The Wicked Stepmother

Once, a snake slithered into a royal bedroom and bit a queen upon her bigtoe while she was sleeping, killing her in an instant.
The snake had been sent by a snake demon called Abbess and, after the queens funeral had been held by her husband and their courtiers, Abbess put on the skin and the clothes of a woman and, seducing him with her snake magic, got him to marry her.
"Now my snake children shall inherit the throne", she thought to herself as the ring of marriage was place upon her finger and the crown of queen upon her head.
But then, one day while the kings son, Prince Rembrandt was in the market place he met a poor old peddlar man who was selling mirrors.
"Buy a mirror, your highness", he asked the prince.
"What would I need one of your mirrors for?", he asked the peddlar, "I'm a prince and I have hundreds of mirrors at my palace, framed with gold and encrusted with jewels".
"Ahh! Not like one of my mirrors", he said to the prince, "My mirrors show the truth about people; the truth they would hide from others and, sometimes even, the truth they would hide from themselves".
"You mean they're magic mirrors?", asked the prince.
The peddlar handed one of the mirrors to the prince and, looking into it, he saw himself, only he had make-up upon his face; a blonde curly wig upon his head and was wearing a frilly pink dress.
"This is not me", said the prince.
"It is what you have become, living your pampered life in the palace far away from your people", said the peddlar.
The prince, growing angry because he felt he had been insulted, was about to throw down the peddlars mirror on the ground and break it but then he caught sight of the pedlars refection and saw, instead of a poor peddlar, an angel in the mirror.
Then, looking up from the mirror he saw that the peddlar had turned into an angel with wings and a halo of gold.
"My name is Adriel", said the Angel.
"I don't understand", said the Prince in shocked tones.
"You must learn, young prince", said the angel, "That not all things are as they appear to be. For example, your stepmother, Abbess is not a real woman but a serpent in womans guise".
"My stepmother?", asked the Prince startled, shaking his head, "I can't believe it".
"Then take my mirror with you next time you visit her and you will see her true form", said the angel.
And so the Prince, anxiously, returned to the royal palace and when he met his stepmother he bowed to her as it was customary for a prince to do upon meeting a queen, but while he was bowing, he looked in the mirror and, to his horror, he saw his stepmother reflected in it but she did not have a womans face but the face of a serpent with a forked, flickering tongue.
Straightening up again; hiding the mirror behind his back as he did, the prince looked pale and Abbess, sensing that something was wrong, asked him,
"Are you alright, my dear?".
"No", replied the prince, "As a matter of fact I am feeling rather sick. I think I need to lie down".
But then, having made that excuse, he rushed upstairs to his bedchamber and closed the door of it behind him.
To his astonishment, he saw a beam of light shining through his window become the angel that he had seen in the market place.
"So you've seen the real face of your stepmother", said the angel.
"Yes", said the prince, looking confused and frightened, "But what do I do?".
"You must reveal her true identity to everyone, especially you father. It is the only way that anyone will believe you", said the angel.
"Yes but how", said the prince.
The angel handed him a bottle containing what looked like water.
"Tommorrow, when you are in the presence of your stepmother, the king and all your courtiers, you must uncork this bottle and throw its contents over your stepmother. It is filled with a liquid that, when it touches her, will reveal her true form to everyone", said the angel.
And so the prince took the bottle and said that he would do as the angel had instructed then the angel disappeared like a beam of light returning to the sun.
Unfortunately, a snake, slithering under the door of the princes bedchamber had been listening to their conversation and, returning to his mistress, Abbess, he told her everything he had heard.
Then, that night, as the prince slept, his stepmother entered his room and, taking the bottle full of magic liquid, replaced it with an identical bottle full of ordinary water.
And so when, the next day, at a royal banquet, the prince, seated next to his stepmother, uncorked the bottle and threw its contents over her, it was only water that he threw over her and it did not reveal her true form.
Then, feigning shock and surprise, his stepmother cried out,
"Prince Rembrandt. You have assaulted me".
And, seeing what his son had done, the king was so angry that he told his son to leave their palace and their kingdom and never return.
So the prince became an exile and had no where to go and, crying out to the angel as he wandered, he pleaded,
"Angel, I did what you said. Why has this happened to me?".
"Only god may move mountains without a single effort", said the Angel, appearing beside him, "Ordinary men must sweat and strain; must feel pain in their muscles and in their heart; must fall down and pull themselves back up again".
"You want me to endure even more hardship than I have already?", asked the prince, "Can't you see I've lost everything. My family, my home, my whole kingdom".
"Those who have never lifted a grain of rice find the weight of a feather unbearable", observed the angel, "What you call hardship would be nothing to a peasant".
"But I am not a peasant. I am a prince", said the Prince.
"Then behave like one. Have some nobility. Stand tall instead of crumpling up like a leaf", said the angel.
"But what am I to do?", asked the Prince, "I have nowhere to go".
The angel covered the princes eyes with one of its wings and when it took the wing away again, they were standing infront of a manor house with a pair of curling horns upon its roof.
"Where is this?", asked the prince looking round and seeing that they were in the middle of a dense forest.
"The house with rams horns", said the angel, "You will stay here with a friend for now and he will teach you what you must know to defeat your stepmother".
But then a wind brushed past his head and, looking around again, he couldn't see the angel anymore.
Then out of the front of the house came a man wearing a bronze mask upon his face.
"Why are you wearing a mask?", asked the prince.
"To cover the burn marks upon my face", said the man, "There are some who wear their masks openly and make no secret of what they are hiding and others, like your stepmother, who wear a beautiful face but hide the scales of a venomous serpent beneath it".
But then the man in the bronze mask told the prince that his name was Borigamo and that he had got burn marks upon his face from looking down into hell and being singed by its flames.
"I was a criminal; a wicked man who did terrible things but the angels gave me a chance to see the fires that burn mens souls and I am glad that I was given that chance", he told the prince, "For now that I have seen hell and felt its heat upon my face, I vow never to go there".
Then he took the prince inside the house with ramshorns and he began teaching him as the angel had said.
Borigamo gave him a magic sword called an Erbus that, upon its users wish, would disguise itself as anything, even a flower.
"It is amazing", the prince remarked, seeing Borigamo turn the Erbus from a blade to a rose to a dove resting upon his hand and back into a blade again.
"Don't be too impressed", said Borigamo, "All the magic in the world wont help you if you don't have the skill to use it. The Erbus will help you get a sword into the royal palace but now I have to teach you how to put it into the demons heart".
Then Borigamo began to teach the Prince how to fight with a sword but then, while he was teaching him, outside, a bolt of lightning fell from the sky becoming a giant serpent and, wrapping its coils around the house with ramshorns it started to squeeze the way that a python squeezes its prey and, when it did, so vast was its body, that it started to crush the house.
Looking out of a window of the house, the Prince saw the head of the giant serpent looking back at him, flickering a forked tongue of lightning and his heart quaked with terror but Borigamo seized him by the hand and led him quickly upstairs to a room with a hatch in the ceiling that led onto the roof and, when they had both climbed up onto the roof, Borigamo took hold of one of the giant ramshorns that were fixed onto it and, pulling it loose, he blew into the narrow end of it.
And suddenly, like a hurricane, from within the horn, there flew a trillionfold tiny winged angels and forming a giant glowing halo around the house they lifted up the monsterous serpent and threw it into the sun where its gigantic body shrivelled up to a cinder.
Then the same tiny angels whirling around the house at a magical speed repaired all the damage that the monsterous python had done before flying back into the horn.
"What was that thing", asked Prince Rembrandt.
"A present from the serpent queen", said Borigamo, "And a reminder of why we must work hard and fast".
But then, after a month had passed and the Prince had worked harder than he had ever had to in his life, Borigamo thought that he was ready enough and, the angel Adriel reappearing, he gave the Prince another bottle filled with magic liquid.
"Throw the contents of this bottle over the Queen. This time it will not fail and when your father and the other people in the palace have seen the monster that hides within your stepmothers skin all will be safe within the kingdom once more", he said.
Then, picking up the prince with all the strength of an eagle carrying off its prey, the angel flew with him to the royal palace.
Seeing him approaching; guards upon the palace battlements fired up flaming arrows towards them but every arrow, when it came close to the halo of the angel, became a little bird and flew away twittering.
Then, a window on the palace opening wide, Prince Rembrandt and the angel flew inside.
They flew right into the royal throneroom  where the Prince's Father and his Stepmother, who the Prince saw was heavily pregnant, were sitting.
"How dare you come into my palace again", said the king angrilly, rising from his throne as he saw his son, "After you have been banished from my kingdom".
The prince pulled the cork from the bottle in his hand, containing the angels magical liquid.
"My father. I only wish to help you by opening your eyes to the monster that sits beside you; to whom you have given half your kingdom and whos demon spawn you call your children", he said.
"Oh! Do you hear how he insults me", the Prince's stepmother said to the king, "His own stepmother and while I'm pregnant. How can you sit there and let him say those things?".
"I won't", said the king, "If I can't banish him. I'll lock him up in the tower".
Then he ordered his guards to arrest the Prince but as they were rushing towards him, Prince Rembrant threw the contents of the bottle he was carrying towards the Queen, splashing her in the face and, the moment the magic liquid touched her face it was transformed from a face beautiful and smooth to a scaly, green face of snakeskin.
Covering her face with her hands, Abbess shrieked, "It's acid! it's poison! He's burned me".
But as she was saying this, suddenly her hands became scaly and reptilian, with long claws instead of fingernails and then her arms and legs; then her whole body and when this happened everyone in the kings throne room stared at the queen, even the guards who had been arresting the prince.
Then someone, pointing to the queen, shouted, "Look! He told the truth. She is a monster".
Realising that her disguise had been removed and her plot of wickedness undone, then the serpent demon Abbess tore off her long regal gown with her sharp claws revealing her serpents body.
And the king looking at her, horrified at the thought that he had shared his bed with a monster, shouted,
"Kill her! Kill that creature!".
 But then, her serpents belly swelling larger and larger, it split open and out of it came a hundred long, poisonous snakes, slithering in all directions, hissing and spitting and biting.
Then, with cruel vengeance burning in her reptillian eyes, she launched herself, screaming, upon the Prince, her mouth frothing with venom.
Then she opened her jaws wide, showing off her enormous fangs.
"If I cannot have thisss kingdom then I will have your sssoul", she hissed into his ear as she prepared to sink her fangs in his throat.
Fortunately, Prince Rembrant had earlier turned his magical sword, the Erbus into a brooch that he was wearing pinned upon his breast and, seizing hold of the brooch, he transformed it, with only a wish,  into a sword before plunging it into Abbess's reptillian heart.
Slithering out of her dead body the way that a snake sheds its skin, the serpent demons evil soul then slipped through a narrow crack in the floor and down, a trillion miles, into hell.
But then, throwing her carcass off of him, the Prince stood up and, looking round, saw that his father and the palace guards with the help of the Angel Adriel had managed to slaughter the demon queens serpent brood.
Then his father, walking over to him and embracing him, tears running through the wrinkles upon his aged face, said,
"I am sorry my son for ever having doubted you".
And, because of the skill and bravery that he had shown, the Princes father thought that his son had proven himself worthy of being a king so, taking off his golden crown, he placed it upon Prince Rembrandts head.
Then, shortly after that, the Prince met a young princess who, it was said, was very much like his mother, possessing all her beauty and charm and he fell deeply in love with her
Ofcourse he made her look into the Angels magic mirror first, just to be sure that she wasn't a demon in disguise and, thankfully, what he saw in the mirror was a glowing star so then he married her and they both lived happily ever after.