A Grimm Warning (The Land of Stories, #3)(100)

“If the elves join this new assembly, I want to lead it,” Empress Elvina said.

“You should have stuck with shoes, Alex!” Conner said. He slapped his palm against his forehead.

“The new assembly won’t have a leader,” Alex said. “But you can manage it with me. The assembly will look to the Fairy Godmother and the empress of the elves for guidance and we will advise them together.”

Alex offered her hand to the empress. Elvina sneered down at it; she had never trusted a human before, but she knew Alex was a woman of her word. Empress Elvina shook Alex’s hand and the deal was made. There was no going back now.

“My army is at your disposal, Fairy Godmother,” the empress said with a small bow.

“Terrific,” Alex said. She looked over at her brother, who sighed with as much relief as she did. Now that the elves were on their side, they could actually win this war.

“Now I want the Elf Army to follow me into the Fairy Kingdom immediately,” Alex said. “I’ll signal the other armies throughout the kingdoms to join us and we’ll strike the Grande Armée before they—”

A deafening noise filled the giant tree as it was hit with a cannonball that blew part of the tree trunk to bits. The twins and the elves hit the ground, and sunlight filled the dark chamber, pouring in from the enormous hole that had just been created. They were too late—the Grande Armée had started their attack.

Another thunderous sound erupted as another cannonball hit the tree, followed by another and another.

“What’s happening?” the elf empress screamed.

“It’s the Grande Armée!” Conner yelled. “They’re here! The Elf Empire is under attack!”

The elves started to panic and ran around the tree in hysterics.

“Everyone remain calm!” Elvina shouted. “I want everyone to climb to safety at once! Our army will stay behind and fight these invaders!”

Alex looked to her brother like a deer in headlights—in a matter of seconds their entire plan had gone astray.

“Conner, what do we do now?” Alex asked. “We need the elves to go with us so we can strike the Armée as a whole!”

“We have to get out of here and come up with a new plan, then!” Conner said. “If the Armée is attacking, I doubt the elves are the only ones they’re targeting!”

“But the elves!” Alex pleaded. “We need them if we want to win!”

“We don’t have a choice! We need to leave now!”

Conner grabbed Lester’s reins and forced his sister onto the large bird. He climbed on the goose’s back himself and they flew higher into the hollow tree. A cannon blasted a hole through the trunk near the top and Conner steered Lester through it and outside the giant tree.

The twins could see a thousand soldiers and hundreds of ogres surrounding the Elf Empire’s tree. The soldiers re-directed their cannons toward Lester and the twins as soon as they were spotted emerging from the tree. The ogres grabbed boulders from the ground and threw them at the goose along with the cannonballs.

Lester squawked in terror as he narrowly dodged the cannonballs and boulders jetting toward him. He flew as fast as he could away from the Elf Empire’s tree. They created a distraction as the Elf Army began firing their crossbows at the soldiers from inside the tree. The citizens of the Elf Empire also began dropping giant acorns and twigs on the Grande Armée from the branches above them.

Just when the twins thought they had flown out of the cannons’ reach, a rogue cannonball bolted through the sky and blasted through Lester’s right wing. The gander squawked in pain and he and the twins began rapidly descending toward the trees on the horizon. Lester flapped his left wing as hard as he could but it wasn’t enough to keep them in the sky.

They crashed hard onto the forest ground. The twins were thrown off Lester’s back and into separate directions through the trees. Conner hit a tree and then landed in a large shrub underneath it. Alex skidded across a grassy field and heard a crunch underneath her. When she came to a stop she reached for her wand but it had snapped into several pieces in her pocket.

Alex and Conner were too wounded to get to their feet. They both had broken several bones in their bodies from the crash. They heard Lester squawking in the distance—he was perhaps in even more pain than they were. They heard the attack on the Elf Empire continuing in the distance but there was nothing they could do. They looked at the trees around them and wondered where they had landed but their vision faded away as they both slowly lost consciousness.

The war had begun.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR





THE FORGOTTEN ARMY


The Grande Armée’s divided troops spread out across the fairy-tale world to attack the kingdoms they had been assigned. Hundreds of Armée soldiers and trolls crossed into the Charming Kingdom preparing to take the capital by storm.

Xanthous hovered in the air high above the spirals of the Charming Palace clock tower and saw the soldiers marching in the distance. The moment they had feared the most had come—the Charming Kingdom was facing its first attack and its defenses were outnumbered. Xanthous pointed his finger into the air and a fiery flare shot from it. It signaled Sir Lampton and his men below and they quickly assembled on the front lawns of the Charming Palace.