Four feet of steel met extradimensional weirdness and from all appearances, prevailed. Which is to say, when Niall’s sword met the orb’s outermost fringe, a pitched squeal rose raggedly and rapidly as its tattered curvature rushed towards the northern pole, where it promptly winked out of existence with a briefly blinding blue flash.
Niall had expected whatever witchcraft this was to repulse his blow, or at best, perhaps yield a satisfying crack. But beyond the noise and the flash, it offered surprisingly little resistance and like stepping down on a stair one expects but does not exist, the king overbalanced – his sword hurtling towards… was that a man in a bed? Before Niall could blink confirmation, his eyes stung with blue light, his ears rang with otherworldly chaos, and with a deft flick worthy of a master swordsman he flipped the blade to the flat.
Manx Horgan awoke to what could only be a stack of Marshall amps strategically placed all around his bed – turned up to eleven. Covers pulled up tight with one arm tucked under head and chin, his shout of startlement was drowned out by Jimi Hendrix feedback. Manx’s eyes opened immediately after a bright blue flash to see a man swinging a very large sword directly at him. He curled into a ball so quickly he banged knees against chin as a king’s sword met a king sized down filled comforter.
Manx’s bed was an effective stop for both King and sword – although not in that order. The strength of the blow combined with Niall’s momentum and an unexpected king sized Temperpedic mattress caused his highness to lose his footing and fall, faceplanting on Manx’s bed and rebounding backwards onto his recently made royal backside. The sword made a soft whuf and remained on the comforter, even as Niall did not.
The area described by the circumference of the now vanished bubble encapsulated Manx, his bed, both end tables next to the headboard and a good stretch of what was once his bedroom floor, up to and including the entrance to the bathroom, where walls disappeared over the doorway in a tight arc. These tipped over with a low thud, with only what remained of his bathroom counter, sink, and a closet on the other side keeping them from collapsing to the floor entirely.
Thankfully Manx did not sleep in the nude, or for that matter, pajamas. He went to bed that night on a warm spring day, so he wore his favorite faded grey NASA t-shirt over black boxer briefs. He felt the weight of Niall’s sword at the foot of his bed as he sat up, swinging his legs over and out of bed, attempting to blink sense into what he saw around him. Everything around him screamed authenticity – from the stone walls of the castle, the short stairs leading up to an oak throne just behind his headboard, to the equally stunned expressions of the crowd just beyond the foot of his bed. Not to mention a smell that he could only describe as medieval. The man lying unceremoniously on his back shook a head with a crown on it. Instinctively, Manx grabbed the sword by the guard and laying the blade (carefully!) on his opposing forearm, offered the sword back hilt first.
Niall scrabbled unceremoniously aloft as he took the blade back. He kept the point of his blade trained as he rose to stand above the man sitting in his bed. He took in the remains of what was obviously a ruined bedchamber. This sprawling bed of a rich man or prince, the tables at the head, they in turn supporting objects both strange and familiar. The odd material of the floor it all stood on, not to mention the man himself – tall and well fed, with a closely shaved face, and as the man smiled hesitantly at him, the straightest, whitest, most complete set of teeth he had ever seen.
Manx looked about nervously, the first tendrils of fear beginning to bloom. He was in trouble and he didn’t have any idea what to do about it. Then he heard the soft click of his (battery backed up) radio alarm clock and the first clean piano notes of a song Manx knew well from his childhood. The acoustic property inside the stone walls carried each note perfect and true. Startled faces looked around and at each other. Adrenaline pounding, Manx immediately knew what he had to do. Ignoring the man with the large sword pointed at him, he leaped on his bed and turned to the royal audience. Grinning widely, he hit the first sentence on the mark: “I wanted to be with you alone…and talk about the weather…”
As he lip synced to a British band that wouldn’t be born for many hundreds of years, Manx did his best to sell his performance using every technique he could recall. He danced in place (they didn’t know how badly). He made eye contact. He smiled where he could. He encouraged the crowd to sing along during the chorus of “La, la, la, la, la” that’s repeated five times. He thought he caught a few joining in but couldn’t be sure. By the time he got to the final line, “Isn’t it funny how time flies…” he’d jumped off his bed and was standing, one hand outstretched in his best Freddy Mercury pose, the other resting on the off switch of his alarm clock.
The song ended and Manx pressed the off button as he dramatically lowered his outstretched hand.
Dead silence echoed off the walls.
King Niall spoke one sentence.
As the guards moved in, Manx supposed he wasn’t in a musical after all.
