A Tale of Ten Monarchs
A tiellan folktale
ONCE, A LONG TIME AGO, the Nine Tiellan Kingdoms stretched across the face of the Sfaera. Tiellans were far more numerous, then, almost double the population of humans, and they directed everything from trade to technology to art and much more. Nine tiellan monarchs ruled these kingdoms, and each of them was beloved by their people; each did their best to rule fairly and justly.
Humans occupied a place in this world, too, but with a much smaller footprint than the great bloody boots with which they traipse the Sfaera now. An empress ruled the humans, with a fist and will of iron. She was not cruel, but had learned the best way to love her people was to keep order among them.
The human empire and the tiellan kingdoms lived in harmony for some time, until one day, quite suddenly, that harmony ceased. A war whose cause was forgotten by the legends we have forgotten today, broke out between the human empire and one of the tiellan kingdoms. Soon other tiellan kingdoms came to the aid of the one, and eventually the entire Sfaera was at war.
The nine tiellan kings and queens witnessed what this war did to their people, the pain and terror that violence wrought, and chose to treat with the human empress so they could finally end the war. The empress, too, witnessed the suffering of her people, and agreed to meet. But while the kings and queens prepared to compromise for peace, the empress had other plans.
When the ten rulers met at the Heart of the Sfaera, they quickly agreed on the horrors the violence between them had caused, and formed a pact of peace. Each of them walked away happy, satisfied the violence had ended and they could once again return to a life of harmony.
But, one by one, the tiellan kings and queens fell ill. The poison coursed through each of them, twisting their bodies, scarring their faces, changing them until they were no longer themselves. What these former kings and queens did not know, what they did not suspect until too late, was the poison the empress had placed in each of their goblets as they sat together, discussing peace.
When the tiellan kingdoms did not recognize their kings and queens, they fell into chaos, and the empress was quick to consolidate her power, assimilating each tiellan kingdom into her empire, creating the largest, greatest civilization the Sfaera had ever known. The tiellan kings and queens, now beggars and pariahs, were cast out, never to be seen or heard from again.
And, for many, many years, there was peace.
Eventually, the empress faded away, as if nothing but a dream in the minds of her people, and the humans and tiellans lived alongside one another. Left to their own devices, small wars and skirmishes broke out, and eventually the humans enslaved all tiellans, taking away their freedom and culture, robbing them of their power, and forcing them into submission. And so the wheel turned.
But as all things must, the Sfaera itself began to grow weary, and buckle, and break. The end of all things had come, and all people feared and trembled. Lightning fell from the sky like rain. Liquid fire burst forth from the mountains. The seas boiled, and all life seemed on the verge of one final, terrible death throe. The worst of all these disasters came in the form of nine terrible monsters, misshapen and ugly, and the people began to wonder whether they had been dead all along, whether this was just some torture dreamed up in Oblivion.
And then, in a burst of light, the empress returned to save her people, one final time. She fought the nine monsters, her light against theirs, but even with her great power and glory the nine matched her equally, and eventually the two sides destroyed one another completely. No trace remained of the empress, or the monsters she fought so valiantly to defend her people against.
And yet, when the empress took her last breath, evaporating into a beam of light, and the monsters sank into the earth in death, something changed.
The Sfaera began to heal.
The Sfaera began to heal, and the people with it. Tiellans and humans, for the first time since the dawn of time, lived as equals and accepted one another. The world knit itself back together, and while there was not always peace, there was, more often than not, love.
In the midst of the remade world, nine great trees grew forth from the Heart of the Sfaera, each one different, each one similar to the other, and each one blossoming and growing and offering shade for weary travelers for many, many ages to come.