Zeke was barely able to register the fact that Daedalus was following him as he ran as fast as he could into the depths of the jungle. The torch he carried cast only a dim glow around him and it was difficult to avoid obstacles. 

Fortunately the flowers, being new to the world of mobility, hadn't developed their land legs yet and tripped clumsily over their own roots. Zeke was able to lose them fairly quickly and was about to stop running when he abruptly tripped over a vine and found himself tumbling head over heels down a steep hill. He came to a stop on his back and continued to lay for a moment, panting heavily. His torch lay on the ground a few feet away but thankfully remained lit. 

His ankle throbbed painfully and he wondered if he had twisted it during the fall. It didn't seem to be broken so he decided to try to stand up. He gingerly put his weight on his bad foot and discovered the pain wasn't too unbearable. He might have to walk with a slight limp, but he was pretty sure he'd recover quickly enough. 

He bent over to retrieve his torch when he heard a pleasant lilting female voice call out to him. "Well, hello there, handsome." 

He jumped a little at the unexpected sound and whirled around in confusion. "Who's there?" He turned his head back and forth but failed to see anybody. 

"Just little old me," the voice said in a silky manner. "Why don't you come over here and talk to me?" 

Zeke picked up his torch and held it aloft in front of him. Suddenly he spotted what had to be the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. She had long flowing dark red hair, soft creamy skin, and Zeke couldn't help but notice two of the biggest firmest breasts he had ever had the pleasure of encountering. She wore the skimpiest of leopard skin bikinis that left very little to the imagination. She looked as if she had stepped straight out of one of those old magazines he used to keep shoved under his mattress. 

Zeke gulped and adjusted his pants in an attempt to conceal his quickly increasing excitement. "Uh, hello there, miss," he stammered. "I'm Zeke. What are you doing out here all by yourself?" 

"Well, Zeke, I'm having a small problem," she said coyly. 

"Uh, is there anything I can do to help?" he asked nervously.  

"Perhaps," she cooed. 

"So, um, what seems to be the trouble?" 

"Well, I can't seem to get this outfit to stay on me." With that she ripped off her top, causing her ample bare breasts to bounce hypnotically in front of him. 

Zeke lost motor control of his mouth and mumbled several incoherent vocal sounds. 

"Do you like?" she asked. "Would you like to touch?" 

Zeke was trying to remember how to get his mouth to form the words "Hell yeah" when she got a little pouty look on her face and sighed. 

"What is it?" Zeke managed to spit out. 

"Well, it's just these bottoms keep getting in the way. I suppose I'd better take them off." She slipped gracefully out of her thong and stood naked before him. 

Zeke's jaw dropped and a bit of drool leaked out of his mouth. "This is the greatest day of my life," he declared. "Making out with Suzie Johnson in the eighth grade just got bumped to number two." 

The woman smiled at him, flashing a row of perfect white teeth. "Why don't you come over here and kiss me, Zeke." 

"Don't mind if I do," Zeke said, regaining a bit of his confidence, although he felt a little flushed. "Maybe there was something to that female repulsor ray business after all." He stepped forward, closed his eyes, and puckered his lips. 

"Zeke, no!" he heard a voice call out behind him. He felt something whiz past his head followed by a loud thump accompanied by a shrill scream. He opened his eyes and saw the woman pinned to the ground, run through the stomach by a spear. He turned around to see Daedalus a few feet behind him. "Looks like I found you just in time." 

"What the hell did you do that for?" Zeke screamed at him. "She wanted me to touch her boobs! I was just about to score with the hottest woman I've ever seen in real life and you come along and kill her? What the fuck?" 

"You're lucky I did," Daedalus said quietly. "That's a siren tree." 

"A what?" Zeke asked. 

"See that little vine connecting her to the tree behind her? She was part of that tree. That's how they feast and reproduce. They lure unsuspecting victims with a beautiful woman decoy. Sure, she would have had sex with you to harvest your seed, but she wouldn't have stopped there. She would have sucked out all your internal organs through your penis and left you little more than an empty shell. It's a slow and very painful way to go." 

"So I would have been having sex with a tree?" Zeke scratched his head. "Hell, if all trees looked like that it wouldn't be such a strange proposition. Well, thanks for saving me. But maybe your timing would have been better if you'd waited until after she'd harvested my seed but before she sucked out my organs." 

"It would have been too late by that point," Daedalus said. "Once they get a hold of you it's like a death grip. They won't let go. I know, these things are insidious. I almost succumbed once to a siren tree that took on the form of a very sexy tigress. I spotted the telltale vine at the last moment and dispatched her accordingly." 

"I wish I could have just fooled around a little," Zeke sighed. "Maybe get to second base. Well, looks like Suzie Johnson gets to keep her number one spot. God, what a sexy little minx she was. Did I tell you she went on to become the prom queen in high school? Of course by that time she wouldn't have anything to do with me, but at least we'll always have eighth grade." 

"That's a truly charming story," Daedalus said. "Thanks for getting me out of that situation with the flowers back there, by the way. That's a couple times you've saved my neck now." 

"Yeah, well you've saved my neck a couple times, too," Zeke said. "But who's counting? Anyway, let's keep following that river downstream. It's supposed to lead back to the city." 

"All right," Daedalus agreed. "Do you know where the river is from here?" 

"Uh, no," Zeke put a finger to his lips and looked around. "In all the excitement of running around I seem to have lost track of it." 

Daedalus sniffed at the air. "There's too many scents in this jungle. It's disorienting." 

"Well maybe we should start by climbing back up the hill," Zeke said. "I know I at least came from that direction." 

"I wouldn't go that way if I were you," they heard a quiet voice say behind them. 

"Who's there?" Daedalus called out. 

A short little man with pointy ears and a big floppy green hat stepped out from behind a tree. "I'm Barnabus, the lying gnome. But don't listen to me, I never tell the truth."  

"Wait a minute," Zeke said. "That's one of those self-contradictory statements that don't mean anything. If you were really a lying gnome you'd tell us you were a truth telling gnome." 

"Oh," Barnabus blinked his eyes a few times. "I guess you're right. In that case I must be Barnabus the truth telling gnome. And the truth is I always tell the truth." 

"We'd better not go back up that hill then," Daedalus said. 

"Wait how can we trust this guy after he just told us he's a lying gnome?" Zeke sputtered. "If he were really a truth telling gnome he'd have said that from the get go." 

"But we just established if he were really a lying gnome he would have said the same thing." Daedalus pointed out. 

"There's no fooling you two," Barnabus said. "You guys are really smart. I think you're the smartest people I've ever met as a matter of fact." 

"Thanks," Zeke said. "Hey wait a minute, do you really mean that or are you lying and that's your subtle way of insulting us?" 

"Gee, I'm not sure," Barnabus blinked again. "You're starting to confuse me now." 

"We're confusing you?" Zeke asked. "You're the one who started with the whole self-contradictory business. Why the hell did you even approach us in the first place? We were doing just fine before you came along." 

"Look, forget I mentioned anything about lying or telling the truth. That's water under the bridge. All I know is it's really, really important that you don't go back up that hill." 

"Why not?" Zeke asked. "What's the big deal?" 

"It's a matter of life and death we're discussing here," Barnabus said. "That way lies certain death. If you go the other way you'll reach certain safety." 

"You know it's kind of hard to ignore the whole lying and truth telling issue when the stakes are apparently so goddamn high," Zeke fumed. 

"What do you care if we live or die anyway?" Daedalus asked. 

"I'm just a concerned gnome," Barnabus said. "Or is that a confused gnome?" 

"Wait, I think I know what's going on here," Daedalus said. "You must be a confusion gnome. I've heard about these guys but I've never actually seen one before. Their whole purpose in life is to muddy up the waters and make everything confusing." 

"Whoever told you that was obviously a very mixed up individual," Barnabus said defensively. "We confusion gnomes are great seekers of absolutes. We enjoy nothing better than getting to the bottom of any situation. Unless we're already at the bottom in which case we like to work our way back to the top." 

"What if you're in the middle of a situation?" Zeke asked. "How do you know which direction you're going?" 

"Well that's very simple," Barnabus said. "You keep working in whichever direction you're going and eventually you'll either hit the bottom or the top. If you hit bottom you were working your way down. If you hit the top you were working your way up." 

"What exactly are we talking about?" Zeke asked. "I'm a bit lost." 

"Precisely," Barnabus said. "I overheard you saying you didn't know your way back to the river so therefore you must by definition be lost. We confusion gnomes like nothing better than finding lost people and, um, helping them find their way again." 

"Look, why don't you get lost?" Zeke asked impatiently. "You're not helping matters one little bit." 

"That's a deep question," Barnabus pondered. "Why don't I get lost? Hmm. Why, it must be because I know my way around. Hard to get lost if you know where you're going, wouldn't you agree?" 

"Let's just forget this guy and go back up the hill," Zeke said. 

"That's a really bad idea," Barnabus said hastily. 

"Why do you care so much whether we go up this hill or not?" Daedalus asked. 

"You know what I think?" Zeke said. "I think if we go back up that hill we'll figure out where we are again and, thus, no longer be lost. And that's just what he doesn't want to have happen." 

"Good point," Daedalus said. "And he is the one who suggested when you're at the bottom of a situation you should work your way to the top. We're at the bottom of this hill, so let's climb to the top of it." 

"Hmm," Barnabus blinked his eyes again. "You guys got me there. Well, in that case you definitely should climb that hill. But it's still a really bad idea." 

"Look," Zeke sighed. "Pretty much the first words out of his mouth were that he never tells the truth. That's a completely meaningless statement if you stop to think about it. So therefore we can pretty much dismiss all the nonsense he's spouted since then as meaningless as well, in which case we're in exactly the same boat we'd be in if he'd never approached us at all. At that point the best decision seemed to be climbing the hill, so let's just ignore this fucker and do it." 

"Aha!" Barnabus shouted. "But therein lies the rub! You concluded you should climb the hill before you talked to me, but then you concluded you should climb the hill after taking into account all the things I've told you as well! If you ignore me, you climb up the hill. If you listen to me, you climb up the hill. So if I were really trying to 'confuse' you how did you reach the same decision both ways? Huh? Answer me that! Confusing, eh?" 

Daedalus smacked Barnabus across the face with an open paw, knocking the gnome out. "We should have just done that in the first place. Now let's climb the hill." 

It was a bit of a steep incline and Zeke's ankle still bothered him but they reached the top without too much difficulty. Zeke felt a little winded, but he was pretty sure he'd survive. 

Daedalus perked up his ears and listened intently. "I hear rushing water off to the left. It must be the river." 

They made their way carefully back to the riverbank. A plant with large sharp teeth took a snap at Zeke's leg but missed by several inches. "I'm getting really sick of this jungle," he grumbled. "Anything that's not trying to eat you is trying to send you on a wild goose chase. I hope we're not too far away from the city now." 

"We've been following the river for awhile," Daedalus said. "I'd wager we'll get there soon." 

They followed the river for about an hour without much incident other than spotting the occasional strange looking bird or fish, most of which fled at the sound of their approach. Eventually Zeke started noticing a sizable quantity of bones littering the ground they walked on. "This doesn't look too promising." 

"Don't worry," Daedalus said as he clutched his spear tightly. "We've escaped too many dangers already to fail now." 

They walked a little ways farther until they found their way blocked by the biggest spider web Zeke had ever seen. It stretched across the river in both directions and up into the trees as far as the eye could see. There wasn't any sign of its inhabitant, at least not at the moment.  

"Maybe we could swim under it," Daedalus suggested.  

"Are you crazy? What if there's more river worms?" 

"Unlikely with that big old web sitting there. Whatever made that is probably big enough to swallow a river worm whole." 

"Well, we should at least test the water first, don't you think?" 

"Okay," Daedalus agreed as he picked up a stone and skipped it across the river. "Looks clear to me. I'll tell you what, I'll go first and if I get past the web safely you can follow." 

"All right," Zeke said holding Daedalus' spear for him. "How are we going to keep the torch lit if we have to go under water?" 

"We'll deal with that in a minute," Daedalus said. "First let's see if I can get across. We'll figure out some way to re-light it if necessary."  

He held his breath and then dived into the river. Zeke tried to follow his progress but lost track of him almost instantly. 

A few minutes later he heard Daedalus call out from the darkness ahead. "All clear! Your turn. You ready?" 

Zeke was about to follow suit when he heard a female voice calling out. "Is somebody there? Please! Anybody! You've got to help me!" 

He paused and looked over his shoulder. "Hello?" 

"Thank the gods somebody's there! Please help! I'm over here!" 

Against his better judgment Zeke felt compelled to investigate. "Hold on a second Daedalus," he called out. "I need to check something out real quick!" 

He walked cautiously in the direction he'd heard the voice. Before long he spotted its source. A beautiful human woman in tattered animal skins with long brown hair and pale skin was chained to a tree right next to the spider web. "There you are!" She called out. "Come over here and undo my chains! Please!" 

Zeke sighed. "Looks like another siren tree. Well, I guess I'd better kill you. Such a shame. You're even hotter than the last one." He lowered the spear and approached her slowly. 

"No!" she screamed and Zeke saw genuine fear in her eyes. 

"Wait a minute. You're not a siren tree, are you?" 

"No, I swear I'm not!" she cried. "Please, you've got to believe me! Please release me!" 

"All right, I believe you. My name's Zeke. What are you all chained up for anyway?" Zeke asked as he examined her bindings. 

"I was captured by a group of vicious weasels and left here as a sacrifice to the Klexitaur. Please! You've got to help me! I'm a princess! My father will reward you handsomely, I promise!" 

"A jungle princess, eh?" Zeke said thoughtfully as he poked at her chains with his spear. "Now that's sexy. But what the hell's a Klexitaur?" 

"That thing!" she cried out in terror as one of her arms came loose. 

Zeke looked over his shoulder to see a horrifying beast approaching them from above. It had the abdomen and legs of a giant hairy tarantula and the head and front legs of a wolverine. He estimated it was the size of a small house and its sharp teeth and claws looked bigger than he was. Foamy drool dripped from its lips which curled backwards in a growl and it scuttled towards them with a surprising mix of speed and agility. 

Zeke realized his tiny little spear wasn't going to be of much use in this situation so he did the next best thing: panicked. He screamed and ran around in circles drawing the beast's attention towards him in the process. A giant hairy foot crashed into the ground next to him causing Zeke to lose control of his bladder. The beast sniffed at him and examined him with a giant yellow eyeball. Zeke dropped his spear and torch and fell to his knees sobbing. "Please don't kill me. I know I don't have much to live for, but I always figured I'd at least die old, bitter, and drunk." 

The beast dropped its entire body to the ground causing the earth to shake. Zeke curled up into a fetal position and began rocking back and forth, eyes shut tight and tears streaming down his cheeks. He winced involuntarily waiting for the death blow to fall but it didn't come. He slowly became aware of an intense heat somewhere in front of him.  

He opened one eye slowly and realized that his fallen torch had evidently rolled forward and set the web on fire. It had spread quickly and soon the entire web was ablaze. Zeke sat up and looked around. There was no sign of the beast. Perhaps it had been scared off by the fire. He looked over to the tree but the princess was gone. Apparently the one arm he had managed to get loose and the distraction he provided had been enough to allow her to free herself and slip away. He hoped she had escaped before witnessing his shameless display of cowardice.  

Zeke picked up the spear and torch and made his way back to the river. He swam under the burning web and relit the torch from the blaze once he reached the other side. 

"There you are," Daedalus called out. "What the hell happened?" 

"Oh nothing," Zeke said. "Just bravely fought off a big scary monster single-handedly. What's new with you?" 

"Well, the good news is I scouted ahead a little bit and I've spotted the city wall. The river goes right underneath it. We just have to swim underneath and we'll be home free." 

"That's the best news I've heard all day," Zeke sighed. "Let's get the fuck out of this jungle." 

They pressed onward and soon Zeke saw the familiar blue city wall, and perhaps even more exhilarating was the sight of blue sky and sunshine for the first time since he'd been captured.  

They swam under the city wall and waded back to dry land. They had barely finished exchanging high fives when they found themselves surrounded by a group of dangerous looking creatures dressed in black Hawaiian shirts and wielding numerous weapons such as knives and whips. 

"Daedalus!" a bat shouted. "The bandit prince requests your presence immediately! Bring your friend here if you must!" 

Zeke looked at Daedalus questioningly. "The bandit prince?" 

Daedalus appeared somewhat ashamed. "Oh yeah, I guess I neglected to mention why I was out in the jungle in the first place. I'm a full fledged member of the bandits guild. I was out on an expedition to waylay unsuspecting travelers and rob them when I wandered away from the group and got myself captured. I suspect the bandit prince won't be pleased." 

"Who's the bandit prince?" Zeke asked. 

"Why, only the kingpin mastermind who oversees ninety percent of the criminal activity in Quartzwater City," Daedalus replied. "He is not a man to be trifled with." 

"The bandit prince doesn't like to be kept waiting," the bat admonished them. 

"All right, let's go see him. Come on, Zeke. I'll put in a good word for you." 

They were escorted by the armed creatures down a series of twisting back alleyways. Eventually they came to a halt in front of a plain, unmarked door. The bat knocked five times sharply and then once immediately afterwards. 

A small slot slid open in the door and two beady eyes peeped out. "What's the password?" 

"Wooga Booga," the bat whispered back. 

Zeke heard a series of latches being undone and then the door swung open. They entered a small but ornately decorated room and were shoved roughly to their knees. A large brown chair was in front of them with its back turned to them.  

"So you've decided to return to us, Daedalus," a smooth masculine voice said. "I trust you have a good excuse for your disappearance? And Zeke, how nice it is to see you again." The chair swiveled slowly around to face them. 

Zeke's eyes widened in astonishment. "You?" he gasped. "You're the bandit prince?" 

"Yes," a sly tone entered the bandit prince's voice. "Indeed I am."