Once the gift-giving was over, Sir Scabby took the burlap that had covered our new weapons and draped the pieces in a crisscrossed formation over the pile of heads and hides at the edge of his camp. He then broke down the wooden crate and built what looked like a teepee over the pile. After packing away or piling up any evidence he’d ever been there he took a flint out of one of the half dozen pouches at his waist. With a few well-placed sparks, he had an impressive, if not foul-smelling fire raging.

“Won’t that attract unwanted attention, my lord,” Aconitum asked, appearing chaotic-nervous.

“Better the attention beest hither, than whither we're headed,” Sir Scabby replied. “And unless thou art joining us, thee should be’est returning to the castle, post-haste.”

The warlock offered a facial expression that looked like a kalanchoe stalking its prey, yet I’m pretty sure it was meant to be a smile. He should seriously stick to frowning or poker faces. “As you say, my lord.” Turning to the rest of us, he said, “You’ll get what’s coming to you when you return with the prince, unharmed.” That completely not creepy, non-foreshadowy speech given, he darted off into the woods like the filthy, crazed murder-hobo I suspected him to be.

Cool, as innocent as a newborn baby, laughed as Aconitum scurried off like a rat into a maze. “Heh. He was nice, but he could use a bath. And a toothbrush. Maybe a pedicure, too. Hey, when we get our rewards, we should all chip in and get him a gift certificate for the kingdom day spa!”

Scalar hefted his huge axe over his shoulder and hung it across his back. He’d fashioned one of the kalanchoe hides into a makeshift bandoleer. He used an additional hide to make twin axe-holsters, which hung loosely from his belt, one on each hip. Scalar was handy with the hides, that was for sure. “Please, Cool, my dear friend, take no offense when I say, hell no. That stinky culo is the king’s advisor. If he wishes to spend a day cleansing his body to make himself look and smell like a respectable creature, then I am quite sure the king would be happy to accommodate him.”

Sir Scabby laughed heartily at Scalar’s response, giving one of Santa’s guffaws a run for its money. “Friend Minotaur, thee feeleth as most of the kingdom doth feel. T’is a mystery wherefore the king alloweth Aconitum to remain at his side. His loyalty and motives has't at each moment been in question amongst the knights of the royal court.”

Cool snaked his head around the trees, his neck winding like a creeping laurentii, and whispered into Sir Scabby’s ear. “He’s not a Minotaur, dude. He’s a cursed prince. He just looks like a Minotaur.”

Both Cool and the knight glanced back at Scalar, the revelation burning between them. Sir Scabby whispered back. “Forsooth he doest. I shalt be’est more careful in the days to come.”

Scalar snorted and plodded into the woods to await directions and grumbled. “I can hear you whispering.”

~

The witches’ lair, cave, tent, teepee, whatever they lived in, was in a region north of what we’d always considered north. Like, so far north, no one from Capitula ever ventured there. It was, as it turned out, beyond the land of the dragons, a place no one ever returned from. We, in our haste, um, my haste actually, agreed to go. Pharaoh offered more than one ‘I told you so’ or in his case, ‘Me did tell yuh suh’, as we made our way into the lands to the west of Candytuft.

We’d briefly considered going directly through Candytuft, but the risk of the queen, or one of her many handmaidens or advisors, seeing Sir Scabby was too great. We chose to circumvent the castle, and everything in its vicinity, by taking the western route.

I know what you’re thinking. What? The western trail? Are you out of your mind?

And yes, you’re right, taking the western trail was going to be dangerous. But think about it. Facing...

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Okay, my life’s really weird. I’m the first to admit I’m not the most normal kid. I’m not a superhero or anything quite that cool, but I do know several.

Let’s see. There's Pharaoh, Cool, Scalar, Hex, Yin-Yang, Dirk Claymore of the Clan McJagger, Santa Claus, and, um, Steve.

Pharaoh and Cool are a part of a superhero team called The Evolutants. Pharaoh, also called the Prince of Beasts, is a hyper-evolved lion with dreadlocks for a mane. He’s wicked strong and built like Arnold Schwarzenegger – if Arnold was a lion who walked upright, wore denim coveralls, and spoke like a Rastafarian. That makes sense, right? Cool is an elastic giraffe. When I say elastic, I mean that dude can stretch high enough to high-five a 747! Yeah, that would be dangerous. It would probably frighten the passengers too. Like, who wouldn’t be scared if some cartoon-looking giraffe with a huge Crest toothpaste grin and big shiny horsesh- um, giraffeshoes? Is that a thing? You know, tried to high-five their plane midflight? He’s impressionable, so I won’t suggest it. Cool is hyper-evolved, too. Aside from stretching, he can shape-shift. He’s great at it. I’ve seen him impersonate Elvis, Mr. Rogers, Bob Ross, Batman – the ‘60s version, he even does the funny little vogue dance, and a hundred different animals! It’s amazing, provided you can get past the fact that he’s always yellow with brown spots. Every person, every animal, yellow with brown spots. I will say, a yellow T. rex with brown spots is still freaking terrifying. And he’s scary good at the T. rex thing.

Scalar is also a man-beast sort of dude. He’s a Dwayne Johnson-sized Minotaur, but with the head of a bison instead of a bull. Unlike Pharaoh and Cool, he wasn't hyper-evolved. He’s a human prince, but an evil shaman cursed him more than a thousand years ago for falling in love with the wrong woman. He and Pharaoh have an odd relationship. Not really a bromance, more like some weird high school rivalry. They’re constantly flexing on each other. Honestly, Pharaoh’s stronger, but Scalar’s a natural-born warrior. If they ever really threw down, it would be like the Punisher vs. John Wick. Pop some popcorn and pick a side because it’s anybody’s game!

Hex is a dinosaur from another superhero team called Team-Rex. She’s a Tyrannosaurus-Hex if I understand correctly. Basically, she’s a teenage Tyrannosaur who’s also a witch. She’s also kind of a b- um, blunt speaker. Oddly, her accent makes her sound like she’s from somewhere in New England. Not exactly New York, more like Boston. ‘Pahk the cah in Hahvid Yahd.’ You know?

Hex is an odd bird, but she’s, um, how would she put it? Wikkid powaful. Her feet rarely touch the ground, since she prefers to hover or fly, she can control lightning with her bare hands, make herself and other things invisible, control minds – she calls it chahming, and even bring dead plants back to life. Unfortunately, you can’t reanimate animals. The brain activity becomes an issue. Brain death is forever unless you’re lucky enough to have a backup of the patient’s brain handy. But come on, this is the real world we’re talking about, right?

Fun fact about Hex: her dead grandmother’s spirit follows her everywhere she goes. A time travel experiment gone wrong sucked them both through a tem-portal, and now they’re constantly together. Sounds awkward to me, but whatever. I thought she was nuts at first, hearing her talk to her grandmother like she was there with us. Only she can see or hear her. Who knows? Maybe she really is nuts.

Did I mention we’re on a quest? It’s wild. I feel like that little guy with the Robin Hood hat in the old Zelda game. “Take this sword, ‘cause shit’s about to get...

I caught my breath, an irrational wave of fear washing over me, like when you wake up from a nightmare you’re on the cusp of forgetting.

All I could recall was my face burning before the dream faded like a sigh in a hurricane.

It took a moment to gather my bearings, but before long the Earth came back into focus, and I remembered where I was. Safely soaring high above the planet I’d sworn to protect with my life. To date, I hadn’t found anything that could even remotely harm me, except maybe old age. I do age, slowly, but eventually entropy even catches up with superheroes. Entropy is the real grim reaper.

The world’s beautiful from up here – just a big blue marble, with white swirls over odd-shaped patches of gray, brown, and green. I had a cat-eye marble that looked like it when I was a kid. Somewhere down there, it still existed. Maybe in a landfill, in the backyard of my old house, or even in the possession of some new lucky child, but it still existed. That’s the nature of matter and the law of conservation of mass. Entropy be damned. When I eventually cease being me, my molecules will become something else. Hopefully, something amazing.

But for now, and I expect for a very long time, I am the Golden Sentinel, sworn defender of Earth and her almost eight billion inhabitants.

I floated quietly, miles above the surface of the breathtaking blue planet, watching, listening. My pristine white cape floated loosely around me, as there was no atmosphere to disturb it, nor gravity to tug at its hem.

Let me tell you, when it rains, it most definitely pours. In my case, it usually hails, sleets, snows, and throws in some frogs and locusts for good measure. The world went from relatively quiet – you know, stuff the global police forces and militaries can safely deal with – to absolute hell in a handbasket in a matter of seconds. Only this handbasket is almost a hundred and ninety-seven million square miles. That’s a huge handbasket for Hell to eff-up.

You can plan and prepare, but much like the Spanish Inquisition, you can never actually expect the unexpected. That’s why it’s called the unexpected. Trust me, my life revolves around it.

As I was saying, the world went from quietly sleeping baby to colicky quintuplets in the blink of an eye.

It all started with a volcano erupting on the island of Nea Kameni, a tiny island in the cluster that makes up Santorini, Greece. Hundreds of tourists would be in the path of any resulting lava flow, and traditional evacuation processes would be too late, so it was a priority-one emergency.

Before I could fly in and save the day, though, the city of San Francisco, all the way over on the West Coast of the United States, began to shake like one of those tacky hula dancer figurines people put on the dashboard of their car. San Francisco’s car clearly had bad shocks and was driving through potholes.

To make matters worse, a massive sinkhole nearly a mile in diameter suddenly formed in the Sea of Japan. Midway between Japan and South Korea, the liquid black hole guzzled seawater like a beer drinker at a football game. Its gaping maw pulled in a luxury liner, the ship’s superstructure shuddering and groaning as it careened sideways.

As I formulated a plan of attack, yet another hero-sized event let down its unruly hair. A small, undetectable fragment of meteorite struck the JEM – Japanese Experimental Module – of the International Space Station. The damage was so minor, the naked eye could barely see it. However, in a very short time, that segment of the ISS’s artificial atmosphere would fail, and all the current residents of the JEM would suffer an unpleasant demise.

I could see