“Then it is settled!” Frem yelled. “Why should the future dragon emperor of the dragoons deny himself the splendor of his own plucking should he fancy a handful of seeds? Should he suffer his own desires in vain, unsatisfied?” He laughed a long, uproarious laughter. It kept going, and going, and going.

  When he was done, he looked at Windston, smiling, fangs bared. His eyes were crazed, his hair was wild, and his hands lit with a simmering blaze.

  “We are the most powerful boys in the world,” he finally said. “Super powered and free. I knew this as soon as we fought side-by-side for the first time.”

  Windston nodded, suddenly staring at his sword. He shrugged. “We are,” he said, nodding.

  “Damn right we are!” Frem yelled. “I can fly,” he said, leaping. “I can shoot!” he said, firing a flurry of blasts at the burning woods ahead. “And I will have nine dragons!” he yelled.

  “Or eight,” Windston said.

  “Why only eight?” Frem asked.

  “Because I'll need one too!” Windston shouted.

  “We'll take over the world!” Frem yelled.

  “And do whatever we want!” Windston yelled.

  “Yeah!”

  “Yeah!”

  “Yeah!”

  “Yeah!”

  “We're super kids!” Frem shouted as loud as he possibly could. “Hear us roar!”

  Windston immediately fell backward in surprise. “Super kids?” he asked. “But I've been dying to be one for forever. How did you...?”

  Frem laughed and, with that, grabbed his bag and booked it north, Windston chasing after him. They found Rat Road, Old Rat Road and hauled butt. They ran and glided faster than they had ran or glided before in what became a race north. There were slices here, blasts there, and fists full of splinters from wild punches. Carriage folk they passed shuttered and quailed; horses flinched and whinnied; dogs, cats, raccoons and bears alike scattered in fright at the sight of them. The super kids were on the loose for the very first time ever, and they were having a blast – literally, in some cases.

  In another case, they got a little carried away. A wrestling match in the treetops ensued, and they were tossing and flipping and throwing one another. At one key point, they barreled down atop a campfire surrounded by men, and those men were bandits. They were still brushing embers and coughing as the scattering men regrouped. One of them let out a chuckle.

  “Didn’t you just say you were hungry for something that ain't fish, Tom?”

  “Hungry?” Frem asked. “Eat this!” he said and shot a blast right at the man's gaping mouth.

  Blood misted and the fight was on.

  Bandits are skilled robbers, muggers and fighters. But these boys were not the sort these bandits were used to messing with. Knives couldn't stick them, and axes couldn't cleave them. And yet the boys' own devices worked perfectly. A bandit exploded here, another there. Limbs flew and heads rolled. The boys were merciless and brutal. All of Windston's years of frustration and anger and rage poured out at once as the blood flowed and cries rang shrill. Frem had his own issues to work out.

  One last bandit stood, and he ran toward Windston raging and waving an axe wildly about. Windston grabbed the axe by the blade with his good hand and, with his left, punched the bandit straight through the mouth and out the other side. There he stood, a bandit dangling from his elbow, impaled through the face and head on his arm. It was as disgusting as it was glorious.

  By the time they were finished, they needed a bath and new clothes. Fortunately, a waterfall fell strong to the immediate north and east of the bandit camp, along a ridge of rock, and a stream trickled not too far south and west from it, one with fish traps full of wiggly fish.

  And there were chests in a broken wagon stuffed with garments and jewels. Frem grabbed a couple bracelets, and Windston took a woodpecker whistle Frank had given him off its twine and threaded it with gold rope. They were as clean as they were stylish, as full as they were satisfied, and finding more and more gold here and there as they searched.

  This bandit camp turned out to be a slaver camp as well. They found three very skinny people in a rusty little cage on the back of a small wagon. They let them out to eat but the slaves ran off screaming and moaning instead. Apparently, they had seen what had happened to their captors and didn't much approve, despite the freeing.

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  Windston and Frem didn't care. They laughed as they stood on a nearby table, looking over their booty, their field of victory. This was step one of what would be their rise of power over the worldwide forces of evil. How lucky they were to have found bandits so soon, to practice their craft, the craft of slaying wicked men and women, and freeing the innocent.

  “Be you wary!” Frem shouted. “All ye bandits and pirates and scallywags! Avast! Ye shall find yer swift end at my hand! Repent! Give back what ye have taken, ye fleas, ye scourge!”

  “Ye varmints!” Windston added.

  “Ye mongrels! For I take pity not on you, but on your victims! Watch them flee in fear!” he yelled, looking down the road at the hobbling slaves. “Watch them stumble!” he laughed.

  Windston chuckled as one of the slaves tripped and fell because he had been looking over his shoulder rather than ahead.

  “Watch them, panic stricken and feeble. They art our flock! They art our peasant folk!”

  “Our sheep!” Windston said. “We are not wolves! The bandits are wolves!”

  “We are... their savior?” Frem asked, looking at Windston, who shrugged. They both laughed. “I think they're more scared of us than the bandits.”

  “I would be,” Windston said.

  “Which reminds me,” Frem said. “En Garde!”

  “Aye!” Windston yelled, blocking a very swift knife swipe from Frem. They were at it again, rolling and tumbling, dirtying their new clothes. They were ferocious, and vicious, and terrifying to behold. But even still, they were children. There was a lot they still didn't know, a lot that could come in handy on their journey. For one thing, rumors spread, and not all rumors come out at the end exactly how they start. For another, they were being watched by a living dead man.

  The boys didn't know that. Therefore, they didn't care. They were in fact as carefree as they were careless. They continued their brawling well into the night, breaking sword after sword, knife after knife, until they were down to their fists. Frem hit hard, that was for sure, but even he couldn't inflict pain on Windston. Windston, on the other hand, as quick as he was, could hardly land a glancing blow on Frem. Frem was like a cat whereas Windston was like a dog.

  The boys eventually tired themselves and crashed beside the dead and their dying fire. They dreamed of battling ghosts all night and awoke as tired as they had slept.

  Together, on a log high up on the ridge to the east, they ate jerky for dinner, honeycomb for dessert, and one after another of these very gushy fruits they had found by the box load near the slave cage. Each fruit was grape-shaped and about as big as a pecan, maybe bigger. The outside was very chewy, and the inside was liquid. The liquid burst in their mouths with each bite in what was a mildly sweet and refreshingly crisp explosion. Frem was the first to take a big bite. He laughed and handed a few to Windston, told him he'd had them before, when he was down south near the Southern Fall.

  “They're so good,” he said. “I had like five of them. Oh man. So good. But they make you drunk or something. Or maybe whatever it is you feel after you smoke. I felt so weird. Everything was so weird. But I never threw up.”

  The truth was that they didn't make you drunk. Nor did they make you high. Zephyr had its special maple mead, and Wile had its special grapes. These grapes really were grapes, only they were different. They were bigger, juicier, and zestier than normal grapes. And they were full of a chemical compound found in abundance in nothing else. They were potent. And they were a delicacy enjoyed by most within Gorals, and the very rich within six-hundred miles of Gorals thought they were worth buying by the barrel.

  After they finished the box, they launched themselves down the cliff and plopped hard on the ground. Windston spit grass and Frem plucked a thorny vine from his sleeve, both of them laughing hysterically.

  The trip north was also very funny to them, but very slow too, because they were so often teetering. They found themselves full to bursting of song... and piss. Lots of singing, lots of pissing. A song here, a piss there. About four miles in they realized they were headed south and turned around, which was all the more hilarious to them.

  By the time noon rolled around they were back where they started, where they decided it was about as good a time as any to stop for lunch, and maybe a couple more of those delicious berry things. Turns out, they had missed a whole box, which had been stashed under the slave cage. On it, Frem read the words, “Authentic Gooshberries of the Southern Wile,” and nodded. “That was it,” he said. “I remember that now.”

  They took a seat on the floor of the cage and had a couple more. They locked themselves inside to prove how easy it would be to get out, only it wasn't.

  But they did get out, after they realized an armed bandit had been sleeping behind the cage under a pile of petals and beside a toppled box of spilled gooshberries, and these ones were green.

  He was haggardly and old, his mouth all but vacant of teeth. He was hacking all the sudden, which was how they realized he was there. He was sitting up, and his eyes were crossed.

  “Check it out,” Frem said to Windston. “There's more,” he said.

  Windston noticed, although it was hard to focus on any one berry.

  He bent a bar, and then another, and tried squeezing out.

  The pressure was immense, and he got stuck for a minute; but with a few grunts and a lot of help from Frem, he fell out the other side and rolled over the bandit – who sat up swinging a dagger – and grabbed one of the green berries.

  Frem crawled over him and grabbed one too.

  The bandit, whose eyes still crossed, just laughed.

  “Well, I'll be,” he said. “Looks like you boys are thinking what I'm thinking.”

  Frem smiled at him. “Maybe,” he said, tossing back a berry. He laughed, his eyes narrowed.

  The bandit smiled bigger, revealing a mouth full of a mixture of gooshberry skins and flower petals.

  “We killed your friends,” Windston said.

  “Oh yeah?” The bandit peered over the bottom of the cage, through the bars at at least one dead bandit. “Well,” he said, his eyes wide, his head bobbing slowly this way, then that way, “you know what I say.” He looked at Frem, and then at Windston. “A friend's as good as a friend can be until they ain't yer friend no more.” He smacked his lips and nodded.

  Windston ignored him, ate another berry. Frem did the same, only he was staring at the bandit.