On the run from an army of evil pursuers, a White Mare seeks refuge in an oak tree and gives birth to a son. She relates her sorrowful tale.In a magical land, the three sons of the Rain King and Ice Queen demand for wives to share their kingdom with. Their father creates three princesses, each representing one season of the year, for the three sons who represent the Sun's daily cycles. Over time, the princesses tire of their lazy husbands and open a door they were never meant to unlock, releasing three evil dragons. The multi-headed beasts, each a symbol of the evils of technological progress, attack the kingdom together with a giant chain-link snake, thrusting the guardian griffin into the Underworld, robbing the King's power, kidnapping the princesses, killing the princes, and literally turning the World Tree upside down. The Queen, transformed into a White Mare, becomes their captive.The King, now mere living fog, impregnates the shackled Mare, and their two eldest sons, who will be known as Stonecrumbler and Irontemperer, escape captivity. While the White Mare is expecting her third child, the King manages to set her free, and she races through the forest up into the Upper World, where she creates a new World Tree and gives birth to Treeshaker within it. The young child eventually grows restless upon hearing the Mare's tale, wandering off into the forest where the King, disguised as an old man made of mist, tells him to suckle until he's strong enough to uproot the World Tree. So the young Treeshaker does, suckling the life out of the White Mare into his adulthood, and ripping the tree out of the ground. Now strong enough to face the dragons, the orphaned Treeshaker sets off to find his lost brothers, guided by the life spark of her mother Mare.Treeskaher meets Stonecrumbler and Irontemperer, defeating them both in short wrestling matches, so the three swear to form a brotherhood and seek out the hole leading to the Underworld. They come across what looks line an abandoned hut inside a giant tree and set up camp. Two brothers leave to seek the Underworld and one stays to cook porridge and weave rope. While his partners are away, Stonecrumbler is visited, robbed and assaulted by the mischievous but powerful Seven-Hearted Lobahobgoblin. The next day, Irontemperer suffers the same fate, though he at least manages to make rope. Finally, Treeshaker overpowers the Goblin, who tears down the tree and reveals the passageway to the Underworld. The three brothers eat their meal and Irontemperer forges a mighty sword out of the Goblin's shaved-off beard.His elder siblings too afraid to venture into the Underworld, Treeshaker descends alone, lowered inside the porridge pot held above by the other two. The now nearly powerless Goblin shows Treeshaker the way to the three apple castles. Arriving at the Copper Castle, Treeshaker is confronted by the seductive Copper-Haired Autumn Princess, who warns that the Three-Headed Dragon, a walking representation of primitive stone age technology, will surely kill him. The dragon arrives, and after eating his supper, challenges Treeshaker to a duel, only to be easily bested and beheaded by the hero. Turning the Copper Castle into an apple, Treeshaker, the Princess and the Goblin then head to the Silver Castle, home of the hysterical Silver-Haired Springtime Princess and the Seven-Headed Dragon, an abusive metal war machine. Slaying the dragon and saving the princess, only one enemy remains.At the Golden Castle, the Gold-Haired Summer Princess greets Treeshaker with energizing wine and the two immediately fall in love. The Twelve-Headed Dragon, a living embodiment of a modern, polluted metropolis, fights Treeshaker and nearly overpowers him, but the princess is there to help. After the final dragon is destroyed, the Goblin claims its shining halo. Treeshaker takes the three liberated princesses and their apple castles to the pot where they rise up to the Upper World, but the rope proves too weak, and Treeshaker is left abandoned in the Underworld.The Goblin points him toward the nest of the fallen griffin, where Treeshaker slays the chain-link snake that had once held his mother captive. In gratitude for saving his chicks, the griffin agrees to fly Treeshaker out back to the Upper World, on the condition that he brings him twelve oxen and twelve barrels of wine. The Goblin, revealing himself as the Rain King, helps Treeshaker fulfill the griffin's demand, and the beast takes off with Treeshaker on its back. But nearing the edge of the Underworld, the griffin's strength fails, forcing Treeshaker to feed his own leg to the bird, granting him the power he needs. Now back safe in the Upper World, the griffin and his chicks restore the hero to full health.Furious at their apparent treachery, Treeshaker almost kills his two brothers, but guilt and forgiveness overcome him. The three sons each reunite with their respective princesses and become princes like their ancestors, each one assigned one of the three apple castles to rule over. With the World Tree and the old kingdom restored, the Ice Queen is also resurrected by the Rain King's might, as she delivers the story's final lines: The princes lived in happiness, their memories immortalized in the stars, but eventually they died too.The spirit of Treeshaker strolls across a polluted, modern industrial city, the legacy of the dragons he had once defeated, until smog engulfs him, the Sun and everything else.