There are tales, spoken of in hushed tones of a child taken too soon and all the revenge it can muster.
The king of the Tiyanak.
He began as all beings like him did.
A discarded body.
A crestfallen mother.
A life taken too soon.
But the king was different. He could think unlike others of his kind.
Now, not a mindless anger of hunger and destruction.
Something so much more.
And he planned.
He raged against the life lost from him, and he knew he was not alone.
Though the centuries he collected his court, infants that never knew what it was like to just be, what it was like to exist and be nurtured.
The king brought these tiyanak together with a goal, to amass enough power to strike at the humans of the middleworld.
Beginning with his own bloodline.
After the king was abandoned, his ersatz family had another child. The king would peer through their window and saw how much they loved that child.
Why didn’t they love the king?
The decades blended into years.
He followed his family. There were 6 generations from his death.
They all needed to pay.
599 tiyanak. 599 bloodthirsty monsters ready to take orders from their king.
It was said that no one escaped the attack, the entire town was eradicated from memory.
And what did the king learn from this?
He enjoyed it.
The bloodcurdling screams from his court were music that no other living being could appreciate.
After his personal revenge he sought to tame even more tiyanak.
Thus, he sits on his throne.
Ready for his next decree.
Written by Karl Gaverza
Copyright © Karl Gaverza
Inspired by the many Tiyanak myths
Illustration by Leandro Geniston
