A/N: This is the start of a series of short stories structured around the War of Acceptance, a conflict between Elwens (the long-lived, beautiful, highly emotional ruling race of Arcadia) and humans. The stories will run roughly in chronological order, but may sometimes step out of it. And I’ll try to have them make comments on each other, so that a bit that was obscure in one story may be illuminated in another. Of course, comments and questions about things that remain obscure, and comments on the stories in general, are always welcome.

Short stories about important happenings during the War of Acceptance that are posted elsewhere on my FictionPress page are the stories of Erith ("Royal Beauty Bright," "Beauty Come Again," and "Firebringer"), "By All the Laws of Vengeance," and "Bargaining With Death."

This is the first story chronologically, telling how the War began. It supposedly came from human encroachments on land Elwen lands. Sometimes suppositions are wrong.

It is a tale not told for three hundred years, and I can only tell it now because the army is disbanded, and the War is done, and I am freed from the obligations of silence that imprisoned me until now.

They were a small group that rode to meet the humans that morning. Lady Eleriad went, of course. As Councilmaster of Rowan, and the most beloved one in history, she was the only choice to negotiate with the humans. Some of them wouldn’t listen to her because she was a woman and humans do not let their women fight, so her husband, West Sunfall, went with her. And her only living son at that time, Alicalor Deerfriend, rode behind them, and with them went a small army of guards. I was one of them. We were dedicated to protecting the Lady Eleriad with our lives, and so we did.

We came up to the humans, and the Lady Eleriad began to speak with them about stopping the burning of land Elwen villages that they were then doing. They disagreed that she had any right to tell them what to do. Lady Eleriad sadly concluded that it must be war, but she was in a state of true pain about it. She did not want to kill the humans. She did not want her own people to die, as we would. She tried again and again to negotiate with the human leader, and each time he only returned the same answers- that the humans would have to have true acceptance from us, that they would settle for nothing less, and that true acceptance would mean coming into land Elwen homes and taking over our lands. We could not yield that to them, and so the humans were determined to go to war.

Lady Eleriad tried to persuade them one more time. I can still see the sun shining on her white hair, hear her sweet and earnest words. "If we could only speak like two people who have a chance of understanding each other, then-"

And then it happened.

I heard the crank of a crossbow from the side, and turned to see a human lifting one of those evil things. He intended to shoot our Lady. I knew it, with all the force of love for her within me.

I leaped upon the Lady and bore her to the ground, and the rest of the guards crowded in around her and her son.

They were not the targets. We must live with that knowledge for the rest of our lives.

There came a great cry, and a moment later, a greater one. The first had come from the Lady’s husband, West Sunfall. The humans seemed to think that he was the true leader, and had shot him down. Or perhaps they really did believe in the Lady and had only shot him to cause her pain.

It did cause her pain. She was beside him when he died, and I have never felt such agony. Her guts were dragged out of her belly in that moment, and her heart while it still beat.

And then she looked up at the humans.

They must have expected her to give up. They do not know what happens when you kill a land Elwen’s love and do not kill the other member of the pair. But they learned that day, and the tale must have spread among their surviving kindred quickly. They fled the banner of the Running Deer for three months before they dared to stand and face us.

The Lady Eleriad called shards of diamond and flayed them alive. Then she took their skins and bound them to the banner poles that we had brought. Those poles carried flags that could have signaled peace or war to the Elwens who waited across the plain and watched for the Lady’s return. Instead, the Lady used the skins, to show that there was indeed war, but it was a fierce war, unlike anything that we had fought before. For as long as she lived, there would be no possibility of peace with the humans. The very suggestion was anathema to her.

I saw the look in her eyes when someone first suggested that, because I was the one who said, "My lady, is this necessary? The humans who have burned the villages are dead now. Is there a chance that we could go back to Rowan and send small fighting forces to the aid of our kin, but avoid war?"

She looked at me, and I might have died in that moment. "He is dead," she said. "There will be no peace for as long as the pain burns in my heart, and it will burn in my heart forever. And that is the end of it."

But that was not the end of it. She hid her pain well, from everyone except her son and the guards who had been there when it happened. When she returned to Rowan, she made a rational speech about how the humans would never stop in their hatred and envy of us- which was true- and that we had no choice but to go to war. And they believed in her, and loved her, and cheered for her, Lady of Rowan with the truth shining in her silver eyes to outdazzle the pain.

She led us in the War of Acceptance, and she led until she fell, and never in that time was there peace. But never was there a suggestion that she fought from any other motive but that of protecting our lands and people from the humans. And she was proven right; the humans quickly showed that they would not make peace, and said they would destroy every Elwen in the world if they could. So it was war.

But I was there. I saw West Sunfall die, and I saw the compassion and the goodness of heart that the Lady of Rowan was known and loved for die with him. She loved him with all the force of her being, and when that love was dead, the force of her being also died. The woman who emerged from that field and led the War of Acceptance was a different woman from the one who rode onto it.

It was vengeance that led into the War, and the Battle of Esshellen, and the death of half the citizens of Rowan, and the death of the Lady Eleriad- and, too, to the trampling of the humans, so that we need never have anything to fear from them again.

The War is over. Many people would not have died if one man had not died.

Let the world know the truth of vengeance for what it is worth.

-From an unsigned document found in the Archives of Rowan.