Episode 90: Head For The Light

Xeno froze, a hot plate of simmering nachos in his hands. 

"You coming in or what?" Billy's silhouetted form stood out against his open bathrobe, and Xeno was keenly appreciative of the backlighting. Billy turned on his heel and moved back into the room, leaving Xeno in the hallway clutching his nachos.

Had he not seen me clearly? Did he think I was someone else? One look at the room he entered told the story. Empty bottles of wine. A mound of white powder on a low table. A small, wicked-looking knife stuck into the tabletop. There was even a hookah off to one side, set amidst a circle of pillows on the floor Billy was now settling himself down in front of the powder, and unsticking the knife, he gestured for Xeno to join him.

"Come have have a tootle while those cool down a bit," he squeaked in his irritatingly high-pitched voice. "Not that I'd feel a thing, mind you. I'm high as a kite. I'm higher than the fucking mooooooooooon!" 

Billy was caught up in a fit of giggling, knife wavering uneasily over the mountain of blow. He had started to divide out a portion when Xeno reached the table and knelt, setting the cooling platter down on the table. Billy was muttering as he shoveled little piles around the table's surface, making little snowplow noises in the back of his throat. Xeno pulled one hand slowly away from the nachos and brought it to the knife on his belt. He was surprised Billy hadn't recognized him yet. When he did, he wanted to be ready...

Suddenly, a loud alarm sounded throughout the building. Xeno and Billy both jumped up, knocking over the table and sending ground beef, refried beans and cocaine flying all over the place. Billy swore loudly and tore out of the room, robe flapping away from his body. Xeno was overcome by a wave of nauseated envy.

With Billy gone, Xeno quickly cased the room desperately for any clue as to how to get out of this situation. There were no big weapons available, and nothing presented itself to him as an exit. He would have killed for a self-destruct button - what a way to go, right? Even better would be to get someone else to do it, but...

Just then he heard a low rumbling from outside. Out on the terrace, he could just make out a low, rectangular shape. It seemed to be emitting steam. With a quick glance behind him he edged his way through the oily meats and cheeses on the floor to the double doors at the back of the room. There, surrounded by candles and bubbling away in the semidarkness was some sort of outdoor tub.  Xeno reached a hand in - the water was hot.

"Oh, you wanna hop in, baby?" Billy had appeared in the doorway. His hair was wild, and his eyes weren't pointing in the same direction. He had guacamole smeared under his nose. Whoever Billy thought he was, he obviously hadn't noticed the change. Xeno decided to play along. Quick as a flash, Xeno hopped into the tub.

"You're in for a treat, sweetheart. I'm gonna take you to to heaven and back. Move over and I'll steer-" Again, the sounds of some sort of alarm system broke the spell of the moment (if you could even call it that) and Billy tore off with a scream of anguish.

It was then that Xeno noticed the knobs.

There seemed to be an entire panel of knobs hidden just under the surface of the tub, on the inner wall facing the building. Xeno could make out dials, numbers, levers. Peering in through the roiling water, Xeno spotted a display that looked like a date, or a pair of dates. He reached out his hand, warily. Could this thing actually be...

"Well that bastard won't be going off again anytime soon!" Billy reappeared in the doorway, a fist full of still smoking wires. "Now how about you move over, toots, and let me show you what this thing can do!" Xeno froze for a moment - the state of Billy's membership making it unclear what it was he was actually talking about. Billy hopped into the tub, sidled up uncomfortably close to to Xeno and thrust his hands underwater, feeling around for the right knob.

____________________________________________________________________

By the time he woke up, Billy felt like Hell. The coke hadn't been the best idea. The Cantilevered Ragweed had clogged the hookah twice. And, by the feel of it, he had quite recently been punched in the face.

Repeatedly.

He looked up (as it was now apparent he was on the floor) and saw someone... an indistinct figure... twitching nervously and ready to - was that a towel he had?

"One false move and you get it again!" shrieked  a familiar voice. Damn, it was the gnome. How'd he get in here? Was he the one that had loosened a tooth? I gotta lay off the hard stuff...

"Get up! Tell me how to use this thing to get us out of here!"

Xeno was pointing to the hot tub. Billy held his hands up, stalling for time. It was then that he noticed a figure standing in the doorway. And what a figure it was...

____________________________________________________________________

The Goddess Iryien, accustomed as she was of late to seeing weird inside of weird inside of weird, was a little weirded out by what she found on the balcony. Xeno seemed to be holding a wet and naked Billy at bay with a towel, twisted up and ready to snap. She herself was a little out of her comfort zone, wearing just enough chain maille to cover her assets. But not one to miss an opportunity, she quickly spoke up and took control of the scene.

"Hey Billy. Why are you fooling around out here when you could be attending a goddess? Wouldn't you rather party with me?" She gave 'slinking' a shot, and slinked rather adeptly in Billy's direction. As she reached out to cup Billy's head in her hands, with her other hand behind her back she gestured to Xeno. Now Xeno had never been one for taking orders, but when it came to dealing with overly-powerful, drug-addled, priapistic imps, Xeno was glad to yield the reins.   

Xeno sidled around the tub while Iryien continued to occupy Billy's attention. As he reached the door, he suddenly felt a strange compulsion to take one of the potted plants that were strewn about the terrace inside with him. He hoisted the biggest one he could carry, and as he stepped inside he was met by the weirdest vision of the night: Ben Firenze's head, floating amidst a swirl of blue flames inside the room's fireplace.

"Ah, Xeno. What a pleasant surprise. Go ahead and bring that over here please. And lose the tree. Can't stand those things."

Xeno stood there for a moment, slack-jawed. The fireplace (with Ben in it) was pulsating, swirling with blue light. He faintly heard Iryien behind him say '...be right back with a surprise for you...' before she came in from the balcony, shuffling quickly on her high heels, holding a sloshing flowerpot filled with water. "Get that dirt in the fireplace, and hurry!" she barked, and Xeno, for once, obeyed without question. Iryien hurriedly heaved the water in after it, sending an arc of liquid right through Ben's smiling face.  Iryien then set down the flowerpot quietly and, picking up the matches that were sitting next to the hookah, she lit one and slowly set the corner of a pillow alight. She held th epillow towards Xeno as the flames started to slowly spread.

"How about a little fire, Scarecrow?" 

Just as Xeno was about to ask politely what the hell was going on, Iryien tossed the burning pillow into the fireplace. Instantly, the fireplace emitted a blinding flash of blue light, and was afterwards replaced by a swirling blue vortex. Beams of blue light shot out of the vortex and out through the doorway into the night beyond. A beam of light reached out to Xeno, and like a warm, tender tentacle, it grabbed hold of Xeno and lovingly tugged him towards the vortex.

"Don't fight it," shouted Iryien, above the growing, vortexy din. "The others are coming too!" And sure enough, floating in through the balcony doorway were Takemiya, Xoe, Madmartigan, and Kobayashi, who seemed to be embracing a Glamazon warrior in a most unmonkish way.

"There is some explaining to be done," muttered Xeno as he was sucked into the vortex and away...

Episode 89: Excerpt from THE BOOK OF IRYIEN

THE BOOK OF IRYIEN CHAPTER 37

1. Then, there, in front of Her Radiance was assembled the Great Crag. It was defended mightily by a number of Harlots arrayed all in leather and steel. And some brass, mostly fashioned into polearms of acute pointiness. And rather strappy boots. 

2. Here She paused for a moment, to have constructed in front of Her great presence a wall. Stacked like cordwood, a dozen dozen fighters lay onto one another, creating a defensive shield and protecting Her most Holy personage. And her Chosen Dancer, the Xoe.

3. On Her right flank, Iryien saw the Mad Martigan toiling with a pair of tubular weapons designed to discharge projectiles. And while he had difficulty exhorting one of them to discharge it's payload, the other he discharged repeatedly into the left flank of the enemy.

4. This annoyed them greatly.

5. Three of the enemy's greatest warriors issued forth from yon Crag with intentions of divesting Mad Martigan of his weapons. Mad Martigan attempted to keep them at bay with his Device for Generating a Hot Cube of Steam, Radius 5' - but he was slow to get it up and soon was entertaining one of the warrior maidens at the base of his pole.

6. Meanwhile, directly in front of Her Radiance, the monk known as Kobayashi was riding on the back of a fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the side of its head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. The monk tried to divest one of the warrior maidens of her brass polearm, but found himself roughly dismounted instead.

7. Taking no heed of his injurious unseating, Kobayashi attempted to get back on the fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the side of its head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head that threw him by polearm vaulting onto its back.

8. Only he missed.

9. And instead the monk flew ever on, over the fish, etc. and towards a young flaming boy who, at this particular moment, was puffing himself up something fierce.

10. The boy had, in fact, just been instructed to self-immolate by his parental unit, Xeno.

11. You see, having sent his only-begotten son, rolling and on fire, into the Crag, Xeno thought it would be a great idea to explode his son to breach the Harlots' defenses.

12. And, to some extent, it was. Only now, Kobayashi was about to land on the exploding child.

13. Luckily for Kobayashi, all of his vital organs had already been seared off and replaced with metal by an Xixchil surgeon on the Hammer of Grapthar, so the monk fell through the rapidly expanding fireball and took little notice. He landed, alone, on the hot sands of the Crag. He was surrounded by a ring of the enemy. He tried to escape...

14. On Her left flank, Iryien saw Takemiya make his way, quietly and with great stealth, to the mouth of the Crag. With great skill he approached undetected, and as he did so, he watched his acolyte struggle with shark riding, pole vaulting and sand digging, all in the same minute. Takemiya blinked at the blinding flash of light that was Troy, rejoiced to see his acolyte had survived, and winced at Kobayashi's  attempt to polevault out of trouble. Takemiya reached out and swiped a brass polearm from a passing Harlot and waded into the fray to save his flailing friend.

15. Xeno, by this time, had decided that animating a couple Harlots would be a great idea.

16. He managed to rescind the soul recall of two poor girls and had them shamble out to greet him. Looking only moderately worse for wear, the two girls escorted him through enemy lines and unto the House of Billy.

17. Delivered thusly, Xeno had the girls do a stiffening striptease, drawing out and distracting the chambermaids and allowing Xeno to penetrate the penthouse, never to be heard from again.

18. Iryien, seeing how easily the mortal gnome perpetrated the ruse, attempted the same.

19. She was not so lucky.

20. Sometimes, even a Goddess stumbles, and it was for some higher reason that Iryien, in an attempt to slide through the Harlots as one of their own, was discovered.

21. Five pairs of eyes turned and regarded Iryien's divine form. Five knives were drawn. Five bosoms heaved. Five warriors circled in, looking to eradicate the divine interloper.

22. "I am so out of here."

23. At that moment Iryien rose up above the fray and looking down, she saw the chaos wrought by her dearest friends and followers.

24. Xeno had gained entrance to Billy's penthouse.

25. Madmartigan had boiled two Harlots alive and was dissecting another.

26. Takemiya was armed, virtually invisible and watching Kobayashi...

26. Takamiya put his hand to his mouth.

27. He looked stricken, horrified.

28. He started to retch.

29. What was Kobayashi doing?

30. He was on top of a Harlot, backwards.

31. OMIGOD WAT IS HE DOING TO HER LEGS OMG HE RIPPED THEM OFF AND IS SWINGING THEM AROUND LIKE LEG MACES WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?

INTERLUDE: The Rise of Billy

Billy stared at the rectangular wall-mounted scrying device with a growing sense of agitation and distress. The confrontation on the beach was not turning out as he had planned, and he was damned if he was going to let this ragtag group of misfits barge into his realm and undo literally years of... weeks of, wait... days...

How long have I been here?

That wasn't important. What WAS important is that he had a good thing going here - booze, girls, fame... and he wasn't going to let this ungrateful group of misadventurers fuck it up.

Billy walked over to the bar, his robe flapping openly in the Automagic Air Coolination System. The chill reminded him of his start here in Billsylvania. Naked and unafraid he'd entered the dark gray realm... naked, unafraid and - quite frankly - tripping balls. The next few hours were pretty much a blur of hot sex, hot liquids and horses, for some reason. He had vague recollections of one or more girls crying, and of himself apologizing profusely through a mouth stuffed with cake.

But that was the past. The present was about what he had, what he earned... A few acres he could call his own. A penthouse in the sky. An elite army of battle-ready strippers willing to die for the lord of their realm. And while he wasn't quite sure he'd secured an heir to his red leather throne, he was certain there would be more than enough opportunity to bugger that bridge when he came to it.

He was just going to have to deal with these interlopers first...

He walked over to the tea table and picked up a tiny black box. He pointed it at the scrying device on the wall...

He pushed a button.

Episode 88: 299

A number of things had gone wrong. 

Xeno was not in his right frame of mind, certainly, after licking the epidermis of his very own Beanstalk of Urine. And he was probably still smarting a bit from the blow to the peripherals by the Rapidly Accelerating Dildo of Doom. And, well, when Mr. Pointy Hat meets up with Mrs. Tubular Weapon Or Other Device Designed To Discharge Projectiles Or Other Material, bad things tend to happen...

But at least Xeno had an iron hat, metallic skin and the warm, loving embrace of Chaos to fall back on.

So when a number of tiny explosions occurred within a small area ad combined forces to create one BIG explosion, the hat and the skin combined to prevent his head from being blown clean off. 

Chaos, it turns out, hung back until Kobayashi showed up.

For as soon as Xeno's limp, nearly lifeless body slumped to the ground, Kobayashi sprung into action. He reached out with his Jade Hand and felt under the now-flattened hat. Nose? Hmmm, nope. Mouth? Nope. Jaw? Oh, that's probably it over there on the linoleum. And this feels like what I imagine what a cerebral cortex feels like...

There was nothing for it. He would have to summon some Chaos to help.

"I summon forth... some Chaos... to help!"

There was a sickly flicker of yellow/green light. Kobayashi could feel things moving beneath his hand. Synapses were being restitched, sinews restretched, muscles and skin regrew at an enhanced rate. And, oddly enough, Xeno's head was almost perfectly restructered, with only a few, moderate side effects*.

And all the while this took place, Madmartigan looted the corpses.

Xeno snapped back to consciousness with a start and immediately regretted it. His skin was now a damp, smelly mess;  his codpiece had a permanent sag; he was hated and reviled by every squirrel and fawn; and he now had a dirty child by the name of Troy to look after. Death looked like an improvement.

So it was with self-loathing in his heart that he attempted to fling himself into the abyss of the coliseum. As he squelched past Iryien, however, his progress was halted by the 'mailled goddess. With a wave of her hand, Iryien stopped his suicidal attempt and refocused him. "Kill Billy," she whispered in her bedroom voice (if her bedroom contained a rack, a full set of graduated manacles and about a thousand whips). She then gently tossed (read, hurled) Xeno towards the sound stage door where Billy had last been seen. She also conjured up a mighty wind that gathered up Takemiya, Kobayashi, Saladin and Madmartigan and hurled (read, hurled really fast) them down the runway and out through the sound stage door behind Xeno. They were all carried with a swirling cry down, up and out the tunnel until they were spat out the other end...

...on a gray and desolate beach.

Away to the left, a cold, rolling sea brimming with dorsal fins. To the right, a high, impenetrable cliff. Ahead, a deep, mysterious crag, from where the occasional glint of gold (or was it brass?) could be seen. And from behind, the shuffling, cursing, broken-bottle-wielding mob led by Iryien and Xoe. 

Xeno, still adrift in a melancholy sea of self-loathing, tried to use his one really useful new power to change himself into something useful. His self-loathing, unfortunately, got in the way.

He rolled a mud bat.

Kobayashi, again trying to seize control of his life, attempted to summon an animal helper to assist the party in it's hour of need. His inability to seize control of anything, unfortunately, got in the way.

He rolled a mud bat.

Her name was Evelyn, and she had just been circulocuting a banza tree in the depths of the jungles of Gleg. It was mating season on Gleg, and her little mud bat flaps were flipping out, trying to find a mate...

She had just spotted a weak-willed specimen, perfect for dominating in the ancient rite of fFlarGha'a'aa when POOF! she was suddenly transported away from the lush jungles of Gleg and into a dark, gray land utterly devoid of hope and reason.

But there, flapping erratically before her very sonaculars, was an even weaker, more morally pliable specimen of the mud bat species. It looked like fFlarGha'a'aa would happen this day after all...

Xeno had just come to grips with the basic functionality of flying when he was hit from behind by a damp, flapping assailant. Claws, teeth, and some rather invasive appendages made Xeno's head and new body spin as he and the stranger would plummet, rise and plummet again in what would always be remembered by the somewhat flummoxed onlookers as 'the Mud Bat Dance of Love'.

Madmartigan, trying to seize control of reality, decided it would be prudent to see what was awaiting them in the distant crag. Cube-tipped polearm at the ready, he lurched across the gray sand, readying himself for whatever terrors the crag held. He could see one, two, a dozen shining shafts of reflected light standing tall in row upon row of... spears. 

Brass, stripper pole spears. And under the spears, hundreds of grim-visaged strippers were eyeing him, death in their kohl-lined eyes. One stripper, larger and more buxom than the rest, was pacing back and forth in front of the undulant legienne, shouting curses and taunts at Madmartigan, and raising heady jeers from the girls behind her.

Madmartigan turned on his heels and ran.

Iryien stood on the beach, devoid of 98% of her clothing, in front of thousands of drunken, leering men.

And she'd never felt better.

"Must be the sea elf in me being actually useful, for once," she thought. She had the men in her thrall. She could feel them behind her, their eyes boring into her like lasers. "And I am the diamond," she thought, "the diamond that will focus these drunken lasers into a force mightier than the armies of Alexander, an army greater than the hordes of Ghengis Khan, a horde fiercer than- whoa. Is that Xeno?"

Iryien bent over the broken and discarded body of a mud bat. It was heaving and sighing in a mix of agony and ecstasy.  Iryien could see the poor thing had suffered a number of broken bones, had severe dehydration, and on top of it all had contracted gonorrhea. She took pity on the poor, mad gnome and reached out her dainty hand to heal him...

Xeno sat up with a start. His skin had returned to normal. HE had returned to normal. And his has was a little pointier than it had previously been. Now only the dirty kid with the lollipop remained.

By now Madmartigan had returned and informed the party of what lay in wait for them in the crag. The party huddled together to strategize. The conversation went something like this:

"How many warriors await us in yon crag?"

"About 299, Iryien."

"Surely my army of thousands can dislodge such a puny force?"

"The mathematics lay squarely on your side, to be certain."

"I'm gonna summon another animal helper."

"Try to get one that actually helps and isn't a rapist this time."

"Oh, look! A shark jumped out of the water and landed right next to me! I think it wants me to ride it!"

"You got any tricks up your sleeve, kid?'
"I kin turna balla fire."

"Let me see."

WOOF

"Whoa. Cool. Think you can roll yourself into that crag over there?"

It was then that the charge was blown, and the battle was joined. Behind a rolling, flaming child rode a half-android monk riding a shark who decided to even things up a bit by casting a three-foot-high fog into the crag. The smell of burning hair extensions was only drowned out by the high-pitched screams of strippers who could not see the shark that was tearing through them to impale it with their stripper-pole spears.

It then, if you can believe it, got weirder.

Madmartigan now found himself caught between two different, but no less imminent, certain deaths - the mad, panicking strippers on one hand, and the horny, bloodlusting drunks on the other. So he did what only Madmartigan can do and attempted an Improbable Escape. (MM's subterranean life and penchant for fungus has allowed him to 'see', at certain times, a highly-improbably path out of almost any predicament.) Madmartigan relaxed, opened his third eye, and looked around to see a way out of this mess.

When he looked down, what he saw he looked an awful lot like Roseanne Arnold.

The charging mass of drunks in his immediate vicinity stopped dead in their tracks. Many of them fell over themselves to get away from him. Some were even heard to start crying. The strippers, seeing a large segment of the charge stop charging, stopped to take stock of the situation. Most of them were quite confused. 

But SOME of the strippers, mostly the ones who didn't take exotic stage names like Tiffini or Starrlyte - the ones who actually kept their given names, like Gretchen or Trudy - some of them stepped to the fore and sashayed over to the new girl, lust glistening brightly in their kohlless eyes. 

A couple licked their lips. A few made rude licking gestures. And one, a strapping six-foot specimen named Gert, brandished a hairy-knuckled fist that was as big as a canned ham.

Madmartigan blenched. A quart of blood dropped out of his body. And in the flash of panicked inspiration that occurs when your life (and your cherry) is on the line, he clicked his heels together three times and whispered to himself "There's no one like me, there's no one like me, there's no one like me..."

Slowly, inexorably, the succulent mound of flesh that was Roseanne morphed back into the hulking, man-beast that was Madmartigan. The aggressive strippers, whose object of lust now had  far more hair and far fewer wattles, grew repulsed, and ceased their advances.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Well, everyone except the few dozen strippers who were being actively mauled by a land shark as it cut a swath through the fogy crag.

Iryien smiled as she looked over the violent and chaotic scene.

"It has been a good day," she said proudly to herself. "A good day indeed."

Episode 87: Xeno and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

"The transformation of excrement is one of the great secrets at the center of Carl Jung's work on alchemy - the quest to turn base material into gold. It's a universal metaphor of psycho-spiritual development, growth, and maturity. If I can look at the "excrement" of my life--all the places in me that hold the worst things I have ever done, witnessed, or had done to me--unpleasant as that may be, it is also the first step toward turning this "base matter" into "gold." Ironically, it is only by looking clearly at the "excrement" of my life that I can transform it into the "gold" of forgiveness, self-acceptance, and felt-sense of the presence of the Divine. Unless I do this, any seemingly spiritual perspective I embrace will only serve as camouflage for my denial and self-deception, which will betray me in the end."

- Jeremy Taylor, 1996

This is not what Xeno intended when he pissed into the crater where AMON once stood. Rather like the basest cur did Xeno wish to make known his displeasure with the house. But when one has courted chaos as he has, one must be careful where, exactly, one relieves himself. For even though there is a burgeoning tradition of 'urine as transformative vehicle' at DCM Enterprises, no one could have guessed just where this latest expression would take them.

It took them straight up.

Suddenly, rumbling forth from the center of the crater, a giant beanstalks shot up, up, up into the sky. Leaves unfurled and vines uncurled as it did so, until a tall, sinewy ladder stretched up and into the flat gray atmosphere. And as the party stood staring up in slack-jawed amazement, something stirred at the bottom of the stalk. The Lovecraftian Dildo Machine had excavated itself from the rubble of AMON, and it was looking for revenge. But Madmartigan was ready, willing and oddly clearheaded. He waited until the Machine got close enough then WHAM! drove his pike straight into it's steamy heart. Extracted it, even. For as the thing shuddered and died, the opalescent, moving heart of the thing remained on Madmartigan's weapon. The only real negative in the situation was the zipping fragment of metal dildo hitting Xeno full in the groin - but after the red fog of pain cleared, Xeno found his skin had been transformed into liquid steel. Not a bad tradeoff, you'd have to say...

Iryien and Takemiya noticed a cold fog was closing in on them. As they both peered into the depths of the collection of liquid water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the ground using their own particular methods of divination, they both reached the same conclusion: there was nothingness beyond the white curtains of vapor that were inching ever nearer.

"Yeah, why don't we just start climbing now, shall we?"

The climb itself was unremarkable but for two things - one, the perpetually-falling pair of XXXL lime green panties and Xeno's unwise/unfortunate/typical (choose one) decision to lick the turgid, chartreuse skin of the beanstalk itself. And while Xeno collapsed and his eyes rolled back in his head in an ecstatic vision involving lizards and spewing pink foam from his mouth, Takemiya grabbed his falling body and hauled him up behind Iryien, who had discovered the top of the 'stalk.

At the top, a canopy of leaves spread out in all directions. Iryien peeled back one rather large leaf to reveal a red velvet wonderland. A cherub-topped brass pole forest sprung up out of the plush red carpeted floor. A gold-flecked linoleum path took off in two directions, and on the other side of the path, a dressing room suddenly appeared in an alcove in the forest. Two stations, one for Iryien and one for Xoe, were set up complete with flowers, a card, and a graduated set of drawers - each holding a chain maille bikini of diminishing size.

Iryien stepped forward and after investigating (and mentally calculating square centimeters) declared that the two should don the second-smallest size.

The rest of the party suddenly took great interest in investigating the quality and craftsmanship of the linoleum pathway.

Suddenly, the brass forest parted and the eerie sexophonic sounds of Kenny G swelled up from speakers hidden in the forest. The forest parted and a long, dark runway appeared. The high pitched voice of Billy then boomed over a distant sound system:

"Gentlemen aaaand gentlemen! Here tonight, for YOUR enjoyment, I give you the goddess Iryien and her petite love slave... Xoe!"

Since the invention of the colossal drunken roar, there have only been five colossal drunken roars that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind. The two women sauntered out, clad more in confidence than in armor, into the center of what appeared to be a spherical coliseum. In all directions there where men - whistling and jeering men - above, below and all around. Billy bade them to dance - but they did not. Billy yelled over the PA for them to dance, but still they denied him. When next Billy screamed for the girls to dance, Iryien raised the hand to the murmuring crowd and saith unto them that she would only dance if they crowd would convert to Geetsieism after the show.

The crowd fell silent.

The crowd wondered exactly what kind of commitment this would entail.

The crowd then weighed that against the benefit of getting to see these two shake their collective thing.

And right then, right there, 80,000 men converted on the spot.

Billy continued his tirade, and even went over to the light technician and tried to shut down the show. But as soon as he reached over the sound tech to turn of the music, a beer bottle whistled through the air and smashed into a million pieces at his feet.

This was construed as "an instructive act" by a number of drunken converts.

As bottles and ashtrays whistled through the air, Billy pulled the sound tech - a matronly woman by the name of Madge - back towards the exit, using her as a human shield. Glass flew everywhere, and as Billy slunk away, cursing Iryien and his horrible luck, Iryien willed the music to resume and she danced...

Meanwhile, as the boys loitered back in the brass pole forest, everything went dark. Madmartigan felt the presence of other creatures, and quickly Kobayashi confirmed that they were being approached by what looked like three bouncers in night vision goggles.

A melee ensued.

Takamiya employed his Supa Gro Powa and readily dispatched two. Xeno lowered his head and charged the third thug, intending to groin him with his helmet.

But for the third time that night, Xeno rolled a 1.

Xeno sprinted towards the thug. He lowered his head. He aimed at his thigh. And he hit him... right in the holster.

There was a big BOOM.

And Xeno knew no more...

Episode 86: The Fall of the House of AMON

So it broke down like this:

After Xeno gained access to the house through the bulkhead, he was followed by Saladin and a shrunken Chickenheart. At the bottom of the stairs they met a drunken, belligerent butler. Words were exchanged and a headbutt was proffered. The butler did not emerge victorious.

As the remaining three made their way to the crypt, a catastrophic event was occurring on the second floor of the house. Somehow, Madmartigan had managed to put up just enough resistance to the Machine to cause a critical buildup of pressure in it's steam housing. The resultant backflow of superheated, super-pressurized steam, applied to a moving matrix of steel, wood and rubber parts caused a sort of 'tactical explosion' that targeted the room's more structurally integral parts. It also helped that Iryien had now arrived, and with her expert assistance, yet another thing was destroyed. The room collapsed, taking Madmartigan and the Machine with it, straight through the dining room and into the cellar below...

...to where Saladin had just discovered the mewling, screeching infant Abigail. She was in the sarcophagus, crawling across the body of the poor, cursed (and now quite dead) Miriam. Saladin tried to soothe the infant, and produced pie charts demonstrating the scientifically-proven advantages of a nuture-over-nature approach to child rearing. But it was at this point that the Black Horsemen charged into the cellar and whisked the child away to the chapel in the forest. There, the old kindly priest was awaiting with a tiny coffin and seven silver spikes (the better to nail you with, my dear).

O'Brien, the leader of the horsemen, as well as the rest of DCM then proceeded to nail the infant's squirming little body into the coffin, thus preventing her from rising from the grave to haunt the world ever again.

Probably.

And as Kobayashi hammered the last nail home, a loud crash from outside caused everyone to rush out the chapel door and watch as the house of AMON collapsed in upon itself, until nothing was left but a rubble-filled crater.

Xeno then walked to the crater's edge, undid his tunic, and urinated into the bottom of sinkhole.

Episode 85: Xoe's Wind Breaks, Abigail is Reborn, and Madmartigan Gets the Short End of 17 Sticks.

When the smoke cleared, only one thing was certain. Xeno's fireball had struck again. Two charred corpses, a partially-melted monk, and the distinct odor of fried chicken everywhere. Xeno wasn't quite sure how he'd made it from the Vermeer to the back yard, but it was always his belief to fong first and ask questions later. 

And right now the question was: "Why is the chateau glowing purple?"

Madmartigan knew. For even as the long, slithering tendrils receded from his brain, he knew that Amon was angry. THEY were angry. Abigail was coming and Grandma would not be there to greet Her. This put the house in a Very Bad Mood... 

Iryien had been languishing in the Steam Pits of Urg when the call came. To her, it had sounded as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. She bolted upright, sending her towel hurtling through the murky air and into the face of Borgat, minor deity of Feldspar VII. "Sorry Borj, gotta run. Xeno has killed his sister again."

Takemiya limped over to his acolyte and recoiled in horror. Kobayashi's face had taken another ghastly blow, and he could even see where three of his teeth were missing through the place where his lips had once been. But a strange idea came to the monk's mind, and he reached into his robe and withdrew the three teeth he had picked up from the bloodstained carpet; three teeth that had once belonged to the dead King...

Chickenheart stumbled back into the edge of the wood, its tiny mind reeling from the pain. What the fuck was that? it thought to himself. Who just lights up the night with a fireball like that? I mean he had friends right next to him when that thing went off... The giant undead chicken paused for a minute, blinked, and tried to push back the pain. Wait one fucking minute...it thought to itself. Since fucking when can fucking I talk? 

It was right about then that the party heard a scream.

It wasn't the short, staccato scream of someone meeting a terrible end. It was the long, drawn out scream of a woman in labor, giving birth to her own personal terrible end. Abigail was being reborn, and it was time for the final showdown.

It was Madmartigan who acted first . He was no stranger to strangeness, and a chateau that was not only angry, but glowing purple was one of the strangest things he'd seen all week. The tea had finally stopped fogging his mind, and he was determined to be decisive and why is that window opening up AND SUCKING ME INTO IT AAARRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH??!?!??!?!?!??!??!??!?

Kobayashi? The monk had had some hard times of late, sure... but his recent embracing of the Chaos of Action was bound to pay off sooner or later. That's right, sleeves rolled up, caution to the wind and plunge right in and why is that patio rising up AND FORMING A TOOTHY MAW AND SUCKING ME IN AAARRRRGGGGHHHHH????!?!??!?!?!??!?!??!

Xeno didn't let the fact that two of his mates had been eaten by the chateau stop him from his plan of attacking the chateau. Hat on head he charged at the thing, and only a haunting, echoey voice in his head stopped him from fonging the thing to the ground.

"Seek thee the cellar." Was this a trick? A demonic ruse? If so, it was a pretty clever one - telling him just where to penetrate it's defenses instead of just snapping him up like it had the other two. But something told Xeno this wasn't a trap - told him it was some other benevolent force assisting him in his quest to bring this sorry affair to an end... and he was right. For the strange chaos that follows Xeno had grabbed hold of Chickenheart and opened his mind to the dimensional nexus that was the Chateau LaFey, had enabled him to see through the physical walls and into the three-layer timecake that the house had become.

A gentle nimbus of light came into being and grew in the air above Xoe's charred corpse. As the light grew, it became evident that two figures were at the heart of it, and one was MUCH bigger than the other. The big one was the first to emerge from the portal. Saladin hopped down to the ground, looked around quickly and assessed the situation. Corpse. House. House eating people. Xeno. Two monks, one horribly disfigured. Giant undead chicken. Ancient memories stirred in his lumbering Athasian brain. Then he turned on his heel, stepped over Xoe's body and headed towards Xeno. That's where the action will be, he thought to himself.

Iryien emerged from her warptunnel. Looking around she found Xoe's charred body on the ground, just beneath her hovering toes. The brutality of Xoe's corpse contrasted beautifully with the understated elegance of Iryien's recent manicure. Jazzmeen over at 'Jazzmeen's Nail and Beautye Parloure" had gone above and beyond this time, and it really showed - in fact I think she'll be getting a little something extra at Christmas, don't you know. Anyway, the contrast was so starkly beautiful that a tear came to Iryien's eye and she shed it; it fell with a splat onto the pile of ashes that had once been a cheeky gnome with a thing for knives...

Xeno found the bulkhead that led to the lower levels of the chateau. "Say anything, and the door will open," spake the voice in his head.  Xeno looked down at the rusty doors and thought about how things have gotten away from him a bit of late. "Anything," he muttered hoarsely, and the great doors swung outwards with an ominous creak. He shrugged. "Typical." He paused, sighed quite heavily to himself and then plunged into the opening.

Speaking of plunging, the House had sucked Madmartigan into one of the upstairs bedrooms. Quick as a flash, he found himself bound to a pair of wall sconces by an extraordinary length of woolen scarf. As the sound of a steam-driven machine from hell reached his ears he turned to see...

The Thing That Should Not Be

Madmartigan's cries could be heard for miles that night:
"FLÜGGÅƎNK∂€ČHIŒβØL∫ÊN! FLÜGGÅƎNK∂€ČHIŒβØL∫ÊN!!!!"

Never roll a 1 at Grandma's house...