The sea lions and gulls basked in the sun's cold rays, on Black Otter Lake, in the cool of the evening under the rising glow of the citylights, eking their way from the encroaching metropolis of Beteneukkre. Sir Ross was cycling along a nearby dirt path to his penthouse, to relax after a day of slaying dragons that ravaged and roamed. The Isthmus had been in peril all week, and he and others of his order had been defending Port Daphne and Wesailles Harbor from terrible wrathmongering lizards. He was spent. Quietly the song of the sea lion rose to meet the rising moon, and he cycled on.

A siren wailed, off, over that way somewhere. He ignored it. There was an advertisement for Jack's Chuck n' Grill, on the new billboard that blocked his only window. He glowered. He glowered the whole way to the elevator, sulking miserably as well. A medium-sized tribe of cuckoos had made their dwelling behind the billboard, and they were coming in his window and sitting everywhere. Some were in his bed that night. He had a terrible night.

A delicious aroma roused him to his senses. Mmmm... He rolled over in his sheets, sleepily in the dark of the shadow of the sign that blocked the rising sun. The delicious aroma was burning. He furrowed his brow. Foxwood his young squire was burning his coffee. He donned a few layers of clothing and leather, and a set of chain mail, with a girdle and some chaps too, for good measure. He figured chaps over his leg armor was a good idea. The helmet was in a corner lying on a pile of crusty trash. He took it with him into the kitchen.

And Foxwood did also then burn the waffles, which he never did, but today wasn't particularly a good enough day to care about what the waffles tasted like. For this day, Melgia was to march on Mechinagua and its capital city Roccotosiannon, with such valor and might that Mechinagua would shudder and gape, for decades and decades. Foxwood coughed just as Sir Ross shifted into the doorway, nearly ready for battle except that he was really tired.

Sir Ross sat on the barstool, reflecting on the implications of the history he was about to make. On the eve of battle, in his grand speech to his companymen, should he promise spoils and women and all that? Maybe rile them into a frenzy that way...

"Bagel?" Foxwood broke in.

"No thank you," replied Sir Ross, stirring his coffee in deep, profound thought...

"Alright then, I suppose I'll have it..."

That day, Foxwood followed his master into battle, riding with the banner of the colors of the house of Dullory, which are all shades of blue. Valor and victory went to the armies of Mechinagua. Though Sir Ross cut down many a Mechinaguan, and killed them thereby, he was at last slain at the blade of a mysterious warrior, who came in secret, dressed in shroud, who moved like a memory, and vanished forgotten.

Foxwood himself was knocked from his mount, gasping for breath amid the mingled blood and sulphuric air of war. From the enemy's mountains to the north came Earth-dragons; tremendous worms, tunnelling, wreaking horror and endless bloodshed on his countrymen's forces. One happened to swallow Foxwood. Trapped as he was, for a fortnight or more Foxwood could only listen to the gruesome sounds that faded... For days in the worm, his only company besides the stale misty air was the groaning of the very earth, as he travelled near to its deepest recesses. In these deep lands, terrible secrets, left long buried, haunted still the very air he breathed.

With an groundshaking shutter, and a slow moan, the worm died, for lack of proper food. It had strayed far from its masters. Foxwood shuddered as well. He found through some crawling and playing with echoes that he was in a large cavern, dizzyingly high and irritatingly dark. Time passed without bound in these depths, and Foxwood wandered without end.

He began to think aloud, and his thoughts, whether anyone was around to hear them, might have struck someone at first as shockingly devoid and futile. Over time, he learned to grope along, then to sort of have a sixth sense about the darkness around him. Everything he sensed, he told himself what it was in his mind, and his mouth would repeat it back to him, in confirmation. Aha, a flint arrowhead, i see. "Yes, that's right, that's definitely a flint arrowhead."

He soon suffered from a delusion of the mind, which caused him to imagine things... That the lizard crawling next to him was really his friend... That the carvings he felt on the wall were a type of warning, a message sent to himself in the past... That the shaft of light that was barely visible at the end of that passage was really there... But it was! And he ran toward it. Surely this is the way out! he reasoned. at last, daylight! "Yes! blessed daylight!"

In this way, Foxwood passed through the entire earth, and came up smack on the other side, almost a hundred and seventy years later. The dark timeless days had made him rough, and the sun was unable to age him as it had other men. He had a diet of stone, a tawny hide, and he wielded great strength, unequalled by ordinary folk.

The villages soon knew him, and knew him well, and feared him. He lived in secret; some say underground. He attracted a band of thieves and marauders, who did his bidding, though none dared approach him. He sought the sea and its freedom; he sought his people, and his homeland.. what had become of them? Mostly he forgot to turn off the radio upstairs, and the bill was likely to be enormous if he didn't get home quick. And nothing would stop him.

He was Foxwood the Sturdy.