[Rimbaud]

A campaigner as experienced as the Lord Gormlessar should have known better than to separate himself from his noble Companions and lay down to rest in an Elvish Glen. Especially, in an Elvish Glen where a great sign advised to ‘Sleep Here’. And indeed the pixie spirits that only children should believe in betrayed him.

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In his sleep, he was drowning in sorrows, and his sorrows, they learned to swim. Surrounding him, going down on him, spilling over the brim. Waves of shadow, waves of joy, he reached out to the one he tried to destroy. Like a candle burning at both ends, Halfullion’s Dreme waxed lyrical, balanced on the edge of music. In all things, was his mind bewildered, and this is why.

Halfullion was a Hero. Not in the inaccurate sense of being heroic, but more in that sense of unavoidable and undignified Fate. He was Fated to be a Hero, as this Sentence is fated to be over-capitalised. Capitalisation being always a dubious crime. Yet, this appointment (for such it is, for a true Hero) preyed ever heavy on his subconscious. He had the unfortunate tendency of being present at great events, and of being depended on by those whose Quests were of vast significance. Not being the most mentally alert of the world’s great heroes (his horse regularly beat him at chess) he found himself disoriented to the point of despair, as quest after mission after thing beset him. The tragedy now, more than before, was that in his heart of hearts, he knew what he would like his destiny to resemble, should he force himself from the Path of Heroism.

Halfullion Gormlessar, the world’s foremost knight and worst poet, longed to cut hair. He longed to curl up and dye. He wished to blue-rinse damsels, not rescue them. Rapunzel would have remained pertinently un-rescued had he been that knights, for fear of damaging those truculent tresses. He wished to fondle folicles, brush bouffants, to pay the toupe. He was beginning to feel his masculine martiality as a malevolent malpropism maliciously miring him in mores of mild moral malfeasance.

In the heart of Halfie, there dwelt a fear. A fear to him nameless it was, yet called by some Cowardice. He feared Death, feared its beady eye. He knew both branches of the Elvish tongue, both Quixotic and Simian (the latter being mostly a series of aahs and ooks, with an over-abundance of accents grave and acute, umlauts (diaerises) circumflexes, cedillas, tildes, stregs, eths, bolles, ligatures, macrons, hácek and breves) but did not know how to communicate with this fear. He knew that one day, a day which drew ever closer, even his dread blade would fail him and the enemy would cut him down. Yet what he truly feared was capture. For when the enemy became aware of his Cowardice and his Ignorance, his Myth, his Repute would become decapatilised and he himself decapitated, deprecatingly and not with the dignity and pride he would want in a good death scene. He would want a good deal of screen-time, especially if he wasn't coming back for the sequel.

He tossed and turned, and finally awoke. He was trussed, bound hand and foot. He was strapped to the saddle of a horse, a horse trotting, seemingly protesting. The stench of orc was all around him. He knew not what had become of his companions.

A fierce blow to the back of the skull sent him back to delirium.