My awesome little brother’s first novel’s first chapter:

In a little-used corridor of the royal palace, a young lad of seventeen years hoisted himself through a dark window and lowered himself to the floor. This boy had light blue eyes and brown hair spiked to the nine levels of Hell. He had bribed a servant the night before in order to obtain a crude map to the castle’s vault, as well as the magical password needed to open the door. “I suppose I should grumble about the cruel taxes of King Drapery for awhile and thus establish my reason for sneaking into the palace to appropriate some of that money,” said Coarse Limely, flashing his sparkling teeth to unseen observers…like you! “Darn King. Always taxing us just to find some stupid pie. I’ll give him a pie. I’ve got your pie right here you stupid…Oh hello.”

Caught up in his internal monologue, Coarse failed to observe any kind of stealth while walking toward the treasury and nearly knocked one of the royal guards on his can while rounding a corner. “Wut the bloody ‘ell are you doing in ‘ere, boy?” asked the surprised guard while fumbling for his sword.

“Oh, I was just…” began Coarse, who then firmly planted his fist between the guard’s eyes, just below the man’s round helmet. “…mugging you and stealing your armor so that I could sneak around this place more easily.” Dragging the senseless guard into an indoor privy, Coarse proceeded to swipe the unfortunate fellow’s outer garments. The armor was plain, but well-made. A green cape hung from a single medallion adorned with the symbol for ‘Pi’ fastened at the left shoulder. Coarse’s new sword had the same medallion on its pommel. The young man looked over the helmet once, but decided it would only get in the way of the heroic image that his impossibly spikey hair projected. He replaced it on the boxer-shorts-clad guard’s head with a pat and left the water closet with a casual whistle on his lips.

Posted for a writing contest, and thank God he posted it someplace, I’ve been dying to pimp it. Fantasy parody, to categorize it as closely as possible. With pie.

Ordinarily when your siblings do creative things, you have to be all “yeah, it was really … erm … good. Yeah” and hope they don’t notice your fingers are crossed.

Not me.

A.