Mythlands: THE HEIST

Enter ... The Gingerbread Man

Colditz Castle, the Magic Forrest.

It is said that achieving legendary status in the imagination of the mortal realms would guarantee your place in the Mythlands. This was as true for places and buildings as it was for creatures. The original Colditz Castle still sat where it always had on Earth, but it's Mythical Double had found its way to the edge of the Magic Forrest.

After time, some imps and ogres had found it and started squatting. When MCI began to organize the realm, law and authority had come to the area and the castle had been repurposed.

'Strangely ironic,' thought Gustav aloud as he stood, leaning against his guard box on the far end of the bridge, sipping a bottle of cider. The bridge was a new build, though done in suitably Germanic style - new because the land surrounding the castle was different to it's mortal counterpart and this bridge spanned a large river moat.

'What is?' asked the fair haired girl in her soft lilting accent. She had been coming here for the past several days, delivering assorted food and drink. Gustav thought she quite fancied him as she often lingered to talk.

'Well my dear Lucinda,' he began. 'The Tortoise in all his wisdom decided to make Colditz a prison again and we have some incorrigible rascals here, I can tell you. This place is more famous than its guards ... they kept the ogres on and they hired more of us. The Warden, he's a snob, looks down on us ... supportees.'

'Supportees? Why I've never heard of such an expression.'

Gustav sniffed. 'I suppose a sophisticated girl like you is from up north, the big city I suppose?'

Lucinda said nothing, so he continued. 'We're a bit more rural in these parts. Supposedly Magic Forrest is its own realm, but everyone knows we're just the southernmost part of the Domain, under a different name. Anyway suportee ... most folk are. Take me, for the first 24 years of my life, as far as I was concerned I was just an ordinary man of Saxony ... then one day this guy, calls himself The Pied Piper turns up and offers to deal with this rat problem we'd been having in Hamlin. This would have been about 1284. So there's some shenannigans and he steals all the kids. Sad but, ya know ... you deal with things. Life goes on, new kids are born and I end up with sons, daughters and grandchildren of my own. Then around 1335, I die. No big deal. Shit happens. It was the Middle Ages and I had a good run, truth be told.'

'And then?'

'Then I wake up in a field and I'm young again. First of all I think its Heaven but soon I get hungry and need to take a dump. That's when I ran across this giant cat! Not just big, massive, size of a hut. If I hadn't already been squatting down, I would've shat my britches!'

Lucinda nodded. 'Sounds like the Yule Cat.'

'Yeah, that's the one. Decent critter when you get to know him, but at the time I'm just this ignorant peasant and it freaked me out. Eventually I get clued in ... turns out I wasn't real in the first place ... not real, real. I was just some fricken background villager in the god damn Pied Piper's story. When he got brought here, however the hell that was, we Hamliners ... his bloody supporting cast, we fetched up here too. Truth be told, 80% of the Mythlands are made up of supporting cast rather than 'characters' ... hence suportees.'

'Ah I see. Well I suppose I'm somewhat sympathetic. I'm from the 16th century myself.'

'Do you know whose story?'

'No story,' she replied.

'So you're a character?' he answered with a scowl. Then added hastily. 'I wouldn't mind if you were. I find you quite attractive. Don't know why I'm being so blunt. Come to think of it I'm not usually this chatty.'

She smiled. 'Well I'm sorry to say that this will be the effects of the poison I put in your cider.'

Gustav turned pale. 'Lucinda! Why?'

'For one thing my name is not Lucinda and I'm not a character. I was actually real before I came here. You told me you've read a lot since arriving. Maybe you've heard of Lucrezia Borgia.'

Gustav collapsed to his knees.

'Ah I see from your expression, you know me.' She held out two vials. 'The blue one will counteract the poison's effects on your cells long enough for you to tell me the layout beyond the main gate and how to penetrate to the maximum security level below the dungeon. If you do so, I'll give you the red vial and you will live.'

Gustav gulped down the blue potion and began to recover. 'I'll tell you, but you'll never get past the ogres at the gate, let alone beyond ...' he stopped and gawped as a gigantic cyclops with a club emerged from the trees, followed by other beasts from Greek and Norse mythology. Titans, Harpies, Sirens, Trolls, Dark Elves and more.

Lucrezia grinned. 'The harpies will fly over the walls carrying elven beserkers while the rest smash their way inside. Now tell me what I need to know.'

'But ... there is only one prisoner down there. A homicidal maniac, kept shackled in an iron lung, his jaw bound in a muzzle. Two dozen elite guards who used to work for the Evil Queen stand between the upper levels and the special prisoner.'

Is there magic?'

'No ... No magic, but the castle's insides are fortified with tungsten steel, electronic tripwires, multiple redundancy alarms and lazer grids. All the paraphernalia and more of what they call in the modern mortal realm, a supermax facility!'

'We have planned for this. The Master has been contemplating the recruitment of the special prisoner for many months and now is the time. In truth I know the base layout. What I need is a guide through the security system. Grogsmyr, bring him.'

Grogsmyr the troll grabbed Gustav by the arm and the attacking monsters strode towards the bridge.

'Be of good cheer,' Lucrezia told him. 'Once the beast has been freed, we shall give you the vial and let you go so you can report this tale and inform the lands that Lucrezia Borgia has returned and that they should beware my wrath!'

Gustav looked into the ice blue eyes of the woman he had fancied and saw only a soulless monster. 'Ohmigod, you really intend to do it, don't you? You're going to release the Gingerbread Man!!'