Merida blinked.
Merida: "Stop! What is going on here? Why are you attacking us in Oralith? You already have everything you need in your own land."
The leader of the army looked at her.
Leader: "We… we want… um… I don't know… I actually don't know what we want."
Merida stared at him, confused.
Merida: "So you are attacking us for no reason? I don't understand."
The king approached, his expression serious.
King: "I think I know what has happened. Come with me."
The king, Merida, and the army's leader entered the Palace and went into one of the towers. The king opened a door.
Inside was… a book.
It was thick, with at least a thousand pages, and it had no stand.
It floated above the floor, and a feather pen wrote inside it at a slow, steady pace.
King: "This is the Storybook. It has written our world for all eternity, deciding what the future will bring. No one knows who created it. We only know that it has always been here, writing this world since the beginning. I believe it wrote that the Land of Darkness would attack us… but now it has started writing something else instead."
Merida stepped closer to see what the Storybook was writing now.
She saw the title: "The Three Gemstones of Tydestera."
She did not recognize the place.
She reached toward the feather pen, but then
➳ "DO NOT TOUCH ME…!"
The pen pointed sharply at her, and Merida jumped back in surprise.
Merida: "I'm sorry. I just wanted to ask why you started writing that we would be attacked, and why you stopped halfway."
➳ "Because that is how it must be. The wicked must be wicked, and the good must be good. Those who live in the Land of Darkness are evil, and those who live in Oralith are good. That is simply the way of things."
➳ "And as for your second question, it was because I ran out of ink. So I fetched more and… began writing something else… oh. Well, I'd better finish what I started. Thank you for reminding me."
The Storybook flipped back to the page with the battle.
Leader: "Wait! We have no desire to attack Oralith! We may be villains, but attacking you is something we would never want to do!"
➳ "How unfortunate, because that is what you do in this tale, and nothing can prevent it!"
Just as the feather pen was about to write, Merida grabbed it.
The pen struggled to escape.
With great effort, Merida erased everything the Storybook had written in this Oralith-tale—except the beginning—and rewrote it instead.
➳ "NO! What have you done?!"
A brilliant light flooded everything.
➳ "Once upon a time, there were two peaceful kingdoms called Oralith and the Land of Darkness. Oralith was divided into seven regions… and the Land of Darkness had only one city."
➳ "Both kingdoms lived in peace and harmony, as they remained on their respective sides."
➳ "And so they did, happily ever after…"
➳ "The end."
The Storybook closes its pages, for now…