Miranda’s Journal, Entry #4
I met a human boy named Gordi, while I was searching for the scepter – Lilith’s scepter, a soul repository that amplifies certain magic, and brought the Fae through the barrier. I figured it was also the key to sending them back, like an ‘undo’ button.
Gordi was a ‘Fetch’ - a human who had been taken by the Fae, alien-abduction style. He was the first one I ever met – humans taken to the Otherworld tend to stay there. We were starting to become friends, but he took off after learning what I am.
Though I answer to the name ‘Miranda McConnell’, that name belongs to a human child, stolen long ago. I am a Changeling.
A Changeling is a Fae, smuggled into the human realm. The Fae cross over via a small tear in the barrier between worlds, accomplished by using the magical equivalent of a nuclear bomb. The escaped Fae kidnaps a human child, leaving a Fae child in its place – ‘changed’ via magic to resemble the human one.
You might be wondering why they go through all this effort. For that I will have to go back again, to what happened after the fall of Atlantis.
Trapped in their new prison, the Fae abandoned all Atlantean ideals. Over time, they turned the beautiful garden of Orbis Alia into a desolate battlefield, filled with fear and death - or as close to it as the Fae could come.
The world started out as pretty much a blank slate, with little more than basic plants and vegetation to be used for building and clothes and food. Each Fae clan wanted a different environment suited to their needs, but there was not enough space to go around - so they began to compete for their own little corner of the world. As they killed one another, their glowing will-o-wisp spirits multiplied. They settled on objects, like stones, weapons, plants or buildings, or positioned themselves up in the sky like makeshift stars. Before long, everything was aglow.
With the finding of Lilith’s scepter, Eldritch Fae were capable of blasting a door into the human realm – yet because iron was so deadly, they could not stay long before returning.
But spells are like legal documents, and Lilith missed a loophole in hers - she proclaimed iron the bane of Fae men and women, but no mention of children, allowing Fae children to live in the human realm without any harmful effects. It also works in reverse - a human man or woman can't enter the Otherworld, but a child can.
The monarchs of Orbis Alia were under constant threat of assassination, either by enemy clans or rival kinsmen wanting to usurp the throne. The Fae protected their royal heirs by swapping them with human children. Before they died of iron poisoning, they'd be taken back to the Otherworld.
At least, that’s the way it used to work. Now they’ve broken free, to invade the human realm.
And I helped them do it.
YOU ARE READING
Changelings: The Novelization (Book 1)
AdventureLegends, folktales, and bedtime stories all spoke of creatures called Fae. But no one thought they were real - until the Fae invaded. Now it is up to a rag-tag group of teenage survivors to save the town of Hawthorne: Miranda, chronicler of the Fae...
