Patience is a virtue. You’ve probably heard this saying countless times in your lifetime. In fact, you’re undoubtedly quite tired of hearing it. Usually when someone says this, they are doing one of two things. They could be saying “shut up and wait”, which would be quite impolite when spoken in such a form, or they may merely be avoiding the matter altogether by stating a true fact that’s masquerading as a plea for you to wait. However, when I say this now, I mean neither of these things. What I mean is that you have been virtuous by waiting through the past week for this post to come out. Unless you just didn’t care, then I take it back. Anyway, you can now see patience rewarded as I finally tell you the story of Tobias Hrothgar’s escape. If you haven’t read part one then you can find it here.

It was 9:52 PM on Friday the tenth. While I was washing dishes with a fierceness seen only in the eyes of a tiger ripping into the carcass of a fallen elephant, Tobias was tiptoeing through a dark and empty street with the stealth of a falling elephant. Actually this was because he was riding on the back of an elephant—that is, until it fell. The matter of how he acquired an elephant is of no great consequence. Well, it is of great consequence, but I shan’t tell you. All that matters is that he was pounding through the town on the back of a bewildered beast, trying to reach the airport before the tigers caught up. Oh, did I forget to mention? Yes, there were tigers; tigers as fierce as me washing dishes (actually, by this point I’d finished with the dishes and was brushing my teeth with an equal or greater fierceness). As you can likely gather from common sense, these were very foolish tigers. Chasing after one of the largest land animals is usually not a safe sport for cats to play. But no matter the foolishness. The airport is almost in sight which is an inconvenient time for one of the tigers to successfully leap onto the elephant’s back and spook him further. The elephant reared back dumping, not only the tiger, but Hrothgar off of its back as well. He did not like falling into the middle of a group of bloodthirsty tigers, but fortunately they were distracted when the bigger meal fell to the ground nearby. He took his chance to run the rest of the way to the airport.

After that whole ordeal sneaking past airport security was no problem. Tobias was safely seated among hundreds of suitcases and bags, trying very carefully to blend in with the baggage. There he waited as the hours passed by. After an unknown amount of time (Tobias dozed off many times) a door was opened. Hrothgar would have just stayed still and quiet were it not for the sound of a cannon being loaded. It was a sound he knew quite well for reasons I will not bother to explain. He leapt up, punched a nearby bag with a force that could’ve broken a nose, and then made an embarrassing squeak of pain that people let out when they punch dumbbells. A man lit the cannon and Tobias jumped out of the way just in time for a cannonball to punch through the dumbbells a lot better than he did and break the airplane wall. Aiming a much more accurate punch than before, Tobias knocked out one of the men and quickly did something really stupid that you normally only see in action movies; he jumped out of the plane.

Falling from an immense height is an interesting sensation. Some people do it for enjoyment, but most of those people were born stupid, and they tend to wear parachutes. Tobias didn’t think to put on one and thus had to use his trench-coat to slow his fall. I’m not exactly sure how he survived the fall and neither is he, but once he reached the water he wasn’t dead. He swam to shore, carefully avoiding the sharks, and collapsed on the beach. A bunch of kids looked somewhat disturbed, but they quickly got over their worry and began piling sand on top of him. They were about to cover his head when he finally roused the strength to escape this lame fate and wander home. It was probably almost twenty-four hours before he actually made it as he was delayed by numerous things including an unexpected gravitational shift, a man-eating sofa that showed no mercy whatsoever, and a library. Finally he collapsed on my couch and began snoring like an angry wasp nest, getting our attention.

The following evening he told us his tale, as I mentioned last week. It still left some things unanswered though, as Jerome pointed out: “What about the message?”

“What message?” Tobias asked. I showed him the message and he observed it critically. “It would seem that someone accidently hacked into the secure line that you phone is connected to. I would say that he was skydiving above the sea when he realized that he left the door open in the living room at home, so he was trying to text his wife and ask her to close the door. Unfortunately, I suppose he didn’t have the strength to swim to shore.”

“I told you!” Torfis crowed triumphantly.

If we’re lucky then Tobias will never end up stuck on an unknown continent ever again, so he won’t need to go through these difficulties. Of course, we’re not lucky. We’re the Hrothgarians.

That’s it for now. I hope you learned a valuable lesson from all this: Don’t be Tobias Hrothgar. It’s a stupid career choice. Also, to all you tigers out there who might be fans of Hrothgar: It’s foolish to attack elephants (yes, I know the tigers won in this story, but in most cases they don’t). Please follow this blog to hear more such stories of action and stupidity.

Ever onward,

Jacob Unger.