The surgically masked woman reached behind her bandages to untie her gown. Her fingers searched the dark in vain without a reflection to go off. The plain blouse provided fell to the Queen’s naked feet on the cold floor. She then paced back and forth beside an itchy cot leaking straw strewn all over the unwashed stones. She dared not turn the lights on again to see her disfigured face in the mirror.

The Queen didn’t remember much of the past few months. Her head was pounding. She wished for nothing to be back in the frozen paradise that was the core. The only place on the planet she had ever felt safe. The only place she had ever been treated by others as a superior. She found herself stranded in a prison behind a locked door, and the rehab programs had already begun.

Every early morning she was woken early to be subjected to a programing schedule of torture: swimming of laps after being thrown into cold water in a pond out back, burning off that water by cooking alive locked in a sauna, and then locked into a caged hamster wheel forced to run in place. She knew that her previously precious son was to blame for this abuse. I will destroy Edward Long-bottom, a voice repeated again, and again echoing itself into a promise in her mind.

She reached behind her right ear, unhooking the jewelry pin cushioned into the flesh one by one. A green clover earring was the last piece clanging to the floor, before she switched ears and dropped the other matching one first.

“Green luck stones ha. I truly never had any luck wearing those clovers” she laughed to herself looking at it all in the trash.

“Bang! Bang! Bang!” came rapping on the door.

The servant ladies must be here to thrust more torment upon her. The human civilizations queen wasn’t respected as anything here among the elves, and she had no clothes.

“Just one second you authoritarians” cried Elizibethy getting dressed.

“Take your time, I'm waiting just outside” an unusually sweet old lady's voice called.

A voice that she had never heard before.

“I think my luck may be restarting here” said the Queen.

She smiled, buttoning together her skirt, and then shirt. Her newly installed false teeth were very dull, but still formed a good greeting. She swung the door out.

“Alright you old bird, what do you want?” the Queen playfully called.

A menacing masked man with bloodshot eyes grabbed a hold of the same heavy wooden door she held. His huge hulking figure stepped into the frame and his other hand grabbed her wrist.

“Time to go back home love” he said in a thick accent from the north.

Surrounding him were a few others smaller, but also suffering from bloodshot eyes and faces that needed to be masked.

“Oh whew” she said, taking a deep breath on account of how gently she was being grabbed on.

“You poor things must also be suffering from bad operations, just like I am. There's no need to attack me for I am not the witch doctor who botched you. Matter of fact you lot look human so that means I'm your queen ” said Queen.

The man at the door smiled with the broken ends of blackened teeth. His deadly breath drove her wild into a ditzy spell. She began to fall, growing queasy from his rancid smell.

"Hows about an chew toy for your new chompers love" he said forcing a slimy dogs toy in her mouth.

"Squeak"

One of the others had a cloth trash bag he threw over her head knocking her down. The old lady held rope in her bony shacking hands. She tied the thrashing end together with several knots. The biggest slob of an never washed man threw her over his shoulder as he walked down the hall towards the exit.

A long way off King Edward drank cheap shlock all by himself at a dive bar off the timber trackway. A flock of pigeons had gathered where patrons had not. They picked under the deserted tables behind the open bar. The king turned on his stool squinting and observed the early morning worms being eaten. His thoughts remained locked on the idea of capturing one queen, while finishing the process of isolating another out of the public.

The one already under house arrest was his mother. She couldn't handle herself. So other people would handle her under house arrest in the human capital city. Edward had already made the pledge to never visit. The other queen he planned on trapping was going to be an entirely different species entirely; unfortunately he hadn’t come across her yet. When he found the right elf she would be whisked away to an isolated tower. There he would go to work with his charms on her all day, and night. He had already laid many traps back in Elf city, the first contestant already in his cross-hairs. In the meantime he had work to do being King. A job that came with an arrow proof alibi.

“Another one?” asked the monotone dead waiter.

His eyes sunk into a scrambled rotting skull where white eggs with no pupils resided.

“I’m good, good sir. I have to attend the largest swearing in ever done” said Edward getting up and leaving a big tip.

He walked out. Turning to revel in the sight of the brain dead ghoul still blindly searching all over the counter. A goofy creature looking to wash the dirty dishes, and then the coins for the Kings nephew who ran the place.

It was a long ride from here to the capital city of humanity. The King’s magma-cycle was still waiting for him warm parked outside perched on its kickstand. He climbed aboard revving the burning crystal deep inside powering pistons. As he accelerated sparks of tiny magma crystal flew out his exhausts threatening to catch the wooden planks flying behind him on fire.

This area was especially impoverished, crime ridden section of what was now his kingdom. The roads he rode on had been laid long before the alchemists revolution around a century ago. There was not another soul around here except the Kings convoy. A fearsome formation of biker knights who would ride wit him to the edges of any planet.

Meanwhile back in Elf city the Queen found herself bound, gagged, and lugged out the backdoor to a waiting car. The trunk creaked open.

“Thud!” she smacked her head.

Thrown on hard carpet the scars from the semi botched operation came apart spreading stitches. The pain was searing. Outside the car doors shut one by one, before she could feel motion. The vehicle came to an abrupt stop and the driver started swearing. The Queen strained to make out the exact words being communicated.

“What is this, some Elf getting herself a useless awards ceremony” screamed the driver.

“Hugo here comes a cop roll down your window” whispered a passenger.

“3 cops now!” stammered the driver.

“Gentlemen, we are going to need to search your vehicle. So get out!” an officer barked.

“GO, go, go!” yelled a voice.

The car rapidly accelerated knocking and bruising the captive trapped in the trunk.

“Thawk, thawk, thawk, thud, wizz” said arrows, with one almost piercing the Queen’s ear.

A moment ago and very close by an almost identical kidnapping had taken place.

A council of elves had formed earlier that day. A group of twelve elders totaling at least twelve thousand years in age. They had come together to pick the best Elf. The Elf taken had not topped their list, but had won her own category. The one voted to be youngest, richest, and most viscous had been nabbed.

Back on the road. On the side of it the King used a payphone to call up the rest of the band who had stayed behind.

“So how did you manage to nab the award on behalf of someone else ha ha ha” he laughed.

“I hate to tell you this Eddy but our mother was stolen under the cover of the very same commotion that we just caused” said Cap, the key player for the land's most famous band DDP.

Edward cut off the line with a slash of his hook before he stumbled to his magma-cycle on the road. The rest of the knights had waited here except for one who relieved himself under a nearby berry tree.

So the King had managed to trap one queen, and yet he had lost another. For somebody who prided himself on always winning the King had come to a draw. Hopefully he would grow to love the newer one much better than his mother. His foolish flesh and blood was somebody else's problem to take care of, but what if they really hurt her…

“Men my mother has been nabbed, so we must turn around and ride back to war against those responsible” called Edward raising his hook to the sky.

The Knights revved their cycles turning around in the desert heat. They drove channeling the anger to burn down a city back towards Elf city.