[Sticks]

Prologue

Good day dear and gentle reader, it has been quite a while since we last met and had a tale centred around the Mystical Realms.

Indeed much has happened since we last met, dear and gentle reader, and if you have not caught up with the events of the previous saga, take you time to visit here first. I’ll still be here dear and gentle reader, I can wait.

..ooO0Ooo..

We all caught up at last? - Good!

When Earth fell in the unexpected war between Earth and the Mystical Realms, it was a great shock to one and all. How could a technologically advanced civilisation be defeated by creatures formed from our own myths, fables and fantasy literature? But so it was. With unlimited supplies of man’s most lethal nuclear weapons, the ability to deliver them anywhere with impunity, with no fear of retaliation, humanity never stood a chance and so the leaders of Earth had no option but to surrender to save as many lives as possible.

The Earth now belongs to Brameana, the daughter of the supposedly long dead tyrant, the Lord Low Troll, not that the Lady High Troll really cared about our world. Its conquest was a merely means to an end so she could claim a throne she felt was due to her.

But wars throw up unlikely heroes and villains.

During the Rwanda conflicts, neighbours behaved abysmally and murdered even the children of their other neighbours because they belonged to the wrong ethnic group. During World War Two a manufacturer of munitions in Germany assisted many Jews to survive the Nazi persecutions.

Now you may observe dear and gentle reader, that I said “supposedly long dead tyrant”, for if you have caught up on the most recent saga, (go there if you have not done so already, I can wait), you will have learned that the Lord Low Troll had not perished after all in that now long distant civil war on the Mystical Realms.

The Lord Low Troll, had by cunning somehow survived and had played dead in the wilderness of the Walong mountains. There he eked out a living in semi retirement visited only by his faithful fixer, Meetal the kobold

This small underground dweller had learned how to cope in the outside world, away from the usual subterranean places kobolds inhabit. He had served faithfully the Lord Low Troll in his hey day

He would skulk the corridors of power to warn his master of plotters, who would then be swiftly arrested and executed.

He effectively assisted the Lord Low Troll during his reign of terror, run a secret police service on the sly, and many were disappeared.

If dirty work had to be done, for which the Lord Low Troll could not be seen to be involved, step forward Meetal.

It is not known how many knew of Meetal’s culpability in propping up the regime of the Lord Low Troll. Who knew how many knocks on the door at midnight were due to Meetal spying on citizens. How many were convicted and executed for crimes they were innocent of, just for political expediency, because Meetal had planted evidence.

It is possible that only Meetal and his master the Lord Low troll kept this to themselves, if there were at all interested in keeping score.

Suffice it to say, Meetal was the archetypical lackey of a brutal dictator, looking out for his master from the shadows.

So what did Meetal get out of it? This is uncertain; maybe it was because he got to share in the opulent life style of his master, the Lord Low Troll. He did after all develop a refinement and a taste for the high life, not normally enjoyed by other kobolds.

It was also rumoured that the Lord Low Troll thought more of Meetal as a son than his own son, with whom he did not have that close a relationship with.

When the civil war came, at the prompting by the long gone Spirit of Lust, all this ended and it was hard on Meetal, Fortunately, for Meetal he had hid in the shadows and had been able to creep back into society after the civil war, unlike his master out in the wilderness. But it was not the same. The other trolls had turned their backs on his master, and forgot what he had done for them. They even dared to blacken the name of Meetal’s master and accused him of treachery.

To Meetal, The Lord Low Troll just did what needed to get the job done. So when he heard of a new player that might help restore his master’s fortune he had gone to inform his master of unfolding events. However as you will have read dear and gentle reader, events unfolded in unexpected ways.

If it were possible, the brutality of this new regime was even more than Meetal could stand, and so he pleaded with his master to be allowed to escape from the new regime and live out in the desert, hardly a place for a kobold. This regime was so brutal, Meetal was prepared to give up what little creature comforts he had left, for the life of an ascetic.

But as I said before, dear and gentle reader, wars, as in this War of the Realms, tend to throw up unlikely heroes and villains, for the Lord Low Troll had one more task for his one time minion. Meetal is to leave not only the safety and comfort of the Lord Low Troll’s secret cave, but for the first time he is to leave the Mystical Realms altogether, travel to a subjugated Earth and search for a human who had been an ally of the Lord Low Troll during his days in power.

To this human, Meetal must carry a message from the Lord Low Troll. In that search would Meetal be heroic or villainous?

When one is called from one’s comfort zone and do something extra-ordinary, how do we stand the test?

Meetal is about to find out.