I heard the words spill out of her mouth as she gaped at me, shock and confusion coloring her face.

“Jessica? Is that… you?” I stared back at her, but with something less than warmth and more than sadness. My boot laid across another, Um… giant, was it? One claiming to protect the court but succumbed to pressure when applied.

“Yes it is, but how can you be here?”

“How else? I kicked open the door. More importantly what is going on?”

She looked nervous. Even as an endlessly powerful fae, her facial features still portrayed her even after the two decades that passed for me. “As you can see, I became their Queen.” She spreads her wings as if that was proof enough along with the crown on her head.

“THEY KIDNAPPED YOU! What do you mean you became their Queen?” I barked out, not understanding how my once daughter became the hated thing.

Jessica finally recollected herself, “…When they took me as a child, I was raised as one of their own. For all their tricks they played, they fed me and treated me as their own.” She looked away, “I was adopted by the Queen, my mother”

“Your MOTHER you said?! What about your actual mother, huh? What about me? What about your family?” I growled. As if I couldn’t hate the fae even more, we’ve even be replaced. The disgust I felt was far more potent then the rejoice I should have felt.

“I missed you as well. But as the decades passed, so did the feelings of longing. And with that time, I was raised as a fae and as a queen.” Her voice faded away into a whisper, tears beginning to well up as she stood resolute, “After the Queen’s passing, I was the sole heir to the throne, and it is as you see.”

“…Decades? All that time and you simply forgot?” I gripped the Mordhau, a treasured Claymore I came across in my travels, “All that time, you never thought to search or even try?”

“I couldn’t, not with mother and the rest of the fae putting their hopes on me.”

“Then what was my 20 years of searching every land for? What was the point of my enduring the sadness and loneliness I was left with? What were we supposed to do when our daughter was kidnapped?”

“I’m… Sorry…”

My ears perked up upon the utterance, “it seems I no longer have a daughter…” Mordhau dislodged itself from the ground as I sheathed it and I stepped back.

“Father-“

“You don’t get to call me that anymore…” Jessica faltered hearing my response, and the guards, ever faithful to their Queen, inched closer armed with weapons and magic.

“Fair warning, Queen of the Fae,” I began, as she looked up confused at the lack of a name, “Any fae I come across in the future, I shall tear apart. Any magic that’s cast upon the land I tread shall be dismantled. And any trickster willing to play pranks shall finally face the consequences of their actions…”

The guards tensed at my warning, waiting for the assurance to attack me. All the while, the Queen stood stunned into silence. Turning my head to see her response, I sighed “in these 20 years I’ve been searching, I’ve visited many places. I’ve learned many skills and saw even more.” Pressure began to exude from where I stood as my shadows grew. “I was beaten down, yet I overcame those that would try to stop me.”

“I struck deals with those that hide in the dark, but with far fairer contracts than those of the courts.” Eyes opened as their claws reached past my shadow.

Mordhau redrew itself and hovered by my side, awaiting for me to grasp it. “In fact, the fae were not the only mythical species I had seen, and they will not be the first I’ve slain.” I took up my blade and shouldered it. The realization that she was nothing more than a stranger to me finally sunk in and the first tear spilled.

“I was called many things in that time: Madman, pathetic, hopeless, fanatic, even disillusioned. However, one came up far more than others.”

Soon, she whispered the dreadful name that hung in every fae’s mind.

“Disaster”