Page 20 - The Flickering Cauldron Magazine - April 2022

The Watchers is one of the oldest (timeline) of my Gran's stories, but one which she would insist that I had to learn, to better understand many of the other tales. It does, in point of fact, date back to before the Iron Age of Man, back into the Bronze Age, imagine if you will...
Humans at that time, shared the planet with, well, everything and everyone, but even back then life was not harmonious, the Humans fought amongst themselves, fought with bigger predatory animals, but whilst the former could be negotiated for peace and the second either killed or chased off there remained a group of beings that no matter what the Humans did, remained for the most part, antagonistic towards them – The Fey folk or Faeries as they were collectively know.
The Fey Folk, for the most part were neither malicious or altruistic towards Man, they lived in the world, they went about their daily lives, they were ruled by a governing class under the feudal type rule of the King and his Queen. However, as Man adapted, spread, brought war, violence and desire to dominate the land, the Fey Folk were inevitably brought into confrontation with Man.
A row, turned into a fight, turned into more and more violent confrontations, the Fey folk for all their wonderful magic, could not defeat Man, and Man much to his astonishment could not defeat the Fey Folk.
When violence failed, they tried living in much closer quarters to each other but as neither could fully understand the other, this peace was not destined to last.
Man, carried on fighting, pretty much anyone that was in his way, Human or Fey, and over time through the need to get better and more reliable weapons than the Bronze that had served before, Man developed a new way of making a weapon, using new materials to create a weapon stronger, harder than Bronze, Iron.
Man soon came to realise that Iron, to the majority of the Fey Folk, was as Acid was to Man – It killed them, it cowered them. In a last desperate attempt at halting the spread of Man upon ancient Fey Folk Lands, the King of the Fey gathered his Lords, his Spell Masters and his armies and prepared for Battle.
The Battle was joined, but the Fey Folk could not overcome the Iron, their spells fell short against it, they died at its insistent touch, they could not best it.
Seeing the devastation that his Folk were suffering, the Proud Fey King sued for peace. Man, knowing now that they possessed the weapons that could wipe out the Fey decided to extract the worst possible punishment he could, so that the Fey would never again threaten Man.
The terms of the Fey Folk’s subjection took a full moons passage to complete, but essentially boiled down to this:
The Fey Folk and all that sided with them, would never again be allowed to live upon the Land with Man, they would fashion for themselves a prison(s) where they could live and rule themselves away from the eyes of Man. The Fey King had no choice, it was either accede to Man's demands or face extinction.
The Fey King had his remaining Spell Masters create a facsimile of parts of his lands in a new Realm, that whilst anchored to Man's world is not a part of it. The Spell Masters almost succeeded, but the War had taken a toll on their numbers and a full Fey Realm could not be created in time, there were just too few of them left to work their magic, not enough magic to recreate everything. The Fey King then told the remaining twelve Spell Masters to each recreate as much as they could and to anchor each to a different point within Man's realm.
The Spell Masters worked, some died with the effort but at last before the deadline, the work was complete, a new Fey realm had been created, sustained magically by its connection to the Earth.
20 | The Flickering Cauldron® Magazine - The Watchers