A butternut squash hit him on a leg, making Fernando kiss the dirt of the flowerbeds as he squealed. Irene looked at her summoner with her eyes woven out of androeciums. She was not what you would call expressive.
“Let me talk!” he cried when he found himself bombarded with a watermelon.
“Florencia, let the man talk, maybe we won’t need to resort to violence.”
“I am resorting to violence since a while ago and it is working wonders.”
“Eh, fine by me,” I shrugged.
“Irene, intercept the projectiles!”
The dragon moved her apparently heavy form to cover Fernando. The fruits landed softly on her petal scales, and, after Irene caught a giant pumpkin with her mouth filled of little teeth made from twigs, Florencia gave her strategy up.
“Pssst, can I throw you?” she muttered.
“Whose side are you on?” I muttered back.
“Ours.”
“That’s a non-answer.”
Irene cast the pumpkin back at us, and Florencia pushed me to a side, taking the hit. At impact, the fruit exploded against her arms, shoving her right into the cucumber plants.
“I hope they are fine, those were good cucumbers,” I said after getting on my feet.
“Walter, a friendly advice: repent. Leave Mateo to his own means, to search in vain for a way back home. Earth is alive in our memory, and in the memory of the ones to come. But this place, if you get rid of it, will die with us, or even before that,” Fernando began his preaching.
“With all undue respect: why are you guys coming one on one to stop me? You could party up and that would increase your chances,” I argued with a confrontational tone.
He placed two fingers upon his sternum. “We pull straws and the loser is sent to get butchered by you and Mariana.”
So my enemies were a bunch of cowards hiding their tails between their weak, trembling legs. They feared me, and the knowledge of this fact filled my heart with warmth.
“So, what do you say? Avoid this unnecessary conflict, and go your way. Attain incredible power, breed an army of Marianas—” he raised his fist in front of himself, encouragingly.
“Hell no,” I interrupted him.
“…You know, no, no, you are right. What I was getting at, is this: leave this place be, and use it however your please. We Escapists won’t interfere with your power fantasies. But let it live, Walter. Let Mateo die here, with the family he made before falling into this obsession for returning to a place we are never meant to.”
I gestured time off and headed over to the parapets. I looked far below, seeing Mariana as a bloodied dot happily scratching and licking off the blood.
“Mariana!”
“What?”
“I need music!”
“What do you need?”
“Something perfect for an anime opening!”
Mariana’s announcers started playing Chayanne’s Torero.
I faced him once again. “As for your offer, no”
“Shame, we could have been good acquaintances. Irene!”
“‘Irene’ will be inscribed in my gravestone, yes,” said the dragon.
“Make oblivion fall upon our foe,” he decreed.
As Florencia slept peacefully among the cucumbers, I unfurled my belts. They sprang out happily, like the quills of an echidna. I spread them all over, as if they were children-killing drones and the garden the middle east. They slithered along the shrubs and their fruit like bad ol’ Luci did before introducing Eve to Steve-Jobs-related odds and ends. A few of the belts, the ones that were not avid chit chatters, stayed with me.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Irene came at me with careful step.
“You will be intelligent and agile, Walter,” she said, as if she were not about to take a monstrous swipe.
Rolling though the attack was being too easy for my taste.
“Fernando, he won’t be allergic!” She claimed, and then opened her mouth in front of my face. Nice breath, smelled like mint.
Pollen breath erupted from Irene’s mouth. I stood in the way, and checked my HP and status bar. I wished I had a clock to check the time on it as she tried to bury me under male gametophytes that did nothing relevant. Then I realized her trap: I was basically being forced into becoming a gay plant orgy.
“I am not homophobic enough to fend this off,”[1] I mumbled, gritting my teeth, resisting the onslaught of harmless pollen.
“Oh lord, that will be a lot of fruit,” Irene exclaimed.
“But we are, boss, the Plants x Zombies TOTY edition attack is ready!” Communicated one of the belts, via telepathy.
“Fernando, if you were a woman, I would make a joke about tossing your salad here.” I jumped back to avoid another swipe from Irene, who promptly retreated to cover her summoner.
Simultaneous to her first back-step, my fingers snapped, which gave my catapult-belts the signal to release a rain of pulp, vitamins and pain. The skin of Irene dented after each impact, just to slowly recover her shape. Inside her, Fernando snickered.
“Walter, Walter, Walter, cannot you see that Ire—”
“He knows,” interrupted the dragon.
“Yes, I know. She can see the future.”
“How did you figure it so fast?”
Irene obeyed preemptively.
“Shut up, Irene,” I ordered. “Good girl. Now, you, uh, named her Irene, made her out of flowers, and she seems depressed enough to want to die.”
The dragon and I spoke at the same time:
“No, they do not,” she said.
“Do you guys also have an Escapist with powers based on something by Bioy Ca—”
“You will be welcome.”
“Thanks Irene,” I said, trying to fit as much irony on my voice as it was humanely possible.
Mariana was taking her goddam time coming back up. And I didn’t have enough belts to reach her, all those meters down, and pull her back up.
Irene stood on her hind-legs. A roar protruded from the depths of her throat.
“Last chance, Walter. Irene is the perfect armor. Desist,” said Fernando, who seemed to be very comfortable inside a vegetable-dragon stomach.
Laughter took me over. A goddamn necromancer, he decided to face a goddamn necromancer in the middle of a garden.
I raised my hands and the belts came back. Each one carried a handful of compost, and it also flowed to me from the nearby flowerbeds.
“Fernando, that will be a mighty advantage. We must…” And then Irene went mute.
The dragon charged at me and aimed a swing to my head. An enormous empanada appeared out of thin air and cushioned the hit for me, smudging me with tepid minced meat and causing the hit to merely take out five percent of my Hp.
My faithful Empanada Priest, eyes open and full of fire and determination, jumped out of the belt-pocket that was containing him.
“We must retreat! We must retreat!” panicked Irene.
“It’s just a puppy who summons turnovers. It’s even level one, we are three hundred.”
“The bull! The bull!”
The little Priest raised his scepter and the clouds seemed to congregate to behold the tiny olive on top of it. Lightning took exception to this obscene display of power. Thunder fretted over the stress that was being put into the lattice of reality.
I continued gathering dirt.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA,” sent Mariana via telepathy, striking right into my mind and nerves. Thanks, Mariana.
The sky bubbled like the surface of a boiling liquid tuned to a dead channel. That’s how you write prose, according to the internet.
The clouds cracked and ripped, and so did reality, allowing the entrance of a holy mass of golden empanadas. They twirled around an axis, around an eye of the storm, and colluded to give form to a somewhat humanoid figure. Torero’s Lyrics got translated into Latin. No, the song didn’t change. Nor the voice. It was still the announcer’s best imitation of Chayanne, just… summoning demons.
From the vortex of turnovers an arm with bare muscles of knife-cut meat was born, and in its fingers of rolled dough it held a half-and-a-dozen wheel. It was like a tart with a hole in the middle, and from the ring of crust empanadas as blades sprouted. Soon, the rest of the glorious knight got revealed: his other arm culminated in a bull head fashioned out of minced chicken and, for the horns, two twisted empanadas. His cape was a titanic slice of cooked ham. His helmet had been carved out of an olive with enough oil to lubricate a nation.
My mouth was watering, product of seeing the grease drip from the body of the summon. Fernando’s stomach grumbled loudly.
“Concede! Fernando, I order you to concede this battle!” said Irene.
“He looks so tasty,” he said, absently minded.
Like it was featherweight the warrior descended from the heavens until he landed between me, my chef and Irene.
The Empanada priest made a fart sound and fell asleep.
“Recover your energies, summoner. I, Empaknight-a, will fight for your cause.” He turned his saucy gaze towards our enemies. “Dragon!”
Irene remained silent, trembling.
“Dragon, I said!”
“Answer the delicious man’s call, Irene,” said Fernando, bewitched by the scrumptious sight before us.
Irene let out a wailing cry that made the very bricks of the castle tremble.
“We will lose, we will lose, we will lose, we will lose,” she repeated like a mantra.
“Irene, he is made of food, attack!”
“I am made of plant cunt and dick!” she argued. I raised a finger to correct her, but my belts gagged me. Considering most of them came from cows, and that cows were, most of the time, female, that meant this was, technically, straight BDSM. And betrayal, too, but that was an afterthought.
“Irene, for the love of all that’s memorable, attack!”
The dragon scoffed and started flapping her lightweight wings. As she rose in the air, the Empaknight-a advanced with firm step.
Irene charged, going straight for the bell pepper that beat in the empaknight-a’s chest.
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[1] Over the years, Mariana has leeched off part of my bigotry and made it hers.