Almare - The White Mirror

The bright but not warm afternoon sun hung low over the Third Kingdom. Underneath the tall tree-like beanstalks in the notorious forest, however, it may as well have been night. No light leaked through to the ground beneath the stalks, whose high canopy was perpetually covered in a thick blanket of clouds.

Acrotis walked quietly across the soft earth of the forest floor. Although the smell of the forest was not pleasant, her bare feet were grateful for the relief of the cool soil. After walking, sometimes snatching a ride on a passing wagon, nonstop for almost two whole days, her thin shoes meant for palace wear had been torn to shreds. She was starved, thirsty, and fatigued but not disheartened in the least. She knew that she was closer now with every step; closer to the Northern Lands and to the army of the Troll King Burly, whom she was going to warn of the Guardian and Virginia’s pathetic plans. Then she would be rid of them, and all the Kingdoms, forever! She smiled and her step quickened, even as she tripped on the torn hem of her once beautiful blue dress.

Suddenly she heard a noise. Halting her jogging pace, Acrotis lifted her head to listen better. The sound was coming from above her. It was of scratching and scraping, as if someone was trying to climb down a beanstalk from up high. As she listened more intently, she heard hushed voices along with the other sounds of climbing. Deep, gruff voices mingled with high, piercing ones, all obviously trying to whisper in their own pitch. And then gradually there were more scraping sounds, and more voices, until it seemed that there were thousands of people clinging to the beanstalks above her who were about to descend.

A few seconds later, she found that all this was indeed happening. As Acrotis watched, giants appeared out of the clouds, clutching onto the beanstalks for dear life and inching their way down as carefully as possible. Soon flocks of flying elves came flitting down gradually, sometimes stopping to rest by grabbing a beanstalk with their tiny arms and hanging there. After the giants and intermingled with the elves came the trolls and Sasquash, distinguishable from each other only because the Sasquash were taller and more hairy, though both species of creatures were unquestionably ugly. In the semi-darkness, they looked like so many demons coming down into the underworld.

Acrotis could barely contain her excitement. Finding the troll army had certainly not proved as difficult as she had thought it would! She had never considered that they would be hiding in the giants’ land, but it did seem like a very practical solution. The army had been camped in the Northern Lands up until a very few days ago, she guessed, and then had secretly moved to the beanstalk forest. Then they had climbed to the giants’ part of the sky (which had always been quite removed from Welkin’s part) and stayed there so that they would be near to their holographic camp but undetected. That way, if the Kingdom armies planned a surprise attack, which they undoubtedly would, the trolls’ army would be close to their fake camp, but of course not in it, when they came. Then, when the Kingdom army stormed the camp, they would have them right where they wanted them: stuck in the valley with no means of escape. It was a good plan, Acrotis thought, one that didn’t seem worthy of a troll’s mind. She was very glad they had thought of it, though - she had not been looking forward to hiking all the way up to the Northern Lands.

She spotted Burly the Troll King as soon as he stepped off a particularly thick beanstalk and onto the ground. He wore an uncanny amount of leather, more than all the rest of his troll minions, if that seemed possible. The king was completely decked out from head to foot in weaponry; several horribly twisted pieces of metal hung from a chain at his neck, five differently sized knives were unsheathed and attached to his belt, and welded to his thick black leather gloves were short iron spikes. All he had to do was shake someone’s hand to cause them serious bodily harm, and Acrotis was sure he liked it that way. Next to him and all the other monsters surrounding her, Acrotis looked desperately pale and fragile.

“Your majesty!” she cried suddenly, disturbing the hushed mood of the group. She realized too late that they were all trying to make as little noise as possible, for fear of alerting any scouts of the Kingdoms that might be lurking around. Acrotis cringed as every head turned toward her with scornful eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to everyone. Trying to ignore their piercing stares, she ran over to King Burly. He was staring at her, too, obviously surprised. Acrotis only hoped that he was pleasantly surprised, but something told her this was not so.

“Who are you?” he spat in an angry whisper, flexing his hands in their deadly gloves for emphasis.

Acrotis paused. How was she going to tell him that she was of a race of people who lived in the clouds and were about to destroy him using the forces of weather? She should have thought about how she was going to phrase herself before, but now it was too late. She would just tell him the whole truth.

“My name is Acrotis, Your Majesty,” she began. “I am, or was, from a place called Welkin, a city in the clouds. But I was exiled, and now I have come to you to help you win your war and gain revenge for myself.”

She stopped, but Burly gave her no response, except for the deepening of his frown. Most of the creatures around were watching them now. Some had stopped their descent from the beanstalks to stay quiet and listen. Increasingly nervous, Acrotis hurriedly continued.

“The people in Welkin are very powerful. More powerful than any of the armies of the Kingdoms, and more powerful than you.”

Now the king stiffened, and there were angry whispers among the people/animals in the trees.

“They are planning to destroy you, and when they find out when you are attacking and where, they will kill you all.”

Several seconds of silence followed this weighted statement. Then suddenly, to Acrotis’s surprise and dismay, the forest rang with Burly’s harsh laughter. The rest of the army hesitantly joined in.

“You mean to tell me,” the troll said between snickers, “that our army, the greatest army on the face of this earth, is about to be defeated by your imaginary people in the clouds?” He grinned widely, showing his rotting teeth. “Go suck an elf.”

“No!” Acrotis cried in distress. “It’s true! They have a Seer, Virginia’s son, who is telling them all your secret...”

Acrotis found herself on the ground so fast she didn’t know what had happened, until she reached up to her face and her hand came away bloody.

“Now I know you are lying,” King Burly hissed at her, bringing his spiked glove back down to his side again. All his minions in the stalks and on the ground cried in outrage and slinked closer to where she lay in pain.

“Virginia is the witch because of whom this war started, I’ll have you kindly remember,” he sneered, breathing on her threateningly. “She’s the one who killed my powerful father and our mighty queen! If you are telling me, and this entire army, that a piece of refuse she calls her son could possibly be a Seer,” the creatures surrounding her laughed menacingly, “then there is nothing else to be assumed except that you have sympathized with her and her wretched family.”

“You’re wrong!” Acrotis shouted, eyes wide. “I hate them as much as you do! That’s exactly why I’m telling you all...”

“No, I don’t think so,” Burly said with satisfaction. “I think, no, I know, that you are a spy come to play the part of a helpless little girl (which you obviously are anyway) to rob the trolls’ of their right for eternal victory and glory.” He narrowed his eyes at her and raised his spiked hand. “I will tell you right now that I am not going to let you succeed.”

Acrotis was smart enough to realize that there was no point in protesting. They were all bloodthirsty, caught up in the excitement of the coming battle. Nothing she said anymore would get through to them at all. The wound in her cheek, sliced by the spikes on the Troll King’s hand, still stung like it was on fire. When Burly’s upraised hand came down on her again, she had every intention of dodging it and running for all she was worth, although that probably would not get her very far anyway. She was completely surrounded with monsters ready to kill her without hesitation.

But the blow did not come. Instead, as Acrotis stared at Burly with panic evident on her fair face and her muscles tensed to sprint away, the king’s hand came slowly to his own neck. His thick fingers closed around a strangely shaped bone attached to a strand of leather, which he brought slowly to his lips.

The sound that the whistle created was unlike any Acrotis had heard before. It was a high, mournful wailing sound like a banshee would make. But there was more power woven into it, as though if someone didn’t know any better they would be compelled to stand up and follow the noise until they found the source.

In the seconds following the lone note played by the whistle, Acrotis again heard something coming down from the sky above the beanstalk forest. This time, however, it was not the sounds of climbing. It was the air being stirred by the wing beats of many huge animals coming down into the darkness.

She knew it was the dragons before she saw them. Along with that realization came fear like she had never known, the rare kind of gripping fear that only the doomed can experience.

The red dragons landed on the ground on all sides of her, where the rest of the army had hurriedly made room for them. They were surprisingly quiet on their huge wings, the size of which knocked the breath out of everyone present, even those who had seen them many times before. They filled up the cramped space between the beanstalks like elephants would fill an apartment building. Smoke and flame billowed from their nostrils and singed anyone foolish enough to stray too close. Blood red scales flowed up and down their backs and through their whip like tails. But what Acrotis noticed was their dinosaur-like teeth and claws, appallingly sharp and big... and close.

“Now you will see how Burly the Troll King handles his enemies,” the brute said in a voice that would have been a gleeful shout if the situation allowed, but instead was a strained whisper. He smiled wildly and motioned toward Acrotis as he turned to the dragons. “Eat her.”

Acrotis tried to rise to her feet, but she tripped backwards over a root sticking up out of the ground, which gave the creatures in the trees more opportunity to jeer at her and cheer the dragons on. She couldn’t have run far anyway, and deep down she knew it, but desperately she knew nothing but the need for escape. This time, however, escape was not possible.

All she could think with her frenzied mind was that she had failed. Hundreds of years of work, and it will end in this!

The scream was caught in her throat as twenty hungry titans circled and ultimately consumed the once-powerful woman who had finally met her match.