knees as he gulped in lungful after lungful of smoky air.
Finally, with several low grunts and groans, Famine straightened himself up. He looked at the others and did his best to fold his gummy lips into a smile. “All right?” he puffed. “What’d I miss?”
DRAKE OPENED THE shed door and looked out. He saw his garden, beyond which lay his house, and, beyond that, his world.
The journey back across the desert of Limbo had been uneventful enough. Before they left the Junk Room, War had collected the Deathblade, which was tightly wrapped in a sheet of blue plastic, and Pestilence had reluctantly agreed to carry the Robe of Sorrows.
Drake had offered to carry both, but had been told by War in no uncertain terms that he was ‘nowhere near ready’. And so he had followed behind the two horsemen, doing his best to encourage the waddling Famine along.
From somewhere off in the distance, an a cappella version of House of the Rising Sun – without the twiddly bits – had floated tunelessly across the sand. This had made them all pick up their pace, and in no time they were back at the shed. Just a few seconds after that, they were back in Drake’s garden.
“So, the second challenge,” Drake said, still looking out at the high grass of the garden. “I failed it, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” War said.
You could’ve heard a pin drop in the shed.
“What happens now?” Drake asked.
War took almost a full thirty seconds to reply. When he did he sounded hesitant, as if he were unsure of what he was saying. “We’ll call it ‘outside interference’,” he said.
Drake turned to face him. War was back in his usual seat at the table, his face serious, his fingers steepled in front of him. Pestilence was quietly setting up the board game, Guess Who? while Famine, for his part, was eating a Twix.
“So what does that mean?” Drake asked.
“The challenge is void. You get an automatic pass.”
“Oh, right.” Drake thought about this. “Good.”
“Yay!” said Pest, shuffling a deck of very small cards with the flair of a Vegas dealer.
Something had been bothering Drake all the way back from the Junk Room. He decided to voice it. “The Deathblade Guardian. Or... whatever it was. It was a robot,” he said. “Like those ball things at the school. They were... What did you call it again? Techno-mystical...?”
“Techno-magic mumbo jumbo,” said War quietly.
“That’s it. Techno-magic mumbo jumbo. Do you think the same person made both of them?”
“Oh, yes,” Pest said. He cut the deck, then expertly furrowed the cards back together. “It’ll be the old Death. He was right into all his techno-magic mumbo jumbo. I expect he’s trying to kill you.”
Drake was taken aback by the matter-of-fact tone of that last statement. “Why would he be trying to kill me?”
Pest shrugged. “Jealousy, I’d imagine.”
“But he quit! It wasn’t my fault!”
Famine shook his head. The movement made his whole upper body wobble like half-set jelly. “No, he went mental, remember? Flipped his lid. No saying what he’s capable of now.”
Drake blinked. “Oh, well, thanks for that. That’s really reassured me, that has.”
“Don’t worry about it,” War said. “Sit down, we can talk about it while we play.”
Drake hesitated, then lowered himself on to the seat across from War. They both had a Guess Who? board in front of them.
“We’ll do it in rounds,” Pest explained. “The winner of you two plays the winner of me and Famine.” He fanned the cards and held them out. Drake took one and propped it up in a slot on the board.
For the first time, he looked properly at the little cartoon faces lined up before him. He’d played this game before, but it hadn’t looked like this. He read the characters’ names aloud.
“Abraham, Jacob, Joseph... What’s all this?”
“It’s the Bible version,” War explained, as he took a card from Pest. He looked at it impassively, then placed it on his board. “I’ll start.”
“New boy should go first,” Famine said. “Only fair.”
“That’s true,” Pest agreed.
“Oh, all right,” War scowled. “Get on with it, then.”
Drake looked down at the board. He blew out his cheeks. The problem was, most of them looked pretty similar. Near identical, in fact. He decided to take a wild stab. “Do they have a beard?”
War clicked his tongue against his front teeth and leaned back in his chair. “No,” he said quietly.
Drake looked at his board. Then he flipped down every face but one. “Is it the Virgin Mary?”
“Yes,” War sighed. He