Champion

Legendary races and peoples — whether in ancient texts or richly constructed fantasy worlds — always reflect something real about how the culture that created them thought about difference, hierarchy, and belonging. That’s what makes studying them so rewarding: you’re always reading two things at once. In Chapter 15, as our narrator and Captain Cactus move through the interior of a vast, obsessively ordered fortress — shelves of diamonds sorted by size, wool by colour, iron stacked with almost ritualistic precision — we’re not just watching a heist unfold; we’re stepping into a space that feels genuinely mythic, the kind of hoard-hall that echoes through legendary traditions from the treasure-mountains of Norse dwarves to the catalogued riches of dragon lairs in medieval romance. The song Captain Cactus hears in this chapter matters precisely because of where it’s heard: inside a place built on theft and enforced order, a song represents exactly the kind of disruption that legends have always used to signal that something deeper — something destabilizing and true — is about to surface. This is the chapter where the world-building stops being backdrop and starts being argument, and I think it’s worth slowing down to appreciate just how much is happening here.

“The vault has to be deeper in,” Biscuit murmured, consulting the list she’d started writing the moment we entered. It was already three pages long. “The shade crystals we collected should help mask our heat signatures from the Sand Minions, but we need more time. Significantly more time.” She looked at me in a way that meant she had seventeen plans but none of them were quite right yet.

That’s when we heard him.

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. If Captain Cactus has officially stolen your heart, you NEED the Aurora® Palm Pals™ Prickles Cactus™ Stuffed Animal sitting on your desk while you read. This tiny 3.5-inch green buddy is basically a miniature Captain Cactus — small enough to fit in your pocket on adventures, collectible enough to display proudly on a shelf. I love recommending Palm Pals because they’re genuinely well-made and ridiculously cute. Perfect for any young fan who wants their own prickly sidekick.

Read more

In every culture I’ve studied, the question of who has access to special knowledge — who can perform rituals, speak to the gods, manipulate the forces of nature — is never purely theological. It’s always about social structure, legitimacy, and the control of meaning. Magic systems, in that sense, are political documents. What makes Grumbleton’s Very Bad Day so fascinating to dig into is that the moment a disorienting wall of spinning orange sand swallows our protagonist whole — alongside a companion who reads the world through scent and crystal-memory — we’re dropped straight into one of mythology’s oldest and most loaded archetypes: the threshold crossing, the involuntary initiation, the point where ordinary knowledge suddenly becomes useless and a different kind of knowing takes over. From the whirlwind that answers Job to the sandstorms that spirits ride in Saharan Tuareg tradition, cultures have long used the sudden, consuming storm as shorthand for the moment the rules change — and whoever controls that storm, or survives it, walks out the other side with a claim to something the rest of the world doesn’t have.

I tumbled sideways. Then backward. Then sideways again, which I was pretty sure wasn’t physically possible, but the desert didn’t seem to care about physics. The tornado spun me around three times, made a sound like a very large sneeze, and then dropped me face-first into a sand dune that was unfortunately not soft at all.

“I meant to do that,” I said automatically, into the sand.

The dune did not respond.

I sat up and looked around. The sky was pale yellow and blazing hot. The Champion’s Crown — still glowing with its three villain-victories worth of warm light — had somehow ended up on backwards during the spin. I fixed it. Three separate dunes stretched in three separate directions, and Biscuit was absolutely nowhere.

“BISCUIT!”

Silence. Then, very faintly, from somewhere behind the tallest dune: “I’M FINE. I HAVE PLANS. SEVERAL PLANS. HOW MANY DO YOU NEED?”

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. If Grumbleton’s very bad day has you in the mood for something grumpy AND monstrous, you need this Care Bears Universal Monsters Fun Size Plush – Grumpy Bear as Frankenstein (Black & White) in your life immediately. It’s basically Grumbleton’s spirit animal — equal parts grouchy and endearingly monstrous. The black-and-white colorway gives it this awesome classic horror film vibe, and honestly it’s small enough to sit on your desk and silently judge you while you read.

Read more

Founding myths are among the most revealing documents a society produces — they tell you exactly what that society considered worth celebrating, what origins they wanted to claim, and what values they wanted to install at the root of their identity. No origin story is accidental. That lens becomes fascinating when you apply it to a hero mid-legend, still assembling their myth in real time — because what our protagonist is living through right now, chasing down the final two villains with a crown literally keeping score, is essentially a condensed heroic origin cycle, the kind of narrative scaffolding you see in everything from the labors of Heracles to the Arthurian quest structure, where each trial isn’t just a plot beat but a credential, a stone laid in the foundation of who this person will be remembered as. The desert setting baked into this chapter’s title is no accident either — from the wandering of Moses to Gilgamesh’s grief-driven crossing of the scorched wilderness, sand has always been mythology’s favorite backdrop for the part of the journey where the hero is most lost and therefore closest to transformation. So let’s dig into what’s happening here, because under the surface of a buzzing crown and a very good piece of toast, there’s an ancient story architecture doing some serious structural work.

“It’s pointing southwest,” Biscuit said without looking up from her notebook. She had seven lists open simultaneously, which I know because she’d numbered them. “Specifically toward the Desert Sea. Specifically urgently.”

“How do you know it’s urgent?”

“It’s buzzing.” She finally looked up. “Also your hair is standing up even more than usual, and that only happens when something important is about to occur.”

I touched my head. She wasn’t wrong.

We packed up camp quickly. Biscuit had the Sunstone Map spread on a flat boulder, and even I could see the problem — the golden lines that traced the path across the Desert Sea were going faint at the edges, like ink left out in the rain. The Crystal Oasis glimmered at the map’s center, still bright, but the route to reach it was disappearing one sand dune at a time.

“How long do we have?” I asked.

Biscuit sniffed the map. “Smells like warm sandstone and something slightly panicked,” she said. “Maybe half a day before the path markings fade completely.”

I picked up my pack. Then I looked at Biscuit. Then — and this was the part that would have surprised the old me, the Chapter One me who fell into fountains and charged forward without a single thought in my head — I said, “What’s the plan?”

Biscuit stared at me for a full three seconds. Her mouth did something complicated.

“Did you just ask me for a plan before running toward something?”

“I might have.”

“Before falling into anything?”

“Nothing has come up to fall into yet.”

She pressed her lips together very firmly, but I could see her trying not to look absolutely delighted. She cleared her throat. “Right. Yes. I have four plans. Plan One involves the shade crystals shown on the map — we collect them along the route to stay cool and also to mark our path as we go. Plan Two involves—”

“Plan One sounds excellent,” I said. “Let’s do Plan One.”

Biscuit wrote Ollie asked for plan. Personal triumph. Note for records in her notebook and snapped it shut.

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. If this chapter’s chaos of sand and zero useful directions gave you serious survival vibes, you NEED to check out Forbidden Desert. It’s a cooperative board game where you and your crew are stranded in a shifting desert, racing against a sandstorm that literally buries the board as you play. No one wins alone — which honestly feels very on-brand for every mythology hero who ever ignored good advice and ended up neck-deep in sand.

Read more