Chapter 10, people. All we have to do is survive this, and we've made it halfway through this literary dreck. It sounds so impressive! ...And then you remember what all we've got left to go through. Ohng.
To top it all off, remember that dullness I spoke of? This chapter is one of the worst in terms of that. Oh, sure, it's got its riffable moments, but for the most part, it's mostly hugely uninteresting sailing.
The next chapter is bad too, but once we get past that... Actually, you know what? I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's deal with the here and now.
You remind me of the sword. (What sword?) The sword with the power? (What power?) The power of voodoo! ...OK, let me stop myself here before I go and recite the whole song.
So Alex and his compadres are... traveling. Just... traveling. This is the written equivalent of a Travel Montage. Except we are informed that "The heat of summer would soon replace the pleasant warmth of spring in Vargland."
You know what? I'm through with asking when, exactly, this is supposed to take place. As far as I'm concerned, this entire novel is now set within the season of Spratuminner. I'm also through with asking how long they've been on the road, and am just going to assume all incidents take place a day apart unless explicitly stated. Any oddities in the winter can be safely attributed to Spratuminner, since its weather is notoriously volatile.
Arconn spends some time telling Alex about the writing in the magic book, employing some pseudolinguistic stuff about words being knowledge and such. Alex also spends some time learning from the herbs and potions book, and identifying twigs for Arconn. Pretty soon, though, and by "soon" I mean "another vague and unidentified period of time later", Arconn is out pacing, being on the watch for bandits!
Guess what our conflict for this chapter is!
Alex wants to know if the bandits will try to kill them. Arconn replies in the possible, but says it's more likely they'd steal the horses and then attack.
Alex: But wait a mo'! Andy told me bandits would attack first, then steal!
Arconn: Yeah, well, Andy's a dumbass. :I
Translation from Authorese: Well, it would've been more plot convenient to rule out bandits by them not attacking the horses the first time, but now, it's more convenient to not rule them out by them attacking the horses! 8D
To absolutely no one's surprise, the bandits attack. Dwarfbeard wakes Alex with the charming technique of "mug them until they awake for want of oxygen." Alex wakes up, the others are mysteriously gone... somewhere, and wanting to not be a complete load, Alex draws Moon Slayer (god how am I supposed to take that name seriously). And he is suddenly filled with the desire... to rush into battle!
Great gods damn it all, this is turning into a Sword Of Truth ripoff, too! Or at the very least, a stupidly similar Emphatic Weapon. Is there any fantasy cliche which this book is not willing to touch!
Bandits strike! Men on horses appear from everywhere! Alex swings his blade and a man falls from his mount, but Alex turns quickly looking for fresh blood, never looking to strike twice. (Rule #2 man! Doubletap!)
But still, "a great happiness and a deep sorrow" fills Alex as he CHAAAAAARGES!
Alex suddenly sees in the night clearly, as if illuminated! But suddenly he stops, the world bereft of bandits, and only a bloody mess littering the forest floor.
ALEX WINS. FLAWLESS VICTORY.
Thinking I went through that whole fight scene awfully quickly? Seriously, it's almost that short in the book, too. The entire thing is about three or four paragraphs. Blink and you'll miss the carnage.
Alex looks down, and to no one's surprise, Moon Slayer (ohmyfriggingod) is glowing in the moonlight, as if covered in tiny flames! Alex feels a "surge of fierce pride" that Moon Slayer is his sword, and that he felt the sword's power... er... "Enter him."
Really, folks, you can insert your own dick jokes here. Honestly, these couple of lines are such a deep well of 'em, if I tried to do this part justice, we'd be here all night. BYO puerile humor.
Not only is the sword glowing—when he was fighting, Alex was too! He was like a beam of moonlight—like a true warrior!
Insert minature "Claudette" conversation here ("I'm no great warrior!" "Shut up! You are because we say so!"), though thankfully, it doesn't last too long. However, after his usual meager protests, Alex looks at the ground and realizes:
OMFG! The ground is strewn with blood, entrails, and random dismembered body parts! He cut a who' buncha people up, suckas! REMORSE! THESE HANDS HAVE SLAIN MY FELLOW MAN!
...Ha. You actually believed that? That would be interesting and would create internal conflict! Alex just "did what he had to do!" So what if he killed around, oh, twenty people? Whatever. Sure, the stink of death now clings to his clothes, but once he and his party rummage through the dead guys' pockets and loot their gems, it'll be A-OK!
Then they start an enormous 20-man bonfire in the middle of the crowded forest to torch the evidence. It's not like that'll ever catch on anything else, like a tree or something. It's perfectly safe! With only 20 bodies in it, it'll burn out overnight!
Alex-tachi goes about this morbid task with about as much reverence as I do. Yes, alright—Alex does get a mild case of the squicks. But his reservations have more to do with dead bodies, and that old chestnut about stealing from dead people, than it does about the fact that he just became a mass murderer. I don't know what it means to just be "chalant," but Alex is so not-it that he's practically comatose from all his chilled-out being.
...That sentence parses really weird.
But our team takes a break from being detachedly macabre to give us holy crap exposition! For, for the first time—halfway through the book—we actually learn that the place where Slathbog is holed up is acually called Varlo! And it's an ancient city that Slathbog drove the people out of!
OMG! Our villain—who has, up until this point, been as utterly immaterial as Alex's personality—actually gets some backstory!
And they're going to stop in a small, nearby town—called Techen—to gather more information about it! And to sell off the twenty horses (holy cow how are Scald and Dwarfaxe Jr. getting them all to follow them all by themselves) left behind by the bandits.
It's good for those dead bandits that those horses are well taken care of, or else Alex (with a meaningful look at Shahreefluffs) would dive into their enormous pyre and tear their corpses apart while being on fire, just to metaphorically teach them a lesson!
Also, since it seems we're now dipping into RPG cliches too, here is are rather lively take on Vendor Trash.
Despite having a magical sword that can slice though flesh like butter, regardless of any input from him (Hmm—who's the hero here; him or the sword?) Alex is still concerned there's more bandits out there. Not likely, Olaf says.
And just in case Alex might even hint that he's maybe, possibly, just a little bit disturbed at his slaughter, yakkmeister Tayo dispenses what is probablly supposed to be his first attempt at a Pithy Truth:
Dwarfbeard adds to that by saying that they've gone "wild"—I mean, they're just like animals in that state, amirite?
...
Yep, folks, it's that time again!
Here's the Thing About Fantasy(TM): (With bonus new theme music
suggested by Lee!)
If you are a fantasy fan, you eventually get used to the fact that most fantasy stories are straightforeward tales of good and evil. They often use Black-and-White Morality with nothing in between—or else go all the way to the other extreme and mire themselves in Gray-and-Grey Morality.
However. In order to make Black and White work, you need to make a few things clear. In particular: You need to make sure your villain is actually villainous.
If you want to have your good guys be Unquestionably Good and your bad guys to be Unquestionably Bad, we have to not be able to question them. In other words, you need to show us them being evil! Just telling us can work, but often doesn't, because it lacks the elements of clear and present danger and menace. In the case of these bandits, we got neither. They were all brutally slaughtered by our hero before they showed any signs of even being slightly dangerous. If there's a Curb-Stomp Battle in favor of the heroes, and you then try to play up the danger posed by the bad guys they just beat, it doesn't work—because our heroes just sawed through them like a bunch of foam dummies! Given all they failed to do, for all we know, our hero just killed an entire party of tourists that were innocently passing through—in cold blood.
And there's another thing. When you're trying to build up your hero's moral high ground, you need to be careful not to go in the direction of Disproportionate Retribution. You have already acknowledged—and brushed over—the fact that our "heroes" kill things to get their loot. But you again don't do anything to establish why these bandits are truly different from our good guys—especially since, after killing the bandits, they do exactly what the bandits would've done, I.E., steal their crap after the kill. So as it currently stands, it looks like we're reducing these bandits to subhuman status (and therefore, OK to kill) simply for... doing what the good guys do.
...But back to the book. Everyone gets warned not to talk about their quest when they go to Techen, the town. You know, just in case some rival adventurers are there who might want to stalk them for a cut of the treasure.
Arconn tosses out a throwaway reference to !*~THE PROPHECY~*!, but, like everything else in this story, he has plotstipation and is barred from talking about it in detail. Lest we exposit before its appointed time!
Alex also explains about the strange mix of feelings he felt while using the sword. Arconn can explain that, too—Dark Elves really put their feelings into what they made, so Alex feels what they do! They were happy to make an object of such beauty! But sad pandas to create a tool crafted for... Dun dun DUUUN! Kiiiiilliiiing. Which we just brushed off as a totally natural and not at all troublesome thing to do, but let's at least pay lip service to the concept, eh?
But Arconn figures it "won't trouble him so much" after a while, even though it is a "terrible joy." I think that while's long since past.
Arconn also has an interesting knowledge of dragons! So it looks like this chapter is going to just be backloaded with exposition then. Hey—it's dull, but it's less for me to type, so I can get through quicker. Yeah, it's said that some dragons are nice and friendly, but for the most part, they can't deny their nature. Which is to be theiving, nasty little sonovas.
Hey, man! They get vital minerals from that gold!
Oh, and don't ever look into a dragon's eyes... because... It's bad!
So much for that exposition. You didn't tell us anything!
And with that, we leave this morally troubling chapter behind.
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