Isabela the witch continued to cackle nervously as a habit. The sands she had previously stirred up in her cauldron had stopped when her puppet dummy had melted to nothing in the sun. The zombies she had also raised from the dead after being killed by Jed now wandered the desert blindly roaming for food. Her master manipulation of the situation had been severed much like the human skin she used in the manufacture of her most expensive designer clothing.

The sands of her cauldron spilled out onto the floor. She strained her popping joints, and sockets to place it back on the boiler pad after successfully emptying it. A large pantry was the next destination for her old bones.

“Hehehe I’m 103, and it’s really beginning to catch up to me” she said, adding snake-oil to the pot as a base ingredient.

The next ingredient an extra concentrated dose of raw apple cider vinegar. A frog's tail followed after a puppy tail wart flower. Salt, and spice mix was dumped half in the cauldron, and some on the floor. Finally a hefty slab of choice cut red meat was lowered into the cook just like Edward’s body had been lowered one step closer to its final destination. Killin Hood’s Labrador retriever licked the salt, and ignored the pepper, while garlic chunks fell from a chopping block.

“Bad dog,” scolded Isabela, furiously shaking a ladle to the cavern's ceiling in frustration at her recent failures.

She added extra spite to the brewing broth from all the hours of stitching and bewitching now wasted. All the hours spent on her monstrous creation terminated with a single continuous stream of jungle juice sprayed from Jed. The dummy had been destroyed, and now she was annoyed. The current cauldron creation continued to bubble. The room was getting smokey.

“Hey witch I need you to complete my heart procedure at once” called Killin Hood, from a nearby room.

“Yes I’m coming,” she said.

Isabela was on her cane, and her hat was on. Today's witch's robe was a traditional style, but also composed of wild material she had harvested. She bent and twisted a dial to reduce the heat to a simmer. She limped out of the room with items ready. A nest of spiders crawled out of hiding as the dog followed.

In another area of the lab Killin Hood had partially strapped himself in. His hands were free enough to check a crystal pocket watch. It was almost time to give himself a royal procedure. The device he sat on was special. A blood converter, heart transplanter, spleen ripper, and kidney pilferer; all in one.

The thing looked like a crossover of an electric chair, and a toilet bowl. An ancient robot claw hung in front of many copper wires leading to the bloodbath. The fridges behind him housed many things still beating. It was only that and the continuous drip of some kind of liquid in the otherwise silent room.

A little later came a rapping on the doorway.

“Here I am dear,” said the witch, hobbling in.

“Yes it is time to advance our operations to the capital, no more lollygagging around, I trust the loose threads have been cut” said Killin Hood.

“Ohh yes our boy is dropped inside a mining system created by our marvelous minds, and we can’t forget you've got the Queen now on a short lease hehe” said Isabella.

“OK,let’s forget about the mind and worry about organs. Turn the music on and let’s get this show on the road,and this over with,” said Killin Hood, removing a large stake from a drawer on the machine that would soon penetrate him.

A cart was wheeled beside the organ operator 3000. Isabella’s fingers fell over the surgical instruments, and she handed him a large knife. A scraping screeching noise intensified. She turned on the sound system that began playing minor key organ music from speakers decorated with shrunken heads. His blade continued cutting into a steak in addition to the plate. A pool of red blood formed through the cracks to the floor of stone. Killin Hood took the rare chunk of seared flesh into his chompers. “Can never do an operation on an empty stomach,” said the boss between bites of what the witch had cooked him.

“You can say that again” said Isabela, beginning to drool with the nearby lab.

She broke eye contact with the juicy steak, and moved over to a row of operating tables. One held a body covered with a fresh sheet, and the other was empty. The grime from the removal of Edward’s heart still covered the empty metal. She grabbed hold of a key from the foot locker, and hobbled to the refrigerators.

The door squeaked open. A mouse headed out the back of the unit to a hole in the wall. The cooling crystals inside the icebox added a cold mist to the room. A beat sounded, a steady rhythm from inside the deep covered baker.

“Hehehehehe,” she laughed, removing the cover.

The king’s heart was revealed in the center rack hooked to tubes inside. She grabbed a hold of it with fingers. It still beat after she unhooked the first wires. Killin Hood set down the cut in half plate, and angled the stake towards himself. Isabela prepared the royal heart into the operational claw for an ancient procedure. The lights flickered as it commenced without anesthesia or painkillers.

Edward was covered in filth in the dungeons. He lay limp in a cell, dressed in rags, while his stump was chained to a hook in the mold covered wall. He remained half dead from his heart being removed, and replaced with another of dubious quality. The guards had joked this was his vacation while he recovered, but he hadn’t heard them in his near comatose condition.

A scream pierced through the dirt, and floors separating his body from the organ. He was still psychically connected to it and the perfect strings played to wake him.

“Arggg..cough…sputter…hack” he cried, with a chest suddenly full of suppressed pain.

Edward keeled over to the hard floor, sending the roaches running for cover.

“Thud”.

A dust cloud was stirred and smelled of sulfur.

“I’m alive,” he choked, attempting to pull himself up by the mattress but only pulling out clumps of straw.

The candle outside the cell had been snuffed. Edward’s eyes opened again. The haze filled the cell that warbled, and he saw pretty colors. Something scraped the stone floor outside the crystal reinforced bars. Finally he pulled himself back onto the dirty mattress. With no sheets or blankets he fell back asleep.

The former king continued his nightmares back in the core of the planet. The hollow center where he had only escaped with one other. The knight had brought reinforcements to save him from his mothers former ice castle. The wind blew at the advancing columns of soldiers coming to save him. He had been tied high on the walls wound with wires that filled with his blood and guts. Edward screamed out to them, but the fluids in his lungs stopped him from producing loud enough vocals. He stopped trying when he glanced to the other side of him.

The wicked witch held a special ceremony dagger full of the hearts of cards. She let a sample collect into a dish marked “Fido’s food” without pricking in any more.

She turned and raised the bowl and let it flow into a purple hollowed skull. The dog dish clanked flying to the top of the temple across the way like it had been sucked by a turbo magnet field. The crystals sparkle along the triangular object on the roof that he had previously escaped within.

“Hehehe look at me” the witch cackled, turning his head back around.

She used her cane to locate, and sway over a trunk hanging from rope tied to a handle. The over popped open to more clanking, and clanging.

“Where did I store that?” Isabela asked herself.

Edward spit a chunk of lung off the side of the wall. It froze before falling past his limited vision, but his body continued burning.

“Ahh there it is,” cried the witch, holding a crystal ball in her bony hands while kicking the trunk shut and out of sight.

“Ahem..knight’s listen here the Queen will greet you she works for us now. The king you see here has betrayed the throne and no longer has the royal genes to serve, and I will prove it with a test” she said.

Her old hands locked the ancient hollowed skull with the crystal ball locking underneath the jaw. Neon lights lit the inside pool project a stream of big block letters into the northern lights.

“NOT ROYAL” they read.

“Ha now let’s test the real ruler” the witch said, dumping the pool of plain blood from Edward.

She hobbled on her cane while holding the ritual machine under one shoulder. A controller emerged from the robe tied to a wrist band. She aimed the device dead on Edward and cackled as she pressed the buttons. The nearby wall exploded and the cyborg queen entered.

“Nooo,” cried Edward.

The former approaching knights of his had stopped to listen. Isabela smiled and put her dried lips to her crystal ball. The Queen remained like a block of ice as blood was drawn.

“Royalty” were the words the blood placed in the clearing sky this time.

“Now go knock them out honey with my advanced spells and cosmetics..Hehehe,” said Isabela pressing the forward arrow button on the remote with reckless abandon.

The cyborg fearlessly stomped forward off the wall composed of crystal ice. It fell tumbling into the air while the witch cackled, and played with her keys behind. The royal cyborg on a jet-pack shot forward with the magma thrusters blackening and melting the ice blocks behind. Queen Elizabethy barrel rolled over the core’s single moon forever burning in full. She flew over her subjects taking a knee deep in the white snow.

Edward was abandoned, and would remain tied to the side of the castle. The witch had long ago hobbled off to join the others. His lips and limbs had frozen, but the pain he felt wasn’t numbed. The moonlight was the only thing keeping him awake. The mass of armed torches in the distance had started falling away.

With them gone the cold had increased into an isolated frost. A single wolf howled away on the cliff under the temple above the castle. The crystals still sparked into the sky lights above. Edward prepared his remaining brain cells for the coming final curtain. A single tear fell from one of his eyes and was immediately frozen solid. Something rustled the guard rail. A skeleton in armor floated into vision that had become heavily distorted.

“Eddy is that you love,” called a voice that sounded familiar but also incredibly smokey.

His vision faded to black while Nancy blindly searched for him but ended up tumbling off the wall. He woke up chained in the dungeon under Killin Manor. The bars had opened. His chain would not let him escape.

“The orders in to transport him to the mines” said a gruff henchman, walking through the open gate.