Or, The Story of Giles the Elder and Bufficus the Vampyr Slayer
Author's note: Some of y'all know I'm taking a class called Ancient Mysteries, where we tear apart the occult theories of things like Atlantis, space aliens building Stonehenge, etc. Well, I'm supposed to be writing a paper for that class. See how fast I'm doing it! Well, there's OBVIOUSLY no continuity, not even really among my historical facts (sorry Dr. Minor!), and I promise I'll return them in the same condition as when I borrowed them, Joss.
Narrator: Once in ages past, there was a chosen one. She was the one who stood between the light and the dark. She was Bufficus the Vampyr Slayer.
Bufficus: *offstage* Psst! You spelled my name wrong.
Narrator: I did not, we're going for old here and all the ancient language experts have a tendency to use pre-Victorian spellings.
Bufficus: *still offstage* If we're going for old, we should just do it in ancient Greek.
Narrator: Yes, but the Author only speaks five languages, and of those five the only dead language is Ancient Egyptian.
Bufficus: *STILL offstage* Alexandria is in Egypt.
Narrator: *exasperated* Yes, but the Greeks were the rulers of the world during the 22nd Dynasty where this is set, and wherever Greeks went, the barbarians either learned Greek or died horribly. Is there some reason we're boring the audience with details they'll need only if they get on Super Jeopardy!?
Bufficus: *offstage but smug* Barbarian comes from the Greek term 'bar-bar', which is equivalent to 'blah blah blah' because that's how Greeks thought non-Greeks sounded.
Narrator: *suspiciously* Why are you stalling? What did you do?
Bufficus: *still backstage, but this time in an embarrased voice* Um, nothing... Keep reading the script.
Narrator: Fine! Um, where was I? Oh yes, the chosen one, Bufficus the Vampyr Slayer! After the death of her parents in the plauge, she was adopted by her kindly uncle, Giles the Elder, who was an alchemist.
Giles the Elder: *curtain opens, he is seated at a table piled high with scrolls and magical implements, looks up from the scroll he is reading* Which pays a whole bloody lot better than being a librarian.
Narrator: Suddenly, the earth reels and rocks! Are the gods angry? Is it a tidal wave?
Giles: *grabbing for things as they fall off the table* Is AleXander the Conquered trying to paralell park the chariot again?
AleXander the Conquered: *from the audience* HEY! I'm not supposed to be in this!
Giles: Oh, yes, that's right. Bufficus! Are you all right?
Bufficus: *comes in from offstage [outside] with plaster dust in her hair* Um... yeah.
Giles: Do you know what happened?
Bufficus: *turns red under plaster dust* Um... yeah.
*The two of them stare at each other for a minute.*
Giles: Well...
Bufficus: I--- accidentally knocked the top of the Alexandrian lighthouse off.
Giles: WHAT?!?!?!?
Bufficus: Well, me and this demon were fighting, and it got pretty hot and heavy there with the axes, and I went in for a great overhand swing and cut his head off... and it kind of knocked the top hundred feet or so of the lighthouse into the bay.
Giles: Bufficus, you've just destroyed one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World!!!
Bufficus: I promise I'll fix it! You can take it out of my allownace!
Giles: It can't be repaired! The stone was worth more than all of the olive oil in Greece for the next thousand years! Do you know what problems this causes?
Bufficus: They can still build fires on the bluffs to guide in the ships...
Giles: Bugger the ships! They're all going to die anyways. There's no good likeness of the Lighthouse anywhere that will survive to the 21st century! Plus, the builders did not leave detailed instructions on how they built it, so the pro-UFO-civilisation-seeding camp is going to use the fact we can't afford to repair it as proof it was built by UFOs, because if Greeks built it they'd repair it, wouldn't they? And they'll convinenently forget that it was built in stages and there were actually taller lighthouses built before it, but they were made of boring old wood and had a tendency to burn...
Bufficus: *starts to back out of the room as Giles the Elder continues to rant* Look, I said I'm sorry...
Giles: But nooo, primitive ancient Greeks who discovered the Earth was round and the sun was the center of the solar system, they couldn't pile rocks up that high! They're too stupid, someone had to help them... *Bufficus flees* And then the pro-Atlantis-civilisation-seeding people, don't get me started on them...
Narrator: *quickly closes curtains, but we can still hear Giles hollering* So the mystery of the destruction, or at least the destruction of the top part of the Alexandria Lighthouse has been solved. Minds may now rest easy in this knowledge.
Giles: *sticks head out through curtains* There's NO EVIDENCE of a sunken land mass the size of the one described by Plato in ANY ocean!!!
Narrator: *flees for his life*
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sws