The Blood Ring of Tytus: A Masters of the Universe Adventure

II - An Amicable Settlement

II
AN AMICABLE SETTLEMENT

AS the first rays of morning sunlight spilled, bright and golden, over the far-off peaks of the Mystic Mountains, He-Man made his way over to the washbasin behind the inn. There he found Man-at-Arms, scraping the stubble from his face with the freshly whetted blade of his dagger. He-Man drew his own dagger from the sheath in his boot and proceeded to do the same. Man-at-Arms threw a handful of water onto his face, rinsing away the remaining streaks of blood and flecks of beard growth. Another handful of water served to cool off his head as it ran down in rivulets through the brown and grey strands of his close-cropped hair. He nodded at He-Man. He-Man returned the greeting with a smile.

"A man of your age and rank is entitled to a beard, Duncan." He-Man said. "But still, a clean-shaven face is preferable to the wispy patch of hair that you had allowed to languish above your lip when first we met. It looked as though a furred Kex larva had made its home on your face."

Duncan, the Man-at-Arms of the ancient City of Eternos, laughed at this. Words such as these coming from a man twenty years his junior would have struck him as gross insolence deserving of swift retribution... had that man not been He-Man. In the short time that they had been allies, He-Man and Man-at-Arms had been through more trials than most comrades in arms would endure in the whole of their lives.

It was, in any case, common among the soldiers of He-Man's race to express their feelings of camaraderie with a bit of good-natured ribbing. He-Man was grateful that his relatively mild jibes about Kex larvae were sufficient to lead Duncan to divest himself of his ill-advised moustache, for he was loath to have to tell his friend and elder that the only other men he'd ever encountered who wore such peculiar islets of hair above their lips were the phallus worshipers of Omrrogh. Their depraved and unnatural practices made them an object of revulsion to He-Man rivaled only, perhaps, by the dwarfish Shit-Eaters of Thenor.

And how could it have been otherwise? The hardness of their jungle life and the rejection of frivolousness and pomp that that hardness engendered, along with their devotion to the scrupulous morals and standards of the Religion of the Old Pantheon, instilled in He-Man's people the greatest antipathy for unfettered hedonism, which was the breeding ground of decadence. He-Man, formerly Adam, Son of Randor, bore these indelible marks of his culture still. Indeed, it was his firm belief that weakness – weakness of body, weakness of mind, yes, but especially weakness of moral and character – was the prime factor that led to the fall of Eternian civilization and allowed for the arrival of the alien forces of Darkness and Destruction to fill the void.

To have said that He-Man saw in Duncan's moustache a reflection of all the ills in the world would have been an exaggeration most absurd, but it bespoke much of the uniformity of the fabric of his ethics that He-Man felt real relief at not having to see on his friend's face even the vaguest shade of things repugnant to him.

He-Man continued to shave, all the while softly humming the tune of a tribal morning hymn.

"And what of you?" Man-at-Arms asked, gesturing to the blade in He-Man's hand. "If a beard is a thing to be 'entitled' to, surely the Champion of Eternia has met all requirements for one?"

He-Man smiled and shook his head.

"All but one, my friend. It was the custom of my people that a man does not grow a beard until he has sired his first child."

This gave Man-at-Arms pause. The idea of He-Man as a father was one that had never even crossed his mind before. What would the offspring of the Most Powerful Man in the Universe be like? He wondered. What sort of woman would be equal to the role of wife to Eternia's Champion? Perhaps if my own Teela were to...