Pleasure Knight

She did so by taking a small fist of powder from a brown earthenware jar from a shelf by the opening and tossing it into the bowl on top of the tall, slim brass base.

The brazier flared up, and the fire turned out to have the same color as Flame's hair. I got goosebumps. That small, slender woman scared big, tough me senseless.

The workshop was a rather small, incredibly cluttered room built inside the tree just like her vast mansion high above. Tree shelves, tree chests, tree work benches, tree chairs, tree nooks, wavy tree walls, tree shadows, everything was made of living wood. Every available space was filled with all kinds of jars, bottles, books, and instruments that a poor warrior, and man, like myself had no idea of how to interpret.

All I could do was follow her around with a tight grip on her hair. I didn't enjoy anything about this. Not the cramped spaces where I had no control. Not the dark opening where anything might appear. Not remembering her shouts and imagining what they might bring. And certainly not that it felt as if I now had collared her. My one consolation was that it would all come to an end soon. Somehow. I also didn't like how she looked around as if she was trying to find a way out of the fix she was in.

"I will kill you!" I growled. Again. For some reason.

In the end she found three small bottles of something I had no wish to either taste or smell. Could be cough syrup, liquor, and perfume for all I knew.

"Got it," she said.

"To Poppy," I said. "Now."

She nodded. When she was done nodding, she crashed straight into her brazier, toppling it. It fell. "Sorry!" she yelled.

There, I thought, goes a worse liar than myself. To think they even existed!

Smoke rose from the smoldering, powdery coal. Thick, noxious, reddish smoke, and lots of it. Why, one might be inclined to think of it as the red, hot cloud of a warning signal?

Right! There was only one thing to do, and hang around gaping at the smoke was not it.

'It' was to think 'By the Wild, Flame is coming!,' bend Lady Deep Shadow's arm behind her back, and yell at her to get me to Poppy as soon as possible. Or I would kill her. Which I said about five times until we at last reached the little knoll.

-

Nothing had changed much since the last time I saw Poppy. The tree was perhaps a little taller, the crown a little wider, the fruit a little more numerous? Could be?

Poppy herself looked if anything even more emaciated, a corpse that was only living through her feverish eyes. She couldn't speak, couldn't move. The grass around her seemed almost rotten, poisoned by the gutfig's roots.

"Get to it!" I shoved Lady Deep Shadow towards her, following close behind to keep within tackle-distance.

"It's a complicated-"

"Then do it fast!"

"I have never-"

"Do it! If she dies, you die." That was a nice variation on the mantra I had recently acquired.

"I don't want to die," Lady Deep Shadow said.

"Join the club!"

"I want to be young again, to live forever." She uncorked a bottle.

"Well, you can't. So, shut up!"

"We could be so good together." She poured the acid around the trunk of the tree that had ripped Poppy's belly apart. Smoke rose like fine vapor.

"You, me, and all the other hags you want to whore me out to."

"That was a mistake. I am talking about love." The second acid quenched the smoke from the first with a loud hiss. The trunk of the tree seemed to grow thinner, deflated, and began writhing as if in pain, shaking Poppy like a rag doll.

"If you don't know what that is yet, you're all out of luck, you old bitch!"

-

"Well," Lady Deep Shadow said, pouring the last acid into the hole. "It's done. Too quick, with no preparations, but... It's done. Let me go."

"The tree is still there!" I said.

"It's dead. That's what the acids were all about. Pull it up. Be careful, or you rupture what's left of her guts."

"I will kill you!"

"No, you will kill her. This is what you wanted, and totally against my wish. I could have saved her the right way, tomorrow, as a compensation for what the Vampiress did to you. Instead you ruined it all."

I reckoned that if I were to listen to Lady Deep Shadow's complaints, I might as well go chain myself to that throne again, collar and all. Instead I pushed her down on the grass next to Poppy and sat on her while I began examining the hole in her belly.

Hunting in the Wild has been a favorite pastime of mine back at Glory Hill, as opposed to kickball. I knew my way around animal guts, but was still not prepared for this. Poppy looked like she had been infested with the world's largest tumor, an enormous fungus growing on both her and the tree, a decaying corpse vomited out of the ground. Dead, burned roots were still attached to her. I had to pull them off, one by one.

Poppy looked at me like I was a mix between the man bringing her the largest cake ever baked and the man who broke into her larder and ate it afterwards.

"It's going to be all right," I said with as much authority as the man who sweeps the bakery floor.

The tree, not attached to Poppy or the ground anymore, toppled over and fell. I picked it up and tossed it as far as I could. Which, I am proud to say, was pretty far.

When I was done, nothing at all happened. Except that Lady Deep Shadow complained of how uncomfortable she was. Poppy did the same with her limited options of expressing herself.

It was, I decided, time to leave. Someone far smarter than me had to take over. Her friend, whatever her name was again?

First, though, I had to stop Lady Deep Shadow from bothering me. I know I had promised to kill her, again and again, but my heart wasn't really in it.

I had no rope, but I had learned that her dresses were easy to rip to shreds. Soon I had her tied up and gagged with her own garment. That should have been enormously satisfying, but the last thing she said was "I'm going to get you, Sir Weed. You will be mine, and next time I will never let you escape the leash."

I shivered, but did not relent. Instead I left her lying there in the tall, lush grass.

With Poppy in my arms I went in search of the wall. Soon I realized that the real problem wasn't finding the thirty feet tall structure which was cleared of any convenient, easily-climbed trees from which hung sturdy, ladder-like vines.

In fact, I had to walk halfway around the garden, following the looming, gray brick structure before I came to a cast iron gate surrounded by pink, fragrant flowers. Was it the one I had entered? I had no idea: That was a thousand years ago.

The gate was locked.

That, I decided, was not a problem. That was an excuse.

-

I put Poppy down, gently, on the grass and began kicking at the lock. It resisted. I liked that.

Finally, after working up a sweat and a warm, red face, I was able to do what I did best. Break stuff.

In the end it turned out it was the iron bars that gave, not the lock. When I found that out, I had the door down in ten kicks.

I picked up Poppy. She stared through me into nothing. There came a wheeze from her throat, which I took to mean she breathed.

I was about to start walking, to move out of the gate, to leave this cursed place for the city outside, when I heard a voice I both hated and desired behind me.

"Turn around," Flame said and giggled. "Turn and face your Goddess."