The hero staggered, exhausted, bleeding from a dozen wounds. The villain grinned and brandished his sword preparing to swing the final blow and end yet another foolish crusade.

The blow never fell, it was like some form of paralysis gripped the villain, he couldn’t even move his eyeballs. If that wasn’t disconcerting enough it was like all sound had fled the world, right down to the buzzing of the bees on nearby wildflowers. Not surprising really as through the dark fog that suddenly blanketed the world he could see the bees were frozen too.

Not so the hero, he was rigid below the waist but his hands twitched and his eyes flicked about rapidly as if seeing some kind of vision. He suddenly reached into the tiny satchel at his belt and fetched out a whole roast chicken; It was piping hot and full of stuffing. While the rest of the world was frozen about him the hero ate.

He didn’t stop there, after the chicken was consumed he pulled out a wheel of cheese from the satchel that had already been too small to contain the chicken. Again the terrible sound, the gnashing of teeth and the slapping of lips and tongue, made all the worse for being the only sound in the muffled and dulled world.

It was as the hero produced a second wheel of cheese. The villain noticed that the terrible wounds were knitting back together, as they the blood disappeared from his skin and soaked back out of his clothes. Even the broken links in his armour and the cuts in leather and cloth fixed themselves.

Finally the hero reached deep into his bag and produced a melon. He ate it like it was nothing tougher than a sweet roll. His teeth crunching through rind and wet pink flesh alike.

When the melon was gone, pips and all the hero had a satisfied looking on his face and smirked as light and sound rushed back into the world and a blow that had been hanging frozen in time was easily blocked by arms that had regained all their strength and vigour.

The villain wanted to run, his ears were still ringing with the terrible smacking of lips, he could not though. Even as his bowels quivered and loosened at the monstrosity the hero had been revealed to be, the compulsion to fight bound him as tightly as the spell that has stolen most of the light and sound from the world.

Just as the villain was prepared to throw himself at the hero again in a punishing flurry of moves the hero crouched and…

What was he doing? There had been a sound he came to investigate, he remembered that much, there should be something here in-front of him, but when he concentrated his head just got fuzzy.

“Must have been the wind,” he said out loud though no one was in earshot.

The villain sheathed his sword and headed back towards the fire. Something was bothering him but he couldn’t place it, he could just hear the echoes of gnashing teeth and smacking lips, he shivered as he sat down on his log and held his hands up to the heat.

Thunk.