Sparrow Truman May 2nd, 20XX

I gasped as the memories stopped and I was allowed back into the present. My body was groggy and showed signs oversleep but my head pounded like I had been out partying for three days and four nights.

Odd chants and rituals clogged up my brain like mold and slowly encroached over my old memories of my life before I was dragged here. I shook my head vigorously to try to clear my thoughts.

“Sparrow?”

The process of clearing my head was interrupted by Rubella’s voice that was somehow less irritating than before. I stared blankly at Rubella and tried to remember why I disliked her so much.

I didn’t like her, the feelings of hostility were strong within me and I couldn’t help bit be over-cautious around her,

But why?

“Rubella?"

She gave me a soft smile and her long red nails circled the rim of her teacup. The tattoos on her arms and face moved around in the same dizzying pace that did nothing to help the foggy haze that had entered my consciousness.

" That was a memory transfer. Are things clearer to you now?"

I shook my head, albeit slowly and spoke carefully to avoid slurring my words. Exhaustion suddenly overcame me once more, but something told me that I shouldn’t fall asleep. That falling asleep would be a terrible thing to do.

" I think it would be easier if you just told me."

My response was somehow extremely hostile, but it wasn’t like she had directly done anything to me? Why were my feelings so irrational?

" I suppose it would. You dear, are a witch and we need your help to take down the fairies”

"I’m a what?"

I knew though. All the memories of spell theory and rituals and procedures. If they didn’t come from a witch, then they came from a certified psychopath.

She stretched her blood-red-lipstick stained lips in a not quite but still menacing smile and drew out her words, slurring the end of each to the beginning of the other.

" Did I stutter?"

I shook my head, one in response to her question and two to clear the moss that was slowly eroding my thoughts and making it difficult to think straight. A rose scented incense flooded the room and made it even more difficult to focus.

" W-Wh-Why do you want to take down the fairies?"

She laughed in a pitying way as if I had just asked what 2+2 was or another equally simple question.

" I would have thought your fairy prince had explained everything."

My... My fairy prince?

" Very well! I’ll give you a quick history lesson. Ohohoho!”

She suddenly let out an odd laugh that somehow still managed to be incredibly charming. Like a skilled courtesan from ancient times.

“What’s so funny?”

She shook her head, an action that triggered her long tresses of red hair to cascade down her neck and waved her hand dismissively.

“I was just thinking about how long it had been since I last had a pupil.”

She didn’t allow me to ask any more questions, namely such as what had happened to the last one and launched right into an explanation, creating a large animated map in the air to illustrate her point.

“The four kingdoms, winter, autumn, spring and summer used to be shared between the races. The elves, witches, fairies, and goblins. The witches had autumn court, the goblins had the winter lands and the fairies had the summer lands, the spring courts belonged to the elves but eventually became an uninhabited land."

Her beautiful face contorted into an ugly mocking grimace as she spoke, the contrast being both shocking and alluring. If I were to rate her on a list of beautiful people that I knew then she ranked below the prince and even bellow Finn, a kid that I knew from school, but the way that she used what she had to her advantage was destructively attractive. Even to me as a straight female.

"However, the fairies began to reproduce much faster than they died, and they decided they needed more land. It began with politics with many councils and discussions and eventually the Fairies negotiated their way into ownership of the land. "

A knock rang through the door as it swung open. It gave way to a very handsome guy wearing an overly formal outfit and holding a tray. He walked stiffly and unnaturally, a sharp contrast from Rubella’s movements which were so fluid that they may as well have been liquid and created a small but effective dissonance that somewhat helped me snap out of it.

" Your evening meal"

He offered the tray to me as well and looked up to connect his eyes with mine. Stunning but inhuman amber-orange eyes were lifted to meet mine but as stunning as they were, they also looked dead and emotionless. Like empty pits or wells dyed with orange rust.

A small but prominent horn, sleek like steel but shiny as silver poked out from the middle of his forehead and refracted the lights from the windows to his eyes and back out.

" Ma'am?"

I couldn't stop staring even as Rubella coughed to get my attention and eventually, he was sent to the side of the room to stop distracting me… not that it worked. He stood in the corner, out of sight but still ready to jump into action if necessary.

Rubella laughed in a manner that was directed at me,

" He's a handsome one, isn't he"

The man stiffened in discomfort but stayed quiet and still at the side of the room, staring at the ceiling. Her eyes narrowed in a shrewish way and leaned forward as if to confide to me in a not so quiet voice,

" He's yours if you want."

My eyes widened in shock and I didn't stop the snappish tone in my voice. After all, no matter how I heard it, it was just wrong and going off the man's reaction it was clear that he thought so as well.

" What?"

She shot an amused chuckle at me like I was overreacting to what was supposedly a commonplace occurrence.

" I believe you heard what I said."

" You can't just offer up someone like they are an object."

She laughed at my expense again and rubbed at the centerpiece of her necklace, a bright ruby stone that danced around her thin neck. Its many facets reflected the light in the room and made small red lights bounce around the room in a distracting way.

" If you insist. Now, where was I? Oh yes, the spring court."

What was so bad, so the fairies had a little more land.

“I won’t bore you to death with the details but all in all the Fairies ended up conquering all of us through the war as we had feared. The Queen even managed to seduce the leader of the goblins over to her side and outnumbered us witches by far. We were eventually beaten down and exiled, although that was revoked. In the original exile though the leader of the witches at the time was so enraged that she gave her life to cast a curse on the happy couple that had been borne out of the war. Once again, I won’t go into detail, but it cursed their firstborn child to have a miserable first 16 years existence.”

I furrowed my brow,

“Why 16 years?”

Rubella shrugged,

“Why curse an unborn child at all? She was an odd woman that spent a lot of time in the human world. Perhaps the number was stuck on her mind. Anyways do you get why we have to combat the fairies now?”

I shook my head and even put on a faux sympathetic smile, not wanting to get on my kidnapper’s bad side but also not being able to lie.

“That’s tragic for you guys that you were first betrayed by the fairies and then lost the war afterward… but why does that mean you have to fight them? Isn’t that all ancient history? Why dig it out now?”

She smiled a bitter smile and began to speak in a mournful tone, just a shade darker than the one she had been using. At this point, my vision also began to wave and flicker, like someone had flashed a bright light right at my eyes and spun me around ten dozen times.

“I’m afraid we can’t just ‘leave it in the past’ as you’ve so quaintly coined it Sparrow. Remember the cursed child?”

I blinked a few times to clear my vision but still nodded to show that I remembered. I mean, she had only mentioned it not even 3 minutes ago.

“Well, that child did grow with a wretched life, starting even before he was born. You recall that his parents were the respective leaders of their people. While there were plans to eventually merge the societies it definitely wouldn’t happen any time fast enough to meet the new royal child and also depending on what it was it would change things a lot.”

A singular tear seemed to form in her eyes as she recalled the fate of this mystical child.

“Regardless of whatever it was, goblin or fairy it was still directly from the line of royalty, after all, it wouldn’t lose to any high-class members of their societies. So, a treaty was formed to keep one side from brainwashing the child. If the child was a goblin male it would be taken to the winter kingdom to be raised. And if it was a fairy female it would be taken to live with the fairies. Either way, it would spend a single season of each year in the other kingdom to learn about its other heritage.”

“Wow... that sounds impressive? But what does that have to do with anything?”

“Just listen! When the child was born it turned out to be the worst-case that no one had even planned for. For the first time in over centuries, a freak was born. A male child with the silver horn and the red eyes of the goblin royalty and the golden hair and wings of the fairy royalty. Both sides seemed to forget completely about the treaty signed earlier and wished to claim the infant for their own, realizing that it would grow to be a powerful weapon in the future or a great threat. It eventually dissolved into the second great war.”

She heaved a heavy sigh.

“In the end, the kid's parents tried to smuggle him into the human world, and both perished during the transfer. The goblins didn’t have the multiple tiers of power that the fairies had and realized that they couldn’t win without an emperor, so they immediately retreated to their winter lands. As for the child, well, a Goblin can't awaken their powers without a specific ritual from their parents or someone directly related to them by blood. Since his father had died it had no hopes of ever becoming a goblin. They left it in the hands of the fairies, where it has been held in all but captivity for the last 17 years or so.”

Sensing that I was about to interrupt again and ask what that had to do with the witches she hurried on to the conclusion.

“All of this was eventually blamed on the Witch’s curse. And I don’t blame them, after all, him being a half breed was the only way that such a blessed existence’s life could ever have even met the slightest inconvenience. But still no movements were made and the witch that cast the curse perished so I didn’t think anything would come of it until we received this…”

An invitation card with a small hologram of two figures dancing below large text was brought out.

Invitation to the Grand wedding of the Prince of the Queendom and the Great general Ruan!

Still, I didn’t see what was so wrong.

“So, the prince, who I assume is that kid you were talking about, is getting married. What’s the big deal?”

Her irritation finally began to crack through her sultry demeanor, and she snapped at me in a shrill voice.

“What’s the big deal?! The prince, who most definitely has a large grudge against us, married the top general of the faires. The one whose mother fought only second to the queen herself, the one who holds the second-largest army in the land, save for the royal armies itself! And if you still don’t think that’s enough then you should know the message the prince sent to one of the other military families.”

She flipped out another sleeve of paper from where-ever the first one had come from and handed it over to me. She let me read it even as she verbally abridged it for me.

“Once the new queen is crowned the very first plan is to take advantage of our still weakened state from the last war and wipe out all witches and wizards from existence! Both this plane and earth. Sparrow! That includes your brother. You keep asking what this has to do with you, but can you stand around and watch the prince kill you and your family because of a grudge from 17 years ago?”

She waved her hand around in the same pattern she had been waving it around before, but I was just now noticing, and my vision suddenly completely went dark. My head hurt so much it felt like it was about to split and the webbed-out branches on my arms began to burn like a flaming torch was being traced over them.

Rubella’s silky voice suddenly pervaded through all the pain and numbness and reached the last bit of my mind before I passed out. I couldn’t quite make out what it was, but I knew it was nothing good for me.