"It is. My father cut my hair short once. It bled for days. I was anemic for months. It took over a year for the sliced off ends to fully heal, and nearly twenty years for my hair to grow back. It was incredibly painful the whole time. The wounds on the ends of my hairs are still scarred. The scars on the ends are very sensitive to touch. The nerve damage never fully healed."

"Aye, that's true," the guard captain stated. "I remember that. Him were sick for years after hims hair were cut. Him almost died."

Quaraun gently pulled up a handful of hair and ran his gold armoured fingers across the scarred ends. The hair withered, wriggling away from his touch. Moving as though it were alive.

"You have, magic hair?" Njord asked. "It just moved on it's own. I saw it."

"Magic? No. Not magic. Well, I guess by your mind, you would see it as magic."

"But it bleeds?"

"Yes. And it hurts when you step on it. The nerves are sensitive."

"Nerves? In your hair? Scars on. . . but. . . you can't have wounds on your. . . you hair. . . Hair. . . doesn't. . . hair doesn't bleed. . ." Njord stopped talking and watched Quaraun's hair as it moved. Slithering around him, like a massive pile of thousands of tiny, wiry snakes. He moved closer to get a better look at Quaraun's strange hair. "It's not hair, is it? It's. . . it's. . . is it tentacles?"

"What are you?"

"I'm a JellyFish."

"A JellyFish? You're joking."

"No."

"These are tentacles?"

"Yes. I told you, I am a JellyFish. My body is pink and covered with lovely purple ruffles, and my tentacles are long and white and glossy and silver and look like hair. I already said this."

"You hair isn't hair."

"No."

"That's. . . I don't know what it is. That's why you never cut it? It's actually part of your body?"

"Yes."

"They move on their own. How much control do you have over them? Can you move them at will, like arms and legs?"

"I can. I can use them like hairs to grab things and pick things up, or to reach up in the tops of tall trees and pick apples without a ladder. I could climb with them if I wasn't scared of heights. I can walk on them like feet should the Elf's feet get tired."

As Quaraun said this, he suddenly lifted himself up off the ground, and by all appearances looked to be gliding, levitating, several feet in the air, his feet not touching the ground. It looked as though he was flying, unsupported by anything, but upon closer examination, Njord saw that the hair nearest the ground had grown stiff, rigid, and was lifting Quaraun's body up into the air.

"I was once overpowered by my attackers and they shaved my hair, I was left bleeding to death, as my blood drained from the thousands of severed tentacles."

"That. . . must have hurt."

"It did. This cutting of my hair left me in agonizing pain for months, and while, like any JellyFish I can regrow my severed jelly-limbs, it takes 30 years for my tentacles to grow back!"

"Thirty years?"

"Yes!"

"That's a long time."

"During that time I had to make the claim that I could no longer cast magic."

"Why?"

"Without my hair, I can do nothing. I am a cripple."

"Cripple?"

"Yes. This Elf. His legs are lame. The Hanging Tree left me crippled for the rest of my life."

"I'm sorry."

"Are you?"

"Yes."

"No one ever is."

"Sorry?"

"Yes. For hurting me. Everyone hurts me. They think it is fun."

"Has no one ever not hurt you?"

"No. No one but BoomFuzzy. He took care of me. That is why I did not die. I meet him the same day they cut my hair. He saw I was hurt. Injured. I lived with him in the gingerbread house, those thirty years, while regrowing my hair. He was kind to me, when no one else was."

"No one is ever kind to you?"

"No. No one."

"Ever?"

"No. Never. Not before. Not sense. I've no one who cares about me. No one who loves me. BoomFuzzy was the only one. And now he is dead and I am alone."

"Why has no one ever been kind to you?"

"I'm seen as a monster. No one ever makes friends with a creature like me. No one ever tries. No cares if I live or die. I have no friends. My family was murdered. I am alone. I went into hiding, citing that my hair is the source of his magic powers. So my enemies would not know how helpless I was without my hair."

"Is your magic abilities connected to your hair?"

"The truth is far deeper than that, though. The Elf's body is weak and in frail health. I rely heavily on my stinging, strangling tentacles to survive. My Elf's body is badly injured, with a lame leg, and I can barely walk with the Elf's legs. I move with my hair, most all of the time, carefully wearing these long skirts to hide my feet, hiding the fact that I'm actually walking on my tentacles and not on my feet."

"You can walk on your tentacles and fly over people that way."

"Yes. But that would terrify Humans. They would call me a witch and crush me under rocks or drown me with chains tied to my feet. You know how Humans are when they think there are witches about."

"Are you also able to use your hair as a weapon?"

"Oh yes. When threatened, and feeling I have no other way to escape, my hair takes on a Medusa-like life of it's own, lashing out at my attacker, either pulling them away, or wrapping around them."

"Can you kill people with your hair?"

"I can. I have. When confronted by life-threatening situations, I have been known to use my hair to strangle my attacker to death."

Quaraun glided back to the ground, and gently sat himself back down on the stone steps of the tall spiralling staircase. His hair slithered around, coming to rest snuggled around his body as if protecting him, hugging him, and keeping him warm.

"Being a JellyFish, similar to the Portuguese Man of War, my tentacles are full of highly toxic venom and I can also sting my enemies to death. But, with my hair-tentacles cut off, I can barely stand, let alone walk. And I hide the fact of my being a JellyFish from most people. Only people I strongly trust know that I am actually a JellyFish. Thus why the claim that I can not use magic and must go into hiding, after my hair is cut. Cutting my hair is cutting off thousands of arms and legs and causes me serious injury. It takes a long time to heal with ninety percent of your body is sliced off and chopped up."

"You really are a jellyfish."

"Yes. I live inside the Elf's skull after I ate his brain. I let my tentacles grow out of his head like hair."

"Aren't they heavy? I mean, tentacles must be even heavier than hair, and hair that long is pretty damned heavy. That many of them, that long, they must be heavier than the whole rest of your body."

"They are."

"How do you walk?"

"I manage. I rarely use the Elf's feet or legs. It is why I wear long full shirts with ruffled trains. The skirts hide the fact that my legs are not being used and rather I am gliding over the ground, using my hair to move instead. My body was made for swimming. Not walk. But this ocean, your water, this planet it is toxic for me. I could not swim in it. And I die out of water. So, I live in this Elf and get by the best that I can."

"Okay," the captain said, clapping his hand briskly. "Enough abut your magic jelly-hair. Up the stairs. Up. Up. Up! We can't spend all day focusing on you. We got a princess to capture too you know. We already lost her once today. We can’t lose her again, right?”

He turned to Quaraun and said: "Here, have a book. A favourite of mine. You can read it in the tower, now move ya pretty lil' ass up the stairs before I kick it up there!"

They continued the long walk up the tower stairs until they finally reached the top, where stood a single door. The guard pushed through the large oak door with a large key and held it open for Quaraun to walk through, while holding the torch aloft. Quaraun entered cautiously.

As soon as he stepped inside, Quaraun found himself in a small, dark room.

A small, dark, empty room.

The only thing in the room was a single small oil lamp on the floor and a rusty iron bed beside it.

Nothing else.

Just the lone oil lamp. Just the dusty, barren room.

No sign of anything else.

Nothing.

There was literally nothing here apart from this one small lamp and that old rusty bed frame. It was like a prison or an insane asylum. Quaraun had never been in such a place in his life. His heart started to beat faster than ever.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

There was a large barred window on the far side of the room and a small barred window on the wall opposite the bed. Quaraun sat down on the bed.

"You carry a whole house full of gear in that little tiny bag of yours, what's bigger on the inside, so we figured you didn't need any decor in here. 'Cepting a bed. I know you ain't got no bed in your pack. You just sleep on the floor on a pile of furs."

"How do you..."

"So there's a bed. Nice soft mattress and everything, in case you decide to go all princess and the pea on us. Decorate this room to your heart's content, Rapunzel. This is your home now."

"I'm not Rapunzel."

"You're hair says otherwise."

"I am Quaraun, The Pink Necromancer. You already know this."

The guards did not respond. Instead they huddled in the corner talking about the missing princess and now completely ignoring Quaraun, as if he wasn't there.

Quaraun looked down at the book the guard had handed him: "Differences in the Courtship Rituals of the Bugbear and the Ogre" said the title.

"THIS is good reading? For who?"

Quaraun flipped through the pages. This book is very clear mostly due to the excellent, well-planned chapters and because of the well-done illustrations. This clarity allowed one to determine that the book had very little useful information, and was nothing more than pornography intended to show off the genitals or ogres. Quaraun didn't know whether to be horrified or mesmerized by the lewd illustrations. Though flawed, one can definitely see that the contents contained some original thought. It was easy to determine that this book was extremely informative on the genitalia of ogres. Examining the book, Quaraun found informative pieces of paper with notes commenting on informative information in this oddly informative book. Quaraun placed the book on the bed wondering why the guard would own such a bizarrely useless piece of trash.

Quaraun got up off the bed and went over to the window. The tower was impossibly tall. Too tall. Many hundreds of feet tall. No man made tower could support this height. Clearly this tower had been built by magic. A magic prison, for a magic mage. Quaraun suspected the tower had not been built at random and had in fact been built, just especially for him. But by who? And why?

The dizzying height was making Quaraun nauseous, so he moved away from the window and sat down on the bed once again, and contemplated his situation. And then pondered it some more.

Quaraun realized that no one here cared enough to question him. That felt odd. And the guards seemed to already know everything there was to know about him. No. One guard. The captain knew him. But how? He could not remember seeing such a Human before. Njord on the other hand clearly did not know Quaraun.

Njord stood by the door, looking bored. The other guard, was hopping around like he was high on drugs that made him hyper.

It seemed they both expected Quaraun to do something.

Quaraun looked around the room. It felt... familiar. Like de ja vu. The sensation that he had been here before. Nothing looked familiar though. The plain, bare stone walls were covered with dust, decades of dust collected on the stone floor. Rust stains dripped down from under the bars on the windows.

After several minutes of silence, Quaraun glanced over at the castle guard. He whispered to his companion. His voice carried easily to the Elf. Quaraun strained to hear what the guards said.

"... he feared her more than anything!"

"Who? The Magician of Destruction?"

“... and so we got to wait until tomorrow night to take him. The princess comes first and if she’s not back by morning, well, it’ll be hard finding her. I can tell you that much...”

"She has to come back! We need the spell book! She took it! Without it..."

"Yes. Yes. I know. We will find her."

"We? Don't you mean YOU?"

"Yes. I will find her. Don't worry."

"Sure, right?" Njord said sarcastically. "She'll turn up. Don't worry. We won't lose track of her! We fucking already lot her once! You know Capt' we really don't have the slightest clue where she went. And now we got Pink Rapunzel here to deal with."

Their whispers continued drifting across the room, floating by on the icy fog of the cold night air. Quaraun was lost in his own thoughts now, though and no longer heard what the two guards had to say.

The cold was bothering Quaraun. It was bothering him a lot. This morning he had woken up in his tent, with a nice warm breeze, chilly, yes, because of the nearby ocean, and the depth of the valley, but still warm none the less. He was good at reading the weather, and all the signs of the wind and the clouds and the birds and the trees said that this entire week was going to bright, warm, and sunny.

And why shouldn't it be?

It was mid-summer after all.

Even here in the North, they had months without snow.

Months with green grass.

Months of planting seeds and tending crops.

And yet, it was so cold now, that ice crystals were forming on the stones of the wall and floor. A glaze of ice, was growing up the metal posts of the iron bed.

Winter was crouching in on them.

No.

This was not winter.

This was a Lich frost.

A Lich was nearby.

Very nearby.

Likely standing in this very room.

Quaraun looked back at the guards.

The ice on the walls was thickest there by the door, near where they stood.

One of those guards was a Lich.

Quaraun watched the guards and listened as they spoke of the missing princess and their desperate need to find her, but, noted that they seemed in no hurry to leave the door and actually head out to look for her. That too seems to Quaraun, very odd.

Something was not right here.

None of this was right.

Quaraun got up off the bed and moved to the other window this time. Looking through the small hole, he could see the castle's courtyard below.

Nothing was alive.

There were no people.

No movement.

The same as it had been in the deserted village earlier.

Not even any animals.

No birds.

No frogs.

No crickets.

The only living thing outside, that moved, was the mist. The slowly swirling mist of shimmering frost crystals, freezing everything it crossed.

Glazing the outer walls of the castle with fuzzy frost.

Castle?

No.

From here he could see it was not a castle, but rather a very large grey granite manor, shaped like a horseshoe. A large stone manor, with two long stone wings running from either end. The courtyard in the middle between the two wings. A grove of apricot Lich trees, growing around a glass conservatory, and overlooking a white marble water fountain.

Apricot Lich trees?

No. It can't be.

Quaraun squinted his eyes to better see the rocks lining the paths. Not rock. No. Gumdrops. Fences made of peanut brickle. Lemonade in the fountain, not water.

BoomFuzzy.

It was BoomFuzzy's garden, which grew candy behind the gingerbread house.

The gingerbread house?

Was this the gingerbread house?

Quaraun looked down at the rust stains under the window. He touched it. It gave way to his touch. Spongy and soft. It wasn't rust on stone. It was the gingerbread, showing through it's stony illusion.

The Twighlight Manor? It can't be. But it is. He knew it was. He'd been in it before. But that meant... BoomFuzzy. Thais was BoomFuzzy's gingerbread house.

Quaraun looked back at the guards.

BoomFuzzy.

The guard. Not Njord, but the hyper one. Had he not said he remembered the day when Quaraun's hair had been cut? And was he not the source of the ice on the walls? That guard was BoomFuzzy.

Or rather, BoomFuzzy's Lich.

It had to be.

There was no other logical explanation for any of this.

Quaraun was now more confused than ever. For if this was BoomFuzzy's ghost, BoomFuzzy's Lich, and BoomFuzzy's haunted gingerbread house, than why the charade?

Why hide from Quaraun who he was?

Puzzled and confused, Quaraun made his way back to the bed and sat down on it once again. This time he lay down on the bed, his gold armoured fingers crossed over his chest as he stared up ar the stone ceiling and watched the ice crystals as the living frost moved and spiralled along the stones.

The bed didn't feel as comfortable as it had before. For now the oppressive weight of worry, bore down on him. As did the silence. The guards had stopped talking and now stood silently watching Quaraun as he lay in silence as well.

Quaraun laid quiet for a while, trying to puzzle things out in his mind, trying to figure out how the hell he had ended up here, and how BoomFuzzy could possibly be here.

Quaraun tried to remember the last few days, but it was all a blur. He couldn't remember anything before walking up in his tent with that strange dog and it's pet rabbit looking at him.

He couldn't remember anything of the last few days.

He couldn't remember anything of the last few weeks.

He couldn't remember anything of the last few months.

He couldn't remember anything of the last few years.

He couldn't remember anything of the last few decades.

He couldn't remember anything of the last few centuries.

His mind simply went for BoomFuzzy's death to the deaths of his own children to the night he woke up in the tent looking face to face at that strange looking dog.

Still laying on the bed, Quaraun turned his head towards the window and took a deep breath. Then another, then another. His chest rose and fell slowly, and he began to feel calmer, his heart began to calm down, his mind calmed down, and his confusion began to ebb away into the darkness of unconsciousness.

He closed his eyes and fell asleep once again.

Quaraun woke up to the sound of someone knocking on the door. He opened his eyes and looked around the room. He was alone. The guards were gone. How long had he been asleep?

Quaraun got up and walked over to the door. He opened it and saw a young woman standing there. She was wearing a dark blue dress, her long blond hair cascaded over her shoulders.

"You!" Quaraun said, recognizing the women he's seen being chased by the bandits. The same woman he saw again in the cellar reading room.

"Shh! Not so loud," she said."The guards don't know I'm here."

"You've changed your clothes."

"What? Oh. Yeah. Forget about that. What are you doing here?"

"I'm supposed to meet my sister, here," Quaraun answered automatically, forgetting his sister was dead. "Have you seen her?"

The blond woman shook her head. "Nah, not since yesterday. But what are you doing here in this tower?"

Quaraun shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know. Maybe I wanted to sleep some more, like Sleeping Beauty. Sleep for a thousand years while I grow my hair out even longer,, long enough so I can climb down out of this tower."

She looked at him skeptically, uncertain if he was being serious or not. Which he was. Quaraun was always serious, and he was contemplating sleeping here in the tower for a thousand years and growing out his hair even longer. Being a pure blooded Elf he could slow down his heart rate and go into a comatose, meditative state of deep relaxation. Elves often did this when they were injured, as a way to heal themselves, growing back new limbs, removing scars. It was why Elves were always young and beautiful and devoid of scars or missing limbs.

"I thought," the blond woman said. "That you were supposed to be n your tent down by the river."

"I was in my tent, but than I fell asleep and ended up here."

"Oh. Right. Well, you want me to get you something? A book maybe?"

"A book?" Quaraun smiled and nodded. "Oh yes, please. Yes that would be nice. I like to read. And I was looking for a book."

"Alright. Here you go." The woman handed him a book.

Quaraun looked at the book she had placed in his hand: "The History of Essential Summonings" Quaraun flipped through the pages and found inside some personal notes, in an archaic tongue, unrelated to the book, scattered throughout the book. Along with bookmarks marking informative information. This book was of above-average clarity thanks to the good diagrams. A short look at the book showed that it was reasonably useful. Especially the chapter on Liches, which was of particular note to Quaraun. Quaraun looked up intending to thank the woman for the book, but she was gone and the door was closed and locked as it had been before.