Of Seaweed and Salad Dressing

Thrice didst the sun rise and fall upon our heroes as they travelled eastward. Well, not on them per se, as that would be both painfully heavy and excruciatingly hot, but thrice didst it emerge from its watery lair ahead of them, and thrice didst it plunge into the depths somewhere behind them. Krulnor had occasionally considered hunting the sun down and slaying it while it slept – just for kicks – but he had yet to find someone who hated the sun enough to fund the trip; most often when he mentioned the idea he found people strangely negative, claiming the sun helped things grow and enabled life on earth. Krulnor doubted this – he had watched the sun closely over an entire week and didn't see it plant or enable anything. He would have watched it longer, but he had suffered a strange period of blindness for the following two years, probably the result of eating too much raw Orc.

There was a lot of muttering, followed by a polite cough, and Krulnor – who had been having a quiet sleep on his luxurious mammoth-skin rug in the back of the boat – opened his eyes to reveal thirteen warriors standing over him with written swords (not drawn swords, as would be the case if this was graphic novel). In centuries to come sea-warriors such as these would be known by many names, such as Pirates, Ninjas, or Chad, but in these ancient and ferocious times, they were known by a more fearsome title: The Kittens.

Ok, so its not really that ferocious, but you try telling that to thirteen sea-warriors with drawn swords! If you do, you'll find out that thirteen really IS your unlucky number...

The leader of The Kittens, a terrifying mountain of a man known as 'Bob', laughed a terrifying laugh.

“Ha!”

Once Krulnor had been given ample time to absorb the terror of this laugh, Bob continued:

“Well, well! If it isn't Krulnor, the mighty hero of yore, who is it?”

There was a slight pause.

“Um, it is Krulnor,” one of The Kittens informed Bob, once the emphasis of Bob's earlier confusingly worded statement had been determined.

“Aha!” Bob affirmed.

There was another pause, as Bob let these traumatising sentiments linger in the air.

“Good!” he added minutes later.

His underlings stood to attention, waiting patiently for their leader to form another thought.
Eventually he did.

A concerned expression furrowed Bobs face.

“If he isn't in my prison-cell in the next few minutes, where is he?”

The Kittens thought about this for just a moment longer, and decided that Bob was in fact trying to hint at something, and promptly transported Krulnor to the prison chamber aboard their ship, upon the deck of which A Malnourished And Conspicuously Absent Messenger's boat had been hauled by The Kitten's boat-hauling-net (patent pending) and was lying (which goes to show that nothing good ever comes of lying).

Soon Krulnor was shackled to the wall of the ship's cell by both his arms and legs, with a metal collar around his neck (which would have made him look quite goth if the term was not already taken for quite a different style in those days). Leaving a guard (to guard), Bob and the remaining The Kittens left Krulnor to his fate, and returned to the deck to rifle through Krulnor's possessions and sample the bounty of his food sack.

“Rats,” Krulnor muttered to himself, “They better not eat that Minotaur jerky I was saving.”

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