I woke up from the bright light in my eyes. I opened my eyes, and looked at my surroundings. Trees towered over me, the only source of light was coming form the sunlight shining through the treetops.

A girl's voice screamed at me from behind, "What are you doing just standing there!? Are you crazy?! Run Iris!"

I looked at the blond haired, crazy eyed girl, "Run from what?"

She jerked her thumb behind her, "From that!"

I turned around and saw the horror of my life running towards me at high speed. The monster had blue skin, with huge spikes coming out at odd, painful angles, and had eyes that expelled green dripping goop.

I ran like a bullet, trying to save my life. Up ahead something shined on the ground.

The girl bent down and grabbed the object. She glanced behind her and continued to run.

"Iris! Shoot it!" She yelled.

"What?" I yelled back.

She tossed me the object. Amazingly, I caught it. I did a quick assessment and saw it was a bow, and a quiver full of arrows.

I slung the quiver over my shoulder and loaded the bow. I pulled back and launched the arrow into flight.

All time seemed to slow down. The arrow slowly penetrated the monster's mouth. The dripping eyes widened in shock. Just as the monster fully realized what happened it disintegrated into sparkly dust.

The arrow disappeared from the mess and reappeared in the quiver.

I continued to run until I caught up with the strange girl.

“What-the-heck-was-that?” I gasped for breath.

“A-troll,” She said breathlessly.

I took one deep breath, “Like, ‘Don’t cross this bridge, or I’ll kill you,’ type of troll?”

She shook her head, “No, those aren’t mean, just greedy. That was a tree troll, the meanest of the trolls.”

“A tree troll?” I raised my eyebrows.

“They protect trees in forests. If anyone touches their trees they attack. They also attack when their brethren are antagonized,” She rolled her eyes as if all this information was obvious. “Iris, you should know all of this.”

“That’s another thing. How do you know my name?” I said coldly. “How did I get here? And since when am I good at archery? I don’t even know your name, how you expect me to know about monsters, and dueling, and everything?”

“Iris, you’ve known me for years. My name’s Kelly, we were in the same classes for six years. You’ve practiced archery since seventh grade. How we got here is a very good question that I don’t have the answer to,” She said in a worried tone.

I raised my eyebrows again, “Ookayy. Do you know where ‘Here’ is?”

Kelly slowly nodded her head, “Yes, I think I do. I think we’re in one of my books of fairytales. That’s how I knew that the monster was a tree troll.”

I nodded my head, “Is our best bet to keep moving?”

Kelly looked ahead, “yes, and along the way we can get reacquainted. Why you can’t remember me, I don’t know.”

As we walked I learned tons of things about Kelly, and I could understand why her and I were friends in the beginning.

After hours of walking we came up to a cobblestone road. We followed the road and came to a large wrought iron gate.

Kelly whistled, “The castle of the evil Queen Maria and King Octavian. I hope this is after the fairytales.”

I gave her a puzzled look, “Why?”

She shifted from foot to foot nervously, “Well, you see, at the end of the book Queen Maria was killed by Prince Andrew, but King Octavian was left alone. They pardoned him for being under her magical influence, but I don’t think so.”

I looked her in the eyes, “Why so?”

She shrugged her shoulders, “Just a feeling.”

I took a long, slow breath, “Well, let’s go see when we are.”