King Jantrice looked shocked when Faya told him what the guards were doing, and he even said he would have the guards who antagonized the witches sanctioned. There was no room for hatred in his kingdom! Faya left the castle that day feeling happier than when she arrived, and she was even happier when she noticed that the king had done exactly what he said he would! The guards reduced their patrols, and there were fewer conflicts in the towns and villages! The relationship between the witches and the Hondurans became peaceful once more, and Faya felt happy that the king was a man of his word! The next month, Faya received an invitation from the king for a meal, and Faya took some precious food and health potions with her as a gift to thank the king for his hospitality.
Once more, the king welcomed her with open arms, and Faya couldn’t help but appreciate how much the king honored her. Over the next few months, Faya and the king spent more and more time together. Faya wouldn’t deny that she found King Jantrice to be a very attractive man. He had an aura of strength and confidence around him that made him seem like a great lion to her, and when he smiled at her, Faya couldn’t help her cheeks from reddening shyly! The two of them slowly grew closer during their many visits, and it was only a matter of time before Faya realised that she had fallen in love with this man! Faya and King Jantrice spoke about many things together, and Faya realised that the King had an intense curiosity about Runes. The king wished to know how runes worked and how they could be utilized! He wanted to know the origin of runes and if it was possible for a non-mage to use a rune to perform magic!
Faya had been excited about the fact that the King had so much interest in magic, and she saw nothing wrong in telling the King everything she knew about runes. Every time they were under the stars together, or when they were in bed, Faya would explain the core concepts of runes to King Jantrice, and Jantrice would listen with an intense attention that bordered on obsession! Faya didn’t see anything wrong in telling the King all these things because she believed it would only make the relationship between the Hondurans and the witches even better! But Faya could never have guessed just how much damage she was doing to her own people! Because the King was a very smart man, and he was playing a long game that Faya could never have understood! Every time Faya told the King anything about runes, the King would record it down, and every time Faya gave the King information about how non-magicians could use runes, the King would send a few of his knights to go and practice to see if they could use the runes!
It took nearly three years of constant conversation for King Jantrice to compile a full magical tome containing all forms of defensive and offensive runes he learned from Faya, and by that time, Faya and King Jantrice were already married, and Faya was pregnant with his child! And it was in this year of the Dancing Dragon on the fifth full moon that the Witch Hunts began.
It was a bloody, twisted, unexpected purge that arrived at a moment no one expected! Before the hunts began, the relationship between the Hondurans and the witches was very good, and even though the witches were still a secretive society, they were known to interact with the Hondurans frequently! King Jantrice knew that he would need a catalyst to change this relationship. Just a few years ago, the Hondurans had been terrified of the witches, so King Jantrice would need to do something completely outlandish and unexpected in order to make the Hondurans see the witches as dangerous people once again and justify his hunts! And that was why King Jantrice summoned the pregnant Faya to his personal chambers on a random day in the castle, and he activated an explosive rune that killed both her and the baby!
’A witch assassinated the royal family! A witch killed the Queen and the future King! The witches have turned to their evil ways again!’
This was the news that surged through the world right after Faya was killed, and the old hatred that the people had buried deep in their hearts a long time ago was suddenly brought back to the surface as they realised just how dangerous the witches were once again! The propaganda against witches surged to new life, and the guards went about telling witches not to use their magic in the open! But this time, the guards didn’t just tell the witches not to use their magic; they also actively attacked any witch who was caught using magic in the open, and this led to many conflicts between the guards and the witches! The witches were some of the most powerful creatures in this world, and if these guards were simply regular men, then there was no way the guards would stand a chance against the witches! But after learning about runes and mastering how to wield them, the guards were no longer as helpless as they used to be!
The guards now had strengthening runes carved into their bodies, and they had strong defensive runes carved into their armor and shield! Their swords were marked with red anti-magic runes, and they had become walking representations of death! A witch killing machine! The guards who wielded these runes became the frontline of the battles against the witches, and it wasn’t long before the Hondurans began to refer to these knights as the witch-slayers!
For a while, the witch-slayers only went from town to town to try and stop any witch from using magic in the open, but it wasn’t long before the witch-slayers began to actively attack any witch that they saw! The witches of Hondura were completely incapable of matching the sheer brutality of the witch-slayers! Faya, the leader of the witches, had been the one guiding them for a very long time, so her death brought great confusion to the ranks of witches, and the fact that the knights who were attacking them all wielded runes and could use them to defend against witch attacks made things even more terrifying!
At first, the people of Hondura were hesitant to support the witch hunts. The witches had been there to help them for a long time, and if not for the witches, then the dangerous magical beasts would have killed many of them! But after they saw how strong the witch slayers were, the people of Hondura came to a damning realisation: they didn’t need the witches anymore! The witches had only been useful for protecting them from the magical beasts, but now the witch-slayers could protect them from both the magical beasts and the evil witches! It didn’t take long for the Hondurans to turn on the witches, and that was what marked the end of the era of the witch!
For the next one hundred years, King Jantrice spearheaded a witch hunt that saw more than five million witches killed and burnt to death! His sheer hatred and anger towards the witches fueled his resolve and ensured he would never back down till the day he died! And now, even after Jantrice was dead, the people of Hondura still did not wish to accept the witches! The Witch Slayer association had become one of the most popular associations in the world. Only the most powerful male knights were inducted into the association, and their job was to make sure no witch rose to power in Hondura ever again! The witch-slayers killed any witch they found, whether they were old grandmothers or young babies! No one was spared!