What happened?

It was at this point in the story that I took it on myself to interrupt.

"Wait, wait, wait," I cried out. "You're just gonna gloss over that whole thing where Odin just sat down and let that little punk kill him? What kinda goose droppins is that?"

The ghost of the meth zombie scratched his dirty blonde hair through his trucker hat. "Well, I was gonna, you know, work it into the story there somewhere. I was thinkin maybe there'd be this big dramatic meetin between Hiroki and his gang and the leaders of Clan Platypus where they'd be all 'Oh, Hiroki, you're so powerful! How did that happen?' and then BOOM! he'd tell em what he saw in the book."

"Naw, naw," I just shook my head, "it's gonna be crap if you tell it like that. Take it from me, I've told a story or two in my time. What you gotta do is just tell us now, so we ain't waitin the rest of the story thinkin 'What the heck happened there?' and cursin your name like we was watchin some overly dramatic movie starring the latest pretty boy actor in his 'break-out role' but it's actually just three and a half hours of people talkin quietly about stuff that doesn't really matter."

"What, you mean, like, just TELL you what happened?"

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm sayin. I ain't standin out here in this scorched wasteland under this freaky blackened sky talking to an army of former meth addicts what has been turned into ghosts for my health, you know. I'm just tryin to make sure my home doesn't end up the same way, you know?"

"Well," he spat, "I guess if that's the way you want it."

"Sure do."

"Well, allrighty then. It turns out that what Hiroki had seen on that paper was a recipe for breaking what was called the 'narrator spell'. I ain't gotta spell it all out for ya, but, in short, it was a spell that trapped a person in a story. And the writer of the story could get that character to do whatever in the heck he wanted him to do. The Grimoire of Necrography had cast this wicked thing on the first person who'd wandered by it in almost 30,000 years, which happened to be Hiroki. The whole trip to the world tree and the burning and everything was all a plan by the Grimoire to get Hiroki to do his bidding. You see, the book, being just a book, couldn't get all the ingredients it needed to make the spell permanent. Apparently, and I ain't no kind of wizard or whatever, to make a person under that kind of spell do what you want, you gotta write it in blood, which wasn't really a problem for the Grimoire. It just chewed up a couple rats that were wanderin the shelves and used their blood. But, to make the spell permanent, the caster had to write the victim's name in god blood, which ain't easy to acquire.

"So the book concocted the whole scavenger hunt for ingredients to help heal Tommy, the deaf, dumb and blind pinball wizard. What the Grimoire didn't count on is that Odin, whether in a story or not, is a crafty old codger who's always lookin for ways to twist the fabric of fate. He also knows everything about anyone who eats and drinks in his hall. So, when Odin took Hiroki for the feast, he found out that he was under the narrator spell. Odin knew the Hiroki was gonna need god blood from somewhere, and on that tree, there was really only three choices.

"Knowin all this, Odin contrived to hide for a bit and then follow Hiroki back to his master. When he saw it was the Grimoire, he knew he had to destroy the thing. He'd had some dealings with that awful book in the past, and knew it was evil from cover to cover. Well, except the title page. That was just bureaucracy.

"Turns out that, a couple thousand years ago, Odin used that very book and the narrator spell to lock up his brother, Loki. They'd always been at odds and Odin was always pickin on Loki, cause he was the younger brother. One day, Loki decided he'd had enough and went to Baldr to ask for a hammer. He was plannin to nail the door of Odin's hall shut. It was just gonna be a little prank. He wanted to catch Odin comin out the window of his hall and was hopin his pants would snag on a nail or somethin and come off as he was comin out.

"Baldr wasn't the brightest sun in the sky, though, and he thought Loki was askin him for a warhammer. He got to makin the hammer, but his muscles got tired. So, he set everything aside and went to bed. Going to his forge groggy in the morning, he got to thinkin about how his muscles were sore. He kept chanting to himself 'Sore, sore, sore" as he stoked the fire. Eventually, that turned into 'Thor, Thor, Thor'. And he convinced himself that he'd been making the hammer for Thor.

"Needless to say, Thor was a little surprised when his uncle brought him the greatest warhammer ever created. When he asked his uncle why the gift, Baldr responded 'Oh, that's right! That was for Loki! He was gonna use it to get back at your dad!'

"As you can imagine, Thor was pretty shocked. He went straight to his dad to tell him about this. Odin, being the totally level headed and rational being that he is, pulled out the Grimoire and wove the spell that would make Thor kill Baldr and get Loki blamed for it. Then, to make sure no one would undo the spell, he ripped out the next two pages of the book, which conveniently explained how to do just that.

"And that's how those Norse gods got themselves locked in that terrible cycle they were in. Then, when Hiroki came along, Odin saw a way out for himself and his family. So, he got the two pages he'd ripped out of the book and, as I said before, followed the young ninja back to the Grimoire.

"So, he sat himself down in that chair and showed Hiroki the way to undo the spell. The only way, according to the book, was to put a period on the narration. Sounds easy, but the catch was that the period had to be made with fresh god blood. When Hiroki hesitated in this, Odin let the page slip and showed him the narration spell that had been written for Loki and Baldr.

"When he saw that, Hiroki knew that he wasn't just doing this for himself, but for Odin, too. Naturally, he didn't know where in the book the Grimoire had written his story, so Hiroki put all his might into the blow and drove the staff, with its flat, round end, all the way through the book, effectively putting a giant period on each page.

"So, there ya have it, that what was goin on with the book. Satisfied?"

"Almost," I said, thinkin. "What about that explosion, though? What happened there?"

"Oh, that?" He seemed surprised I'd asked. "The Grimoire of Necrography, being one of the oldest dark magic texts in the universe, contained a whole lot of magic in its pages. When Hiroki destroyed the book, all that magic was released at once and formed, as magic will, a fiery hurricane."

"And it didn't hurt him none?"

"Not one bit. The staff, being made from a magic tree and soaked in the blood of three gods, brothers no less, soaked up all that magic and became one of the most powerful weapons ever known. And that's what you need."

"Super," I said, "and where do I find this staff?"