso, was a belt of cylindrical explosives, which she was tearing off with her free hand and scattering around the station as she flew up towards the surface. On her head, perched one of her wide-brimmed sunhat.
"P-Bubs sent me. She knows what happened, so she told me to get you out of here ASAP."
Marceline pulled the final stick of dynamite off her chest and threw it aside, and shot out of the subway's entrance and into the sunlight.
"Marceline, go back! We can take it together!" Finn insisted.
Marceline was flying straight upwards. She reached into her pocket with her free hand and pulled out a mobile phone and a small, silver cylinder.
"Yeah, Bonnie said you'd say that. Here, talk to her." Marceline handed the phone to Finn, then flipped the top off the cylinder with her thumb, revealing a small, red button. "SAYONARA LICHEY-BOY!"
Immediately after Marceline pressed the button, grinning madly, the entire island shook and a mountain of smoke blasted through the concrete and into the air. The towering ruins crumbled to the ground and the entire ruined city collapsed into the crater Marceline's explosives had caused.
"Peebles?" Finn said, putting the phone to his ear once the shock had subsided.
"Finn!" She cried his name in relief. "I'm so glad you're ok! Are Jake and Marcy…?"
"Yeah, Marceline totally saved us both! What's this crazy biz about us not fighting the Lich?"
"Finn, my sensors have totally flipped out! The Lich is far too powerful to be killed by mortal means! If you'd stayed, it would have killed you!"
"But we were getting all up in his business with the power of love!" Finn protested.
"You're not dealing with the same Lich as last time, Finn. It's back, and stronger than ever, the power of love wouldn't have been enough. Come back to the Candy Kingdom with Marceline and we can draw up a battle plan. This isn't over yet."
As the tiny, black spec in the sky disappeared over the horizon, a small patch of the mighty pile of rubble began to shift. As if imitating almost every zombie movie ever made, the Lich thrust its arms through the ground and clawed at the sky. Shaking the pebbles from its skull, the undead monster pulled itself out of the ground and stood up.
This place would do fine. There was so much fear here, so much death. The corpses had been undisturbed for hundreds of years, and that meant they would be restless, the perfect troops to begin its mighty army. The army it would use to crush the pitiful life out of this pathetic world once and for all. There would be no revenge. Not on the candy princess who had imprisoned it, not on the human and dog who had done such a wonderful job of delaying its victory. Revenge was for lower beings, fools who thought it accomplished anything. No, they would die along with everyone else in due time.
As of that moment… the war had begun.