"You’d think I’d be tired a’ this room,” said the dragon, settling into a chair that remarkably held up beneath his tremendous person, “after being frozen in here.” Pengoons waddled in and out, tripping over one another in their haste to set the table. “But I find that even such a negative experience does little to diminish a dracken’s appetite.”
The appearance of a hot meal changed the mood of the room. As with so many things in Platformia, it happened suddenly and was quite inexplicable to me. Not only did the staff not disappear, as humans do, into a kitchen for a while before the meal was ready, but they also continued hasty construction work around the house, patching up holes where the fire had left damage and cold air could get in.
Surprisingly, I was given an actual hamburger, the first I had seen in Pengoon Peaks even after hearing the word so many times. And what a specimen it was: a plump, medium-rare patty of prime beef, the savory juices of which soaked into the brioche bun. My first impulse (okay, my second impulse) was to deliver it to Commander Zideo. I thought of him in a cold jail cell, alone except for a mean, but cute, little penguin guard, but could not contrive a way to convey the food to him intact. Lacking thumbs rarely bothers me, but it turns out that an opposable digit is central to the ergonomics of the average hamburger. The only way to carry it in one piece—and even that was a dubious prospect—was to clamp it mightily in my jaws, covering it in my own saliva. At that point, the work of eating the thing was nine-tenths done, and even I knew that Zideo would not accept the food in that state. It was easier to allow my jaws to close than to keep them open, and my friends, I fear I came close to swallowing it whole. A cold dog who has burned a lot of calories can make quick work of an unguarded, that is, a human-style meal.
I say “human-style” because although I could not tell a difference between it and hamburgers I may have acquired by certain means in Airy Zone, the logistics of this hamburger boggled the mind. Hamburgers are typically made from beef, and beef is a word that humans say so they don’t have to think about the creature they are eating, which is a cow. In fact, I think they have gone to lengths to disguise that fact, adding “ham” into the word to further obscure its origins, but that is another theory for another day. But I had seen few animals since my cold and sudden landing on Platformia, a few white hares fleeing into frosty warrens perhaps, and on rarer occasions, snowbirds hunching in the branches of certain trees. The only other thing that could count was the pengoons themselves, and they strained the definition of the word, making use of tools I thought of as human, as well as crude but undeniable language. Their expressions and body language prevented me from perceiving them fully as beasts like myself. Indeed, these digital realms were full of beasts that tended toward thoughtful mannerisms. I wondered if I were the only true animal in this realm.
This of course had horrific implications for the hamburger, so I gulped it down quickly before my mind arrived at any pesky moral imperative.
Helmgarth and the dragon—dracken, rather—sat across from one another speaking seriously as they ate. Other pengoons ate at the table with them, and Peligrosa stopped by to pet my head before climbing up into one of the chairs. Pengoon flipper does not feel as good as human hand against my fur, but until then most pengoon activity had been the expression of need. I was moved by her giving gesture, although I did not know why she was sitting at a table with the mayor. Or why the mayor was a dracken.
I knew that if I could only focus on their conversation, I would likely get the answers to my questions. With Zideo in jail, it would be important for me to stay alert and gather as much information as possible. But a fed and tired dog is to sleep as a sponge submerged in a full sink is to water.
I am not saying that human(oid) conversation is boring, but it is one of the most hypnotic sounds on the planet to a dog with a full stomach, whose duties are fulfilled. I planned to enact a certain physical protocol—I would close my eyes, but focus on routing the last of my energy to my ears, turning them toward the conversation letting my mind record the soundwaves and as much of their meaning as possible. This is dog surveillance at its best. Under no circumstances was I to fall all the way to sleep.
The dracken’s drawl held so much inertia, as though each word weighed a dozen pounds for every syllable, and speaking it was surmounting some kind of threshold, heaving it over a fence. I felt physical exhaustion of a task completed at the termination of each sentence.
I revised my plan: I would not sleep, but I would doze. They’re very different. Dozing is a regenerative state of rest that yet allows for quick action if anything comes up. So I twitched my ears in the appropriate direction and dozed.
The overdressed seneschal asked, in some exasperation, what had happened. The dracken’s silverware clanked onto his plate, and his chair creaked as he sat back and strained its joints. I raised one eyelid and discovered his meaty tail flexing, and talons tapping the floor.
“Well now that’s the rub, ain’t it?” said Gobo. I will attempt to recall and set down the dracken’s story to the best of my ability. But it is so strange that I fear I may have dreamed parts of it. I will not recreate Gobo’s accent except where necessary.
The drackens hail from Dracken Rescue (19Ω8), a place where players were once tasked with running, jumping and exploring wide open spaces, towers, bridges, aeries, and a slew of clever obstacle courses. During the course of things, there rose an dracken called Langobardus, who was evil but not too evil. In his lust for power, he came into possession of a magical weapon, a wand or scepter that allowed its wielder to turn an opponent into icy crystal and perhaps uncreatively named the “Crystallicer.” The spell could be reversed by using the wand itself, or by the touch of the main character, a hapless but spunky little drackling inhabited by a player.
Thus the drackling would explore the lands in search of treasure and “crystalliced” friends, crystalline statues of drackens that thawed at the player’s touch. This made me recall Addrion’s return to normal at my own human’s hand, and Shiori’s as well, during the infiltration of the tower. I think I growled in my near-slumber.
Gobo, a born politician who wandered the Dracken Palace seeking an audience with the Dracken Council, was discovered by Langobardus and turned to ice crystal. During the long periods of time waiting for players to arrive, Langobardus—a Boss by nature—would wander the halls of the palace and unfreeze his captives for conversation, sometimes only partially, thawing their heads so they could provide entertaining conversation. This was a purely pragmatic tactic. In the presence of the main character, the villain adopted a full-throated laugh and a sinister manner, calling for guards and decrying the drackling’s rescue efforts.
But the truth was that this was a role. Langobardus was a lover of history, the arts, poetry—a renaissance dracken by any accurate measure. This was a side that the main character, and therefore players, never witnessed. He fully thawed Gobo when they were “on the clock,” sensing the presence of an active protagonist halfway across the world and awaiting his or her arrival through the time-consuming trial and error that characterizes platformer gameplay. They would trade stories and talk about philosophy. They debated their preferred metrical structures for poetry both serious and comical. Then, sensing whatever queues that informed them of the player’s approach, Langobardus would use the Crystallicer on his friend, for that was what he was becoming. “Strike a pose,” he would hiss, and Gobo would find increasingly improbable and decreasingly appropriate positions to be frozen into and discovered by players.
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Sometimes Langobardus was absent for long periods of time, only returning when the presence of a player was evident. Sometimes he would play-act the “boss fight,” a sequence of events that happened every so often, during which Langobardus was expected to challenge the player in single combat.
In Gobo’s opinion, Langobardus put on a good show when defeated. He shook his fist at the exultant player, hissing and gurgling as he sank into the fairy mere, bemoaning the denial of his villainous plan. Gobo saw a passion there, not Langobardus’ pursuit of his own schemes, but for the wholeness, the right-with-the-universe-ness of the role. As all bosses, Langobardus believed in the eternal nature of villainhood, the essentiality of the Boss in driving the events of all platforming worlds.
It was at this point in Gobo’s tale that Helmgarth mused about no platformer plot ever being initiated by the actions of heroes. They brought closure to things—came in response to desperate need. Gobo pointedly chose not to reply to this, but continued.
Sequels came and went. Gobo was in and out of the line of fire in Langobardus’ “evil” plots. After a time, it seemed that peace had returned to the land, and the villain of the Dracken Kingdom did not show his face. Then one day he appeared to Gobo, disguised, and hidden in the shade of the Dragon Palace. Langobardus was hooded—an utterly ridiculous way to conceal a dragon’s identity—and wild-eyed. He was sick with guilt, rambling incoherently about how something big was coming. Something terrible. Something he was complicit in.
Gobo tried to calm his old friend, but the old villain was inconsolable and it escalated into a quarrel. Langobardus stormed out, and Gobo did not see him for sometime again.
One day, while going some an errand in the Dracken Kingdom, Gobo encountered a creature he had never seen before. At first he thought it was some kind of centaur: graceful in finely wrought mail, stamping the ground in challenge. Noticing a horse’s head, he realized its rider was a distinct being, some kind of soft pink creature wielding a burnished blade. He had heard of these beings before, but thought they were much smaller. Dracken parents often said “Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the humans bite!” before bed to their dracklings, and often used the tiny mythical creatures as leverage to encourage good behavior.
She immediately charged at him, swiping her great two-handed sword and nearly severing Dabo’s neck. He leaped out of the way of her charge, blowing her off course with a gust from his wings. She was unhorsed, and Gobo, mortified, offered her his talon to help her back up. Her steed fled in terror.
She was stunned by his use of speech, not to mention speech that she could understand. She told him her name was Sir Guenevere, and that she had wandered into the Dracken Kingdom and gotten lost. Gobo could not imagine where she had wandered from, and offered to escort her back to her homeland. He was shocked to discover a boundary where none had been before, a neighboring country full of beings of whom he had been completely unaware. In fact, no one in the Dracken Kingdom had heard of them.
Gobo, and Sir Guenevere had a good laugh about the misunderstanding, and after a time their bond developed into a friendship. Sir Guenevere like the little drackling hero, in that she was regularly tasked with saving her own kingdom from a resident Boss. Her fellows thought it wise to send her as an envoy to the neighboring one, Gobo’s own, for help.
Gobo was appointed to receive her during each diplomatic mission. Peace talks were held between the land of Dracken Rescue (19Ω8) and Super Imps & Ogres (19Ω1). Gobo was surprised to find that he greatly anticipated these meetings… But in his heart, he knew the truth. He longed for Sir Guenevere’s company, and could think of no way to reveal his love to her.
The day came when the Total Conversion reached their worlds, as it reached all worlds. Here, Gobo did not get into the details, and Helmgarth was solemnly silent, as though he already recognized this part of the story and required few details. His homeworld crumbled, and leaving half the dragon palace, and a few surrounding fields and mountains. He could see the edge of Sir Guenevere’s homeland in the distance, across a new gulf thrust between them that was so deep that Gobo could not see its end.
Time passed, and Gobo did not know how long. He had ceased keeping track now that his entire cosmology was meaningless. Many of his comrades wandered off to find food and supplies in other parts of the newly formed Platformia. Some whispered about finding a walled city called Ludopolis where they would be safe, but Gobo found that he was unable to leave even what remained of the world he knew, and dwelt in the remnant of the Dracken Kingdom, the closest thing the surviving drackens had to a leader.
Then one day the Boss Tower appeared out of the clouds, as I myself had seen it do over Ludopolis. A long-haired human introduced himself as Xue-Fang, the ruler of all Platformia, and offered Gobo a chance to replace a mayor in a cold, remote region at the far end of the Shard. The people there were difficult to manage but the reward would be great.
Gobo hated him instantly, and had often thought back to that moment when he had just barely restrained himself from striking him down with his sharp dracken talons. Nevertheless, he accepted the position reluctantly under the promise that the Dracken Kingdom remnant would be taken care of, though his heart broke to leave behind any chance of ever seeing Sir Guenevere again.
He was taken in the big fat sky stingray to Pengoon Peak, which was in open revolt. He watched the troopers of the Empire of Sorrow rough up the pengoon populace—a thought which rippled my skin with weary anger—and remove their mayor, Portly Pengoon, who had a little too much spirit for Xue-Fang’s liking. Gobo did not see what became of the pengoon mayor, and did not ask.
After the Empire’s forces departed, leaving W. H. Gobo to clean up the mess, he went to work feeding and protecting the little town of needy pengoons. He even began to enjoy mayorship, despite the unenviable climate. He grew fond of the little creatures and even the remoteness of the town.
He had found a new life, a new calling, and Gobo finally understood that he could do some good in the world even in small proportions. Things settled down and he found a rhythm to life. That was, until a wanderer appeared in the dead of night, and he made a mistake that doomed them all.
A boy named Bailey was wandering through, only pausing to ask for directions in Pengoon Peaks. He said he was from Ludopolis, and he was looking for something. Gobo did not expound on what it was, and his tone seemed to tell Helmgarth not to ask. Whatever it was, they did not have it, but they supplied him with Hamburger and sent him on his way.
Then the Empire of Sorrow returned in their sky stingrays, with Sorrow Troopers and Ohmpressors and Street Toughs, setting fire to the town. Langobardus himself confronted Gobo in the town hall, demanding to know why Gobo had aided the enemy. Gobo was confused and angry. Once more their voices raised and their tails began to swing, and Langobardus used the Crystallicer, freezing Gobo in his own home. Then he released his own glamour, and Gobo watched as Xue-Fang the shape-changer tut-tutted his disappointment in Gobo, and ordered his troops to set fire to the town hall before departing in his stingray-shaped transport.
Frozen and helpless, Gobo watched his town burn and his helpless constituents lament. Then all the little pengoons turned into rabbits made of clouds, and I chased them playfully through hamburger fields dappled in the light of rainbows. Looking back, that’s probably the part of the tale when I drifted off to sleep.