theroadtoanywhere

[theroadtoanywhere]

French ED Theme

[theroadtoanywhere]

Crowning Moments of Funny

The start of the film, in which Blane, Hinto and Orrin, disguised as fruit merchants, try to get a castle guard to let them speak to Carmen, which starts with the guard lampshading the presence of bananas in a northern part of Arc. Which then shifts to the first guard and another guard getting into a Seinfeldian Conversation about sparrows and their carrying capacity, at which point the three just give up and skip right to searching for Garnet. Really sets the tone for the story.

Guard 1: Where'd you even get the bananas?

Orrin: Uh, we found ‘em.

Guard 1: Found 'em? In the North? The banana’s tropical! This is a temperate zone!

Blane: Well, sparrows fly south for the winter! Ergo, these bananas are imported from the south.

Guard 1: ...Are you suggesting bananas migrate?

Blane: No, “imported” means “brought from”. Y’know, as in carried?

Guard 1: What? A sparrow carrying bananas?!

Orrin: If it was a sparrow, it could hold them by the stem!

Guard 1: It's not a question of where it holds them! It's a simple question of weight ratios! An eighty-five ounce bird could not carry one-point-four pound bananas!

Blane: Look, it doesn't matter! Will you go and tell the Red Queen to let us in?

Guard 1: (is silent for a moment) Listen, in order to maintain airspeed velocity, a sparrow needs to beat its wings between 16 and 19 miles per hour, right?

Hinto: (exasperatedly) Would you just-?!

Guard 1: Am I right?

Hinto: We’re not interested!

Guard 2: (interjecting) They could be carried one at a time!

Guard 1: Oh, yeah, one at a time, maybe, but not all together at once, that's my point.

Guard 2: Oh, yeah, I agree with that.

Poppy’s threats as Garnet is taking the sack holding the former to the latter’s room.

Poppy: OPEN THIS BAG OR I'LL EAT YOUR EYEBALLS!

The castle lords.

Lord: You don't scare us, human vermin! Go and soak your heads, ye seeds of stupid people! I pick my nose and wipe it on your blimp! You and your silly, so-called human trrrravelllllers! (blows raspberries)

Poppy: What a weirdo.

Blane: Now, look—

Lord: I don't wanna talk to you anymore, you empty-headed human waste dispenser! I fart in your faces! Your mother was a bonnacon and your father smelled like Limburger!

Orrin: Anybody else up there we could talk to?

Lord: No! Now leave these premises or I Shall Taunt You a second time!

And then the four get bombarded with fresh produce. "Fetch the big one!"

"AND THIS ONE IS FOR YOUR MOTHER!" [throws watermelon]

The failed attempt at entering the castle in a "Trojan Cat", namely that the lords promptly catapult the cat back out with the quintet inside.

The Freymere witch trial scene.

Mayor: What makes you think she's a witch?

Peasant 3: Well, she turned me into a toad!

Mayor: A toad?

(beat)

Peasant 3: She could’ve.

Crowd: BURN HER ANYWAY!

The mayor tries to reason with the mob with some bizarre science:

Mayor: What else do we burn apart from witches?

Villager 1: MORE witches!

Villager 2: (nudges him) Shush!

Villager 3: Wood!

Mayor: So, why do witches burn?

(very, very long pause while the villagers think)

Villager 2: 'Cause they're made of... wood?

The “trial” ends with Garnet being put to the mayor’s test, which is weighing her against a goose, because if witches float, they must be made of wood; wood and geese both float, and so must weigh the same. She fails, thanks to a hilariously off-balance scale.

Poppy: (being held by a villager) Is all this because she’s human?

The other three running towards Freymere with dramatic music, but making no ground. The movie cuts between them and the town guards watching five times before the trio suddenly get there.

"HIYAAA!"

The guard's mildly worried "Hey..." after Hinto flying kicks his fellow guard.

The three’s Roaring Rampage of Rescue, in which they beat the hell out of everyone who’s attending Garnet and Poppy’s attempted execution.

Sigal hyping up the Beast of Ganamar is given extra hilarity in the film, with an especially hammy delivery.

Sigal: And so, brave adventurers, if you do doubt your courage, come no further! For death awaits you all with big, nasty fangs!

(Cue looks of utter confusion from the kids, except Poppy)

Poppy: Bravo. (begins clapping her wings, before Garnet stops her)

The cave containing the last words of the sage Donnan, ending with the word “aaarghh”.

Hinto: What is that?!

Blane: He must’ve died at the end of it.

Hinto: If that’s the case, he wouldn’t even bother carving “Aaarghh”! He'd just say it!

Blane: Well, that’s what it says here. Unless he was dictating it and the guy who wrote it took down his death rattle.

All leading, of course, to the dramatic entrance of the Beast of Ganamar, which Orrin attempts to distract with the offer of teaching it a knock-knock joke:

Orrin: You go first.

Beast: Knock knock.

Orrin: Who's there?

Beast: ...

Orrin: HE BOUGHT IT! RUN!

[The group escape]

The trailer has nothing to do with anything in the movie adaptation, and that's why it's just as hysterical.

Narrator: ONCE! In a lifetime! There comes an animated motion picture, which changes the whole history of animated motion pictures. A film so stunning in its effect, so vast in its impact, that it profoundly affects the lives of all who see it. You flocked to see The Magic Kaleidoscope for the music. You went to The Little Godfathers to see the world of a children’s book come to life. You came to see Ryumi and the Magic Jewel for the creature designs. But this film can offer you so much more. It's not just the music, nor setting, nor character or creature designs which makes this brand new film a unique cinematic experience. It’s the animation. Yes, folks, you’ve never seen anything like this before! CGI effects with 2D effects! Fluid motion up the wazoo! Silly walks! It makes Hadi and the Magic Ring seem cheap. No expense has been spared bringing in the world's greatest animators!

Producer: Wait a minute, wait a minute. What about the plot?

Narrator: Uh, the what now?

Producer: The plot. Y’know, what the movie is about.

Narrator: Well, I haven't actually seen it...

Producer: Seriously?! You're actually sitting there telling literally everybody watching this to go see a movie you haven't even seen?!

Narrator: Well, I can't go and watch every movie I narrate the trailer for!

[theroadtoanywhere]

The Road to Anywhere movie plot

The surreal continent of Arc, where humans are considered animals and keeping one as a pet is reserved only for the wealthy, is divided into four territories: the Red Lands, the Blue City, the Green Country and the Yellow Kingdom. The story begins proper with Princess Garnet, who lives with her possessive “momma”, Queen Carmen, the ruler of the Red Lands. One day, after meeting and playing with a strange boy, Garnet saves Poppy, a harpy-like creature, from being served for dinner, and hides her in her room. Poppy tells Garnet of the wonders of the world outside the palace; Intrigued, Garnet asks Carmen for permission to head out to explore, but Carmen refuses, claiming that life in the palace is better than anything in the outside world. Later, an anchor from an airship, the Luminus, crashes into her room. Garnet and Poppy quickly meet three other humans, Hinto, Orrin and the boy from earlier, Blane, who spirit them away aboard the Luminus and inform Garnet that she is not the Red Queen’s daughter, but a pet. She learns that the trio were also once pets of the three other rulers of Arc, Baron Marlais, Duchess Cloris and Count Aneirin; Blane had accidentally discovered the truth of his upbringing, and has stolen Aneirin’s magical compass, which can guide its user to various places in Arc, before rescuing Hinto and Orrin and stealing the Luminus from Cloris. They convince Garnet and Poppy to join them in their search for a new home where they can be free. The five visit several locations in Arc, first coming to a castle whose occupants taunt them, driving them back with a barrage of fruits and vegetables. They concoct a plan to sneak in using a Trojan Cat, but it is flung back out with them inside. Next, they avoid getting devoured by a Hydra-like beast by fleeing while the heads are arguing. Unbeknownst to them, their activities are being monitored by Empress DeVoid, a demon sorceress who is attempting to acquire the compass herself. Carmen, Marlais, Cloris and Aneirin also contact her to consult her for her aid in recapturing the quintet. Communicating to the group through the Luminus’s broken radio, DeVoid convinces them to come to her lair, the “Fortress of Lost Dreams”. To find it, they must first seek the enchantress Sigal, who knows the way to the Cave of Ganamar where the location of the Fortress is said to be written. Using the compass to find Sigal, they fly through a stormcloud, and Garnet and Poppy accidentally fall from the Luminus and land in the superstitious village of Freymere, where Garnet is accused of being a witch and subjected to an impromptu witch trial. However, the other three manage to locate Garnet and Poppy with the compass and rescue them. In a mountainous region, they meet Sigal, who informs them of a prophecy involving “two youths and two maidens” coming together to destroy the “fiends of Arc” and subsequently leading Arc into a new age of coexistence, before she directs them to the Cave of Ganamar, which is home to the Beast of Ganamar. Inside the cave, they find an inscription directing them to the Fortress of Lost Dreams, yet warning them of “great peril” within. As they discuss this, the Beast attacks, but the quintet escape with the help of the compass. After surviving an encounter with a gigantic “skymaid” who wears the Luminus like a hat, they reach the Fortress of Lost Dreams. There, they are lured into a trap by DeVoid, who takes the compass and uses it to summon the four rulers of Arc while the five are imprisoned in a cage at the bottom of a well, but Poppy manages to escape and retrieve the keys to their prison. As they make their way to DeVoid’s laboratory, they overhear her henchmen discussing her plans to combine the compass and a magic wand into a miniature scepter which opens gateways to realms outside Arc, allowing her to dominate the Cosmic Garden, Arc’s spirit world and the realm of the benevolent goddess Lady Alba, who banished her to the Fortress of Lost Dreams. As DeVoid combines the compass and wand before using her magic to fuse with the four rulers, becoming the Black Specter, the quintet steal the scepter, and throw dreams that DeVoid has bottled at the fusion, summoning various warriors, monsters and fighting machines born from imagination. However, the Specter has no trouble overpowering them all. As a last resort, Garnet uses the scepter to open up a portal leading to somewhere as far away as she could imagine: an asteroid in deep space. The Specter is sucked away to its death, and the group are nearly pulled through as well, until Alba appears and closes the portal. She then invites the five to live with her in the Cosmic Garden, but they decline, deciding instead to remain in Arc to ensure that humans will be allowed the rights of citizens, which Alba allows before departing, leaving them the scepter. After leaving the Fortress of Lost Dreams, the heroes meet up with Sigal, who reveals that she sent them to DeVoid deliberately to fulfill the prophecy. Realizing that they have new responsibilities as the new rulers of Arc after its former rulers’ deaths, the group begin to make preparations to spread the news with the scepter’s help, looking forward to their future. They are then seen from above as their figures grow smaller and the scene becomes a map of the whole of Arc, before it is rolled up by Alba.

[theroadtoanywhere]

The Road to Anywhere: The Full Story

Prologue

For as long as I could remember, my life was something that pleased me and my Momma, the Red Queen. In fact, it never even once occurred to me why I looked... different from her.

I stood behind her, sat beside her. After lunch each day, I would be sent to my room to play with my toys. My life as a princess was divided into periods: I’d wake up, I’d eat, I’d play, I’d bathe, I’d sleep.

There were no windows anywhere in the palace. Not that I minded, though, since Momma told me life was better here, and that I didn’t need to go outside.

My Momma knew everything and she’d always take care of everything.

At least, she said she was my momma.

What a lie that was.

Chapter 1

It all began one day when, after lunch, I went to my room to play with my toys.

That’s what I was doing when I heard the sound from above.

Whiiiirrrr...

I had never heard anything like that before.

Whiiiiirrrr...!

Is that getting louder? I remember thinking, before...

CRASH!

Right at that moment, a strange, big metal thing on a chain fell through my ceiling. It looked like the letter ‘T’ with hooks at the bottom.

It was followed by a boy jumping down through the hole it’d left, a cord attached to him. I’d never seen him before. I’d never seen the color he was wearing before, either. I thought that Red and Pink were the only two colors there was. This new color looked... well, cold. At least, it reminded me of coldness.

Aside from the cold color, his clothes were also odd. He wore a vest with a hood and short pants, and he had no shoes on, only wrappings. (Then again, I wasn’t wearing any shoes either.) Was this boy what Momma would call a ‘peasant’?

He looked me over and said “Are you Garnet?”

I was tempted to ask How did you know my name?, but I was so surprised at what just happened, and what was happening now, that I just replied, “Y-Yeah.”

“Okay then, come along with us,” he said, putting an arm around my waist. “We’re running away together”

I could hear Momma and her guards coming. They must have heard the noise from my room. “But what about-”

Before I could finish, he tugged at the cord. It jerked him upwards, taking me along with him.

I looked down just in time to see Momma through the hole the boy’s metal thing had made. She didn’t look scared or worried for me. She actually looked really mad.

Outside, it was warm. The sky was the same color as the boy’s clothing, with fluffy, floating things without any color, and a big ball of light that hurt to look directly at. The cord pulling us up came from a flying thing, which was like my toy boat but gigantic, attached to an even bigger balloon, hovering above the palace.

We were hauled aboard the boat by what I later learned was called a ‘winch’. Two others were there, another boy and a girl, each dressed in another unfamiliar color. The other boy wore a color that reminded me of the big light-ball in the sky, while the girl wore a darker color that was kinda similar, but not quite. She was dark-skinned, and she wore a vest and had no pants or skirt, just two strips of cloth that hung down in the front and back of her bare legs. He had on puffy, short sleeves and pants with toeless leggings, and wore a strange hat.

They helped the two of us aboard, then shut the door behind us. “Cast off!” the boy in the funny hat exclaimed.

I was a little scared, but also curious. While they pulled up the ‘anchor’ (Because that’s what they called the metal thing.), I took a look around.

The boat had a small house in the back, and near that was a large, round thing. The boy in the funny hat came over and spun it. “Let’s go!”

The boat turned in the direction the round thing was spun, and it flew away from the palace. 

When we were a good ways away, I asked “So, where are we going?”

“Anywhere that’s safe from people like that tyrant.” the boy who brought me aboard the boat replied.

“Tyrant?!” I was shocked at what he said. “How could you say that about my Momma?”

What the boy in the funny hat said next startled me even more. “Princess... the Red Queen isn’t your mother.”

“What?” I couldn’t believe what I just heard.

“She’s your master,” he said. “At least, she was, but hey, you’re free now! We’re all free, here.”

“What are you talking about?”

They then told me everything, about the world, about themselves, about the flying boat that they called the Luminus, and how they found each other and me.

First, the realm of Arc was divided into four: the Red Lands (where I lived before they came to get me), the Blue City (where the hooded boy was from), the Green Country (where the girl was from) and the Yellow Kingdom (where the boy in the funny hat was from). Humans (that’s what they called people like us) were like any other animal here, except that rich folk (like my ‘Momma’) were allowed to keep them as pets.

The boy in the funny hat was called Blane. By mistake, he had learned the truth about a man he had called his ‘father’, the Yellow Count, who also owned a tool called a compass. From what I was told, compasses normally point in only one direction so that you know where you are. But this one was special; It could point in the direction of wherever you wanted or needed to go. When Blane escaped, he stole the compass, which led him to the other two.

Hinto was the hooded boy’s name. He was trapped in some place called a ‘zoo’, after being captured by the Blue Baron. Blane met him there, and rescued him.

The girl, Orrin, was also in a zoo, which was owned by the Green Duchess. The Duchess also owned the Luminus, which they stole after freeing Orrin, and before the Compass led them to me. They only learned my name when they overheard the palace guards talking about me and the Red Queen, how I’d been ‘adopted’ after my real Momma died.

Now here we were, the four of us on what was called an ‘airship’, and they were asking me to join them in looking for somewhere, anywhere that they could be free.

“So, what do you think?” Blane said to me. “You up for adventure?”

When you’ve spent your entire life in one place, following a routine, only for you to suddenly leave that place, with that routine broken, the change actually feels nice. Was this what being free really felt like? Nobody telling you what to do, how to act? I had heard of freedom from the Red Queen’s subjects, but to actually feel it sent a chill up my spine, yet at the same time it felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. 

“Okay,” I nodded. “I’m in.” The other three smiled. I smiled too.

And that was how, for the first time in my life, I found new friends.

Chapter 2

There’s a castle somewhere on the outskirts of the Yellow Kingdom. We parked the Luminus next to it and walked up to the door. It was locked.

“Hello?” Blane called out. There was no reply.

“Anybody there?” I called. A strange face appeared at the top of the rampart. It looked like his helmet was his head, and he had holes instead of eyes. He called back to us: “Hello! Who’s this, now?”

“We’re just travelers,” Blane lied. “Who lives here?”

“It’s our castle,” the man responded. “We are all its proud lords and masters. What of it?”

“Not much,” Blane explained. “Just let us stay here for a while, and-”

“Out of the question!” the man exclaimed. “You are human-types! You are so far below us, you lowly little garbage man!”

“Okay, that’s it. I’ll show them what we humans can do.” Hinto started to march up to the door, but Blane stopped him.

“You don't scare us, human vermin!” the man boasted. “Go and soak your heads, ye seeds of stupid people! I pick my nose and wipe it on your blimp! You and your silly, so-called human trrrravelllllers!” He trilled the Rs, and somehow, the Ls in travelers, before making a rude noise by sticking his tongue out and blowing.

“What a weirdo.” I said to Blane, who I noticed was getting irritated. “Now look-” he began.

“I don't wanna talk to you anymore, you empty-headed human waste dispenser!” the man interrupted. “I fart in your faces! Your mother was a bonnacon and your father smelled like Limburger!”

I didn’t understand half of what he just said. Orrin called up to him “Anybody else up there we could talk to?”

“No,” he replied. “Now leave these premises, or I shall taunt you a second time!”

“Okay, look,” Blane declared. “We need a place to stay, so we're not going anywhere until-”

BOING!

It was at this moment that a large round thing (I later learned that it was called a ‘pumpkin’) was launched over the rampart.

“OH, DEAR GODDESS!!!” Blane shouted.

We all scattered as the thing smashed on the ground. Before we knew it, they were throwing fruits and vegetables at us while cackling like maniacs. In the end, we ran for it.

“So, what now?” I asked once we were out of their throwing distance.

“We can’t just straight up go in there,” Hinto said. “Unless we sneak in there...”

After a while (don’t ask how long) we had this large wooden creature (”It’s a cat,” Hinto said) built and ready for action. We made it hollow, so that we could go inside it. We rolled it up to the door, and hid inside it before they could see us.

Outside, we heard the door open, and then them talking, before the whole thing started to move with us inside.

Once we felt it come to a stop, Blane whispered “So, now what?”

“Now, we wait for the perfect chance to jump out, and-” Hinto started to explain, when suddenly...

BOING!

Everything lurched. We all screamed. It was pretty scary. Then, with a crash, we landed.

They had just launched us out of the castle.

So we gave up on trying to get in.

In a jungle somewhere in the Green Country, there lives a monster with seven heads. We learned this the hard way when we were trying to see if we could build a house for ourselves.

We were planning on what kind of house it should be, when it came bounding over.

“Halt!” it said. “Who art thou?”

“We’re just passing through.” Orrin replied.

“Human travelers, eh?” One of the heads said. “In that case, I shall have to kill you.”

“Shall I?” another head asked.

“I think not.” a third head objected.

“Well, what do I think?” the second head proposed.

“I think kill them.” yet another head joined the conversation.

“Oh, let's be nice to these kids.” the third head suggested.

“Oh, shut up.” the leaderly head grumbled.

“Could we just-” Blane began.

“And you too.” the leaderly head interrupted.

“Come on, let’s bite their heads off!” the fourth head said.

“Oh, bite your own head off!” a fifth head barked.

“Yes, do us all a favor!” A sixth one agreed.

While the heads argued, we snuck back to the Luminus and left.

The Luminus had this box thing that was called a ‘radio’. When the airship was stolen, that radio was broken so nobody could use it to track us down.

Which is why, as we were trying to figure out our next move, we were stunned to hear it come back to life, even though it was beyond fixing.

A female voice came out of it, clear as crystal. “Little ones,” it cooed. “Listen close and listen well. I know of someone who can help you.”

“Oh, really?” Hinto was suspicious, and I can’t say I wasn’t, too. “Who would help people like us?”

Her response was a surprise. “Another of your kind. A wild woman. The enchantress Sigal.”

“Another human?!” Orrin gasped.

The voice continued. “She knows of a cave which no one has entered. Wherein is carved the location of a most wonderful haven. Seek you the Fortress of Lost Dreams...”

And with that, the radio made a crackling noise, then was silent.

“The Fortress of Lost Dreams?” I didn’t know what to make of it and, from the others’ expressions, neither did they.

“It is kinda suspicious,” Blane said. “What do you think?”

“Maybe it’s a sign from the Goddess!” Orrin suggested.

“Yeah, it was a woman speaking to us,” said Hinto. “And the radio should be dead.”

“Well, I guess it’s worth a shot.” Blane decided with a shrug.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Let’s go!”

And off we went.

Chapter 3

The one thing we didn’t count on, when we told the compass to take us to Sigal, was flying straight through what was called a ‘stormcloud’.

During my time in the Red Palace, I had heard the occasional storm. I listened to the booming thunder from my bedroom.

But here, out in the open, there were also these flashes of light that came with the thunder, called ‘lightning’. Water also seemed to fall from the sky.

“Just a little storm,” Blane called out. “No big deal!”

The thunder was louder here than in the Red Palace. I ran for the Luminus’ hold, my hands over my ears.

And that was why I didn’t hear the others warning me that I was too close to the railing.

BOOM!

The thunder and lightning came too close to the Luminus for comfort, and I slipped, startled...

...and I fell into nothingness.

The next thing I knew, I was below the Luminus, seeing the airship getting smaller and smaller. I thought I heard Blane screaming my name.

In that moment, I felt like my mind was big enough for only two thoughts:

I must’ve fallen over the side,

and

I’m gonna hit the ground and SPLAT,

both of which were stating the blatant obvious.

It was like every dream of falling that I’d ever had, just a fast drop straight down. Luckily for me, there just so happened to be a group of houses right below me, and a man pulling a cart with a giant pile of straw. That’s where I landed.

Unfortunately, that’s also how I got mistaken for a human witch from the sky. As I crawled out from the straw, I heard other people whispering about me, and these strange beings approached. They had long, stiltlike legs, and they moved along like some demented caterpillar. (I only know what a caterpillar is from a book on bugs I had in the Red Palace. It was the only book I had.)

In a few seconds or so, they had surrounded me. I couldn’t run away even if I wanted to.

“Careful lads,” said the one at the front. “No telling what kind of dark magic she’s capable of working.”

“Am I in trouble?” I asked them.

“I’ll say you are,” said the leader. “You are hereby charged on suspicion of witchcraft, and shall be brought to the Mayor of Freymere to be judged forthwith.”

And with that, they were skittering off to the ‘town hall’, carrying me with them, while a crown of people followed.

They carried me into a place that must have been the town hall, and there they dropped me and retreated to a respectful distance.

Pardon the interruption, Sir,” the leader said. “But as you can see: we’ve caught a witch. May we have her locked up, or burned?”

The Mayor seemed to take interest, as the crowd shouted stuff about burning me. “How do you know she is a witch?”

Someone shouted “She fell from the sky!” which the others confirmed.

“Bring her forward.” the Mayor ordered, and the tall beings did so.

“I’m not a witch.” I told them. I explained that I had just fallen from an airship. He looked me up and down, then asked the crowd “What makes you think she's a witch?”

"Well, she turned me into a toad!”

Everybody turned to look at the man who had spoken, whom I had clearly not turned into a toad. “A toad?” the Mayor questioned.

There was a pause, before the man said sheepishly “She could’ve.” The people then began to shout “Burn her anyway!”, but the Mayor calmed them down.

“There are ways of telling whether she is a witch,” he said, and the mob begged him to tell them.

“Tell me,” he asked “What do you do with witches?”

The outcry of “Burn ’em!” echoed through the town hall.

“And what else do we burn apart from witches?” the Mayor proposed.

“More witches!” shouted a man who was then nudged by the lady next to him. Someone else suggested “Wood!”

“So,” the mayor said. “Why do witches burn?

The people stood in complete silence, thinking. Finally, one of them spoke up. “'Cause they're made of... wood?”

“Good,” the Mayor smiled. “So, how do we tell whether she is made of wood?”

“Build a bridge out of ‘er!” The man who had been silenced said.

“Ah, but can you not also make bridges out of stone?” the Mayor replied, to which everyone muttered “Oh, yeah...”

The Mayor then asked “Does wood sink in water?”

“No,” the people answered. “It floats! Let’s carve her into a boat! Put her in the lake!”

“What also floats in water?”

Everybody started giving different answers each:

“Bread!”

“Fruit?”

“Uh... soft sand!”

“There’s a kind of rock that floats, I think...?”

“Leaves!”

“Paper! Wait, that gets soggy...”

“Seafoam, seafoam!”

“Sponges!”

“What about a goose?”

Everyone stopped and looked at the tall beings’ leader. “Exactly!” The Mayor nodded. “So, logically...”

“If... she... weighs the same as a goose...” the man at the head of the crowd spoke slowly. “Then she's made of wood.”

“And therefore...”

The people seemed to come to a realization. “A witch!”

They dragged me outside, to the Mayor’s scales, which were the biggest I’d ever seen, and they sat me down on one end. They had an animal (That must be a ‘goose’, I thought) that they put on the other end. The scale must have been off-balance, because I seemed to weigh the same as the creature. As the crowd dragged me to a wooden pillar sticking out of the ground, I shouted and shouted but nobody listened to me.

But then, just before they could tie me up, I saw my friends.

They were pummeling everyone who was unlucky enough to be in their way. When they got close enough to me, I reached out my hand. Blane took it.

We ran for our lives, out through a gate and through the woods, until we were back at the Luminus.

As we took off, I breathed a sigh of relief.

We made it out alive.

Now we just needed to meet Sigal.

Chapter 4

The compass led us to a rocky area on the border, between the Blue City and the Red Lands. That’s where we found Sigal.

She was casting spells on a pile of burning sticks, changing the colors of the fire. Hinto got her attention. “Are you Sigal?”

She looked up at us, and her mask, which made it look like her eyes were the size of ping-pong balls, startled me. “I am she.”

We told her that we were seeking a certain cave, and that we needed her help to find it. “You seek the cave of Ganamar?” she said.

“Yeah,” Blane replied. “Can you take us there?”

“Yes, I can help you find the cave, and the last words of the sage Donnan carved within.” Sigal began to lead us along a particular path. “But follow only if ye be youths of valor, for the caverns are home to a beast so ruthless, so clever, that no human can outwit it and escape with their life! The stolen treasures of its victims lie strewn about its lair! And so, brave adventurers, if you do doubt your courage, come no further! For death awaits you all with big, nasty fangs!”

We arrived at this opening in the ground, with Sigal telling us to go in. It lead into some kind of rocky chamber. We were making our way through when Orrin suddenly cried out “Look there!”

Just as we’d been told, there were words carved into a wall.

They read:

And then, below that:

“What is that?!” Hinto stared at the last word.

“He must've died at the end of it.” Blane guessed.

“If that’s the case, he wouldn’t even bother carving ‘Aaarghh’,” Hinto argued. “He'd just say it!”

“Well, that’s what it says here,” Blane pointed out. “Unless he was dictating it and the guy who wrote it took down his death rattle.”

“What about that ‘great peril’ he mentioned?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Blane pondered. “Wonder what he meant by that...”

“Whatever it is couldn’t be worse than me.”

We all jumped at the unfamiliar voice and turned around. Behind us was this creature with an almost human face and sharp teeth.

It was one of those moments in our adventure where we all knew what this thing was without a doubt. Sigal had warned us about him.

As the Beast prepared to pounce, Hinto hissed “Somebody do something!”

That somebody turned out to be Orrin. “Wait, wait!” she cried. “What if I teach you a knock-knock joke? You go first.”

After some consideration, the beast said “Knock-knock.”

“Who’s there?”

The Beast paused. Orrin exclaimed “He bought it! Run!”

So we did. However, getting back to the exit was easier said than done: there were two tunnels ahead, and the Beast was bounding after us with a “Hey!”

“Compass, get us out of here!” Blane ordered the compass, and the arrow pointed at one of the tunnels. Immediately, we all ducked into that tunnel.

We came out of the cave, and bolted for the Luminus without looking back. We scrambled aboard and quickly launched into the air before the Beast could reach us.

The Luminus kept going up, higher and higher, until it seemed like we were sailing on the colorless stuff, the ‘clouds’.

Blane had just asked the compass to take us to the Central Wastes, when something jolted the airship from below. We ran to the side and looked down.

There was a huge mass below us, like a statue bigger than our small airship. When I looked closer, I could see that it was a giant woman who looked like she’d been carved out of stone and weathered down, yet she was flying through the air like she weighed nothing at all.

“It’s a skymaid,” Blane said.

By chance, she was flying in the same direction the compass was pointing, so we let her take us along with her.

And soon, we were there.

Chapter 5

The Fortress of Lost Dreams towered above the Central Wastes, almost touching the sky. Once we lifted the Luminus off of the skymaid’s head and touched ground, we went in.

The fortress wasn’t as colorful on the inside as it was on the outside. In fact, it was a bit creepy. We were looking around, trying to figure out what to do next, when we heard that voice again.

“Congratulations,” she said. “You made it. You’ve done well in bringing the compass to me.”

The owner of the voice wore the strangest, darkest dress I’d ever seen, and her skin was the color of milk. Before any of us could say a word we were surrounded by dolls, made of metal and string and old parts of clockwork. They were beautiful, but scary.

I knew then we’d been tricked.

Before we could make an attempt to escape they crowded us. One of them snatched the compass. Two more of them held a huge net. As we were trying to get the compass back, we were all wrapped in the net. It was a little like being dropped into a web of darkness, and in the darkness we screamed and struggled, until we were tumbled out of the web into a cage.

We were lowered into a pit with vines growing around the sides, and they left us there.

“So, what now?” Orrin was obviously worried.

I didn’t know what to tell her.

Blane looked around. He looked dejected.

Then his eyes widened, and he didn’t look anywhere nearly as dejected anymore.

“Look around us!” he said. So we did.

We realized that there was a way to escape. This is how we did it.

First, we all pressed ourselves against one side of the cage, and reached out to grab the vines. We pulled with all our strength, reaching out and grabbing higher and higher vines, until the cage was off the floor.

We kept climbing the vines while still in the cage, until we reached the top of the pit. We heard voices, then.

“Ere, I saw the lords ‘n ladies arrivin’ just a min' ago; What’s the mistress summoned ‘em ‘ere for?”

“Oh, that? Just to bear witness to when Empress DeVoid connects her wand to that compass she got.”

"A compass?”

“A magic compass, mind you. A recent acquisition by the Yellow Count, until it was stolen, but the Empress tricked the thieves into coming here. They’re in the dungeon now.”

“What’s so special about this compass?”

“It always guides you wherever you want to go. With the Empress’s wand, it can even open gateways! Even to places beyond Arc, if you know what I mean.”

“Aha, so she can finally dethrone the Great Banisher Lady Alba ‘erself, eh?”

“Indeed. You know how Her Majesty the Empress has been yearning for her vengeance on the Goddess. Come, I want to see what the Cosmic Gardens look like.”

As we heard them leave, Orrin whispered “She’s gonna do something terrible to the Goddess, isn’t she?”

“We can’t let her.” I replied.

“So, how do we get out of here?” Hinto asked.

“Uh...”

At that moment, one of the vines that we were clinging to snapped. We were so surprised that we all lost our grips.

We fell, screaming, back to the bottom of the pit. When we landed, the cage broke open. Good thing none of us were hurt.

“That works,” Blane groaned.

We got out of the pit by climbing on the vines. Now that we were free, we were off to save the Goddess. All we had to do was get the compass back and get out.

To be honest, we weren’t expecting it to be so complicated.

Chapter 6

We crept through empty corridors, making our way through the Fortress, trying to find DeVoid, our hearts pounding in our ears.

Finally, we came to a great door, hearing more voices on the other side. I recognized two of them: DeVoid and the Red Queen.

“I don’t know what kind of time you call this. I’ve been worried sick about my Garnet.”

‘Patience, Dahling. Soon, you shall all see your precious pets again, just as we shall gain all the power in the world.”

Carefully, making sure that the door didn’t make a sound, we snuck in. We saw DeVoid and the Red Queen with three others - I knew they were the Yellow Count, the Blue Baron and the Green Duchess.

DeVoid held up a stick thing (A ‘wand’?) and attached the compass to one end of it.

I felt a wave of energy crackle through the air. My friends felt it too, from the looks on their faces.

The doll servants applauded as DeVoid looked proudly at what she created.

“Now then,” she said, putting the scepter down on a table. “Let us fuse, and so combine our strength in the coming revolution.”

She began to glow, and the other four were drawn towards her, along with the dolls. For a moment after that, I couldn’t make out where the woman I thought was my ‘Momma’ started and where all the others ended.

What came out in the end was some sort of multi-armed... thing that was dark all over. There was barely any color to them. They looked like something out of one of those spooky stories I heard the servants tell back at the Red Palace, only this was all too real.

“Now we are one,” the Specter spoke, and their voice had an echo.

By this time we had crept over to the table with the scepter. Quickly, I snatched it... just in time for the Specter to turn around.

“You little THIEVES!” they bellowed. We decided to run, then.

So we did.

We escaped to a big room filled with bottles of swirling light of different colors. Unfortunately, it was a dead end. And the Specter was making their way in.

“We should have known you'd be clever enough to escape the dungeons,” they said. “Of course, all things must come to an end. Give us the scepter, and we’ll say no more about it.”

We could’ve just given in and done that, but we didn’t want to endanger the Goddess. So I grabbed one of the bottles and threw it at the Specter.

As the bottle smashed, a knight on a horse instantly appeared and ran them over. The Specter was stunned for a moment.

I looked at the others. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I could’ve said, but chose to not say anything. It wouldn’t matter anyway, because we were thinking the same thing.

We began grabbing bottles and smashing them on the floor, releasing whatever was sealed inside them. Gargoyles with spears, bull-headed soldiers, cannons that went off on their own, whole armies; Whatever fantastical thing was inside any bottle we broke open attacked the Specter on sight. I guess it was payback for being stuffed into a bottle.

But the Specter obviously wasn’t willing to give up. They just tossed aside the things from the bottles as they kept moving towards us. Soon there were no more bottles to destroy.

We backed up against the wall. I clutched the scepter tightly.

The scepter.

It could be our only chance... or it could end up killing us all.

I held it up, and imagined someplace as far away from Arc as I could. I thought of whatever was beyond the sky, far beyond the big glowing ball that I had learned was called the ‘sun’. I thought of somewhere that wasn’t the Cosmic Garden.

And I opened a gateway.

It was like being back in the storm: The world swirled and shook around us, but we were fine. I could see the Specter being pulled back, struggling against the wind. They were screaming at me, demanding that I close the gate, begging, pleading, then screaming.

And then they were gone, and there was nothing to be heard but the howling of the wind.

Unfortunately, the gate was pulling us through, too. We all held on to the shelves for dear life.

Then it stopped.

We all collapsed to the floor, relieved that it was over. I was wondering why it was over when I saw her. My friends looked up, and saw her too.

Her hair was long and colorless, but she was beautiful. She wore a long, elegant dress, and there was a shiny ring around her head.

I knew who she was without being told.

She spoke first, and she said “Well done.”

Chapter 7

The Goddess Lady Alba smiled. It was the warmest smile I had ever seen from anyone.

“You truly have proven yourselves worthy of a place in my court.” she said.

“Your court?” I asked.

“You mean... the Cosmic Gardens?” Blane guessed.

Alba nodded, a gateway opened behind her.

Beyond that gate, everything glittered and shimmered and gleamed. I had never seen anything so magical as that place.

“Shall we?” she asked. We looked at each other.

After a moment of consideration, I gave our answer:

“I don’t think so.”

We explained to her that there was still trouble here in Arc. Humans everywhere were probably being oppressed, treated like animals and abused and who knows what else. We wanted to change all that for good.

“If that is your final decision, then I shall abide by it. Thus, I leave you this, as the new rulers of Arc.”

She picked up the scepter and presented it to us. I bowed, and took it gracefully.

As she departed through the gate, she said “Good luck, brave ones. And should you ever need me, you know what to do.” And then she was gone.

She was right. We did know what to do, just in case.

Epilogue

We’ve had our ups and downs since then, managing the whole land, but that’s to be expected, as a family, ups and downs.

We are now the empresses and emperors of Arc, with the scepter our holy treasure. Thanks to us, human beings have rights now, and all is well with the world.

I still remember that day, when I was spirited away from the Red Palace and met Blane, Hinto and Orrin. If Blane hadn’t found out the truth about our former lives, we wouldn’t be where we are now.

In fact, it took all of us to make a difference.

But sooner or later, we’re gonna need someone to inherit the throne. Someone willing to keep the peaceful coexistence we have now.

Orrin brought up the idea of having our own children. We did had real Moms and Dads once. What could possibly go wrong with being Moms and Dads ourselves?

I just know I’m gonna be a better parent than the Red Queen ever was to me.

After all, every child has to grow up like I did.

- EMPRESS GARNET -

[theroadtoanywhere]

The Road to Anywhere

The surreal continent of Arc, where humans are considered animals and keeping one as a pet is reserved only for the wealthy, is divided into four territories: the Red Lands, the Blue City, the Green Country and the Yellow Kingdom. The story begins proper with Princess Garnet, who lives with her possessive “momma”, Queen Carmen, the ruler of the Red Lands. One day, an anchor from an airship, the Luminus, crashes into her room. Garnet quickly meets three other humans, Hinto, Orrin and Blane, who spirit her away aboard the Luminus and inform her that she is not the Red Queen’s daughter, but a pet. She learns that the trio were also once pets of the three other rulers of Arc, Baron Marlais, Duchess Cloris and Count Aneirin; Blane had accidentally discovered the truth of his upbringing, and has stolen Aneirin’s magical compass, which can guide its user to various places in Arc, before rescuing Hinto and Orrin and stealing the Luminus from Cloris. They convince Garnet to join them in their search for a new home where they can be free. The four visit several locations in Arc, first coming to a castle whose occupants taunt them, driving them back with a barrage of fruits and vegetables. They concoct a plan to sneak in using a Trojan Cat, but it is flung back out with them inside. Next, they avoid getting devoured by a Hydra-like beast by fleeing while the heads are arguing. A mysterious voice communicates to the four youths through the Luminus’s broken radio, convincing them to seek the “Fortress of Lost Dreams”. To find it, they must first seek the enchantress Sigal, who knows the way to the Cave of Ganamar where the location of the Fortress is said to be written. Using the compass to find Sigal, they fly through a stormcloud, and Garnet accidentally falls from the Luminus and lands in the superstitious village of Freymere, where she is accused of being a witch and subjected to an impromptu witch trial. However, the other three manage to locate Garnet with the compass and rescue her. In a mountainous region, they meet Sigal, who directs them to the Cave of Ganamar, which is home to the Beast of Ganamar. Inside the cave, they find an inscription directing them to the Fortress of Lost Dreams, yet warning them of “great peril” within. As they discuss this, the Beast attacks, but the quartet escape with the help of the compass. After surviving an encounter with a gigantic “skymaid” who wears the Luminus like a hat, they reach the Fortress of Lost Dreams. There, they are lured into a trap by Empress DeVoid, a demon sorceress and the one who had spoken to them through the radio, who takes the compass and uses it to summon the four rulers of Arc while the four are imprisoned in a cage at the bottom of a well. Climbing up out of the well whist still in the cage, they overhear DeVoid’s henchmen discussing her plans to combine the compass and a magic wand into a scepter which opens gateways to realms outside Arc, allowing her to dominate the Cosmic Garden, Arc’s spirit world and the realm of the benevolent goddess Lady Alba, who banished her to the Fortress of Lost Dreams. The quartet break out of the cage and, as DeVoid combines the compass and wand before using her magic to fuse with the four rulers, becoming the Black Specter, they steal the scepter, and throw dreams that DeVoid has bottled at the fusion, summoning various warriors, monsters and fighting machines born from imagination. However, the Specter has no trouble overpowering them all. As a last resort, Garnet uses the scepter to open up a portal leading to somewhere as far away as she could imagine: an asteroid in deep space. The Specter is sucked away to its death, and the youths are nearly pulled through as well, until Alba appears and closes the portal. She then invites the four to live with her in the Cosmic Garden, but they decline, deciding instead to remain in Arc to ensure that humans will be allowed the rights of citizens, which Alba allows before departing, leaving them the scepter. This leads to a new era of peaceful coexistence, with the heroes crowned the new rulers of Arc, and the scepter now its holy treasure.

[theroadtoanywhere]

Epilogue

We’ve had our ups and downs since then, managing the whole land, but that’s to be expected, as a family, ups and downs.

We are now the empresses and emperors of Arc, with the scepter our holy treasure. Thanks to us, human beings have rights now, and all is well with the world.

I still remember that day, when I was spirited away from the Red Palace and met Blane, Hinto and Orrin. If Blane hadn’t found out the truth about our former lives, we wouldn’t be where we are now.

In fact, it took all of us to make a difference.

But sooner or later, we’re gonna need someone to inherit the throne. Someone willing to keep the peaceful coexistence we have now.

Orrin brought up the idea of having our own children. We did had real Moms and Dads once. What could possibly go wrong with being Moms and Dads ourselves?

I just know I’m gonna be a better parent than the Red Queen ever was to me.

After all, every child has to grow up like I did.

- EMPRESS GARNET -

[theroadtoanywhere]

Chapter 7

The Goddess Lady Alba smiled. It was the warmest smile I had ever seen from anyone.

“You truly have proven yourselves worthy of a place in my court.” she said.

“Your court?” I asked.

“You mean... the Cosmic Gardens?” Blane guessed.

Alba nodded, a gateway opened behind her.

Beyond that gate, everything glittered and shimmered and gleamed. I had never seen anything so magical as that place.

“Shall we?” she asked. We looked at each other.

After a moment of consideration, I gave our answer:

“I don’t think so.”

We explained to her that there was still trouble here in Arc. Humans everywhere were probably being oppressed, treated like animals and abused and who knows what else. We wanted to change all that for good.

“If that is your final decision, then I shall abide by it. Thus, I leave you this, as the new rulers of Arc.”

She picked up the scepter and presented it to us. I bowed, and took it gracefully.

As she departed through the gate, she said “Good luck, brave ones. And should you ever need me, you know what to do.” And then she was gone.

She was right. We did know what to do, just in case.

[theroadtoanywhere]

Chapter 6

We crept through empty corridors, making our way through the Fortress, trying to find DeVoid, our hearts pounding in our ears.

Finally, we came to a great door, hearing more voices on the other side. I recognized two of them: DeVoid and the Red Queen.

“I don’t know what kind of time you call this. I’ve been worried sick about my Garnet.”

‘Patience, Dahling. Soon, you shall all see your precious pets again, just as we shall gain all the power in the world.”

Carefully, making sure that the door didn’t make a sound, we snuck in. We saw DeVoid and the Red Queen with three others - I knew they were the Yellow Count, the Blue Baron and the Green Duchess.

DeVoid held up a stick thing (A ‘wand’?) and attached the compass to one end of it.

I felt a wave of energy crackle through the air. My friends felt it too, from the looks on their faces.

The doll servants applauded as DeVoid looked proudly at what she created.

“Now then,” she said, putting the scepter down on a table. “Let us fuse, and so combine our strength in the coming revolution.”

She began to glow, and the other four were drawn towards her, along with the dolls. For a moment after that, I couldn’t make out where the woman I thought was my ‘Momma’ started and where all the others ended.

What came out in the end was some sort of multi-armed... thing that was dark all over. There was barely any color to them. They looked like something out of one of those spooky stories I heard the servants tell back at the Red Palace, only this was all too real.

“Now we are one,” the Specter spoke, and their voice had an echo.

By this time we had crept over to the table with the scepter. Quickly, I snatched it... just in time for the Specter to turn around.

“You little THIEVES!” they bellowed. We decided to run, then.

So we did.

We escaped to a big room filled with bottles of swirling light of different colors. Unfortunately, it was a dead end. And the Specter was making their way in.

“We should have known you'd be clever enough to escape the dungeons,” they said. “Of course, all things must come to an end. Give us the scepter, and we’ll say no more about it.”

We could’ve just given in and done that, but we didn’t want to endanger the Goddess. So I grabbed one of the bottles and threw it at the Specter. 

As the bottle smashed, a knight on a horse instantly appeared and ran them over. The Specter was stunned for a moment.

I looked at the others. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I could’ve said, but chose to not say anything. It wouldn’t matter anyway, because we were thinking the same thing.

We began grabbing bottles and smashing them on the floor, releasing whatever was sealed inside them. Gargoyles with spears, bull-headed soldiers, cannons that went off on their own, whole armies; Whatever fantastical thing was inside any bottle we broke open attacked the Specter on sight. I guess it was payback for being stuffed into a bottle.

But the Specter obviously wasn’t willing to give up. They just tossed aside the things from the bottles as they kept moving towards us. Soon there were no more bottles to destroy.

We backed up against the wall. I clutched the scepter tightly.

The scepter.

It could be our only chance... or it could end up killing us all.

I held it up, and imagined someplace as far away from Arc as I could. I thought of whatever was beyond the sky, far beyond the big glowing ball that I had learned was called the ‘sun’. I thought of somewhere that wasn’t the Cosmic Garden.

And I opened a gateway.

It was like being back in the storm: The world swirled and shook around us, but we were fine. I could see the Specter being pulled back, struggling against the wind. They were screaming at me, demanding that I close the gate, begging, pleading, then screaming.

And then they were gone, and there was nothing to be heard but the howling of the wind.

Unfortunately, the gate was pulling us through, too. We all held on to the shelves for dear life.

Then it stopped.

We all collapsed to the floor, relieved that it was over. I was wondering why it was over when I saw her. My friends looked up, and saw her too.

Her hair was long and colorless, but she was beautiful. She wore a long, elegant dress, and there was a shiny ring around her head.

I knew who she was without being told.

She spoke first, and she said “Well done.”

[theroadtoanywhere]

Chapter 5

The Fortress of Lost Dreams towered above the Central Wastes, almost touching the sky. Once we lifted the Luminus off of the skymaid’s head and touched ground, we went in.

The fortress wasn’t as colorful on the inside as it was on the outside. In fact, it was a bit creepy. We were looking around, trying to figure out what to do next, when we heard that voice again.

“Congratulations,” she said. “You made it. You’ve done well in bringing the compass to me.”

The owner of the voice wore the strangest, darkest dress I’d ever seen, and her skin was the color of milk. Before any of us could say a word we were surrounded by dolls, made of metal and string and old parts of clockwork. They were beautiful, but scary.

I knew then we’d been tricked.

Before we could make an attempt to escape they crowded us. One of them snatched the compass. Two more of them held a huge net. As we were trying to get the compass back, we were all wrapped in the net. It was a little like being dropped into a web of darkness, and in the darkness we screamed and struggled, until we were tumbled out of the web into a cage.

We were lowered into a pit with vines growing around the sides, and they left us there.

“So, what now?” Orrin was obviously worried.

I didn’t know what to tell her.

Blane looked around. He looked dejected.

Then his eyes widened, and he didn’t look anywhere nearly as dejected anymore.

“Look around us!” he said. So we did.

We realized that there was a way to escape. This is how we did it.

First, we all pressed ourselves against one side of the cage, and reached out to grab the vines. We pulled with all our strength, reaching out and grabbing higher and higher vines, until the cage was off the floor.

We kept climbing the vines while still in the cage, until we reached the top of the pit. We heard voices, then.

“Ere, I saw the lords ‘n ladies arrivin’ just a min' ago; What’s the mistress summoned ‘em ‘ere for?”

“Oh, that? Just to bear witness to when Empress DeVoid connects her wand to that compass she got.”

"A compass?”

“A magic compass, mind you. A recent acquisition by the Yellow Count, until it was stolen, but the Empress tricked the thieves into coming here. They’re in the dungeon now.”

“What’s so special about this compass?”

“It always guides you wherever you want to go. With the Empress’s wand, it can even open gateways! Even to places beyond Arc, if you know what I mean.”

“Aha, so she can finally dethrone the Great Banisher Lady Alba ‘erself, eh?”

“Indeed. You know how Her Majesty the Empress has been yearning for her vengeance on the Goddess. Come, I want to see what the Cosmic Gardens look like.”

As we heard them leave, Orrin whispered “She’s gonna do something terrible to the Goddess, isn’t she?”

“We can’t let her.” I replied.

“So, how do we get out of here?” Hinto asked.

“Uh...”

At that moment, one of the vines that we were clinging to snapped. We were so surprised that we all lost our grips.

We fell, screaming, back to the bottom of the pit. When we landed, the cage broke open. Good thing none of us were hurt.

“That works,” Blane groaned.

We got out of the pit by climbing on the vines. Now that we were free, we were off to save the Goddess. All we had to do was get the compass back and get out.

To be honest, we weren’t expecting it to be so complicated.

[theroadtoanywhere]

Chapter 4

The compass led us to a rocky area on the border, between the Blue City and the Red Lands. That’s where we found Sigal.

She was casting spells on a pile of burning sticks, changing the colors of the fire. Hinto got her attention. “Are you Sigal?”

She looked up at us, and her mask, which made it look like her eyes were the size of ping-pong balls, startled me. “I am she.”

We told her that we were seeking a certain cave, and that we needed her help to find it. “You seek the cave of Ganamar?” she said.

“Yeah,” Blane replied. “Can you take us there?”

“Yes, I can help you find the cave, and the last words of the sage Donnan carved within.” Sigal began to lead us along a particular path. “But follow only if ye be youths of valor, for the caverns are home to a beast so ruthless, so clever, that no human can outwit it and escape with their life! The stolen treasures of its victims lie strewn about its lair! And so, brave adventurers, if you do doubt your courage, come no further! For death awaits you all with big, nasty fangs!”

We arrived at this opening in the ground, with Sigal telling us to go in. It lead into some kind of rocky chamber. We were making our way through when Orrin suddenly cried out “Look there!”

Just as we’d been told, there were words carved into a wall.

They read:

And then, below that:

“What is that?!” Hinto stared at the last word.

“He must've died at the end of it.” Blane guessed.

“If that’s the case, he wouldn’t even bother carving ‘Aaarghh’,” Hinto argued. “He'd just say it!”

“Well, that’s what it says here,” Blane pointed out. “Unless he was dictating it and the guy who wrote it took down his death rattle.”

“What about that ‘great peril’ he mentioned?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Blane pondered. “Wonder what he meant by that...”

“Whatever it is couldn’t be worse than me.”

We all jumped at the unfamiliar voice and turned around. Behind us was this creature with an almost human face and sharp teeth.

It was one of those moments in our adventure where we all knew what this thing was without a doubt. Sigal had warned us about him.

As the Beast prepared to pounce, Hinto hissed “Somebody do something!”

That somebody turned out to be Orrin. “Wait, wait!” she cried. “What if I teach you a knock-knock joke? You go first.”

After some consideration, the beast said “Knock-knock.”

“Who’s there?”

The Beast paused. Orrin exclaimed “He bought it! Run!”

So we did. However, getting back to the exit was easier said than done: there were two tunnels ahead, and the Beast was bounding after us with a “Hey!”

“Compass, get us out of here!” Blane ordered the compass, and the arrow pointed at one of the tunnels. Immediately, we all ducked into that tunnel.

We came out of the cave, and bolted for the Luminus without looking back. We scrambled aboard and quickly launched into the air before the Beast could reach us.

The Luminus kept going up, higher and higher, until it seemed like we were sailing on the colorless stuff, the ‘clouds’.

Blane had just asked the compass to take us to the Central Wastes, when something jolted the airship from below. We ran to the side and looked down.

There was a huge mass below us, like a statue bigger than our small airship. When I looked closer, I could see that it was a giant woman who looked like she’d been carved out of stone and weathered down, yet she was flying through the air like she weighed nothing at all.

“It’s a skymaid,” Blane said.

By chance, she was flying in the same direction the compass was pointing, so we let her take us along with her.

And soon, we were there.

[theroadtoanywhere]

Chapter 3

The one thing we didn’t count on, when we told the compass to take us to Sigal, was flying straight through what was called a ‘stormcloud’.

During my time in the Red Palace, I had heard the occasional storm. I listened to the booming thunder from my bedroom.

But here, out in the open, there were also these flashes of light that came with the thunder, called ‘lightning’. Water also seemed to fall from the sky.

“Just a little storm,” Blane called out. “No big deal!”

The thunder was louder here than in the Red Palace. I ran for the Luminus’ hold, my hands over my ears.

And that was why I didn’t hear the others warning me that I was too close to the railing.

BOOM!

The thunder and lightning came too close to the Luminus for comfort, and I slipped, startled...

...and I fell into nothingness.

The next thing I knew, I was below the Luminus, seeing the airship getting smaller and smaller. I thought I heard Blane screaming my name.

In that moment, I felt like my mind was big enough for only two thoughts:

I must’ve fallen over the side,

and

I’m gonna hit the ground and SPLAT,

both of which were stating the blatant obvious.

It was like every dream of falling that I’d ever had, just a fast drop straight down. Luckily for me, there just so happened to be a group of houses right below me, and a man pulling a cart with a giant pile of straw. That’s where I landed.

Unfortunately, that’s also how I got mistaken for a human witch from the sky. As I crawled out from the straw, I heard other people whispering about me, and these strange beings approached. They had long, stiltlike legs, and they moved along like some demented caterpillar. (I only know what a caterpillar is from a book on bugs I had in the Red Palace. It was the only book I had.)

In a few seconds or so, they had surrounded me. I couldn’t run away even if I wanted to.

“Careful lads,” said the one at the front. “No telling what kind of dark magic she’s capable of working.”

“Am I in trouble?” I asked them.

“I’ll say you are,” said the leader. “You are hereby charged on suspicion of witchcraft, and shall be brought to the Mayor of Freymere to be judged forthwith.”

And with that, they were skittering off to the ‘town hall’, carrying me with them, while a crown of people followed.

They carried me into a place that must have been the town hall, and there they dropped me and retreated to a respectful distance.

Pardon the interruption, Sir,” the leader said. “But as you can see: we’ve caught a witch. May we have her locked up, or burned?”

The Mayor seemed to take interest, as the crowd shouted stuff about burning me. “How do you know she is a witch?”

Someone shouted “She fell from the sky!” which the others confirmed.

“Bring her forward.” the Mayor ordered, and the tall beings did so. 

“I’m not a witch.” I told them. I explained that I had just fallen from an airship. He looked me up and down, then asked the crowd “What makes you think she's a witch?”

"Well, she turned me into a toad!”

Everybody turned to look at the man who had spoken, whom I had clearly not turned into a toad. “A toad?” the Mayor questioned.

There was a pause, before the man said sheepishly “She could’ve.” The people then began to shout “Burn her anyway!”, but the Mayor calmed them down.

“There are ways of telling whether she is a witch,” he said, and the mob begged him to tell them.

“Tell me,” he asked “What do you do with witches?”

The outcry of “Burn ’em!” echoed through the town hall.

“And what else do we burn apart from witches?” the Mayor proposed.

“More witches!” shouted a man who was then nudged by the lady next to him. Someone else suggested “Wood!”

“So,” the mayor said. “Why do witches burn?

The people stood in complete silence, thinking. Finally, one of them spoke up. “'Cause they're made of... wood?”

“Good,” the Mayor smiled. “So, how do we tell whether she is made of wood?”

“Build a bridge out of ‘er!” The man who had been silenced said.

“Ah, but can you not also make bridges out of stone?” the Mayor replied, to which everyone muttered “Oh, yeah...”

The Mayor then asked “Does wood sink in water?”

“No,” the people answered. “It floats! Let’s carve her into a boat! Put her in the lake!”

“What also floats in water?” 

Everybody started giving different answers each:

“Bread!”

“Fruit?”

“Uh... soft sand!”

“There’s a kind of rock that floats, I think...?”

“Leaves!”

“Paper! Wait, that gets soggy...”

“Seafoam, seafoam!”

“Sponges!”

“What about a goose?”

Everyone stopped and looked at the tall beings’ leader. “Exactly!” The Mayor nodded. “So, logically...”

“If... she... weighs the same as a goose...” the man at the head of the crowd spoke slowly. “Then she's made of wood.”

“And therefore...”

The people seemed to come to a realization. “A witch!”

They dragged me outside, to the Mayor’s scales, which were the biggest I’d ever seen, and they sat me down on one end. They had an animal (That must be a ‘goose’, I thought) that they put on the other end. The scale must have been off-balance, because I seemed to weigh the same as the creature. As the crowd dragged me to a wooden pillar sticking out of the ground, I shouted and shouted but nobody listened to me.

But then, just before they could tie me up, I saw my friends.

They were pummeling everyone who was unlucky enough to be in their way. When they got close enough to me, I reached out my hand. Blane took it.

We ran for our lives, out through a gate and through the woods, until we were back at the Luminus.

As we took off, I breathed a sigh of relief.

We made it out alive.

Now we just needed to meet Sigal.

[theroadtoanywhere]

Chapter 2

There’s a castle somewhere on the outskirts of the Yellow Kingdom. We parked the Luminus next to it and walked up to the door. It was locked.

“Hello?” Blane called out. There was no reply.

“Anybody there?” I called. A strange face appeared at the top of the rampart. It looked like his helmet was his head, and he had holes instead of eyes. He called back to us: “Hello! Who’s this, now?”

“We’re just travelers,” Blane lied. “Who lives here?”

“It’s our castle,” the man responded. “We are all its proud lords and masters. What of it?”

“Not much,” Blane explained. “Just let us stay here for a while, and-”

“Out of the question!” the man exclaimed. “You are human-types! You are so far below us, you lowly little garbage man!”

“Okay, that’s it. I’ll show them what we humans can do.” Hinto started to march up to the door, but Blane stopped him.

“You don't scare us, human vermin!” the man boasted. “Go and soak your heads, ye seeds of stupid people! I pick my nose and wipe it on your blimp! You and your silly, so-called human trrrravelllllers!” He trilled the Rs, and somehow, the Ls in travelers, before making a rude noise by sticking his tongue out and blowing.

“What a weirdo.” I said to Blane, who I noticed was getting irritated. “Now look-” he began.

“I don't wanna talk to you anymore, you empty-headed human waste dispenser!” the man interrupted. “I fart in your faces! Your mother was a bonnacon and your father smelled like Limburger!”

I didn’t understand half of what he just said. Orrin called up to him “Anybody else up there we could talk to?”

“No,” he replied. “Now leave these premises, or I shall taunt you a second time!”

“Okay, look,” Blane declared. “We need a place to stay, so we're not going anywhere until-”

BOING!

It was at this moment that a large round thing (I later learned that it was called a ‘pumpkin’) was launched over the rampart.

“OH, DEAR GODDESS!!!” Blane shouted.

We all scattered as the thing smashed on the ground. Before we knew it, they were throwing fruits and vegetables at us while cackling like maniacs. In the end, we ran for it.

“So, what now?” I asked once we were out of their throwing distance.

“We can’t just straight up go in there,” Hinto said. “Unless we sneak in there...”

After a while (don’t ask how long) we had this large wooden creature (”It’s a cat,” Hinto said) built and ready for action. We made it hollow, so that we could go inside it. We rolled it up to the door, and hid inside it before they could see us.

Outside, we heard the door open, and then them talking, before the whole thing started to move with us inside.

Once we felt it come to a stop, Blane whispered “So, now what?”

“Now, we wait for the perfect chance to jump out, and-” Hinto started to explain, when suddenly...

BOING!

Everything lurched. We all screamed. It was pretty scary. Then, with a crash, we landed.

They had just launched us out of the castle.

So we gave up on trying to get in.

In a jungle somewhere in the Green Country, there lives a monster with seven heads. We learned this the hard way when we were trying to see if we could build a house for ourselves.

We were planning on what kind of house it should be, when it came bounding over.

“Halt!” it said. “Who art thou?”

“We’re just passing through.” Orrin replied.

“Human travelers, eh?” One of the heads said. “In that case, I shall have to kill you.”

“Shall I?” another head asked. 

“I think not.” a third head objected.

“Well, what do I think?” the second head proposed.

“I think kill them.” yet another head joined the conversation.

“Oh, let's be nice to these kids.” the third head suggested.

“Oh, shut up.” the leaderly head grumbled.

“Could we just-” Blane began.

“And you too.” the leaderly head interrupted.

“Come on, let’s bite their heads off!” the fourth head said.

“Oh, bite your own head off!” a fifth head barked.

“Yes, do us all a favor!” A sixth one agreed.

While the heads argued, we snuck back to the Luminus and left.

The Luminus had this box thing that was called a ‘radio’. When the airship was stolen, that radio was broken so nobody could use it to track us down.

Which is why, as we were trying to figure out our next move, we were stunned to hear it come back to life, even though it was beyond fixing.

A female voice came out of it, clear as crystal. “Little ones,” it cooed. “Listen close and listen well. I know of someone who can help you.”

“Oh, really?” Hinto was suspicious, and I can’t say I wasn’t, too. “Who would help people like us?”

Her response was a surprise. “Another of your kind. A wild woman. The enchantress Sigal.”

“Another human?!” Orrin gasped.

The voice continued. “She knows of a cave which no one has entered. Wherein is carved the location of a most wonderful haven. Seek you the Fortress of Lost Dreams...”

And with that, the radio made a crackling noise, then was silent.

“The Fortress of Lost Dreams?” I didn’t know what to make of it and, from the others’ expressions, neither did they.

“It is kinda suspicious,” Blane said. “What do you think?”

“Maybe it’s a sign from the Goddess!” Orrin suggested.

“Yeah, it was a woman speaking to us,” said Hinto. “And the radio should be dead.”

“Well, I guess it’s worth a shot.” Blane decided with a shrug.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Let’s go!”

And off we went.

[theroadtoanywhere]

Chapter 1

It all began one day when, after lunch, I went to my room to play with my toys.

That’s what I was doing when I heard the sound from above.

Whiiiirrrr...

I had never heard anything like that before.

Whiiiiirrrr...!

Is that getting louder? I remember thinking, before...

CRASH!

Right at that moment, a strange, big metal thing on a chain fell through my ceiling. It looked like the letter ‘T’ with hooks at the bottom.

It was followed by a boy jumping down through the hole it’d left, a cord attached to him. I’d never seen him before. I’d never seen the color he was wearing before, either. I thought that Red and Pink were the only two colors there was. This new color looked... well, cold. At least, it reminded me of coldness.

Aside from the cold color, his clothes were also odd. He wore a vest with a hood and short pants, and he had no shoes on, only wrappings. (Then again, I wasn’t wearing any shoes either.) Was this boy what Momma would call a ‘peasant’?

He looked me over and said “Are you Garnet?”

I was tempted to ask How did you know my name?, but I was so surprised at what just happened, and what was happening now, that I just replied, “Y-Yeah.”

“Okay then, come along with us,” he said, putting an arm around my waist. “We’re running away together”

I could hear Momma and her guards coming. They must have heard the noise from my room. “But what about-”

Before I could finish, he tugged at the cord. It jerked him upwards, taking me along with him.

I looked down just in time to see Momma through the hole the boy’s metal thing had made. She didn’t look scared or worried for me. She actually looked really mad.

Outside, it was warm. The sky was the same color as the boy’s clothing, with fluffy, floating things without any color, and a big ball of light that hurt to look directly at. The cord pulling us up came from a flying thing, which was like my toy boat but gigantic, attached to an even bigger balloon, hovering above the palace.

We were hauled aboard the boat by what I later learned was called a ‘winch’. Two others were there, another boy and a girl, each dressed in another unfamiliar color. The other boy wore a color that reminded me of the big light-ball in the sky, while the girl wore a darker color that was kinda similar, but not quite. She was dark-skinned, and she wore a vest and had no pants or skirt, just two strips of cloth that hung down in the front and back of her bare legs. He had on puffy, short sleeves and pants with toeless leggings, and wore a strange hat.

They helped the two of us aboard, then shut the door behind us. “Cast off!” the boy in the funny hat exclaimed.

I was a little scared, but also curious. While they pulled up the ‘anchor’ (Because that’s what they called the metal thing.), I took a look around.

The boat had a small house in the back, and near that was a large, round thing. The boy in the funny hat came over and spun it. “Let’s go!”

The boat turned in the direction the round thing was spun, and it flew away from the palace. 

When we were a good ways away, I asked “So, where are we going?”

“Anywhere that’s safe from people like that tyrant.” the boy who brought me aboard the boat replied.

“Tyrant?!” I was shocked at what he said. “How could you say that about my Momma?”

What the boy in the funny hat said next startled me even more. “Princess... the Red Queen isn’t your mother.”

“What?” I couldn’t believe what I just heard.

“She’s your master,” he said. “At least, she was, but hey, you’re free now! We’re all free, here.”

“What are you talking about?”

They then told me everything, about the world, about themselves, about the flying boat that they called the Luminus, and how they found each other and me.

First, the realm of Arc was divided into four: the Red Lands (where I lived before they came to get me), the Blue City (where the hooded boy was from), the Green Country (where the girl was from) and the Yellow Kingdom (where the boy in the funny hat was from). Humans (that’s what they called people like us) were like any other animal here, except that rich folk (like my ‘Momma’) were allowed to keep them as pets.

The boy in the funny hat was called Blane. By mistake, he had learned the truth about a man he had called his ‘father’, the Yellow Count, who also owned a tool called a compass. From what I was told, compasses normally point in only one direction so that you know where you are. But this one was special; It could point in the direction of wherever you wanted or needed to go. When Blane escaped, he stole the compass, which led him to the other two.

Hinto was the hooded boy’s name. He was trapped in some place called a ‘zoo’, after being captured by the Blue Baron. Blane met him there, and rescued him.

The girl, Orrin, was also in a zoo, which was owned by the Green Duchess. The Duchess also owned the Luminus, which they stole after freeing Orrin, and before the Compass led them to me. They only learned my name when they overheard the palace guards talking about me and the Red Queen, how I’d been ‘adopted’ after my real Momma died.

Now here we were, the four of us on what was called an ‘airship’, and they were asking me to join them in looking for somewhere, anywhere that they could be free.

“So, what do you think?” Blane said to me. “You up for adventure?”

When you’ve spent your entire life in one place, following a routine, only for you to suddenly leave that place, with that routine broken, the change actually feels nice. Was this what being free really felt like? Nobody telling you what to do, how to act? I had heard of freedom from the Red Queen’s subjects, but to actually feel it sent a chill up my spine, yet at the same time it felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. 

“Okay,” I nodded. “I’m in.” The other three smiled. I smiled too.

And that was how, for the first time in my life, I found new friends.

[theroadtoanywhere]

Prologue

For as long as I could remember, my life was something that pleased me and my Momma, the Red Queen. In fact, it never even once occurred to me why I looked... different from her.

I stood behind her, sat beside her. After lunch each day, I would be sent to my room to play with my toys. My life as a princess was divided into periods: I’d wake up, I’d eat, I’d play, I’d bathe, I’d sleep.

There were no windows anywhere in the palace. Not that I minded, though, since Momma told me life was better here, and that I didn’t need to go outside.

My Momma knew everything and she’d always take care of everything.

At least, she said she was my momma.

What a lie that was.