“Let’s go down to Earth”, said Alethea, “it’s been a while since we’ve been down there”. The immortal eldila of Valinor could descend down to Earth whenever they wished. They could go down as humans, or as elves, or as other creatures. If they went down as elves, they kept their memories and a full breadth of magical powers. But if they went down as humans, they would start with a blank state, with no memories. However, they still retained a faint connection to the beings in Valinor, whom they could hear through soft whispering thoughts in their mind. When they went back to Valinor, they remembered everything again, with the memory of their short human life added on.

Earth these days had one giant Pangea-like continent and several smaller island continents, and most of the land was covered in lush tropical rainforests, cities, towns, and other settlements. Humans, elves, wizards, dwarves, talking trees, and other creatures inhabited the land. Magic filled the air, and every creature used magic in some way.

“How long do you think you’ll want to hang around this time?” asked Aurielle. “A hundred years or so,” said Alethea, waving her hands. “I’ll join you for a dozen years or so”, replied Aurielle.

Nauriel, on Earth:
My friend (and roommate) was thoroughly sick and bedridden, and I wanted to find a cure quickly. I went to Pelegrin, a local wizard who was both a doctor and an apothecary. Pelegrin towered over me, eyebrows furrowed, with his bushy mustache looking down at me with suspicion, as though he didn’t trust me. I had stolen a transparency potion of his when I was a little kid, and he hadn’t forgotten that. “My friend is sick. He has an awful headache, and he can’t see well. He says he sees things through a white mist.” “I know what that is. I have a potion that’ll cure him right up. It’ll be eight gold coins.” “I don’t have eight gold coins. Could I give you three for now, and five later?” “I’m afraid I’ll need it now. This illness won’t kill him,” replied Pelegrin. I didn’t want to press the matter, so I left quietly.

I went over to a corner of the town, by the woods. There was a little wooden shack there, with a little bar, frequented by criminals and outcasts. I went over to a table with the least scary looking group of people, and asked, “Is there any way I could come about five gold coins?” “Hullo, I’m Tim. We have a little job a bit north of here. Help us out, and five coins is yours”. “Whereto?” “The fewer questions, the better”.

They gave me a merchant’s outfit the next day, which they’d magically shrunk to my size. We got in a carriage, which was pulled by these translucent iridescent mist-like beings that looked like seahorses.

Alethea and Aurielle:
“Let’s pick a form.” Alethea decided to take the form of a small young elf. Aurielle took the opposite route and adopted the form of an old elven wizard. In a few moments, they emerged out of a portal in a cave on a mountain beside the city Zior. They made their way down. A few small travelers’ outposts dotted the mountainside, serving food and drink. As they got close to the bottom of the mountain, they reached a dwarven settlement built on the last slight downward slope of the mountain. The unpaved rocky path gave way to cobblestone roads. As they were passing by a row of houses, an old dwarf popped out and said, “Oh wow! How long have you been around? It’s been a long time since we’ve seen any elves here.” Aurielle said, “We just arrived.” “I’m Aren. If you’re looking for a place to sleep tonight, I’d love to have you stay over.” They were looking to rest, so they took up Aren’s generous offer.

Nauriel:
I was quite anxious about joining these robbers. But if my friend couldn’t work, I couldn’t afford to cover the rent on my own, and we’d lose our house. We were already late on last month’s rent. I kept quite mum on the way to wherever we were going. The last thing I wanted to do was irritate these professional thieves with my small talk. I didn’t want to get tossed out for asking some annoying question.

After about a day, and after having unhappily relieved myself in the woods while an annoying bird watched me, I began to make out the outline of some city. “Have you heard of Olin?” said Tim, who sat across from me. “No, I haven’t. Who’s that?” “Well, he’s only the best wand maker in a thousand miles.” “Are we doing something for him?” “No, do we look like we work for a living to you?” “Well…isn’t all this stealing a form of work…?” I replied. “It’s fun actually. I don’t really need to do it anymore. I do it for the thrill of it. Our last heist was enough to retire on. But that was too boring for me. Besides, I have an escape token that’ll transport me right back home if anything goes wrong, so I’ve got nothing to worry about.” “What if you get killed before you can escape?” “Do I look like I started doing this yesterday?” 

As we got close to the city, apparently named Kae, a fear and anxiety grew in my stomach. I wanted to leave and go back home. Perhaps a homemade remedy would have sufficed. But I was too scared to leave now. What would Tim and his friends do if I tried to bail on them now? We got off the carriage by some woods close enough to the city that I could see rooftops through the foliage. A bearded man, Arlo, who had sat silently by Tim during our journey (but always nodding in agreement to things Tim said) waved his hands over the misty seahorses, saying some mysterious words, and I saw them turn into a watery looking liquid and go into a vial he wore as a necklace. He then repeated the motions with our carriage, and our carriage shrunk to thimble size. He picked it up from the ground and put it in his pocket.

“Your job will be to grab some tiny bags of fairy wing dust that Olin has in his storage room,” Tim said with a tone which indicated that I didn’t have a choice about the task. “It shouldn’t take you long. We’ll keep him distracted and preoccupied while you nab six bags. Each of your coat’s six pockets can conceal a bag; a concealment spell has been cast on them, so no one can detect them once the bags are in your pockets.” Tim pulled up a hand-scrawled map and pointed to the top right corner. “There’s a trapdoor near these shelves. Sneak in and follow the short tunnel to the end; that’s where Olin’s storage room is. Arlo will put a quietness spell on you which will still the air around you, so you’re not heard.”

As we walked nonchalantly into Olin’s wand shop, my heart was beating so loudly that had it not been for Arlo’s silencing spell, I think everyone would have heard it. Tim strolled up and said confidently “We’re looking for a training wand for my niece. Do you have any recommendations?” “Oh, yes, we have lots of different kinds of training wands. What kind of magic is she training in?” “Healing magic,” said Tim. “Alright. Let me get you a catalog of what we have”. As Olin was grabbing a catalog file that had “HEALING TRAINING WANDS” scribbled on the side, he noticed my overly anxious facial expression and asked, “Are you alright?” with genuine kindness and care. “I’m alright. Just a bit tired,” I replied. I felt bad about what I was about to do.

I slowly moved away, pretending to look around the shop, while Tim peppered Olin with questions about the pros and cons of various wands. As I inched closer to what seemed like the trapdoor, I prayed and hoped that Arlo’s spell held. I lifted its dirty handle and slipped in quickly. I heard it close with a thud. But assuming that Arlo’s spell worked, I’d be fine. The tunnel wasn’t too long. At the end of it was a circular wooden door with a wavy bronze handle. I didn’t notice a keyhole. I turned the handle, and I was inside. There was a veritable cornucopia of things in here. Wand making was a complex art that involved many ingredients that varied depending on the kind of wand to be made.

I carefully looked around. I couldn’t stop looking at all the objects that surrounded me. There were so many fascinating things. I could easily get lost examining these things for hours. I hated the fact that I had so little time to spend here.

Tim had forgotten to tell me where to find this dust. What did he expect me to do? Look for a bag labeled fairy wing dust? Thankfully, I had a locating spell up my sleeve–one that I learned as a kid, and which has been useful to me for many years. I muttered an incantation. A soft yellow light accompanied by a slight humming sound emanated a few shelves away. I walked over, toward a shelf, where there was a box conveniently labeled “fairy wing dust”. I only saw three bags inside the box. Well, that would have to do, I thought. I pocketed the three bags. But just as I was about to leave, I saw an open box on a table that piqued my curiosity. I went over to look at it. In it was the most elaborate wand I had ever seen. Instead of wood, this wand seemed to be made of metal and was covered in a twirling gold and glistening green pattern. I grabbed the wand and tucked it in an inner pocket of my coat. It pressed against my chest.

I gently opened the trapdoor and came out. When I got out, the shop seemed empty. Then, through the window, I saw that Tim was with Olin, trying out a wand, casting small conjuring spells with it, making little colorful flowers pop out of the end of it.

Alethea and Aurielle:
“What do you want to do while you’re here?” asked the friendly dwarf, of Aurielle. “Help folks out a bit here and there. Perhaps create some new spells that’ll be useful and improve lives.” “That sounds wonderful.” Alethea added, “I’m hoping to do a bit of the same, but I also want to take a look at the political state of affairs on Earth and see if there are any people being oppressed or who need help.” “The people of Zior might need your help actually…,” said the dwarf quietly, without explaining further.

Aurielle and Alethea reached a large human settlement in Zior. There was a certain mysterious somber and taciturn feel to it. “This place wasn’t like this a hundred years ago… I wonder what happened,” said Alethea. There was sickness here too; they saw people coughing. One person was sitting outside shirtless, leaning against a house’s wall, and their skin was covered in rashes or blisters.

Elves were immune to disease and sickness, so they themselves had nothing to worry about. But Aurielle and Alethea’s hearts went out to these people, and a feeling of sadness coming from empathy washed over them for what the people here were going through.

Aurielle whispered, “I have a feeling or sense that tells me that this person knows what’s going on here.”

Alethea walked over to the rash-covered human and asked, “What happened here?” They looked up at her with sadness and said, “The king has ruined our city. We used to be a happy city, well-to-do, full of learning and knowledge, and people traveled from far places to study at the universities in Zior.”

“What changed?”

“About fifty years ago, a man named Drumpf was elected our ruler by the narrowest of margins. He lied all the time^c.f., incessantly, about anything and everything. He never cared about the people and just cared about the glory and the power and the trappings of office.”

“How did he get away with all that lying?”

“The red dragon from Mordor made him a wand that helped him deceive people. He used it to cast a spell over this city that dulled people’s sense of discernment between what is true and what is a lie.”

“What about the people in your universities? Were not the professors in your university immune to this spell of deception?”

“Yes, they were immune to it. They blocked it from themselves immediately. But he lied and lied and convinced people that our universities were all about brainwashing people. He called the people who spoke out against him liars and fake news, even though he was the biggest liar we’d seen in a position of power in over a century. He surrounded himself with evil and obsequious people, and elevated himself so that many deceived people failed to see his wickedness and looked up to him as though he was good.”

“How did he stay on for so long?”

“He canceled elections, and became a king. Many were deceived by his lies, and so he had a cadre of supporters to help him cling on to power as well. He also cut off funding to all our universities, so most of the learned people left Zior. The universities shuttered, and the people that remained fell deeper into his blackhole of lies. Many weak ones in our city fell for his deception spell, and felt like there was nothing wrong, and failed to see the evil and suffering that was before their very eyes. And also, he threw anyone who resisted or wasn’t sycophantic towards him or didn’t address him as ‘our dear and beloved king’ into a gulag in a foreign land, to be tortured. Our people got sick. We became poor.”

“What did he have against universities?”

“The universities taught people to think and discern between truth and lies better, even without magic. In addition, our greatest university’s professors fought to counter the evil deception spell he’d cast over our city. But, alas, the dragon’s magic was too strong for us to overcome at the time…”

“What’s the rash you have?”

“It’s measles.”

“Didn’t I give you all a spell a hundred years ago that eradicated it?” Aurielle piped in.

“Yes, you did. No one had measles fifty years ago. But this evil king and his friends told people that the spells we cast on our children to make them immune to various diseases were actually hurting them, even though we had a hundred years of evidence of your spells working. And people believed his lies, became deceived, and they stopped casting protection spells on their children. My parents refused to listen to his nonsense, but he threatened to imprison parents who tried to cast protection spells on their children. My parents were adjunct professors, and so we could not afford to move like some of our friends.”

“Who benefits from all this?”

“I don’t know, to be honest. I know that the red dragon that he got the wand of deception from hated humans. In fact, that dragon hated humans, dwarves, elves, and most creatures. I think that dragon just wanted to see us suffer. I think it gets a perverse pleasure or schadenfreude when it sees us getting sick and dying. And that too, from a disease like measles, which we had defeated in the past. I’m sure that dragon is laughing in his cave when he thinks about how we’re suffering and dying from measles.”

Alethea felt sad when she heard all of this.

Nauriel:
I walked out of the door of Olin’s shop. “We missed you there for a bit!” Olin said warmly, smiling at me cheerfully. I felt really bad that I had stolen from such a nice, genuinely kind man. I glanced at Tim, trying to indicate that it was perhaps time to go. Tim seemed to have gotten the signal, and he told Olin, “I think I’ll need to think it over, chat with my niece, to decide which one to get. Thank you for showing us your wares.” “You’re most welcome,” replied Olin.

We slowly trudged back to the woods climbing up a sloping rocky path. Arlo took the miniature carriage, and carefully placed it on a small patch of forest that was clear of trees. He began casting a spell. Just as the carriage was growing bigger, I heard a loud screeching noise as though from a bird, but I saw no bird anywhere. When I turned around, I saw Olin stepping out of a portal, and he looked angry. “You don’t know what you’ve stolen!” “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sure these guys put you up to it. That’s the wand of the king of Zior! It’s a wand that was crafted by a dragon. I was working on adding more manna to it. That king didn’t even pay me for it; he just threatened to hurt me and my family if I didn’t modify the wand the way he wanted.”

Tim spoke up and said, “Hey, I’m sorry about that, but we didn’t steal your wand. We did help ourselves to some of your fairy wing dust as we do need to make a living, but we’re not interested in your wands. They’re not as easy to sell. We don’t know anything about this wand. We’re going to be leaving now.” Tim took out a little button-like object and cast it on the ground between us and the carriage, and as soon as it hit the ground, a bubble of light surrounded us and the carriage (but not Olin as he was a bit further away from us), and everything went dark for a few seconds.

I felt around my arms; and I could still feel my arms, but I felt weightless, and felt like a light wind was blowing around me, in the darkness. A few seconds later, we reappeared near the woods, near the little shack where I’d found this gang. “Any idea what he was talking about?” asked Tim. “Nope,” I lied. “That escape token cost me a lot, and I wasn’t expecting to need it to escape from the wand maker.” Arlo added, “Olin’s one of the finest wizards around. I don’t think we had much of a choice.” Tim said, “Well, I think we’ll need to subtract the cost of it from the payout for our new friend here.” “I didn’t do anything wrong,” I protested, knowing that wasn’t entirely true. “Your share would just about cover the cost of our escape token. I’m sorry this job didn’t work out for you, but maybe you can make something on our next job.” “What…,” I mumbled, and slowly started walking back home.

I thought to myself that, well, if anything, even if we couldn’t pay rent, at least I had a fancy new wand to play with.

Alethea and Aurielle:
“We should have come down here sooner. We should have kept a closer eye on Zior.” Aurielle muttered. “You go and confront the king. I’ll go about breaking this dark veil of deception,” replied Alethea.

Alethea went to a square in the middle of the city. She began to cast a spell. As she was muttering the incantation, some of the king’s soldiers approached her, but they fell back as soon as they saw she was an elf. They could sense that she was a powerful elf, even from far away, and they dared not confront her.

First, she broke the old deception spell. Then, she slowly cast a new powerful spell over the city, standing in the middle of the square, for hours, muttering, without even a sip of water.

This new spell she cast would create a blueish light over someone’s mouth when they lied, and a violet light when a lie was repeated.

In less than twenty-four hours, the people of Zior caught on. They figured out that they could now tell when anyone was lying, or even just repeating a lie they had heard but believed.

People began experimenting in front of a mirror by saying the things they’d heard, and seeing if a violet glow appeared in front of their mouths. Many began to realize how much they’d been lied to.

Aurielle had magically transported herself to the king’s courtroom. He wasn’t there. But she found an old genteel-looking man, chained against the side wall, looking quite bruised and with dry clotted wounds. She squinted at him. “Aren’t you Olin..?” “Yes…,” he replied, sounding weak. “The king’s warlocks kidnapped me and tortured me because I lost his precious wand… His wand was stolen from me…”

“Where is the king now?” Aurielle asked while casting a spell that healed Olin. She then magically broke his chains. “I don’t know,” replied Olin. Aurielle cast a locating spell, and followed the path it lit up. It led to a door on the second floor of the palace. She flicked her hand, and the door burst into pieces; and she walked in. The old king was lying in bed, half naked and drooling.

The king of Zior was fat, old, decrepit, and borderline senile. Years of lying with no shame had corrupted his mind, to the point that he believed some of his own fabrications, and he could no longer distinguish what was true and what was false himself.

“You’re an evil man,” Aurielle said. “What did that red dragon offer you, for the evils you’ve inflicted on the people of this city?”

“Who are you… I don’t know what you’re talking about…,” the king murmured from his bed, as though he was drunk or high on something.

I’ll deal with him later, Aurielle thought. She magicked herself back to the square, where Alethea was resting by an old fountain. The old fountain was covered in black grime, because the city government hadn’t cleaned it in years. The king had cut funding to and fired all the people responsible for cleaning public places many years ago, and pocketed the tax money for his own pleasures.

People saw the two elves in the square, and began connecting the dots as to what had just happened. Many people came to them to say thanks. “Thank you so much for opening our eyes…”

“I wish we’d done this sooner…,” muttered Alethea quietly to Aurielle.

The evil king was angry now.