From the outside, the covered wagon is pretty unassuming. White canvas arcing over a wooden bed, wheels creaking along as they kick up the dirt and dust of the road. Hitched to the front of the wagon is an unassuming bicycle, and riding that bicycle is an unassuming man. If any potential brigands or bandits were to see this wagon as it rumbles lazily down the road, they would think, what an unassuming and uninteresting little wagon. Nothing to see here, no reason to spend my precious time attempting to rob them, they likely don’t have anything worth stealing, I’d best get back to my embroidery. They would think that, but they would be deeply, deeply wrong. This wagon, it just so happens, contains a prize worth more money than most people see in their entire lives.
Inside the wagon, things are significantly more interesting. It’s something of a Marxist nightmare. One half of the caravan - and I should note that this “half” of the caravan takes up maybe 20% of the available floor space - is entirely spartan. No decorations, no frills, nothing really at all other than a cot and the man sitting on it. This is Sir Taran. He’s rolling a silver ring back and forth between his thumb and index finger. To say that it’s a ring, though, is slightly misleading. For any regular person, it may as well be a bracelet. For Sir Taran, it’s a perfect fit. Taran is big. Huge. All of him. Well over six feet tall, broad shoulders, 250 pounds of pure pectoral muscle. Long, flowing blonde hair, great smile, piercing blue eyes. A true and bonafide hottie with a body, the cot underneath him protesting loudly at the mammoth man’s weight.
The other half of the wagon - which, again, takes up at least 80% of the wagon - is the portrait of luxury. Purple curtains and intricate tapestries hang down in front of the white canvas. Big, soft bed elevated off the ground by an elegant baroque bed frame. A veritable ocean of pillows and blankets, swaddled in which is Prince Lexington. For every pound of muscle that Sir Taran has, Lex has a pound of, well, not muscle. They’re both about 17 years old, but Lex is about as different from Taran as he could be. Short, curly brown hair, full belly, crumbs on his cheeks. He leans forward in his bed, poking his nose out towards the knight.
“Please, please, please, Sir Taran. Tell me the story again.” He shoves a handful of Doritos into his mouth, most of them finding their mark but a good chunk of crumb and Dorito dust exploding past his face onto the wall behind him.
Taran laughs and shakes his head. “My liege, I think if I were to tell it again my tongue may shrivel up and leap out of my mouth.”
Another crunch of Doritos. Then, through chewing teeth, “Pleeeease. I’ll put your tongue back in if it falls out.”
The knight smirks and cocks an eyebrow. “And since when did my lord become a doctor?”
Lex smiles in return. “Just now, just got back from doctor school. In fact,” he drifts off as he clumsily gets to his feet and hops out of bed. He barely manages to untangle his ankle from a snake of blankets, landing haphazardly on one leg and barely stabilizing himself as the wagon hits a bump. Taran rises to his feet to help the prince, but Lex raises his hand to show he’s got this. “In fact,” he continues, putting the back of his hand against Taran’s forehead. “In fact, I think I diagnose you with Has-To-Tell-Me-That-Story-Again-Itus. Very fatal, must have been sleeping in some nasty places to have picked that one up.”
Taran feigns a cough. “You’re right, I’m not feeling so well. Don’t think I’ll be able to tell the story before I... bleh.” He lies back in his bed and kicks his legs up in the air like a dead mosquito.
Lex climbs back up onto his bed and re-cocoons himself. “It’s a good thing the gods gifted you with being the strongest and hottest and coolest guy ever, cause they definitely didn’t gift you with acting chops.”
“Oh, I don’t know about coolest.”
“Come on, Sir Taran. We’re gonna be at Camp Trin soon, right? I promise I’ll stop asking you to tell the story once we get there.”
“Hardly seems like a fair deal, for once we depart Camp Trin, you’ll start accumulating stories of your own that you’ll be able to tell me.”
“Oh my gods, stop stalling!”
“My liege, at this point you know the story word for word.”
“I know, but it’s so much cooler when you tell it.”
“Very well, very well. There I was, on the outskirts of enemy territory. The skyscrapers of the Seven Cities were high on the horizon. Six York soldiers had me surrounded, weapons drawn, getting closer to me with every step. I had nowhere to run.”
“But you weren’t gonna run anyway! Cause you knew that you’d be able to beat ‘em all up, cause you’re a badass and they suck ass.”
Taran laughs out loud, a hearty belly laugh that seems to fill the whole wagon with warmth. “Why do I even bother to tell the story at all?”
“Uh, because it’s awesome? Hearing about how you knights fearlessly charge into battle and open up cans of whoopass on people, it’s so cool!”
“I don’t know about whoopass. And I definitely wasn’t fearless. I was terrified. I had crucial intel that I needed to bring back home to New England or, well-- I don’t even want to think about that. Prince Lexington, you and your family and everyone who lives in New England-- I just can’t imagine what I’d do if anything happened to any of you. That’s why this mission is so important.”
The knight looks down at his ring. He reads the inscription on the inside of it silently to himself, then closes his eyes and hugs the ring tightly against his chest. He whispers something, but it’s so quiet that Lex can’t hear it. The prince is about to ask about it, but suddenly a huge bump rocks the caravan. A startled Taran loses his grip on the ring and it flies from his big sausage fingers down onto the wagon floor. Fast as lightning, he darts to the ground and picks up the ring.
“Sir Taran,” Lex begins, “Do you think I’ll ever be a knight like you?”
Taran smiles. He places the ring back on his finger and admires it. “Prince Lexington, if you work hard and never give up, there’s nothing that you can’t accomplish that. I mean it.” He does not, in fact, mean it. It’s a nice sentiment, but it’s basically an outright lie. Lex is a good kid. Smart, kind, personable. He’s just not really the athletic type. More than that, though, he’s just a naive kid. He’s lived his whole life fattening up inside the palace walls. He doesn’t really have much of an idea what the real world is like. The whole knight thing would be a pretty uphill battle.
“Sir Taran, how come we’ve stopped?”
Taran hadn’t noticed it yet, but, yeah, they have stopped. They did just hit a pretty nasty bump. Eric, the cyclist out in front of the wagon, must have hit some ungodly large pothole and dinged up the bike. Eric’s one of the best cyclists in the kingdom, though, so he’ll probably have it back up and running soon enough. A truly great cyclist must also be a great mechanic, and Eric is both of those and then some. Even so, Taran decides that it wouldn’t be very knightly of him if he didn’t at least offer to help.
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“Eric, everything okay out there?” he calls out. He turns his head toward the front of the caravan. There’s only a small slit of opening between the draped walls of the canvas, enough for sound to carry but not enough for him to see what’s going on outside. “Need a hand?”
A moment passes, then another, then another. Lex looks out as well, trying to peer through the small opening, but he’s even farther from it than Taran is. The two of them look at each other, each one of them shrugging. Taran shrugs as if to say, I wonder what’s going on. Lex shrugs as if to say, I wonder what’s going on, and also I’m not going to be the one to go find out. Taran nods in understanding.
It’s been several seconds now, far too long to have not heard a response from Eric. The cyclist definitely would have been able to hear Taran, especially since they’re stopped and don’t have to contend with the sound of squeaking wheels or crunching dirt. Maybe the force of the bump sent Eric flying off the bike seat. It isn’t terribly likely, but the only other thing that it could be would be... Well, no, it couldn’t be that. Sure, they’re near the edge of the kingdom, and the infrastructure here is definitely less put together than back in New Boston, but certainly the territory here is still fenced off to keep unwanted things out?
“Eric? You good?”
Still no response. Taran’s getting worried now, but the last thing that he wants is for Lex to worry. So, he simply smiles and puts his hand in the air to beckon Lex to relax, it’s all good, no worries. But, just in case, Taran grabs his weapon and moves towards the caravan’s opening. Quick note, just so you have the right idea of what I just said, Taran’s weapon isn’t a sword or axe or bow or anything like that. It’s a lacquered section of tree trunk, about three yards long with half a yard diameter, that Taran wields as a club. Remember, this guy is massive. It takes some effort to pick up, but not so much effort that he isn’t able to swing it around with precision and dexterity. He hoists the trunk up and steps out the front of the wagon.
He sees that the bike is still tethered to the wagon. That’s good, but it does look pretty dinged up. Whatever they just ran over, it did a number on the bike. That’s not so good. He notices that Eric is not sitting on the bike, nor is he currently working on fixing it up. That’s not so good. The knight steps down the steps and hops onto the ground. He peers underneath the wagon, looking for potholes. He doesn’t see any. That’s not so good.
“Eric?” His voice trembles, only for a moment. “Everything alright?”
Taran walks around the side of the caravan and sees very quickly that everything is very much not alright. Things are actually, from the look of it, quite bad. Eric, specifically, is quite bad. Very bad. Really, he’s about as bad as a person could ever reasonably be. He’s lying in the grass a few yards away from the caravan and he’s got two bugs on top of them. One of them is making a buffet out of his left arm while the other one is chewing on what looks to be his lower jaw. He’s kicking and flailing a bit, still a little bit of gumption left in his veins, but he’s gotta be just about... Yep, that’s it. He’s done, very dead.
It only takes about two seconds before both of the bugs’ skulls explode into cranium confetti by means of Taran’s giant fucking tree trunk. For the record, no, that isn’t an innuendo, he literally smashed them with his club that is a tree trunk, but also, yes, if you must know... Giant fucking tree trunk, the dude’s got it all. He’s a bit surprised to see the white ooze bubbling out of them when he crushes them. He conceptually knows that that’s supposed to happen, but Knights of the Oaken Tail aren’t typically tasked with bug cleanup. He’s got a lot of experience pulverizing living human heads, not so much dead icky bug heads. It’s just something he hasn’t really had to deal with a lot before. More importantly, it’s something that Lex has definitely never dealt with before.
Taran snaps his gaze to the caravan entrance and sees Lex’s face. “Shit. No, no. Your liege-- my liege, get inside, quick.”
For a moment, Lex doesn’t say anything. Silence, like the tide receding before a tsunami. Lex’s mouth opens wider and wider, sucking in the world’s biggest breath. Once his chest balloons up to max capacity, he shuts his eyes and explodes into a cacophony of wailing, crying, blubbering, and general disarray. He’s lived a pretty sheltered life up to this point. It’s quite possible that he’s never even seen blood before, not even his own. Now, he’s staring at the mashed up corpses of two humanoid bug monsters staining the ground next to an armless, nearly headless version of a man who he really liked.
He and Eric weren’t besties by any stretch, but they got along well. We didn’t really get to meet Eric, but he was a cool guy. Maybe we’ll see him in a flashback some time. He was well liked. Did magic tricks for kids birthday parties. Obviously he was a great cyclist, that’s why he was here, but his passion was magic and children’s laughter. Once he got home from this mission, he was going to open up a little magic shop on the east side of town. Have all the kids come down and do shows for them. Pluck coins from their ears, pull rabbits from hats. He had it all planned out. But now, he’s got no left arm and half of his face has been chewed off, and Lex is just so not emotionally equipped for something like this. He is, appropriately, in hysterics.
Taran is a really good knight, he’s just generally good at a lot of things, but he’s not the world’s best babysitter. He doesn’t really know how to handle this situation, but he knows that a loudly crying kid with a high body fat content is basically a big blinking Eat At Joe’s sign. Taran knows that where there are two bugs, there are probably a lot more.
“My lord, please, be quiet. I know this is awful-- horrible-- but I really, really need you to be quiet.”
Lex responds by not listening at all, and instead getting louder and sadder and angrier, just more -er, everything bad is getting er-er, more er. Taran sees and hears this and knows that they need to get out of there ASAP, but what can he do? The bike is in no condition where it could be ridden. He could just unhitch the wagon from the bike and pull it rickshaw style, but if and when more bugs were to show up, he wouldn’t be able to outrun them while towing an entire caravan. At least not with it’s heaviest cargo currently screaming like a banshee on the front steps. For a split second, he thinks about leaving that cargo here, and instead towing the caravan to town. He shakes his head, embarrassed for even having the thought.
“Prince Lexington. I need you inside. Now.” He doesn’t linger his gaze on the prince long enough to know if his orders have been heeded. Instead, he gets to work. The only option is to fix up the bike before more bugs come along. He opens up a satchel of tools strapped to the bike chassis and fumbles around, the tools comically small in his Gigantor hands. He isn’t necessarily a bike whiz, but bikes are important enough that every knight worth his salt at least knows how they work. Every knight’s boot camp experience involves at least one token scene of rapidly assembling and disassembling a bicycle, just like in that scene for Forrest Gump.
While Taran is furiously trying to get the bike roadworthy again, Lex is starting to calm down a bit. Bless his heart, he even has an idea. A good idea. Or, at least, Lex thinks it’s a good idea. It’s a bad idea. But Lex wants to help, and this is the best way he can think to do it. He hops off the wagon and kneels down next to what used to be Eric’s body.
“Eric?” He reaches a trembling hand out toward the body of his beloved cyclist. “Eric? Are you okay?” It’s almost ironic that Lex joked earlier about being a doctor, because it’s plainly clear that Eric is so visibly beyond ever being okay again. I can’t overstate how dead he is. Body in shambles, face looking like a half chewed Quarter Pounder, blood spurting out of him like a Crazy 88 member. He’s-- wait. Wait a second. Did Eric just move? Was I wrong? Could he actually somehow be alright?
Lex’s eyes immediately light up. “Eric? Eric! Talk to me! Pick my card, turn a stick into a bouquet of flowers!” The kid is so excited that the power of love and friendship might actually be able to save his magician cyclist buddy. To his amazement, Eric’s legs begin to twitch. His shoulders spasm. He remaining cheek tenses up.
Suddenly, Eric sits all the way up so that his body is in a perfect L shape. Lex smiles wide. Eric screeches as if his lungs were on fire. Lex frowns deep. Then, Eric’s body starts doing some weird stuff, stuff that Lex has never seen a body do before. The empty limb where his left arm used to be starts to bubble up with a thick, white paste. So does the missing section of his lower face. The ooze starts to bubble and fizz for a bit before it starts to move, expand, and take shape. Eric’s screeching slowly but surely melts and morphs until it’s become more of a low buzzing sound. Before long, Eric has grown an entire insectoid arm and beetle-like mandible. Lex slowly backs away as he realizes what’s happening, but it’s too late.
In an instant, a reanimated Eric has pinned Lex to the ground. Lex can keep the beast’s face at arms length, but only for so long. Eric is chomping, chomping, only biting air but getting closer and closer to Lex’s face each time. It sounds and smells like a wasp’s nest inches away from him. Lex screams, he kicks, he does everything he can, but things aren’t looking good. The spines on Eric’s arm are starting to lacerate Lex’s skin. Lex’s muscles have barely been used in his life ever, they’re quickly starting to run out of juice. Eric’s biting gets closer and closer and closer until it finally lands on soft, bare flesh.
Lex sees blood spurt out as the bug pincers pierce flesh. He howls, his mind ablaze with pain and fear. What was he thinking? What will become of him now? Why... Wait. Why doesn’t this hurt? He looks to his right and sees that the bitten flesh does not belong to him. He sees the arm of Sir Taran, outstretched in front of the prince like a mother reflexively protecting her child in a car crash. Not a moment later, Taran’s huge fist storms down on Eric’s skull, pounding it to dust and instantly sending his metamorphosed body crumpling to the ground.
Lex and Taran look at each other for a moment. Lex should be screaming, but he doesn’t have enough left in his system to make any noise whatsoever. He’s just staring at Taran, bewildered, wondering what’s gonna happen next.
“Lex. We need to get to Camp Trin now.” Taran’s words are belabored. Thick sweat is already beginnng to form on his brow. “I should be able to fight the curse for a little while, but I need a doctor. Then we can get a new cyclist, a new caravan, we can continue with the mission.”
Lex nods, but barely. He’s looking around. He sees Taran nursing his wound. He sees the bike, fixed up and ready to go. And, in the not too distant distance, he sees a pack of bugs charging towards them.
Taran follows Lex’s gaze. They both hear the crescendo of buzzing. “Lex? I need you to get me into the caravan and I need you to ride us to Camp Trin.”
Lex’s eyes dart frantically between Sir Taran and the bugs who are getting frighteningly close. Sweat drips from his face. He gulps.
“Lex-- ugh.” The knight tries to stand, stumbles. “We don’t have time, I need your help right now.” The curse has already started to spread from his arm to his other extremities, his entire body feels heavy. Through bleary eyes, he sees Lex stumble towards the bike. He sees the prince unlatch the bike from the caravan. He sees the bugs closing in around him from every angle. A slurry of angry profanities escapes his mouth and his vision starts to cloud over as he watches the prince pedal further and further away.