So let’s take a break from dudes hitting each other with swords
and talk about a LADY hitting dudes with a sword
she is the Bradamante I mentioned before
and she is subject to more crazy magic shit
than a fledgling prince in a snowglobe full of wizards.
So like for example
after she kills Sacripante’s horse and rides off
she runs into this knight crying in the hills
(the medieval wilderness is where knights go to cry
presumably they think they will not be found
but when the whole wilderness is full of sadtimes armormen
it’s really only a matter of time.)
anyway Bradimante’s like “Sup loser”
and he’s like “Man, my girlfriend got stolen
by a dude with a flying horse
so I ditched the army I was commanding to go follow him
(which prolly means I shouldn’t have been in command of an army but w/e)
and I found his HUGE METAL CASTLE IN THE MOUNTAINS
and I hid there because I suck
but then this dude Ruggiero and one of his boys showed up
and the knight came out with his flying horse
and zapped them with a laser light show from his shield
and I passed out and I guess he took them prisoner.”
and Bradimante says “Wow, you suck.”
But what she’s thinking is “Wow, I need to go fight this flying dude”
because for one thing, he’s a flying dude
how often do you get to fight those
also he lives in a shiny metal castle and shoots lasers from his shield
he’s obviously a time-traveler who thinks it’s funny to kill knights
which means he deserves to die
PLUS
Ruggiero is Bradimante’s boyfriend
so she’s not about to let him live in Chez Shinytimes forever
so she’s like “Bro, lead me to this castle, bro”
and the bro leads on.
But this bro has a secret:
he is actually LORD PINBALL OF THE JERKLORDS
[name altered for the sake of not looking it up]
and he has serious beef with Bradimante’s fam
so instead of leading her to a castle
he leads her into a cave with a big hole in it
and then pushes her down the hole
because I guess he really didn’t care about finding his girlfriend that much.
Then Bradimante is in the hole
but it’s fine because it turns out that the hole is MERLIN’S TOMB
and there’s a sorceress there
and she’s like “Sup Bradimante, I’ve been waiting for you
Merlin’s ghost told me all this cool shit about you
come hang out.”
So she takes her into a crazy room full of the ghosts of all Bradimante’s unborn children
and introduces her to all of them
and half of them are named Azzo and the other half are named Alfonso
oh and somewhere in there she says Ruggiero is gonna get stabbed to death in a field
but it gets conveniently lost in all the names
and then the sorceress is like “Man, I sure don’t care enough to keep talking about this.”
and Bradimante is like “No wait, tell me about those two kids over there
they look like assholes.”
and the sorceress is like “Yeah, they are.
It’s cool though, the rest of your kids are pretty dope.
Anyway, here’s what’s up:
in order to kill that flying knight, you need a magic ring
I’m gonna take you to a hotel
and there’s gonna be this other dude there
hired by the king of Africa to do the same thing you’re trying to do
and he’ll have the ring
so just steal it or whatever.
It’s fine, he’s from Africa.
We’re at war with Africa and also pretty racist
as will become obvious when the poet describes this guy in a couple pages.”
So Bradimante goes to the hotel
and there’s this dude Brunell there
and he has the ring
so Bradimante travels with him to the castle
which he knows how to find
and then she beats him up and takes the ring
and is like “HEY, TIME-TRAVELING KNIGHT
COME OUTSIDE AND FIGHT ME LIKE A TECHNO WIZARD”
and the dude comes flying out on his robot horse
carrying a book that is either a spellbook or an instruction manual
and starts shooting her with force-lances or telekinesis or laserbolts or magic maybe
but she’s immune to it because of the ring
so finally he uncovers his laser shield
and she’s like “OH NO, YOU GOT ME”
and falls down and pretends to be dead
and then when he comes to tie her up
she punches him in the face and sits on his chest.
She’s about to cut off his head, but he’s real old so she feels bad
and instead she’s like “Bro
why did you travel all the way back to our time
just to kidnap a bunch of people and have a sweet palace in the mountains?
Other than the obvious reasons.”
and the old dude is like “Well there’s this guy Ruggiero
and he’s gonna die in battle
and I really like him for some reason
so I came back in time and captured him
to keep him safe from danger
and I have been snatching hot chicks and knights for years now
in order to populate this wicked cool party palace I built just for him.”
and Bradimante is like “…
…………….
….
..
………WHAT?
Okay first of all you can’t travel back in time to change the past
this is not the fucking Terminator
causality doesn’t work like that.
If he’s gonna die in battle
he’s gonna fucking die in battle.
Second of all I am not having my boyfriend banging sluts in a technopalace
third
I want your horse and your cool shield.
Let me into the castle so we can get out all the prisoners.”
So the old guy lets her into the palace
but then at the last second he does some magic and WHOOSH
the castle disappears
and he does too
and all these hot chicks and studly knights are left standing in the mountains
like “What the hell, we were having a party.”
and then Ruggiero sees Bradimante and he’s like “…Yay!
I’m so glad to be with you in this barren mountain landscape
instead of having a fivesome with captured vixens
hoorayyyyyyyy.”
and Bradimante is like “Yeah yeah whatever, slutbrick
just lemme capture this flying horse and we can go.”
But that flying horse won’t be caught.
It just keeps flying to different mountains
until finally it ends up in front of Ruggiero
so he grabs it and climbs on, to bring it back to Bradimante
but he gets pranked
because it turns out this was the wizard’s plan all along
the horse has been programmed to take Ruggiero way out to the middle of bumfuck Egypt
where no one can EVER HARM HIM
so he takes off at Mach 5
and Bradimante is just standing down there like “Aw, fuck.”
So the moral of the story
is that some relationships just aren’t meant to be.
Some footnotes:
The ghost-descendants show is kinda the Renaissance version of product placement. Y’see, that lineage culminates in the total awesomeness of . So B & R *have* to get married, so that can all happen. But they got a *lot* more craziness to go through before that.
The wizard likes Ruggiero ’cause he’s R’s foster-father, and raised him up from infancy. He’s been doing variation of this “try to foil prophecy through magical overprotectiveness” thing for pretty much R’s whole life.
(In fact, IIRC, Brunello first got hold of the magic ring in order to break R out of a *different* magic castle, years ago. He stole it from Angelica. Long story…)
Bah, part of that got eaten.
“that lineage culminates in the total awesomeness of ” …rich dude who pays the author’s bills.