Now that I got a little free time...

"You'll do?!?!" I squeaked. "What on Earth is that supposed to mean?"

"It means," said the staff in a voice that came from everywhere and nowhere at once, "that you aren't the greatest man that ever lived, and that, given my preference, I would take someone else. Someone stronger. Someone smarter. Someone for whom magic was an everyday occurance. However, seeing as how you have dug me out of the ice, and you're not that bad of a person, all things considered, I will make use of you to destroy those who created and imprisoned me whilst simultaneously cleaning up this planet. And, since I am an incredibly powerful, fully conscious instrument of pure, strong magic which lacks only the ambulatory nature needed to complese this task and since you, sir, are basically decent and, more importantly, mobile, I will allow you to function in a transportation capacity and my ends will be met. That is what I meant. I apologize for being brief."

I wasn't too sure how I was supposed to respond to that kind of honesty. I managed to get as far as, "Oh, well, then, if that's..." before the staff yelled at me.

"Quit dilly dallying and pick me up, you fool! The necromancers have surely detected my release and are most likely oozing this way through the shadow realm right now."

I ain't gotta be told twice. I may not have much of what you might call book learnin, but I know anything that can ooze through the shadow realm, whatever that may be, is prolly bad news. And if a stick is saying I should grab it to protect myself from the aforementioned oozy thing, I would be remiss not to follow. Of course, by the time I'd finished this rationalization for myself, the staff was already in my hand.

It's hard to say what happened then. It was like I was still lookin at the world, but I was sorta lookin through the world, too, like the world was made out of a bedsheet and I was dressed as a blind ghost for Halloween. I could still see everything that had been there, the ghost army, Alistair and the mech, but I could see more. I saw all the pain and suffering that laid over thr world. I saw the iron hard determination that Alistair had to defeat Clan Platypus.

And a monster. I saw a slimy monster that looked like someone had glued a bunch of elephant tusks randomly on the world's largest hairball and then dipped the whole thing in extra slimy slime. You know, not that regular slime you get down at the feed and slime co-op, but the good, importec kind you get over at the slime boutique over on 5th. The kind that comes from them fancy French snails and the leavins in a caviar can. Real slimy slime.

Well this thing was droolin and gruntin and speakin some weird language of the sort you would expect from a monster of the type I was seein. Me, I was scared, and I ain't ashamed to admit it. I froze right up, as one might be expetin to do in that kinda situation. Despite that, I found myself flyin through the air, staff spinnin over my head like a helicpter blade, and me screamin some gibberish language. It was like that time I ate a jar of peanut butter a month after its expiration date, only without the throwin up.

"What's goin on here?" I thought.

The staff spoke to me. Let me repeat that. I thought something, and this thing responded. "I've taken over your nervous system to allow you to fight the most powerful magicians in this galaxy and not die in the process."

"How bout that," I thought at the staff. "And what is that thing we're flyin at?"

"That is what is left of Genji Nakahura, the least of the thirteen."

"And what is it we plan on doin when we get to...uh...what was that name again?"

"Genji Nakahura. We're going to strike him in the face, pull all of his magic out of him, and fill him with all of the pain he has caused in others, which he will experience fully and sequentially until he has felt the full implications of his evil."

And that's what we did. Well, the hittin in the face part, I know for sure happened. As for the rest, if it looks like oil rainbows bein sucked through a crazy straw and sounds like a cat with worn out brakes, then it happened. If not, then someone's got a belly full of oill and a cat that needs to be taken to the shop.