'What are you doing here?!?' a voice boomed.
Jake at first figured they were awake. He was wrong. The group was already ahead of him.
'What?! Where is it coming from?!' the group responded in different tones of surprise. The midgets remained unmoved, their eyes closed.
'WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!!?!' the boisterous voice rang out once more.
Then Jake noticed. It was the left elephant of the two that demanded an answer and he did not look happy.
'You're... you are...' Jake stammered. A near-silent voice in his head murmured that by now, he should be used to the craziness this place keeps throwing at him, but as he was just shown, he was not.
'A white fucking elephant. Bingo Sherlock. Now, what the hell are you doing here?' The creature gave the group an angry stare, slowly panning his head from left to right, taking in each seemingly misplaced character.
'We are following the yellow brick road', Hitchens responded, finger raised, his voice layered with a pinch of arrogance.
'And it seems to go straight through your pearly gates'.
'I guess you are right. But you are not passing.' The elephant seemed adamant.
'All right Gandalf, is there nothing we can do? We really kinda need to pass', Jake dropped in. Nobody got the joke. Jake realized he probably should have picked a more temporally relevant pop culture reference.
'I vill call up ze Wehrmacht! Bring in ze panzers! Theze animals won't know what will hi-'
'Settle down, Adolf', Twain cut in. 'Let's see what we can do here. Diplomatically speaking.'
'I do not care-a for these animals. I will go-a where I-a please, take what I-a please', Columbus joined
'YEAH! WE TAKE! WE PLUNDER, WE PILLA-' Khan joined the chorus.
'SILENCE!' the elephant shouted, adjoined with a deafening sound from his trunk. The dwarves still seemed asleep.
'None of you will pass, unless you solve my riddle!'
'What kind of riddle?' Jake asked.
'How nice of you to ask' the elephant responded, together with a roll of the eyes.
'Here it comes', he said.
'In a faraway kingdom, there is a mysterious herb. The poisons brewed with this herb break down in the body for a number of minutes, and then they cause sudden death. But there is a catch: If you drink a stronger poison brewed with the same herb while the first poison is still breaking down in your system, then it will neutralize the weaker poison and act as an antidote, thereby saving your life.
The king in this land wants to possess the strongest poison in the realm, so that he may save his own life should anyone try to poison him. He summons his pharmacist and his treasurer.
"Each of you will brew me the strongest poison you can," he commands. "Next week, you will each drink the others' poison, and then your own. Whoever brews the stronger poison will live, and the other will die."
The two immediately set to work, but it doesn't take the treasurer long to realize that he cannot possibly brew a stronger poison than the pharmacist. It's just not his area of expertise. And so he devises a plan to survive.
The pharmacist, meanwhile, is almost done with his poison, a strong brew that is about as potent as possible. But the day before the potion-drinking showdown, he comes to an important realization: The treasurer must know the pharmacist's brew will be stronger, and if he wants to live, he must be thinking up an alternative plan. After some thought, the pharmacist realizes what the treasurer must be planning, and he devises a counter ruse.
The next day, the pharmacist and the treasurer appear before the king. They each drink the others' potion, and then their own. The treasurer dies, the pharmacist lives, and the king doesn't get what he wants.
What happened?'
The group was rather baffled. Hitchens set about solving the riddle, but Khan's answer included nothing more than a swing of his axe. Adolf did not want to play any games. He insisted on keeping marching, preferably in goosestep. Twain was not a big fan of the ruckus and Columbus ostensibly did not understand any it, so they stepped aside, found a big rock to sit on and lighted one of Twain's last cigars. It took Jake the better part of an hour just to get the group together, conveniently around the aforementioned rock.
''So, any ideas?'' Jake asked, his voice rising more towards the end than he wanted.
''I can hazard a guess'', Hitchens pondered, finger raised. ''But I can't be sure.''
''The treasurer would-a be stupid to go up-a against the pharmacist in the first-a place'', Columbus proclaimed like it was extremely obvious.
''I thank you for the input Chris, but we need some serious answers right now'', Jake responded, sporting a shit-eating grin.
''10 minutes remaining!'', the elephant blurted.
''Things just got a whole lot better'', Jake muttered. ''Any ideas?'''
''WE COULD JUST SMASH THEIR HEADS IN!'' Khan never learned how to whisper. Probably there was no need, with all the heads bashing in and relentless fighting and all.
''I-a have to agree-a with Khan here,'' Columbus said. ''I do not-a care if you-a do not-a let me in. I will enter-a anywhere I want-a!''
The group quickly took care of it, feeding Khan and Columbus with drink and food. They quickly shut up and left the rest of the group - those with more brains than brawn - to figure out a solution. Many ideas were posed, but few with any serious consideration.
Then it hit him. He wrestled himself away from the bickering group and walked up to Columbus.
''What did you say earlier?''
''What-a do you mean-a?''
''About it being stupid to challenge a pharmacist.''
''Yes-a. Of course-a. You can know-a that a pharmacist will-a be much better-a in making a potion than-a treasurer. This is obvious.''
''Thank you'', Jake ended the short exchange and promptly walked up to the elephant.
''TWO MINUTES LEFT'' he blurted in Jake's face.
''Yeah, that's all great, I came to give you the answer.'' He swiped the trunk away with the strength of someone swatting away a fly. It didn't help much.
''You have the answer? You would be the first.'' The elephant looked pleased, his lips curling up.
''There's a first time for everything'', Jake riposted, arms crossed. He raised a finger, closed his eyes and said, ''so, here's the deal: the treasurer, of course, realized that he could never make a more powerful poison than the pharmacist and tries to find a way to outsmart his opponent. He drinks a weak poison just before appearing in front of the king, and he brings plain water as his own '''poison.'" Jake accompanied the word with air quotations.
''This way, when he drinks the pharmacist's poison, it will neutralize the poison he drank earlier, and when he follows that up by drinking his own, he'll only be drinking water. As for the pharmacist, he will drink water, and then his own poison, leading to his death.
But the clever pharmacist correctly surmises the treasurer's trick. To counter this plot, the pharmacist also brings water as his poison. Both the treasurer and pharmacist then drink water twice. However, the weak poison the treasurer drank earlier ends up doing him in, and he falls dead to the floor.
Neither actually brews a poison, and so the king does not get what he wants—a strong poison to guard against any attempts to assassinate him with a weaker poison.''
The elephant looked shocked. Then surprised. Then angry.
''You are ... correct. You may pass.''
The gate swung open.
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