Chapter 12: Lava Nice Day

As the Castle Crashers rendezvoused with the king back at the now-ruined Sea of Flowers Castle, the king and his remaining soldiers agreed to escort Rita home, leaving Saul to rejoin his comrades. When asked why he wouldn't accompany the Castle Crashers any further, he said, "There are only so many generic gray knights in the kingdom. If you cost me any more, I'll have to dock your salary."

"How much?" asked Gottfried.

"At least 50,000 gold per casualty."

"...Fair enough."

"However, I will tell you what Rita told me she knew about the Evil Wizard and his plans."

"Which would be..." asked Lumiere.

"That someone stole three relics from a ship at the docks, and without them, the crew can't set sail."

"Why would the Evil Wizard steal stuff from a ship when he flies most of the time?"

"Actually, the Necromancer does that," said Anton. "It appears that the Wizard can only fly with that crystal. Also, most likely, he stole the relics from the ship to keep us from following him and his minions."

Lumiere opened his mouth to ask why the kingdom had no navy, but then remembered that they did. Instead, he asked, "So, why did Rita agree to marry that conehead, anyway?"

"I asked her that same question," said Saul. "She told me not to think too hard about it. Then again, she was always pretty fickle, even when we were kids."

"Hey! I'm not that fickle!" shouted Rita.

After resupplying and rearming-including replacing Gottfried's cloven shield-the Castle Crashers marched together along the burning bank of a river of lava. Geysers spewed the bright orange liquid in high plumes everywhere they looked. The air hung heavy with smoke and the stench of sulfur, which the Castle Crashers did well to blot out with cloth over their faces beneath their helmets.

"Waah!" yelped Lumiere as a lava geyser gushed forth at his feet.

He glimpsed the plains ahead to see two fire demons approaching, each one wearing a closed, scarlet, horned helmet with amber fangs and lenses, and carrying a charcoal gray pitchfork-like weapon. The minuscule wings on each demon's back looked rather silly.

No sooner did Gottfried open his mouth than one of the demons lurched forward and hocked a fireball from its helmet fangs. "Well, so much for diplomacy," he said, letting the fireball splash against his shield. The fire, however burned a small hole in the shield, urging Gottfried to drop it in pain from the heat.

Lumiere summoned his fire magic to blast the advancing demons, but something felt different. The cracks in his shield gauntlet glowed orange-white as Lumiere felt a massive surge of power well up within him. "Guys, you might want to stand back," he grinned.

"Lumiere, wait!" Anton tried to interject, but it was too late.

His body wreathed in mystic fire, Lumiere hovered in the air and forced his hands forward. A tidal wave of fire washed over the demons, but it had no effect.

"Oh, come on!" spat Lumiere as he touched down.

"My turn," groaned Anton as he formed an ice board and dove headlong at the demons, but to his alarm, the board melted beneath his feet, sending him tumbling onto his face. He was fortunate that his body missed the demons' pitchforks, and more so when Gottfried blasted them back with lightning.

"Okay, note to self: no water in volcanic air," he muttered as he rose to his feet.

Recovering from Gottfried's lightning assault, one of the fire demons hocked another fireball forward that whizzed by Saul's head and splashed into the rocks behind him, melting them into a puddle.

"I think this is the part where we just bum rush those things," said Saul, wiping brimstone soot off his visor.

He charged headlong at the demons and flailed his halberd at the closer of the two, but no sooner had he raised his weapon than his quarry loosed a series of fire pillars that singed the green knight and set the handle of his halberd ablaze. The torched Saul dropped his weapon, grabbed the fire demon, and wrestled it to the ground. The other fire demon ignored its companion and focused its attention on the remaining three Castle Crashers.

Gottfried and Anton sandwiched it between katana edge and lightning bolt, blasting it and carving it up before it could figure out who to attack first. Frustrated by having such immense power and not being able to use it, Lumiere ignited his hammer and heaved it at the remaining fire demon. Saul hauled the fire demon into the path of the blazing hammer, letting the resulting explosion wash over him. He fumbled the dead demon away, sinking to his knees beside the still-burning hammer.

"That recklessness of yours will get you killed someday," said Anton, rubbing the contents of a healing potion into Saul's burns.

"Not today," said Saul.

It was about here that Lumiere spotted a perfectly toasted sandwich lying on the ground where the demon lay. "Hey," he said. "What's a fire demon doing with a sandwich?"

"Of all the wacky things in this place, THAT's what you question?" said Anton.

Without a second thought, Saul peeled himself away from Saul, lifted off his helmet, picked up the sandwich, and took a big bite.

")S$ETY)SAEN$)%CQI#%$YOPEOFR$O^Q{Q)AM{&UQ^UIOS{MUY#A%POMSQ" he roared as he super sized into a ridiculously beefy version of himself.

The other Castle Crashers gawked at him as he plodded onward until he came to a huge metal slab with a likeness of a piece of sliced bread engraved into its face. Saul shrugged to the others, marched to the slab, gripped its sides, and tore it from its mount, revealing a metal ramp leading to the cliffs above. Almost immediately thereafter, he returned to normal size in a puff of black smoke.

"Wow," he moaned. "What happened?"

"Uh...steroids?" shrugged Gottfried. "I know not."

Dodging lava geyser, breaking stone statue, and besting fire demon, raining lava gob, and food that just happened to be in the statues, the Castle Crashers sallied forth until they came to a small, conical mound of rock with an obscure engraving in its side.

"Is this another one of those prophecy thingies?" said Saul.

Gottfried tried to read the inscription to no avail. "I cannot read this," he said. "It is but a picture of a sleeping face."

"A face?" repeated Lumiere. "What's that mean?"

With a low, rumbling moan, the face opened its hollow, glowing eyes and rattled the volcanic mound, spewing gobs of burning lava that rained down on the Castle Crashers. Again and again, they struck at the mound, but to no avail; their weapons and magic glanced off its hide.

"Saul!" barked Gottfried "The sandwich!"

"What sandwich?" said Saul, hopping on a dead fire demon with his halberd like a pogo stick.

"The one you just picked up," replied Gottfried, blocking a gob of lava with his shield.

"Oh, right."

Saul peeled off his helmet, fished out the sandwich from his inventory and swallowed it down.

"PSUN5 Y8OUSYszoiers%(yis#()%wyeta)us#(wq)Z(IRET^YA()$#5erhesau5)Z{UYU" he roared as he super sized again.

This time, as he punched and kicked at the mound, it rattled and squeaked as if in agony. Again and again, he whaled on the mound, until at last, it sputtered and fizzled out, its face vanishing. In that instant, Saul returned to his normal size in another puff of smoke. Again, he wobbled on his feet, straining to recall what had just happened.

Past stone statue, past lava geyser, and through hordes of fire demons, the Castle Crashers sallied forth, but after a while, Lumiere noticed pulsating cracks in his shield gauntlet, as if veins of fire ran through it. When he tried to flex his hand closed, spasms of pain surged through his arm.

"Lumiere, what's wrong?" asked Anton.

"I don't know," said Lumiere. "This hasn't happened before. Well, maybe, it has. I can't remember."

"Oh, great. Another amnesia case. I hate those."

"What do you mean 'another'?"

"Uh, never mind," said Anton with a wave of his hand.

"No, seriously. What do you mean?"

"UROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAH!" roared a massive scarlet dragon with amber eyes and fangs and twisted ram's horns atop its head.

Wait. What? How did that get in there? Uh, one second.

SOME TIME LATER...

So, it turns out that by the time the Castle Crashers had that conversation about amnesia, they had reached the foot of a small volcano with a path leading up to a shuttered doorway, which was guarded by the dragon's dirty sock puppet. Now that we have that out of the way, let's move on.

"Aww, it's kind of cute," said Saul.

"If that's your idea of cute, I'd hate to see your idea of horrendous," said Anton.

The dragon wasted little time attacking the Castle Crashers with its fiery breath. Its head hung too high for any of them to hit, the skin on its hand too thick to pierce. With a slam of this hand, the dragon sent a huge boulder tumbling down the volcano's pathway. It bounced over their heads as they ducked beneath it. Seizing this chance, Gottfried trudged his way up the path and onto a nearby outcropping.

"Castle Crashers, up here!" he shouted. "But beware the puppet!"

"Duly noted," said Anton, lashing out at the dragon's fist as it breathed another stream of fire.

Once the other Castle Crashers joined their leader atop his perched, making sure to stay out of the puppet's reach, Lumiere glanced about.

"Now, what?" he asked.

"Lumiere, blast it!" barked Gottfried.

"What?" spat Lumiere. "You saw what happened when I tried that against the-"

"Just do it!"

"Okay. Fine."

He closed his eyes and let the mystical fire wreathe his body and carry him above the ground once more. Again, he forced his hands forward, loosing a torrent of fire that consumed the dragon's face.

"Saul, throw me!" shouted Gottfried, energizing his longsword and hopping atop Saul's hands.

"Heave ho!" said Saul, launching Gottfried at the dragon as it shook its clear of the fire too late to stop the airborne Gottfried from sundering its head with his energized blade. The red Castle Crasher fired a bolt of lightning to halt his momentum just short of the lava river's bank and let him land safely on his feet.

"It is done," he quipped in triumph.

He soon rejoined his comrades atop the mountain as they gathered around a large, gilded skipper's wheel resting on the nearby outcropping. Saul, quickly losing interest, strolled down the mountain to poke at the dead dragon with his halberd, almost as if trying to wake it up.

"Why doesn't the crew of that ship just buy or make three more relics for their ship?" asked Lumiere, cradling the skipper's wheel in his hands.

Gottfried and Anton shrugged their shoulders while Saul continued to prod the dragon's corpse with his halberd.

Some distance away, the Wizard hovered over the river of lava where Saul had cast the Cyclops, perched atop the great red crystal. Beside him hovered a dark, skeletal-armored necromancer on massive bat-like wings, his skull helmet housing large, curved horns and bleeding red eye slots.

"Unfortunate," growled the necromancer as he stretched out his hand and fed a fell stream of dark energy into the river.

The lava stirred, bubbled, and then gave way to a charred, gloved hand.

"Well done, Terry," applauded the Wizard, watching the Undead Cyclops crawl and scratch his way onto the shore.

"Thank you, master," said the necromancer, "but stop calling me that."