~o0o~
The desert of Di’Jinn lay dead.
All life in the desert died.
Everything.
Everything lay dead.
Every bird.
Every beast.
Every Human.
Every non-Human.
Every insect.
Every plant.
Every germ.
Every bacteria.
Nothing survived.
Nothing could disobey the fiercesome will of an Elder Brain.
The Elder Brain pointed a finger into the desert and commanded: “DIE!”
And obediently all life did exactly as ordered: All live in the desert curled up and died.
Everything alive moments before died and withered into dust.
In the blink of an eye, all life in the desert of the Di’Jinn ceased to exist.
The brilliant orange sun blazed down on the empty nothingness.
The golden desert sands blew, bleak and lifeless in the blistering summer heat.
No life. Nowhere.
No life at all.
Nothing.
No where.
All life turned to ash. Powdery grey ash now floating, gloomy and lifeless in the breeze.
All life in the desert vanished, save a small Elf wearing ultra pink Thullid silks and a black Unicorn. The dazed and confused Elf turned around and walked out of the desert. And walked clear across the planet, making his way back home to the Moon Elf village of the Deep North. Meanwhile, the Phooka gathered up what little remained of his army and trailed along behind the Elf.
Years passed as the cherry blossom pink robed Wizard priest walked across the planet. And everywhere Quaraun went, rumours gathered of the Moon Elf wizard in Thullid clothes. And stories spread of the bodies he left behind in every village he visited.
In the years it took for him to walk back home, he gained a reputation for being the single most feared being to ever exist. More feared than the Thullids, more feared than the Elf Eater himself.
And yet, Quaraun was naught but a simple tailor, who wove pink silk and sold embroidered scarves. That the scarves possessed magic powers he’d not intended them to have remained a fact Quaraun was clueless about. And that the Elf Eater followed behind him, slaughtering each village after Quaraun left, also remained unknown to the oblivious Thullid infested Elf.
~o0o~
Quaraun in his many decades living with the Di’Jinn had taken to dressing like them, and now wore very elaborately bejewelled dresses in brilliant shades of pink. He stood out starkly against the silvery, blueish white snow covered landscape. His hair, likewise strayed from convention. Having never cut it in several decades, Quaraun’s silvery white hair, now reached past his knees.
Quaraun had only been a small child when the Moon Elves had sent him to live with the Thullid Wizards.
The squid headed alien mages ate Elves, and it was expected that they would eat Quaraun and the Moon Elves would be done with their troublesome little Elf.
No one, save the King, had expected the Thullids to take the Elf in and treat him as one of their own, much less that they would train him in their dark magic arts and induct him into their elite wizarding society The Order of the Di’Jinn.
Upon realizing that Quaraun would never be eaten by the Thullids and that he was fast gaining a reputation as the most powerful Wizard of all time, the Moon Elves decided it was time to bring him back into their society and undo the damage of his having taken up wizardry.
The Moon Elves shied away from magic arts, seeing them as a great evil.
They saw Quaraun’s fast rising fame as a black eye against their culture, for the world saw Quaraun as a representation of his people and his people saw him as a freak and a corruption of everything they held dear and sacred.
They determined they could not allow him to go on this way and must turn him back into a good and proper Moon Elf before it was too late and he became too set in his ways.
They had requested his return several times and were surprised when one day he actually showed up, unannounced.
Quaraun was on his way home to the Valley of the Moon Elves in the far Deep North, after having lived so many decades with the Di’Jinn.
Quaraun had speech disorders, was plagued with phobias, and was shorter, smaller, and thinner than every other Moon Elf. Seen by the others as a retarded, weak, runt in frail health, he had spent his early childhood being bullied and teased horrendously by the other Moon Elves.
It was why he had killed them.
Quaraun for whatever reason, had no memory of having killed anyone, not the Moon Elf children who’d bullied him, nor the Di’Jinn who’d raised him. He had also had time to forget what the villagers were like, how they had treated him. The villagers in turn, where not expecting to see the crown prince return as a transvestite dressed in shimmering almond blossom pink gowns, making him in their eyes, far more freakish than he had been when he left.
The Moon Elves had other reasons for requesting Quaraun’s return. Reasons which they had chosen not to tell him about, for fear he’d remember how they’d treated him and not help them.
A thousand years ago or more, no one really knew the date, there had risen up a King.
An evil, murderous, bloodthirsty, monster, who set out to killing every King across the globe.
One by one the monstrous beast had slaughtered every King of the Realm of Fae, declaring himself King of all the Faeries.
The creature was a bitter, angry Phooka.
An evil trickster Faerie who thought there was nothing more delight-some than to watch his victims die horrible deaths at the expense of his often bloody, practical jokes.
King Gwallmaiic hailed from Fire Mountain of Pepper Valley, and he had an insatiable lust for eating Elves, and thus he became known as The Elf Eater of Pepper Valley.
But after a thousand years of terror, the evil King vanished without a trace.
Only to rise up again a few hundred years later as a Lich, unlike any Lich the world had ever known.
He was not dead.
No one could explain it.
He was not fully a Lich and yet he had very Lich-like traits and powers.
The horrors King Gwallmaiic had rained on Elven villages in his lifetime was nothing compared to the nightmares his reign of strange-near-undeath had brought.
Millions of Elves fell in his wake and rumours said that he ate the flesh of every one of them.
The Elves of the Deep North had long thought themselves safe from this monstrous terror.
As the Elven races of the South became extinct, the Phookan King and his army of undead minions moved farther north. The aristocratic High Elves of the Deep North shuddered in terror. For the undead Phookan army marched ever closer to their snow-capped mountains.
The Moon Elves hated their frail, transvestite prince. But, in his 70 year absence he had gained a reputation. A reputation as the most powerful and most deadly Wizard since the Elf Eater himself.
Supposedly.
Rumours said, that Quaraun, supposedly, was one of the few beings to ever meet a Lich face to face and live to tell the tale.
Supposedly.
Quaraun, also supposedly, had a skill for getting close to Liches and killing them.
Supposedly.
Permanently.
Supposedly.
Liches are immortal.
Supposedly.
They can not be killed.
Supposedly.
A Lich once killed, supposedly, will reawaken 100 years from its so-called death.
Quaraun had killed the Di’Jinn - the masters of making Liches. So people assumed that he must know how to kill a Lich.
A difficult feat, as Liches were eternal beasts who could regenerate indefinitely.
In truth, Quaraun had never killed a Lich.
He had once met a Lich, but he had been unaware the Lich was a Lich. So, Quaraun had no knowledge of his having encountered said Lich.
But, people will believe gossip, lies, slander, and rumours, long before they will believe the truth. No matter how many times Quaraun said he was not a Lich hunter and had never met or killed a Lich, people refused to believe otherwise.
It was the hope of the Moon Elves, that by having Quaraun back in their village, he would kill the Elf Eater of Pepper Valley. Save all Elves everywhere. Or at least, save the only important Elves: The Moon Elves.
~o0o~
