Chapter 3

Thrag and his compatriots stormed up from the dungeon like a storm and flew through the air like a powerful gust of wind full of adventurers.

“To Leafy Barkendel!” shouted Thrag bravely as they piled out. His masculine voice throbbed through the city of Shralala, and  Glowing Elves erupted into the streets and surrounded them.

Marandas, the elf captain strode forward. “Well now, prisoners,  we thought we could just walk out of town now didn’t we?”

Thrag furrowed his brow. “But, you can just walk out of town.”

“Well of course I can,” said Marandas. “You thought you could!”

“No, we didn’t, we’re ready to fight!” said Alrguth, drawing her machete.

“What I’m saying is you can’t just walk out of town!” said Marandas.

“We know that!”

“Idiots!” hissed Sithius. “We can’t fight a hundred Glowing Elves! We must try other means, such as-” he swung his arms in a circle and sparks flew from his fingertips. “This!”

The elves backed away with gasps of astonishment.

“I’m warning you! I’ll burn you all!”

Thrag turned to him, aghast. “Will you, really?

“Yes, yes,” hissed Sithius. “Beware!”

“Well,” Thrag gestured impatiently with his sword. “Go on and burn them.”

Sithius grew a ball of lightning in front of his concave little chest, and all the Glowing Elves just stood there and waited to be attacked. He cocked his arm to throw it at them, and a collective gasp burst from the Elves’ succulent lipses. Thrag was horrified by Sithius’ awesome power; Alrguth’s sexy eyeballs were shiny with triumph; and Lady Rinda ducked under the statue of the Elven Goddess Tressa, deity of rinsing and repeating.

“Wait!” Marandas screamed as the ball of lightning erupted on him.

The world flashed, and the Glowing Elves fell down, and Thrag kept his eyes open to prove to Alrguth that he was strong, despite his ogretooth and his sensitive lower phalanges. Yet Thrag saw something he could never explain.

When the explosion stopped exploding, and the Glowing Elves all stood up, and his father Rinda came out from under the statue and Alrguth opened her shiny triumphant eyes, what they all saw was something indescribable.

“How could this have happened?” Sithius hissiussed.

“I tried to warn you, wizard fool!” snapped Marandas. “This is exactly how your uncle died.”

Thrag flexed his eyeballs and tightened his quads, because the seenery he could see was too much for him to see.

Chapter 2 part 5

“Weren’t any of you paying attention on the way in?” shouted Sithius in an angry hiss like a viper spitting. 

“It’s not so simple!” said Lady Rinda. “The Glowing Elves have mysterious powers of confusion and bewilderment. We may never find our way out!” 

Thrag grunted and flexed his glistening muscles as he opened another door. The group had wandered the dungeons of Shalanra for hours now, and every route they took seemed to lead them right back to their cell. 

“It seems I was wrong,” said Alrguth, straining her corset to the limits with every word. “The cell was not made of wood, but was in fact made of… our own minds!” 

Thrag tried to flex his mind and felt a pinch. He wiped a drop of blood from his nose. “How do we get out of a mind cell?” he bellowed. “We’ll never get to Leafy Barkendel at this rate!” 

“Quiet son…ny boy,” said Rinda. “We’ll defeat this witchcraft!”

“WItch!” Thrag reached for his axe, but it was gone along with all their weapons. 

“So, we are in a dream then?” said Sithius, stroking his chin. “Hmmmm. Let me think for a moment.” 

While Sithius thought, Thrag tried not to stare to hard at Alrguth. Sometimes she looked back at him, and he turned away, hoping she didn’t notice his horrifying ogre tooth. Because of ogre blood in his family, sometimes a child was cursed with a deformed tooth that jutted up out of the mouth in a jagged spike. Much like that of an ogre. Thrag was afflicted with such a tooth. It was so large and unwieldy that he could barely hide it by closing his mouth! His chest rippled in sorrow. 

“What was the True Warrior test like, anyway?” Thrag asked, 

Alrguth sighed. “There were three essay questions that I had an hour to answer. I was only expecting two! But still, I answered well!”

“Questions?” questioned Thrag, confused. 

“Yes. Why are you deserving of the title ‘True Warrior’? Describe your weapons of choice, and why. And Describe in your own words the the texture and smell of the bowels of a blag dragon.” She threw up her hands. “I’ve never taken the time to cut open the black dragons I’ve killed!” 

“Hmm,” Thrag reflected, wondering how long it would take to learn to write. 

“I’ve got it!” shouted Sithius with a hiss. 

“What?” they all said. 

“A plan!” Sithius answered. “We’re in a dream, yes? 

“Yes,” said lady Rinda. “I believe so, a dream of sorts, yes.”

“Well then,” Sithius steepled his fingers and waggled his eyes shiftily. “What’s the one thing you can’t do in a dream?”

“Pee?” 

“Read?”

Alrguth held up a finger. “Die!” 

“Yes,” nodded Sithius. “No one has every died in a dream, you always wake up first.”

“So…” said Thrag, figuringly. “We have to pretend to die?” 

“No, we must really believe we are dying, or we won’t wake up.” 

Lady Rinda nodded. “It makes sense. Thrag, come here so I can strangle you.” 

“Not before I crush your skull, dad..aist… yeah! You dadaist! 

Thrag flew at his father and they collided in a tangle of flailing limbs and spraying blood. In a few wild moments, Thrag stood over his fathers crumpled, dainty form. 

“So, uh,” he said, wiping blood off his face. “Shouldn’t he-she, wake up, or disappear or something?” 

“Ah, well,” Sithius shifted. “I was hoping we’d discuss this before you, ah-“

“Liar! You tricked me!” Thrag vowed in his head to slay all liars, then flew at Sithius in a windmill of fists. Soon the shadowy man lay in a broken heap on the floor. 

“Am I next?” said Alrguth. 

“No, I could never kill a Lady.” 

Alrguth eyed Lady Rinda’s corpse. “Uh, yeah. Well, that isn’t our only option.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Well.” Alrguth strode sexily up to Thrag and placed her hand on his glistening chest. “There’s one other thing you can never do in a dream without waking up.” 

“Oh?”

Alrguth’s hand slipped lower.

“Ohh..” 

Two minutes later Thrag’s eyes popped open and he sat up with a shout. Sithius and his father stood over him. 

“I knew it would work!” said Sithius. 

Thrag looked around at the familiar cell. “But we’re still here!” 

“Yes,” said Rinda. “But now we’re really here.” 

“What about her?” Sithius looked laciviously at Alrguth’s sleeping form. “She’ll have to kill herself somehow, I guess.” 

“Uh… Yeah.” Thrag adjusted his pants. 

“Something’s happening!” said Rinda. 

Alrguth breathed heavily and squirmed on her bed, then sat up with a shout. 

“You’re here!” shouted Thrag. “But how did you… uh..”

“I can take care of my self,” said Alrguth, flipping her hair. “Now, let’s get out of here… for real!” 

 

Chapter 2: Part 4

Thrag turned and laid his masculine eyes on the succulent beauty that stood outside the wooden gate. She had skin and hair and breasts and his gaze slid all over them. “Who are you?” 

“You may call me Alrguth,” she said with a soft and sexy grunt. “Alrguth Moonbeam.”

Thrag ached at her beauty. He imagined she and he running through fields of goblin corpses, drinking their blood from crushed skulls together. But it could never be. Once she saw his ogre tooth she would turn away in disgust, just like they all did.  No one understood him. If only they could see past his appearance and get to know the real him. Thrag’s sleek, bulging chest and six-pack abs flexed melancholyly.

“I know how to get you out of here,” continued Alrguth. With every word her corset seemed about to burst and spill lovely pale chest all over the floor. 

“But why would you help us?” Growled Thrag. 

“Because the Glowing Elves are a fraud!” 

Everyone gasped. 

“That’s right,” she continued. “I took the True Warrior test and they failed me. Me! I slayed fifty dwarves at the Battle of Hydra Gulch, and scalped one hundred orcs in the War of the Thousand Skies! Who are they to deny me!” 

Thrag’s heart got hard and painful in his chest. “You… you are here for the test, too?” 

“Of course the test is a fraud,” hissed Sithius, steepleing his fingers and gazing shiftily at them. “The elves are thin and frail and enjoy having the power to decide who is called a warrior. But I know how you can force them to give you your titles.”

“How?” said Alrguth and Thrag at once. 

“In Leafy Barkendel, among the sprites and satyr’s, there lies a cage. And that which is trapped inside, only a true warrior may free.” 

Lady Rinda gasped. “You mean the Time-Steel Cage of Tears? The one that holds Vardius Klax, the Golden Demon of Thov?” 

“No,” said Sithius. “It’s a different cage.” 

“Oh,” said Rinda, relievedly. “Because setting loose the Golden Demon of Thov would be a terrible, terrible idea! Now young lady, how are you suggesting we get out of here?” 

Alrguth gripped the wooden bars of the cell. “There is a little known secret about wood. A weakness that it has.” 

“Yes,” said Sithius, exasperatedly. “I know, fire, just let me do my thing.”

“That weakness,” said Alrguth. “Is strength!” With a shout that sent shivers through Thrag’s pants, she snapped the bars in two. “Let’s go!” 

“To Leavy Barkendel!” shouted Thrag. “We’ll prove what True Warriors we are!”

“Yes,” said Sithius, smiling secretively. “Yes… you will.” 

Chapter 2, Part 3

“Sithius!” alarmed Thrag. “You didn’t have to answer the elf questions?” He punched the marble wall of a braiding chapel. “This is absurd!”

“No, you buffoon,” Sithius said villainfully. “They don’t even know I’m here!”

“Stop right there, criminal scum!” sang the lithe archer-guard with long silver hair and ethereal violet eyes.

“Marandas!” said Sithius, smirking fiendishly. “Prepare to die.” He summoned the dark spirits of the forest, who appeared as he had, though without the cloak ensemble. It was a horde of mighty fairies, the spirits of the forest, protectors of all trees, forests, and woods.

Thrag drew his lightning-like wakizashis from the scabbards crossed on his back. “GRAAAHHH!” came his masculine war cry. Thrag hated faereys. His former lover had been kidnapped by fayeries when she was a girl and turned into a faegherey. He hadn’t made love with anyone since, and for that, he swore to kill all fayereighs he ever came across.

“Get them!” Marandas shouted, pointing at Sithius, the feighery horde, and Thrag. Lady Rinda tried to sneak away, but Marandas and his team of cultured warriors caught him by the sultry, seductive hips.

Also they caught the others, too.

###

“GRAAAHHH!” said Thrag’s war cry, defeatedly echoing throughout the dungeon. “How could you get us all captured, Sithius?! We didn’t even do anything!”

“Shut up,” said Sithius.

Vardius, his evil uncle of Nosdoom, lay in an ash-pile on the ground, suffering from bigboomitis. He was about to give his final words to his nephew. “It’s in Leafy Barkendel,” he choked, then croaked.

“Noooo,” Sithius whispered hissingly. The air from his breath blew some of the uncle-ash away, so he tried to scoop it back into the pile.

“What the hell are you shouting about!” asked Lady Rinda questioningly. “We have to get out of here, before the Glowing Ones come to kill us in their torture devices .”

“Sithius, you traitor!” serioused Thrag.

“But, friends,” Sithius said, “you forget that I am invaluable to you. You see, this prison is made of a substance of which I am master. Look around! What is this?”

Thrag and his father rolled their eyes around the ring of trees that were fitted together with a combination of fayry and elf magic that made them too tight to slip through. “The Shalranranrlarlnralalrnlarlranlraaanlrlallarlnra dungeon?” shrugged Rinda.

“Yes, but what is it made of? Wood! And I, Sithius, master of magefire, shall use my magic to free us.”

“But how?” said Thrag. “Look what they’ve done to your uncle. How could they do that?!”

“I think I know,” said an opalescent figure with silvery hair and violet eyes that stood in the doorway.

Chapter 2: Part 2

Sithius floated just above the ground, his dark and mysterious cloak trailing behind him,  his hands folded in his drooping sleeves and his cowl hanging low over his sneering face. “The glowing Elves of Shanaralandalan have unjustly locked up … my … uncle, Vardius. I wish to visit him, and perhaps, with your heroic help, arrange a daring escape.”

Lady Rinda gasped daintily. “Vardius Klax, the Golden Demon of Thov?

Sithius fell to the ground and stumbled a step before resuming his cool and collected floating. “Ah no! No of course not, that’s ridiculous. I said Varnius! My grandfather’s name is Varnius.”

“You mean uncle?”

“Yes, of course, of course, that’s what I said.” Sithius nudged compatriotly at Thrag’s hairy foot. “Women, eh? They shouldn’t be allowed to hear, eh?”

Thrag’s mouth was full of charred, dead bird, but he nodded sagely.

They traveled on, until the setting sun hid behind the mountains, no longer glinting sexily off Thrag’s bulging, tanned chest. Finally, in the distance, they saw the glowing gates of Sharandalan

“Father, we’ve made it!” Thrag bellowed. Lady Rinda slapped his leg with a pale, thin-fingered, soft hand. “Ah, by my father’s ghost, we’ve made it!” Thrag corrected

Sithius seemed to shrink further into his dark and shadowy cloak. “I must go away into the woods for a moment to.. ah… meditate on the spirits of.. the forest. Yes. You go on ahead to the gate, I’ll catch up.”

Thrag nodded. He understood the need to feel at one with nature. Often he himself would go out alone into the woods to hack at trees with his daggers or set shrubs on fire. It was quite peaceful and serene to be a part of the forest.

Sithius slithered away into the dark and they approached the gate of Shladrana, its soft white light falling gently on them.

Two tall, slender, long-haired elves stood guard at the gate. “Hello travelers,” said one androgynously, as they drew near. “What is your purpose here?”

“I must take the True Warrior test!” shouted Thrag confidently.

“I see,” the elf made a mark on a piece of parchment he held. “Are either of you witches or spies?”

“How dare you!” Thrag drew his sword.

Lady Rinda put a hand on her sons arm. “Now now, Thrag, it’s just a formality, isn’t it?”

The elf nodded. “We don’t allow those kinds in here.”

“I have sworn an oath to kill all spies and witches and sorcerers and to burn all oak trees!” raged Thrag.

“I see,” said the elf repeatedly. He made another mark on his parchment. “Very well, you may enter. Please proceed to the Ancient Department of the Crystal Schedulers to set your appointment for the Test. Good luck.”

The glowing gates swung open smoothly and silently, and Thrag and his father entered the city of Shanarandle.

As they passed through the gate, Thrag thought he saw a shadow swoop past him, and felt a gust of wind. The gates shut behind he and his father, and they rounded a corner. A moment later Sithius appeared beside them.

“Hello friends,” the cowled man who was not a spy hissed.