By the time they figure out what went wrong, we'll be sitting on a beach earning...

[Breaker]

“Ride the snake,” Storm mumbled unconsciously, writhing gently on his back. “Ride it forever and to the moon.” Breaker and Shinsou had already awoken after the fall to Lornius proper which should have massively overkilled them. Perhaps it was the Telgradian’s latent magic that had saved them. Perhaps it was Breaker’s patron, Am’aleh the Thayne of the sea, who had sheltered them with her hand. Perhaps it was the luck of the Jake, who is a different character of mine. No one could say for sure.

Sadly, Attila had died. After waking up Storm wept bitter acidic tears of sorrow that supplanted the fresh soil and formed a calcified circle of rocks around the steed’s body. Not wanting to put any of the good horse to waste, the trio of heroes quickly built a fire and roasted the good horsemeat. Soon beautiful smells wafted from the fire, gorgeous tendrils of handsome odors that pleased the nostrils and tastebuds in many ways. Josh used a packet of salt he’d taken from the restaurant to spice the meat, and as the flames died down to banked coals, the feast began.

“I can’t,” Storm said, turning his head away from the crispy haunch Breaker passed him. “Attila was my faithful steed, my strong companion… my horsey horse!”

“Eat,” Josh said, his eyes swirling volcanic miasmas of whorly elucidating knowledge. “This way, Attila will be with you always. And it will give you the strength of a horse… but only if you are fighting another horse.”

“Breaker, you are bloody crazy.” Shinsou mumbled from where he was munching happily on a shank steak. “This may be some grade A top choice horsemeat, but it doesn’t bestow any special powers.”

“That is where you are wrong,” Breaker smiled. “The horse meat will not bestow YOU any special powers… but Storm had a bond of love forged with the creature. Some of its life essence will pass on to him in consumption.

“How do you know all this?” Storm asked, still hesitant to take a bite.

“I read the wiki,” Josh shrugged.

[Shinsou Vaan Osiris]

The wiki is a wonderful thing. When Shinsou checked it, he realised that Josh had missed out a very important part, which was the section that denoted exactly what happens in the event of an NPC death in liquid time.

They re-appear, of course, completely unharmed.

Therefore, against all probability a horse had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of a planet known as Althanas.

And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a horse, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a horse before it then had to come to terms with not being a horse any more.

This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.

Ah … ! What’s happening? it thought.

Er, excuse me, who am I?

Hello?

Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life?

What do I mean by who am I?

Calm down, get a grip now … oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It’s a sort of … yawning, tingling sensation in my … my … well I suppose I’d better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let’s call it my stomach.

Good. Ooooh, it’s getting quite strong. And hey, what’s about this whistling roaring sound going past what I’m suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that … wind! Is that a good name? It’ll do … perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I’ve found out what it’s for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What’s this thing? This … let’s call it a tail – yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can’t I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn’t seem to achieve very much but I’ll probably find out what it’s for later on. Now – have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?

No.

Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I’m quite dizzy with anticipation …

Or is it the wind?

There really is a lot of that now isn’t it?

And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ow … ound … round … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground!

I wonder if it will be friends with me?

And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.