Hiccup goes from hyper-tense to full-on panicking. He runs to the cell door. “Fickers! Someone get me my lawyer! Goes by the name of Solon!”
“No lawyer for wankers,” an inmate across the hall calls out.
Hiccup bangs his head against the bar. “Fick you! I’m crazy, you hear me!? Come over here and I’ll be dining on your chalupa while I make you watch, you little fickered pinko twat!”
“What the bloody hell is a chalupa?”
“Fick! Fick!”
“Quiet, goblin,” Zaena says.
“We’re going to die! Shit. They’ll take me first. Always do. Racism and heightism and I’m the shortest and I’m a goblin. FICK! This is bad; Marbles will be next, then Twixy, then Liz. Shit! They’ll learn about Wolf and go get him and Conan. Enway too, but I don’t know her so well so that’s fine. But fick, Snowballs! He’s so young!”
FeeTwix approaches the goblin. “Holy hell, Hiccup, get a hold of yourself! Your fans are watching! Don’t act like a little fickboy in front of your people.”
“This is bad!” Hiccup grinds his teeth together and moves over to the bench. He plops down and lets one rip.
“Gross!” Zaena stands.
“Stress related flatulence, Liz. Fick! We’re gonna die, we’re gonna die … I’ll never see my son again!”
“Your son?”
“I told you!” he screams at FeeTwix. “Spew Gorge may be mine. Dunno. Doesn’t matter. Well, it matters because if I die, I want him to get the five percent Marbles promised me.”
Ryuk sighs. “It’s two percent.”
“Three, but you get the picture!”
“Hiccup, I think you are overreacting,” FeeTwix says. “And if Spewy is your son, why do you call him your cousin? A cousin means your father or mother is related to his father or mother.”
“What? You’ve never bumped nasties with your aunt? I find that hard to believe, especially coming from a Swede. But that’s not what is at stake here, Twixy! We’re fickin’ doomed!”
“Relax, I think you are coming down from your concert high.”
“Fick! Why couldn’t we have just stayed at the concert. It was so beautiful there! All those choice bits of ass, and that DJ Ride the Lightning ... I’ll have whatever he’s on, am I right? Ha!” Hiccup frowns miserably and lies onto his back. “Son of a ficklord, we’re beyond ficked.”
FeeTwix walks to the cell door, turns, and uses his cuffs to make a ruckus. “Guard, I have a question!”
“Shut up!” a guard yells from down the hall. “And stop running your cuffs along the bars!”
“What’s the bail looking like?” he calls back.
“No bail!”
“Ah, don’t be like that. What’s it going to take, buddy? Work with me here. We got loads of rupees, coming out the wazoo if you ask me.”
“Are you bribing me!?”
“No, sir! I’d never do that, kind sir!”
“Twick, Fixy … shit, you know what I’m trying to say. Dammit, how many times do I have to tell you to let me do the talking when it comes to negotiating?”
FeeTwix ignores Hiccup and turns to Ryuk. “Well, okay, get lemons and make lemonade. Something like that. What I’m trying to say here is that it looks like we’ll need to think of another way. Come on, guys, we’ll think of one! We’re the Mitherfickers! Hell, I’ll bet we can just message Enway to break us out once Oric is better.”
“We can’t use our dashboards or log out,” Ryuk reminds him.
“But I can still livestream!”
“Fick your followers, FeeTwix, they won’t be able to get us out of here.” Hiccup grows tearful. “I never would have thought that I’d be incarcerated at the young age of 154.”
He blows his nose, and without anything to blow it onto, snot just dribbles onto his lips. He wipes it on the bench and continues sobbing. “Fick me. We’re going to die, and when we do, they’re going to rape our corpses. That’s what happens in these places, you know. I read, I know things. You can learn a lot from the ‘letter to the editor’ section of Wet Goblin Holes. I don’t want anyone to rape my corpse, especially one of those inbred guards we saw back there. You see that one with the overbite?”
“Enough whining. I will get us out of here.” Zaena hops up from her bench.
FeeTwix steps aside and looks at her questioningly. “How? You’re just as cuffed as we are.”
“If not more,” Ryuk adds.
The Thulean assassin approaches the bars and looks down the hall. “Guard. I demand your audience, now.”
“Ha! Demand!”
“Yhai blahte charotakh lavaka.”
Hiccup’s ears twitch. “What the fick did you just say?”
A guard approaches moments later, his clubbing stick at the ready. “Say that again and see what happens!” he growls.
A tear-shaped light forms under the skin of Zaena’s forehead. As soon as the guard sees it he drops to one knee. “What is it you’d like, milady?”
“I demand to be removed from this prison and I demand an audience with Empress Thun.”
Ryuk glances at Hiccup, whose jaw has dropped open, and back to FeeTwix, who’s still trying to figure out what’s going on.
“Yes, milady!” the guard says as he goes for his keys.
(0)__(0)
The Thulean restraints are quickly taken off Zaena and she’s ushered out of the cell. “Not without my companions,” she tells the guards and they begrudgingly comply.
“But they must stay cuffed,” the head guard says, the one with the overbite. “At least for now.”
“That’s fine, as long as they’re with me at all times.”
“Seriously,” Hiccup grumbles as the guard guides him away from the bench. “You could have told us, Liz! No wonder you’d always bristle when I called you princess.”
Ryuk stops dead in his tracks. “You’re … a Thulean princess?”
“That’s right, Marbles, Liz has royal blood.”
“How come none of you knew?” the Swede asks his audience as he’s led out of the cell. “And why didn’t you tell me?” he asks Zaena, suddenly a little hurt.
“We will discuss this later.”
A thought comes to FeeTwix. “Wait, if you’re a princess does that mean you’re related to the Thulean queen that Quantum Hughes took out in the giant tournament?”
“No, she’s related to another queen, Twixy. Of course she is! Fick me, you’re daft.”
“Queen Renata is my older sister, so yes, I am related to her.”
“I’m just pissed that her royal highness over here hasn’t used any of her power to a) get us better hotels; b) better guildmates, sorry Marbles; c) rupees galore and the working gals that follow; or d) fund the Mitherfickers’ extreme vetting program. Hey! Watch the fickin’ hair!” he barks at the guard steering him.
“A goblin with pink hair?” an inmate calls out. “I got dibs on that little pink-haired fuckboy!”
“Fick!” Hiccup shoulders past Ryuk. “Get me the hell away from that pedo! Talk about some bad hombres! Whew! Glad we’re getting the fick out of here!”
“Enough, goblin,” Zaena calls over her shoulder. “You are a noisy pest.”
“Well, she is royalty,” the goblin starts to tell Ryuk, “so that would explain some of the racism. I agree,” Hiccup says even though Ryuk isn’t responding, “she should call me by my proper name, but hey, like I said, she’s royalty. Can’t live with them, and we aren’t allowed to kill them.”
“Where are they going?” one of the inmates cries out as they reach the stairs. “Not fuckin’ fair, mate!”
“Quiet, Luke!” the lead guard shouts. “Or it’s another flogging for ye!”
“Oooo! Flog me!” screams another inmate.
“Keep your mouth shut, Bobby!” growls the guard.
They’re led up a flight of stairs to a long corridor, and from there, they head back down another flight of stairs to an underground passage.
Ryuk’s mind reels as he tries to piece together all the times Zaena hinted that there was more to her story. But to find out that “more” is the fact that she’s royalty is something that he is pretty shocked to hear, especially Thulean royalty.