Chapter 9: Showdown

The group of vengeance seekers finally reached the castle. Lonnie was guarding the castle and cried,

"Halt! Who goes there?"

Elliot called up,

"Hey, remember me?"

"I do, and I'm reporting you to the king immediately!"

"Let us pass without word to the king or else!"

"Or else what?!"

Elliot unveiled her secret weapon (though in Waspia it was her secret shame): her unusually strong fingers. Elliot cracked a single knuckle and it practically thundered in the air. The dwarves cringed and Lonnie was cowed into submission.

Carla asked Elliot,

"Do you have any more crazy stuff hidden like that?"

"Oooh, sometimes when I'm nervous, I'll eat too many vegetables and then..."

"Never mind!"

After dismounting, Elliot led them through the cook's quarters as they carefully made their way through the castle, steely-eyed and determined.

King Robert, whose arrogant swagger was at an all-time high, looked at the mirror and cheerfully asked it,

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most powerful of them all?"

The mirror looked slightly worried.

"You are, sir, I guess."

King Robert glowered at the mirror.

"What do you mean, 'you guess'?"

The mirror actually gulped a little.

"Well, you know the old saying, 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?' Well, try the fury of a princess and seven dwarves!"

Confused, King Robert turned around, only to face Elliot and the dwarves.

"How the hell did you get in here?!"

"We bribed the guard,"Perry replied cooly, "You don't pay him enough, so it was easy."

King Robert quickly regained his trademark evil smugness.

"Well, bless my soul, Neurotic Nellie and her Performing Midgets are here to amuse me!"

"That's 'little people'!" Doug shouted. King Robert stared menacingly at him. Doug bowed his head and murmured,

"Sir."

Unafraid (or at least trying to look it), Elliot snapped,

"We know what you did last night, Bob! You thought you could get away with it? Murder? Cover-up? Basically being a big old…"

"What Princess Babblemouth is trying to say is," Perry cut in, "you mess with one of us…"

"You mess with all of us," Carla added.

"And with Jesus!" Laverne chimed in.

"This time it's personal!" Turk shouted. He'd always wanted to say that. The mirror suddenly spoke up,

"Uh-oh, you're in trouble, sir!"

Jordan's eyes widened in surprise.

"Am I crazy, or did that mirror just talk?"

"Yes and yes," Perry replied.

It dawned on Elliot.

"A magic mirror? Is that how you did it? That's how you found SW so you could kill him?"

King Robert smiled complacently.

"Yes, you found me out. I did humanity, oh, what the heck, myself a favor by doing away with the one thing standing between me and my reign of complete power."

Elliot glared and took a step towards him.

"What would you know about power? You need to talk to a lousy piece of glass in order to feel good about yourself!"

"Doug," Perry ordered, "break out the weapons!"

Doug took the large sack he'd been carrying on his back, dumped its contents on the floor…revealing a pile of dirty laundry. Everyone stared at him, and Turk said,

"Doug, where are the weapons?"

"I thought this was it! I guess it was the wrong bag!"

"Ya think?! Didn't you notice it was kinda light for a sack full of pickaxes?!"

"I thought I'd gotten stronger somehow!"

"My, my," King Robert announced gleefully, "looks like you're all in a bit of a pickle. Guard! Lock my chamber door!"

Another guard appeared as if by magic, closed the doors and the sound of a lock pounded in the air. There was no way out. King Robert grabbed a sword from a wall display and sauntered toward them, his smile growing wider and more sincere (which was even more terrifying than his usual, phony one) .

"The Todd thinks he just messed himself!" Todd blurted out, his voice an octave higher than usual.

"No, that was me!" Doug whimpered.

"It's good to be the king," King Robert said, "I feel bad for wizards who use magic to smite their enemies. I'm much more in favor of a good-old fashioned, slice and dice dismemberment by hand, aren't you? And now..."

Before he could finish his evil monologue, King Robert doubled over in pain as a shoe smacked him right in the solar plexus. All eyes were on the normally passive Laverne, who deadpanned,

"You full-growns talk too damn much!"

Taking advantage of King Robert's temporarily weakened state, everyone sprang into action. Turk, Carla, and Perry tackled King Robert while Todd kicked the sword across the room. When it looked like King Robert would get up again, Elliot and Jordan yanked down the floor to ceiling drapes and threw them on him like a net. King Robert snarled and struggled to get up as Carla, Perry and Todd pinned him down while Turk did the "stop hitting yourself!" routine with his arm.

Todd was struggling to get a good grip on King Robert's shoulders, and Perry shouted,

"Pretend they're boobs!"

Todd did just that, King Robert was rendered practically immobile. He yelled,

"Get off me, you damn ankle biters!"

Doug, who had been nervously standing on the sidelines, took this as an inspiration, so he grabbed King Robert's ankle and sank his teeth into it. As King Robert yowled in pain (and humiliation at being pummeled by dwarves), Laverne grabbed a vase, gazed heavenward, mumbled a prayer of apology, and smashed the vase over King Robert's backside. Carla cried to Elliot,

"Hey, Elliot, what did you say wanted to do to King Robert?!"

"Oh, yeah!" Elliot cheerfully replied and promptly kicked King Robert right in the rump. That sent King Robert over the edge. He shot up, and roared incoherently as he ran and grabbed his sword. He approached them threateningly, a cruel expression darkening his brow.

"I'm going to slice you all into such little pieces, I'll be able to sprinkle your remains over a damn salad!"

Elliot stepped in front of the dwarves.

"Pick on someone your own size, ya big frick!"

"Very well."

With a speedy grace belying his effete old age, he grabbed Elliot by the shoulder and pinned her against the wall, the sword against her throat. The dwarves were rooted with horror and Elliot trembled mightily. King Robert sneered,

"Now, don't you worry, sweetheart, I'll have your funeral be open casket! That will show you that women should be seen, not heard!"

During his umpteenth evil monologue, he didn't notice that Elliot was frantically feeling around for something, anything, to use as a weapon. She finally got a good grip on a candlestick on the table next to her and swung it at him. King Robert ducked... and Elliot hit the mirror instead. The mirror shattered into a million pieces with a resounding crash. The pieces fell, but instead of scattering on the floor, they began to form a pile. The pile grew in size and width, forming what looked like a human shape. There was a blinding flash of light, and there, standing in the pile's place, was a man in a dark gray robe, and he had a familiar bald head and long face. King Robert was flabbergasted.

"What? How? Get back in your mirror or I'll…"

But the mirror man didn't answer. He pointed at King Robert and King Robert suddenly levitated up in the air, squirming and protesting vigorously. The mirror man then snapped his fingers and King Robert disappeared in a puff of smoke. Everyone coughed as the smoke cleared, and Turk asked,

"Where'd he go?"

"Oh," the mirror man said, a hint of a smile on his lips, "just… elsewhere."

King Robert coughed and waved his hands in front of his face to clear the smoke. He found himself on a wide, flat brown plain with a white sky surrounding him. He took a step, and found that the ground was hard. It was wooden, which made no sense… until he realized that it was a hardwood floor. Just then, a booming voice from above rumbled,

"Fe

Fi

Fo

Fum…"

An immense shadow covered King Robert, and he blanched as he croaked,

"Oh, crap!"

The mirror man then ran to Elliot and kneeled.

"Thank you, fair princess and intrepid dwarves. You have released me from my glass prison and granted me my freedom!"

He clumsily kissed Elliot's hand. Baffled expressions were worn by all.

"Who are you, exactly?" Elliot asked.

"I am Theodore," the mirror man replied, "and nineteen years ago I was the greatest wizard and psychic in all of Sacredheartland. Unfortunately, I was the most arrogant as well."

Perry raised a skeptical eyebrow. Theodore looked defensive.

"What? It's not that hard to believe! Anyway, the powers that be decided to take me down a peg by taking away my flowing chestnut locks. When that didn't work, they turned me into a mirror whose only ability was to show the answers to people's questions. I was forced to be King Robert's helpless, magical slave until the day I could be freed by no less than eight brave souls! That's where you guys came in."

"Whoa," Todd said in amazement and raised his hand, "deus ex machina five!"

Everyone stared at him.

"What? I know what it means!"

Theodore continued,

"I can't thank you enough. Hey, maybe..."

Theodore touched a hand to his bald head, paused, and groaned in disappointment. Then he continued,

"There's so much to catch up on! Maybe now I can get back to my fellow wizards and reunite our a cappella group! I just hope they haven't replaced me."

He then looked at Elliot,

"Princess, before I forget, there's something of great importance I must tell you about SW."

"What is it?" Elliot asked.

Out of nowhere, three other cloaked men materialized and one of them grabbed Theodore and said,

"There's our tenor! It's about time you got out of that mirror! We have a ton of practicing to do!"

"Wait, guys," Theodore protested, "I have to tell the princess something!"

"C'mon, we're now doing songs that won't be released until the 1980s!"

"Wait, Theodore!" Elliot cried. "What was it you wanted to tell me about SW?!"

But Theodore and the others vanished. Elliot's heart sank as she stood there, staring at the place Theodore had just been. Finally, she and the dwarves left the chamber and returned to the forest.