Prologue: Existential Blues

by Steve

CowLord had been adrift in the Battle Net for some time now. Threads continued to hum and change color. Portals opened and closed. It mattered little. The portal that would return him home wasn't there anymore. The Boojum had seen to that.

He'd been to a number of other universes in the time since his epic battle with Queen Diablo, leaping from world to world, putting right what once went wrong and hoping each time the next leap would... No, that wasn't quite it. But whenever he did stick his nose into local business, he'd wound up on the Battle Net again, barely escaping the Boojum. If he wasn't confident that the so-called Lag Monster was nothing more than a force of nature, he'd swear it had some sort of personal vendetta against him.

As it was, all his experiences were doing was making his multiple personality disorder worse. He'd spent most of his tenure in the last world he visited convinced that he was a Swedish porn star named Hugh Jorgan. Before that, he'd been a trendy, attractive and witty twenty-something running a trendy coffee shop in New York, surrounded by his trendy, attractive and witty twenty-something friends. It was during that experience that he'd picked up, and hadn't been able to lose, the live studio audience. Actually, it was just the sound of a live studio audience.

They'd been quiet for awhile. Maybe they'd finally lagged out or gotten bored and gone home. He decided to test it:

"COWLORD FEARS NOTHING!" he bellowed. The studio audience cheered wildly at the catch phrase. No doubt many of them were drooling fanboys in 'CowLord Fears Nothing' tee-shirts. They were sort of people whose sex lives, if any, invariably involved Agent Scully and/or Lara Croft. CowLord, in fact, feared them. He was glad he couldn't see them.

Somewhere within the CowLord armor, Conjurer Ichabod sighed. This was a fine end to come to after saving the world from a Zerg invasion. A man without a country. The Wandering Jew. The Flying Dutchman.

The references caused the personalities of Rabbi Iceberg and a nameless Dutch fighter pilot to struggle to the surface, battle for dominance, cancel each other out, and then recede.

"Oy vey," muttered Ichabod.

It was time for a change of scenery. Anything was better than this. He made for a blue portal. That would at least take him to some version of Tristram.

As CowLord passed through the portal, something huge lurched to life on the Battle Net and moved to follow him.