Once upon a time. A magical being with the horns of a Roebuck deer made the only trespass that a human would not allow.

It shared its weakness. Vulnerability.

It reaped the rewards of its kinship, when its friend - a human girl - died. The child's death was avenged on the creature, for the clan that called the child its family came to see the attachment that the creature had created with it as the sole reason for the child's accidental death.

The only humans that he had known came and killed the tiny beings that he guarded, deep in the wood.

Even this cruelty was no matter in comparison to the pain he subjected himself to. His inability to be present when his beloved friend died, frightened and alone in his wood while he was busy elsewhere, was something that he could never forgive himself of.

He - the one whose true name is forever lost to time - vowed never to love again.

And then the humans returned, seeking to cleanse his wood by means of fire. To kill the pitable, heart-broken thing.

With the burning of his home destroyed any remaining compassion, understanding.

He wandered into the wood, meaning to be immolated in the flames, only to come out of the fire, transformed into a terrible beast.

Calling himself the Deep One, he spread fear and pain to the clan that had destroyed the wood.

With the act of their murders, he began to transform. Once, magic could be bent to the wills of those who cried loudly enough for it.

For the Deep One, he wished for power soon he became swelled by it, until his horns began to become deformed by it, twisting into senseless, vulgar masses.

Avenged, he should have gone on to live a solitary existence, known only as a cautionary tale for not angering the first of his kind. But he had developed a taste for the pain of humanity and he soon found kinship with others like him.

Humanity was a spreading race, whose potential marked them already as a unique species among the physical realm. They multiplied rapidly and were tenacious.

It was not a difficult thing, as he fed off of each death that he earned, to continue. With aid, the Deep One planned then to deal with the small matter of gaining the trust of other magical beings.

He set about to mislead other, more powerful beings into accepting an invitation to ceasefire negotiations. He had been stopped in the past of his murders by others who made their displeasure to his practice of murder known.

The Deep One killed his own kind, with the aid of the seemingly few discontented beings who wanted to destroy the plague that was humanity.

In a relatively short amount of time, even in terms of a human life's span, the Deep One managed to subject even those humans who evaded death by agreeing to rule over them.

He became the Deep King, the defiler, the one whose lack of compassion spread amongst his own kind to create a lack of connection to the physical realm, corrupting much of the first of his kind.

It is said that he kept court Underground, in a place known as the Unseelie Garden, where even dead, humans were used as slaves. He had a large assortment to choose from. In his struggle to maintain control over the physical realm, he had brought the human population down to a fourth of its previous amount.

When he chose to come aground, he would do so in a variety of forms, including a monstrous form whose body could blot out the sun for a small human settlement.

It was a genocide, the full extent of which may, hopefully, never be replicated.

Even with this power, the once content Roe-horned being found naught but discontent. He never once realized, even with the aid of his seemingly endless stream of help from others, that what he was suffering from was akin to what physical beings felt with a lack of nourishment, but on a spiritual level.

His heart starved.

He suffered enormously from a malnourishment of the spirit, he found himself longing for the friendship once offered freely by a human. Friendship that he would surely never get, free of judgement and without the cruelty of his own subjects.

He languished for the remainder of his one-hundred year reign, and subjected many humans to his twisted pantomime of the intimacy he coveted.

It was said that the only thing that kept the Deep King from destroying a settlement during the span of a moon's cycle was a woman entering one of his offering places, prepared to accept whatever desire he took - or gave.

It never fed the starving, wrenching desire that shook him to his core, and in time, his sexual frenzy was said to become so that he needed at least three women to wait for him at one time in order to be satiated for a night.

And then, one day, as though in answer to his desperation, a woman appeared in the world.

Strong, quick of wit and somehow, elementally, different even from the humans from which she had sprang, the one known as the Silver Kite entranced him.

Set to be married shortly to an oafish human of a neighboring land, the Kite asked humbly for the Deep King's aid. She promised a decadence of love and affection that she would shower on him for every day forth through to infinity. To not be disgusted by him, like every human who had lain with him for a night.

Shocked by her offer and realizing then a breadth of emotion heretofore unbelievable to him, the Deep King did as she asked, and humbly requested that if she meant what she said, that he wanted her to come with him to his Kingdom. To die so that she could become immortal in his world.

The Kite explained then that the reason that she felt such a kinship for him was due to the fact that she had abilities that were unknown to any in humanity. She did not need to ask him for anything, as she could make the celestial bodies do her bidding, if need be.

He shortly found that he wanted to do her bidding as well.

After they copulated and he showered her with affection, The Deep King suffered the very first undignified role of a Familiar as a slave to the whim of the Silver Kite.

She took his proffered exchange of power and used it as the very binds that she needed to tie him to her. It was the final mark in the irony that was the concept of the King possessing a free will.

It is what granted the Silver Kite with the distinction of being known as the Mother Goddess, who freed humanity from the Deep King's cruelty.

The act of taking him in this manner as an immortal, unbodied slave had the effect of granting any of her kind that emerged from the field of the remaining humans born, blooming amongst the surrounding field of flowers like a hybrid, the power to control and enslave a magical being.

Magical beings found their latent powers to be irresistible - the root of what is known as the process of the Sacred Contract, of which Witches once did not require taking part in the creation of magic.

And yet, most of them never forgot the indignity suffered, the rage of being forced.

This shift of power - the vacuum created by the loss of their King - brought these beings aground, where many would one day find that these hybrid humans, with the aid of their own Queen, would crush them beneath their power.

In retrospect, his reign was coined by his own people as the reign of the Traitor King - who sold their power, their equality, for lust, a symptom of his emotional sickness.

The King himself was no more than a shadow on the cave wall - a widely stretching, yawning one - that obeyed the bidding of his Master.

It is generally accepted that his tale, what parts of it that are often reputed to be mostly the stuff of legends, act as a cautionary tale. What is not ascribed away as coincidence and flat-out lies are often said to be an amalgamation of the tales of warlord humans that have existed and the acts of a variety of beings in the past.

He is said to be a Witch's legend. A figment of overactive paranoia. The Witch's answer to the supreme evil posited by human religion.

It is said that when the Silver Kite died, she was found to have fallen off of a wall of her castle - or, as some have said, she was pushed.

A sign that Monsters can, perhaps even in a state of thrall, take a moment of weakness to their advantage.

Still, it would be wise to never cross a Monster, as they have proven the strength of their wills when pressed.  

Netta read words that she had only been told of in passing by others throughout all of her youth.

Every Witch heard of the Traitor King in passing once or twice. He was akin to the Bogeyman in how little was generally known of him but how his legacy, relatively unknown as it was, stretched.

To many, he was little more than the Big Bad Wolf of their legend, a tempting force that personified the dangers of trusting Monsters. That did not stop every young Witch with being warned to beware who they made their Familiar, or as a tool to illustrate that Monsters had reason ingrained in them to loathe humans.

Especially Witches.

When Netta had finished, she sat the manuscript packet down.

She felt as though she had made a mistake by being curious about the tale and reading it. A sick feeling had begun in the pit of her stomach, and the more she thought about it, the more that it seemed to turn into a more yawning, angry vortex.

In her mind, Ash asked if she was feeling alright. Netta tried to tell him that she was feeling just fine, then she knew immediately when she wasn't.

Just barely making it to the trash bin, she felt her stomach attempting to cure what it perceived as an illness in her, trying to purge her despair. After she had finished, she laid her forehead down on the edge of the bin as she tried to figure out if she was going to begin to cry.

She reached up blindly and found that, when she took her hand away, it came away, wet with her own sick.

When she didn't start to cry, she struggled to her feet and found that Ash was there.

Wordlessly, he took her in his arms and walked her to the bathroom attached to her room. In there, she allowed him to take her clothes off. His gentleness did not stop her from flinching at the feel of his hands on her.