No one could understand the sensation Delsa felt when he first saw the Xiang Pa in the sky. After inwardly cursing Obischillaci, he resisted the impulse to create poetry, greedily inhaling the moist air like a bull, even as the bugs he drew in struggled pitifully in his nostrils.
Behind him, a dark cave yawned, an invisible barrier seeming to guard its entrance. From the other side, beings of the same complexion and look watched Delsa with complex emotions: fear, envy, jealousy...
The cave was full, yet none dared to cross.
Although the ultraviolet light from Xiang Pa blinded him, turning his eyes a stark white, when Delsa glanced back at the beings in the cave, a hint of mischief played around his lips. "The night has granted me black eyes, but with my nostrils I seek the light. Better to be here, in the open, than trapped in the underworld with no light at all, don’t you think?"
Today it was the sixteenth, it is often said that after Xiang Pa’s fullness on the fifteenth, its roundness peaks on the sixteenth. At such a moment, when the Elemental Tide that comes every fifty years reaches its most violent point, Delsa, the sole male heir of the Night Elves, is forcibly stripped of his title and banished to the surface, in a secret pact by the jealous heiresses - or so the official account goes.
A man causing his entire species to wage war among themselves was a shocking departure from the Night Elves’ philosophy.
At the time, the future queens formed an alliance, declaring loudly and with great haughtiness that Delsa, handsome as he was, tempted disaster. Each insisted he be executed.
As Delsa played a new melody in his palace, oblivious to the impending order for his execution, the future queens, the future grandmothers, sent their stealthiest, most ingenious accomplices to deliver their messages.
Each note bore a simple message: Someone wants to kill you. Flee, my treasure, quickly.
Delsa arranged the notes, seven distinct messages from underground where they had established a constant network of eight rulers. Exclude Delsa, and there were seven left.
With the ghost of a smile still gracing his lips, his dark eyes contracting suddenly, the seven letters on the table turned to ashes and dissolved. Not a trace remained.
Then, he sat back and listened to the bickering beyond his doors, the clang of weapons, and the death cries of countless Night Elves. A single tear slipped down his cheek as he played his instrument, created from the finest tip of a Gargoyle’s wing and the tail of a nightmare.
The exquisite music seemed to quell the anger and bloodlust in the Night Elves’ hearts.
All involuntarily lowered their weapons as a light rain, unnatural for the underground, began to fall. The late arrivals, the remaining Night Elf heiresses, held out their palms, deliberate in tasting the wetness of the rain. Their feelings for Delsa subsided, replaced by the icy thrill of annihilation. Read full story at NoveI-Fire.ɴet
Delsa was to be killed.
The common Night Elves did not understand the gravity of this, even the high priests of their kind struggled to grasp the meaning behind it, but it did not mean the heiresses were ignorant.
A calming war song - the rain was a product of magic.
Meaning, the next Night Elf heir was a dual-cultivator of war songs and magic, something the seven princesses found intolerable. But more than that, he was now a threat, and a much-desired one at that.
However, this alone was not enough to make them want to kill Delsa. What pushed them was something else.
When they were selected and distinguished from the other Night Elves and made home in the luxurious heiress mansion, they received a strange message. This message led them on a path they hadn’t anticipated, showing them a magical sheepskin parchment that only the female Night Elves could interpret.
It said: When a male heir arises amongst the Night Elves, their kind will seize the day, scaling up from the underworld to the brilliant mainland.
The princesses didn’t initially believe the prophecy, but their attempt at proving it wrong met with surprising and pleasing results.
However, in the Night Elves’ world, love was discarded, worthless as scrap paper.
They couldn’t bear the thought of sharing Delsa in his harem. The only way to possess him completely was to eliminate the other six princesses, ensuing a war whose outcome none dared contemplate.
Caught between claiming Delsa and the brilliant mainland or revelling in the comfort and safety their statuses as heiresses brought them...
Women are typically thought to be short-sighted.
Delsa became the sacrifice, yet he bore no resentment. With his eternally present smile, he watched the broken-hearted princesses, whispering softly in their ears as he passed, "I will miss you."
The princesses could hear something snap inside them.
"Execute him immediately."
One of the princesses bit down hard on her lip, shaking like a goblin in the cold of winter, naked under the onslaught of the wind.
"We could have had a more perfect sky."
As he said this, disappointment spread across Delsa’s face, causing the princesses’ shattered hearts to meld together once more only to be mercilessly broken again. The pain was too much for them to bear, they dared not look into Delsa’s dark eyes. At that very moment, tears as black as the night rolled down his cheek.
An outraged cry burst forth from the entrance of Delsa’s mansion. When the princesses opened their eyes again, Delsa was aboard a strange blue bird, soaring in the not-quite-sky.
Despite what had transpired, the princesses did not issue an order to kill him. They sat on the ground, listless and stunned, the echo of a man’s words resounding in their minds: ’One day, when we stand on the brilliant mainland, greedily breathing in the vibrant, life-filled air, I will take you soaring in the sky on a blue kite.’
The initiative to kill Delsa began in the stupefied silence of the women, an action that required little prompting. Every male Night Elf harbored a mixture of reverence and revulsion for Delsa, feelings that transformed into an understanding that Delsa was the "enemy of all men," after the princesses issued the order for his execution.