This isn’t even valid for that game. You have to be able to put your finger through the hole. A picture of the hand is nothing.

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.

He collapsed down onto a pile of rubble in a great clattering of plate mail, his sword falling to the ground though still chained to his gauntlet.

“Brave sir knight, you have rescued me from incarceration, wouldst though remove thine helmet so I might gaze upon thy countenance?” the princess asked with all the confidence of being born into wealth and power.

“No,” he replied curtly.

The princess looked at him dumbfounded, having never been refused a request so harshly; even her captors had treated her like royalty, apologising for the necessity of her kidnap.

“What do you mean ‘No’, she asked finally finding her words even if not the high born speak expected of royalty.

“It’s a simple enough word, two letters, no, I’m not going to take off my helmet,” the knight answered gruffly after taking a moment to catch his breath.

“I never…” the princess stammered out.

“Look, why do you want to see under my helmet, I’m sweaty, flushed, poorly shaven, I’ve not brushed my teeth since yesterday and I stink inside this armour because I’ve been riding for a day straight to rescue you. Do you think this is some kind of tale where the low born knight rescues the princess and asks the king for his hand in marriage?” he scoffed out an interruption.

It was the princesses turn to slump down on her rump in the rubble. She had indeed grown up on bards tales of knights rescuing princesses and scandalous marriage proposals that the king was honour bound to uphold. It was what had made the whole kidnapping process bearable.

He looked over at the slumped princess seeing her disappointment. For a minute he was reminded of his own daughter and he felt bad for being so gruff with her.

“Look, life isn’t a bard’s tale, I hate to be the one to break it to you princess, and I understand, what you’ve got waiting for you back at the palace is a proposal from some pampered prince who couldn’t lift his own bath sponge let alone a sword,” he consoled.

The princess looked up at him tears in her eyes, not just from the disappointment, her emotions in general were bubbling to the fore. She had put on a brave face but being kidnapped had been stressful and scary, and the whole time she hadn’t been able to escape the memory of her lady in waiting, clutching a white pinafore to her belly that was gradually turning a deep claret colour; while her ordinarily rosy cheeks grew paler in exchange.

“Look you’re about the age of my daughter and I’ll tell you what I told her, if you don’t want to have a marriage arranged for you then become the kind of woman that gets to pick out a man you want confidently,” he said before groaning and awkwardly getting himself back onto his feet.

The princess looked up at him bleary eyed and simply asked, “how?”

The knight pulled off his helmet and shook out his thinning mop of sweaty hair. He smiled down at her the way a father does to his daughter then kicked over one of the kidnappers fallen blades.

“Let’s start with the basics, how to hold a sword, then work our way up to not getting kidnapped and needing rescue again, I’ll probably too old to do this next time,” he joked.

Looks like someone crossed a Jack russel with some kind of mastiff.

I would also recommend working your way through everything by Iain Banks, starting with the wasp factory.

Wonderful book, goes through grotesque and out the otherside into beauty

Any of the books with death in are easy reads too.

They let you just pick the books you want in there!? I’m quite suprised.

I recommend yellow blue tibia, a sci-fi mystery of sorts beginning in stalin’s Russia and taking you up to the chernoble era