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How to Steal the Plot Armor

by Luke Wildman

PART TWO of TWO

 

Something was obviously wrong from the moment we entered the great hall. Too many folk milled about, too many by far. Logs crackled in the firepit. The tables groaned under a weight of food and drink too profuse for the number of retainers who abided here while the Lord of Omlath was absent, and something was wrong with their eyes . . . a sort of dull light. They moved in a jerky, mechanical way, as if someone had wound them up and set them to clanking from task to task. Disconcerting, to say the least.

The explanation soon became apparent. In a flower-carved throne at the head of the hall, the Lord of Shadows presided.

The Master of Darkness swung his gaze to us when we entered, and his obsidian eyes seemed to pierce all hopes and disguises. “Ah,” he said, “entertainers. Come! Play a song for your great lord.”

Sir Barm stiffened beside me. I followed his gaze and beheld a willowy slip of a teenage girl lounging on the steps at the Shadow Lord’s feet. She wore a fetching red gown, a gold circlet over brown curls, and she possessed the same delicate pasty features as her dad, though they looked better on her. From how Sir Barm was gaping, I knew at once that his love for her was no fickle impulse. There was a story behind it, though I hadn’t listened when he told it to me. This could spell trouble.

“Lords and landed gentry!” Bacchus said, bowing. “Behold — we trifling troubadours shall traipse through twittering tunes, endeavoring to entertain for the honor of your encores!” And with that, he began to play.

I’d hired the man for a reason. Neither Sir Barm nor myself had the faintest idea what to do with the musical paraphernalia strapped to us, so we banged our drums and blew our pipes at random . . . and somehow, Bacchus made a song of it. He wound our cacophony into a greater melody, sweeping discordant notes along as if they were intentional. The song reared to the vaulted roof, reverberated among the ceiling beams, sank low and mournful into the souls of our listeners. In this song, wrought partially of my own ineptitude, I recalled every grief of my life, relived each failed and faithless moment, remembered all my bitter choices, until I longed to weep. And still it continued.

Bacchus was rearing the song toward a triumphant crescendo when jeers interrupted him. His accordion squawked in protest, and the music fell apart. All heads turned toward the source of the desecration.

“You call that music?” the Shadow Lord’s daughter asked. “There weren’t even lyrics! When I hear music, I want poetry. I want to hear about ancient deeds of valor. In short . . . I want recitations.”

A cruel smile played on her rosebud lips as she rose and sauntered toward us.

“Play a good song, a song with words,” she said. “Make them play one, Daddy . . . or chop off their heads!”

The Shadow Lord looked bemused. He raised his eyebrows at us. “Well, boys? You heard my daughter.”

I clenched my jaw.

Bacchus was shooting me worried glances, but he should’ve been more concerned about Sir Barm. The knight was trembling from head to heels, his accordion emitting tiny squeaks as he took shuddering breaths, his gaze fixed on the teenager. When she halted a foot away from him, I feared he would go into cardiac arrest.

“Oh lovely Lady,” Bacchus said, “while your request reveals rarified refinement, we troubled troubadours are poor players of proper parts, being best at instrumental anthems and —”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” she said, smirking. “You’re professionals, right? A least one of you must have a decent voice. You, knees?” she asked, looking me up and down pointedly. “Or how about you, goldilocks?” Her eyes drank in Sir Barm’s impressive physique.

The knight blinked several times. He glanced at me, and I nodded. I’d allow a recitation just this once, for the sake of not getting my head chopped off. Of the Rules Three, this was the least important; it’s just that I’ve heard more than enough damned songs and poems and prophecies over the years. Why does every company of dwarves or party of adventurers seem to think music is a good way of explaining their quest’s backstory?

“If my lady wishes, I will sing,” Sir Barm said in a hoarse voice.

“My lady-self wishes.”

Bacchus and I braced for disaster as the knight cleared his throat. After trilling through a few warm-up exercises, he began.

 

“Oh, once there was a lady,

Lovelier than the stars.

Her eyes made strong hearts shudder,

Her voice made weak men’s arms.

To glimpse her a brave man journeyed,

Through heaven and earth and hell.

But if this lady loved him,

The brave man could not tell.

He asked, “How may I win your favor?”

She laughed in a scornful way.

She said, “First you must sway my father,

To let you ask me out today.”

Now this lovely lady’s father,

Was renowned as a wicked lord.

The brave man knew that to beat him,

He would need a star-forged sword.

He sought the aid of a wizard,

A most Sagacious Sage.

Who suggested to him a different plan,

To win his lady fey.

They ventured to the dark lord’s castle

To try their blessed luck,

But there they beheld the lady

Whom the brave man wished to —”

 

I burst into a fit of coughing that made my accordion and bagpipes wheeze hideously. Sir Barm cut off not a moment too soon; he’d been on the verge of spilling all our secrets.

“Is it over already?” the girl asked mockingly. “Thank the gods. I was having awful flashbacks to all the men who seem to think the most romantic way of winning my heart is to murder my beloved father. A new dunce comes along every other week. I can’t even remember them all anymore.”

Sir Barm’s eyes bulged. He looked a bit purple in the cheeks, so I decided this was an opportune moment to slip away.

“Liege,” I rasped to the Shadow Lord, “is there a place where an old man can get some air? My lungs aren’t what they once were.” I made sure to give a full blast of the bagpipes with my next cough.

“Yes, yes,” the Lord of Darkness said hastily, “there’s a balcony right up those stairs. When you come back, perhaps you can stick to the percussion instruments rather than the woodwinds. You go with him,” he said, pointing at Sir Barm. “Just leave your third friend behind. The one who can actually play.”

We bowed our way from the hall.

We lingered on the balcony just long enough to discard our kits, then hammered up the spiral staircase, Sir Barm taking the steps three at a time. I huffed and puffed behind him as we wound toward the castle’s uppermost tower.

“So,” I said, desperate to distract myself from a stitch in my ribs, “you and the lady. That song. Autobiographical, I take it?”

Sir Barm glanced back at me, hardly seeming winded. “Many a tale reached my ears and heart concerning her beauty, but when I sought her out in her enchanted tower — as instructed by the centaur’s crib-prophecy, you recall — she said she dares not wed for fear of her father. Doubtless, his presence is the reason she pretended not to know me. She does love me.”

“Oh, doubtless,” I said, though the real story was obvious. Here was an unhinged, pampered young man who couldn’t imagine anyone not being into him. He didn’t know how to handle straight rejection or take a hint. My disgust for him was rivaled only by my irritation that the girl had called me “knees” and forced me to endure a recitation. Maybe they deserved each other.

I might’ve pushed the issue, but I had to save my breath until we reached the top. A couple of crystal guards stood on duty, but Sir Barm dispatched them with frightening ease.

As we burst into the unnatural summer daylight, a scent of wildflowers and fresh grass hit us. The source was a glowing, rune-engraved stone on a pedestal in the center of the round tower. I’ve seen miracles aplenty in my life, but even I paused and gasped at the sheer magicalness of it.

Sir Barm approached the capstone as if in a trance. His hands hovered over it — then he wrenched them away and glanced at me. “Master, it would be wrong for me to steal the honor of unseating our foe. Yours should be the hands that enact his defeat.”

“Oh, unseat away,” I said. “This quest is all you. Just wait a few minutes, till our gryphon friend arrives. We wouldn’t want the castle to collapse with us trapped up here.”

We didn’t have long to wait. I gazed for a couple minutes into the distance, admiring the spell of summer-magic that kept all the lands of this cantref green to the distant horizon, where I just caught the glitter of winter ice. Soon enough, the whump-whump-whump of wings beat the air, and a yellow speck circled down, becoming Garsteaodeafix the Gryphon. She landed with unlikely grace, her lion’s claws grasping the parapet.

“Where is the bard?” she asked.

“The Shadow Lord wanted him to stay and play awhile,” I said. “By this time, he should be following our alternate plan and making excuses to leave by the gate.”

Garsteaodeafix bobbed her head regally. “Then let us proceed.”

Sir Barm approached the capstone again. It throbbed gently as his hands hovered over it. His fingertips brushed the surface . . . then he blinked at me again.

“My ladylove is below,” he said. “What shall become of her?”

“Are you forgetting everything I told you in the tavern? Even before we knew that the Shadow Lord and his daughter were here, I wasn’t about to let all the innocents in this castle perish. The collapse won’t be instantaneous. The walls will start to rumble as soon as you pull the capstone out, but it will take time for the foundations to split apart and the roof to cave in. The people below will realize what’s happening and flee.”

Sir Barm nodded but continued to look hesitant. Fear seized me — He knows! — and I was contemplating backup plans when the knight finally reached out, seized the edges of the capstone, and wrenched it from its iron brackets. All three of us held our breaths.

Nothing happened.

A moment passed. Stretched longer. Turned into a full minute . . . and still no rumbling. Sir Barm shook the stone, turned it around in his hands, and held it up to his ear, as if it might whisper to him like a conch shell. Then he looked at me.

“Sage?”

I scratched my chin. “Well, that’s . . . huh. That should’ve worked.”

I took the capstone from Sir Barm, ran a finger over the runes, mumbled inaudibly. Then I slapped my forehead. “Gah! I must’ve gotten a bad translation of the rune writing in those secondary texts I studied. This clearly says that one must actually remove the stone from the castle’s premises to break the magic.”

Garsteaodeafix’s golden eyes narrowed to slits as I spoke, but Sir Barm looked utterly aghast. He leaned over the parapet, clearly considering hurling the stone off the tower. But there was no chance it would clear the rooftops below.

“Oh dire fate!” the knight wailed. “Our enemies will triumph! What shall we do, wizard?”

I gritted my teeth. “There’s only one thing to do. As I told you in the tavern, the stone can’t be transported via magical beast — which means one of us must carry it out through a doorway. And since I’m the one who made this mistake . . .” I sighed. “You’re a young man, with your life ahead of you. Just promise you’ll use your years well. Live life to the fullest. And — pardon a piece of unsolicited relationship advice from an old fogey — when young ladies tell you they don’t want to be courted, try to respect their wishes.”

What’s an adventure without a moral, right?

Sir Barm was staring at me in dazed amazement. I’d already half-shoved him onto Garsteaodeafix’s back before his brain seemed to catch up with events.

“Master, no!” he cried, dismounting and tottering dangerously close to the edge. “I cannot let you sacrifice your life for mine. I will descend back with you into the castle, and we shall cut our way out together or die in the attempt.”

“You fanatical whelp,” I snarled. “Have you completely forgotten Rule the Second?”

In Sir Barm’s expression, I read a war between his desire for heroic martyrdom and his slavish zealotry to rules. I doubt concern for my life came into it. Sir Barm stepped toward Garsteaodeafix again . . . then shook his head, as if to clear it of cobwebs, and planted himself. “No, Master,” he said. “I will not abandon you.”

Uh-oh.

“Listen,” I said, trying to look mysterious, “there’s something you should know about me. It’s my duty to deal with the Shadow Lord because . . . because I created him. I haven’t always done a good job of mentoring my pupils.”

Sir Barm gasped, then frowned. “Wait . . . our enemy did not appear to recognize you, down below.”

“He has amnesia.”

“But the story of his life is recorded in many histories,” Sir Barm said. “The devil sired and raised him, and he came straight from the depths of hell to begin his conquests. At no time did he study under a mortal teacher.”

“Um . . . all the historians have amnesia, too?”

“Why are you trying to deceive me, Master?”

I flung up my hands. “Just let me do this, all right? I feel as if my entire life’s journey has prepared me for this sacrifice, yada-yada-yada, etcetera.”

Sir Barm rested a hand on my shoulder and looked down at me, his blue eyes somber. It made me feel shrimpy. “No matter our pasts, we can choose to be braver men in the future,” he said. “We will fight them together, Master. You will cast off your cowardice, and I . . . I will sever the compulsion that the witch must’ve laid on me.”

“Hold on. Cowardice?”

“Come, Master! Come . . . to a glorious end!”

Seizing one of the fallen guardsmen’s swords, he brandished the blade aloft and, tucking the capstone under his other arm, rushed back down the stairs.

Garsteaodeafix fixed her gaze on me, and I shrugged. “Well, now he’s broken Rule the First and Rule the Second. Gods spare us any more infractions.”

The gryphon raised a brow and said, “Indeed. How unfortunate that you did not properly understand the capstone’s magic.”

“A real bummer.”

“And you still have not told the knight . . .”

“About the curse, yes. I know. He’ll learn in good time.”

Garsteaodeafix chuckled as if this was all a very fine joke, then sprang away to drift on the hot air currents, her tawny fur and feathers magnificent against the sky.

Grumbling imprecations, I followed my imbecilic mentee back down the stairs.

---

The castle shuddered when we were halfway down, making Sir Barm yelp and throw out his arms for balance, though I’d already braced myself.

“What devilry is this!” he cried. “Did you not say that the stone must be bodily removed from the fortress?”

“You know, some translations are a bit ambiguous. I always forget if the ancient runes are meant to be read top to bottom or in a widdershins spiral.”

“Master Sage, I begin to doubt your sagaciousness.”

On some of the flights along the stairwell, we glimpsed servants and crystal guards scurrying back and forth, but with the same jerky movements as before, as if they were windup toys with their springs coiled almost to the breaking point. Still, most seemed to be heading for the exits, which reassured me.

Pebbles plopped from the ceiling, and a couple of steps cracked right before we put weight on them. It was with enormous relief that we both spilled from the stairwell onto the bottom floor. Short-lived relief.

Chaos filled the great hall. An oak beam had tumbled from the center of the roof into the fire pit, scattering embers. Half the courtiers jigged madly to stomp out tiny blazes while their fortress collapsed around them. The other half fainted dead away or scrambled for the exits. I saw no sign of the Shadow Lord or his daughter.

A couple of men glimpsed the capstone under Sir Barm’s arm and tried to stop us, but he knocked them aside and rushed to the door.

“Ah-ha!” he cried, standing framed against the daylight. “Behold your fate, evildoers! Be buried under your sins!”

He turned to rush out . . . and we both saw the entire garrison of crystal guards congregating before the gates. From the snarls on their faces, they’d heard Sir Barm’s speech.

We sprinted back through the great hall and into a corridor. War cries and thumping boots echoed behind us as we took the turns at random, praying we wouldn’t strike a dead end. Hanging tapestries and suits of armor flashed past, and a thick scent of dust scratched at our nostrils as we tangled deeper into the warren of passages. We became thoroughly lost.

The air grew chilly, and realization crept over me that we were descending below the earth . . . which meant Rule the Third was in serious peril. Of all my rules, it was the deadliest.

I skidded to a halt in front of a low-arched doorway of brick. A sign stood next to the archway, with a helpful arrow pointing at the entrance and runes underneath it that proclaimed: “Ye Olde Family Crypt.”

“Oh no,” I said. “I am not going in there. Nuh-uh, no chance. Not this side of the underworld. No crypts!”

“Master, the tunnels are our last hope. Listen . . . our pursuers gain.”

The tromp of footsteps was growing louder, but I backed away. “I’ll take my chances with the guards,” I said. “This is the part where a mentor always gets killed.”

“Have you lived all your life on a mountaintop because you feared the world below, Master? You have spoken words of courage to many heroes . . . but have you kept no courage for yourself? You are strong enough for this! We shall risk this danger together!”

“Easy for you to say,” I grumbled. “Your destiny will lead you right out the other side of this tunnel. That’s some nice plot armor you’ve got.”

“Master, please.” He said nothing more. Just looked at me with those ridiculously piercing hero eyes.

I shuddered — then took a step toward him. “When did you grow so wise?” I asked. “Truly, I have nothing left to teach you. It seems that I’m the ‘prentice now, you the master. You know, if I’d ever had a son, I would’ve wanted him to be exactly like —”

The crystal guards burst into the hallway behind us.

We both froze.

“Go, go, go!” I yelled, pushing Sir Barm into the crypt-tunnel ahead of me. “For all this to mean something, we must keep the capstone away from them!”

“Master, we can both make it. We —”

“No,” I said. I clasped my pupil’s hand. “It’s not cowardice this time. You’ve shown me the meaning of courage. Fare thee well, Sir Barm.”

I strode back toward the guards, spread my arms, and began to chant nonsense words. They pulled up short.

A rumble shuddered the earth, as if we stood in the throat of some great beast. I pointed at the guards. “You fools dare challenge me? You would challenge one who has survived a thousand quests, destroyed a thousand evils, seen a thousand prophecies fulfilled? Come and get me, curs!”

The very foundations of the castle cracked and heaved. Bricks showered the crypt’s entrance. A curtain of dust descended, through which I glimpsed the knight, staring back at me, arms outstretched . . . and then an avalanche of masonry collapsed the tunnel between us.

I let my arms drop to my sides.

“He’s a hard fellow to get rid of,” one of the guards observed. He lifted his helmet’s visor, revealing delicate, pasty features.

“Tom,” I said, nodding to him. “Glad you got my letter.”

We grinned and embraced. Always a pleasure to see old friends.

The second guard doffed her helmet. Coffee-brown hair tumbled free. “Oh my gods, that knight was so annoying. And he was too old for me! I’m so glad he’s gone.”

“You, young lady, were not very nice today,” I said, shaking a finger at her. “You know how much I hate recitations. And calling me ‘knees’? Really?”

She shrugged, packing the gesture with insecure scorn as only a teenager can. “What was all that stuff you said at the end? Something about, if you’d ever had a son . . .”

“I had to stall him somehow until you two arrived. You took your sweet time getting down here.”

“My apologies,” Tom said. “We did not expect to need the backup plan. I had to trigger the spells manually to get that bit of tunnel to collapse on time. Also, a stone conked me on the head in the great room. I nearly lost control of the hex I’ve been using to enslave the minds of the castle staff.”

“Any trouble kidnapping the real lord?” I asked.

“None whatsoever. My dragon, Smoggy, thought he was delicious.”

The corridor trembled again, dust dribbled onto our heads, and we beat a hasty retreat, aware once more that this fortress was disintegrating. If Sir Barm had flown off on Garsteaodeafix, as I’d intended, I would’ve had ample time to escape before the process started.

“You’re certain that everyone will hear of the knight’s shame?” Tom asked me. “He must be punished for his disrespect toward my daughter and myself.”

“Oh, people will hear,” I said. “That bard who I told you to set free is excruciatingly good at what he does. He won’t be able to resist composing a ballad of these exploits — especially when he learns that the castle Sir Barm destroyed was a fortress of goodness and light, not the summer home of some scummy evil lord. Er, no offense, Tom.”

Tom grinned wickedly at me. “None taken.”

---

The next time I beheld Sir Barm, his head and arms were trapped in a wooden stockade. Egg yolk dripped down his clean-shaven cheeks. Rotten, by the color and smell.

“You addlebrained dunce!” a peasant woman shrieked at him, pelting his rear with a tomato. “You destroyed our lord’s castle! Lucky we don’t chop off your head, you are.”

“Good damsel, you must believe me! I have been betrayed. My mentor —”

“Rubbish! Seems to me that a real knight, an honorable knight, would take the blame for what he’s done, and the punishment, too.”

“You impugn my honor!”

“I’ll show you impugnment, I will!”

A volley of rotten produce plastered him with fetid juices.

It took a few hours for the crowds to grow bored and drift away. I waited across the courtyard, nursing ales at a table outside The Rusty Ploughshare. When Sir Barm was alone, I stood, yawned, and ambled into his line of sight.

His eyes widened when he saw me. “You scoundrel! You fiend! You are the architect of my downfall.”

“Harsh words,” I said. “But not untrue ones, I guess. What can I say? Having you destroy this castle was an honest mistake, and I’m terribly remorseful.”

“A mistake? You caused me to tear down an innocent wonder of the world! You have heaped disgrace upon my name.”

“Oh, it’s not that bad. Tell you what: I’ll get you out of these stocks, we’ll buy some supplies, and we’ll journey up to the Ash Lands for a real adventure, like you wanted in the first place. We’ll pay that Lord of Shadows back for tricking us, I tell you.”

I could actually hear Sir Barm’s teeth grinding. “Do not touch me,” he growled. “I swear on my honor as a knight, you will never mentor another hero. You think my name is shamed, now? By the time I am finished, there will not be a person in the world who won’t have heard of your ineptitude. Adventurers will mock your name! You will become a tavern jest, a byword for duncery . . . and then you will be forgotten! No hero will come within a thousand leagues of your wretched mountain!”

I hung my head and whimpered. “Please,” I said, “mentoring is all I’ve ever known. What do you expect me to do with my time . . . read books? Live a life of boredom in my cozy cottage, drinking endless tankards of ale and mugs of tea? I beg you, give me another chance!”

“You should have died in that crypt,” Sir Barm said. “Then, at least, you would be remembered as a martyr, and knights might foolishly venture to your cottage, hoping to find you resurrected. Leave me, now. The next time I behold your face, I will strike you down.”

I blinked fake tears from my eyes and shuffled away from the stockade. A chilly breeze made me shiver. Glancing up, I saw gray clouds mounding above us, threatening snow. The summer-spell had been broken.

At the very edge of Sir Barm’s vision, I paused and glanced back. “Good knight,” I said, “I should give you a warning. I’ve pondered the runes on the capstone — the ones that I misinterpreted before. I’ve made one last translation of them, and this time I’m sure it’s correct. Be warned, Sir Barm: a curse lies on the stone! Its power is not that of turning winter to summer, but of revealing hidden natures. Just as it pulled back winter’s veil from this town, showing the land beneath, so will it strip away the pretenses from anyone who possesses it for any length of time. For a truly good person, that’s not a problem. But for a hypocrite — say, someone who withheld healing from a scabrous beggar woman until she cleaned up a field of aurochs dung for him — well, for a person like that, I can only imagine the punishment would fit the crime.”

I smiled at him. “You have a little something on your cheek, just there.”

Sir Barm stared at me, then rubbed at his cheek with his shoulder, smearing the egg yolk more thoroughly. The skin beneath was already scabbing over.

I chuckled to myself and took the main road out of Omlath, stopping briefly to purchase a couple of books. I’d arranged to meet Garsteaodeafix on the town’s outskirts. The gryphon didn’t know the extent of my deception, but she’d volunteered to fly me back to my mountaintop. Judging by the weather, that was a good thing.

It was starting to snow.

---

Host Commentary

Now, as mentioned at least twice already, and this is your third and final warning, this is PART TWO of the story, so skip ye back to episode 881 if any of the following recap isn’t ringing any silver bells of recollection in your head. We opened on our solitary sage minding his own business atop his lonely and remote mountain, dealing with yet another hero who couldn’t take the LONELY and REMOTE hint, who had already proven his worth (and so, alas, overcome our sage’s usual dissuasions) in clearing both the field of auroch dung at the foot of the mountain and Abominable Alice’s scabrous appearance. Thus was our sage burdened with this hero determined to fulfil the prophecy that he would challenge the Shadow Lord for supremacy and the right to woo his daughter, a noble quest that could—naturally—only be undertaken with the wise and gentle guidance of an equally noble mentor, who, as tradition foretells, must needs die at the crucial moment in order to leave the hero Alone and Overwhelmed yet, nevertheless, unstoppably motivated to complete his quest and prove himself worthy of his mentor’s faith.

Never mind that said mentor might in fact not want to die as a sacrifice to someone else’s emotional journey and might instead prefer to sit by his fire reading books and sipping tea. Alone. On a remote mountain. Imagine.

And so the sage has brought Sir Barm to Omlath, where stands the castle of the Shadow Lord—or his summer home, at least—with a magical capstone enchanting the surrounding lands to a perpetual midday pleasantness, resistant to the seasons. Removing this capstone will bring down both the castle and the Shadow Lord, and surely impress the beautiful daughter whom Sir Barm so desires. The wily mentor has gathered allies—Bacchus the Bard, and… erm… a fancifully named gryphon—and laid out his plan to get them into the castle to remove the capstone, though he may have been remiss in laying out the terms of the curse on it. Ohnowhatashame. Anyway.

He also has laid out his rules three for the granting of his tutelage: no recitations, ballads or heroic prophecies to be uttered without permission; no disobedience to the word of the sage; and absolutely under no circumstances no way no how any crypts, tombs, tunnels, or subterranean spaces of any nature liable to prove terminal to an elderly character of the mentor persuasion.

And now pay attention, for Sir Barm has crossed the bridge of Omlath Castle dressed as an entertainer, in the company of his companions three, and the guards have accepted their forged documents and permitted entry; and as he proceedeth unto his destiny, so shall you proceed unto the conclusion of our tale…

---

…aaaaand welcome back. That was “How to Steal the Plot Armor” by Luke Wildman, and if you enjoyed that then happily he has a website with a few stories he’s published for free—it is, simply enough, at lukewildman.com

I have a great love for stories that, well, love fantasy enough to take the piss out of it. And it is a form of love, here, because skewering it like this requires knowing it, its beats, its habits, its expectations. And it’s a fine and storied tradition, from Dianna Wynne Jones’ Tough Guide to Fantasyland 30 years ago through to last year’s How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler, because for all the range of wonder and possibilities inherent to and implicit in fantasy as a genre… sometimes we sure do get stuck on our cod-medieval, farmboys-and-foretellings, wizards-and-warriors schtick. My first fantasy series as an 11yo, that I read at a pace of one book a day because I was hooked, was bloody David Eddings’ Belgariad, a piece of worldbuilding so cliché that literally entire nations were apparently made up of exactly one (1) type of person. Like, uh, poisoners. How’s that economy work, huh, David? Who’s growing the wheat and sewing the clothes there? Ridiculous, honestly.

But sometimes you just get a hankering for a bit of Dragonlance, right? Some people will binge reality shows as comfort food for the brain, some people will play endless match 3 games on their phones, and some of us, well, some of us will dive straight back into Terry Brooks.

But there’s another Pterry that was a master in every way, who loved fantasy enough to take the piss out of it, and loved fantasy enough to treat it seriously: our beloved, and oh-so-missed Mr Pratchett. Because treating something with humour doesn’t have to mean you’re not treating it seriously, right? I’ve met some of the most serious moments of my life with humour, because sometimes if you’re not going to laugh there’s only worse options left. But as well, I think, humour as a concept generally relies on surprising you in some way, on coming at things sideways and showing them in new light or connecting them in new ways; and so sometimes you need humour to show you something you’ve stopped truly seeing, something you only glance at now before your mind slides over it, too familiar to waste time actually thinking about. You need the askance view, the transgressive presentation, to puncture through that familiarity and force you to look again, and see in ways you weren’t prepared to see at first and could no longer see once your mind had an allotted image.

So sure, today’s story might just seem like a light-hearted gentle ribbing of some of our genre’s story predilections. But maybe it’s trying to show you something else, too.