Page 168 of Into the Isle

She had been missing for over two years now.

Something needed to be done.

So it was that King Dannon opened the gate to his most hidden prison cell. He stared at the unkempt state of Queen Amisara with a frown.

He had always had an affinity for her, ever since first smiling at the elven lady during a celebration feast after the First Taldan War. It was a shame, in his mind, that his motives for a peaceful marriage had been thwarted by the elven woman’s love for his own damned sister.

Queen Amisara, though chained to the wall, held her head high. Her belly was bloated with child, and it wouldn’t be long now until Dannon had himself a son.

The capture, imprisonment, and continuous rape of the elven queen had already given Dannon two daughters. Now he simply required a son to continue his legacy, and then he could be done with Amisara once and for all.

Queen Solveig, his sister, and Lord Talasin, his elven “brother,” did not know of Dannon’s two daughters, of course. Nor did they know of the state of Queen Amisara, kept under lock and key in the dark dungeons of Dannon’s castle.

Dannon had never forgotten about the visions he’d seen. They had incited his every move since first witnessing the destruction of humankind in his dreams, where Lord Talasin and the elves had been holding the sword to the humans’ throats.

After winning the Second Taldan War, King Dannon again went to Lord Talasin to demand the magical Runesphere be kept on Midgard, in the possession of the humans, rather than Alfheim with the elves.

Talasin denied him, throwing Dannon into a rage. They were supposed to be equals. How dare the elven king try to hold the artifact they had found, together, away from him!

Talasin made the suggestion that they crack the Runesphere in two, so each race could have a piece of it. Dannon scoffed at the idea, saying it was foolish—that both of the races might lose the magic within the sphere, because they had no idea how it might react to being broken in two.

Dannon and Talasin went their separate ways.

Everyone in Dannon’s royal court found it odd that the king had never married. They were also curious about the two infant girls being pampered, running through the castle. Dannon claimed they were the orphaned daughters of a distant cousin—a human lord and lady of another castle who had both perished during the Second Taldan War.

He could not explain, however, the slightly tapered point of the babies’ ears.

His advisors grew suspicious. Dannon felt the walls closing in—that his secret abduction and brutal raping and breeding of Queen Amisara would soon be uncovered.

So he made a desperate play. He sent a secret message to Lord Talasin, the man he had once called a brother. In that message, he gave Talasin an ultimatum, an exchange: the Runesphere for Lady Amisara. Give the humans the artifact, and the elves would receive their queen back.

Lord Talasin was enraged. Filled with wrath, he wished to bring the war to Dannon’s doorstep, after being lied to for years about the whereabouts of his sister.

In the end, he relented. For the sake of his people, who had just survived two vicious wars, he agreed to Dannon’s stipulations.

In secret, the two met—Talasin with the Runesphere, Dannon with his pregnant prisoner, Amisara.

It was an ambush. A fight broke out, and during the fight Lord Talasin was killed by the human he once called a brother. His body was tossed into the depths of the seas.

Dannon now had the Runesphere, the elven woman who would give him a son and heir, and half-elven daughters who would continue his legacy and bring inherent magic to the human populace.

In his mind, the King Who Saw had successfully prevented the terrible visions he’d seen years before.

But Talasin’s body washed up on a shore. It was discovered and identified by his allies. It was only then that the elves raised arms against the humans, thus thrusting into motion the omen Dannon had prophesied.

The Third Taldan War broke out, this time among elves and humans. Allies turned family, family turned rivals, rivals turned enemies.

During the chaos of the war, the three half-elven children of Queen Amisara the elf went missing. The queen herself died, succumbing to her years-long imprisonment. King Dannon contracted a horrible illness and perished, in a sign of the Norns working against him, or so it was said among his advisors. More likely, an assassin sent from Talasin’s allies had managed to slip by Dannon’s defenses and end his reign.

The Runesphere was retrieved by the elves and taken back to Alfheim, where the elves believed it rightfully belonged. Then, the elves put up a barrier to separate themselves completely from the bloodthirsty humans, so the two races might never interact or commingle again. The magical ward made traveling between the two planes impossible. The elves and humans became hated enemies.

And, for a thousand years, that barrier has held, with the last peaceful dream between humans and elves long forgotten . . .

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