A new day. Conscripts of the greedy important came to collect the blacksmith for ironwork that needed tending at the fortified citadel. The princess hastily disguised herself so no one should recognize her and said she could perform the tasks since her master was away. Ababuo gathered a bag of tools to smuggle the counterfeit sword and trusted armor inside. No sooner were they out of sight than the armorer walked by carrying buckets of coal none the wiser.
Presently the young woman passed the portcullis of the ominous stronghold, this time riding inside a coach instead of stowing away underneath it. After working in opulent halls and galleries the princess made her way to the throne room replete with beauteous spoils. The master manipulator, who cheated his brother out of his noble birthright, was thrilled to see his own image reproduced in stone, paint, and pottery, but most of all with bronze. While Ababuo restored larger-than-life monuments depicting him in absurd lionhearted poses she waited for an instant when the armed guards looked away from the sculptured glass case. In sleight of hand she surreptitiously replaced the genuine article with its impostor twin.
As the princess left the throne room she shot a steely look at the arched colonnade leading to the dungeon that swallowed her two friends lingering in living deaths. Setting her jaw firmly with great fortitude, she took the skeleton key from a pocket. The blacksmith's apprentice descended spiral staircase steps that seemed to sag under their own weight then proceeded down a sloped corridor hewn from rough rock lit at intervals by dimly burning lamps mounted in sockets on the dripping walls echoing with anguished screams and groans. Under the curious gaze of guardians she announced she was there for inspection of the prison cage doors.
Now the ruthless king was so bewitched by the enchanted golden crown and sword that he did not care about his subjects, nor care about his soldiers. He only liked to look at the magical metallurgy; and just as they say of a king, "He is in the council chamber," or, "He is meeting with advisers," they always said of him, "His Majesty the King is in his throne room."
At first the king suspected nothing about the faux sword. Sitting back in his throne watching mesmerized while resting his chin on his clasped hands he beamed, but then he opened his eyes wide and bellowed, "Incomprehensible!" In that instant guards shouted that the prisoners were escaping. From his tall mullioned windows the malevolent king glowered at the three conspirators absconding from the bleak stone edifice. Ventricles of the king's barnacled heart raged with quenchless fury coursing through his throat. He smashed the glass cocoon to brandish the false weapon. "You are not useless after all!" Horses saddled, armaments readied like rats scurrying on a woodpile, the wrathful king set out with his hundreds of boots pulling war machines on wheels to recapture the sword and then subjugate the princess's kingdom.
After thanking their watchful dragon guide for the head start and days without respite the travelers could see a cavalcade following them spurred on to raise an immense wall of dust. The collaborators journeyed onward only pausing to fill their water skins until they had almost reached jagged mountains with snow blanketed slopes divided by a narrow valley that led to the emperor's palace. A frozen crater lake with fossilized dinosaur tracks in the shore was dotted with deposited shipwrecks like garnishes on a silver platter; dragged here from the seabeds of all four oceans by currents and transported via intertwisted natural hypogean catacombs seething with deep sea creatures that never viewed light from the sun. Previously unknown aquatic life forms from the crushing depths that took refuge in the derelict ships left behind nightmare-inducing internal and external frameworks of bleached bone and dried cartilage with extended teeth, plumes, and antennas.
