417. Of foundations, assaults and a little resistance

Cassandra Pendragon

With an almost imperceptible smirk I replied:

"Duly noted. How far have they carried you off?"

"I can't say for sure, but my lands are the closest to the mountains. They only took us with them, though. My people were bled dry upon the walls of my castle. There's nothing left there but corpses and ash." I felt my jaws grind, the wanton, pointless destruction almost more repulsive to me than the treatment of the fey's prisoners. Sacrificing them would at least have served a purpose. Killing the rest… not so much.

I raised my head to the sky and closed my eyes, listening to memories from ages past. Above the sweet, gentle breeze, now laden with the scent of cherrywood, the whispers of waned wisdom told me stories of war and peace. Of how the one had transformed into the other and why, sometimes, the bloodshed just never had stopped. "A year," I finally said. "A year for every corpse. The fey will find their way back home, to the place where they first saw the light. But in exchange they will help you, they will help the elves rebuild. Selflessly. A year of debt for every life they have taken." I turned and my gaze fell upon Lancelot. "That's the price, fey prince. That's the price of a home that won't be built on bones and thievery. Will you abide by my terms?"

Defiance, fear and anger glowed in his bright eyes, but there was also a spark of curiosity, maybe even longing, buried deep underneath. He held my gaze for longer than I had given him credit for and his words as well came as a surprise:

"I'm not the only one you have to convince. Even if my siblings can be persuaded, which I don't believe, what about the elf king? We've tortured his friend and bled his lands, his people, like animals. How ever will you convince him? And even then…" he jerked his head towards the elves, "you've heard him. They don't want our help." I didn't even blink.

"Their king will make the same choice. Like you, he lacks the courage to become a martyr. As for your reparations… even a blood tainted hand can learn to hold a plow. It will simply take a while. A pretty long while. I…" paused when I felt my ears twitch and my nostrils quiver of their own accord. Something was changing. The smell, the constant hum of magic in the air… it was as if a strange, discordant note had been introduced to a familiar song. A decaying, nightmarish note.

Damn it, even though we had shut down the sophisticated spell Lancelot had created, the veil between realms had definitely been broken several times over and now the pressure was mounting. Something else was going to come through and from the looks of it, it wasn't going to be a cute, white bunny. Unless Monty Python's rabbit of Caerbannog was actually a thing. Which I fervently hoped it wasn't.

A silver curtain descended upon my vision and I immediately saw ripples, or rather cracks running through reality, as if a pane of glass had been hit by a stone. With every passing moment they widened, a dark, frothing nothingness pushed against the fissures from the other side like an ugly, poisoned mockery of water seeping through. It even smelled like a rancid bog. My consciousness expanded until I felt Greta's gnarly thoughts wafting through the arcane haze below me.

"Are you strong enough," I simply asked.

"Unless the entire realm breaks through I can keep them safe. My aura only reaches as far as the cherry trees, though. You'll have to deal with whatever comes through on your own." I gave a curt nod she couldn't possibly see and focused back on the absurd scene. When we had gotten up this morning none of us, neither me, nor Lancelot nor the elves would have ever dreamt of standing where we were.

"It has to wait," I snarled, my eyes darting from left to right nervously as I tried to puzzle out where the roiling darkness could possibly materialise. And what it even might have been. "If you value your lives you'll hide in the forest. Now. Don't leave the protection of the cherry trees." They gaped, elves and fey staring at me with a look of utter astonishment as if I had just lost my marbles. Hardly surprising, considering how my entire demeanour had changed mid sentence, but there was no time to lose. "Go," I hissed, "go, damn you." They weren't any more convinced than they had been before, but now there wasn't much of a choice left. Despite their hatred for each other the fey prince and his former captives dove, side by side, while the floor of the valley became a flurry of movement, my command strong enough to urge the remaining fey into motion, even though I hadn't focused on them. "If you have to choose, protect the cubs," I added mentally.

"No need to tell me," Greta grumbled, "but I won't have to. You might have forgotten, but I still remember. It's about time to remind the darkness why it fears the light." Ex abysso lux… appare. 

A perverted clarion call, a loud, bone wrenchingly shrill sound thundered through the sky and the biting winds died down only to be replaced by a suffocating breeze of distilled hatred. Hatred for the world, for the living, for life itself. I felt my fur bristle and my muscles tense as my head whipped around, my eyes aglow like rising stars. A wet, foul wind blew back my hair and with a dry, cracking sound like breaking glass a rift tore open and consumed the sky.

Shadows sprawled around its league long edges, a wiggling, writhing mass of darkness, but even they stilled as an unfathomable, a heart stopping presence pushed itself closer to the gap. Beyond the frayed fringes of reality an eye opened, red and black and evil, smothered in pulsing tendrils of malevolent energy as large as mountains. A red, corrosive mist wafted through the rift and in its wake the first, tiny part of the creature appeared.

Its head, I thought as a warm, sweet gust rose from the forest and carried me along. The thing was huge, easily as large as a hill, but it had no real form. Flesh and magic came together, only to be torn apart again in a sickening display of growth and decay. Except for its frothing maw. A bottomless pit, filled with uncounted teeth, opened and closed convulsively, the very elements disintegrated wherever they came too close to the churning abyss and an arcane maelstrom manifested, a visual representation of the forces it was leeching from our world. Thunder rumbled in the distance, faint and weak, overshadowed by a terrifying howl. A massive, bloated, black tongue darted out and tasted the amalgamation of magic before it slurped it up with a sound like sewers being drained. The smell was even worse, a mixture of rotting flesh, blood, ozone and decaying magic. And I was headed straight for it. 

Piece by piece the alien abomination seemed to slither through the gap. Its formless, distorted figure grew with every breath as it feasted on the essence of our world, a nightmare made real, a nightmare that had finally left the confines of our dreams. Death it promised and with every repulsive movement of its body a tiny piece of our world broke off and turned into magic, only to be devoured the very next instant. 

From the shredded, tormented mist a creature rose, a towering embodiment of malice and hatred manifested, its form almost similar to a gargantuan squid by now. On and on it trailed, its tentacles still hidden on the other side, but its elongated beak alone, a solid mass of energy above its sickening maw, spanned wider than my wings. The singular eye blinked and then its deadly gaze fell upon me, the only speck of light in a cresting ocean of darkness,

A dry chuckle escaped me when I imagined all the places I'd have preferred to be, but then I grit my teeth and allowed my body to change. This wouldn't be a fight, but an ugly, one sided slaughter. Some things just would not exist in the world of the living for as long as I was alive.

Long, silver fangs broke through my jaws, my hands turned into silver claws and for the first time since it had tasted the intoxicating buffet of reality the creature was challenged. A howl, not quite like a wolf's, but just as eerie flowed from my throat, my wings swelled until they became a thunderstorm in their own right, the cherry petals in the air turned silver and a shimmering corset of dwarven steel and mithril closed around my limbs. The breath of winter, still caged in its sparkling depths, bursted forth and a wave of ice and liquid light pushed the poisonous fog back. 

Dropping to my haunches midair I spread out my tails like a peacock and raised my unoccupied claw in front of my chest. Aiglos manifested, cold and hard and beautiful, its own flames crackling with the memory of our last battle, its spirit eager for a chance to vent. Grey light broke through the encroaching darkness and everything stilled. The nightmarish apparition, the despairing mortals, even Greta's protective magic, it all came to a halt. Silence reigned, the world froze on the brink of now and forever and a spark of fear ignited in the monstrous eye.

Slowly, gradually Aiglos spun around, its heft trailing silver sparks. A tiny flame, not larger than my pinkie, ignited on its tip. The runes along its shaft pulsed once and without warning the spear erupted in a flash of unforgiving, unfaltering light. "Go," I barked, my own will closing in on the rift.

Lightning struck and a streak of silver tore its way through magic, flesh and reality. First the remnants of the creature's ungodly meal became engulfed in flames, then the nightmare itself flowed suit, but that wasn't the end. Aiglos' trail vanished into the rift and, accompanied by a sensation like closing my fist, I commanded the tear to close, if only for a moment. A heartbeat later there was only grey, fractured nothingness at the heart of the storm.

I released my grip and the raging winds of the northern mountains descended on us. They carried away the superficial remnants of a nightmare that had already been forgotten while the entire world seemed to draw a tentative breath. Then the heavens shuddered and an echo of silvery flames danced across the sky. The next moment my spear reappeared in my hand, just as my animalistic features sharpened and a soft, scaly coat grew from my tails towards my head. A mighty, but distant thunderclap shook the air and an echoing wail of anguish and hatred came from everywhere at once. I flexed my claws and allowed the trembling rift to open again.

Deep within the cherry forest the fey were cowering, mouths open and eyes wide, as forces reminiscent of Armageddon rattled the very foundations of their world. For war and conquest they had come, but their paltry ideas of what it entailed hadn't prepared them for the wanton destruction of a real fight. They were safe behind Greta's living walls, but the screams of elements torn asunder, the suffocating tides of light and the feeling of an entire realm tethering on the brink of annihilation would haunt their dreams for years to come. Good. I wanted them to watch, I meant for them to remember. It was going to make everything so much easier.

"Don't move," I snarled, as I felt the tiny butterfly squirm in my other claw. Skin turned into scales and she became engulfed by my soft, silver coat. "If you leave my side you'll die. It has barely begone." Her movements ceased as she tried to hide within the rippling waves, but her heart still hammered like a drum. She wasn't in any danger, far from it, but her mind was still hovering on the brink of collapse, the sensations of reality going mad around her much too overwhelming for her mortal spirit. I closed my fist, my silver talons turned into a protective curtain around her and I willed my magic to keep her safe, but that was all the attention I could spare.

As soon as my hold on the rift weakened it bursted open, the tear much larger than it had been before. A wide, almost black scar appeared in the sky and the diabolical sounds of a dying realm thundered against me once more. Whispers of death and promises of pain assaulted my ears, spoken in a language that wasn't meant for the world of the living. Large, formless shadows writhed in the encroaching darkness, but I didn't move. I waited, my senses taunt, my body shaking with excitement. Any second now…

A single spark, a silver streak of light suddenly ignited beyond the veil and a scream of pure, undiluted agony blasted back the snow and the petals when, from one second to the next, the entire rift erupted with silver flames. The tear in the sky became a window to hell, ravenous, inexorable magic danced on the other side and in their desperate attempt to flee the fire the inhabitants of the realm pushed towards the only path to salvation they had left. They blindly fled towards me as their world was consumed around them, but… they would not pass.

Another howl erupted from my throat and finally I moved, my wings and tails spread wide. I had never known how large I actually was in this form, but the rift still towered above me like the grotesque, wriggling arm of a giant. A thought brought me closer while another reached for the paltry, obscene mockeries they called souls. They weren't real, their power, their hatred, their anger were a mirror of mortal desires, brought to live by the magic of the disintegrating plane where Aiglos' fury and my power burned reality to cinders. Like maggots sprawling from an infested wound the nightmares of every sentient being on Gaya clawed their way into our world and with them came the despair and fear we all feel in the cold, dark hours before dawn when we're alone and forgotten in the night. But sometimes, just sometimes, there's an angel watching.

Light was so much more than magic or power. It burned, but could also nourish, it was bright and beautiful, it was split, but also whole and… it was always the same. No matter where, no matter to whom. And it was mine. Mine to use, mine to command, mine to marshal when I deemed it necessary. There was no spell, not even a proper intent because it listened to me willingly. Just like Ahri was the one true mistress of fire and flame, so was I the bringer of light. Light and darkness… they would always be there, even after the end of time.

"You're nothing," I breathed, my voice as ethereal as the kiss of a star, but just as heavy. Silence fell again, the frothing, suffocating mass froze just like the valley below me and then I spoke: "you're a single spark, far away from its source. The dawn has come, it's time to wake up. Let there be light." My spear shot into my outstretched claw and a single rune ignited. First it only smouldered with silver and blue, but barely a heartbeat later the scent of ozone filled my nostrils and the glyph blazed to life with an eternal beauty. "Return," it read and the silver flames, still unleashed within the other realm, turned into a glaring, unstoppable maelstrom, that thundered towards me.

Caught in an instant like flies in amber the horrors, the nightmares of our world became engulfed, their flimsy form nothing, but nectar to be devoured by my wrath. Lilith finally got her fireworks and they weren't shabby, if I do say so myself. Waves of silver and blue tore through the aberration of perverted dreams, sparks ignited in their wake and a glaring, beautiful mist of liquid light spread through the darkness. Like a silver wreath it became intertwined with the stream of flames before the celestial river swelled and surged. As if my feline body had suddenly sprouted a veil the unearthly magic wrapped itself around my tails and wings and for a long, infinite moment I once again felt the restraint power in my core threaten to break free.

"Not today," I pressed out through gritted fangs and forced my wings to expand, to grow and devour. The world hiccoughed, time resumed and the only thing that was left of the nightmares come to life was a shower of stardust, that gently fell across the changed, verdant valley.