Chapter Twenty

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Chapter Twenty

“BROTHERS AND SISTERS!” Opisthia roared, his voice echoing cacophonously through the dining hall. “RAISE A MUG TONIGHT IN HONOR OF THE RIDER OF HENRIES, WHO HAS CONQUERED THE SECOND TRIAL IN HER QUEST TO CLAIM MY HAMMER!”

“May her laughter never cease!” the Brotherhood responded in perfect unison, their combined voices somehow not managing to match Opisthia in volume. They thrust their wooden mugs into the air, spilling fizzy brown liquid all over the tables and themselves.

“What is this stuff?” I asked, looking down at my own mug while the rest of the Brotherhood guzzled it down like an army of dehydrated fish

“It is the nectar of the gods!” Opisthia answered proudly. “The drink of champions! A concoction developed thousands of years ago by our most gifted alchemists, which has seen the Brotherhood of Zanni through countless wars and famines. We call it lacstarb!”

“There's nothing in it that's dangerous for nonmagical creatures, is there?” Jade asked, putting a hand on Ethan's arm.

“Or alcohol?” Ethan added. “Because none of us are twenty one.”

Jade raised a finger. “Actually, I'm—”

“Fine, Henry and I aren't twenty one.”

“Not to worry!” Opisthia reassured us. “There is nothing in lacstarb except what the name implies!”

I cocked my head. “Lac and…starb?”

“Lemonade, apple cider, sweet tea, and root beer!”

“How does that…” Ethan paused. “Oh. That was almost clever.”

“Everything a warrior needs to stay in top condition!” said the puppet.

“And by that,” Jade said, pushing her mug away with a grimace, “you mean enough sugar to give an elephant a heart attack.”

“Say no more!” I exclaimed, wrapping my hands around my mug and tilting my head back.

Holy…

Freaking…

SUGAR RUSH!

It was an avalanche of flavor. Every ingredient, from the tanginess of the lemonade, to the sweetness of the tea, to the carbonated bite of the root beer, was distinct. Yet somehow they flowed together to create an entirely new flavor that was both comfortingly familiar and exotically new. It was like eating a chocolate-dipped taser. The smooth, rich taste of the chocolate didn't prepare you for the kick of the taser, but neither would have been complete without the other.

“Ugh!” Ethan spat in disgust. “It tastes like five different kinds of acid!”

The last delicious drop slid down my throat, and I slammed the mug back into the table. “More!”

“ONE OF US!” the monks changed in approval. “ONE OF US!”

I couldn't help but grin as a server ran up to refill my mug. Being the Hunter, I was accustomed to a…less enthusiastic reception. Nobody would deny that my job was necessary, but given that I was basically an executioner who made her living smashing the heads of klaonkind's most downtrodden members, I wasn't exactly the most popular guest at parties. Not that I ever got invited to parties. I didn't hold it against them…usually. Would I want to be friends with someone I knew might end up killing me, or my friends, or my family someday? It was only natural they'd want to keep their distance from me.

But this…hearing the monks cheer for me, knowing it was because they actually respected and admired me…it was surreal. Like one of those dreams where you win the lottery and suddenly develop superpowers and your crush says they've always loved you, only for your brain to realize that this many good things could never happen to someone like you, and you wake up a split second before you get married on your own personal cruise ship in a wedding officiated by the Incredible Hulk…

I'm not the only one who's had that dream, right?

But as hard as it was to believe, I wasn't dreaming. I was really here in Jah Beryge, surrounded by people who genuinely seemed to look up to me.

Just imagine the looks on their faces when they realize you're only here to rob them, the annoyingly logical voice in my head whispered.

And just like that, my spirits came crashing down like an elephant sitting on a house of cards.

“Now, as always,” Opisthia said, Fatty raising his arm to let the First Hunter address the entire room, “let us give thanks for our evening meal!”

The sound of moving bodies and rustling cloth filled the air as everyone bowed their heads. I watched them, curiously—and then jerked when Ethan elbowed me in the side.

“Be respectful!” he hissed, bowing his head and closing his eyes as well.

Reluctantly, I followed suit. I'm a pious disciple of the whoopee cushion in the sky—all hail its benevolent flatulence—and the idea of praying to another god made me uneasy. But considering the Brotherhood was allowing me to stay here tonight, and what I was planning to do tomorrow, I decided this was the least I could do to pay them back.

Silence swept over the dining hall, and when there was no sound except for the peaceful breathing of the monks surrounding me, Opisthia spoke again.

“Night falls, the sun departs,

And laughter’s springs still freely flow,

But let not our fleeting hearts

Forget our joy was born from woe.

Across the Sea Betwixt we fled,

Exiled, scattered, cast away,

But while the seasons past us sped,

We could not outrun the Gray.

And then when hope was nearly lost,

Upon this blessed shore we landed,

With joy too ample to exhaust,

A second chance to us was handed.

For those who grant the feast we share,

We vow in solemn, humbled breath,

Their lives shall rest within our care,

Our bond unbroken even in death.

May laughter never cease.”

“May laughter never cease,” the monks repeated.

With that, the doors at the end of the hall burst open, and a small army of klaons emerged, carrying massive plates covered in steaming hot food. The smell hit my nose like the world's most appetizing semi-truck, and my stomach gave an audible roar.

“Ha!” Opisthia barked. “The Rider of Henries sings the song of craving! Bring her some food before she decides to eat her friends instead!”

“She hasn't tried that yet,” said Ethan, “but I wouldn't be surprised.”

He was joking. At least, I thought he was. It was hard to tell, since he never smiled. I didn't miss the way he scooted a couple inches further away from me, though. I narrowed my eyes. Did he really think I—

With a clunk, a heavy platter covered in food was set in front of me, and I immediately forgot about…whatever it was I had been thinking about a few seconds ago. Slowly, my eyes ran from one end of the table to another, my mouth suddenly salivating like a waterfall. There was moussaka, pastitsio, souvlaki, gyros, lamb kleftiko, paidakia, youvetsi, tzatziki, dolmades, spanakopita, tyropita, saganaki, keftedes, gigantes plaki, baklava, galaktoboureko, loukoumades, rizogalo, portokalopita, and more. And yes, I do know what all of those things are. After all these years of using foods as cuss words, there aren’t many dishes out there I can’t name.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I realized that everything they were serving was Greek food. Luckily, I was too hungry to waste time thinking about anything besides what I wanted to stuff down my throat first.

Moving with the skill and grace that only the Hunter can achieve, my eyes immediately locked onto my first piece of prey. Arming myself with a fork, I struck, sinking its tiny metal blades deep into a slice of saganaki. The way its melted yellow-white cheese bled across the table as I transferred it onto my plate was almost more than I could take. I wanted nothing more than to slam my stupid face down onto the table and devour it like a starving beast, and probably my plate and a good chunk of the tablecloth too.

There have always been people who’ve called the Hunter a monster, McGus’ voice echoed in my mind. And some of them actually were monsters. But the only one who can prove them wrong is you.

Reluctantly, I picked my fork back up and shoveled the entire thing into my mouth in one bite like the civilized person I was.

“Greek architecture, Greek food,” Ethan said, spooning a helping of gigantes plaki onto his plate. “You guys really go all out with your theme here, don’t you?”

“Indeed,” Opisthia agreed, sagely nodding his stuffed head. “It reminds us of home.”

Fatty cleared his throat—the first sound I think I’d ever heard him make.

“Me,” Opisthia corrected himself self-consciously. “It reminds me of home. The other founders of the Brotherhood are…no longer with us, after all.”

“Just how old are you?” Jade asked, pausing with a bite of pastitsio halfway to her mouth.

I snorted, a much bigger bite of pastitsio making my cheeks bulge out. “Trrrtffll, Jrrrr. Rrrrr smrrrf.”

“Swallow first, Henry!” Ethan snapped. “I swear, a pig rolling around in its own trough would have better manners than you!”

I did as he said, but the pastitsio got stuck in my throat, forcing me to chug another mug of lacstarb to wash it down.

“I said,” I repeated once I’d caught my breath, meat and tomato sauce smeared across my face, “tactful, Jade. Real smooth.”

Her cheeks turned a shade redder, earning me yet another glare from Ethan, but Opisthia just shook his head. “I don’t mind. You tend to stop caring about things like that a few centuries after your mortal body dies. Brother Fossilicious! Would you honor us with a retelling of—”

“No!” the grumpy old geezer’s voice piped up from somewhere nearby. “I wouldn’t want to risk putting any plot holes into the story!”

The other monks that were within earshot exchanged confused looks. Apparently, what had happened up in the Hall of Reverie wasn’t public knowledge.

“Very well,” Opisthia agreed without missing a beat, “I shall tell the story of the Jocular Brotherhood of Zanni. I suppose it is only fitting, seeing how I was there for most of it.”

Fatty stood up and raised his arm.

“HARK NOW,” Opisthia called, “THE EVENTS THAT LED TO THE FOUNDING OF OUR ORDER!”

A wave of silence descended over the dining hall. I had been in the middle of making a sandwich out of kleftiko, with two slices of baklava as the bread, but I couldn’t help but pause and turn toward him to listen.

“We first came to this world nearly two thousand years ago,” he said, tilting his googly eyes upwards reminiscently. “And our first point of contact was with the people in what you now call Ancient Greece.”

“We?” I asked, and then raised my kleftiko baklava sandwich—I decided to name it bakleftleva—to my mouth.

Opisthia shot me what was probably supposed to be a conspiratorial look. “We, klaons.”

I dropped my bakleftleva.

“We had scouted so many worlds,” he went on before I could say anything. “Hundreds? No, more likely thousands! Hope was beginning to run out—as were our rations. Our people were on the verge of complete and total disaster. We needed to find a world that suited us, and our unique diet, and we needed to find it soon.”

“What—” I tried to say.

“Shh!” Ethan hissed. “Don’t interrupt!”

“And then, just as the colors were at their grayest, we found it!” Opisthia declared. “A world where the very air could nourish us! But we would soon learn that it wasn’t the air itself that was so special, but the strange inhabitants who breathed it.”

He turned to glance at Ethan.

“Human beings,” he said, with more than a hint of reverence in his voice. “Living creatures with such a strong connection to the emotional planes that they could produce joy simply by laughing? We had never heard of such a thing. Even I, myself, would have called it madness if I hadn’t seen it myself. Surely this world, this Earth, was destined to be our new home!”

I leaned forward. “But where—”

“Alas, though, the colors are never as bright as they initially seem,” he talked over me, hanging his head in shame. “For unknown to us at the time, we had brought with us the very thing we had set out to escape from. Our ancient and most vile enemy. The Gray.”

“What’s the Gray?” I asked, half surprised he actually let me finish.

He shot me a look that sent a chill running down my spine. “What indeed, young Hunter?”

I paused for a moment, thinking, and then my eyes widened. “The maiams?”

“Yes,” he said with a nod, “though back then we had no name for those creatures. The Gray has haunted our people since the dawn of time, but with the discovery of humans and their laughter, it manifested itself in a way that we had never seen before. A manifestation that was far worse than any it had ever taken in the past, for now it threatened not only us, but the people to whom we owed our lives as well.”

By now, the entire dining hall had fallen silent as the other monks listened to him recite the story. I had even forgotten about my bakleftleva.

“I and a few close friends quickly decided we couldn’t bear to see the Gray have its wicked way with this world, and that something must be done. And so we gathered the strongest, the bravest, and the truest klaons who had crossed the Sea Betwixt with us, and we fought back. Thus was the Jocular Brotherhood of Zanni created, and it still fights for the humans to this day! Though I am the only one of the founders who remains, as long as the Gray’s threat persists, we shall continue to stand tall and proud against it! We are like the laughter that the humans give to us—a light in the darkness that may fade and falter, but will never truly go out!”

“We will never go out!” the Brotherhood shouted their approval with a raucous cry, thrusting their mugs up into the air again and sending a shower of lacstarb raining down on us. Fatty raised his arm high, letting Opisthia stand as proudly as a raggedy old puppet could over his followers.

Seeing my chance, I took it.

“But where did we come from?” I demanded, having to yell to be heard over the celebration.

Opisthia looked down at me, but he didn’t answer.

“The way you were just talking,” I persisted, “you made it sound like—”

A deep, resonating horn blasted from somewhere on the other side of Jah Beryge loud enough to make the air warp in front of my eyes like a mirage and drown out the Brotherhood’s cheering.

“—Oh, come on!” I yelled, not even able to hear myself. Beside me, Ethan was clamping his hands over his ears, his face screwed up with pain.

Just as suddenly as it had started, the sound ceased, leaving my ears ringing. Everything seemed unnaturally quiet all of a sudden—and as my head cleared, I realized that wasn’t just my imagination. The entire dining hall had abruptly gone silent.

“What the hell,” Ethan said, looking around in bewilderment, “was that?”

“That,” Opisthia said, the joviality suddenly gone from his voice, “was the Call to Arms.”

“What does that mean?” Jade asked.

“It means I have work to do,” I said, slowly rising from my seat. I patted my pocket, then froze. “Alligator nuggets! I left the Escher Cube at home!”

“Well, it shouldn’t take more than a minute to grab it,” Ethan said as he and Jade stood up as well.

“No!” I snapped almost before I knew I was saying anything. They both froze, looking at me in surprise. I stared back at them, my head spinning as I tried to figure out what was going on in that empty space between my ears.

“Henry?” Jade asked.

“You’re not coming with me,” I said, my feelings somehow forming the words that my brain still couldn’t quite put together. “Not this time.”

“But—”

“I almost lost Jade earlier!” I cut Ethan off. “I can’t…don’t ask me to go through that twice in one day.”

Again, the two of them shared a look, the confusion plain on their faces.

“But you can’t leave me alone,” Ethan said slowly.

I couldn’t help but smirk. “Look around you, dummy! Do you really think anyone from the Council of Shnoob is going to find out?”

“I guess not,” he admitted reluctantly. “But still…”

“What if you need our help?” Jade asked.

“I was the Hunter for three years before I even met Ethan,” I reminded her, “and if you haven’t noticed, I’m still alive. I know how to take care of myself.”

“That’s true,” she said softly. “But…are you sure?”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Opisthia said before I could respond. “Because I am going to go with her.”

All four of us spun to look at him in surprise—including Fatty.

“I would very much like to see the current Hunter out in the field,” he explained. “It’s obvious that the Rider of Henries is very skilled. She could not have taken down Brother Humdinger and Sister Swoosh otherwise. I’m curious as to how those skills translate into killing maiams.”

Ethan and Jade hesitated again, but it was obvious from the look on my face—and Opisthia’s too, somehow—that neither of us were going to back down on this, so eventually they sat down.

“Just be careful, okay?” Ethan said, giving me one last anxious look. “You remember what happened the last time you went off on your own, right?”

I froze, the memories of that horrible day drilling through the protective layer of stupidity and bad jokes that wrapped around my subconscious.

A grinning rubber mask.

A stone amulet on my forehead.

My friends begging me to stop as I used all of my skills to—

“I’ll be fine,” I forced myself to say, giving them a smile that didn’t reach my eyes.

I walked away before they could say anything else, with Fatty following a few steps behind me. As we left the dining hall behind, the faint murmur of conversation began to rise from the tables again. I glanced over my shoulder at Opisthia.

“So, about that story you were just telling,” I said tentatively. “Where did you say we—”

“You should focus on the hunt,” he interrupted me.

I wanted to argue with him, but something in his tone of voice made the words die in my mouth before they could pass through my lips, leaving them lying on my tongue like a half-rotten leaf of lettuce. He was probably right, though, I reluctantly decided. The last thing I needed when I was about to go head to head with a maiam was the long lost, forgotten history of klaonkind banging around inside my skull. But even as we headed for the door leading back to my house, something about his story was like an itch on the back of my brain. With all that talk about coming to Earth, it almost sounded…

I turned the doorknob and led the way back into my dimension.

…like he was saying we were aliens.

NEXT CHAPTER 11/26/25