The Tale of Sir Xellos (Or monsters in Swamp Castle).
Martina sighed in bliss as she stared across the view of the recently restored kingdom of Xoana. So what if the only available land for their capital was some god-forsaken bayou? It was still ALL HERS! And soon, her realm would be made stronger by far than anything she could have imagined. "Just imagine dear. Someday, this will all be yours."
"What the curtains?"
"NO NOT THE CURTAINS!" She snapped at him. "All the LAND! EVERYthing you can see; it will all be yours."
Her petulant son glared at her sullenly. He wasn't all that much to look at; five foot eight, stringy dirty brown hair, ordinary brown eyes, and a pasty complexion. "But father..."
"Mother, I'm your mother dear."
Herbert sighed. "But mother, I don't want any of that."
"Listen!" she interrupted what she recognized to be the start of a Grade 'A' whine. "When I first came here, there was nothing but swamp. People said I was daft to build a castle here, but I built it anyway just to show them all." She made a slight concession to 'them.' "It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. It sank into the swamp. So I built a third one." She winced at the memory; it had taken Zangulus weeks to get her properly consoled (wink-wink, nudge-nudge). "That one burned down, fell over, and THEN sank into the swamp. BUT THE FOURTH ONE STAYED UP!" She unleashed a grand gesture. "And THAT'S what you're getting. The strongest, most beautiful, and most blessed castle in this entire world!"
Herbert stared listlessly around at the rough, poorly finished rock that made small, dank, moist, and smelly rooms. Blessed are the outcasts; that was the only thing he could think of that would justify Martina's statement. "But mother, I don't want any of that. I'd rather..."
"Rather what?" Martina asked snippishly.
"I'd rather...just...Sing..." He smiled dreamily as music swelled around him.
"STOP THAT, STOP THAT! You're not doing a song while I'm still here." Martina glared at her would-be Liberace son as the music died dischordantly. "Now look here! In ten minutes, you're going to marry a girl, who's father owns some of the richest land plots in the world!"
"But I don't want any land..."
"Listen, Alice - "
He frowned comically. "Herbert."
Martina winced. "Herbert. We live in a bloody swamp. We need all the land we can get our grubby little hands on!"
Can't refute that. But... "But I don't like her."
"Don't like her?! What's WRONG with her?! She's rich - " Martina winced at the potential lie. "Beautiful; she's got HUGE...tracts of land."
Herbert shrugged. Big 'tracts of land' weren't always a draw - just look at what they did for his mother. "I know that. But," he paused as the music began swelling once more. "I want the girl I marry to have that certain...special...something..."
Martina shot in front of the screen, her hands waving. "CUT THAT OUT! CUT IT OUT!" Glaring impotently at her son, she grabbed him by the lapels. "Now look here. You're marrying the princess Lucy of Elmekia. SO GET USED TO THE IDEA!" Dropping him, she turned back to the door, summoning guards.
Herbert watched as she tried to convey the fairly simple concept of 'don't let my son leave until I get him' to a pair who had a collective IQ of approximately four.
It provided the perfect interval to send off a note of pleaing.
--------
Zelgadis glared irritably at his shadow. Or close enough. "For the last time, WHY are you following me around like this?"
Xellos shrugged unconcernedly. "Oh, nothing better to do. No real plots to plot to try and increase our power, no secrets to drive you all insane by keeping. So I'm just bugging you for lack of a better thing to do."
Zelgadis sighed a mushroom puff. So far Xellos hadn't done anything beyond follow him around like some kind of sadistic version of a lost puppy. Still, it wouldn't last. If it did, then that would be interrupted soon enough by Hell freezing over and the world ending.
Fortunately for all concerned, it actually ended with a clothyard shaft impacting his head. A clothyard shaft bearing some kind of small scroll. "Oh, lovely message service."
Xellos pounced, knocking Zelgadis to the ground as he grabbed the scroll. Incidentally standing on top of the currently resigned if irate chimera.
"To whosoever finds this note, I have been...imprisoned by my mother, who wishes me to marry against my will...please, please, please come and rescue me...tall tower in swamp castle."
Xellos adopted a state of mock woe. "Oh, what horrors these cruel heavens and cold stars do inflict upon such poor, fair, maids. Oh, that I could fight this travesty with mine own two hands, but what friend would allow himself to champion the one who slayed his greatest, truest friend the noble Zelgadis?"
"I'm not dead yet, you moron."
Xellos winced at the rejoinder, but countered quickly by mashing his foot over the chimera's mouth. "Oh brave Zelgadis, to see hope in even so bleak a circumstance. Yet lies before me are of no avail; it is clear that though death has been staved off for these mere moments, the wound's fatal touch shall claim thee soon enou..."
Zelgadis irritably torched him with a fireball to get the incongruously Shakespearean mazoku off his face. "Are you stoned or are you just trying to tick me off? I'm part golem, remember; it takes a LOT more than an arrow to finish me off." Grumbling under his breath about lunatic trickster priests, he started off.
Xellos clucked his tongue, shaking his head at the retreating chimera. They both knew that a simple fireball wasn't enough to do more than distract him; it was more the action than the true intention of harm. Watching the chimera run off, Xellos shrugged nonchalantly. "Ah well. May as well go save this...whoever it is." He brightened suddenly, as it occured to him that he could complete the rescue in such a manner as to generate maximum suffering.
Maybe it wouldn't be a total waste after all.
--------
The guards didn't last long against the gleefully cackling mazoku as he shredded his way through the castle of Xoana. Neither did the handful of wedding guests, caterers, or entertainers that got between him and...well actually just got in his way period.
Neither did the guards at the door as he burst in, kneeling on the floor. "Oh fair one, your humble servant The Trickster Priest, here to serve your..." he paused as he noticed for the first time his would-be damsel in distress's gender. "Oh, terribly sorry. Must have burst through the wrong door."
Herbert stared at him in awe. "You got my note!"
Xellos sweat-dropped as the prince leapt up to clasp his hands. Contrary to the beliefs of many fanfic authors, he wasn't (at least not in this version of the universe) inclined towards either yaoi or shonen-ai. As such, this was both unprecedented as well as slightly creepy. "Uh...I got A note..."
Unshaken from his path, Herbert continued gushing. "I KNEW you'd come!" He leapt to the window sill as music began swelling. "I knew that somehow, there would be someone out there, who..."
Martina burst into the room. "CUT THAT OUT THIS INSTANT! I SAID NO SINGING!" She turned to the room's occuptants. "Who are you?"
"I'm your son..."
"NOT YOU!"
Xellos scratched his head, his smile turning strained. "Oh, hi Martina. It's been a while, hasn't it."
The princess of Xoana blinked in surprise at the sight, but shrugged it off. He'd been at the wedding, and she wasn't interested anymore; his presence would be tolerated. "Did YOU kill all those guards?"
Xellos paused, trying to recollect his berserker assault. "OH! Yeah, sorry about that."
Martina waved his considerations aside. "They cost fifty gold pieces each?! What were you thinking?!"
Xellos rushed to placate her. "Well, you see the thing is that I thought your son was actually a female..."
"I can understand that!" she grumped.
"Oh, don't worry Xellos!" Herbert leapt into action, grabbing a huge bundle of cloth from his bed. "I've got a rope all ready!"
"SHUT UP!" Martina snapped. "You just killed the bride's father is all."
Xellos winced. That couldn't have been diplomatic. "Well I really didn't mean to."
"DIDN'T MEAN TO; YOU RAMMED YOUR STAFF THROUGH HIS HEAD?!"
Xellos's wince deepened. "Oh dear..."
"Hurry Xellos! Hurry!"
Martina groaned as she rubbed her head. "This is going to cost us a fortune..."
Xellos shrugged. He'd gotten his meal on the terror and such inspired by a would-be angel of death/mercy (he wasn't sure WHAT this rescue fell under), and now had to clean up. Normally he'd just get Lina and Zelgadis to do it, but they weren't here. And only an idiot wastes his meal. "Um...well you see, I was heading south from Seyruun when..."
Martina perked up almost instantly. "Seyruun? You uh...you still have fairly good connections with Seyruun?"
Xellos nodded slowly. "Sure. I'm still on a first-name basis with Princess Amelia and Phil."
"Hurry Xellos! I'm ready to be rescued!"
Martina slowly digested this new information. "Lovely uh, lovely land up near Seyruun. Wonderful pig country, you know."
Xellos sweat-dropped. "I'll uh...take your word for it."
"Would you like to have a drink?"
Xellos shrugged, not particularly caring about the rapid and slightly odd change of pace. "That's...awfully decent of you."
Martina paused just long enough to slice apart the rope supporting her waste of protoplasm son before leading the way. "Any preferences?"
Xellos shrugged, ignoring the muffled 'OOMPH' in the background as Herbert struck the ground. "None really. You know, I really do have to apologize; it's just that when I'm in that particular idiom, I tend to get a bit...well, carried away..."
Outside was a decidedly different scene, those unwounded crying desperately as they tried to patch up the victims of Xellos's little rampage.
"...Of course, I want to tear this all out, get some masons to refinish the work," Martina continued conversationally as they exited the tower to reach the courtyard.
"THERE HE IS!!!" one of the wedding guests howled.
Martina paused as she literally saw the bloodthirst spring into their eyes. "Oh bloody hell."
Xellos similarly paused as the attack began, instincts of self-preservation activating
Then he smiled.
Martina whacked the monster upside the head. "NOW CUT THAT OUT!"
Xellos winced at her. "Sorry, sorry. You see what I mean, I just get carried away..."
"HE KILLED MY OLD MAN!" one of the villagers howled in rage.
Zangulus popped up to work damage/crowd control; he was a bit more adept at it than Martina was. "People...people, please! This is supposed to be a HAPPY occasion. Let's not bicker, and argue about," his voice turned mocking, "'who killed who.'"
"HE'S MURDERED THE BEST MAN!"
Zangulus raised a calming hand. "Now people, listen to me. This...is Lord Xellos Metallium. A very brave, powerful, and INFLUENTIAL man among the court of Seyruun." He continued, making things up on the fly as they occured to him. "Now, he came here to redress what he considered a great wrong, and we shall respect him no less for his...shall we say misinterpretation? We're here to celebrate!"
The people started murmuring at that, in no small part do the 'influential' part of Zangulus's speech. The kingdom of Xoana was hardly founded on altruism. The no-longer-so-crazed-swordsman raised a hand for quiet again. "However, in this time of sorrow, we have suffered loss. For my son Alice, er, Herbert, has just fallen to his death from the Tall Tower." He broke into the sorrowful murmurs again. "But, I don't want to think so much that I've lost a son so much as...gained a daughter."
He gestured to the rather ox-like young woman sobbing in the courtyard. "For with the death of princess Lucy's father - "
"HE'S NOT QUITE DEAD!" someone crowed from the back.
Zangulus froze, rewording his speech a bit. "Since the near-fatal WOUNDING of her father - "
"IT LOOKS LIKE HE'S ABOUT TO PULL THROUGH!"
Martina curtly jerked her head towards the old man as Zangulus began for a third time, taking her actions into acount. "The dear princess Lucy, who's father, just when it seemed that he might recover felt the icy hand of death upon him..." He smiled at the resulting death rattle and the murmurs of, 'oh, he's quite dead now, false alarm,' returning to his speech. "I would like to take it upon myself to raise her, in short; I want her to look at me and Martina as her parents...in a very real, and legally binding sense."
At the murmurs of wonder following his pronouncement, he continued, getting quite into his speech. "And thus, shall we celebrate the merger, er, marriage, of the Princess Lucy to the brave...DANGEROUS Xellos Metallium..."
The trickster priest felt himself face-fault. "WHAT?!"
Martina leaned forward, growling into his ear, "what, you didn't think we were going to let you completely off the hook?"
He was spared an answer by the outcries of, "LOOK! It's the dead prince!"
"He's not quite dead yet!"
Herbert shook his head at the last comment from his place in Zelgadis's arms. "Oh, I actually feel much better."
Martina wasn't aware of the grooves her nails were carving in the balcony as she glared at her inconveniently alive son. "YOU FELL OUT OF THE TALL TOWER, YOU CREEP!"
"I know, but I was saved at the last minute," Herbert murmurred pathetically.
"HOW?!"
He smiled faintly as Zelgadis put him on the table. "Well I'll tell you," he proclaimed as a festive tune sprang up, the villagers joining in to form a chorus.
Martina felt the blood drain from her face. "Not like that, NOT LIKE THAT!"
Zelgadis shook his head as the singing began. "Well, you coming or not?" Not that he wanted the priest around, but if he was tormenting Zelgadis, he wasn't tormenting Lina, an occurence that usually resulted in a massive drop in property values.
Xellos shook his head. "No no, it's not right for my Idiom. I must escape in a far more mysterious and at the same time incomprehensibly annoying fashion!"
"Actually, according to Amelia this is where you make a dashing, heroic, and dramatic exit."
Xellos paused, but shrugged it off. "Eh. If she insists; she knows this stuff a LOT better than I do." Ignoring the singing, the nigh-psychotic Martina, and the apparently depressed Zangulus, he grabbed one of the ropes that had been used to hoist some kind of temporary chandelier, and with a "HEYAH!" swung across the ramparts.
Then swung back.
And forth.
And back.
And forth.
"Uh...I don't suppose that someone could give me a push?"
Martina sighed in bliss as she stared across the view of the recently restored kingdom of Xoana. So what if the only available land for their capital was some god-forsaken bayou? It was still ALL HERS! And soon, her realm would be made stronger by far than anything she could have imagined. "Just imagine dear. Someday, this will all be yours."
"What the curtains?"
"NO NOT THE CURTAINS!" She snapped at him. "All the LAND! EVERYthing you can see; it will all be yours."
Her petulant son glared at her sullenly. He wasn't all that much to look at; five foot eight, stringy dirty brown hair, ordinary brown eyes, and a pasty complexion. "But father..."
"Mother, I'm your mother dear."
Herbert sighed. "But mother, I don't want any of that."
"Listen!" she interrupted what she recognized to be the start of a Grade 'A' whine. "When I first came here, there was nothing but swamp. People said I was daft to build a castle here, but I built it anyway just to show them all." She made a slight concession to 'them.' "It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. It sank into the swamp. So I built a third one." She winced at the memory; it had taken Zangulus weeks to get her properly consoled (wink-wink, nudge-nudge). "That one burned down, fell over, and THEN sank into the swamp. BUT THE FOURTH ONE STAYED UP!" She unleashed a grand gesture. "And THAT'S what you're getting. The strongest, most beautiful, and most blessed castle in this entire world!"
Herbert stared listlessly around at the rough, poorly finished rock that made small, dank, moist, and smelly rooms. Blessed are the outcasts; that was the only thing he could think of that would justify Martina's statement. "But mother, I don't want any of that. I'd rather..."
"Rather what?" Martina asked snippishly.
"I'd rather...just...Sing..." He smiled dreamily as music swelled around him.
"STOP THAT, STOP THAT! You're not doing a song while I'm still here." Martina glared at her would-be Liberace son as the music died dischordantly. "Now look here! In ten minutes, you're going to marry a girl, who's father owns some of the richest land plots in the world!"
"But I don't want any land..."
"Listen, Alice - "
He frowned comically. "Herbert."
Martina winced. "Herbert. We live in a bloody swamp. We need all the land we can get our grubby little hands on!"
Can't refute that. But... "But I don't like her."
"Don't like her?! What's WRONG with her?! She's rich - " Martina winced at the potential lie. "Beautiful; she's got HUGE...tracts of land."
Herbert shrugged. Big 'tracts of land' weren't always a draw - just look at what they did for his mother. "I know that. But," he paused as the music began swelling once more. "I want the girl I marry to have that certain...special...something..."
Martina shot in front of the screen, her hands waving. "CUT THAT OUT! CUT IT OUT!" Glaring impotently at her son, she grabbed him by the lapels. "Now look here. You're marrying the princess Lucy of Elmekia. SO GET USED TO THE IDEA!" Dropping him, she turned back to the door, summoning guards.
Herbert watched as she tried to convey the fairly simple concept of 'don't let my son leave until I get him' to a pair who had a collective IQ of approximately four.
It provided the perfect interval to send off a note of pleaing.
--------
Zelgadis glared irritably at his shadow. Or close enough. "For the last time, WHY are you following me around like this?"
Xellos shrugged unconcernedly. "Oh, nothing better to do. No real plots to plot to try and increase our power, no secrets to drive you all insane by keeping. So I'm just bugging you for lack of a better thing to do."
Zelgadis sighed a mushroom puff. So far Xellos hadn't done anything beyond follow him around like some kind of sadistic version of a lost puppy. Still, it wouldn't last. If it did, then that would be interrupted soon enough by Hell freezing over and the world ending.
Fortunately for all concerned, it actually ended with a clothyard shaft impacting his head. A clothyard shaft bearing some kind of small scroll. "Oh, lovely message service."
Xellos pounced, knocking Zelgadis to the ground as he grabbed the scroll. Incidentally standing on top of the currently resigned if irate chimera.
"To whosoever finds this note, I have been...imprisoned by my mother, who wishes me to marry against my will...please, please, please come and rescue me...tall tower in swamp castle."
Xellos adopted a state of mock woe. "Oh, what horrors these cruel heavens and cold stars do inflict upon such poor, fair, maids. Oh, that I could fight this travesty with mine own two hands, but what friend would allow himself to champion the one who slayed his greatest, truest friend the noble Zelgadis?"
"I'm not dead yet, you moron."
Xellos winced at the rejoinder, but countered quickly by mashing his foot over the chimera's mouth. "Oh brave Zelgadis, to see hope in even so bleak a circumstance. Yet lies before me are of no avail; it is clear that though death has been staved off for these mere moments, the wound's fatal touch shall claim thee soon enou..."
Zelgadis irritably torched him with a fireball to get the incongruously Shakespearean mazoku off his face. "Are you stoned or are you just trying to tick me off? I'm part golem, remember; it takes a LOT more than an arrow to finish me off." Grumbling under his breath about lunatic trickster priests, he started off.
Xellos clucked his tongue, shaking his head at the retreating chimera. They both knew that a simple fireball wasn't enough to do more than distract him; it was more the action than the true intention of harm. Watching the chimera run off, Xellos shrugged nonchalantly. "Ah well. May as well go save this...whoever it is." He brightened suddenly, as it occured to him that he could complete the rescue in such a manner as to generate maximum suffering.
Maybe it wouldn't be a total waste after all.
--------
The guards didn't last long against the gleefully cackling mazoku as he shredded his way through the castle of Xoana. Neither did the handful of wedding guests, caterers, or entertainers that got between him and...well actually just got in his way period.
Neither did the guards at the door as he burst in, kneeling on the floor. "Oh fair one, your humble servant The Trickster Priest, here to serve your..." he paused as he noticed for the first time his would-be damsel in distress's gender. "Oh, terribly sorry. Must have burst through the wrong door."
Herbert stared at him in awe. "You got my note!"
Xellos sweat-dropped as the prince leapt up to clasp his hands. Contrary to the beliefs of many fanfic authors, he wasn't (at least not in this version of the universe) inclined towards either yaoi or shonen-ai. As such, this was both unprecedented as well as slightly creepy. "Uh...I got A note..."
Unshaken from his path, Herbert continued gushing. "I KNEW you'd come!" He leapt to the window sill as music began swelling. "I knew that somehow, there would be someone out there, who..."
Martina burst into the room. "CUT THAT OUT THIS INSTANT! I SAID NO SINGING!" She turned to the room's occuptants. "Who are you?"
"I'm your son..."
"NOT YOU!"
Xellos scratched his head, his smile turning strained. "Oh, hi Martina. It's been a while, hasn't it."
The princess of Xoana blinked in surprise at the sight, but shrugged it off. He'd been at the wedding, and she wasn't interested anymore; his presence would be tolerated. "Did YOU kill all those guards?"
Xellos paused, trying to recollect his berserker assault. "OH! Yeah, sorry about that."
Martina waved his considerations aside. "They cost fifty gold pieces each?! What were you thinking?!"
Xellos rushed to placate her. "Well, you see the thing is that I thought your son was actually a female..."
"I can understand that!" she grumped.
"Oh, don't worry Xellos!" Herbert leapt into action, grabbing a huge bundle of cloth from his bed. "I've got a rope all ready!"
"SHUT UP!" Martina snapped. "You just killed the bride's father is all."
Xellos winced. That couldn't have been diplomatic. "Well I really didn't mean to."
"DIDN'T MEAN TO; YOU RAMMED YOUR STAFF THROUGH HIS HEAD?!"
Xellos's wince deepened. "Oh dear..."
"Hurry Xellos! Hurry!"
Martina groaned as she rubbed her head. "This is going to cost us a fortune..."
Xellos shrugged. He'd gotten his meal on the terror and such inspired by a would-be angel of death/mercy (he wasn't sure WHAT this rescue fell under), and now had to clean up. Normally he'd just get Lina and Zelgadis to do it, but they weren't here. And only an idiot wastes his meal. "Um...well you see, I was heading south from Seyruun when..."
Martina perked up almost instantly. "Seyruun? You uh...you still have fairly good connections with Seyruun?"
Xellos nodded slowly. "Sure. I'm still on a first-name basis with Princess Amelia and Phil."
"Hurry Xellos! I'm ready to be rescued!"
Martina slowly digested this new information. "Lovely uh, lovely land up near Seyruun. Wonderful pig country, you know."
Xellos sweat-dropped. "I'll uh...take your word for it."
"Would you like to have a drink?"
Xellos shrugged, not particularly caring about the rapid and slightly odd change of pace. "That's...awfully decent of you."
Martina paused just long enough to slice apart the rope supporting her waste of protoplasm son before leading the way. "Any preferences?"
Xellos shrugged, ignoring the muffled 'OOMPH' in the background as Herbert struck the ground. "None really. You know, I really do have to apologize; it's just that when I'm in that particular idiom, I tend to get a bit...well, carried away..."
Outside was a decidedly different scene, those unwounded crying desperately as they tried to patch up the victims of Xellos's little rampage.
"...Of course, I want to tear this all out, get some masons to refinish the work," Martina continued conversationally as they exited the tower to reach the courtyard.
"THERE HE IS!!!" one of the wedding guests howled.
Martina paused as she literally saw the bloodthirst spring into their eyes. "Oh bloody hell."
Xellos similarly paused as the attack began, instincts of self-preservation activating
Then he smiled.
Martina whacked the monster upside the head. "NOW CUT THAT OUT!"
Xellos winced at her. "Sorry, sorry. You see what I mean, I just get carried away..."
"HE KILLED MY OLD MAN!" one of the villagers howled in rage.
Zangulus popped up to work damage/crowd control; he was a bit more adept at it than Martina was. "People...people, please! This is supposed to be a HAPPY occasion. Let's not bicker, and argue about," his voice turned mocking, "'who killed who.'"
"HE'S MURDERED THE BEST MAN!"
Zangulus raised a calming hand. "Now people, listen to me. This...is Lord Xellos Metallium. A very brave, powerful, and INFLUENTIAL man among the court of Seyruun." He continued, making things up on the fly as they occured to him. "Now, he came here to redress what he considered a great wrong, and we shall respect him no less for his...shall we say misinterpretation? We're here to celebrate!"
The people started murmuring at that, in no small part do the 'influential' part of Zangulus's speech. The kingdom of Xoana was hardly founded on altruism. The no-longer-so-crazed-swordsman raised a hand for quiet again. "However, in this time of sorrow, we have suffered loss. For my son Alice, er, Herbert, has just fallen to his death from the Tall Tower." He broke into the sorrowful murmurs again. "But, I don't want to think so much that I've lost a son so much as...gained a daughter."
He gestured to the rather ox-like young woman sobbing in the courtyard. "For with the death of princess Lucy's father - "
"HE'S NOT QUITE DEAD!" someone crowed from the back.
Zangulus froze, rewording his speech a bit. "Since the near-fatal WOUNDING of her father - "
"IT LOOKS LIKE HE'S ABOUT TO PULL THROUGH!"
Martina curtly jerked her head towards the old man as Zangulus began for a third time, taking her actions into acount. "The dear princess Lucy, who's father, just when it seemed that he might recover felt the icy hand of death upon him..." He smiled at the resulting death rattle and the murmurs of, 'oh, he's quite dead now, false alarm,' returning to his speech. "I would like to take it upon myself to raise her, in short; I want her to look at me and Martina as her parents...in a very real, and legally binding sense."
At the murmurs of wonder following his pronouncement, he continued, getting quite into his speech. "And thus, shall we celebrate the merger, er, marriage, of the Princess Lucy to the brave...DANGEROUS Xellos Metallium..."
The trickster priest felt himself face-fault. "WHAT?!"
Martina leaned forward, growling into his ear, "what, you didn't think we were going to let you completely off the hook?"
He was spared an answer by the outcries of, "LOOK! It's the dead prince!"
"He's not quite dead yet!"
Herbert shook his head at the last comment from his place in Zelgadis's arms. "Oh, I actually feel much better."
Martina wasn't aware of the grooves her nails were carving in the balcony as she glared at her inconveniently alive son. "YOU FELL OUT OF THE TALL TOWER, YOU CREEP!"
"I know, but I was saved at the last minute," Herbert murmurred pathetically.
"HOW?!"
He smiled faintly as Zelgadis put him on the table. "Well I'll tell you," he proclaimed as a festive tune sprang up, the villagers joining in to form a chorus.
Martina felt the blood drain from her face. "Not like that, NOT LIKE THAT!"
Zelgadis shook his head as the singing began. "Well, you coming or not?" Not that he wanted the priest around, but if he was tormenting Zelgadis, he wasn't tormenting Lina, an occurence that usually resulted in a massive drop in property values.
Xellos shook his head. "No no, it's not right for my Idiom. I must escape in a far more mysterious and at the same time incomprehensibly annoying fashion!"
"Actually, according to Amelia this is where you make a dashing, heroic, and dramatic exit."
Xellos paused, but shrugged it off. "Eh. If she insists; she knows this stuff a LOT better than I do." Ignoring the singing, the nigh-psychotic Martina, and the apparently depressed Zangulus, he grabbed one of the ropes that had been used to hoist some kind of temporary chandelier, and with a "HEYAH!" swung across the ramparts.
Then swung back.
And forth.
And back.
And forth.
"Uh...I don't suppose that someone could give me a push?"