Afterglow

Rise

Mewni never really was a place of equality.

From its appalling class divide to its tarnished history, the nation wasn't exactly the best leader in terms of opportunity. Many of its streets and roads were filled with the impoverished and the misfortuned, and many of the rich indulged in their luxuries and wealth as they watched from afar, none batting an eye to the squalid conditions down below their estates.

For all of its victories and triumphs, its advancements and inventions, the fact that you could find lines of people roaming the streets, living off less than a dollar a day within the capital city showed a severe problem with its society.

But this problem was no more so apparent to anyone else than the monsters.

The monsters, who every day stared begrudgingly at the towering castle of their oppressors and conquerors in the skyline. The monsters, who were relegated to the backwaters and the deplorable wastelands of the continent, spending their days hiding in the forests as they struggled to get by.

They had no food, no delicacies or luxuries to enjoy as they had once before. But just outside lay bountiful yields of corn and wealth. They starved as their only source of food taunted them from afar, protected by the shield and might of the Butterfly Kingdom that had left them here to rot centuries ago.

They had no nation to call their own as they once had, it having been crushed and destroyed by the Mewman settlers with their magic and sword. They lived as stateless beings, disorganized in the Forest of Certain Death in loosely organized bundles.

It seemed, even as Mewni grew more prosperous and rich each day, the monsters would be sidelined, left to their own as their people were slowly forgotten and eventually extinct as a minor footnote in history, their traditions and memories being lost with time.

Even as some Queens tried to change it, to make their lives better and even integrate them into Mewni, nothing changed. They were still stuck in the underdeveloped forest, suffering and dithering, left to die as nature tested them.

So now, when their new Queen speaks of unity, of integration and peace, what weight can it hold to them?

How can they believe what she says holds truth?

Those monsters who do believe in her words find themselves in the cities. They go to the towns under the new laws and find themselves harassed by mobs and attacked by fanatics, being named slurs and given the dirty eye as they walked the town.

How can they believe the people are different when they have clearly shown otherwise?

She acts so naively, so idiotic in her understanding. She speaks as if she knows everything about this problem when it is clear she does not. She acts as if everyone around her agrees with her and respects her. She thinks what she's doing will work.

Does she really think what she's doing now will forgive their atrocities?

Does she really think what she's doing will make us forget?

They've taken our land and now they're trying to offer us cakes and friendship as if what they'd done never happened.

It is a humiliation. An insult, how she treats us. We are not children. We are not defenseless and we are not voiceless.

But now we have the chance to take it all back. To get our revenge on them for everything they've done.

She has become a sitting duck on her throne, complacent and unsuspecting, defenseless and unprepared. Her armies are deserting and her supporters are fading. She believes so genuinely in some artificial peace that she's been willing to weaken her kingdom to achieve it.

Never before have we had such an opportunity to take down such a weak enemy.

We can finally make them pay. We can set fire to their homes as they did ours, kill their families as they had ours, we can trample them and enslave them as they did to us, and we can leave them to die here like they left our ancestors.

Maybe then they will understand what they have done to us, and maybe then they will understand why it is unforgivable.

But until they do, they will suffer as we had. They will experience loss for the first time, pain and despair to such a degree they've never known. They will see great fires and no mercy as we'd seen.

It is only fair, after all.

An eye for an eye.

The time for darkness is over. Let us emerge from this wasteland and rise from the ashes as we take back what is rightfully ours.