Prologue
A loud roaring sound woke Lyvia up and she sat up groggily. Where was she? She has a splitting headache and touched her forehead. It was tender, swollen and slightly warm to her touch, as if she fell on something or something hit her.
She looked around her. Everything looked foreign. Strange.
Something shiny roared past her and she recoiled, scrambling back on the hard, strange ground. Was that a monster? What was that ground she was sitting on? It was hard, rough and like nothing she has seen or touched before. She checked her limbs and body. She didn’t seem to have broken anything.
“Princess! Princess Lyvia! Where are you??” she heard Jinna calling to her from somewhere behind her.
Clutching her tender head, she slowly got up, swaying slightly and turned towards Jinna’s voice.
“I’m here, where are you Jinna?” she called back.
She looked around her.
There were tall structures everywhere. Some were shiny, reflecting the sunlight as if covered in mirrors, while others seemed to have hundreds of squares of mirrors, like eyes, glinting at her.
The hard grey ground she was standing on seemed to extend endlessly both ways. Trees lined the sides of the grey strip of ground but there was hardly any grass.
What foreign land has she landed on? What happened to her? She shook her head. She couldn’t remember anything before waking up here.
Another metal beast roared past her and she took another step back. She noticed there were people inside the metal beast. Have they been eaten by the beast?
Suddenly something gripped her shoulder and on reflex, she grabbed it, twisted it and almost threw the assailant on the ground when Jinna’s soft cries stopped her.
“Princess, ow ow ow, it’s me,” Jinna cried. Lyvia released her sheepishly.
“Sorry Jinna, I am not quite feeling myself. Where are we? What happened to us? How did we end up here?” she asked as she looked around again. There was another phallic structure stretching up to the skies behind them. Like the strange ground, it was grey and looked unyielding with rows of little squares of mirrors.
There were no other humans around. It was a strange land indeed.
“Princess, don’t you remember? You wanted to escape the suitor, you ran and I followed you and then as we turned the corner at the garden, the ground suddenly opened up and we fell,” Jinna said.
That was strange indeed. This does not look like the palace gardens. Lyvia turned all around and tried to see if the palace was peeking out from any of the tall structures. She couldn’t see it. There was nothing familiar about this place.
“So, now what do we do? How do we get home?” she asked Jinna but Jinna seemed on the verge of tears.
“I don’t know Princess. I will get into trouble if I don’t get you back soon. The Queen will punish me for not taking good care of you,” Jinna said as she wrung her hands, tears spilling onto her delicate cheeks.
“Oh Jinna. Don’t worry, I will get us out of here,” Lyvia said reassuringly as she tried to formulate a plan.
On the other hand, she is secretly pleased. Nothing screamed of adventure more than suddenly waking up in a strange land. Maybe there will be dragons and evil warlords. If there are fast moving metal beasts that devoured people, surely there are dragons too.
She grabbed Jinna’s hands and started walking.
