Darkstalkers: Dark Black, yadda yadda yadda
DARKSTALKERS:
THE DARK BLACK NIGHT OF DARKER SHADOWED MIDNIGHT BLACKNESS
The sun did not beat down on the big man and the little girl as they walked down
a lonely country road. The heat did not assail them in monstrous waves like a
breath from the pits of Hell itself, nor did the light from the sun torment
their eyes and blind them, because it was nighttime, of course. It's kind of
hard for all of those things to happen on a pitch-black moonless night full of
shadows and other dark things.
In the darkness, the man strode purposefully onward. His bare feet made
impressive crunching noises on the fine gravel and his clothes flowed about him
impressively. An impressively impassive expression sat on his noble features
and the lack of light failed to glint impressively off of his impressively huge
sword. In short, then, he strode impressively down the road. He made not a
sound. He said not a word.
He slammed facefirst into a large object in the road.
"Aaaooww, who pud thad there," he observed, nursing his insulted nose. He
fumbled about in the shadowy darkness that was so impressive two seconds ago,
feeling what he had just walked right into.
This, of course, was the reason why Anita walked Ibehind/I him.
"Stupid git's gone and spaced out again," she muttered under her breath.
Finally, Donovan lit a torch by executing the complicated manouvre of pressing
the button with his impressively drawn thumb. Still looking as impassive as
ever, even with the huge bandage on his broken nose, he swung the beam this way
and that.
"Huh," he pontificated.
Anita looked. Strewn about an overturned carriage were several dead bodies.
They looked as though every single one of them had suffered some sort of
internal failure, as there wasn't a mark on them.
All, that is, except the banana stuffed into one man's ear and a note stapled to
another man's head.
The note was folded up.
Donovan reached forward and pulled it from the man's head with a flick of his
impressively drawn wrist. The metal jangling sound that accompanied him
whenever he did anything more than stand there and breathe sounded a little bit
louder.
Amid more jangling, he opened the note. It unfolded, flopping downwards until
it extended in three feet or so of paper. His eyes scanned the print. They
widened for an instant, then his brows met.
"There's only one thing to be done about this," he intoned.
"What's that?" Anita asked.
"Where?" Donovan shouted, dropping instantly into a fighting stance, the note
clutched in one fist. He looked damned impressive as he whipped his gaze about
the dark plain, the paper in one hand and the torch in the other.
To Anita, however, he just looked damned silly.
"No, what is 'the only thing to be done about this,'?" she clarified with a
sigh.
Donovan straightened, as though all this were the most natural thing in the
world for a person to do out in the middle of no-where. He looked at the note
in his hand, as though reminding himself of what he'd been thinking about two
seconds ago. "There's only one thing to be done about this," he reiterated.
Before Anita could reply, he added, "This." He bent and, with a fluid and
impressive motion, he plucked the banana out of the dead man's ear. He then
continued walking, engaging in the impressive task of peeling the banana and
eating it.
And Anita wondered for the Inth/I time just what she was following this yutz
for.
ITake a walk on the silly side. The undead, you know, don't have two brain
cells left to rub together, yet they fight anyway. Why is that? Where am I
going with this narrative? What, if anything, does this have to do with the
images of strange creatures fighting each other for no apparent reason other
than the fact that it's been in the script since the first game came out in '93?
Take a walk on the silly side and, if you find out why...
Come and tell me because I have no clue.../I
A woman sat in a posh theatre, waiting for the play to start. No-one else there
was waiting for anything, though, as they were too busy staring at her with
either seething, muderous jealousy or unabiding, panting lust. She frowned. It
used to be that she enjoyed this reaction when she went about in the Human
world, having poured herself into some skintight little bit of something,
turning on that sexual charm in a manner that only a succubus could. Nowadays,
though, she found it mind-numbingly boring and more than a trifle irritating.
She sighed. Several male bodies hit the floor in dead faints and several sets
of female fingernails shredded the seat cushions.
The lights went out and, thankfully, no-one could see the succubus any more.
They looked at the stage as the play started and people on the stage danced
about, pretending to be cats.
To Morrigan's increased, albeit completely irrational, ire, one appeared to not
to have to pretend at all. A little part of her mind was not surprised, after
all, what other musical would Felicia appear in, for crying out loud? It was,
however, drowned out by the voice that popped up in her head whenever she saw
one of those people.
"RRRREADY..." it said.
"FIGHT!"
And Morrigan leapt onto the stage, scattering Jellicles everywhere as she
shouted something in Japanese and threw a bat-shaped energy bolt at Felicia.
The catwoman ducked, took three strides forward, and lashed out with a claw.
She took with her the only button that held Morrigan's blouse together.
"Onegai," Felicia yelled, an evil smile on her face. "Tasukete!"
"K.O.," the voice intoned as Morrigan was buried under the entire audience,
humiliated beyond measure.
After a moment, she crawled out from under the writhing, groping, punching,
kicking crowd, and limped off the stage. She leapt and flew after Felicia as
she bounded backstage and out the door. The fight continued in earnest.
And continued.
And continued.
And Icontinued./I
"Had enough yet?" Felicia screeched, missing several hanks of fur and jumping up
and down on an equally bedraggled Morrigan. "Yet? Yet? Yet?"
"Never!" came the reply. "Never! Never! Never!"
"Well, that's what you get for ruining my musical!" Felicia screeched, kicking
Morrigan in the ribs so that she shook like two specifially placed bowls of
jelly. "Do you know how long it takes to shampoo my fur?!" another kick. "What
possessed you to leap onto the stage and attack me, you brainless collection of
pheremones?!"
"Didn't you hear the voice?" Morrigan demanded, catching Felicia's foot and
throwing her against the building. "And I resent that remark, I am not a
collection!"
"What voice?"
"The one that says, 'FIGHT!'" Morrigan replied, in a passible imitation of that
voice that follows them all wherever they go...
Felicia stopped and blinked at Morrigan.
"Oh. That voice," she said. She scowed heavily. "That stupid voice. I get
into so many fights because of it and I'm sick of it!"
"Me, too," Morrigan said, hauling herself up from the pavement.
"If I ever find that stupid voice, I'll wring its neck!" Felicia grumped.
"So let's find it," Morrigan replied. "Truce?"
"Yeah, okay. Let's go," Felicia replied, eyeing the succubus warily. "But put
some clothes on, first.
"Oh, you're one to talk," Morrigan replied as her fighting costume (such as
there was of it) appeared around her. Felicia stuck her tongue out at her
before walking away down the street.
"Where do we start?" Felicia asked.
"I think I have an idea," Morrigan replied.
In a quiet Japanese house, a samurai sat on the verandah, a cup of tea in his
hands. He gazed contemplatively, as only samurai apparently do, upon the
insane, mind-bending simplicity of a Zen rock garden. Really, I mean it's a few
rocks and obsessively combed sand, yet somehow they found a multitude of
meanings in it. Must be something in the tea.
He sipped the tea. It mattered not that he was a glowing spectral entity who
apparently had no feet, he drank the tea and pondered the rocks because he was a
samurai and that's what samurai do on their off hours.
A knock sounded on his door. The samurai sighed and put down the tea, floating,
as only a footless ghost does, toward the door.
He opened it.
And screamed.
Granted, the scream wasn't exactly an "EEEEEEE!", or even a "YAAAAAHHHH!" or an
"OOOOO" in surprise and alarm.
It sounded a lot more like, "AAAARRRRGH!"
And it was followed by an enraged "GO AWAY, YOU RIDICULOUS HEAP OF RUSTED
METAL!"
The object of his ire didn't budge. "Don't you have anything better to do?" the
samurai demanded.
"Nope," the armour at his door replied.
"Oh, so you just decided to visit me because you were bored?" the samurai
snapped peevishly.
"Essentially, yes," the armour replied.
The samurai sighed. "Well, have at it, then," he growled.
The armour surrounded him so that he was now wearing it. The samurai sighed
again and returned to his verandah. He sat, reduced by his circumstance to a
kind of spectacularly un-Ibushido/I peevishness, deciding with a
stubbornness that would make a Swede tell him to lighten up that he would remain
bored no matter what.
As his impressively bad luck would have it, events unfolded a little bit
differently. The clouds parted and the full moon shone down on the land. The
samurai looked up, flabbergasted, as he could have sworn the night had been
moonless a few minutes ago. His gaze then whipped from the sky as a
"GGGRRRAAAAAAAHHH!" sounded from his bushes, of all places, and a werewolf, of
all things, fell out. He appeared to have a piece of paper stapled to his head,
but it didn't bother him in the slightest.
"RRREADY..." a voice intoned.
"Oh no, not again," the samurai moaned.
"Grrrrrrr," the werewolf added.
"FIGHT!"
The armour snapped to the samurai's feet, the sword in the samurai's hand. The
samurai sighed mentally as the armour charged at the werewolf, who leapt,
slashing with his claws.
And, yet again, the fight commenced.
Halfway through, though, after the werewolf had kicked the armour upside the
samurai's head, stunning it for a moment, the samurai took control and reached
out, grabbing the paper. An almost blase swing of the sword knocked the
werewolf off his feet. The samurai flipped open the note with a flick of the
armour's hand.
The werewolf hauled himself up from the grass, staring at the armour.
"ARGH," the samurai growled, "When will she leave me alone?!"
"Who?" the werewolf asked.
"I don't know," the samurai growled. "That's what gets me so mad."
"Where did you pull that from in the middle of a fight?" the werewolf demanded.
"The top of your head," the samurai replied, gesturing with the armour's other
hand.
"Oh, so that's where that stench came from," the werewolf replied. "It nearly
made me sick!"
"What stench?"
"Perfume. And I think I know whose. How dare she staple that to my head?!"
"Show me," she samurai replied, and Talbain and Bishamon left the Japanese
house, setting off to find the owner of that incredibly strong perfume.
And, all over, the world, various Darkstalkers stared in absolute horror and
rage at what stood or sat or lay before them...
Sasquatch set out from the pile of viciously and excessively clubbed harp seals,
a note with incomprehensible ideograms on it that he was certain said something
along the lines of, IHa, ha, take that,/I clutched in one fist.
And Rikuo, likewise, set out from the shore where a pod or two of dolphins in
tuna nets lay, words spelt out next to them in seaweed that said,
IThbbbbttttttt, love, Charlie Tuna./I Judging by the fur at the site, he
had a good idea who did it, too.
And Anakaris left the pyramid upon which someone had spray-painted, in Iday-
glo green,/I several lewd pictures in Egyptian style, and had signed it,
IThere, that looks much better,/I in a very familiar scrawled handwriting.
And over the river and through the woods from grandmother's house Baby Bonnie
Hood went, fuming and growling all the way, hunting for the creature who had
robbed the aforementioned matriarch blind, leaving her only her bonnet and false
teeth and a cryptic note. If that isn't obvious, I don't know what is, she
fumed. He'll be eating through a straw when I'm done with him!
And Hsien-ko, who was never in one place for very long, was now traveling with a
purpose, having found the tyres of her sister's car slashed, the gas siphoned
out, and--the straw that broke the camel's back--the CD player ripped out and
replaced with an 8-track, cassettes of Barry Manilow in place of their favourite
discs of Chinese opera. Her only clue, a note scrawled in the paint-job with a
key, signed with a familiar name.
And, watching all this in a manner that can't be explained with mere logic and
science, Demitri Maximoff laughed a hearty, booming, and only slightly maniacal
laugh.
"GWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA," he laughed.
The nicely bouncing view of Hsien-ko tromping across a moor was replaced by a
familiar upside-down face. "THHBBBBTTT!" said the face. Demitri's own face
turned...well, okay, it didn't really turn any colour because he'd been feeling
a little peckish, but he bared his fangs.
"Upstart," the face said. "Pervy bastard."
"Pleonastic purple poet," Demitri replied.
"Circumlocutory simpleton," Jedah answered.
"Your wings are as stunted as your manhood," Demitri spat.
"Your fangs are as dull as your mind," Jedah retorted.
"Blood donor," Demitri sneered.
Oooooo. You can't throw a worse insult at a vampire. Jedah dropped the
proverbial volley. As he had eaten recently, he turned a lovely shade of
purple. "Th--" he spluttered. "Wh-- Ghrgh-- Yah--"
"GWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA," Demitri laughed.
The view returned to Hsien-ko, just before she whipped an enormously sleeved arm
in an arc toward the camera, not even looking at it. Demitri caught one last
look at a nice jiggle before the camera went to static. Besides thinking
pleasant thoughts about what he just saw and his smug satisfaction at having
beaten Jedah at yet another contest, he secretly thanked the fates that Morrigan
wasn't there to see him ogling that particular Chinese dumpling. She'd beat him
senseless if she knew.
The window shattered inwards and he thought for a moment that she Ihad/I
seen him and was about to dish out painful punishment.
A familiar tall, thin figure only slightly less dapper than his good self stood
before him, panting and blowing. He waved a scythe about for a moment in a
frothing, eye-rolling rage and charged with a bloodcurdling scream.
Demitri yawned and swatted him out of the air when he leapt for him.
And yet another fight commenced.
Talbain and Bishamon came upon a town, one with a castle on an enormous rock
hanging over it in a most improbable fashion.
"I've been here before," the samurai observed, pointing with the armour's hand.
"This is where she hangs out now," Talbain replied. He looked to his right when
the samurai (or was it the armour) burst out laughing. It couldn't have been
the armour, he decided, because it wasn't an evil laugh, or a maniacal laugh,
but the wholehearted, enthusiastic laugh of someone who had just heard something
hysterically funny.
"Hee hee," the samurai chuckled. "Hangs out. That's a good one."
Talbain, being the altogether too serious-minded stick-in-the-mud that he was,
had to ponder a moment before he got it. "Oh, yeah," the werewolf snickered.
They headed toward the town.
But no sooner had they hit the city limits than a bat-shaped energy bolt slammed
into the armour's head, knocking the samurai flat.
"There you are!" a female voice shouted.
They looked.
"There she is!" Talbain barked and leapt.
Morrigan took to the air. "What's your problem," she demanded. Out of the tail
of her eye, she saw Felicia charge toward the aforementioned evil samurai.
"Hey, leave me some!" she yelled.
"Come down from there, coward!" Talbain shouted up at her.
"No-one calls me a coward, dog!" she spat.
"Wolf," Talbain said as she sailed past, her kick missing.
"What?"
"Wolf. I'm a wolf, not a dog."
"What-Iever/I!!"
They beat on each other as Felicia and Bishamon laid waste to another corner of
the street.
Just as Talbain was about to kick Morrigan senseless after having cornered her,
a spray of bullets threw him to the ground. He stuggled up, turning to look
behind him.
"There you are!!" the enraged Red Riding Hood clone screeched. "'Big Bad Wolf,'
indeed!!" She let fly with another hail of bullets.
"What?!" Talbain yipped. "What? What?"
"Defend yourself!" Hood screeched.
Just as the fight was promising to get nasty, Hood was smacked to the ground in
a most indecorous manner by a set of three-foot iron claws on a chain.
"How dare you?!" a voice hollered from above. A shower of iron balls
accompanied the descent of the wild zombie. "An 8-track?! You monster!"
"I didn't do anything with an 8-track!" Hood yelped.
"I am not a stepping stone!" Felicia hissed, nursing her injured head where
Hsien-ko had leapt off of it.
"I could never stand you!" Morrigan added. The three set upon Hsien-ko, who
fought them all off and knocked them flat with a multitude of sharp weapons.
The fight was so short and brutal that all the males stared.
"How..." Morrigan grated, "how could you have done that? You're the worst in
the game!"
"You're so slow!" Felicia added.
"And so easy to hit!" Hood put in.
"Easy," the Ikuan-shi/I replied with a smug smile. She put her hands on her
hips and stuck her chest out. "My measurements beat yours. Just check out my
popularity on the net. Ha," she added, for extra pulchritudinous effect.
"Oy," Bishamon said, shaking his head.
"Wow," Talbain added, staring even harder.
"GRAAAAHHH!" the three women roared and leapt.
The fight got a little more viscious and a little bloodier.
"Eep!" Felicia said as a green, scaly hand grabbed her out of the air.
"Murdering fish-eater!" Rikuo howled, slamming her against a convenient wall.
Felicia looked up. She'd had enough. "Mmm, sushi," she said, licking her lips.
She leapt and...well, you get the picture.
And Morrigan looked up to dodge a huge sword as it looped through the air toward
her. It returned to its owner, who said, in an impressively impassive voice,
"Where is your consort?"
"Wha-Ihaaaat/I?" But before she could inquire further of Donovan, a
sarcophagus of obviously Egyptian design flattened him.
"Stinking desacrator!" a particularly...mummylike voice rumbled and, yep, you
guessed it, another fight started, but didn't last for long before an ice storm
buried the mummy in six feet of snow and a large furry shape came sailing in to
send his target flying with a spectacular flying kick. Yaddah, yaddah, fight,
fight, yakkety-schmakkety....
And meanwhile, in the castle, Demitri placed a chess piece in its new space,
knocking over the opposing king. "Checkmate," he said.
"Best of twenty, then!" Jedah yelled.
There wasn't much left of the city block the fight had started in. It had been
pounded and sliced, raked to rubble by claws, blasted by bombs and missiles, and
pocked with gunfire. There was ice and fur and water and blood everywhere.
Bits and clothing and blunted esoteric melee weapons lay strewn in the rubble.
The fight had gotten even worse when a Frankenstein's monster had attacked Rikuo
and a punk-rocker zombie had made one too many amorous advances toward Hsien-ko.
Now a bedraggled Morrigan waved her arms around. "Stop, stop, STOP!"
The fight paused as people looked at her.
"What on Earth is this all about?!" she demanded.
Twelve voices created a babel of complaints. Another fight broke out.
"ENOUGH!" Morrigan screeched, flattening the combatants with another bat-shaped
energy bolt. "Let's start from the beginning." She looked at Felicia. "We
were looking for the source of that annoying voice. And there he is!" She
pointed an accusing finger at Bishamon.
"Huh?" was the samurai's witty reply.
"She isn't going anywhere until she answers for what she did to those dolphins!"
Rikuo put in.
"And you aren't going anywhere until you pay for flooding out my house!" Victor
told him.
"I didn't flood your house!"
"I didn't kill any dolphins!" Felicia added.
"All I need to do is find your long-winded consort," Donovan said calmly.
"You can't because you will die for what you did to my pyramid," Anakaris
reminded him.
"And you aren't killing anyone because I'll kill you for what you did to those
poor seals!" came the obvious answer from Sasquach.
"He robbed my granny blind, the beast!"
"You deserve it, you philistine! You even slashed our tyres!"
"Oh, squelch it, you smug overstuffed jiggling paira tits!"
"Don't talk to my girl like that!"
"You stay out of this! I'm not your girl!"
"I didn't rob your granny, I was looking for the owner of that hideous perfume!"
"That's right, the author of this ridiculous note!"
"Waitaminit, waitaminit!" The accusations died down when Morrigan snatched the
note out of the armour's hand. She read it, then took a whiff.
"That is your perfume!" Talbain insisted.
"And it's your handwriting!" Bishamon added.
Morrigan favoured them with a sour glare. "Of all the guys out there, you're
the one I'd have the least interest in, beleive me, honey," she said. Then she
looked at Talbain. "I don't even wear this crap anymore. Someone else does..."
she thought for a moment.
"If you didn't rob my granny and leave that Big Bad Wolf note, who did?" Hood
asked.
"Who flooded out my house and left a note signed 'Rikuo?'"
"Who clubbed those seals and left a note in heiroglyphics?"
"Who spraypainted pictures on my pyramid and left a note signed 'Donovan?'"
"Who killed those dolphins and left Felicia's fur?"
"Who slashed our tyres, siphoned our gas, stole our CD player and left an 8-
track and Barry Manilow cassettes and a note signed 'B.B.Hood?'"
"Who killed all those men and left a banana in a man's ear and a three-foot long
note signed 'Demitri' stapled to another man's head?"
"What kind of psycho gets his kicks by stuffing bananas in dead men's ears?"
"The same kind who gets his kicks by stapling notes to dead men's heads?"
"Probably the same person who stapled that perfume-soaked love letter to
Bishamon signed 'Morrigan' to my head of all places."
Morrigan, for her part, was thinking. She thought and pondered and cogitated
until steam puffed from her ears.
"Well, who's not here?" Hsien-ko asked.
"Demitri's not here."
"That freaky Jedah's not here."
"Bee-chick's not here."
"Lilith's not..." Morrigan's voice trailed off. "This is Lilith's perfume!!"
"Why that little..." Talbain spluttered. "I wouldn't put it past her!"
"Me neither!"
"Neither would I!"
"Where is the little brat?!"
"Let's get her!!!"
And the whole group charged off Ien masse/I down the street in a huge cloud
of dust, waving fists and claws and weapons galore.
"Not that way, you idiots!" Morrigan yelled, but they didn't hear her. She
sighed and started after them.
And meanwhile, in the castle, Demitri smiled evilly. "B-6," he said.
"Curse you, you sank my battleship!" Jedah growled. "Best of fourty-five!!"
"SHE'S THAT WAY, YOU MORONS!" a voice hollered from behind them. The group
stopped as one. Turned to look at Morrigan flying after them.
"Say what?"
"Huh?"
"INani?/I"
Morrigan landed. "Lilith. Is. That. Way." she enunciated.
"ROIGHT! CHAAAAARGE!"
And the whole crowd charged forward, trampling poor Morrigan in their wake.
They rumbled off into the distance.
Morrigan hauled herself up from the pavement. "Sometimes it pays to just stay
in bed," she moaned. She limped after them.
She hadn't limped far when someone came round a corner.
"Eeesh," said Q-Bee. "Where'd the freight train that ran Iyou/I over go?"
"Have you...seen...Lilith?" Morrigan wheezed.
"Nope," the insect replied. Morrigan wilted. "I'm not even in this story," she
added. "The writer can't think of anything to do with me. What a putz. Ack,"
she added as a piece of masonry detatched itself from the building over her and
squashed her flat.
Morrigan stared, eyes as big as saucers and a huge sweatbead on her head. When
she recovered, she continued after the charging crowd. It wasn't as though they
were hard to follow, all she had to do was listen for the sound of howling,
shouting voices.
Sure enough, as soon as she rounded a corner, something smacked into her,
knocking her over.
It was Lilith, clinging to her for dear life. "Help me! Help! I didn't do it!
I can't even write in heiroglyphics! Where would I get all that water! What
would I do with a CD player from a car?! Help me!!"
Morrigan sighed and detatched herself. Then she screamed as the whole lot of
them came crashing down on her and Lilith.
And, meanwhile, in the castle, Demitri looked up from a hand of cards.
"It was Colonel Mustard, in the library, with the candlestick."
Demitri's servant shrugged and put down his cards.
"Graah! Best of fifty!" Jedah frothed.
People and Darkstalkers went flying.
"GGRRRAAAAHHHH!" Morrigan roared and punted Hsien-ko right after them. She felt
kind of satisfied at that.
"What are you doing defending her?" Rikuo demanded.
"Yeah! She made a monkey outa you, too!"
Morrigan looked down at Lilith, who did her best to look cute and harmless. She
looked back at the crowd.
"D'you really think she's smart enough to come up with all of that?"
"Thanks, I think," Lilith said.
"But it's Lilith's perfume!"
"No-one would put it past the little punk!"
People leapt for Lilith, who did her best to fight them off.
"Hmmm," said Hsien-ko, pondering heartily. The brains of the undead are
sluggish things at best, and even though she did prove particularly bright for a
zombie, it still took her a while to come to this conclusion:
"Sounds like something someone would do when they were bored. Bored and
powerful. Who's bored and powerful?"
The fight ground to a screeching halt.
A pause.
A breeze blew.
"GET HIM!" The crowd roared, heading south.
Morrigan lay on the pavement where they trampled her once again. Lillith ran
after them.
"I give up," Morrigan moaned.
And, meanwhile, in the castle, Demitri grinned as Ryu finished off Ken with a
properly dramatic Ishohryuuken./I He put down the controller. Jedah got in
his face.
"Best...of...sixty!"
The ziggurat was in ruins. Little pieces of various Huitzils lay everywhere.
And a glowing shape lay under a punching, kicking crowd of enraged Darkstalkers.
They booted him to and fro and shot at him and sliced him to bits with swords
and esoteric bladed weapons and buried him in snow. For a bit of a change, they
booted him fro and to for a while. They clawed at him and flattened him under
sarcophagi and buried him in catpeople. They booted him up and down. They
sliced and slashed and slew. Slew?
"Had enough yet?" Felicia screeched, jumping up and down on him. "Yet? Yet?
Yet?"
"Uncle?" more people yelled, twisting his legs.
"Holler 'nuff!" More people shouted, kicking his head.
"Waaaugh! Okay! I give! Enough! Uncle! Stop!" he wailed.
They detatched and left the building.
"Huh. Ruler of the Universe, indeed," they huffed.
Once everybody had left, Pyron sat up.
"I am so," he sniffed. "Jerks."
Morrigan limped into the castle and into the room, just in time to hear
Demitri's servant say something that sounded suspiciously like "right foot,
blue."
"Rrrkkkk," said Jedah. He and Demitri, it turned out, were twisted round each
other on a huge mat covered with coloured circles. Supported by only his right
hand and his left wing, Jedah struggled to reach the only blue circle he could
see.
There was a snap.
"Ouch," he said, and fell.
"I win again," Demitri said, straightening his jacket and rising.
Morrigan left the room, but not before she heard Jedah hiss:
"Best of seventy!!"