The narrator, battered by Yetis Yek and Neg after a brutal fight, is dragged through snow while the great Yeti warns of Curtin’s encroaching darkness threatening to enslave them again if the Eleven Lands fall. Rescued by Ga, who shows a painting of Emperor Anastasius as a symbol of hope, they’re later fetched by Maud, a falcon-sent giant rodent-faced woman, and their winged stallion—urged to race against Curtin’s forces to reach Anastasius’s army before it’s too late. [Automatically generated summary]
The following contains strong language and adult themes and is intended for a mature audience.
Are you ready?
Huh?
Oh, yeah.
You're far away.
What are you thinking?
I'm thinking that the world has gone so crazy that you have to be crazy to see the truth.
Oh, I don't know.
You're not crazy.
No?
I think this story I'm telling you really happened.
Well, maybe you're a little crazy.
All right.
So where were we?
I went back through the portal and fought the Yeti.
Some fight.
He kicked your candied butt.
They kicked my candied butt.
There were a lot of them, remember?
Well, anyway, they knocked you senseless.
Did they ever?
I was still barely conscious when one of the creatures grabbed me by the ankles and began dragging me through the snow.
Another Kingdom, the final season.
Written by me, Andrew Clavin.
Performed by Michael Knowles.
Episode 5, Life Among the Monsters.
I was still barely conscious when one of the creatures grabbed me by the ankles and began dragging me unceremoniously through the snow, bumpity bump bump on my back.
With drifty dim-wittedness, I watched the blizzard dropping on me and the distant darkness of the sky.
I felt the whole platoon of beasts marching along all around me.
I heard the frozen snow crunching under their large feet.
After a while, I was jarred back to some level of sentience by the pain and irritation of being thumped along the rough mountain ground.
With the fight over, my liquid armor melted back into me, and there was nothing but my furs to protect me from the rocky terrain up here above the tree line.
I wondered vaguely about my sword.
I must have lost it when the great Yeti sent me flying.
But it was a magic sword after all, so maybe it would be there in my invisible scabbard when I reached for it next time.
I didn't know.
But that thought, and all my thoughts, were put on hold as fuller consciousness returned to me and I became aware of voices in the storm.
They were just audible beneath the continual whooshing of the wind.
The Yetis were chatting as they marched along.
They were chatting about me.
How was I supposed to know? said one of them.
He sure looked like food.
He had a deep, growly voice like a bear talking.
No fear.
It was a mistake anyone could make.
That must have been the great Yeti, a voice like thunder.
The sound was unmistakable.
You might have at least asked, Yack.
This voice was a bit higher, but still low and growly.
You don't have to attack everything that moves right away.
You make a good point, Neg, Yek answered.
How would it be if I bit the front of your face off?
How would it be if I disembowered you and let you watch me feast on your intestines while you died?
Yek answered with a deep, threatening growl, and Neg answered with a less deep, but just as threatening growl.
And the great Yeti said, How would it be if I picked up both of you in my two paws and ground you together into a single bod of beef?
Then swallowed you home.
The growling stopped at that.
The beasts dragged me on in a disgruntled silence for a few moments, bumpety bump, bump.
I go to walk, you know, I tried to say, but my words were soft and slurred.
Even I couldn't understand them.
And no one paid me any mind anyway.
They continued to drag me along, my legs lifted in the air.
I bumped over the rocks, trying to remember under what quixotic delusion I had left Los Angeles to come back here.
You're not to blame, the great Yeti thundered then, speaking to Yek, I guess, who was, I guess, the beast who had first attacked me.
I only found out because Cambitis sent one of those falcon messengers a few hours ago.
You know, the ones he speaks to, and then they repeat his words when they arrive.
It's amazing they can do that!
I mean, a talking bird!
Whoever heard of such a thing?
I grunted as the back of my head went over a sharp rock.
The blow made my eyeballs roll in their sockets.
But even so, I remembered Cambitis now.
The guy who had somehow sent me the email about wisdom and the good.
He was, I recalled, Queen Elinda's father, the not altogether wise king of Menaria.
In his royal city of Vagos, his people turned to stone by day due to one of the wizard Curtin's curses.
I remembered Curtin, too.
He was that caped figure with red eyes, the one I had seen in the forest graveyard.
It was all coming back to me.
The falcon told me to watch out for this one, the great Yeti went on.
Meaning me, I guess.
He said he'd be taking the shortcut over the White Mountains to reach Anastasius, so the Emperor can bring his armies to restore the Queen of Galiana.
He asked for safe passage for him through our territory.
Eh, what is the Queen of Galeana to us?
What is Cambitis to us when it comes to that?
I'd eat them both.
And this one, too.
He looks very tasty.
Quiet, before I rip off your right arm and devour it.
Before Anastasius won these mountains for himself, we could no more speak than a bird could.
Do you want to return to that life?
This morning, at Center Base, I smelled a blood-red darkness coming from the east.
Curtin's power is spreading from Edramont and Galiana.
Once the Eleven Lands are his, we will be beasts again and slaves again as beasts must be.
Do you think only of your belly, Yek?
Can you not skip one afternoon snack to keep your freedom and your mind?
Yek thinks only of his belly because he has no penis to think about.
How would it be if I had your penis for a snack instead of this man here?
How would it be?
Hey, I shouted in a thick voice.
Hey!
I tried to lift my head off the ground to stop it from bumping over the rocks, but the blow from the great Yeti was still sending throbs of pain through me, and I lay back again, groaning.
The food is talking!
First birds, now food!
It's a world of wonders!
Isn't it enough we haven't eaten him?
What more could he want?
Let me up.
I groaned at the snow in the sky.
I keep hitting my head on these rocks.
They're killing me.
They continued dragging me along for another few seconds, my head bouncing up and dropping down as it hit each new jag and outcropping.
Then I heard the great Yeti rumble.
All right.
I stopped moving.
My ankles were released and my legs dropped to the earth, sending another shock of pain all through me.
Get up then, food!
Walk on your own and save us the trouble of dragging you.
With many more groans and a few curses, with many spasms and aches in my head and shoulder and lower back, I rolled half over and pushed myself off the ground, fighting to stand.
One of the beasts, Neg, I think, grabbed me under the arm.
He hauled me upright so sharply, my feet left the earth for a second before I came back down, upright.
That hurt too.
Thanks a lot.
I looked around, and I felt my innards go cold at what I saw.
Beast upon beast stood in the blizzard all about me, huge, shadowy hulks nearly lost in the snowstorm, their red eyes burning like beacons.
And when I faced front, there was the Great One.
He seemed to me about the size of a brownstone.
If you wanted me to go with you, you could have just asked.
I could also have bitten your head off, swallowed your brains, and spit your face down the stump of your neck.
Right.
I rubbed the spot where he'd hit me.
It was lumping up.
I appreciate your restraint.
In case the information should ever prove useful to you, I can testify that abominable snowmen have a tin ear when it comes to sarcasm.
The great Yeti's only response to my remark was to tilt his head toward the horizon and rumble, Come, food!
They are sending an escort for you!
Who is?
But he turned away without answering.
He lumbered on.
The other beasts followed him, all but Yek, who stood still another moment, gazing balefully at me with his red eyes.
I could tell he was itching to finish our interrupted fight.
He wanted to prove how easily he could have ripped me to pieces.
My hand wandered toward my invisible scabbard, and I wondered again whether my sword would be there when I needed it.
But Yek didn't make a move.
I was under the great Yeti's protection.
After a second or two, Yek slowly, deliberately licked his chops with a thick tongue, showing me his dripping fangs as he did it.
I nodded to let him know I got the message.
Then he huffed, mist swirling out of his mouth.
Then he turned his back on me and thumped away.
I trailed behind him, stumbling through the storm.
It was hard going up the side of the mountain.
We climbed into the clouds.
They rolled over us, cold and damp and blotting out everything.
I pulled the hood of my fur tight around my head, but my face was unprotected.
The skin of my cheeks stung for a while and then went numb.
My shoes were damp too.
Soon my feet were as frozen as my face.
But on we tramped, the beasts and I. My head ached from the great Yeti's blow, and my shoulder ached from the fall to the ground, and my back ached from being dragged over rocks, and the climb through the thin air made me increasingly breathless.
But after what seemed a long time, we emerged from the clouds.
All at once, as if magically, there was clear night sky above us, dusted with stars.
The blizzard was left below.
The great Yeti changed direction and moved along the side of the mountain.
The climb became more gradual, the hike easier.
At last, through light mist and darkness, I saw a huge rock formation rise up in front of me, a great rectangle of white stone, limestone maybe, dotted with cave openings, one next to another.
It looked like some sort of primitive apartment building.
There was a line of campfires lighting the night outside and the wavering red glow of other fires lighting the shadows within the caves.
There were creatures, deer-like animals with single antlers like unicorns, in fenced pens at the bottom of the formation.
Clearly, we had reached center base.
The return home of the Yeti army was a crazy sight to see.
Their families came out of the caves to greet them.
The abominable snow women were smaller than the snowmen, but plenty abominable for all that.
The abominable cubs were actually kind of cute, especially the really little ones clinging to their mother's fur.
And as the Yeti men arrived at the camp, so help me, I'm not making this up, some of them casually grabbed their women, turned them around, and took them right then and there, the children dancing about them, oblivious.
Other men went straight to the deer pen, reached in and with a single swipe tore the head off one of the poor creatures there, held it by its horn, and chomped away at it like it was a candied apple, while the body gouted blood and thrashed and died.
The scene did not instill confidence in someone like myself, who had been mistaken for a meal only a couple hours earlier and who was still being casually referred to as food.
All I could think was, these people are animals.
I stood unnoticed as the reunion went on.
Only when the enormous great Yeti finished rape-greeting his likewise enormous wife did he bother to glance over at me.
Then, with his enormous dingus receding into his fur, he made a gesture with his also enormous head.
He was ordering me to enter the nearest cave mouth.
Seeing the light of a fire within, I obeyed eagerly, desperate for the warmth.
And it was warm inside, thank heaven.
A high fire of grass and sticks was snickering merrily just over the threshold.
Other than that, the place was a dump.
Bones of half-eaten creatures lay everywhere amidst piles of other organic junk.
I hate to think what.
There was a thick stench that seemed to mingle the smells of wet fur, shit, and urine.
There were stone bowls and utensils piled haphazardly against the wall, and a charred wooden spit with maggots swarming over the bits of cooked meat still stuck to it.
It seemed odd to me, the savage scene outside, the traces of semi-domesticity within.
Clearly, the Yeti women folk were engaged in the age-old female enterprise of civilizing their men.
Just as clearly, they hadn't gotten very far with the project.
I heard a huff and turned and saw some Yetis come in after me, a female with two cubs toddling and tumbling around her.
When she looked at me, I noticed for the first time that the female's eyes weren't red like the men's, but large and dark and almost gentle.
I am Ga, she said.
She had a grumbly voice, but softer than a male's.
Sit and eat now.
It had been hours since I'd snacked on hors d'oeuvres at the party in Malibu, and I was hungry after our long trek.
I hoped there was something to eat here besides deerhead covered with maggots.
Still, when in Yeti land, you do like the Yetis do.
So I sat down as ordered, glad to be near the fire, stinky as it was.
I held out my hands toward the flames and shivered as my palms began to warm.
To my relief, the abominable snow woman turned out to be a pretty good housewife, or cavewife, or whatever she was.
She went about setting up a little stove of rocks on the fire.
She then used the stove to heat up some broth in a stone bowl.
Finally, she handed the bowl to me.
Thank you, ma'am, I said, nodding up gratefully at her great fanged monstery face.
Her eyes softened even more.
I am glad you are here.
You are welcome.
There was a large roaring cry from outside where the rowdy reunion was growing rowdier by the minute.
There was loud roaring laughter.
Ga glanced at the cave entrance, then at me.
She seemed embarrassed by the orgy.
Anastasius taught us how to live when he conquered these mountains.
Ga's Embarrassment00:13:29
But we do not yet know the whole of it.
Our men are not yet really men.
They think of nothing but their stomachs and their... their things.
Yeah, well, men are pretty much like that where I come from, too.
I sipped the broth she had given me.
It was dreadful shit, but at least it was warm.
It's good, I managed to gasp at her.
She seemed gratified by the compliment.
While I sat hunched and shivering, sipping the brew, Ga moved away into the shadows.
I heard pottery rattling as she dug amidst a seemingly random pile of objects against one wall.
She lifted something out of the mess and carried it over to me, holding it carefully in both of her big white paws, as if it were a great treasure, delicate and precious.
One of the emperor's soldiers gave this to me when the armies passed through.
I looked at her prize.
It was a piece of a painting, a piece of canvas cut roughly out of the hole, threads dangling from its jagged edges.
It was very good work, very detailed, very sophisticated.
It reminded me of pictures I'd seen in museums.
The fragment showed the head and shoulders of a man.
He seemed to be wearing armor and a cape, so maybe he was a soldier or a knight.
He was looking down as if at a defeated enemy, his face very stern, very determined, very manly.
The scene was dark, but the knight's face glowed, and there was a portion of stormy sky above him, to his right.
The heavy clouds were parted to reveal an area of golden radiance from which several cherubs looked down upon the action.
I guess this was meant to suggest there was another level of meaning to what was going on below, like it was the work of heaven being done on earth or something.
I don't know.
The soldier who gave it to me said I should hang it on the wall, but Neg doesn't like it.
He says he feels it's watching him all the time.
It makes him nervous.
I glanced up at the oddly gentle eyes in her furry snow monster face.
It was clear this thing was very important to her, but I wasn't sure why.
I wasn't sure what I was supposed to say.
It's very beautiful, was what I finally came up with.
She nodded proudly.
I think it may be the Emperor Anastasius himself, she said in a tone of awe.
Do you think that's possible?
After a moment, I nodded.
I pretended to study the picture carefully, just to please her.
Maybe.
Maybe so.
I don't know.
This is what I think our men will look like when they are truly men.
And then, shyly, in a low voice, she added, like you.
I started to laugh, but then stopped because I saw she was serious and that it meant something to her.
As I looked up into Ga's yearning eyes, I thought of my life back in LA, the party at Solomon Vines.
How could I tell this poor beast that if she and the Yeti women worked very hard and managed truly to civilize the Yeti men, the Yeti men might one day build them a civilization so great, so rich and safe and powerful, that they would all be free to become savages again, as we had.
I guess it does look a little like me, I told her with a smile.
I can sort of see the resemblance.
She drew the fragment back toward herself and studied it tenderly, smiling tenderly, if monsters can be said to smile.
I will make you a place to lie for the night.
I am told someone is coming to get you.
She moved back to her little stash of objects and gently replaced the painting among them.
Yes, that's what your leader said.
Someone is coming for me.
Who is it?
Do you know?
She shook her head.
I am only a female.
I am not told these things.
Shoeing the cubs who wrestled and tumbled around her, she fetched a rolled deer skin from the wall and spread it out beside the fire.
She then shepherded the little ones into a deeper part of the cave, away from the firelight.
Left alone, I sipped the horrible broth and eyed the skin on the floor.
Apparently, I was supposed to spend the night in this place.
I turned my head and cast a wistful glance toward the cave entrance and the night outside.
I could hear the celebration out there getting even louder.
I caught glimpses of Yetis passing by, gulping drinks from skins.
They staggered, roaring as the drink took hold.
I heard a masculine shout and a blow and a female cry of pain.
As I looked at the cave mouth, I decided to try an experiment to test my new skill at creating portals.
I reached mentally into my core and made a motion of my willpower toward the opening.
A dim hazy light appeared there, like a veil dangling over the entranceway.
Through that veil, I could make out the hallway of my apartment building in Westwood.
My pulse quickened.
All I had to do, I realized, was stand up and walk through the veil, and I'd be out of this craziness.
I'd be home.
I relaxed and released my will.
The veil disappeared, and so did the scene beyond it.
I couldn't leave yet.
I had work to do here.
Find Anastasius.
Send his armies to restore the queen.
I still felt this instinctive certainty that if I was going to help Jane get out of prison, I was going to have to accomplish my quest here first.
I finished the broth and lay down on the skin.
I listened to the rowdy noise of the party outside.
For comfort, I reached into my fur to touch Lady Bethere's locket where it hung around my throat.
But the locket had changed shape.
Oh yes, I remembered.
Here in the Eleven Lands, the locket became the talisman, the bolt-shaped symbol I had found in the castle at Eastrum.
This was what I had to bring to Anastasius.
This was Elinda's signal to him that she needed his help.
My fingers closed around the jagged shape of the bolt.
I felt a shock of power surge through me.
A vision came into my mind, so clear it was almost real.
I seemed to be high in the air.
Laid out below me was a long grassland bordered by cliffs above a roiling sea.
A vast army of various creatures was camped along the plain down there.
These, I understood, were the forces of Anastasius.
I had no idea how far away they were, but somehow, I had to cross the rest of these lands and reach them.
My hand released the talisman.
The energy surge ended.
The vision faded away.
I lay where I was, filled with anxiety.
Would I be able to do what I had to do?
Could I reach the Emperor?
Could I free Jane?
Could I get Riley out of that damn madhouse?
I closed my eyes.
The noise of the party continued outside.
Woefully, I told myself I would never be able to sleep under these conditions.
I was asleep in seconds.
We'll get back to another kingdom in a minute.
But first, if you're enjoying the final season, please make sure you go over to iTunes and like and review the show.
It really does help.
And if you want even more content from like-minded thinkers, check out DailyWire.com, where you can listen to Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh, and me talk about politics, culture, and pretty much anything else we deem worthy of discussing.
So remember to go give us that five-star review, and while you're at it, tell a friend about us, or two, or ten.
And now, back to Another Kingdom, the final season.
When my eyes next fluttered open, there was daylight at the mouth of the cave.
The fire beside me had gone out.
My body was stiff and chill from a night on the cold ground.
I drew a deep breath and sat up, shivering.
I looked around.
In the gray dawn, I could see the whole cave.
I could make out the shapes of Ga and her Yeti family, way back in the shadowy rear, asleep against the wall.
The furry wannabe housewife was curled up in a ball.
Her man, Neg, at least I think it was Neg.
All these monsters looked pretty much alike to me, was sprawled out beside her.
Her head lay on his belly and rose and fell with his snores.
The children were curled up in the crux between the two adults, nestled in their parents' fur.
I worked my aching body to its feet.
I rubbed my shoulders for warmth.
I stretched and yawned.
I wandered out of the cave.
A mist had fallen on the mountainside.
Through the drifting haze, I saw the shapes of Yetis who had passed out on the ground.
They lay amidst wine sacks and piles of crap and vomit and the bodies of dead unicorns.
Some of the abominable snowmen were beginning to stir where they lay.
One or two were already on their feet, their hulking shapes moving slowly through the fog.
I turned my back on them and relieved myself against the base of the rocks.
When I was done, I turned around again and let out a curse as I suddenly found myself staring smack at the navel of the great Yeti himself.
I had to crank my head way back to look up at the enormous fanged face hovering over me.
For a moment, all I could think was that it would only take him a second to bite my head clean off.
By the look in his red eyes, I suspect he was thinking the same thing.
But he didn't attack me.
He merely growled, Your escort has arrived, food!
He stepped aside.
Beyond him, through the mist, I saw a form approaching.
At first, in the drifting tendrils rolling through the hazy light, it looked like a fearsome thing, an incomprehensible shape that seemed to float above the ground like an alien spaceship.
But as the thing came nearer, I began to understand what it was I was seeing.
A faint hope, and then a stronger hope rose like a second dawn from the dark inside me.
For the first time in what seemed like forever, I laughed out loud with pure, untrammeled gladness.
It was my horse.
My old friend, the black stallion.
He had abandoned me at the foot of this mountain the day before.
He had left me to go on alone as he returned to his master, King Toritanio, in Shadow Wood far away.
After all our adventures together, all the times he'd saved me, I thought I would never see him again.
It was uncanny, in fact, even miraculous, that he could have found his way here so quickly.
He plodded forward a few more steps.
He broke out of the mist, and I saw the shape of the creature perched on the pummel of his saddle.
The giant rodent with the woman's face!
And now at last I remembered her.
Maud!
In all seriousness, I don't think I was ever as happy to see anyone in my life as I was to see that mutant squirrel girl.
Not exactly what you would call a friendly face, but a familiar face and a friend all the same.
I ran toward her and the stallion.
All around us, the waking Yetis gathered to watch our meeting.
I could hear their growly voices murmuring to one another.
That looks tasty.
Yes, I've had horse.
It's quite good.
I meant the rodent.
Her face alone looks like a delicacy.
Meanwhile, I reached my two old companions.
I nuzzled the stallion's nose with genuine affection.
Then I looked up at the rodent girl riding him.
You're here, I said gratefully.
She gave a dismissive snort.
Oh, now you recognize me!
When I looked in your bathroom window, all you did was screech like a little girl.
That was you!
In LA!
How many people do you know who look like this?
But how did you get there?
You called me!
I called you?
Well, some part of you called me anyway.
The vanishingly little piece of you that still retains some sense of manhood, decency, and honor!
I've missed you too.
And since you're the doorway now, I was able to come through you and find you until you closed the door and sent me hurtling back again.
I nodded.
I understood.
Sort of.
Cambytis sent me an email too.
What's an email?
It doesn't matter.
But I guess that came through me too.
But how did you get here then?
One of King Toritanio's falcons saw your stallion returning to the forest.
The king put me on another of his birds and sent me to meet him.
But then, how did you get here so fast?
It took us forever to climb the mountain.
That's because you traveled overland.
And with that, she reached out her small rodent forelegs, seized some strands of the stallion's mane in her rodent claws, and gave them two sharp tugs.
I stumbled back as the horse whinnied once and reared on its hind legs above me.
With a loud fluttering sound, two vast appendages sprung from the beast's flanks, one on each side.
The appendages spread in the air, dark and wavery and huge.
So huge they blocked the misty dawn from view.
Wings.
The black stallion had grown a pair of wings.
Saddle up, said Maud as I stood gaping, flabbergasted.
Our time is short.
We have to reach Anastasia's before Curtin does, or the Eleven Lands are lost forever!