Butcher (booch'er) n. 1. one whose work is killing or dressing animals for meat 2. one who cuts meat for sale  3. a brutal killer

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"Ahh, my leg!" yelled Wirt as the butcher's cleaver sliced through his leg.  Butch was about to finish the job when Griswold, holding his axe, stepped between them.
"Ach!!" said Griswold for no particular reason, "Let 'im go!!"
"Urrh?" asked Butch.
"Kill this guy instead!" said Griswold, grabbing a nearby victim named Wounded Townsman.
"Ahhh, fresh meat!!" said Butch as he cleaved Wounded.  Griswold dragged Wirt to safety.
"Nice blood trail yer leavin' there, Wart," he commented.  If only because of this statement, Wirt was traumatized for the rest of his life.
Lazarus laughed at the foolish townspeople who had foolishly followed him into the Butcher's lair in a very foolish way.  Come to think of it, thought Lazarus, some of these people were just downright foolish.  Lazarus' thoughts were interrupted when something collided with his head.  He turned around to see Butch holding Wirt's leg.
"What are you doing with that thing??" asked Lazarus angrily.
"Urrh." answered Butch.
"Oh," said Lazarus calmly, "I never thought of it that way.  Carry on."  The butcher continued to whack the foolish townspeople with Wirt's leg.  Laughing to himself, Lazarus retreated into the deepest bowels of the labyrinth, despite the fact that the word 'bowels' was disturbing to him.  Those townspeople who were too foolish to run away were eventually killed from repeated blows to the head.

Some townspeople did escape, however.  Among them was Griswold, who was dragging the bleeding Wirt behind him.  When he finally escaped the labyrinth, he was greeted by the extremely scary-looking witch Adria.
"I shall heal Wirt." said Adria.  She outstretched her hand as the theme from "Jaws" played in the background.  Griswold briefly considered running back into the labyrinth and trying to get help from Butch.
"Don't be silly," said Adria, reading Griswold's mind.  She grabbed Wirt by his eyeballs and wrenched them free of his face.
"If he ever wants to see these again, you'll let me take him."  Despite Adria's ironic choice of words, Griswold decided that he had no choice.  He handed Wirt over to the witch, who cackled and ran away.  Griswold sighed and stood there for a few minutes, thinking to himself.  Suddenly, he heard a groaning sound behind him.  He turned around to see Wounded Townsman crawling out from the entrance to the dungeon.  He was badly wounded.
"Please," begged Wounded, "Listen to me..."
Griswold laughed and walked away.

Griswold was in a good mood when he walked into town, despite the fact that there were a couple of corpses hanging from a nearby tree.
"What happened to them?" asked Griswold.  Pepin, the town healer, was standing next to him.
"You've never noticed them?" Pepin was shocked, "They've been there for weeks now."  Griswold scrunched his eyebrows together.
"Nope," he said after awhile.
"Lazarus did that," Pepin explained.  He remembered that day vividly.....

"Good people of Tristram!!" Lazarus had yelled to the crowd, "Those two people are clearly evil!!"  He was pointing at two soon-to-be corpses.  "They should be hanged!"  The crowd cheered.
"I've got some rope!" called out Griswold.

"Hey, wait a second..." said Pepin, returning to reality.  He turned toward Griswold, but he was sprinting away.
Pepin wasn't known for his memory.  He was actually considered a little bit slow.  Normally, he would have forgotten about the rope incident after a couple weeks.  Griswold cursed his bad luck.  He would have to wait at least a few hours for Pepin to forget again.  He decided he should pay a visit to the witch.  Who knows what kind of horrible torture she's putting Wirt through, he thought...
"DIE WIRT!!" Adria was screaming as Griswold walked into her cabin.  Adria quickly concealed the knife she was holding.
"Ach!  What did ye just say?" asked Griswold.
"Uhhh..." said Adria, stalling for time, "I said... dywyrte.  It's an ancient magical incantation."  Griswold looked impressed.
"Wow," he said, "What does it do?"  Adria shrugged.
"Technically, it would cause Wirt's heart to stop beating."
"Hence the name, Die Wirt?" asked Griswold.
"It's not DIE WIRT it's DYWYRTE!!!" yelled Adria.
"Sounds the same to me," said Griswold.  Adria scowled.
"Well, that's just because you can't hear the way it's spelled."  A sudden thud behind her made her realize that she had said Dywyrte a few too many times.  Wirt was dead.
"Heh.  Warty-boy never was very good at staying alive." said Griswold.
"Don't you take anything seriously??" asked Adria, reaching for a scroll on a shelf.
"Ach," answered Griswold.  Adria opened the scroll, and read aloud the mystic, arcane words written upon it...
"I'm a medieval man," she chanted.  Wirt's body glowed brightly.  Then, the confused Wirt opened his eyes.  He was alive once more.  Griswold, astonished, asked the obvious question.
"You are?" Adria's eyes turned a bright red color.
"So now you know my secret," she said, "I have the ability to bring life back to the dead."  Griswold shrugged.
"I was more interested in whether or not you're a medieval man," said Griswold.
"FOOL!!" yelled Adria, "DON'T YOU EVEN REALIZE WHAT THIS MEANS???"  Griswold thought for a moment.
"I guess it means that Wirt is okay."  Adria resisted the temptation to cast her dygryzwolde spell and instead helped Wirt stand up.  Griswold noticed that his missing leg had been replaced with a wooden peg.  Griswold laughed.
"Ach!  Yer leg is wooden!  Ye'll be an ootcast fer the rest 'o yer life!!"  Griswold reverted back to his over- exaggerated Scottish accent.  Wirt limped over to him.
"Now Griswold," said Adria, "You must tell no one of what transpired here.  Do not tell anyone my secret."
"Ach," promised Griswold, dragging Wirt out of the witch's cabin.

"HEY CAIN!!" yelled Griswold.  Cain, who had been sleeping peacefully under a tree, woke up suddenly and banged his head on the foot of a corpse hanging above him.  Cain was known as the wise man of the town.  He was old and perhaps a little messed up in the mind.
"GUESS WHAT I FOUND OUT??" Griswold yelled so loudly that Cain was afraid that the corpse above him would come back to life.
"DID YOU KNOW THAT ADRIA CAN BRING CORPSES BACK TO LIFE??" Griswold yelled.  Cain, unused to people reading his mind, was startled by this statement.
"How does she do that?" he asked.
"Magic," said Griswold, "She brought Wirt back to life."  Cain hadn't noticed that the young Wirt had been standing next to Griswold the whole time.
"Oh, hello Wirt," said Cain, smiling.  Wirt opened his mouth to respond, but Cain cut him off.
"I hear you plan to become Griswold's apprentice as a Blacksmith." he said.
"HAH!" laughed Griswold, "'ol Wart here says he wants to deal in goods of dubious origin!"  Wirt began to shake his head, but Griswold quickly stepped in front of him so that Cain couldn't see.
"Well, we better get going..." said Griswold, turning to leave.
"Ahh... Griswold?" Cain's voice stopped him, "I heard that you encountered some kind of butcher down in the dungeon."  Griswold nodded in agreement.
"Do you think the butcher might try to leave the dungeon and enter the town?" he asked.  Griswold laughed.
"Ach!" he said, "Butch can't open doors.  We'll be fine."  A vision of all the doors that he had left open while he was in the labyrinth passed through Griswold's mind, but he quickly dismissed the thought.
"Still," said Cain, once again stopping Griswold from leaving, "I think it would be wise if we established a hunting party and killed the butcher."  Cain was sounding suspiciously like Lazarus.
"That's a good idea," said Griswold, feigning interest, "I'll go tell Farnham."  Farnham was the town drunk.  He had been in the adventuring party that Lazarus had led down into the dungeon.  Few things in his life had ever been as sobering as seeing a cleaver-wielding butcher running toward him while yelling "Ahhh, fresh meat!!"  Griswold managed to find Farnham sitting outside against the wall of his house.  Ever since the butcher incident, Farnham had been in a constant state of drunkenness.  The mere mention of the butcher or of Lazarus would be all it would take to drive Farnham completely insane.  For this reason, Griswold decided to have some fun.  He approached Farnham, carrying his axe.  Farnham looked up from the empty glass he was holding and saw Griswold.
"Ah, hullo Grish me old freind."
"Friend." Griswold corrected.  Farnham ignored him.
"Ye're joost in time to rufill me glass 'o... hey... why the axe, Grish?"  Griswold held up his axe for closer inspection.
"Oh, I don't know... it doesn't look like an axe to me..."  Farnham thought for a moment.  Suddenly, he snapped his fingers (or at least he tried to, but his fingers, in an amazing display of bad coordination, missed each other by several feet)
"I know!  It's a dagger!"  yelled Farnham triumphantly.  Griswold pretended to think about this possibility for awhile.  Then, he brightened.
"I've got it!" he yelled excitedly, "It's a cleaver!!"  Farnham blanched, realizing as he did so that he had no idea what the word 'blanch' meant.
"What... didsht ye shay?" asked Farnham, wide-eyed with terror.
"Gee," said Griswold, inspecting the axe, "I think this is your cleaver, Farnham!"  Farnham's jaw dropped open.
"Look," said Griswold, holding the axe near Farnham's face, "Isn't this your name inscribed here?"  Farnham tried to focus his drunken eyes on the inscription.  He could barely make it out.
"G-R-I-S-W-O-L-D," he read aloud, "Thatsh not me name."
"Spelled backwards, it is," argued Griswold.  Farnham tried to imagine the word spelled backwards, but his mind was too muddled.
"Hey..." thought Griswold aloud, "YOU must be the butcher!"  Fear gripped Farnham's heart.  His first thought was wondering how Griswold had discovered his true identity.  His second thought was wondering if he even HAD a secret identity.
"I'm afraid I'll have to throw you back into the dungeon," said Griswold.  At this statement, what remained of Farnham's sanity dissolved into a puddle of reddish goop.  (Figuratively speaking, of course)
"Nyarrrgh!!!!!" yelled Farnham, as he ran away as fast as he could.  Griswold started to run after him, but he thought better of it.
"Go get 'im, Wart!" ordered Griswold.  Wirt, as ordered, gave chase to Farnham.  Griswold watched as the two of them ran off into the distance.  Farnham was stumbling forward in a drunken panic, while Wirt was hobbling along on his new leg.  Suddenly, Griswold heard noise in the distance.  It sounded like the angry shouting of a mob of people.  Griswold, feeling it was his duty to investigate, ran off in the direction of the noise.

A mob, led by Cain, had surrounded Adria's cabin.
"Die witch die!  Die witch die!" the crowd chanted.  Adria stepped out of her cabin.  The crowd quieted down.
"What is the meaning of this?" Adria demanded.
"We want you to DIE!!" yelled Cain predictably.
"Yeah, we don't want your evil life-bringing powers here in Tristram!!" yelled a member of the mob.
"Let's hang her!" yelled someone else.
"I've got some rope!" yelled Griswold.
"HOLD IT!!!" interrupted Pepin, moving between Adria and the mob, "You've been tricked!  That isn't Cain!  It's Lazarus in disguise!!"  The crowd watched in a shocked silence as Pepin tore the Cain-mask off of Lazarus' face.  It was then that Pepin realized that he had made a mistake.  He had torn Cain's face off.  The crowd didn't really care.  They had come here to see a gory death, and they had been satisfied.  They cheered as the corpse of Cain fell to the ground.
"Ahhh, fresh meat!" came a voice from behind Griswold.  He recognized that voice.  Griswold slowly turned around, holding his axe up in front of him.  Standing there was a figure dressed in black.  A hood over the figure's head made his face difficult to see, but Griswold could just barely make out the hideously ugly (and stupid-looking) face of the butcher.  In the butcher's hand was a cleaver.
"Ach." said Griswold.
"Urrh." said Butch.
"Ach?" asked Griswold.
"Urrh." answered Butch.
"Ach." commented Griswold.
"Urrh." agreed Butch.  Griswold thought this conversation was going rather well, despite the fact that he had to duck the swing of the butcher's cleaver after every sentence.  Finally, he decided to fight back.  Griswold swung his axe at Butch, narrowly missing his blubbery stomach.  The townspeople standing nearby thoughtfully pulled musical instruments out of nowhere and played some battle music.  Butch swung his cleaver at Griswold, who avoided it with a carefully timed back flip.  Unfortunately, Griswold didn't know how to do a back flip.  He ended up flat on his face.
"Ahhh, fresh meat!!" yelled Butch, raising his cleaver for the final blow.
"Ach!!!!!!" yelled Griswold as the butcher's cleaver smashed into his brain.  That was when Adria began to chant.
"Roses are red, violets are blue, Griswold is dead, and so are you." as soon as the last word was spoken, a ghostly silhouette of Wirt's missing leg appeared in the air over the butcher.  The floating leg smashed itself into the butcher repeatedly.  Butch awkwardly swung his cleaver at the leg, but it was no use.  With one final "Urrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhh!!!!!!" the butcher collapsed in a bloody heap.  Adria dusted off her hands.
"Well," she said, "That's that."  Pepin, shocked, asked the obvious question.
"Violets are blue?  I thought they were purple."  Adria, resisting the urge to cast her dypehpin spell, returned to her cabin.  The mob, too stupid to realize that the battle was over, continued playing their battle music.  Pepin looked at the face in his hand.  He vaguely remembered killing Cain.
"Hey..." he thought aloud, "Where is Lazarus, anyway??"

"AAAAHHHHH!!!!" yelled Farnham as he bumped into Lazarus, who laughed evilly.  Farnham and Wirt both turned around and ran in the opposite direction.  Lazarus started to give chase, but he slipped in a puddle of reddish goop.  Lazarus fell to the ground.  He didn't bother to get up.  He instead lay on his back, looking up at the clouds above him (which looked suspiciously like a Windows 95 backdrop)
"Let them think they've gotten away," said Lazarus to himself, "There are always.... sequels....."  The laughter of Lazarus echoed throughout the sky.  The shortcut icons floating above him fled in terror.  Lazarus would have his revenge.

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The Old Man in the Sea
Chrono Trigger

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