Drups was looking for a point to store his torso.
As he passed through a side corridor with his very thin body, searching for a closet or a neglected room, suddenly they saw him. The two giant tribal-warrior guards of Farjoud's army were joking, so they froze in astonishment when they saw Drups and his eyes, which looked in all directions. His two eyeballs move voluntarily separately, and sometimes opposing, in a way that contradicts human nature!
One of them asked him in annoying tension:
- "Are you a human or a sea-jinn?"
Drups had no time to dodge, so he began calling the blackthorn magic at once, and his skin quickly changed from a regular wheaten colour to orange, the colour of Phanarians skin.
(Delgis) had provided him with the magic of trees, using the two thorns of the Silver-Poplar tree and the Wave tree together, and his genes responded more to the poplar tree and its black thistle, or the bastamic thorn, as the Bald-Men call it after their mythical hero Bastam Kiyas.
But from the combination of these two thorns, he acquired precisely the fighting qualities of the Phanarians, a southern people ruled by the mythical naiad (Farina).
He took out a sharp rhombus from his belt, pointed it at the two guards, muttering something, and one of the giants drew his sword and pounced on (Drups) shouting in the manner of the war tribes:
- "You sorcerer."
His attack was terrifying and it appears from the size difference who would win, but the tribal guard suddenly felt a constriction in his left leg, lost his balance, and fell violently to the ground, and when he examined his leg he discovered in horror that his leg was intact.
But it is small!
The blackthorn grants two main gifts, one of which is the gift of reducing the age, and with certain spells that the enchanted memorizes, he can use this gift in four ways, called Rebounds: basic-rebound, partial-rebound, directed-rebound, and reverse-rebound. And what the terrified guard did not understand was that (Drups) had hit him with (partial-rebound), so only his leg was younger, not the rest of his body, meaning that the rest of his body is the same, while his leg became the same as his leg when he was a five-year-old child. Small and short and too weak to bear his enormous body, and clad in fungal rhombuses like those that grow on poplars.
When he fell to the ground, frightened, and frozen in terror, Drups approached him, feeling the effects of this recoil, diuresis, intense sweating, and hypothermia, and he passed the sharp rhombus around his neck. The spirit of the guard overflowed.
His colleague's eyes widened, and he drew his sword as he waved it cautiously, without attacking, saying in fear:
"You look to me like one of Akradar's warlocks, you bastard."
Feeling that the blackthorn energy within him was still vital, he raised the killer's rhombus towards him, casting a different spell.
With a pulsatory heart, the giant watchman saw a casing of rhombuses swarming over his body like mushrooms, and rushed toward him, trying to slash him in half or to cut off his hand holding this metal rhombus, before he was hurt like his comrade, but he suddenly fell down and the things around him rose as if his stature was getting smaller.
Tribal became a five-year-old child.
Naturally, the sword was now too heavy for the guard, letting him fall feeling weird. (directed-rebound) lowers lifespans backwards to the age of five, whatever the age of the injured.
With strange idleness the guard said in a gentle childlike voice, as he left the wide clothes left by his gigantic body:
- "Have you seen my goat (Shaqqwa)? I have searched for it for a long time. It has a milky colour mixed with cocoa."
Drups furrowed his eyebrows and understood that the guard at this time was spending most of his time in the company of a goat, and since the directed-rebound returns the casualty to his young age and completely loses his contemporary memory, he is now behaving like a perfectly normal child, so he advanced from him lowering the rhombus down, sweating despite His temperature drops while his bladder screams of fullness, as a direct result of the use of (directed-rebound), which causes these effects to the body, but the child guard now said innocently:
- "Your game is contaminated."
Drups looked at the one with whom he was preparing to cut his throat, then remembered that the guard would remain like this forever, and there was no danger at all in leaving him alive and said to him:
"I saw your goat outside. He left this corridor, then went to the courtyard of the palace, and from there to the outer gates of the castle."
The little kid laughed happily, hugged him, and then hurriedly ran away. He cast a frightened look at the baby-legged giant's corpse, then continued on, remembering his goat, forgetting everything else.
Drops eagerly searched for a toilet, but instead found an old sideboard, he put his torso in it, and the rest of his organs were freed. He succumbed to the pressure of his bladder, letting his torso urinate in the closet.
On the ceiling, his eyes went.
Now he had separate arms, free legs, eyes, ears, nose, and tongue, and these organs dispersed completely freely, an ability possessed by every Akradar's warlocks, and considered by the sages (Orioum) to be a defect, while they themselves use it in circus games by day, and in killing by night.
He left his right ear a distance behind him to warn him, and his left ear in front of him at a distance to warn him, literally applying the principle of the walls have ears, until he found a map of the palace in the library, and set his goal in it, and crawled out on the ceiling. Suddenly, three maids saw him carrying clothes, and they cried out in terror. His arms and legs fell upon them, punching and kicking them until they lost consciousness, but their screams drew the attention of the rest of the palace occupants, so the warning trumpet sounded, and he hurriedly returned his limbs to the closet quickly, and recovered the trunk, so that the arms, legs, eyes, and ears were put in it softly, and changed his path to break into the chamber of (Aynur) who taught its place accurately.
He had used his eyes in the same way to explore the lacuna he had passed between the two armies outside and around the castle, and it is so hard to notice two eyeballs rolling through the darkness, voluntarily changing directions.
When he reached Princess Aynur's room, he found two rows of armed dwarves guarding her door, and at the end of them (Fossan) personally in his distinctive woolen clothes.
He was not worried, on the contrary, he felt confident and proud when he realized that he had finally arrived at the runaway princess and that he would prove to (Delgis) that he had not overstepped the right of the Black Gods,
Most importantly, he does not need others to help him.
He was still afflicted with minor nerve pains and headaches from using the partial-rebound, and their number would not allow for long maneuvers directed at each individual, so he decided to use the basic-rebound though dangerous, as it would involve his own body with theirs, but it was the last recourse.
Fossan surpassed his shock with the success of the warlock to penetrate the two armies outside and reach here alive, and shouted at the dwarf guards:
- "What are you waiting for? It's him. Kill him, kill him at once."
***