Cloak of Darkness( return of vesna book 1)

Prologue

A long time ago.
Much further than what has been recorded.
When many gods were worshipped, when demons thrived, when the immortals lived side by side with the humans. It was a time of greatness, one where peace reigned.
The world thrived with all beings living in a state of balance.
This pleased the gods. They smiled at this world and granted favors to the immortals to maintain the balance and keep it thriving with one request, that they were to protect the humans.
In so doing they created a hierarchy of immortals.
The highest rank belong to the Fae , they were beautiful males and females, common among their features were their pointed ears and lavender eyes some of them had wings.
The demons - they loved to rebel against the wishes of the gods and play tricks on the humans. Their features were blunt, they had razor sharp teeth and their eyes were either obsidian or red.
The sprites- they were the smaller fae as big as a human thumb, all of them had wings, large eyes, pointed ears and a poisonous bite.
The selkie - the water nymphs, they were beautiful with round blue eyes and wonderful aquamarine skin that glistened in the water, they had a tail instead of feet. Known to use their powerful melodious voices to lure unsuspecting sailors to the depth of the ocean.
The elves - similar to the Fae they had pointed ears obsidian eyes long flaxen hair and perfect features. Their skin was mostly pale only they didn't have wings instead they wielded powerful,magic that rivaled the Fae.
As time passed and the other immortals mated with the Fae they started to form clusters and their features morphed according to the clusters they belonged. Left unchecked even their character changed and thus began their thirst for dominion and power.
Initially the Fae faction split into two groups the seelie and the unsellie but even among them they still toyed with ideas of dominance and power, spreading mischief and maliciousness which started to extend to the other immortals.
The seelie consisted of the pure blooded Fae they representing spring court and summer court under the kingdom of light and their ruler was the Light Queen.
The unsellie were a mixed breed of Fae, some had mated with demons or selkies or elves, such mating had corrupted their nature, they represented autumn court and winter court with a large majority preferring the cold, bleak darkness which was why they were called the dark Fae. They fell under the jurisdiction of the kingdom of darkness their ruler was the Dark King
The courts played malicious games with each other, the light wanted to teach the dark a lesson and the dark just simply wanted dominion over the light. Causing a third faction to fall away from both kingdoms scattering about the world and taking refuge with human tribes or demons. This third faction were the solitary.
The solitary who chose to mingle with the humans, preferred to live within the human kingdoms. The five human kingdoms were Pretoria, Ishtar, Mulbroke, Lagenas and Meriadon. They were known as the seers . Mortals flocked to them for knowledge or healing but when it became too much they migrated to Mangalene ,Irinthar or Valene.
Still.....
As time passed, the unsellie grew restless in their machinations, they constantly challenged the seelie until both factions finally agreed to the games. A place to settle their growing restlessness by challenging each other to feats no mortal could ever survive.
Such games were deadly and only the strong survived.  Every hundred years the Kingdom of light or dark would host such feats and dominion would be granted to the victorious faction for a hundred years until the next game.
The gods  became restless with their immortal creations and thought the games to be the best possible solution and refrained from interfering. And so it went for a thousand years until King Soldar a dark Fae royal from the unsellie winter court became the King of darkness.
Upon claiming the throne he plotted his next move, one that would bare consequences on the balance of powers.  He enjoyed taunting the other immortals by creating minor skirmish that eventually would go out of hand. Eventually he went after the solitary and the Mangalese extracting loyalty from these two independent nations. When that wasn't enough he sought to raise havoc among the seelie. The light court, grew pensive as king Soldar's influence grew until finally they approached the gods. But the Gods did not want to meddle, instead they granted a vision to the seers.
A prophecy was revealed by the seers of the Gods, a prophecy that would lead to King Soldar's destruction by the hand of a seelie from the light kingdom, one born from among the court of spring. After annihilating the seers of the gods, kind Soldar plotted to find this light Fae using the games to his advantage.
Appearing before the queen of Light he maneuvered the games to his advantage gaining the loyalty of Mangalene, Irinthar and Valene to pursue his malevolent plan.