She went down the list of every metal in her vaults, then every metal in her armory, then every metal she had ever read about in the kingdom's records. She went down it twice.
There wasn't an ounce of it anywhere in the Candy Kingdom.
...
Three days later, Ray was back on the stool with the smallest gourd in his mouth, and it was still winning.
His ribs had mostly stopped complaining. He could lie down on his back again, and laugh without holding his side, and the peppermint bandage was gone. That was the good news. The bad news was the gauge. He blew into the gourd until the room went bright at the edges, and the needle moved the width of a hair, the same hair as last time.
"Again," Bubblegum said.
He did it again. She wrote something down. She didn't say anything about the sword, and he didn't ask, because he had a feeling that the answer was in the notepad and that he wouldn't like it.
The breakfast part of the deal, at least, was holding up. There had been waffles. There had been a pitcher of something pink and fizzy that he was pretty sure was just liquid candy. He had eaten until a Banana Guard came and took the plate away from him, gently, like it was a weapon.
"There's a party tonight," Bubblegum said, around the twentieth try. "In the courtyard. You're welcome to stay."
"Will there be food?"
"It's a party."
"Then I'm staying."
...
The party was huge. The last party Ray had been to in the Candy Kingdom had ended with him blindfolded in taffy, swinging a chair leg at a zombie, so this one was already doing better. Everything was edible, including some of the guests, who didn't seem to mind.
There were lanterns strung over the courtyard and a band made of what he was pretty sure were gingerbread men, and a buffet that went on longer than the warehouse loading dock.
He started at one end of it.
Finn and Jake showed up around sunset. Jake went straight to the buffet too and they nodded at each other in the middle of it, like two guys meeting at work. Finn didn't go near the food. Finn had put on a clean shirt and was standing near the dancing, with his hands behind his back, trying to look like a hero who happened to be at a party.
Bubblegum was up in a little tower at the side of the courtyard, the kind with an open balcony on top, dancing with a couple of her ladies-in-waiting. Every time she spun around, Finn's ears went a shade redder.
"He's been practicing that stand all week," Jake said, with his mouth full. "In the mirror."
"It's a good stand."
"It's a great stand. She hasn't looked once."
Ray put a candy shrimp in his pocket for later. Then he put three more.
That was when Cinnamon Bun got up on a table.
"Everybody! Hey, everybody! Watch this!" He was a big, soft cinnamon roll with a lot of frosting and not much else, and he was swaying a little. "I'm gonna do a flip!"
"Is he gonna do a flip?" Ray asked.
"He is not gonna do a flip," Jake said.
Cinnamon Bun ran, jumped, and did about a third of a flip. Then he flew right off the end of the table and hit the base of the little tower with his whole body, like a sack of wet dough.
The tower cracked. Ray heard it over the band. It was a long, ugly crunching sound, and then the whole thing started to lean, slowly, out over the courtyard, with the princess on top.
...
Finn moved before his brain finished saying anything.
He was already running when the tower tipped. Behind him Ray went, "Oh, shit, shit!" and started running too, but Ray was slow. Ray had been blowing into a gourd all day and his legs were all wobbly from it, and Finn had seen that at lunch. Ray got about halfway. Finn didn't look back to check.
The balcony broke off.
"Eek! Princess!"
"Somebody do something!"
The princess slid right off the edge and fell, with her crown going one way and her hair going the other.
Finn jumped off a bench and caught her.
He didn't even fall down. He landed on his feet with Princess Bubblegum in his arms, and the tower came down behind them in a big crumbly heap, and then everything got really quiet.
She was looking up at him. She had a little bit of tower in her hair.
"Finn," she said. "You saved me."
"Uh," Finn said. "Yeah. Yes. I did. That was me."
"You're my hero, Finn."
He was pretty sure his whole head had turned into one big ear, and the ear was on fire. He set her down very carefully, like she might break, and stood there, and couldn't think of a single thing to do with his arms.
The princess didn't go back to the party. She stood there with her hand on her chin and a little line between her eyebrows, looking at him like he was something on one of her lab tables.
"Hero," she said again, but quieter, like she was trying out the word. Then she looked up. "Finn. Come with me. Bring Jake. Bring..." She looked past him to where Ray had caught up, bent over with his hands on his knees. "Bring Ray, too."
She took them across the courtyard, past the guards, and into the big tower in the middle of the castle. Halfway up the stairs she pushed on a stone that looked like all the other stones, and part of the wall swung in.
Behind it was a little round room, and in the middle of the room was a glass ball on a stand, with clouds moving around inside it.
"Whoa," said Finn.
"Whoa," said Jake.
"Okay, that's sick," said Ray, which Finn didn't totally get but figured was good.
The princess put her hand on the glass. The clouds cleared, and there was a book inside. It was big and old and had a gold clasp, and it was sitting on a stone table on top of a mountain, with light coming down on it from somewhere.
"The Enchiridion," she said. "It's a handbook for heroes. Everything a hero should know is written in it. It's been on top of Mount Cragdor for a very long time, and it's guarded by trials. Only a true hero can get through them." She turned around. "A true hero of..."
She stopped for a second, and her eyes went past Finn, over to Ray. It was really quick. Probably she was checking if he was okay from all the running; Ray did look kind of sweaty. Finn went back to the book, which was the most amazing thing he had ever seen.
"...righteous super power," she finished, and looked right at Finn. "I think it should be you."
Finn didn't say anything. He couldn't. He was too busy trying not to float.
...
Mount Cragdor was a whole morning away, and Finn talked for all of it.
"What if it has a whole chapter on sword fighting? What if it has a chapter on like, monster weak points? What if it tells you how to talk to princesses?"
"Then you should definitely read that one first," Jake said, from underneath him.
Ray rode on Jake's back behind Finn and let it all wash over him. The kid had been like this since last night. According to Jake, he had slept with his arms crossed over his chest like a guy in a coffin, smiling, and when Ray had come over for breakfast, he'd answered the door with his sword already on.
Ray didn't mind. Listening to Finn was better than going over last night again, the princess at the globe stopping halfway through a sentence and looking at him first, for about a second, before she looked at Finn.
The mountain was tall and grey and mostly cliff. At the bottom of it there was a big stone wall with a big stone gate, and in front of the gate there was a little man.
He was short and round and yellow, in a pale blue robe, with a helmet strapped very tightly around his face. A big iron key stuck up out of the top of the helmet.
"Greetings, young heroes-to-be!" He talked so fast that the words came out stuck together. "This is Mount Cragdor, which exists to guard the Enchiridion and to test the hearts of those who come to claim it, and you'll only pass this gate if you can answer my riddle, which goes like this: what opens the way but cannot walk it, wears the key but cannot turn it, and waits by the door for one who knows?"
There was a silence.
"Can you say that again," Ray said, "but like, at human speed?"
The little man opened his mouth. Before he could get anything out of it, Finn walked over, picked him up under the arms, turned him upside down and stuck him in the lock, helmet first. The key went in perfectly. There was a loud clunk, and the gate swung open.
"...How did you figure that out?" asked the little man, from inside the lock.
Finn shrugged. "I just thought you'd look cute stuffed in that lock."
"That's correct!" He sounded delighted about it. "That's exactly correct! Most of them get it that way."
Finn pulled him out and set him down. The little man straightened his robe and his helmet and cleared his throat, and his face went serious, or as serious as it could go with a helmet that tight.
"Beyond this gate are the trials. They're meant for the hero and one companion, and only one, because a hero always has someone at his side, but he doesn't bring an army." He looked at the three of them, and then he looked at Ray. "Sorry, big fella."
"No, yeah," Ray said. "That makes sense."
He said it fast and easy, the way he said most things. Finn looked back at him, and then at Jake, and his face scrunched up like he was about to argue for Ray, and Ray didn't want him to. The kid had caught a falling princess last night; he could have the mountain too.
"Go on, little bro. Go be righteous."
"You sure?"
"Dude, I'll be right here. Go get your book."
Finn grinned, the big one, the one he did with his whole face. Then he turned around and ran through the gate, with Jake loping after him, and the gate swung shut behind them with the same loud clunk.
Ray stood there for a second with his hands in his pockets, one of them full of candy shrimp. The little man was looking up at him.
'Nineteen days in Ooo.' He did the math without meaning to. 'I got lightning, a princess making me a sword, and a kid keeping score of my broken stuff on his doorframe. And the mountain took one look at me and went, nah, the short one.'
He laughed a little, out loud, because it was kind of funny.
'Which is fine.' He took a candy shrimp out of his pocket and ate it. 'That's the correct answer. I'd have picked Finn too.'
He sat down on a rock next to the gate and stretched his legs out.
"So," he said to the little man. "Do you get a lot of visitors?"