Recap

"I still don't get it, Freddy," said Velus. "Didn't you die?"

"Well, yes...I told you it was a long story."

"Well, we've got time, tell it!"

And so Fred sat down on some cooled tuff and began his tale. "It all began on the day I died. It was the middle of the week if you didn't know, the eighth day of thirteenth month in the thirty-second year of our King Emry, again if you didn't know."

"Look," growled Velus. "I may be a teenage dog, but I know what year it is."

"Anyway," continued Fred. "I came, I entered, I died. Then I went to a misty place where winged men like to stand outside of gates made of mother- of-pearl. I kept waiting for the squids but they never came, this made me very sad. But there was this one very cool man with wings, Pete. He said I could come back, and so I did. I was able to appear, as if in a dream, to our good King Emery and tell him of my death. And so he sent Paulito on te quest to kill the dastardly dragon."

"That was Sir Paulito who I just met?" interrupted Velus.

"The very one."

"But if you did what this Pete told you, how come you're here again?" asked Velus.

"Well, this is where it gets complicated," answered Fred. "Things were kinda strange for me in cloud city, I didn't know anyone, there were no jousts, and then -yesterday- a big commotion occured at the gates. People were everywhere, Pete was swamped with work answering questions, delegating tasks, crowd control... that kind of thing. In all the commotion I sorta... kinda... well... I looked down and saw Paulito and decided it couldn't hurt to help him."

"You ran away from the realm of the dead?!!?" yipped Velus.

"Well, yeah, what's it to you?"

"Tight!" barked the teenage dog-boy.

Just then a frazzled Sir Paulito ran into the volcanic chamber and began gasping for air. He coughed and wheezed and phlegmed this way and that. he backed out of the chamber and Fred and Velus followed. "Damn! How could you guys breath that crud?!" asked Paulito.

"I'm close to the ground where the good air is," answered Velus (although Paulito could not understand one single bark). "And I'm...well...dead," said Fred.

"Great," said Sir Paulito. "I'll I wanted was a cool vacation, a little pachanga with a couple of babes...instead I'm in dragon's cave with a bespelled teenager and a dead man. And you wouldn't guess what I saw in a cavern not far from here."

"The dragon?" asked Fred.

1. "No, a centaur having the crud being beaten out of him by some gnomes!"
2. "No, an ugly woman who's either dead or deeply asleep and layng within a glass box."
3. "Yes, kinda, well not exactly. I saw dragon guano...big droppings...excrement the size of boulders...and man did they stink!"

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