The Hunter & The Betrayer: 1000 Years

     “Your Majesty?”

     A voice disrupted King Altador from his reading. He startled, made an embarrassed harrumph sound, and closed the History of Neopia and Its Dangers tome with a large thud.

     The voice came from one of his servants, a groomsmen of his privy chamber. Perkin was his name, an obedient old Blumaroo who had been with the king many years now. Not one thousand, Altador couldn’t help but think, but then no one was around from the very beginning. Couldn’t be, after what had happened.

     They knew too much.

     “Yes, Perkin?” Altador said resignedly. He knew he was spending too long in his private study these days, nose in books about the past and rarely involved in the active politics of his kingdom. He was tired. He was ancient. And he knew that there would come a day very shortly when he would have to do something his heart couldn’t bear.

     Perkin hesitated. He loved his king, and knew him to be a most gracious and good ruler, fair and powerful and just. But he also saw his king behind closed doors, one of the few who saw him alone, and he knew his king was shouldering a great burden. “Her Majesty Queen Fyora is here, sir.”

     “Queen Fyora?” Altador echoed.

     This was it. What he had been waiting for.

     The dread began to creep into his heart, his strong Lupe heart. The steady beat ramped up, from anxious calm to frenetic chaos.

     “Shall I let her in, sir?” Perkin asked.

     King Altador opened his mouth to say of course, but found his mouth hung open and his throat seized to prevent him from speaking.

     “Give me a moment, Perkin,” he finally murmured. “A moment, and then I will come out and speak to her in the privy chamber.”

     Perkin nodded. He knew not to question his king when he was in one of his melancholic moods. “I will tell her, sir.”

     After Perkin left, King Altador slumped down in his damask-lined chair once more. His private study was nowhere near the size of the grand Altadorian Library open to the public, nor was it as decorative. Where the Altadorian Library had honey-coloured bookshelves made from the finest oak trees and wallpaper handwoven by the most skilled Ixis in Neopia, as well as huge glass windows that soaked light into the room like a sponge in a lake, Altador’s private study was a dark, tiny space. There was only one window, circular and barred, that sat high above the shelves that circled the room, and let in only the tiniest glimmers of light, just enough to be able to get a sense of what time of day it was. Instead, Altador used oil lamps, one in each corner, and one on his desk, which took up the centre of the room. Across the desk were scattered many scrolls and manuscripts, and this great tome he took to reading whenever he felt low. Altador would study Neopia’s history, and his own history, with as much focus and dedication as any scholar. After all, he was one of the few who had lived it, and indeed lived to tell the tale.

     The desk held three drawers underneath, where Altador stored his most precious of items. The middle one had a false bottom, which Altador used a small key he kept on his person at all times to now open. Inside were two tiny boxes and an ancient, yellowed letter, the scrawls barely visible. In the first was an emerald signet ring. With trembling paws, he placed it on his left paw. Even in this dim light it glittered and shined more powerfully than all the jewels in the kingdom.

     In the second was an identical-sized ring, with the same gold band, but set with a ruby stone. And this one sparkled most of all. But King Altador did not put this one on, merely held it in his paw, and wept.

     For he had given this ring to the one he loved more than any other, his greatest friend.

     The memories came thick and fast then, of a time one thousand years ago. When he was a simple farmer, and she was not infamous, not unnamed, not a vile, malevolent force, but the faerie who saved his life and who he loved as a friend not just for this action, but for her smile, her sense of humour, and above all her sense of justice and will for peace.

     The arrow meets its target, straight into the foul beast that had so plagued the farmlands. Altador, out of breath, kneels to take in great gulps of air, satisfied as it crashes to the ground that he has done his part. He has saved these lands and the people from their terror.

     But he does not realise what is coming behind him. Another, even more grotesque, even more strong, has emerged from the shadowy cave the first called its home and lets out an anguished cry at the scene before it. For, I suppose, beasts have friends too, and this scruffy-looking Lupe has slain him.

     Altador, exhausted, stumbles as he reaches for his bow and arrow, cast aside on the ground, but he knows he is too late. He is done for.

     And then he isn’t.

     There is a charge of some kind, the sparkling sound of electricity, and then everywhere around him is illuminated in purple. It lasts only a second, but then the beast lets out another cry, this time of true pain, and Altador has time to spin around and watch it collapse to the ground in front of him.

     Behind this enormous beast, magic fading from her palms, is a Dark Faerie.

     She is beautiful and terrifying all at once, as Dark Faeries are famed to be. She stands with her arms outstretched, as if even she cannot believe she has deigned to rescue another, against all instinct, but her shining eyes are full of concern as she studies the Lupe in front of her. Her wings are an impressive affair, spreading out as wide as her waist on either side and adorned with spikes. The left one holds an old scar, a clear white line, a mark of someone who tried their luck to best her and failed.

     “You saved my life,” Altador says. He has never known a Dark Faerie to make such a sacrifice, to put herself in danger for another, especially not a Neopet. “If it were not for your actions—”

     “If it were not for my actions you would be in a sorry state indeed,” she interrupts, a wry smile forming on her face. It transforms her; what was once terrifying is now only beautiful, and warm and kind.

     “Come to my village,” Altador says. “We will take these beasts, and there will be a banquet. You will be honoured as a hero.”

     “You too, I imagine.”

     “Will you come with me?”

     She considers him, folding her arms. Altador is surprised by his strength of feeling, of how much he does not want them to remain strangers.

     “Very well,” she says. “What is your name?”

     “Altador,” he tells her. “And yours?”

     “My name is…”

     No. That name must never be spoken of again.

     Now, King Altador was not ashamed of the tears that wet his fur. He lifted the ruby ring into the air and examined it, noting the crack that lined the stone. He remembered well how it had got there.

      “For me?” she asks, astounded. “I can’t believe this!”

     Altador, unsure, frowns. “Do you not like it? I was told that you loved jewellery…”

     “It’s not that,” she says, and bursts into laughter. She laughs so much that she clutches her sides and her wings shake. “Look at what I have got you to celebrate the new year.”

     She takes out a carefully wrapped box, identical in size, and hands it to him.

     Altador tears the paper away and opens the box to find an emerald ring, entirely like his ruby one.

     “We can be twins,” she says, putting the ruby ring on her left hand, the smallest finger. It shines brightly, and she holds it up to the light to admire it. “We know each other so well.”

     “Twins,” Altador repeats with a smile, putting the emerald ring on his matching paw. His fingers are so much larger than hers, but placing them side-by-side the rings look beautiful together. He sneaks a glance at her face and sees she is flushed pink with excitement, a blushing tinge to her normally so blue cheeks.

     “I will never take it off,” she promises. “We will know that there is peace and prosperity in our land when we are united.”

     “Me neither,” Altador says.

     That ring. That ruby ring. It tormented him, the one she had later created out of Jerdana’s Orb, the one that drained her life force and drove her to madness. It was because of him, he knew, that she had made it. Had she secretly been crying out for help, then driven too far? He had dwelled on this very thought for too long. It did not matter that his court of advisors told him she had changed, she was nothing like that faerie he met one thousand years ago. It did not matter that he had defeated her himself. A millennium had gone by and still she invaded his dreams.

     ”You have gone too far!” Altador shouts, desperate.

     They are alone in Altador’s Grand Hall, but they will not be for long. The court and all of the public have argued for her banishment, that she is a danger to Altador and indeed Neopia’s way of life. She is too power-hungry, they protest, they cannot trust her.

     And Altador now realises, after trying his best to defend her, that they are right.

     “Torakor and his army should have united Neopia,” she replies. She is glorious in her anger, flames bursting from her hands, ruby ring shining in their flames. “We could have had everything. Everything, Altador…”

     “You agreed at the time it was not the right decision! That we would have ruled through intimidation and fear, which we never wanted!”

     “And yet look at Neopia now! The inequality amongst the kingdoms, the difference in their lives…”

     “That is not ours to decide! We are not conquerors!”

     With this, she shoots a flame towards him, her best friend, and he has to lift his shield to counter it. He is surprised, but it is she who gasps, as if she has not done it herself. She raises her hands and stares at them as if they have a life of their own, and the flames extinguished.

     “I am sorry,” she says. “I did not mean—that was foolish…”

     “Enough.” Altador lifts his sword. “You are banished from this city. You used magic to charm and manipulate fellow council members, to try and turn the innocent Neopians on your side. We always said magic was not to be used unless under dire circumstances. You circumvented this, to your own means. You wanted all the control, not the rule of the Twelve.”

     Anger is quick to return to her eyes, blazing with fury. She always had a temper, but never to this extent.

     She has betrayed him. Him, and his heart. He has no choice. “Give the ring back.”

     “The ring?” she echoes, all the hurt and pain evident in her voice. “But—”

     “I will not ask again.”

     She wrenches it from her finger and throws it to the ground with a screech. It hits the floor ruby-first, and the stone cracks almost in two.

     “This is what you have done,” she hisses. “I will always think of that ruby and your betrayal.”

     “It is you who has betrayed us,” Altador says. “All of Altador, all of Neopia…and me.”

     Enough. It had been longer than a moment. Altador sighed. He knew he should destroy the rings, destroy any remnant of her, but he couldn’t. Even when he knew he would have to deal with her once and for all. He returned the rings to their respective boxes, grazed his paw over the letter, but did not read it. The false bottom was secured, the key turned to lock it tight, and the drawer closed.

     Queen Fyora was waiting patiently for him in his privy chamber, looking as ethereal and regal as always, but her normally patient smile was gone from her face. Her brows were knitted together, a frown resting on her lips.

     This was it, then. The day they had been waiting for.

     “Fyora,” Altador said. He was familiar because they had known each other one thousand years now, and there was no use in formalities when Neopia was at stake. “Is it time?”

     “Your searches,” Fyora said, like him immediately bypassing the need for pleasantries, “they never did uncover anything, did they? No leads? After Xandra’s actions…”

     “No.” He did not need to tell her that had his searches uncovered her, he would have done the honourable thing, however much he may have wanted otherwise. But he knew she doubted him, even now. He knew she wondered if he had helped her escape. Well. Now she knew that above everything, even above his truest friend, he would choose honour and Neopia. “Nothing at all.”

     “As you are aware, we were tracking the events of the Advent Calendar closely. And now we have confirmation.”

     For a second, Altador closed his eyes and saw her face. “Confirmation?”

     “She is back, Altador. The Darkest Faerie has returned.”

     One thousand years, Altador thought, and I shall never forget you. Let it be two thousand, ten thousand, and I will always be waiting for you.

     “Very well,” Altador said. “Then let us begin.”

     The End

     Author’s Note: I just wanted to add what an incredible privilege it is to be a part of this historic 1000th issue of the Neopian Times. I started writing short stories for this paper when I was a child, and it helped encourage and support my dreams of someday becoming an author. Well, now I am an adult and a published author, and I have never forgotten the joy of the Neopian Times and the many years of reading everyone’s wonderful contributions and writing my own efforts. Thank you to the editors along the way, the other Neopians, the NTWF, and everyone who makes this paper, and indeed this website, still an utterly fantastic place to be a part of.

     Happy 1000th issue, everyone. We made it!

     The End.