Milyza and the Dragon's Magic Mirror

Arrival at Crystal Mountain

On departure day, Nutsy helped Milyza in the morning to pack up for their journey, well at least as good as a tiny squirrel could help.. Then Ronald brought Milyza to a narrow side street, a little off the main square. There, a dirty middle aged man was waiting next to an old transport wagon. Ronald gave him a small sachet with money and the man nodded approvingly. Ronald helped Milyza get on the back of the transport wagon. The man got on the front and Milyza waved goodbye, while the wagon already started moving. Milyza layed down behind a barrel on the wooden surface, so that the guards couldn't see her when they left the castle. After a while, Milyza felt the cobblestone pavement make way for a bumpy dirt road. They must have reached the edge of the woodland, when suddenly the vehicle turned left and stopped.

Milyza tried to get up to see what was happening. But by that time the driver had already jumped on the back of the vehicle and knocked Milyza out with a straight fist in the face. Then he opened a large wooden box that was filled with dead mayflies and put Milyza inside. Her weight compressed the dead mayflies just far enough, so that the wooden lid closed above her. With a sigh, the man sat down on top of the wooden box and said: "Yes, your friend paid me to get you to the crystal mountain, but he didn't specify what should happen to you after that and in the end: who pays more wins!" He took a bunch of nails, started nailing the lid of the box closed and added: "With special regards from your humble master, the jester!"

When Milyza gained back consciousness, she felt as if she were buried alive. She tried to open the box by kicking with her hands and feet as hard as she could, but the thick wood didn't budge and she quickly had trouble breathing. So she stopped. She tried to think about the positive side of things. She was able to breath through a few small openings in the wooden box and as far as she knew, they were still on their way to the crystal mountain. She tried to relax and decided to wait for their arrival before trying other ways to escape. Luckily the dead mayflies made a soft cushioning. Time passed very slowly and it felt like an eternity until the transport wagon finally stopped. Milyza heard someone unload the barrels one after the other and overheard a conversation with at least three different speakers..

- "So many barrels! Every time they order more of this stuff. Be careful Percy! For a good reason the wizard of the present told us to handle these barrels with care. They may easily explode if their seals break and their contents get in contact with air"
- "Alright, Andy! I'll be extra careful. It's a shame that there's three wizards! One would be bad enough!"
- "Well l think, actually they are all the same wizard, they just come from different times. I've never met the wizard of the future, but I think that he is in charge of the other two."
- "Thanks Mandy for lecturing us. Don't forget about the big box. The wizard of the past told me not to deliver it to the lost aprendices."
Then the driver chimed in: "Lost apprentices, yeah right? The box is full of dead mayflies. I wonder which monster the wizard's gonna feed with that." l
And Mandy replied: "It is said that the wizard of the past used to drop apprentices down the deep ditch next to the entrance when they misbehaved and nobody ever heard from them again. If the monster eats mayflies, then it's probably some kind of reptile or snake."
- "Shut up Mandy and be happy that the wizard of the present only transformed us into man-sized mice. Yes, driver. Please give us a hand with that box!"

Milyza cried for help, but nobody paid any attention to it. Then she felt her box falling down through the air. She pressed her hands and feet against the insides of the box with all her strength and luckily the box fell legs ahead. She crashed with her box into a heap of something and luckily the lid got kicked open on one side. Milyza kicked against it with her feet until the lid finally fell off and landed a little further down in the heap with a crashing sound. It was already quite dark and Milyza could not see what the heap was made of. But she wanted to get out and away as fast as she could, just on case there really was a monster.

She stepped out of the box and started running, when she realized that the heap was crushing below her feet and the sound was somehow familiar. She reached down and picked something up, just to let it drop again immediately once she realized what it was: human bone. She ran even faster, draining from an inner strength that she had never felt before. She tried not to imagine what kind of monster would leave a heap of human bone of that size, closed her eyes and just kept running. She crashed into the wall of the ditch and luckily felt some thick roots between her fingers. She grabbed the roots with both hands, climbed up the ditch and after a short while stood sweating in front of the huge entrance to the crystal mountain. Relieved she wiped the sweat off her face, but when her hand touched her hair she felt something strange.. "Take this you ugly six legged beast!" Nutsy shouted, throwing a big nut at the palm-sized spider and luckily it fell off. Milyza tried to step on it quickly, but missed and the spider quickly crawled back down the ditch.