Captain Valiant. Magically afflicted mortal. : Kingdom Of The Wicked.

Captain Valiant had not always been Captain Valiant. No, Captain Valiant had once been an ordinary boy called Declan Spencer, and Declan Spencer had lived a very ordinary life. That had been a week ago however, and now things were very different.

Different had hit poor Declan like a truck, a truck that was towing another truck which itself was carrying a thousand toy trucks to the toy truck store. And that's a whole lot of truck.

The last thing Declan Spencer had thought as he spiralled down to the ground, his vision blurring, his gangly arms numb, was how pitiful a death this must seem from an outside perspective.

He'd heard of people that just dropped down dead from un-discovered brain tumours or a severe deficiency of carrots, but he hadn't really believed them until this moment. And now he was paying for it, falling slowly to the pavement with no chance of rescue and dying from the inside out.

That wasn't it. What he was feeling right now was a very acute helplessness as all of his senses started to shut down. What a way to go, being beaten by a carrot. Actually he'd been beaten by the absence of carrots in his diet. Declan wouldn't have minded too much if a carrot had beaten him, because then at least he would have gone down fighting something.

But the reason he was dying was because of a carrot-shaped absence in his stomach, no epic battle, no final stand, Declan had been beaten by 'No carrots' and that was just rubbish.

Then Declan saw something float past him, just before his eyesight failed him completely.

'What the hell is that?' he thought.

Something white and papery had slowly flown past his nose, seconds before blackout.

'A shopping bag? Oh yeah.'

Declan remembered that he had just finished shopping when he had started to get dizzy. Mum wanted pasta, teabags, eggs, and a loaf of brown bread, and it was important that Declan bring them back quickly because she was hungry and needed to be off to her game of bridge this afternoon.

All that seemed to have happened years ago. A whole other lifetime, and what he'd learnt then wasn't going to help him where he was going now,

Lights? Oh Lights. Yep. Those were definitely lights. Warm blues and bright greens surrounded Declan and kept him suspended in the twilight of his own brain.

Wait, just back up a second. Where was the street now?

'Hello?!' He shouted into the colors.

'Look, this is a really nice place and everything but my mum needs me to make her some tea, so if I could wake up now…I'd…I'd really like to go home please.'

Declan wasn't sure exactly who he was talking to. He probably looked like a crazy person. If he had to make a guess he would probably say it was the presence that he feeling all around him, and including him. It was in his throbbing temples, and then the shadows, and then in the places that weren't shadows.

Now what did you call a thing that wasn't a shadow? Anything else he supposed, it wasn't very clear.

As Declan floated in space the colors that were actually helping a lot to make him feel at ease started to strobe around him and merge together, revealing a silhouetted figure of luminous white in his periphery.

"Why do you resist child, I do not wish to harm you. I only mean to give you what is yours. A most stupendous gift, your birth right and your place in the physical world."

The voice that swathed over him came in waves, like the gentle reassurance of a coastline. Nothing could ruin this perfect moment in all its holy beauty.

"Are you a carrot?!" Declan called over to the figure, trying his best to swim over to him.

Well, almost nothing.

The words were out before he could stop himself, a product of his be-fuddled mind and surreal surroundings.

But the man dressed in the white gown didn't seem to mind, in fact he started to chuckle as if he had been told the most amusing joke.

"No child, I am no sort of rooted vegetable. Though I'm sure you already knew that. You've seen me several times before in world of your dreams. Think back. Take hold of your memories. Know my name to be Argeddion, and you the receiver of thy gift."

The angel Argeddion (for this is what Declan decided he was) placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.

At that very instance Declan could feel something warm pulsing in his chest.

"Wait…WAIT, wha..WHAT what is…?"

"Go now…" the soothing dulcet tones came again. "Go see for yourself the value that this gift holds within."

And with that it was Captain Valiant that woke up on a broad street in Roarhaven, surrounded (and covered) in the remains of a dozen eggs, and ravenously hungry.

That's to say, hungry for justice.