Many shadows danced between the flickering lights cast through the valley from far away flames. Jed found himself running towards the source of light polluting the forest. The sound of crackling wood burning intensified with the glare and lens flare. It was a particularly wintery night on the planet Tenare. While it would be awesome to have a wagon to pull the injured party member Bessie. It was something he figured was becoming highly unlikely of stumbling onto Mule.

A wolf howled a series of painful blues in the distance. Bessie rested in a small dug out near a fire with the night and storm too fierce to continue. A fool of him being out on this excursion. He raised her hatchet that he had borrowed, lost, and now retrieved. The crystal blade she had asked him to retrieve was studied like a textbook. The truth was He had gone mad in love with her, and would kill anything on the path back to the farm. This would greatly increase his chances of wedding her. The jungle juice could still be delivered somehow… If he could just deliver that on time somehow it would enable him to purchase her a fancy crystal ring.

Jed stopped in his tracks while thick black smoke barreled his way after being filtered through the forest further on ahead down the valley. At the last second the wind averted the smoke in another direction. No longer his slow plan of working way up from stable hand to hand in farm ownership. If he played his cards right he could do it overnight. There were various scenarios played in slightly different life movie fantasies religiously replayed rent free in his mind. He had hatched up a plan long ago in romancing her just like they would hatch chickens, and eventually children. He was jumping the gun because she remained stranded and injured resting before they would have to run again soon.

Suddenly something cut his heart strings, and his gut told him to give this entire situation a look over from a different perspective. After searching all around he found a thick tree and stored his belongings underneath. He began to climb the branches with the goal to reach the top. While reaching for the next ring of branches piles of snow smacked him. It splattered into wet white whip cream on his steaming red face threatening to knock him out. He persisted to climb even with flaming arms. There was a strong anxiety building in him that the fire further on would spread too fast and trap him up here but he persisted.

Jed swung between branches with renewed confidence like a monkey. He would finish this mission as fast as possible in order to guard his princess he would save just like the old fables. However first thing first he had to double check on what had become of her chariot. Jed, who had never been officially knighted but considered himself a self-diagnosed member of the highest order riding in shining white armor, and his steed a wildcard of legendary strength. Mule was of a different species than him and Bessie being basically unkillable.

Jed climbed onto the peak of the tree and remained still. The sharp winter winds threatened to throw him off while swinging back and forth. The tree sprung backwards, slowing some; he saw the wreckage far below across the valley. The chuckwagon had for certain crash landed under a cliff. It was near the same road they had just run from the wolves.

He was launched forward again, but this time a wave of hot air full of embers and smoke greeted him. The scene of the crash had already long been burnt away in the insane heat. Now was nothing but an outline of ashes chunks burning brightest in the aftermath their gunpowder popped with bullets firing haphazardly. It was time to leave.

Jed’s feet and landed on the ground. The area was covered with spruce trees that had shed their winter coats and stood rooted in ever deepening puddles.

“Hey MULE.. buddy if you hear me I've got to go.. Bessie is injured. I've got to get her home now, back to the farm.. Anyway I’m sure you will survive you tricky old bastard, I'm out,” he yelled, jumping over a stream running high, to run through branches that had long been melted into sludgy mud.

He jumped a log and ran along a deer trail before he entered a clearing. He stopped while exploding into a hacking fit of coughing up his guts. The twin moons hung like needles in the sky illuminating two slivers onto the forest. Both cast ugly scenes of barfing, but the blazing going on in the other moon's light was much worse. It smelled of barbecue again as smoke was cast in like a spell from the wind.

Jed was half blinded with eyes fiercely stung and the poison seeped into the treeline behind the stinking of a wet burn. He bent over and continued to gasp for breath putting a cloth over his face. He ran again with eyes darting into a cloud of smoke long after his body. His escape was slowed due to vision being fully knocked out with a fierce stinging sensation. “Cough cough cough,” he hacked, while his thick noggin smacked aside branches.

“Good thing for this.. Shit where I put it…” he continued to curse, while blindly rooting around in his backpack.

It was too bad he had disposed of the heavy soldier in the previous episode with a boulder to the head or he would have used that dude's fancy helmet. Instead Jed was stuck with a flimsy mask from the looted medical sack. He slapped it on, then covered it with the ripped clothes and continued forward into the dark forest burning up with a fever behind him.

“Let's get going honey there's a fire burning towards here,” he thought he yelled upon jumping into basecamp.

On further reflection he realized half the words had been a hoarse mumble due to vocal cords damaged by smoke.

She stuck her head out the cave where she thought to herself for many seconds.

“And my wagon?” she asked, limping forward.

She used her arms to climb down outside. There they faced each other with tears beginning to brew as the storm ravaged the land. He hugged her tightly as the wind moaned, smiting them with hail, and blowing up powder from the ground.

“I’m afraid it’s been destroyed, and the Mule has gone M.I.A.” hollered Jed, straining his eyes that bulged with styes while his cheeks had somehow managed to turned bright red as genetically modified tomatoes. “We need to get running now,” he screamed into her ear, shaking her well in the process. “I’ll carry you if need be, but I ain't leaving anyone else behind,” he finished pulling at her coattails.

Bessie and Jed began to escape together while a trail of smoke was hot on their heels. They ran along a trail of footprints buried in the white. Bessie grabbed onto the metal roof of a tiny building with rotted sides not big enough to be a doghouse. They ran down a bank almost tripping on a tree spray painted with a large K. Then the branches of furs and thick bushes they pushed past.

Soon the pair arrived at a frozen pond where along the bank they stood. A beaver had cleaned away the brush leaving an open view of the ice. Across it the fog hung over the treeline winter covered foliage.

“We've got to cross,” said Jed, stepping on.

“Brrr…wait, test it out first, and don’t lose it this time” she said, handing him back the crystal cutting hatchet.

Its blade sparkled in the thin slivers of moonlight while he stepped forward into the open and used it to test the water.

Meanwhile Mule was freefalling into the hollow center of the planet. He and his entangled attackers were kicking and biting up a storm through the air.. Engaged in battle with three wolves thrashing around with teeth dug into ass. The clouds darted apart letting the connected pack through. A massive object flew in front of them blinding them in its vast mast reflecting bright yellow light from itself underground in the even vaster center of the planet.

“What the farc is that doing in the core?” cried Mule, slinging his tail sideways.

It was a moon flying underground directly towards him. The gravity got weird as he cracked a wolf's skull using it to bounce forward avoiding a direct impact. It had grabbed onto his tail and ended up ripping it off with it. Another of the beasts bit even harder into Mule’s behind. He thrashed with touchdown imminent.

“Yeooooo!” he cried, as a stream of blood followed.

At the last second before impacting Mule spun sideways knocking two yelping wolves into each other inside a crater. The pack bounced together before hitting a crater and spinning in different directions. Mule floated backwards before touching down skidding across the sharp dirt of the surface. He slid into clouds of kicked up moondust disappearing inside the field of radiation.

The yellow surface let off groans from deep below while the shaking intensified, threatening to cause a quake. A collision course approached with the ceiling of the center of the planet sparkling with energy. In the distance the alien antennas connected to the moon's surface in the far distance began to extend until they were connected to the ceiling. There was a loud humming as bars of color formed a rainbow connection to the sparkling cavern roof rapidly growing close to hitting. Mule covered his face, and turned his hand into a bird's wing he used to swat away the obstructing dust in the windless sky.

“Woof!”

A fourth wolf that had remained hidden until now spawning onto Mule’s back. It snapped its jaws shut clamping off the wing that fell to the ground. It gently fell into the low gravity impact while the body it had been attached to bug out jumping around howling. Mule bounced across the moon’s surface dodging the second attempt at a bite from the chasing wolf that remained laser focused on eating him for dinner.

He also bounced between shapes, but from rabbit to snake he was always missing at least one arm, and a tail. The roof was imminently ready to collide with the surface as he turned into a fly. The wolf snapped its jaws shut on the insect just before being squashed. The surface hummed jolting with transferred energy while something on the moon or maybe the whole thing entirely was refueled with some kind of energy source. The loud humming began to gradually subside until something somewhere dinged.

The roof of the planet's core began to slowly shake again. The moon also moved as it slowly retracted from the impact zone. Small rocks and other debris shook loose from both sides pulling apart and were left floating in no man's land. The dead wolf was among these things floating with its tung hung out with its crushed body leaving a newly minted crater implanted in the surface below. A fly flew out of the other end of the beast before turning into a one winged hummingbird that shifted again, and again.

A gray three legged rat with no tail blended into the environment nimbly darted between moonrocks. It was working towards the glowing antennas in the distance. In swift form Mule jumped over a small gaped crevice that fell miles below the surface. The antennas sparkled towering over his small little rat body above him. There were steep dirt piles preventing a climb, but a rune filled surface started at his level. The lights engraved in the crystal rockwall were a rainbow of the twelve colors. The white engraving on the very bottom had formed cracks leaking air.

This entrance was just big enough for Mule to squeak into. He wiggled out of the first crack into another before he had to transform into a smaller mouse to proceed down a tunnel. Eventually he saw light on the other end and emerged from a small hole in the wall. He then crawled into a small ritual room with three glass cube prisons made of crystals. Two of the prison chambers were much smaller and contained a cat stuffed into each. The third in the center was like a fishbowl full of some kind of medical fluids. Inside it had a man's head strapped with a mask while in a coma he floated. He wore a breathing mask connected to the tubes leading to the cats. A feeding tube was not needed because he was just a head. One of the cats farted and a digital meter displayed underneath the man inched forward. There was about a third left to go before it became full.

“Smack!”.

Mule jumped back in surprise as one of the cats had launched itself against the glass that separated them.

“Ding!”

A green light on the cats' prison pens lit glowing them and their litter. A hatch had opened letting out an able bodied mouse into each box.

“I’ll take that,” squeaked Mule, transforming his remaining arm into scales he became a tailless snake yet again.

The vent hissed while he slithered inside before metal banged. As one of the cats jumped onto the mouse it later bit into nothing but air. Mule ate well inside the gears of the machine he hid. He went to slither out but was too fat.

“Oh right,” he squeaked, changing back into a mouse.

The one in his stomach was absorbed into parts rebuilding his tail. Now he just needed to do the arm but the other cat had already gobbled up hers. The chart underneath the science experiment inched closer to done.

“I’m already well past nine lives, but that man’s well past the afterlife somebody ought to put him out of his misery,” said Mule, composing himself into a one armed man with a top hat and suit. He bowed winking playfully at the cat still trying to eat him. “Hey you there mr. whiskers and your friend look particularly hungry tonight I will be back with a snack promise,”.

He walked towards the other side of the small room. A cane began to form from dark matter dripping slime. The dripping top-hat slowly composed of the same insidious fibers. A loud beeping alarm had the shadow man stop in his tracks, and turn 180 degrees. The fishbowl containing the head bubbled while it was slowly pulled underneath the rocks. Its eyes had opened under a bald head full of crystal cysts while the waters around its nostrils raged.

“Toxic plasma transfer almost complete subject will soon be fully under control,” a robotic voice played over the speakers, but appeared to originate from what little remained of Edwards head submerged under medical waters. It mouthed the words underneath the mask as it was sucked into a chute towards its body to be reattached.

“Oh Elementals… well let’s see what's behind door number 2,” said Mule, tapping on runes lit into the wall.

The room began to loudly rumble and shake as ¼ of the rock walls around him was pulling into the ceiling. The next room, a bar, is the only thing lighted by lamps hanging upside down from the darkness. It was composed of crystal glowing in the center. Around it was nothing, but the sound of water dripping like it was lightly raining.

Mule walked to the center of the room while being gently moistened. A control panel behind the bar lit up with runes. He pressed several buttons until something projected a light into the darkness. It was diagram after diagram of animals including the subject in the other room who had become top priority due to his resistances to their rocks.

“Ahh a plan of yours to build a monster mix of man and the elements that you control brainwashed with cat toxins,” said Mule tapping buttons, revealing that another body was in production in another area of the facility to be attached to the severed head he had already become acquainted with.

“BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ,” hummed the control panel begging to smoke.

Mule was shocked away from touching it further. The projector went into overdrive pushing away the darkness. There were diagrams of how the test subject known as Edward’s new body would be able to progress various skill paths to level up until it eventually will conquer the planet's surface alone with crazy strong magic powers from the crystal batteries built into his elemental suit.

The flood lights sparked on to the far reaches of the corners revealing row after row of quietly standing elementals towering well above 30 feet tall in the cavern. They began glowing red and snapping into movement with sharp animatronic movements. There was an ear splitting buzzing. The laser scanners scorched sections directly in front of the slowly advancing giants.

“Well well it's time for some martial arts action, and me to break this whole moon operation apart” said Mule, readying his magical cane.

It reformed a mirror in his hand he used to cast back the laser backwards busting apart the one who had cast it. The cane reformed in his hand, smoking hot and overcharged for now.

“There’s plenty more of that waiting for you, I’ll blow this entire place up,” Mule taunted.

The creatures advanced without showing any sign of being able to understand him. Mule retreated but the door he had used to enter had closed and locked.