Home / Fantasy / How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis / Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

All Chapters of How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis : Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

244 Chapters

111. The King Is Dead, Long Live the King

The three giant worms had come through the mountain walls at around twenty feet up. They swayed their heads like Stevie Wonder in the middle of a harmonica solo but didn’t leap into the Temple where, most likely, they could have caused proper havoc.“Why didn’t they come up through the ground?” I asked Hitokag.“The soil the Temple is built on is poison to them. They cannot pass through it without suffering great pain.”“Then why didn’t you take the soil and use it to fight them in the first place?” Seemed an obvious solution.Hitokag ran his thin tongue over his teeth like he was considering if it was even worth answering such a dumb question. “Then the Temple wouldn’t work,” he said with great restraint.“And that’s more important than giant worms devastating the entire country?”“Yes.”Well, you couldn’t fault his commitment to the cause. Whatever that was.The three jabberwocky didn’t seem to have a plan beyond flapping about
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112. King Worm

There must have been twenty wasps, at least. Only half a dozen had riders on their backs, but all had bits of wood held by their six legs. I don’t know what they needed the wood for — something to do with whatever they had planned to do in the Temple, I suppose — but they dropped everything when they saw us.“Oh ho,” said the lead Intui. Now that I was close enough to see clearly, I could tell this one was Meeth, the one we had encountered earlier. See, I’m not racist, I just have poor eyesight. “Come to rescue your friend, have you?”The wasps spread out before us ready to attack, but Meeth’s smug leer turned into shock, then rage, when he saw Dudley standing with us, rather than tied to the sacrificial altar.“How did...” His eyes went beyond us, probably concerned about what had happened in his absence. And rightly so.It was oddly quiet. I’d have expected all the falling rocks and screaming lizardmen to have made a lot more noise but for some reason the
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113. Castle in the Air

“That was a really stupid thing to do,” Jenny mumbled into my chest. “Stupid idiot.”I pulled her in a bit tighter. Partly because it was cold up in the night sky, and partly to make sure she didn’t fall off the dragon. But mostly because I could and I liked it.“Do I look older?” I asked with my chin resting on the top of her head.“It’s hard to tell under that mop. I’m going to give you a haircut.” She said it very aggressively, daring me to object. I wasn’t going to argue, especially when I agreed with her.“Thanks. I could use a shave, too. Shame I lost all my shaving gear.”She reached up a hand and stroked the hair hanging off my chin in what could only be described as a miserable attempt at a beard. She tugged it, making me yelp.“Idiot.”“It’ll be worth it if Vikchutni actually remembers I saved his life. Could come in useful in the future.”Jenny lifted her head. “Who’s Vick Chutney?”“The dragon. That’s his name.”
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114. Sympathy for the Archfiend

Cheng looked like a member of a boyband. The one who gets all the attentions from the girls.He was tall with an athletic build. The most striking thing about him was his face. He was pretty. Not like a girl — his jaw was square and his features were pronounced — just in a very symmetrical way. Everything balanced really well.He had no hair on his head or on his face, not even eyebrows. And then there were his crimson eyes.They didn’t glow but they were strikingly red.We’ve been over this a number of times so I won’t repeat myself. I’m still not.There was much commotion as Cheng entered as everyone gathered around him, offering greetings and salutations. He was popular, I’ll give him that.“I know you said he wasn’t a Visitor,” I said to Hitokag from the side of my mouth, “but you could have mentioned he’s human.”“He isn’t,” replied Hitokag.Cheng parted the crowds with a wave of his hands and walked towards me. If he wasn’t
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115. My Dinner with Angry

Hitokag glided downwards in an arc with me hanging naked below him. By the time he had banked all the way around to face the castle again, we were level with what I hoped was my room. Entering a stranger’s room dressed like this could only end badly.As the window rushed towards me, Hitokag let go and I shot through the gap at a speed I was not comfortable with. Since Hitokag didn’t follow me in, and there was no splat! of him hitting the stonework, I assumed he had flown off to ruin someone else’s night.I landed on the ground running and barely managed to stay on my feet, the cloak billowing out behind me.Jenny sat up in the bed not quite believing the sight in front of her.“Bloody hell,” she said. “Sleep with a guy a couple of times and he thinks he’s a superhero.”I undid the clasp that held the cloak around my neck and crawled back under the furs and threw myself on top of her. I sucked the warmth from Jenny’s body and it quickly spread through
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116. Way of the Beast

Cheng didn’t seem all that convinced by Jenny’s sudden surge of enthusiasm for finding him a bride. In fact, he seemed a little suspicious of her motives. Can’t say I blamed him.“Yes, well, I suppose there is room for interpretation. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a Visitor or a virgin, technically, but I would still prefer it that way.”Jenny was still standing, leaning over the table. “As longs as it’s the right person, the details of who she is or where she comes from shouldn’t matter, should it? If she’s the right girl, she’s the right girl.”I grabbed the back of Jenny’s shirt and pulled her back into her seat.“Ignore her,” I told Cheng. “You know what girls are like whenever you mention a wedding. It’s like catnip to them. Drives them nutty.”All three girls turned to glare at me (Noreen was already glaring at me, so she didn’t count).“I still have a bunch of questions I want to ask, so let’s leave your nuptials to one side for a mo
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117. Face to Face

When I woke, I was no longer on top of Jenny. She was on top of me and had both my wrists held tightly in her hands. I guess she planned to keep an eye on me, too.We got dressed and gathered the others. Noreen appeared and took us to a room on a lower floor where we had breakfast. I had some fruit and cheese, while the others stuffed their faces.We went outside, past the fighting children, and headed towards the dragons which were eating grass and occasionally dropping steaming dragon turds. Flossie started to get jumpy as we got closer.A number of Mezzik lizardmen wandered in between the dragons, and standing in the middle of the herd was a young boy.“Is... Is that him?” said Claire, shocked even though I had given them a full description of what he would look like.“Good morning,” said Cheng, the deep voice still incongruous with his appearance.To suggest the girls revised their opinion of the demon with the mother-eating father because
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118. Room for Truth

Flossie refused to have anything more to do with dragons. It was understandable considering she had just been forced to take a flying fuck, and probably thought she was going to die.Dudley held onto her and they looked like they planned to stay attached for the foreseeable future. Maurice and Claire did their best to calm her down, but Flossie only buried her face deeper into Dudley’s chest.The Mezzik gathered around and offered congratulations and seemed very impressed with what they had seen. Clinging on for dear life and screaming yourself blue in the face were apparently the signs of greatness among the Mezzik.The one person I couldn’t see in this throng was Jenny. I looked around and finally spotted her on the far side of the dragon herd, engaged in conversation with Hitokag. Jenny was doing all the talking while Hitokag had a concerned look on his face. His wings opened and closed which, from what I had been able to work out about Mezzik behaviour, was a s
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119. Mask

The crowd parted as I led the Intui shaman into the castle. Cheng accompanied us but everyone else remained outside with their baited breaths, large wasps and huge expectations.It would be untrue to say I didn’t feel under pressure. Somehow, I had to avert a fight which would most likely result in my death. Talking my way out of a tight spot was nothing new, but all it took for me to fail was for the other person to say, “Nah, don’t buy it.”There were still a number of methods I could use to avoid getting involved with violence, most of which relied on convincing others to be violent on my behalf, but my preference was to find a method that didn’t require fighting. And that method was called lying.Lying, when it works, can be better than magic. Poof! The problem’s gone.“The Worm King is mentioned three times by name,” I said, pointing out the places on the wall, “and a couple of times indirectly.”The shaman had an awed look on his face. I don’t t
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120. Welcome Back

Jenny cut my hair. It had grown to shoulder length so I must have lost a good chunk of time healing her. She trimmed it back to a mop and shaved my beard, if you could even call it that.I don’t know why I’ve never been able to grow a proper beard. Not even magical time-lapse produced growth of more than a few centimetres. I think I would have grown up much more secure in myself if I’d had good facial hair.“You’re an idiot,” said Jenny after I told her my theory. She finished shaving me — which didn’t take long — and then got me to shave her.The hair around her newly scarred skin was patchy and uneven. She wanted me to cut it all off on that side of her head, as short as possible.It was tricky with just a knife and I nicked her a number of times — which I healed, of course. By the end, she had an 80s New Wave haircut with half of it long and silky and the other half a skinhead. It looked kind of cool.We bathed and went to bed. When I woke, I was a
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