"Let go of me! Why are you dragging me into trouble again?" Yavanna shouted, trying to free her arm from Melian's firm grip.

Melian, a tomboyish young Elf with a short, ruffled black hairdo but a stunning face nonetheless, gave another yank, urging her friend to come along with her plan to check out the humans in her mother's upper chamber. "Don't be so childish! You want this as badly as I do."

"I do. It's just…." Yavanna trailed off as she tried to find an excuse to escape. "Aw, come on, Melian! For God sake, your mom is a highly honored representative in the high council! Don't you understand my fear?"

"Stop being such a scaredy-cat," Melian said, tugging again before finally releasing Yavanna's arm. "It's not like she's going to send you and your family to the forgotten realm where your soul is burned to wander in a distraught state for all eternity."

"But she could, couldn't she?" Yavanne rubbed her sore arm where Melian's grip had left fingerprints.

Melian sighed, her voice heavy with frustration. "Yes, she could. But she only did it once, over two hundred years ago when she wanted to prove to the council that she could take decisive action if necessary."

"At the cost of a poor soul whose spirit still wanders in torment to this very day today," Yavanna replied solemnly.

"And his whole family to the fourth degree of consanguinity." Melian corrected with a grave voice. "But hey! That guy was in bed with the humans, so he deserved it. And don't forget this happened in a time when the Mayflies were still a real danger to us elves."

"And now they are extinct," Yavanna said.

"Ah, but that's what they want us to think, isn't it?" Melian wagged a finger as she spoke. "They are still among us, my dear Yavanna. Only infinitely more insignificant than they already were."

"In your mom's upper chamber?" Yavanna asked, her face bright with eagerness.

Melian nodded with delight. "Wanna see them?" She gestured with her arm towards the stairs leading them to her mother's upper chamber. "You may play with them if you like."

Yavanna's sky-blue eyes sparkled, and her pointy ears – that pierced cutely through her thick mane of sun-blond hair – twitched excitedly at the prospect of finally seeing a human.

In all of her ninety-two years living in Light Haven – which was equivalent to eighteen years in human years, making her appear like a young blossoming flower – Yavanna has never encountered one before.

She'd heard many tales from the elders, though. Back in the old days, around three hundred years ago, most elves viewed humans with disgust.

They had a short life span, often talked loudly when seized with emotions and carried a foul smell with them after heavy exertion.

Tales went around that some of these creatures showered twice a day while rubbing themselves with substances that wore the smell of flowers – a scent that elves emitted naturally from their skin pores. And, apart from a small percentage, most were ugly-looking creatures compared to the elves. Some of them even more hideous than Orcs.

There was one talent that the humans had a knack for, though. One that sparked reason for concern among a good portion of the elven population and envy with others – and that was technological advancement.

The wiser of the elves understood that when given free rein, it could potentially lead to the enslavement or even extermination of their people.

Rather than attempt to prevent this progress, the elves chose a more covert approach and remained hidden from the humans using their magic.

And thus, as the humans progressed to the point that they could colonize alien planets and their numbers exceeded the amount of sand grains in the Sahara, their technology became advanced enough to pierce through the veil of invisibility erected by the magical elves.

This marked the beginning of 'The Great War,' a struggle against extinction for the elves.

As the elves faced overwhelming odds against their human enemies, city after city fell until only a handful of strongholds were left.

Women were rapped and children slaughtered by chuckling human soldiers carrying a glare of blood in their eyes who knew nothing else than the way of war.

Despair was everywhere. Capitulation seemed the last resort.

Then Alfidor, the brightest star in the heavens, suffered a gravitational collapse, resulting in a massive supernova visible in the sky for weeks with the naked eye. And it changed everything.

It heralded the death of the Light Goddess and the ascension of a new one.

A surge of Celestial Dust came free in the explosion. It was swept throughout the universe, finding its way into the respiratory systems of the elves and boosting their magical potential to phenomenal heights.

From birth, male elves excelled in physical strength and agility, while females flourished in magical power. So it was expected that they were the ones who noticed the difference.

From one day to another, young girls, novice practitioners, could suddenly cast spells that took others several hundred years to master.

And that was not all. The pace at which they developed their magical prowess was downright frightening but a welcome occurrence nonetheless. Finally, the elves had the means to strike back.

One Elven city after the another was liberated by these so-called 'Ladies Of Retribution.'

Their fight did not end there. Fueled by rage at what the humans had done to their kin and homeland, the Ladies Of Retribution took the fight to the humans and left entire cities to piles of ashes.

Whole armies knelt in subjugation before female elves barely older than college-aged girls in human years.

It soon became clear that the humans could not fight against this onslaught of magical wrath.

It became a battle between a cockroach and a tigress. The humans were powerless.

Eager to learn from the humans, the high council ordered the human civilization to be preserved instead of utterly wiped out.

One Elf named Iriel, Melian's grandmother, came up with a creative solution and proposed to shrink them down, making it easier to hold them contained while studying them.

And so, that is what happened. Instead of destroying the human cities, the Ladies Of Retribution simply shrunk the humans and all that they had built them down.

This went fast but was an immense task nonetheless as you were talking about shrinking down several planets – from which some were multiple times bigger than Earth – filled with human civilization.

Luckily, The solution presented itself in the form of a young elf named Katriel—a 212-year-old High Elf who would later become the next Light Goddess.

The effect of celestial Dust on Katriel's magical abilities was innumerable times larger than it had on her fellow kindred. Where the others were like giants on the field of magical capabilities compared to what they used to be, Katriel was now like a heavenly body compared to those same giants.

After a short period, Katriel was able to cast a shrinking spell of such magnitude that it could dwindle an entire planet to a handheld object.

Billions of bewildered humans who stared up in the sky probably assumed they were facing the wrath of a deity when Katriel's stunning countenance filled the sky after she playfully plucked their planet from its orbital path like an apple from a tree.

Right before her ascension to the next Light Goddess, Katriel shrunk the entire human race to a fraction of their original size and presented her collection to the High Council, who, in their turn, placed it under the guardianship of Iriel.

Yavanna was on the fence about Melian's invitation to look at the humans when she spotted a line of formidable guards blocking the grand staircase leading to the upper chamber. "How do we get past that?"

Melian snickered when she noticed her friend's eye rest on the men at the foot of the staircase leading to the upper chamber. "Those duds are merely there to stop unwanted guests from entering. For me, being my mother's daughter, they are merely some guys I say hello to when walking by."

"But what about me?" Yavannah tilted her head. "I'm not related to your mother."

"You're my best friend, are you not? Of course, you're not an unwanted guest!" Melian said. "They won't give you the time of day, trust me." She grabbed Yavannah's arm and dragged her along.

Not entirely convinced, Yavannah let herself be guided by her friend toward the row of armored elves guarding the staircase leading to the upper chamber. As said by Melian, the guards barely registered their presence as they passed.

"We're almost there," Melian said excitedly, tugging Yavannah up the stairs.

Yavannah's eyes widened with awe as she reached the top of the stairs. The magnificent wooden gate that separated them from their goal was painted a bright, canary yellow with dark red wood symbols imprinted on it. Metallic blue frames gleamed in the rising sun, reflecting back diverging rays of light like a prism. "It's huge!"

"I know. But be aware, though, because beyond this gate, anything is just pathetically small. Come, let's have a blast!"