War Cometh

There is something simply wrong here in the Western Empire. I promised my compatriots that I’d not tell you where we are, but that’s silly. Most people are unaware that Fairies even have a written language, let alone have the ability to read it. When you’re looking at letters that are less than a firth high, how is a big lump like a human even supposed to see them?

Humans don’t even know how big a firth is for Bennu’s sake. They measure things in inches and feet and miles after all. They are too big to need firths and pelegowats.

I can let you know that our main camp is in the Vequerrel woodlands, but the Empire already knows that.

So, I’m sending this tiny missive to you because I have to let you know that everything is wrong. There are thousands of yearlings, mother. This isn’t my normal over exuberant exaggerative bombast. At last count there were 53,278. Yearlings, mom. There are more yearlings here than adults.

Every one of them is born knowing they are going to war. They train like humans, mom. We have an army bred to be an army. It’s just un-fae.

It’s as if the militant attitude of the humans has infected everything here from the animals to the fae to…balance is gone from the world. It scares me that being here is corrupting me. I’m less flighty than I used to be. This entire environment is changing us, changing me. The fair folk are going to war, momma, and Bennu help me but I’m going along with them.

They were happy to see me, and the joy that radiated from them was so great that I almost thought that the rumors were just that: empty air. They were happy because of what I was, and what I represented.

We may be born with all the knowledge of our race, but experience is what teaches you how to do something. My actual ability with woodcraft was something that was huge, and I was no sooner arrived than I was sent out to scout. The forests are full of soldiers for the emperor. They search the woods for our people, but we’re smarter than they are.

For some unknown reason, humans and elves never look up. You have to look out for Dwarves because they’re always looking into the heavens, but not humans or elves. Their scouts look straight out across the horizon, so when you’re a pelegowat up in the air they never see you. Just up at the height of a tree and you are all but invisible to them.

Slowing them has been a much harder proposition than I would have thought.

In the past, it would have been a simple matter of a fairy dance here or there and then spiking their food with liberal portions of fae magic. These people have enough priests and wizards that they are summoning bread and milk for their entire army. They just summon it forth the moment that they need it.

That and the problem that there is no fae food that will replace bread or milk.

Those same wizards protect their people from our other tricks. When the battle happens it’s going to be bloody, and a lot of people are going to die.

There is something so wrong here, mother, and it is changing us. Keep yourself and father far away from this because I am changed enough for all of us. Tell the people what has happened. Let them know that this is a war of extermination and that we fear for our race, and not just our lives.

Be safe.

Hannah.

(Note from the transcriber: Apparently a firth is equal to about 1/20th of an inch. I say ‘about’ because no two fairies that I questioned had the same understanding of it. How can you have a unit of measurement without having a consensus on its weight? Regardless, a pelegowat is easier to measure being equal to either 200 inches or ‘the height of a young tree’ depending on the fairy you ask. That is roughly 16 and two thirds feet.)

Image from conceptart.org