The Prince and the Princess were shocked and fascinated by the tale that their mother wove for them over the breakfast breads and fruits, they almost couldn’t believe her, but she had never lied to them before and this story was almost too strange not to be true! The Prince wanted to go into battle and prove his manhood with his sword skills, but it did not seem that such weapons would be much good against an opponent that had no body as far as they could tell. The Princess frowned as she tried to recall a story told her by one of her wise teachers, of an old magician who lived up in the hills and was renowned for his talents in bygone days.

The Queen was so exhausted she decided to try and get some rest, while her children went riding off to find this man, to ask him if he could shed some light on this nightmare that was threatening the royal family. The Princess used a special crystal from the royal treasury to guide their journey, aligned with her intuition the stone managed to lead them straight to this man who was living all alone in a cave. He had heard the common folk speak well of their ruler, and so he was happy to be of service in this crisis, he had heard of this sort of thing happening before and had an inkling of what the cause might be.

The magician sat in the Queen’s bedroom and meditated for a very, very, long time, he was so still a mouse ran over his lap thinking him to be a statue rather than a man. When he stood up he had a fierce smile on his face, he asked for mirrors to be brought from all over the palace and placed all around the bed. That night the dark force came again to attack the Queen, and she woke as the darkness hit the mirrors, and some of them broke and there was a terrible loud noise as if it were storming inside the room. No one outside heard a thing but the magician had been keeping watch, and once again he was smiling with fierce joy.

The next day all the nobles stayed abed, it was as if a great plague had swept through their ranks, when they eventually emerged they all looked as if they had been run over by a wagon. One of the servants had disappeared from his bed, leaving a strange oily black ash behind, that the laundry woman despaired of ever washing out.

From this day forth the noble folk of the castle began to support the Queen in her modern ways, all their arrogance seemed to have been washed away and the kingdom became a much happier place than it had been. The Prince grew up to be a wise King and the Princess became a wise woman in her own right, the Magician went back to his cave satisfied with a job well done.

You see the dark forces that array against us can be beaten back, if just once, just once, they can be shown the emptiness, that lies where their hearts ought to be!