The three adventurers — Nurl, his Half-Elven flatmate Gort, and Borgus Rennan, 13th Level Mage — were crouched on the crest of a steep hill overlooking the long valley that ran between The Vampire Foothills Of Deathhausen and the staggering spire of Mt Crucible, former home of the Younger Gods before they got fed up with the majestic scenery and moved en masse into the shadier parts of Wisdom City, where all the fun was to be had.

"Maybe it’s a folk festival?" suggested Gort in his annoyingly bright and positive and maliciously pleasant Half-Elven voice.

"Folk festival my bottom," muttered Nurl. "You don’t get seven or eight-hundred Half-Orcs and Hobgoblins in one place because you want to explore traditional arts and crafts. You get them in one place because you want to explore some very traditional and exceptionally unpleasant ways of killing a lot of people. And what about this?" He held out a crumpled piece of paper, which fluttered back and forth in the high wind that coursed across the hill. "I found it nailed to a tree a couple of miles back."

Gort took the piece of paper and glanced at it, then passed it on to Borgus with a shrug. The Mage spent a few moments examining it, then looked up at his companions.

"It’s been a long time since I tried to read Hobgoblin, but I think this," he traced some symbols with a finger, "is a name — ‘Gralgar The Perpetrator’ — and this smudgy thing here could be the symbol for ‘Attack at dawn without mercy and kill everyone starting with the women and children because, wow, don’t they usually get off easy?’ Or… or, it could be the symbol for ‘Attack at dawn, with a little mercy, but not much because word gets around and we have a reputation to maintain, so women and children are optional but we are nevertheless expecting a top effort from everyone in the wholesale slaughtering and mindless carnage arenas.’ It’s hard to tell, considering that Hobgoblins only have about 12 words in their vocabulary and 11 of them are used to describe ways of killing people."

"What does the 12th one describe?" asked Gort.

"Basically, what to do to the people after you’ve killed them. But that’s only if it’s written on its own. That’s the problem with Hobgoblin — the meaning is entirely dependent on the context. In fact, the most famous piece of Hobgoblin writing, "The Ballad Of HLaarRRlllRrrllRllll", can be read either as a very moving poem about a young Hobgoblin who meets the Hobgobliness of his dreams and who decides not to kill her and boil and eat her head, which is the traditional Hobgoblin courting ritual, so his relatives kill him and boil and eat his head, which is the traditional Hobgoblin method of dealing with rebellious teenagers; or it can be read as a recipe for a moderately dull chicken salad with sesame seeds; or it can be read as detailed instructions on how to repair a General Alchemical toaster oven."

"Those Hobgoblins and their toaster ovens," Nurl said sadly. "You’d think the silly bastards would have learned by now. They haven’t even invented fire yet, let alone electricity. No wonder they always think the things are broken."

Borgus stared out at the hive of activity taking place in the valley below. "I don’t think we can just ignore this. That’s a veritable crapload of Half-Orcs and Hobgoblins to have just an hour’s ride from Wisdom City. Maybe it is some sort of innocent gathering; but then again, maybe we should just go with bitter experience and assume these mad, bloodthirsty lunatics intend to attack the city like every other time 3 or more of them happen to be standing somewhere together at the same time."

"I say we wait until nightfall," said Nurl. "We should have a better idea of what they’re up to, and maybe Wandering Xing-Lu and Phil The Berserk Accountant will have got here by then."

"I agree," said the Mage. "Five against eight hundred makes so much more sense than just three against eight hundred."

"They won’t know what hit them," said Gort in a teeth-grindingly well-adjusted and pleasant tone.

"Yeah," said Nurl. "And if we’re really unlucky they probably even won’t notice what hit them, either."

Here Endeth Part 1. Please send lots of money, or I promise I’ll write Part 2.

He took a sip from his frosted latte.

"To get to the lake, you must walk through the forest. To get to the desert, you must swim across the lake. To get to the mountain you must trek through the desert. And when you reach the base of the mountain, that is where your true journey begins."

The Master began smearing marmalade on a freshly toasted piece of bread and then stopped. "And it’s a big fucking mountain."

He continued scooping large, mountain-like dollops of marmalade out of the jar.

There was a rustling among the Disciples.

"And this is just applicable to men, is it?" One Disciple asked, with a definite edge on the word ‘men’. The other Disciples shifted subtly, eyes rolling in the direction of the one who had spoken, as though they had been collectively wading in shallow waters only to discover that they were, in fact, frolicking at the very edge of a bottomless trench.

The Master stopped mid-bite, sticky toast crumbs decorating his beard in mystical patterns.

"Well," he said cautiously, clearing his throat and scattering crumbs on the tabletop, "I don’t think it only applies to men, per se, but it was generally men that I had in mind, er, yes. I suspect women have other… things… that they… have… uhm."

"Only," continued the Disciple, whose name was Allegedly Dennis, "it seems like men think they have some sort of deathgrip or something on being deep and interesting, like it takes having a penis to wonder about the inner nature of the Universe. And, if you really think about it, having a penis is probably counter-productive to doing any thinking at all. At least," Allegedly Dennis added in a dark mutter, "that’s always been my experience with men."

The Master frowned. "Look, Dennis," he said, "when you applied to join the Brotherhood, did anyone explain-"

"What if you don’t like forests?" Interjected another Disciple.

"What?" said the Master.

"What if you don’t like forests?" repeated the Disciple. "Could you have an inner carpark, instead of an inner forest?"

"An inner carpark?" said the Master incredulously. "Who in the name of Grod wants an inner carpark? That’s a horrible, soulless, desolate metaphor for an inner landscape!"

"Oh, but what, an inner forest is, like, amazingly better?" said the Disciple. "Huh, I’d rather spend my time crossing a desolate inner carpark than staggering through a self-actualising forest with creepy-crawly-things-with-claws-and-poison-darts-and-great-big-bloody-bitey-whatsit-fangs!"

"Unless you got mugged," observed a third Disciple, whose name for some reason was Inappropriate Ralph. "Most of the carparks in my neighbourhood, you’d be lucky to make it across alive even if they gave you a headstart first."

"I can’t swim," said a morose voice from the back of the group. It was a voice that knew no-one was listening to it, because no-one ever did, and in this it was perhaps the wisest voice in the room, because, in fact, no-one was listening to it at all. "I just know I’m going to drown in my inner lake."

"What I want to know," said one very intense Disciple, stabbing a finger at the air as though he meant to do it physical harm, "is whose brilliant idea was it to put Enlightenment at the top of a fucking mountain? I mean, forest, yes. Lake, whatever. Desert, okay if you absolutely must. But I get nosebleeds getting things down from the top shelf in the kitchen! Even if I go through all that other crap, I’m going to be spending all my Enlightenment leaning my head back and wishing I’d brought more tissues!"

"Look," said the Master, "the thing about Enlightenment is, you don’t just get it by going through the motions, right? If you climb to the top of the mountain and you find that your nose is bleeding, yeah, then chances are you climbed to the top of the wrong mountain. Do you see?"

There was a long, contemplative moment among the Disciples.

"Wait," said one Disciple. "There’s more than one fucking mountain?"

‘No,’ Jacob said. ‘No more talk. I’m done with talking.’

‘But,’ Jack said, ‘maybe you’ll get used to it?’

‘Get used to it?’, Jacob said with a snort. ‘I’d rather kill myself than carry you around for the rest of my life. In fact, I’d rather kill myself than carry you around for just one more day.’

‘Oh that’s lovely,’ said Jack, ‘you really know how to make someone feel like shit, don’t you?’

‘It’s nothing personal,’ Jacob said. ‘I didn’t ask to be cursed, you didn’t ask to be the curse. But here we are. Now shut up, I’m trying to read.’

‘Shut up, he says,’ Jack muttered bitterly to himself inside the box. ‘All I’ve really got is the ability to talk, and he says shut up.’

‘Shut up,’ Jacob repeated, and flipped another page of the very old book. ‘Okay, it says here that Goldmeadow was able to get rid of Evil Pixies with some sort of potion. Are you a Pixie?’

‘How the hell would I know if I’m a Pixie?’ replied Jack. ‘What does a Pixie look like? While you’re at it, what do I look like?’

‘I could tell you what you look like, but you won’t let me open the box.’

‘Yes! Don’t open the box!’ Jack said emphatically. ‘Something bad will happen if you open the box!’

‘So you keep saying, but it occurs to me that I only have your word for it.’

‘Please don’t open the box!’ Jack begged. ‘I promise you something bad will happen!’

‘Okay, okay,’ Jacob said with a sigh. ‘There’s a drawing here of a Pixie. You don’t sound like you look like that.’

‘Show me?’ said Jack. ‘You can open the box just a little bit. But,’ he added hastily, ‘only just a teeny, tiny little bit!’

Jacob held up the book and pulled the lid of the box up a fraction, so a small sliver of darkness showed from within. There was a scuttling sound inside the box, and an eyeball pressed up against the sliver.

‘This Goldmeadow,’ Jack said after a moment, ‘was he completely right in the head? I thought Pixies were supposed to be cute with an extra helping of cuteness. That thing looks like it could eat through concrete.’

‘Who knows?’ Jacob said with a shrug. ‘Maybe you need to be a bit mental to write a Grimoire about banishing Demons and Devils. And Pixies. I mean, it’s possible it might help with trafficking with the dark arts, if you’re already a little snorting mad to begin with.’

‘What’s in this potion he talks about?’

Jacob scanned the page again. ‘Doesn’t say. Just says that it’s a ‘vile and most profane concoction.”

‘Right, well, I can’t say I like the sound of that. ‘Vile and most profane?’ That sounds pretty bloody unpleasant, actually.’

‘No-one said getting rid of a curse would be pleasant. Or easy, for that matter. Don’t worry, I already assumed you weren’t going to enjoy it.’

‘Oh, that’s a weight off my mind,’ said Jack. ‘You know something? I’m three-and-a-half thousand years old. Maybe you’re my curse, did you think of that?’

‘Nice try,’ Jacob said with a razor-edge smile, ‘but you’re in the box, and I’m not. I’m going to get rid of you, and you are going to be got rid of. See? At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter who is being cursed.’ He dropped the book back onto the table and got up. ‘I’m going to see what I can find in the house to make a ‘vile and most profane concoction.’ You stay there.’

‘Oh, very funny,’ said Jack inside his box. ”You stay there.’ You should be a bloody comedian, you really should.’

A few minutes later, Jacob returned, carrying several bottles. He set them down on the table, and added a ceramic pouring jug that he had been clutching under one arm.

‘Okay, let’s see,’ he said. ‘I have bleach. I have turpentine. I have weed killer. And I have creme de menthe. If that doesn’t make a ‘vile and most profane concoction,’ nothing will.’

He reached for the first bottle and at that moment a loud thump was heard from upstairs.

‘What was that?’ Jack asked.

‘Is it 6:15?’ Jacob said, as he poured a measure of bleach into the jug. ‘It must be 6:15. At 6:15 Mrs Sphyx always hangs herself upstairs. She’s my landlady.’

‘Wait, wait, your landlady hangs herself every day at 6:15? I mean, she hangs herself?’

‘Has every day since I rented my room from her, yes.’ Jacob said with a shrug. ‘Nice lady, though.’

‘Is she not good at it? Not that I’m an expert, but I thought most people only hang themselves just the once.’

Jacob leaned closer to the box. ‘Yes,’ he said helpfully, ‘but this is Elsewhere, you see. Things are always a little different Elsewhere, haven’t you noticed? You get used to it after a while. She’ll be down in a few minutes and cooking dinner.’

‘Wow,’ said Jack. ‘You can get used to your landlady hanging herself every evening, but you can’t get used to a talking box. What does that say?’

‘It says,’ Jacob said slowly, as he measured some turpentine into the jug, ‘that you are much, much more annoying than my landlady.’

A short while later the jug was full, and while the contents looked and smelled unpleasant, neither Jacob or Jack were entirely certain it was the vile and most profane concoction mentioned in Goldmeadow’s Grimoire.

‘I have to give you extra points for adding in the creme de menthe,’ Jack said. ‘Not everyone would have the courage to do that. It definitely makes it technically evil, but I don’t know about vile and profane, exactly.’

‘Only one way to find out, I guess,’ said Jacob, taking the jug by its handle and lifting the lid on the box a fraction.

‘No, wait!’ shrieked Jack. ‘Why don’t we-’, but he didn’t get a chance to finish the thought.

‘Aargh!’ Jack yelled as Jacob poured the potion into the box. ‘No! Please! It’s…! NooooOOOooo!’

Once the jug was empty Jacob set it back on the table and listened to Jack’s shrieks and wails. Eventually Jack fell silent, and Jacob frowned.

He used a finger to open the lid a fraction, and peered inside. ‘Did it work?’ he asked hopefully.

There was a short silence, and then a sarcastic voice said from within, ‘Depends. Were you trying to make me sticky and smelly? Because, if so, I am completely fucking sticky and smelly. Well done, if that was what you were trying to achieve.’

‘Okay,’ said Jacob, ‘but no feeling like you’re going to die, or be banished, or just generally, you know, disappear?’

‘It stings a little,’ Jack said. ‘I guess that’s a plus, from your perspective.’

Jacob sighed. ‘Okay, Plan B. I brought the electric drill from the garage as well. Let’s see if that works.’

‘A drill?’ Jack said. ‘But hold on, to use a drill you’d have to… DON’T OPEN THE BOX! Please don’t open the box! The bad thing will-’, but he didn’t get a chance to finish that thought, either.

There was a sproinging sound, followed by an uncomfortable silence. Jack was hanging limply over the side of the box, his shiny wooden face and improbably large hook nose glowing with embarrassment and humiliation.

‘So,’ said Jacob calmly, ‘when does the bad thing happen?’

‘When does the… Isn’t this bad enough?’ Jack demanded. ‘I’m just hanging here, like some sort of useless idiot! I hate it when people open the box. It’s so… so… demeaning, is what it is.’

‘I can see that,’ Jacob said with a nod.

There was a soft knock on his door, and a pleasant voice said, ‘Dinner will be ready in 10 minutes.’

‘Thank you Mrs Sphyx,’ Jacob called out. Then, ’10 minutes gives me enough time to see if the drill will do any good. It’s cordless.’

‘No, wait!’ yelled Jack, but there was no waiting to be had.

"3 of you?" Nurl murmured, frowning down at his crossword puzzle.

" – yes, and we were looking at this sword, right -"

"Which 3 of you? I thought you usually worked alone?"

"- yes, normally, but I met the other 2 at a bar — this being FlargFlargBloxlnl The Difficult To Pronounce and Wandering Xing-Lu -"

"Xing-Lu’s out of jail again? I thought he was in for 8 years this time?"

"He was, but he got off on a technicality."

"Really? What was the technicality?"

"He ate his way out of his cell and killed all the guards."

Nurl blinked and gave this some thought. "That’s by way of being a hell of a technicality."

"Yes, anyway, so I met them at a bar and we’d had a few too many drinks and it seemed like a good idea at the time… You know the sort of thing — someone says, ‘Hey, I know this Level 9 Castle that’s just around the corner. Who’s up for storming it?’ And it’s only as you’re clinging to the underside of the drawbridge, staring down at a moat that has more fangs in it than any moat should, that you remember that you need at least 4000 heavily-armed soldiers to attack a Level 9 Castle, and here you are with 5 pissed warriors and a very angry accountant named Phil. Even worse, Phil is the only one making any progress and you can hear him going completely berserk somewhere in the castle over the state of their tax returns. So, anyway, we’re looking at this sword and it’s, like, stuck in this stone, so -"

"It’s stuck in a stone? The sword is stuck in a stone?"

"- is what I just said, yes, it’s stuck in this stone, and -"

"Like, it’s fully encased in the stone, you mean?"

" – no, no, it’s sort of buried in it, standing upright -"

"Wedged? Would you say that it was ‘wedged’ in the stone?"

"Who the hell cares if it was wedged or not?! The important thing — the thing that matters the most — is that it is stuck in the stone -"

"Who would leave a sword stuck in a stone like that?"

"- is something of which I have no idea… Listen, are you going to let me tell this story or what?"

"Tell, tell." Nurl said absently.

Kenneth took a deep breath. "So -"

"What’s a 5 letter word for treasure? Starts with a ‘b’."

"What?"

"5 letter word for treasure. Starts with a ‘b’."

"Booty. So -"

"Boooooooooty," Nurl repeated, carefully penciling the word into the appropriate squares.

"Look, will you please shut up. So, there were the 3 of us, looking at this sword, which is stuck, as I have pointed out, in a stone. And there’s a plaque, which says -"

"Extract."

"… Actually, yes, words to that effect… Hang on, have you seen this sword?"

"Hmmm? No, no — 7 letter word for ‘retrieve’, starting with an ‘E’. Extract."

"Right! I’m going to go tell this story to someone else!"

"No, no, I’m listening. Sword. Stone. Plaque."

"… Okay. So, yes, there’s this plaque, on the stone, and it reads, ‘"Whoso shall pull this Sword forth of the stone
is rightwise king, born of all England.’"

"Did I ever tell you that I was emperor of Prussia for a couple of weeks, until I got sick of the cabbages? King of England would be better. Not so many cabbages, you’d imagine."

"Which is what we were all thinking as well, except for the part about the cabbages, yes. So, there we were, trying to pull this damn sword out of this damn stone, and this kid comes along. What was his name…"

"Barry? Graham? Seth?"

"…You’re not helping, you know that, yeah? Arthur! That was his name – Arthur! So, this kid wanders up to the sword, and we’re all giving him crap about the fact that if 3 muscle-bound heroes can’t get it out, what hope in hell does he have, right? I mean, we were all pissed, so our manners weren’t the best, and -"

"Aha ahahah — your manners are never the best, even when you’re sober. Especially when you’re sober, come to think of it."

"- shutup, and knock me over if the little bugger doesn’t just pull the damn thing out! So, we’re all like, ‘Yeah, well, you know, we loosened it for you and everything,’ and the kid says, ‘You 3 look like you are of noble and heroic birth — you shall be the first to become my Knights Of The Round Table." So, we all looked at each other and the same thing occurs to all of us -"

"You mugged him."

"- which is exactly what we did, and we made off with the sword."

"You mugged the King of England. I’m having coffee with the guy who mugged the King of England."

"Anyway, so we hightail it into this forest, right, and we get our silly asses lost -"

"Hah! There is no surprise to me in this. Remember that time you raided the Temple Of Grod, and you were in there for like, 14 weeks? And it turned out there were only 6 medium-sized rooms to the entire temple? And you had a map?"

"Shutup. So, we’re standing in the forest, arguing about whether or not we should have taken a left, instead of a right, back at the Gingerbread Cottage, when this guy jumps out from behind a tree, all dressed in green -"

"Good color for a forest. Very soothing."

"- shutup, and he yells ‘Aha!’"

"- being standard jumping-out-from-behind-a-tree dialogue -"

"- and none of us are expecting it, so we all go about soiling our loincloths, and he says, "I am Robin Hood! I steal from the rich and I give to the poor!"

"Hang on — he steals from the rich…"

"Is what he said."

"And he gives to the poor…"

"Is also what he said."

"Well, the stealing from the rich part I get. That makes sense. But the giving to the poor? That sounds mental."

"Maybe it’s some kind of fetish thing. Anyway, so we’re all doing this, "Wow, it’s been a long time since we had any work, we’re flat broke, maybe you’ve got a few thousand dollars you can spare?" thing, when he spots that Xing-Lu’s carrying a bow."

"That Xing-Lu. Always with the bow."

"So, he challenges Xing-Lu to an archery contest, and me and FlargFlarg are going, "Oh, hell no, that’s how that whole thing with William Tell got started," but Xing-Lu won’t be told, so they set up this target and Xing-Lu goes first, partly because he’s the one who got challenged, but mostly because you can tell he’s completely psychotic, so who would argue, am I right?"

"Which reminds me — what’s a 6 letter word for a container for carrying arrows? Starts with a ‘q’?"

"Quiver." Kenneth frowned at his coffee companion.  "Look, Nurl, you do realize that you’re supposed to do crossword puzzles on your own, right? Otherwise, they’d be called Annoy The Person Sitting Next To You Puzzles."

An offended expression crossed Nurl’s absurdly chiselled features. "Hey, listen Kenneth," he said, "I don’t need your help with the crossword. The last thing I am in need of, just so we are clear on this issue, is your help with the crossword. What I am doing is allowing you to participate in the crossword, see, in the interests of ensuring that you do not feel left out, in a crossword-participation sense."

There was an acrimonious silence.

"Quiver is with one ‘v’?" Nurl asked with a sniff, as if he wasn’t even vaguely interested in the answer.

"Yes, one ‘v’." Replied Kenneth wearily.

"And a ‘u’?" Nurl asked, also with a sniff.

"Yes, also with a ‘u’."

"And it ends with -" began Nurl, presumably with a sniff.

"Q!" Yelled Kenneth. "U! I! V! E! -"

"All right, all right, I have it now! For the love of Grod, Kenneth, you really need to learn how to relax…"

"I am relaxed," Kenneth snarled, his left eye twitching madly.

"Why don’t you finish your story," Nurl suggested. "You’d just got to the part where Xing-Lu was going to kick some poor demented shmuck’s green-clad ass at archery."

Kenneth giggled randomly for a few moments and then suddenly sat forward. "Well, now that’s what you’d think, right — after all, Xing-Lu’s legendary with the bow, and who the hell is this guy who hangs around in forests? However -"

"Didn’t we establish that his name is Robin Hood?"

"- yes, but it was a rhetorical question -"

"Funny name for someone who steals for a living, when you think about it: "Robbin’." And "Hood"? Why didn’t he just call himself "Robbin’ MafiaHitman"? Or, "Robbin’ Loanshark"? Or, "Robbin’ 2ndHandCarSalesman"? I mean, it’s a little obvious, don’t you think?"

"- yes, yes, we know his name, well done, but the point I’m trying to make, however, is that everyone knows Wandering Xing-Lu is amazing with a bow and arrow and this forest dude is obviously in for an introduction to some major archery humiliation. So! They set up this target and Xing-Lu goes first — thunk! A bullseye! And me and FlargFlarg are going, "Pfeh, of course" and we’re wishing like hell there was a bookie somewhere in the forest when the other guy lines his shot up and kchunk! -"

"Kchunk?"

"- yes, kchunk, shutup, it will become evident why — and kchunk! He splits Xing-Lu’s arrow!"

"He what?!"

"I know!"

"No, no, I didn’t hear what you said, I was trying to spell ‘kchunk’ in my head… What did he do?"

"Oh for the love of Grod… He split Xing-Lu’s arrow!"

"You’re kidding me! What, right down the middle, split the arrow in half?"

"Yah! In half!"

"Wow, Xing-Lu must have been pissed."

"Pissed does not even begin to cover how Xing-Lu is feeling at this point. So, anyway, he takes another shot, and kchunk! -"

"Kchunk again?"

"- yes, kchunk!, he splits the other guy’s arrow!"

"Good Grod!"

"But wait! The other guy takes a 2nd shot and kchunk – yes, kchunk – he splits the arrow Xing-Lu used to split his arrow, which he’d used to split Xing-Lu’s first arrow!"

"He split… the second arrow… that Xing-Lu split… with his other arrow…?"

"Yes, something like that — anyway, this keeps going on, right, one arrow after another, until the forest clearing is completely littered with arrow bits and you can’t even see the target anymore, it has so many split arrows stuck in it. By this point me and FlargFlarg have totally lost interest and we’re lounging underneath a tree, swapping lies with this Hood’s group of merry men, while FlargFlarg is also trying to hit on some maid called Marion, when Xing-Lu finally loses his temper and kicks this Robin guy in the fundamentals."

"In the fundamentals?"

"Yes, you know… the, er… you know, the fundamentals."

"You mean the testicles?"

"Ssshh! Ssshhh! Yes, yes I mean the, er, the… fundamentals, like you said."

"That Xing–Lu. Always with the kicking of people in the fundamental testicles."

"Shhhh! So, anyway, this is when everything goes completely banana-shaped, right. FlargFlarg is bragging to this Marion maid about the size of his -"

"Manhood?"

"Estate! The size of his estate! And I’m telling this huge guy called Little John and this other guy called Friar Tuck about how good I am with my -"

"Enraged masculine essence?"

"- sword! How good I am with my sword!"

"Well, yes, I guess you could call it a sword…"

"My real sword! Shut up! And suddenly this Hood guy goes "Hoik!" and slumps to the ground and within moments the air is literally sizzling with arrows and with guys in green swinging back and forth and people yelling "The Sheriff Of Nottingham!" and "Evil Prince John!" and "Phil The Berserk Accountant!" So, me and FlargFlarg grab Xing-Lu, who is still stomping on the forest guy, and we catch the number 93 bus to -"

"You what?"

"We grab Xing-Lu and we catch the number 93 bus, which -"

"You catch a bus? In the middle of all these merry men doing their merry thing in the forest, you catch a bus?"

"Did I not mention about the bus? This is why we were hanging around the clearing in the first place — waiting for the number 93 bus."

"Oh, well done, Kenneth — here I am, thinking you’re in some dark and primeval forest -"

"Well, it was a little dark -"

"- facing off against all these monsters and crazy forest people and whatnot -"

"And it was at least reasonably primeval…"

"- when it turns out you were just running around like an idiot in the flower beds outside the Sherwood Forest Shopping Mall?"

"Look, Nurl, this was serious business! There were injuries! For example — Xing-Lu slipped when he was getting on the bus and hit his head, and now he thinks he’s a small citrus tree… And the disgusting little bugger is expecting to be pollinated! Not to mention that FlargFlarg got into an argument with a group of nuns at the back of the bus and a knife fight broke out and he was stabbed 143 times before any us of thought to go check what he was screaming about."

"These nuns -"

"I hate those nuns."

"- they’re not the nuns that are always singing about how do you solve a problem like Maria?"

"Yes!"

"And the ones who are always going on about how the hills are alive with the sound of music?"

"Yes!"

"Pfeh. Someone should tell those nuns that the only hills in this region that are alive are the Vampire Foothills Of Deathhausen. And the only sound they’re alive with is people screaming, "The Hills! The horrible, horrible hills!" Accompanied, of course, by the sound of chewing."

"I hate those nuns. Have I mention that I hate those nuns?"

"Everyone hates those nuns, Kenneth. Well, maybe Xing-Lu doesn’t anymore. Hard to imagine a nun-hating citrus tree…"

"Pollination," Kenneth muttered with revulsion. "It’s disgusting, I tell you, completely disgusting."

If you enjoyed this (hell, anything’s possible), you might also enjoy:

• Scene From A Cafe Somewhere, Featuring Two Heroes Talking
• Notes on a City

In many ways, Wisdom City is much like any large city you might encounter in our Universe, or at least those ones in which the majority of the inhabitants don’t breathe methane and don’t have lots of tentacles and eyes and very sharp teeth [1].

In fact, while I first started writing about Wisdom City before I’d seen much of the world, it eventually began to take real shape for me after visiting cities like New York and San Francisco. While I’ve never felt that Wisdom City was particularly based on any real city, visiting places like these helped me get an impression of metropolises (metropolii?) that were immense in size and rich in diversity.

Because I grew up enjoying fantasy fiction and superhero comics, it seemed natural to me that Wisdom City would feature both. In particular, when I first began mapping out the ideas that became Wisdom City, I was inspired, in a humorous way, by experiences of playing Dungeons And Dragons and other, similar RPG games.

I thought to myself at the time, "Wouldn’t it be funny if you had sword and sorcery heroes situated in a modern environment, concerned with things like experience points and booty and who got to rescue which Princess, but still having to deal with things like traffic jams and mindless bureaucracy?" And, it turns out, it was funny. Well, you know, to me at least.

The Superhero story lines, on the other hand, evolved a little later. Originally I had these cast in an entirely separate reality, simply generically called ‘The City’ (as in, "The City never sleeps at night…"), and then at some point I decided that there was no reason why fantasy characters set in a ‘contemporary’ environment couldn’t live alongside superhero characters set in a similar environment. Or maybe I didn’t decide this. It’s possible the two different story concepts merely grew together over time.

And it was in this way that Wisdom City, as I currently write about it, was born.

The City Itself

To best imagine Wisdom City the way it exists in my head, take a city like New York (or whichever large city with which you are most familiar), and collide it at high speed with a city drawn entirely from a fantasy realm. The mess you have left over will be not too far away from Wisdom City.

So, there are skyscrapers and a downtown precinct, and a waterfront, and delis, and cafes, and apartment buildings, and parks, and everything else you would expect of a modern metropolis.

But there are also temples, and castles, and dungeons, and forgotten treasures, and dragon lairs.

There are Elves and accountants, sorcerors and policemen, Demon Gods From The Infernal Realms and the stock market.

In theory, Wisdom City is infinite while being simultaneously finite, both conceptually and as I physically imagine it to be.

Because reality is somewhat rubbery in Wisdom City (not to mention a little sticky, for reasons not quite understood by anyone outside the Mage Guild), there are areas of the city in which entire ‘sub realms’ can be discovered, some of which are blissfully unaware of the fact that they exist within the broader framework of the city. One such is an area physically about the size of Central Park in New York, called Darkwood Forest, which is a largely endless purely fantasy realm once you enter it. I haven’t written much about Darkwood Forest thus far, but it’s always there if and when I need it.

The History Of Wisdom City

I have to admit that I only have a tenuous sketching of the history of Wisdom City. Up to this point I’ve been more interested in writing about the things that have been taking place in the city ‘now’, as opposed to what has taken place in the past.

That said, I do know that Wisdom City has existed in its location for hundreds, if not thousands, of years; though it’s safe to say that it has almost certainly been burned down or otherwise destroyed a number of times since it was first inhabited, and any number of different ‘Wisdom Cities’ have been rebuilt in its place.

If I sit and think about the history of the city for any length of time, aside from getting a mild headache, I imagine it as having a turbulent past in which countless exciting things have taken place. Revolutions, regicides, the curse of The Holy Requisition, empires and ruin, discovery and dark ages.

I tend to draw back to these things when I need to while writing about the city as it is now, and I suspect that I have a lot of details built into storylines that heavily contradict each other. I have to admit, I’m not too worried by this, since there’s every chance that through the intercession of Magic and the whims of various Gods, two or more very different Wisdom Cities might have existed in the same place at the same time, but in different sub-realities.

I should also mention that simply through the reality of having to earn a living, and thus being only able to work on Wisdom City when time and energy allows, I probably haven’t focused on its history in the way I would have liked. Also, there’s that lack of talent and imagination to constantly struggle against.

That’s where it would be wonderful to be a Terry Pratchett, who can devote himself entirely to his creations, and can obviously afford (or, more likely, his publishers can obviously afford) to enlist cleverly artistic people to help him realise these ideas in drawings and maps and whatnot. However, Pratchett obviously has bucketloads of talent and imagination to spare, so he probably wouldn’t have needed any of these to help him get closer to his ideas. Damn his excessively talented eyes.

Outside The City

What I have done, however, is create an accompanying broader reality in which Wisdom City exists. Some of these places and localities existed in my creative writing long before Wisdom City took shape, but they thankfully have fit seamlessly into the hodgepodge reality I’ve created, so I’ve plagiarised myself mercilessly wherever possible.

The future can only tell if I’ll write all that much about these places, but again, it’s nice to know all that material is there if I need to throw my characters into the mysterious, snowbound northern kingdom of Carcass Deep, or have them riding like the wind across The Western Steppes, or indeed trying to solve a particularly diabolical slaying in the extensive grounds of Murder Mansion.

The Introduction, In The Introduction

Below are the couple of paragraphs I wrote for myself some time ago to help me set the mood of Wisdom City content:

Wisdom City is just like your city, except that in many cases it isn’t.

It is home to Heroes, Superheroes, Villains, Gods, Demons, Elves, Half-Orcs, Full-Orcs, People-Who-Aren’t-Really-Orcs-But-Who-Have-Bad-Table-Manners-All-The-Same, and many other creatures, both real and imaginary, besides.

Wisdom City manages to combine the magic-and-mayhem fantasy of loinclothed barbarians with the ultra-contemporary metropolis of Superheroes and Supervillains largely because it’s creator decided to ignore the many differences these two disparate genres imply.

And so it is that in Wisdom City two sword-wielding Heroes can sit in a cafe and argue about the best way to attack a Level 9 Castle, while in another part of the city a crime-fighting duo could well be having the crap kicked out of them by a Supervillain, who generally don’t like being interrupted while plotting world domination.

And there, as the saying goes, you have it.

“The very bowels?” Asked Nurl, examining a bagel.

“- yeah, the very bowels, right -”

“Sounds kind of unpleasant…”

“Is what I’m trying to explain to you, yeah, so shut up; there I am and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, jump these four Schlorgian Death Priests -”

“What, four of them?”

“Yeah, four of them. And -”

“No, hang on, Schlorgian Death Priests only travel in threes. They’re famous for it. Well, that and sticking sharp sticks up people’s – ”

“Yeah yeah, usually, usually, except, you see, on The Sacred Feast Day Of Schlorg, which takes place on the Vernal Equinox, I think. And every Sunday. And then they travel in fours. See? Anyway, so they jump out, right, and I think ‘Crap!’ -”

” – being in the bowels of the Temple, as you were -”

“- yeah, funny, did I not just tell you to shut up? I thought we established you were going to shut up? So shut up. Anyway, so there I am, and there are these four Schlorgian Death Priests, right, and you know what they’re like, no sense of humour whatsoever -”

“This is the Schlorg with the armpits?”

“… no that’s the other one, I think. This is the one with the knuckles. And the eyebrow. I’m definitely certain there’s an eyebrow featured somewhere.”

“Right. Not the one I’m thinking of.”

“Yes -”

” – with the armpits -”

“- yes, not that one, the other one.”

“I thought the other one was the other one?”

“Seriously, you need to shut up. And give me a bagel.”

“These bagels,” said Nurl philosophically, “are not very good bagels.”

“Anyway, so there I am, and there are the Death Priests, right, and suddenly I remembered that I was carrying The Amulet Of Encroaching Middle Age and I realised -”

“The Amulet Of…”

“- Encroaching Middle Age, yes, and I realised you can use this thing against Schlorgian Death Priests. I mean, it actually even says so right in the User’s Manual and everything. And so -”

“How does it work?”

“- is what I’m about to get to, so shut up, and so, I take out the Amulet and I go, right, ‘Hey, take a look at this Amulet guys.’ This, you understand, is what you’re supposed to do. And then one of them says, ‘Hey, you know, interesting amulet.’”

“Ooh, spooky.”

“Shut up. And then he says, ‘Hey, Dennis, come and look at this amulet.’ And Dennis says, ‘Wow, nice amulet. I remember my dad had one of those.’ And, while they are looking at the amulet, this is when you completely run away.”

“Instead of the alternative, which I assume is only partially running away?”

“What, and I am going to ask you seriously about this, is wrong with this bagel? There is definitely something wrong with this bagel.”

“Didn’t I say to you about the bagels? I remember mentioning the bagels.”

“Miss? Could we have two more cappuccinos over here and can you do something about the bagels? I mean, is that too much to ask? Anyway, so there I am, running down this ramp, being chased by one of those huge rolling stone balls -”

“Why does every temple have one of those huge rolling stone balls? Is there some Evil Temple Design Handbook, of which I am unaware, that says, ‘And whatever you do, don’t forget the huge rolling stone ball’?”

“- and I remember that I’ve left the Princess with the One True Bellybutton Ring behind -”

“The One True…?”

“- yes, Bellybutton Ring, and it is currently attached to the Princess and she is back with the Death Priests.”

“Tell me about this bellybutton ring. Should I know it?”

“Everyone knows about the One True Bellybutton Ring don’t they? It’s the one that rules them all.”

“The all of them what?”

“The other bellybutton rings. Look, there were 9 of them, right, and they were given to the — was it the Gnomes? No, they got the other 4, the cheap ones. Maybe it was the Hippies? Anyway, it rules them. The One True one, I mean. And when you put it on it makes you visible.”

“This is its magic power? On the off-chance you happened to be invisible to begin with?”

“No, no — it’s just really big and gaudy and you couldn’t miss it if you were blindfolded and dangling over Bord’s Pit Of Eternally Not Being Interested In Anything Very Much Anymore.”

“You know, I’m not believing a word of this. There is not a word of this that I am prepared to believe. I mean, when you started out this story you were in some box with a table and a mirror and there was no way in or out and you were wondering, how the hell am I going to get out of this box? So now you’re in the Temple Of Schlorg being chased by some stone ball? How the hell did you get out of the box?”

“What?! You weren’t listening when I told you about the box?! But that’s the whole point of the story! If you don’t know about the box then none of it makes sense!”

“You know, I really need another bagel.”

“Those bagels,” said Kenneth philosophically, “are not very good bagels.”

“This is exactly what I have been saying about the bagels all along.” Replied Nurl. “Have I not been saying this about the bagels?”

He felt it was important that he should be inscrutable on a regular basis, since this was the sort of thing that was expected of an Oriental Manservant, along with the ability to punch through solid chunks of timber, as well as running madly across open spaces yelling, “Aiiiiieeeee!”

The problem with all of this, as Phon Du had often privately acknowledged, was that he wasn’t Oriental by birth or even particularly by nature. His name wasn’t even really Phon Du – it was Bernie Smathers – but he’d answered a job ad asking specifically for an Oriental Manservant And Sidekick, and since he’d been the only one who had applied for the position, he’d won it by default.

He’d tried his best since then to learn how to be Oriental, with mixed results. He had, for example, ordered a book from a web site entitled, “Everything You Need To Know About Being Inscrutable,” but when it eventually arrived he’d discovered that all the pages were blank. He’d decided this was probably Zen, since as far as he could tell, when things were Zen you didn’t have to understand them, and he’d gone on to use the book as a sort of private journal.

In those pages he’d catalogued his attempts to become at least a little bit more Oriental. A whole section of the book, for example, had been dedicated to his martial arts lessons, which pretty much turned out to be a growing record of the number and nature of the injuries he’d sustained at Mister Miyaaarghi’s Dojo Of Learning How To Kill People While Doing Oddjobs Around My House.

In particular, there had been the infamous Breaking Logs With Your Bare Hands Because I Need More Firewood lesson, which had simply resulted in Phon Du breaking all his knuckles instead.

There had been much snickering about this in the Dojo, until Phon Du had returned the next day, hands heavily bandaged, carrying a small hatchett, a chainsaw and dragging an industrial woodchipper. What had followed was a session of woodchopping that had been so hideous that Phon Du had been given his Black Belt that very afternoon and pushed out of the grounds of Mister Miyaaarghi’s Dojo with a polite but firm explanation that there was nothing more that he could be taught, basically because everyone was now terrified of him [1].

Consequently, while he knew The Three Basic Forms Of Fixing The Guttering, and The Kneeling Style Of Repairing That Bloody Fence, not to mention The Seven Infamous Methods For Building A Small Pergola In The Backyard And Have It Done By This Afternoon If You Know What’s Good For You, he had no clue how to use any of this allegedly esoteric learning in an actual fight.

And it was as he sat crosslegged, perched on a small packing crate, pondering the relative merits of Terrified Student Raking The Leaves In A Category Four Hurricane versus Polish That Car Again By Grod I Can Still See Smudges On It that he felt a sharp blow to the back of his head. Had he not lost consciousness instantaneously, he might have been pleased to know that it had been delivered by a Blokeworthy Number 13 Shifting Spanner.

***

Max Damage, superhero, hurried across the Wisdom City docklands.

He had received a call from his Oriental Manservant to say that something nefarious was possibly (or possibly not) happening down at the waterfront, and since the waterfront was the kind of place where 48 nefarious things could take place between 3pm and 3:15pm on a quiet Sunday afternoon, he was reasonably certain his Manservant was onto something. Hell, he thought to himself as he jogged, even if Phon Du had got himself over-excited by being inscrutable again, he’d actually had to hurry past 6 nefarious things just in the time since he’d parked his car.

***

“What should we do with him?” Asked Clutch Badway.

“Forget about him,” Said Fondle Badway, eldest of the Badway Brothers. “He’s tied up and unconscious, he isn’t going to be bothering anyone.”

“Yeah,” said Clutch with some concern, “but he’s, like, Oriental, isn’t he? They’ve got devious methods, they do. Plus, if he ever gets free he’ll probably get all inscrutable at us. All that, ‘What is the hand of one sound while someone else is clapping,’ stuff. Gives me a right thumping headache.”

“Look,” snapped Fondle, “he’s not bloody Oriental, I already told you that. He’s got lines drawn in the corners of his eyes, see? So he’s about as bloody Oriental as wossname was in that show where he had to go around doing things.”

“David Carridine,” said Sheldon ‘Really, Really’ Badway, youngest of the brothers, who had remained silent up to that point.

“Yeah, him,” said Fondle. “So why don’t you just shut the hell up so we can-“

“And the show was called ‘Kung Fu’,” Sheldon added helpfully. “It was set in the Old West.”

“Right,” said Fondle, who had a feeling the conversation was getting away from him. “Like I was say-“

“Did you know that the role of Kwai Chang Caine was originally going to go to Bruce Lee, but the producers decided that audiences weren’t ready for a real Oriental actor, but that for some reason a really fake Oriental actor was fine.”

“Really?” interjected Drool Badway, the fourth of the brothers. “Wow, he’d have been so kickass in that show!” And then he and Clutch and Sheldon had spent several minutes waving their hands in the air and yelling, “Waaaah?!” and “Haiyah!” and “Grod, Sheldon, that really hurt! Show me how you did it?” and “You did it again! I only wanted you to show me how you did it! Come here you little bastYAAAARGH!”

Fondle stared up at the ceiling of the warehouse and counted to 10. Then he did some long division, and rounded out the exercise by calculating Pi to 112 significant digits.

“Right!” he said brightly, once the seething red tide of hostility that often washed over him while dealing with his brothers [2] had finally receded. “That’s excellent! Do we all think we know enough about the show with the guy?! Great! Now, how about we do some actual fucking work?! Anyway,” he added with scorn, “Jean-Claude Van Damme could take Bruce Lee with one arm tied behind his back.”

***

Max Damage was one with the night.

This had nothing to do with his ability to move stealthily, since he carried so much weaponry with him wherever he went that he sounded very much like an entire orchestral brass section being pushed down a steep crevasse followed by a small avalanche of rocks. It did, however, have a lot to do with the fact that his superhero costume had been made of an experimental fibre that absorbed every bit of stray light that was unfortunate enough to shine in his vicinity.

This made him effectively invisible during dark nights such as that particular night, but had the opposite effect at any other time of the day. Essentially, it was hard to miss a moving patch of blacky-black-blackness moving at a scurry across a well-lit space of ground. Particularly one that jangled and clanked and tinkled with every step.

Still, Damage had a way of approaching a heavily armed position with so much noise and obviousness that most guards were still going, “Wow, he’s like… I mean, who does he think he’s kidding? Look, he dropped one of his bandoliers and he’s… he’s really going back to get it. See? He’s standing right out there in the open, putting it back on. You could shoot him from here. Seriously, that’s just so-“, so that by the time he reached them he had plenty of time to basically blow them off the face of the earth with his personal arsenal of weapons of localised destruction.

***

Phon Du gradually regained consciousness.

He was vaguely aware that a group of men were nearby, and that they were having a heated argument about who would win a fair fight between Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Judge Judy.

Currently it appeared that the Judge Judy contingent was carrying the debate, but a spirited counter-attempt was being made by the Jean-Claude camp, with the observation that he would just do one those horrible, horrible splits of his whenever Judge Judy came in close with her gavel, and that Jean-Claude would show her who was really out of order.

“Don’t be daft,” said another voice. “Jackie Chan would just…,” there was the scuffling sound of movement, “and then he’d…,” more scuffling, “and then he’d grab this chair, right, and he’d… like this… and then he’d do this! You telling me Jean-Claude’s got an answer for that?! Hah!”

The argument descended into indistinguishable bickering, leaving Phon Du to begin working at the ropes that were binding him to the packing crate.

It’s time, he thought to himself, to get inscrutable. And then he thought, What is the sound of one hand getting free of some ropes? And then he thought, It is probably the sound of one man whimpering softly as he loses most of the skin on his fucking wrists…

***

Max Damage crept closer to the warehouse, with only a little bit of tinkling. He was going to need the element of surprise when he launched himself through the doors, and he briefly considered removing some of his more noisy weapons to assist in this endeavour.

Then he discarded this notion, particularly since he realised it would probably take him two hours just to divest himself of the 3 different grappling hooks that were attached to his costume, let alone any of the rocket launchers, grenades, pump-action shotguns and / or ritual disembowelling spoons.

He paused. There were voices coming from within, and it appeared that they were arguing about something.

Good, he thought to himself with a sneer, so much the better to take you by surprise! Aha ahahahahah!

And then he swore softly under his breath, because he was certain he’d accidentally said that last bit out loud.

***

It had been a quiet night on the docks for the lads who worked in Warehouse 9C. Technically they were supposed to be busy shifting crates and shipping containers back and forth, but the boss was never there for the night shift, so who was to know if the lads took a break every now and then to indulge in the favourite past-time of every burly, masculine dock worker.

“Are you sure,” Legless Dave said with a suspicious tone, “that you don’t have a 9? I think you do have a fucking 9!”

“I do not have a fucking 9,” said Spiteful Warren, “or any other type of 9, for that matter. This is why, when you asked me if I had a fucking 9, I said, and I quote, ‘You can go fucking fish’.” [3]

“Listen, Spiteful,” said Legless, “if I come over there and find out that you’ve got a fucking 9, I am going to beat you into such a bloody pulp such as what your wife and kiddies will be able to keep your remains in a small mayonnaise jar. Without, I might add, taking out much mayonnaise first.”

“You are welcome,” said Spiteful, “to come over here and check whether or not I have a fucking 9, Legless, and while you are at it how about you bring some buddies, for the purposes of dragging your mutilated body to a funeral home wherein they will be forced to employ many and subtle funereal arts simply to identify your corpse.”

“I think I will come over there, Spiteful, to check whether or not you have a fucking 9, and then what I will do with your genitals afterwards, will be written about in medical journals with accompanying high definition photos to establish the true horror-“, but he didn’t get to finish this thought as one of the other players held up a hand for silence.

“Shhhh!” said Hearing Things Trevor. “Did any of you hear that? It sounded like someone said, ‘Aha ahahaha!’, and there was also some tinkling.”

Everyone else at the table sighed.

“There is a reason why we call you Hearing Things Trevor,” said Legless Dave, “and this is because you are always, not to put too fine a point on it, hearing things. Now, how about you shut up while I sort out if I need to go over there and tear Spiteful Warren’s head off his still living body for hiding a fucking 9 on me.”

“I am rampant with expectation at the prospect of you coming over here, Legless,” said Spiteful Warren, “for I am looking forward to the opportunity to push your face into an industrial shredder, after which I plan to-“ but he also didn’t get a chance to finish this thought, because it was at that moment that the warehouse erupted in hellfire.

Amidst all the noise and screaming and the subtle sounds of four dock workers simultaneously soiling themselves, there was also the sound of someone yelling, “Aha ahahahaha!” accompanied by a lot of tinkling.

***

Phon Du had freed himself from the ropes.

I wish the Boss was here, he thought to himself as he hid behind the packing crate, he’d know what to do. Then he gave this observation some careful scrutiny, and decided that what the Boss would probably do was blow everything up, and that maybe it was best all round if he wasn’t there, after all.

He slipped his trusty Number 13 Spanner out of his flowing robes. It appeared that the four villains were still engaged in their squabble, with one having sunk into a splits that had obviously sprained his groin, another hovering on the periphery with a small hammer and yelling, “You’re out of order!”, a third hopping around madly while frothing, “I’m going to enter the dragon! So help me Grod, I’m going to enter the dragon!”, while the fourth was doing complicated and possibly illegal things to a chair.

Okay, thought Phon Du with a little bemusement, maybe this is going to be easier than I thought.

He hefted his spanner aloft and then, because he was trying to be the best Oriental Manservant he could be, he issued the obligatory blood-curdling, “Aiiiiieeeee!” before rushing across the open space of the warehouse.

***

“Look,” called out Max Damage as he stood in the middle of the blazing warehouse, “I did say I was awfully sorry!”

“Thank you,”  Legless Dave yelled back from where the four workers had managed to hole themselves up in the warehouse’s pay office. “We accept your apology and we would like it very much if you left!”

“I’m sure you can clean up the place!” Yelled Damage. “I’d be happy to come back later and help, if you like! It’ll be as good as new!” He added doubtfully, looking around at the bullet-ridden carnage.

“No, that’s okay!” Came Legless Dave’s voice. “We’re happy to do it ourselves!” There was the sound of several voices having a hushed but passionate conversation. “And we’d also like it if you promised to not ever come back, ever!”

Damage scuffed a mildly embarrassed foot back and forth. “Well…! I’d have to come back if you were doing anything illegal! It’s a sort of professional thing!”

“What the hell would you do if we were?!” Yelled back Legless Dave. “Nuke the entire fucking city?!”

There was a short pause, and then, “Actually, there is one thing you could do! Can you check to see if there’s a 9 in the hand of cards closest to the door?!”

Then another voice yelled, “Are you still going on about that fucking 9?! Sweet Merciless Grod, Legless, I swear I’ll push you out to deal with him if you don’t fucking drop it!”

However, Max Damage was no longer there to help with that particular request. He had heard a familiar “Aiiiiieeeee!” from a neighbouring warehouse and had legged it into the night, tinkling and clanking as he went.

***

There was nothing left for Damage to blow up when he eventually arrived at the right warehouse, by way of levelling two other warehouses along the way, just to be sure.

There was his Oriental Manservant, squatting on the concrete floor in the middle of a circle of tightly bound Badway Brothers.

Every now and then he deftly clubbed one or another of them with his spanner, just to maintain a sense of status quo.

“What happened here?” Damage demanded, finding it hard to hide his disappointment at having missed the real action. He was holding what appeared to be a gently smoking flamethrower, which was also gently setting fire to the warehouse ceiling.

“Well,” said Phon Du, “first I employed The Three Hidden Forms Of Operating The Weed Wacker, and then I went straight into You Don’t Get To Use The Ride-on Mower Again Until You Learn How To Make Straight Lines. And then,” he added, because he was essentially an honest Oriental Manservant, “I hit them with my spanner.”

“Right,” said Damage decisively, but that was as far as he got before several tons of burning ceiling beams collapsed on top of him.

Phon Du shook his head and sighed, and then got busy dragging his Boss out from under the burning beams and into the cold night air. After a few minutes he returned to perform a similar operation on the unconscious Badway Brothers.

***

Later, once he had got everyone out of the warehouse, Phon Du had squatted next to his gently smouldering Boss and had looked out over the waterfront.

Most of the warehouses were ablaze, and the sound of sirens were beginning to fill the night air. [4]

In the foreground a fistfight had broken out amongst a group of dock workers, and occasionally the sounds of one or the other of them yelling about a fish had wafted over to him above the sirens.

You know what? He had thought wisely to himself. Something very fucking Zen must have happened here tonight.

At that moment Max Damage began to gurgle as he surfaced closer to consciousness, and Phon Du reached over and very tenderly thumped him in the head with his spanner. “Yaargh,” said Damage, and sank bank down into the depths of unconsciousness.

Phon Du smiled an inscrutable smile, and looked out over the flames. He had earned a little break, and, he had thought, Wisdom City always looked its prettiest when it was burning down at night.