The Monster in The Margins

It always starts the same way. Every age, century, generation, every single time there’s a ‘Once upon a time’. This story is different -

Once upon a time, in a world quite unlike our own, there was a kingdom of Fairies ruled by a tyrant queen and her ruthless siblings. Queen Kalevala was said to drink the blood of her enemies and put their tears into her bread. Of all the Fairies, she was the cruelest of them all.

Lies, lies, and look, more lies! My sister was a queen, yes, but she was a gentle ruler, you son of a three-headed trout! Her personality isn’t even what this story is about! It’s about the war between Humans and the Myths, remember?

She wasn’t the only black soul in the kingdom; however, she had an advisor, a strategist, an executioner. Isolde was an iron ruler, loyal and stubborn as ice itself. She tortured and killed at her sister’s every command. It is said she even wounded our beloved King Viktor in a great battle.

It was not a battle; it was a peace negotiation, one. And two, Viktor was an idiot who decided to come drunk to said peace negotiations and tripped over his own royal robe. At which point I had to escort him back to his rooms. And for your information, I was the queen’s general, not executioner.

For years, humans lived in terror of the Fairies and their allies. Monsters of all sorts tormented the land. No village or city could escape the magic of the elves or the teeth of the ogres. After King Viktor died, the issue only worsened, as the people of the land had lost their greatest protector. Finally, one brave soul, the son of the dead king, emerged from the depths of our fears and decided to end the terror once and for all.

He waged war on the Mythics, and his brave knights sent ogres cowering back to their holes. Victory after victory, more children could sleep soundly at night. The people shouted the name of Alexei from the rooftops. Everywhere he went, joy followed. But the fairie-

Stop, stop, stop. What kind of crunchy, munchy candyland are you painting here? Alexei was a tyrant. He appeared out of nowhere after King Clumsy’s death and abolished the Peace Treaty of Aed. Every town he “freed” was overrun with sorrow. Before he came, mythics and humans lived together peacefully, helping advance work, knowledge, and art. The people didn’t shout for joy at his coming; they threw rotten tomatoes at him!

Kalevala and my brother Sindri tried to make peace with him. We offered half of our land, one thousand pieces of fairy gold, even a marriage alliance! He refused all of it. He said he would not rest until every last member of the royal family was dead. He came for the youngest of us first.

Ahem. The fairies refused the peace treaties King Alexei offered. They claimed that they would not stop fighting back until all the humans were subject to their rule. So Alexie fought back. He and his royal advisors worked night and day to come to a solution. They offered everything they had to the fairies to stop the bloodshed, but to no avail. Queen Kalevala was stubborn, and Isolde’s attacks would not stop.

At long last, Aqil, royal advisor to the king, came up with a solution. It was harsh and bloody, but less than the fairies deserved. Aqil proposed that Alexei kill the royal family and banish them to the Wastelands of Isgrynn. Alexei had empathy for the fate of the Fairies and tried to find another way. In the end, he accepted the proposition with a heavy heart.

(Hysterical laughter) Accepted with a heavy heart? Are you serious? No, you can’t be. King Sadistic over there was the one who proposed the solution. Aqil tried to talk him out of it, but he insisted there was no other way! He murdered my little sister Orla with glee. He was literally laughing as he slit her throat! Don’t you dare say that-

The youngest daughter of Tuoni went first. With tears in his eyes, Alexei slew the beautiful fairy princess. Orla was not remembered by her people; her sisters paid no attention to her suffering in the halls of death. Instead, they fought on. Isolde killed more on the battlefield than any other warrior. She became the scourge of the land, the judgment every soldier feared. She was a fiend with nothing but a black hole for a heart.

Bit by bit, the fairies were forced back into their hovels. The elves retreated across the sea. The ogres fled to the mountains, and the dwarves buried themselves deep within them. Lays and ballads were written in honor of King Alexei and his brave knights (Yeah, written by royal scribes and forced into popularity), and the people sang them with joy. Isolde’s armies were vanquished, and she herself fled, vanishing without a trace. The other children of Tuoni were killed in their beds or on the battlefield.

When the war was finally over, the people rejoiced. They celebrated for days at the victory of Alexei. The women dressed in bright colors, and the men stopped their work. Alexei thought to honor the Mythics in his own way, leaving them a shred of dignity. The merciful king gave them more than they deserved. He wrote them into the people’s history, leaving nothing unsaid. Every word he wrote about them was true, and the people remembered them. And that was the War of the Mythics. And ever so slowly, the people forgot the sorrows the Mythics brought them, all because of the great Alexei.

The End

No, no, no. First of all, I did not flee. I was struck down on the battlefield, and a wandering elf saved my life. When I woke up, my people were dead. My sister was dead. So I hid, I protected my people, I kept fighting from the shadows. The day Alexei won the war was a day of mourning. The humans who still had a heart protested everything that had been done. All of them were killed, formally and respectfully. As Alexei would always say. Also, Aqil wrote the stories truthfully, and Alexei edited them. He made the Mythics seem like evil creatures when the only true monster was himself.