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Long had the Fire belonged to the Fae.
It was power, and it was knowledge. It was sacred.
The humans did not possess it. They struggled along in darkness, only seeing the shadowed patterns the fire cast all around them, interpreting the motifs as truth. Never knowing the true meaning of light and warmth, those shadows were their only reality.
None treasured the Fire more than the High Lord of Autumn, and he kept its burning embers close to his greedy heart. From up on his dais – fire licking at his fingertips – he scoffed at the lower beings crawling along Earth’s crust, wrinkling his nose at their barbarism.
He urged his subjects to do the same.
Occasionally he shot his flames down onto the humans, letting them devour people and homes alike, laughing scornfully at his cruel jest. Treating their lives and deaths as mere entertainment for his depraved whims, the High Lord played with the humans as if their worth was null.
He urged his subjects to do the same.
The humans, eager to please their overlords, sacrificed their livestock in an attempt to halt the ravaging flames. The High Lord devoured their offerings, but when he again grew impatient and hungry, he burned the Earth anew. Remembering their last reprieve from the flames, the humans gave more of their precious sustenance to appease the Fae, hardly leaving any for themselves. Eternally gluttonous, the High Lord filled his belly with their immolated oxen, goats and sheep.
He urged his subjects to do the same.
But the High Lord’s eldest son, Eris, saw the treatment of the humans, and shame burned willfully in his chest from the strife. The next time his vicious father feasted on their hard earned provisions, he ate so much that he fell into a deep slumber. Eris crawled up the dais to the Autumn despot’s sleeping form and stole the fire from him, before starting his descent to the human lands.
When he reached the Earth, the cunning prince distributed the flame among the humans, enlightening them with knowledge, technology and civilization. As if rousing from a vivid dream, the humans saw the world as it was, and so shaped it in their own image. Pleased with their creative power, Eris returned to his father’s seat quietly, pretending never to have left at all.
But upon waking, the High Lord found that his flames had been taken from him, and he was furious. He turned to the humans and tried to seize his fire back, but it had been split into so many parts that he could never catch them all. Vowing to destroy them for their theft, the High Lord again directed his flames towards the Earth, but Eris – who by now loved the humans as his own kin – stopped his father by admitting his guilt.
Enraged by the treachery, the High Lord punished his son by chaining him to a rock upon the highest mountain in Prythian, where every day eagles would eat his immortal liver, and every night it grew back for another day of torment. It was a never ending cycle.
The pain of the tearing beaks became so unbearable that Eris pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became indistinguishable from it. Therefore, in the course of thousands of years, his deceit was forgotten – forgotten by the Fae; forgotten by the eagles; forgotten by himself.
Only the lowly humans remembered.
They commemorated Eris by creating an altar to him in the grove of their first academy, holding a festival in his honor where they lit a torch with the Fire he gifted them, then raced it along the streets of their newly built cities. Mirroring the chains in which Eris was trapped, they adorned themselves with wreaths made from the plants they cultivated, never forgetting his sacrifice.
And so, the fire gave life, and it took it away.
Generation upon generations of humans came and passed as the Fae sat sulking upon their thrones, never quite remembering where their unhappiness stemmed from.
But the glowing embers of one crucial sacrifice continued to warm the hearts and hearths of humans, the lone figure on the rock never more than a thought or prayer away.