Flip Flop Frenzy

In the age before the age, when the world was young and its shadows younger still, there rose in the green heart of the vale a kingdom called Austinea — a realm that took for its own the founding creed of its royal house, Serva Regnum Semper Mirum, that the realm be kept forever strange. Its banners flew from the Vermilion Keep; its enchanted spires burned like captive moons above the rooftops; and through its every quarter ran the bright water of the Silverwend, over which the twilight bat-legions rose each dusk in a great dark ribbon against the dying sun.

At the kingdom's holy center lay the Sacred Font — a spring ever-warm and ever-clear, welling up from the deep bones of the earth since before the first crown was forged. Its waters were held above all treasure, and it was decreed by ancient law that no filth nor crawling corruption should ever come to touch them. To keep the Font was the highest and most solemn charge in all Austinea, sworn only to one of royal blood.

That charge fell to Princess Lizbeth — Elizabeth of the eldest line, fearless and unyielding, sworn guardian of the Sacred Font. Where others faltered at the falling of the dark, she stood. Where lesser hearts fled the skittering of a thousand legs, she set her feet upon the sacred threshold and would not be moved. And so the realm slept easy, for the realm knew the Font was watched.

For the Font had enemies without number. When the sun went down they came — the Eight-Legged Horde, pouring from every crack and every shadow, and behind them the goblin-broods, swarming inward from all quarters at once, hungry to defile the holy waters. They came as a tide of legs and appetite, and each night they broke upon the threshold like a black sea upon a single stone.

But the princess did not stand unarmed. In her hand she bore Thwackalibur — the sandal-relic of legend, forged of foam and fury in an age now lost to memory, light as a whisper and swift as a falling star. A thousand thousand crawling things had already met their ending beneath it, and a thousand thousand more were yet to follow. One by one they came against her; one by one she met them at the door — and not one ever reached the water.

That watch has never ended. Even now the shadows gather and the horde swells at the threshold, and the Sacred Font waits upon a hand steady enough to keep it pure. Take up the sandal, then, and stand where the princess stood. The night is falling, the legs are many — and the watch is yours to keep.