Chapter 1

Fairyland

Fairyland is not a pleasant place. It is not filled with white fluffy clouds, multi colored bubbles, sparkling castles made of sugar, and other such sickeningly cute landmarks. It does not even deserve the name 'Fairyland' because of the happy image the name produces. A more appropriate name would be Land of the Fairies, but, the name to put fear into the minds of those who are listening is the old Helkish name; El Zanjo de los Hados.

El Zanjo is a dark dark place, which even the fiercest creatures avoid. The ground is hard black soil which human farmers would love to use for their agriculture. Many have tried. None have returned. Some parts of the ground have red streaks. No one really knows what those streaks are from. Some say it is where the sun came too close to the earth long ago and made great burns on the soil. Others say it is the blood of those who the fairies wish to punish.

Others say nothing at all.

The land is full of rocks and small volcanoes that emit a hiss of steam when one least expects it.

The land is not completely lifeless. Apart from the fairies themselves there are dark creatures with red and yellow eyes that slink from rock to rock, looking for any intruder that the fairies might have missed.

Among this barren dark landscape there is one castle, but it is certainly not made out of sugar. It is made out of coal, cemented with stardust left over from black holes and gravity itself. Because of this amazingly strong glue, the castle is nearly impossible to destroy. All who have tried have been blown themselves to pieces or, on occasion, sucked into the glue by the small particles of the black hole that are still hungry for matter. The pathway leading up to the horrible castle is paved with stones of an extraordinary color. The hue seems to change as you stare at the stone and each time you try to give the color a name, the thought is drawn from your mind and replaced with an instant sensation of happiness and an urge to do good. The fairies call these seemingly good stones, intentions, though no one knows why The pathway paved with intentions of goodness is meant to lure you into the fairies' horrible castle where all sorts of horrible things take place.

Within the indestructible walls are dark hallways and vast rooms lit by a few candles or torches. The fairies like the dark and are reasonably happy as long as they are in it. Because of this, they ordered the sun never to let a single beam of its light shine on their land. If the sun were unable to carry out this order, it would be destroyed, along with the rest of the sun-loving life in the world of Tale. The sun has dutifully obeyed and hid behind the darkest clouds as it passes over El Zanjo. It only comes out at the outskirts of the land where the barren wasteland ends and things begin to grow again.

But just because they dislike daylight does not mean that they outlaw all types of light. They love fire and the power it has within it. With a single wisp of flame you can destroy an entire city of wood and leave nothing but a pile of black ashes. They have toyed with the scientific principle that matter is impossible to destroy and can only be transformed into another form. They hope that one day they will find a way to subvert this natural law.

Within the castle are rooms filled with wealth. The fairies have little need for it, but knowing it is there is all that matters to them. Any thief they catch is forced to use the stolen money to buy the richest foods available. Then in a single hour they are forced to eat it down to the very last crumb. The thief - skinny from hunger and desperate from poverty – is often unable to digest so much food and bursts. The fairies laugh and laugh, falling over with their evil laughter, which, more often than not sounds like fingernails raking a chalkboard.

Once the fairies are done laughing, they drain all the blood from the erupted thief. They use the blood to paint all the walls of the room used only for torturing prisoners.

With each coat, the room becomes a deeper red. They know that one day the room will become such a deep shade of red that it could drive anyone who was locked inside insane.

The fairies swoon at the thought of driving someone into madness; the slowest and most horrible torture they could possibly imagine, and it lasted until the prisoner died!

What could be more pleasurable?

A fairy's heart is literally made of stone. Each heart is carved and sculpted by an old man. He seems human apart from his parsimonious nature, but he has lived for thousands of years and never grown sick or weak or wavered in his work. He sits day and night in his small house with his beard slung over his shoulder, out of the way of his work; chipping away at rocks, shaping them into what will be the heart of a newborn fairy. The man walks the lengths of El Zanjo, searching for these rocks. No one knows how he can tell which is a fairy heart rock and which is simply a plain old rock but somehow he does.

When the heart is done it is placed in a basket woven of the few tough twigs that grow in the soil, wrapped in a black velvet cloth, and taken to the castle. There it shall be placed inside a newborn fairy, giving it a cold set of mind and a hard endurance.

The way the fairies use their heart and mind makes them thoroughly evil. Their skin is red but smooth, making them seem strangely handsome. Their hair is very dark and straight, but rarely curly. Their eyes, on first glance, seemed completely black, but when looked at carefully, one could see that there was nothing behind the curved film that made the eyes sparkle in the little light there was. There is only a hole behind the shine.

Sometimes, when the fairy is particularly angry or greedy, the nothingness glows red.

As you may have gathered, fairies are among the most powerful and clever of species. They can control many aspects of outer space as well as their own world. They are also clever enough to realize that if they wasted their time torturing those who did not deserve it, they would not be any happier. Fairies, for the most part, though they are evil, only wish to be left alone in their portion of the world. If they felt the need, they could kill everything or use all creatures as their slaves, but they see the wisdom in not doing so. They are capable of the cruelest tortures and the most logical and insightful actions. They do not stir up trouble where it is not wanted. But they believe in adequate punishment and their punishments are rarely as light as a slap on the wrist.

Of course, because of all this power and cleverness that the fairies contain, they require a leader in order to keep themselves under reasonable control.

At one time El Zanjo was ruled by a stunningly beautiful queen named Kisa. The way her hair seemed to flow over her shoulders often viewers breathless. She usually dressed in black silk dresses with carefully placed tears through the fabric. A cape of the same material never left her shoulders. If she was angry, which was often, she could be seen sailing through the dark hallways, her cape billowing behind her along with her hair, and her high-heeled shoes clopping on the stone floor. Though she loved to wear rubies because of their blood-red color there was a rarer stone that she had such a passion for that her crown was studded with it. The substance was halfway between a piece of coal and the diamond, which would emerge from it. But unlike a simple diamond in the rough, this special stone could only be found in the remotest and coldest parts of Greenland and had an inner magic of its own. It was said to look like a piece of a star. It was silvery white and glowed with an inner fire. The stone was called Eurethes.

The queen also had one necklace made completely of these stones. If you inspected each stone along the strand, one by one, you would see that as the strand got longer, the stones became larger, more beautiful, and had a more intricate design engraved on them.

The queen only wore her powerful Eurethes necklace when entertaining a guest who must be impressed with her utmost power and wealth or when she was forced to exploit its power.

Although Kisa was an incredible leader and a stunning creature, it was often whispered in corners that she cared too much for her appearance and not enough of the enemies lurking outside of the borders of El Zanjo.

Shouldn't they be conquering the world or at least killing off a few unnecessary species? Surely they should protect themselves and prove to the rest of the world that they are superior.

In fact, the only reason that the fairies did not come together and overthrow their queen was because of the amount of magic she possessed. She was the most powerful and had blasted her way to the throne and she could blast more if needed. She had complete confidence in herself.

It was only when the fairies faced a battle with the Giants of Greenland that her subjects began to doubt her.

Most giants, like those from Montagnes, are very dimwitted. They can only swing their large clubs and torches of fire at their enemies and hope that they were aiming correctly.

But the Giants of Greenland are better educated and trained and are much cleverer. The fairies had suffered a terrible loss in that horrible time when the world was in chaos over a war about just a few square miles of land. After all sides had been worn out, the exhausted fairies had retreated to their own land and lived in shame over the loss.

The defeat was forever blamed on their arrogant queen. Many wondered if they couldn't find another ruler who was even more clever and powerful. Could there possibly be anyone with more strength and beauty than that of their queen?

With each generation, the newborn fairies seemed to be less powerful and less clever. What if Greenland launched another attack on them? Could they handle a Second World War? The fairies were in trouble.

But the day the guard fell everything changed.

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