No one had ever dared taint the bloodline.

The royal family prided itself on never having produced a half-Elf. And yet here was Quaraun, white as a Moon Elf, all the physical features of a Moon Elf, but he was very small like a Faerie. The other Moon Elves were similar in height to Humans, yet Quaraun was a head shorter than the shortest of them. Barely over 5 feet tall, Quaraun was only the size of a Faerie. He was very thin like a Faerie as well.

They feared and dreaded Fae blood corrupting their purity. But had they known a Thullid had invaded their village, their terror would have been far greater.

While Elves looked frail, they had great strength for their size, but Quaraun did not. He was just as frail and weak as he looked.

Quaraun’s love of glitter drove the royal family mad. For, his obsessively encrusting everything with gems, left the young Elf blinding the other Elves with his shimmering reflectiveness. This was another distinctly non-Elven and very Fae habit.

Some wondered if he didn’t have Gnome or Dwarf blood, what with the way he sewed gemstones and diamonds on everything he wore.

Furthermore, there was his skill at magic.

To the Human mind, all Elves had unusual capabilities, of course.

But nothing like the powers Quaraun possessed.

Each Elf had a link to nature.

Indeed, the High Elves were the guardians of the environment.

They kept the order of life and death in harmony. Without them the ecosystem of the planet would collapse in of itself.

In fact, this was exactly the problem. It was why the Diontites had stepped in. Why they had arrived from a galaxy beyond this one. Why Gremlin was constantly moving forward and backward through time, trying to undo the damage. In the year 2525, the world would die. Imploding in on itself, after the Moon crumbled and fell apart. All because the Moon Elves stopped doing what they were supposed to be doing: Keeping the moon’s gravitational pull in check.

But the Diontites in all their wisdom, did not know this. They did not understand how the magical powers of Elves functioned. And so, they incorrectly blamed Quaraun for the destruction of the planet. For the Battle of Ongadada.

Had the Diontites understood how Elven magic worked, they would have known stopping the Battle of Ongadada, was NOT the event they needed to change.

They needed to keep the Moon Elves alive.

They needed to keep the Moon Elves alive.

They needed to set the Moon Elves back on their true path of protecting the Earth’s oceans from the Moon.

But now, none of this mattered. It was the year 800 A.D.

The year 2525 was a long ways away.

And right now, the Moon Elves were too busy glorifying their own beauty, to pay attention to the Moon that inched slowly closer to the Earth.

High Elves filled the world with flowers.

They woke up the trees each Spring.

Through laying on of hands, an Elf could instantly restore dead brown grass, to its lush, green beauty once again.

Before the High Elves had gone insane, they had once carried the names matching of their dominant skills.

Moon Elves shifted tides with the moon.

Thus they limited storms from growing out of control.

Snow Elves blanketed the world with snow.

Wood Elves, healed the trees.

In this manner, these guardians of nature kept the world in balance.

Additionally, Elves acted as healers, keeping the birds and animals healthy. They took care of sick and injured plants, birds, and beasts. These were the normal everyday powers of the High Elves. But, as there became fewer Elves in the world, natural disasters became more common.

And the Moon Elves had lost their way.

So many years of putting self importance, vanity, and perfection of self beauty over all else had led to the Moon elves, no longer taking care of nature.

Locked in their own insane asylum of their hive mind, they congratulated each other on their endless beauty and forgot to temper the gravity pull of the moon. Around the world tides grew too high, storms lasted too long, winters too cold, summers too hot.

And then was born an Elf, who loved roses.

A Moon Elf who, took care of flowers, as did the Moon Elves of olde.

A Moon Elf who, nursed back to health injured birds, the way his ancestors had done.

A Moon Elf who, laughed.

A Moon Elf who, cried.

A Moon Elf who, smiled.

A Moon Elf who did the things Elves used to do, centuries ago, before the Moon Elves went mad.

A Moon Elf who did things other Moon Elves had forgotten were the things Moon Elves used to do.

A Moon Elf who, was as Moon Elves were supposed to be.

Quaraun did the normal things, Moon Elves were supposed to do.

The things Moon Elves used to do.

For it was not Quaraun who was different.

It was they whom had long ago gone insane.

So insane, where the Moon Elves, for so many centuries, that when a normal Elf was born, they did not know what to do with him. Thus they lashed out at him with bitter vengeance.

Unaware that they had lost their true powers over time, they were scared of the boy, who had the powers, their ancestors once possessed.

Quaraun did normal Elf things.

But, he could do more.

He moved things with his mind, and he commanded the weather, not just controlling it, but causing it.

On many occasions, when Quaraun got angry, the Elf he was mad at instantly died by a lightening bolt striking them.

He’d ordered the ocean to rise up as tidal waves to crush villages. But, he’d done these things as a small child, 3 years old.

So, he didn’t remember that he had done these things.

But the other Moon Elf clansmen remembered.

Because of this, they were frightened.

This was a power seen only in Dark Fae, Demons, and Thullids.

The Moon Elves thought Quaraun was not only part Faerie, but he was part Dark Fae.

Dark Fae were the evillest creature to exist, by Elven standards.

Perhaps the most maddening thing of all was his emotions. Quaraun often laughed, sometimes cried.

So long as he laughed, he must be punished.

He smiled.

Elves did not smile.

Unlike other Elves, Quaraun smiled.

Elves had no need to smile.

The hive mind conveyed each other’s emotions instantly to everyone else. Outward emotions unneeded.

For this reason, smiling was evil.

Moreover, smiling was something Humans and Faeries did.

Not Elves.

And trying to break him of these habits, meant that Quaraun had spent much of his early childhood shackled to a dungeon wall with a chain lashing his back.

To teach him not to cry out when in pain.

To teach him not to shed tears.

Beat him.

Until he stopped crying.

But beating him, made him cry more. The more he cried, the more terrified they became.

As long as he continued to show outward emotions, they continued to torment him.

For fear that he would destroy them all with only his mind, they continued to torture him.

For the purpose of protecting their village, they beat him. Without mercy. With much contempt.

Laughing or smiling resulted in his being locked in an iron maiden.

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When they grew tired of beating him, they would lock him in a room.

After all, what else was one to do with a naughty child?

Abandon it? Yes.

Beat it? Yes.

Abuse it? Yes.

Obviously the best way to teach a naughty child was to terrorize it into submission.

Without delay, off to the room.

That room.

A horrible, horrible room.

That horrible, terrible room.

A room filled with rats.

Lots of rats.

So many rats.

Rats everywhere.

Rats.

They bit him.

Rats.

Gnawed on his hand.

Rats.

Chewed on his feet.

Rats.

He was too busy fighting them off to sleep.

Alone for days without food or water.

No blankets for warmth.

Nothing soft to lay on.

A floor of sharp, jagged ledge.

The rank smell of mould.

The constant scolding and chiding from the hive mind was deafening, maddening.

Quaraun could hear every thought in every head of every other Moon Elf.

Just as they all could each hear each other’s thoughts.

Except Quaraun.

He was a Thullid.

A Thullid could connect to the Elven Hive Mind, but an Elf could not connect to the Thullid Hive Mind.

And so Quaraun could hear their thoughts.

They could not hear Quaraun’s thoughts.

The hive mind did not connect both ways for Quaraun.

He could hear them.

They couldn’t hear him.

He could feel them.

They couldn’t feel him.

For this reason they feared him.

For this reason they loathed him.

For this reason they conspired against him.

All they taught him was that he was alone, unwanted, and unloved.

“We have to break that Faerie spirit and make an Elf of you,” his father said between lashes of the whip.

Quaraun’s father was cruel in his torture of the poor boy, and finally, Quaraun broke and stopped showing emotion, just to avoid being punished for doing so.

Thus Quaraun became sullen and depressed, while still only a small child.

And worst of all, Quaraun possessed the gift of Faerie Sight.

He could see into the Realm of Fae.

This was the thing which pissed off his father the most, for a rare few were Faerie Sighted and it was said that the only way one could possess Faerie Sight was to have Faerie blood. This was proof, positive in the Moon Elves’ minds that Quaraun was only a half-Elf. This also meant he was not truly royal blood, for his father had to have been a Faerie and not the King’s younger brother.

Faeries existed alongside other races, but for the most part they were invisible. Faeries were rarely seen, usually only coming out at night and rarely setting foot outside of a forest. It was possible that Quaraun’s mother had spoken the truth about being faithful, for the Faeries had a nasty habit of shape-shifting to take the form of a lover. It was very probable that the Moon Elf had never slept with a male other than her husband and still produced a half-Elf.

A Faerie could easily have taken the form of her husband, bedded with her, sired a half-Fae child and the young mother never know the man in her bed was not her husband, but a Faerie instead. This was the lie the Moon Elves told strangers when anyone asked what had happened to Quaraun’s mother.

How did she die?

Why did her husband kill her?

Why was he allowed to get away with murder?

That Quaraun wasn’t an Elf any more, but was now little more than a husk infested by a Thullid that had long ago hollowed out his skull and attached itself in place of his brain, was a secret the Royal Family did not want anyone to know. The story that he was a half-Fae was more bearable.

Male Faeries taking non-Fae women in this manner had become a common occurrence in the past few centuries. No one knew for certain what had happened, but rumours told of a plague that had wiped out nearly every female Faerie, resulting in the males out of necessity, secretly bedding with non-Fae females in order that the Fae race not fade into extinction.

The Moon Elf Prince knew he could not have fathered such a corruption and publicly blamed Quaraun’s existence on the infidelity of his wife. She claimed that she had not been unfaithful, and he was Quaraun’s father, but he would hear nothing of her innocence and when Quaraun was still a small child, the hot tempered prince had beaten his wife to death.

Quaraun had witnessed the horrible event.

The young Elfling, barely old enough to walk, watched helplessly as his father beat his mother to death. In his childhood, Quaraun was daily beaten and pushed around by his father. However, Quaraun was the old Elf’s only son.

Daughters he had countless numbers of, but Quaraun alone was his only male offspring.

The King likewise had no male children, and this meant that Quaraun stood to inherit the kingdom should both his father and uncle die. It also meant that in spite of how much they despised the poor idiotic, fool, both the King and his younger brother sought to make a King out of Quaraun to prepare him for taking over for them one day.

Unfortunately for both of them, Quaraun was much more interested in being a princess then being a prince and no one in the village was even been aware the royal family had a male offspring as no one had ever seen Quaraun not wearing the garb of a she-Elf before, not until today that is.

Quaraun listened to BeaLuna yapping about sex and thought about how his father and uncle were both demanding he at least find a sex partner until he found a wife.

It disturbed him greatly, that people were so interested in his sex life or rather his lack of a sex life. Quaraun not once in his young life had ever had anything close to a sexual thought about anyone.

The order of the Di’Jinn and their vow of celibacy, suited the young Elf well, for he had no intention of ever forming a sexual relationship with anyone. BeaLuna’s talk of sex made Quaraun very uncomfortable, for Quaraun not only had no interest in having sex, but he found the very idea of sex to be utterly and completely repulsive. Thullids were asexual. Quaraun wasn’t an Elf, he was a Thullid.

It was said by other Wizards, that it was by his virtue of complete non-interest in sex that Quaraun came by his vast magical powers.

While BeaLuna, along with most every Moon Elf in the village, teased Quaraun and made fun of his aversion to sex, few realized that he truly, positively hated sex.

They thought he was joking to cover up the fact he preferred males to females, but Quaraun never joked and never lied.

He spoke only in facts, truth, and logic and had no mental ability to comprehend that BeaLuna and the Moon Elf villagers where joking around and having fun. All Quaraun knew was that they were being mean to him and while he made no outward sign of emotion, their words did deeply hurt his feelings. He very much wanted a friend he could talk to, one that wouldn’t tease him or laugh at him.

Quaraun, with his baby pink dresses, garish make-up, mega long hair, small stature, and frail dainty ways had been labelled as a fop. Foppery was illegal, punishable by life in prison if one openly admitted to being a male who preferred males, or execution if one was a male caught in the act of sex with another male.

Because the laws against males with males was so severe, all the other Moon Elves, assumed that Quaraun preferred males and had taken a vow of celibacy to avoid punishment and to have an excuse for his not keeping time with females.

The truth was that Quaraun was not attracted to anyone, not male nor female.

Thullids were asexual.

Quaraun wasn’t an Elf, he was a Thullid.

He simply had no interest in sex at all, and it bothered him greatly that no one believed him when he said as much.

But then there was King Gwallmaiic.

Because Quaraun was a Thullid and not an Elf, he had no use for emotions and physical sensations. It never occurred to him that there were reasons for sex beyond reproduction.

The thought that anyone would want sex simply for the sensual pleasure of sex had never crossed his mind. Like High Elves, Thullids thought of themselves as above other races, and they based this on their having evolved to an asexual existence.

The Jelly Thullids like the one in Quaraun’s head were both male and female and at the same time neither male nor female and when they decided to reproduce, the matter was as simply as breaking off a tentacle and allowing it to swim free and grew into a whole new Jellyfish.

So for Quaraun to have to put up with the Moon Elves and their obsession with their inferior means of reproduction, bored him immensely.

However, Quaraun was a Thullid trapped in an Elf’s body and the Elf body was still subject to weaknesses of the flesh.

The Di’Jinn had been careful to guard Quaraun from anything to do with sex at all, thus raising him the purest, most innocent, virginal Elf to have ever existed. It was why they killed the herd of black horses, for they knew what they were. Unicorns.

Unicorns were mystically attacked to virgins and would stop at nothing to get a hold of the virgin. And while some Unicorns protected virgins, there were others, whose only thought in life was the rape virgins. These horny horned horses were known as Phookas.

The Di’Jinn had known the danger their little Moon Elf was in, when the herds of black ponies, lead by the Phooka began gathering at their door.

And so Quaraun, a Thullid trapped in an Elf’s body, without his Di’Jinn advisers to steer him away from the evil Unicorn that was stalking him, had fallen victim to the Phooka’s lust for bedding with a virgin.

And now the poor Thullid Elf was more confused than ever. He knew a male could not reproduce with a male, so he could not understand why the Phooka had raped him.

He also couldn’t understand why he had enjoyed it so much.

No one had ever told him the pleasures of sex and he wanted more than anything to feel the Phookan Unicorn inside of him again. These were the thoughts going through his Jelly brain as the Gnome sat beside him talking of other things.

Quaraun tolerated BeaLuna’s company, only because she was the only person in the village who tolerated his.

Few people in the village really knew Quaraun.

He had never left the palace during his childhood and he’d only been a small youth when his father had sent him to live with the Di’Jinn.

Secretly his father, hoped Quaraun of being a half-Elf and not a Thullid. For he had hoped the Di’Jinn would kill the young Elf so he could be rid of him. Instead the Di’Jinn had seen Quaraun as an Elf of great promise. Quaraun lacked the arrogant hatred of non-Elves. More importantly, Quaraun was a Thullid who could pass for an Elf. This made him valuable to the Thullid.

And because of his shy, non-social habits, Quaraun had proven himself to be well suited to book learning. And so it had come to pass that a Thullid who live among the Di’Jinn, ZooLock, had taken the young Moon Elf in as his apprentice.

ZooLock taught Quaraun all there was to know of the Di’Jinn order.

The Di’Jinn ways.

The Di'Jinn religion.

The Di'Jinn culture.

And the Di’Jinn magic.

The worst part of all was the other rumour.

Quaraun’s mother - people said her husband had killed her for her unfaithfulness, for her having given birth to a half Fae.

It was what the villagers told strangers when strangers in town asked why Quaraun was isolated and excluded for social activities with the rest of the community, but it wasn’t the truth. They all knew the truth behind the lie they told to the world...the real reason the boy had been sent to live with the Di’Jinn.

Quaraun had lived with the Di’Jinn for nigh on 30 years, before returning home to the Moon Elf village. He returned wearing the bright pink robes typical of Thullid Wizards.

The Thullid were an androgynous race of squid-like amphibious humanoids. Their culture had transcended the need for sexual reproduction centuries ago and thus Quaraun had come to be raised in a culture where sex simply did not exist.

This deeply annoyed the Moon Elf King for Quaraun was heir to the throne and if the royal family was to continue, it was, the King said, Quaraun’s responsibility to marry a she-Elf and sire as many Moon Elf children as absolutely possible.

The problem now was that Quaraun had spent most of his young life with the Di’Jinn and had joined their order becoming a Di’Jinn Wizard himself and thus had taken a vow of celibacy and had no interest in ever taking a wife, siring children or even taking over the Moon Elf Kingdom was something he had no interest in doing.

Quaraun had only been back in the Moon Elf village a few months and already his presence had disrupted the Moon Elf’s quiet reclusive way of life, as travelling Wizards from all points of the globe were continually coming to the Moon Elf village to request’s Quaraun’s services.

Though only a very young Elf, barely 75 years of age, and only the equivalent of a 15-year-old boy, were he a Human, he was revered as a wise old sage, by other races.

The long lifespan of an Elf made even a young Elf seem wise and old in the eyes of the shorter lived races. But in the eyes of other Elves, Quaraun was but a foolish young boy. The other Elves saw Quaraun as a child and he would not be old enough for them to classify him as an adult for another 40 or 50 years.

When Wizards of other races began showing up in the village, seeking out Quaraun’s additive and services, it infuriated the older, wiser Moon Elves who saw Quaraun as not but a stupid child.

While living with the Di’Jinn Quaraun had built up for himself a reputation for’ his skill and craftsmanship in making small containers which were much larger on the inside and embedded with powerful spells to contain anything, even a Lich.

A Lich had attacked the Di’Jinn and Quaraun with very little effort, Quaraun had captured it and contained it in a tiny bottle. From that day forth Wizards of all races, species, schools, and guilds sought out the young Moon Elf to hire him to make more of these bottles, boxes, and bags.

Quaraun had become very famous in only a few short months and it was for that reason the King had sent for him, requesting his return to the village.

The Moon Elves saw what Quaraun did as blasphemy against his clan and culture.

Wizards were not well liked among the Moon Elves and for a Moon Elf to become a Wizard was seen as mutiny against his people.

Had it been any other Moon Elf, Quaraun would have been banished, shunned, no longer considered a part of his clan, possibly even executed.

But this was the King’s nephew, the only male heir of the royal family and the King had decided it was time for Quaraun to come home, cast aside his foolish “hobby” of wizardry and learn to be the next King.