All of the older boys took after their father, the heavy bodied King Harken. Whereas Vulkan favoured his mother, a small boned, flaxen haired creature that the king had taken as his second wife after the death of the old Queen Helga. His father had married Vulkan's mother only because of the land she brought with her as dowry and neither she, nor the skinny Vulkan had ever enjoyed the king's fullest favours. Hence Vulkan was detailed to spend most of the year travelling around the small kingdom, collecting his father's taxes and partaking, whenever the opportunity arose, of perks like those offered by the common little slut now weeping miserably beside him.

Satisfied that the girl had been suitably impressed by his vigour, Vulkan closed his eyes and began to doze off. A small smile of contentment playing across his lips at the sounds of his men's laughter drifting over from the cottage where the girl's mother was continuing to provide sport.

As the inattentive prince slumbered carelessly, a cloaked and hooded figure stole surruptiously from the forest edge to make its way to the barn, behind the backs of the troopers who were intent only upon taking their turns to rape the hapless miller's wife.

Once inside, the mysterious interloper worked quickly and silently, casting a fine sleeping mist over the girl, as she lay shocked and trembling in the hay. The potion stifling her scream before it could rise in her throat to rouse the slumbering prince. Next he wafted a tiny glass bottle under the youth's nostrils and began to whisper in his ear in a strange sibilant tongue, until presently, the young prince arose slack jawed and heedless of his nakedness to follow the mysterious figure back into the forest from whence it had come.

With infinite slowness, the arch thaumaturge, Lord Malpurgo of Castle Gliss, turned the tiny crystal valve between forefinger and thumb. Thus, introducing the final element of the complex combination of drugs he had been carefully feeding to the helpless Prince Vulkan for the past month of his confinement.