Episode Two
PREVIOUSLY ON "IT WAS A TIME OF DARKNESS":
Confounding the hopelessly complicated plans of the wizard Dixdastardlax, Princess Breasts and Ash are about to learn from Inspector Petit-Pivic what new dangers face Akansaxchukabuk when they are attacked by unseen archers.
Meanwhile, unseen archers interrupt Inspector Petit-Pivic's explanation to Princess Breasts and Ash of the new dangers facing Akansaxchukabuk, cheapening their confoundment of the wizard Dixdastardlax's hopelessly complicated plans.
(Scene: The river. Arrows splatter into the party's rowing boat as they huddle feebly.)
ASH: Get behind me - I'm a tree.
PRINCESS: No you're not.
PETIT-PIVIC: Quick - capsize the boat. We'll use the hull as a shell and paddle to safety while our slower-witted foes continue firing blindly, thinking we're sitting here bumbling over what to - aaarghh! (Dies.)
ASH: Dammit - killed before she could complete her escape plan.
PRINCESS: We'll have to swim for it.
ASH (peering into the gloom): There's no point. We're surrounded by the entire army of Akansaxchukabuk's evil neighbour Grimsaxhaibailak fully equipped for an invasion. (Fatalistically.) Looks like we'll never know what dangers face the old home town. Aaarghh! (Dies. Falls on oar, which levers to crack Princess Breasts under the chin. Cut to black.)
(Fade in on Princess tied to chair. She snaps awake. Pull back to show she's in a tent - the field headquarters of the Grimsaxhaibailak army.)
PRINCESS (furiously): What is the meaning of this? (Beat.) Wait a minute...
GENERAL REDMAX: Yes, Princess. Not so cocksure without your powers of interrogative perplexity, eh? Defogging your pronouns was a simple matter for a master of maajikcke such as I.
PRINCESS (gesturing to take in the tent and the army outside, except she can't, but still): Your invasion of Akansaxchukabuk will not succeed.
REDMAX: How in - ? No matter. You forget, Princess, that your city is in political turmoil. The king is lost, that wizard and his lapdog plot to betray one another, and with you as my prisoner your people will have to open the gates.
PRINCESS (sniffs): You don't know my people at all.
REDMAX: On the contrary. (He indicates a representative sample filling in questionnaires.) I've been planning this for months. Nothing's been left to chance. What the devil?
(Ash and Inspector Petit-Pivic have burst in, brandishing weapons.)
ASH (signalling the officers should stand as if posed figures): Frieze!
PETIT-PIVIC: Nobody move, and I guarantee you won't be hurt.
AN OFFICER: What, ever?
ANOTHER OFFICER: Does that also apply to behavioural aberrations?
PRINCESS: Petit-Pivic! Ash! (She embraces them joyfully, except she doesn't.) But - I saw you die.
PETIT-PIVIC: No you didn't. The arrow merely grazed my temple.
ASH: And it turns out I am a tree.
REDMAX: How did you get past my entire army?
PETIT-PIVIC: We removed our shoes.
REDMAX: Curses. (Feinting, then hurling a phial.) Feel the might of my çauçyry.
(Colourful explosion. Expensive sequence of Ash, Petit-Pivic and Princess spinning through dimensions. Cut to featureless plain. Party rises into shot.)
ASH: What a wierd place.
PRINCESS (slowly): Oh no...
PETIT-PIVIC (sharply): What are you inferring?
PRINCESS (desperately): It's the Realm of Illiteracy.
ASH: Slack grammar.
PRINCESS: Whatever. (As a mantra.) Practise - practice - minuscule - separate...
ASH (dully): We must sieze the future.
PETIT-PIVIC (blankly): We should of killed him.
PRINCESS: ... vying - disperate - oh no! Aaarghh!