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Fear had ruled much of Lidia’s life. Fear of strangers, of the dark, of starvation, of dangerous men. Fear had taught her many lessons beneath its iron grasp, it had bent and shaped her, sent her scurrying in the night beneath its brutality. Fear and she were longtime companions, teacher and student. Abuser and victim.

Fear was not in the scream she gave.

Oh she was afraid, she was terrified. The panic in her heart was a palpable force that grasped her throat and dared to strangle the air from her lungs — but in time, she’d had other teachers. Friendship, Family, Duty.

Love.

No, in that scream was the defiance of an orphaned child, the anger of a scorned youth, the pride of a stoic warrior before the uncaring monsters, and God’s Blood — the fury of a mother for children she had yet to bear, and in it’s wake was the ring of steel.

Her saber flashed from its scabbard and she met the swelling rush with a whipping lash of the blade — the Bane hissed like a living thing as she disemboweled a lunging Seelie that was all gangling limbs and swollen guts and gullet, its fetid blue ichor sizzling on the steel as it fell backwards, screaming horribly.

There was no quarter asked, and none given as the wounded was buried under the mad rush of the others. Lidia screamed in return and met it head on.

A howling cry echoed her own and suddenly Gram was there, visor clapped down and blade in hand. Gore and limbs flew as he met her shoulder-to-shoulder and simply smashed into the melee, his steely armor repelling the fae like the man was aflame. He crashed into their ranks like a meteor and Lidia rushing along into the gap he made, the two fell into the familiar dance of war — hound and hind, hammer and anvil. Lidia dipped and darted between the bigger man’s long limbs — driving lethal or crippling cuts and thrusts into gaps he hammered open, and he brutally cutting, stamping and bulling his way over creatures wounded by her flashing blade. The pair covering each other’s flanks and gaps as they pressed doggedly towards the end of the avenue, they were of the same mind — She had felt this man’s hands upon her in the most private of places. They moved here as one as much as they had elsewhere, if anything — this was more intimate.

They wheeled through the chaotic riot of flesh and fable like a pinwheel of blades, all who came for them recoiled, stung by the bite of Anathema — but for every one they sliced or wounded, two would join their place, and the shapes and sizes became increasingly dangerous. As they committed to a running battle, desperate to escape the grasping, tugging mob as they wheeled about from poor match-ups or too-dense crowds. Herding and being herded in return.

Split-Jaw lumbered into the fray, moving far too fast for his tremendous bulk, his heavy build’s leonine mane extending to a fluid feline quickness as he crashed into the pair, grasping Gram bodily even as his fingers sizzled in agony at the touch of the iron. He gave a howl of anger and pain as his bull-rush snatched the Darrowmite up, driving him backwards towards the wall of a nearby salon.

Gram answered that by headbutting the brutal faerie directly in the face.

The steel of his visor rang out like a carriage crash as the monster’s nose flattened against its alien skull, a new scream of uniquely alien agony joining the chorus as Split-Jaw stumbled, and Gram only added to the brutality, slamming his face into the other’s again and again, steel smoking and sizzling with faerie ichor as he finally wrested his arm free, and drove a plated fist backed by the crosspiece of his saber directly into the hulk’s temple. The fae’s slit-eyed stare went glassy as his movement suddenly, terminally arrested and he pitched forwards, Gram landing heavily beneath the fallen Seelie’s bulk with a grunt. The host descended upon him in nearly feral fury, and Lidia snapped her hand down into her bag.

“Tirrah, I need ye!” She barked, and out came the last powder bomb. The little fomori was already on it, bolting down her arm like a shot as Lidia never stopped moving, her saber darting and snapping at molesting hands and grasping limbs both fantastical and mundane. Lidia snarled and brought the bomb to her teeth, tearing and biting the fuse length short as she sprinted towards where the host of hostile fae were bearing down on her loverboy, still pinned under the hulking form of Split-Jaw.

Tirrah raised her flint with a valiant cry, and struck sparks across the fuse. It lit, Lidia grit her teeth as she ran the numbers one last time as she cut the hamstrings of one pursuing Seelie aristocrat and used its slumped form as a springboard, leaping high into the air.

“GET AWAY FROM HIM!” She snarled, and pitched the grenade with a neat twist. The orb spun in a sizzling arc, the fuse trailing spiraling smoke behind it before it once again found its fire at the precise place, about twelve spans above the ground.

Thunder clapped. Steel rained. Sidhe screamed.

The concussion seemed immense in the tightly-packed walls of the avenue, and the shrapnel had little trouble finding homes as it hammered itself down on the faerie host, the winnowing hunger of Iron slammed a dozen or more of their bodies to the ground, writhing and screaming as they were disabled by the toxic hail of iron and scrap. Gram roared and kicked the body of Split-Jaw — riddled with shrapnel — off himself as Lidia came to his side, grasping his arm and swinging her beloved back to his feet, they both snapped their gaze to the bridge and their goal. A coughing hack from below drew their attention.

“You… base creature… the Bane… here, like this?”

Split-Jaw raised his head, somehow, hideously alive despite the grievous wounds he had sustained, built substantially tougher than the Dewkeepers had been.

“The Queen will anoint me… when I bring her your body knotted like rope...”

Gram clenched his fingers around his blade’s hilt, and the two lover’s eyes met. No time. No time at all.

They broke into a run, Split-Jaw snarling and dragging himself painfully to his feet behind them, the scattered and disorganized mob offering them little resistance in the wake of the detonation, many screaming and wailing as they tended themselves and others feeling the eradicating bite of Iron.

“We ‘ave tae get to th’ throne, nae way in th’ coldest part o’ th’ Queen’s Arse she’d nae ‘ave a plan for this, she’ll open th’ door fer me!” She shouted as they ran, the teeming mass of sidhe reorganizing behind them, around them — incensed, offended, furious, they began to mass for another rush. A rush the pair wouldn’t be able to ward off. Lidia and Gram poured on the effort, Tirrah’s tiny voice fearful as she clung tightly to Lidia’s hood. The angry cries of the sidhe behind them growing less human as they got closer.

“The Queen remains locked away, she has not spoken to kith nor kin for many a year.”

The voice was sudden, and it was absolute. Everyone froze. Lidia and Gram among that number, skidding to a halt as the resonant, stoic voice rang out from nowhere, from everywhere.

“She has not spoken to us, and she will not speak to _ you _.”

The air cracked. It did not crackle like lightening, or clap and boom like thunder. It cracked. Like g_lass._ The very sky fragmented and shattered, pieces and parts of perception falling away as everything around them became darkness.

Darkness and teeth.

Gnashing, tearing, biting maws, fangs and flashing incisors unfolded infinitely before the eyes in an unending phantasmagoria, falling forever while standing still as the terrace itself warped beneath that hellish tapestry of teeth, tongues, and the primal terror of being eaten alive. Maws opened within maws and within them therein further gnashing mouths parted ways to a new reality — the statues of the Queens remade in a sheathing of enamel and bone, their faces sallow and sunken in the ivory relief. No longer were they serene, but instead their faces stern and furious, Badab and Macha’s hands were no longer outstretched, but upturned in rending claws. The salons melted away, a forest of fangs springing up from the ground and gnashing down from thin air, clenching together into titanic parapets like bleached jaws, windows and arrow-slits formed out of gnashing mouths peeled back in snarls eternal. Brick and mortar given way for flesh, teeth, and hideous bare bone.

A fortress bloomed into existence, unfolding like a child’s paper craft in layers of ferocious fangs and maws aplenty, the entire structure gnawing its way into being like the great mouth of some unknowable, unfathomable being, peeling back reality from this jagged redoubt of fangs like great, disdainful lips.

Lidia felt her blood run cold. Not merely for the spectacle and its mind-rending impossibility, nay that alone had warm bedfellows in her memory of other, horrible places. Nay, it was because she had been here before.

Rising from the center of this newest, too-familiar abomination was a singular figure. Simple, sleek and symmetrical in outline, it stood above even Split-Jaw as he limped to the edge of the watching crowd. Easily twelve or more spans high, tall as Morgana had been in the study back at the Keep. It moved with easy grace, its entire body was a notable feature here in this place of raucous madness and colorful delight — for it was entirely black. Black like the glossy sheen of obsidian. Black like spilled ink on a rare tome. Black such that it almost seemed to warp between purple and blue as the chill light struck it, eating it whole. A massive, leathery mantle hung from its shoulders like great black wings folded across its chest, save for the inner lining, seemingly made of the same glistening red flesh as the velarium — it was the only shock of color on the otherwise jet creature as it approached them.

It became apparent that It was in fact He, as the purely, inarguably masculine presence washed over them. His attire and flesh seemed as one, hard black carapace melding together in a faux-musculature that seamlessly blended with the details of gnashing fangs and snarling maws embossed into the plates with hideously life-like engravings. They formed patterns down his broad, belled chest to his waspish waist in suggestion of a singular, massive mouth splitting him in twain just beneath his breastbone. His limbs were long and supple, too long really as he paused before them, folding his arms across his chest — each shot elbow to wrist with those same lifelike rows of gnashing teeth. He was built much like Morgana had been — too-long limbs, boneless strength and strange three-toed digitigrade legs — but for where hers had been soft, ivory flesh, he was made of glossy chitin welded over glistening exposed sinew, that same vivid red of the velarium once more. His face was naught but a massive, eyeless, lipless maw clamped shut — an overwrought parody of human teeth save for massive, tusk-like incisors. The fleshy, faceless head tilted at them a moment, and the jaws chattered.

With a wet, leathery creak of stretching flesh and sinew, the maw yawned wide, too-wide, and where a tongue or soft palate would be, it folded back like a visor and gorget… from a face. A fine-boned, sharp-cheeked, fierce face, handsome by any measure. A Darrowmite face. Wider the maw-helm opened, peeling back from his skull like a coif to settle about his collar like a raised gorget of fangs. Upon his brow rested a twisted, black crown, his features fine-boned and beautiful in contrast to its hard, ugly angles of twisted black wire. The soft, perfect contours of his mouth a perfect counter to the thorny peak.

It was then, he opened his eyes. Eyes the color of a house fire, the hue of a runaway forge, of a pyre of a forgotten hero. Blazing yellow eyes. Slitted eyes. Sidhe eyes.

Lidia felt her guts twist up in an unknowable, irrational fear as the eyes from her dream stared at her with open, unabashed hatred in them. His face serene, the towering Sidhe Lord gave his head another tilt, the strange, fleshy coif framing his features closely, as if the tiny shred of humanity that was this perfect visage were trapped within the ebony-shelled prison, peeking out of naught but a gap in the bars of its cage. Dagonet’s voice suddenly rang out, he and Dearg having vanished in the melee, but the Dewkeeper had appeared once more, suddenly striding forward from his place of concealment, his voice booming with his usual gusto.

“Behold everyone, bow and pay homage to He who is before us!” The Dewkeeper crowed as he swept before them, spreading his arms as he took the role of herald, looking out to the crowd, and to Lidia and Gram in particular.

“Take knee and pay homage to He, The Pallid Prince, High-Captain of Seelie, Queen’s Champion, First Son of The Morrigan,” He dropped to his own knee as he raised his own voice in proper tribute, crowing with adoration.

“Mordred, Lord of the Gnash!”

The towering figure smiled, his pale lips full and supple as he spoke again, his voice gentle, soft… one would go so far as to say dulcet and sweet, a thrumming tone that was like honey to the ear and yet full of authority that rang like hammer to the soul.

“Hello, little sister. You have come quite a long way to die.”

Lidia gaped at that, but the tall Sidhe turned instead to Dagonet, raising a six-fingered hand to his cheek with a genuine fondness, his smile as real and good as gold.

“Dagonet, my friend, you ever do me proper grandeur as none else can,” he crooned in a gentle tone, his voice was warm and smooth, thrumming in the lower registers like a private whisper at any range. The Dewkeeper smiled, and his joy was palpable.

“Milord asks I merely say that which I see, what simpler task?” He exhorted, letting the Sidhe Lord raising him from his knee with that hand, his other raising palm up in time, bidding all around him rise — and rise they did. Lidia and Gram didn’t have a say in it, those burning eyes casting across the crowd as they all stood, compelled by authority, his chin raised as he gave a little nod of affirmation.

“Traveling in company of my boon companion, little sister, that has earned you the least of my curiosity, and my ear for a time.” He said, gesturing to the side with an air of authority, one that the warping reality followed — the walls literally chewing themselves apart, restructuring themselves teeth-for-bricks into a small, stately pavilion overlooking the infinite, twisting cosmos beyond. It even went as far as to twist and form a series of bench seats from the enamel-like material. A quint, if morbid little salon.

“Yer jokin’, right?” Lidia said to him as he once again had turned to warmly regard the Dewkeeper, the yellow-eyed sidhe raising an eyebrow up into the chitinous coif.

“I am not. Loyalty is a rare commodity in Seelie, and I reward it always.”

“Jus’ like that?” She hedged, Gram looming behind her like the specter of war itself, smeared in sizzling sidhe blood on blade and armor both. Mordred’s face was cool and he even smiled.

“Just like that.”

Lidia and Gram exchanged a look, Tirrah joining in from her perch, all bewildered in different ways. Dagonet smiled at them broadly, the Dewkeeper’s presence as key as ever. The trio sheathed their weapons hesitantly, the towering sidhe lord raising his chin pointedly at that as they proceeded to the benches, the strange enamel-like stone sinking beneath their weight as they sat — far as they could to one side. Mordred obliged them, seating himself opposite of them — Dagonet eagerly sprawling across his larger frame, laying bonelessly across his lap like a lazy cat, Mordred smiling and lowering a six-fingered hand to stroke his face once more — the limb oddly symmetrical, unlike the others with an extraneous pinky or extra middle digit — his were split perfectly in the middle, four fingers, two thumbs in arrangements of three each. He dragged them up the sidhe’s belly, along his chest and up beneath his chin, a bemused look on his face as the Dewkeeper gave a content little shudder, before those blazing yellow eyes turned upon them again. He spied Tirrah, and the smile turned just a bit wicked.

“Ah, I see you as well have come to appreciate the care of a vassal.” He said, voice gentle, conversational even as he leaned back, and the bench warped beneath him, filling out into a high-backed throne of incisors and bone, absently threading those taloned fingers through Dagonet’s hair, kneading his scalp fondly. Lidia stiffened a bit, Tirrah’s eyes were wide as she watched Dagonet’s treatment at the hands of the towering sidhe, she flicked a gaze to Lidia, as uncertain as she was.

“I dinnae think we ‘ave th’ same… understandin’,” she said, the Fomori chirping in the affirmative, but she did seem a bit longing for the contentment that washed over the Dewkeeper’s face, Lady’s Teats Lidia felt a touch of longing at that, such contentment did not often cross a human-like face in public. She screwed up her courage and faced the sidhe man dead-on.

“Cozy talk fer th’ man who threatened tae kill me,” she said bluntly, setting her teeth. “Twice.”

“You are not so dull as to forget,” Mordred said cordially, his hand in constant, idle motion along Dagonet’s scalp, “Good. This will be an interesting distraction at the least.”

“Hard tae forget someone invadin’ my mind, ‘appened once or twice before.” She returned again, folding her arms across her chest. He smiled at her, eyes glimmering.

“I noticed that, the scars of another, grander thing had come before I. You have a habit of angering things greater than you, little sister.”

“I get it from Mum,” she answered cheekily, her crossed arms turning into a defensive hug, “Dinnae call me that, I ‘ave a big brother, an’ ye ain’t it.”

“Are you so certain of that?” He asked, trailing a talon along Dagonet’s cheek idly, the Dewkeeper practically asleep across the expanse of his thigh, Mordred’s eyes dilated intensely to wide, predatory pools of shadow limmed in fire. “Are you so sure in all the fullness of time, that ne’er before has The Morrigan taken a mortal to her bed and breast?”

Lidia paused… she didn’t. She knew really nothing about her mother, her… family, as it were. Caught off-balance like that, Mordred’s smile turned sharp.

“So sure of your primacy that you never even considered you were the mere current fashion, how very like Mum indeed, little sister.”

“She is also canny and ruthless, and of a most delightful irreverence, Milord,” Dagonet murmured out from his place beneath the other’s raking talons, “A Fomori Vassal, so quaint!”

“A Fomori and one of the Pale Lady’s Men of Iron, wrapped in the bane head to heel no less.” He mused and Gram’s hands reached for his visor.

“Man of Iron is a new one, but I will wear it with pride,” he grated from behind the steel, raising it to meet the yellow-eyed sidhe’s gaze with his frosty glare directly. It was Mordred’s turn to be shocked, the gentility falling off his face like ice melting from the eaves of a house as mute surprise filled it, widening his eyes and narrowing their pupils to knife-like slits.

“You’re… Darrowmite,” He breathed, leaning forwards with a sickeningly leather-like creak and clatter of chitin and flesh as he almost crossed the distance bent that way, built just outside their scale, his head and hands too large, eyes too wide. He breathed deep. Gram’s lip was crusted with blood and a half-dozen nicks from the melee, and she could practically see the scent waft to the sharp, aquiline nose. “Nay, not just that — a half-breed. Child of two houses.”

“Yes, a child of unfortunate circumstances,” Gram answered honestly, his voice level. Mordred raised his eyebrows inquisitively.

“Adultery?”

“Rape.”

Mordred’s eyes lit with a moment of intensity at that, his free hand curling beneath his chin contemplatively. “The dastard responsible dealt with squarely, then?”

“’Tis a work in progress,” Gram responded succinctly, getting a deep nod from the towering Sidhe Lord then, his willowy frame exaggerating the motion with stately grace.

“I am obstructing you, are I not?” He offered, and his voice was almost apologetic, Gram’s mustaches bristled around his exhale.

“Plainly put, you are.”

Mordred dipped his head again in a nod, stroking his fingers over the nearly-comatose Dagonet’s back, “Is this the reason you invade this place?”

“It is in part, I have business with Dame Morgana that must be concluded before I may pursue my own,” Gram stated, his hand finding Lidia’s beside them before he added, “I would give my own children a house undivided.”

Those words seemed to strike Mordred, and his claws slowed in their descent down the Dewkeeper’s back, getting a soft exhale of discontent from the smaller sidhe, answered with a gentle caress of the back of his hand. He stared with a moment of open, naked longing at Lidia and Gram both, his eyes flicked between their joined hands, each one’s eyes in turn. His hand stopped again.

“A noble goal, one I would gladly aid for another true-blooded Son of Darrowmere.”

Gram’s eyes raised at that, and Lidia pressed; “Ye’re a full-blown Sidhe, what do you mean? Little sister? Son o’ Darrowmere?” Her voice was perhaps strained as she spat finally, “Ye’ve been plain ‘bout all else, speak plain now!”

The Sidhe Lord’s smile returned, but there was a brittleness to it as he dipped his head in a nod, “A fair point raised, I have been cryptic for the sake of presence I suppose.”

“You were brooding again, Milord.” Dagonet purred, and the towering Lord laughed, a soft, honest sound.

“I was, was I not? ‘Tis my right I suppose,” He chuckled, raising those eyes to the trio again.

“I am both, as said. Eldest born of the Morrigan and Scion of Darrowmere the same,” he said, fixing them with a provocative quirk of his eyebrow. “You, Steelskin, you know your history do you not?” He challenged, and Gram raised an appreciative eyebrow.

“My father is a man of books and learning, I know much.” Mordred smiled, and there was an unnatural amount of teeth in it, all perfectly, hideously neat and straight.

“You are to learn new things this day, have you ever considered what the Old King offered to the Queen of Blood and Darkness to gain their support against the Empty One?”

Gram furrowed his brow, and his eyes flicked in place, as if reading distant pages, “It was control of all of Darrowmere west of Blackreach to the Eastern Marches, wood to wood, Seelie to Unseelie,” he read off, as if quotation. Mordred gave a genuine smile, Dagonet grinned.

“See? Her vassals are unprecedented, a Fomori Knight and a Soldier-Scholar!” The Dewkeeper said delightedly, and Mordred curled a talon beneath his chin fondly.

“They are an impressive lot, in spite of their limitations. Yes, quite well-said. But look about yourself!” Mordred declared in a stentorian tone, spreading his arms, the mantle on his shoulder flaring out around him as the pavilion chewed itself apart around him to reveal the great yawning cosmos beyond and all of the Amber Terraces twisting, swaying, and swirling through the eternal spring skies.

“You offer us that which we already own, that from which cannot be taken from us! So I ask you again, Man of Iron,” Mordred said, the very stones rolling beneath him now, the pavilion restructuring itself to carry him forward like a tongue to lean down in a disarmingly genteel fashion to Gram and Lidia both.

“What would the Old King have to offer, to the Queen of Blood and Darkness?” There was a beat and Mordred’s lips split in another smile and he offered in a generous, inquisitive tone, “Why do you call her Dame Morgana?”

Gram’s eyes went wide. Lidia’s as well.

“Oh God’s Blood, she bred into th’ line like…” She swallowed, but Gram’s eyes betrayed the part she’d left unspoken with a momentary pang of discomfort. Like Karnov.

Mordred spread his arms with a smile that rapidly turned smug, the lolling structure his throne sat upon leaning him closer, looming down on them in all of his well-deserved grandeur. Lidia could not even find fault in her awe, for what he said was true. He was Sidhe.

“I am Mordred, the True Heir of the Old King. The Scorned Son of Darrowmere, and her Truest Son the same.” He swept a low bow, and an edge came to his smile.

“And your eldest brother, little sister. I am most displeased with you.”

Lidia glared up at him with baleful eyes, “I ne’er done a thing tae you.”

Mordred’s response was delivered with such cool, gentle civility that it physically chilled her.

“You were born.”

Lidia balked at that, and the Sidhe Lord continued, returning to his gentle recline, “You were born, and Seelie very much began to die. Do you know what name I knew Mother as?” He asked her, and paused then before addressing her with genuine curiosity, “What did you call her?”

“Morgan,” Lidia said, her voice still cagey, “Turns out ‘twas shortened-up from Morgana, or sommat.”

“Or ‘sommat’, yes.” Mordred echoed glibly, his searing gaze fixated on her own now. Staring dead into her eyes, “I called her Macha, when she deigned to speak to me…” his genteel veneer slipped again, the ice once more thinning under the heat of his disdain as he leaned forward again, his face dipping towards her as his lips peeled back in a sneer.

“Those eyes. Unfit to be seen on such an artificial thing, so base and without purpose. A doll for a dead man.” He snarled in a voice only barely human in its hatred. “What right does she give you those eyes, and not I? How dare you look at me with those eyes.”

“She made me tae be loved, what did she make ye for?” Lidia snarled back coldly, a well of bitterness bubbling up in her at her hitherto unknown sibling — her greatest want, a family! And it is madness and hatred to the bone! Mordred grinned at her, and behind his teeth lurked not chittering insectoid mandibles, but rather more teeth. Rows upon rows as he chewed the words with the sheer authority in which he spoke them. He spoke as if his word were law, and here in this place — it was.

“She made me to conquer.”

The voice rang out with an off-kilter echo, and in between the gnashing of words, she saw deeper the gnashing of mouths behind mouths, teeth behind teeth. He smiled around infinite smiles, all made of knives.

“Why does er’ry one keep talkin’ ‘bout me eyes? Ye ‘ave the same as me!” Lidia spat back, her ire only rising as the sidhe lord towered above them, “Jealous, hateful fookin’ monsters, all o’ ye!”

“It is as I told you earlier, Little Hind,” came a soft, feminine voice, Dearg emerged with a tray balanced upon an upturned coil of her animate mane, sashaying up to the towering seelie man and sweeping a respectful but far more modest bow than others, upon that tray a pitcher and flutes of the Dew, gleaming and bubbling. She turned to her lover, sliding into Mordred’s lap without asking and apparently without issue, winding herself around the pampered dewkeeper in clearly amorous glee unlike that which Mordred had displayed, her body pressed hungrily to his back, and her hands grasping his face, turning it up to Lidia, leaning in close.

“Queen’s Favored.” She purred, blinking next to her trembling lover’s hungry gaze, which turned back to look at the little changeling with the same green gaze she saw in a mirror. Green eyes. Green eyes. Where else had she seen green? Surely it cannot be so rare… but as the tableaux played out before her, Dearg winding pleasantly around Dagonet, the both receiving the idle attentions of Mordred as he turned his attention back to his sister. She could only think of one other face with eyes that green — Mum’s.

“Have you sussed it out yet?” Mordred asked in a conversational tone, his talons stroked down Dearg’s back this time, but he was harder with her, leaving welts that cut through her bloody painted attire, leaving her trembling in their wake, she framed the Dewkeeper’s face so they could look nowhere else but Lidia’s uncertain eyes. She blinked first.

“Dagonet’s exquisite charms are the only thing that penetrated the Queen’s malaise these many years, long have she and I both been fond of him.” He continued, Dearg seeming to fill in for the doting as he spoke far more carnally, the sleek sidhe man shivering as his red-painted paramour slid her tongue along his pointed ear, the pair entwined in Mordred’s lap, artfully tangled.

“It is… aah! My duty, my Lady called me away and cared for me, I s-should do the same, no?” The trembling Dewkeeper gasped in a voice lurid with pleasure, eyes fluttering as he was absolutely drowned in it platonically and romantically alike. Dearg’s voice thrummed as she turned her red gaze on Lidia next to the fluttering eyes of her lover.

“He is the most loyal vassal in Seelie, and the Queen long imbued upon him her favor in his form and station, to gather Dew for the Morrigan herself, to spin tales for her and her court, oh!” She shuddered in some kind of lewd mixture of envy and pride, pressing her body flush to Dagonet in a hungry way, only to give a little gasp of delighted outrage as Mordred’s fingers found a handful of her hair, peeling her back from the quivering Dewkeeper with a faint ‘tut-tut’ of his tongue. Dagonet panted and could only smile in response.

“I am attentive to my duty, she asks and I do, she asks of me tales, and I have many!” He said and sprang up from his master’s embrace, Dearg watching him with hunger, Mordred with enjoyment as the lithe Dewkeeper spread his arms, voice raised in praise. “The wonders of Seelie are infinite, and mine eyes, ears, and tongue only grow more capable of singing them as I become one with it ever further!”

“My boon companion,” Mordred echoed, “In the many years I have stood at my Mother’s side, her red right hand… Dagonet has been here, a spot of eternal joy.” He explained in a tone casual, even wistful. “He was dutiful and bold, a vassal without fear or doubt. I have found in him a loyal and steadfast companion in the needful solitude of my role.”

“Even the Lord of the Gnash cannot find grievances to air when Dagonet’s voice is raised in song.” Dearg trilled, Mordred laughed, a polite thing done with the lips, not the belly.

“Heavy is the headsman’s blade, it does one well to hang its weight elsewhere for a time.” Mordred agreed turning his gaze back to Lidia, “Yet and still, Queensguard and enforcer alike — even I was denied mother’s council in her malaise, as the Stillness settled over Seelie and the Terraces tittered with anxiety, all were left bereft the guiding light of the Throne. Yet Dagonet, steadfast and true Dagonet — had her ear all that time, and came with soothing tales and a bounty of Dew. Dagonet, Herald of the Court, Dagonet, Dewkeeper Captain,” Mordred’s eyes flashed, like a seething pyre they fixed on her.

“Dagonet, Queen’s Favored.”

Mordred loomed tall then, Dearg shifting aside as he stood, his heavy, chitinous feet striking the alien stone sharply as his shadowy frame loomed over the Dewkeeper, six-fingered hands framed his face as he lowered his own to stare into Lidia’s eyes, his burning yellow gaze over Dagonet’s mirrored green eyes before her.

“Imagine to my disquiet, the discovery that the very dalliance that plunged my world into stagnant languor had come calling in person. Had cut a little rivulet of chaos through my already-wounded lands, and on top of those unforgivable offenses...” his fingers tightened possessively, talons forming a cage around Dagonet’s beautiful green eyes. “… You had taken from me yet another thing.”

“They were bold, daring, they… they knew me, knew Jean.” The Dewkeeper gasped, Colin gasped. Mordred’s lips turned downwards in a hard line. Jealousy and fury seethed in that flaming gaze.

“How very like mother of you, little sister.”

“So let me go then!” Lidia hissed, fury welling up in her, “Mum’s locked away, is she? Iffin’ I’m right, she’ll let me in, I can talk tae her, I can reason with her!” Lidia begged and Mordred’s gaze only narrowed.

“Let the mad spawn of the mad queen into her bower, to plot mad things with her vassals, already you tilt the way of things, already you distort the order,” he said bitterly, voice cold as the grave, “It is an insult already that you have made it this far unmolested, toothless is this new Court, so debauched and distracted by base pleasures that a cuckoo bird wanders into their nest, and they welcome it as novelty.”

“I dinnae care fer yer bloody court or yer petty axes tae grind wit’ me, I only care about one thing an’ that’s savin’ me Loverboy, I’ll kill ye iffin ye try an’ stop me.” Lidia snarled, her own sidhe eyes dilating to wide spheres as her hand tightened on her saber’s hilt. Mordred’s eyes tracked both movements, and his body did not tense or coil like others she’d seen had, his interest simply intensified, eyes flaring as if to dare her to strike. A sliver of steel left the scabbard.

“He, then?” Mordred asked, his eyes turning to Gram where he sat, Lidia blinked and Gram nodded.

“Aye, her nature drains me when we touch.” Gram stated in return. Mordred’s eyebrows raised in understanding, and his mouth turned up at the edges.

“Oh how like mother, to leverage one’s vassals against them,” He said, guiding Dagonet to the side where Dearg folded him back in her arms, dancing kissing down his neck. “Truly, she made of herself a shrine in you, little sister.”

“Stop callin’ me that,” Lidia snapped, the ire that had been building erupting in absolute anger, she curled her teeth away from her fangs as she chewed the words with her frustration, “Me big brother is a good man, a carin’ man, an’ yer not him.”

Mordred’s eyes cast to Gram again, “Would you echo this assessment?”

The cavalier fixed Mordred with a stern gaze before he nodded, “I would. You are a hard man, Ser Bart is not like you, nor like I. He is a better man than we are.”

“Honest, I can see why little sister has clung fast to you even as mother’s machinations lick the flame from your oh-so-thin wick.”

“There has never been much use for dissembling language in Our Lady’s service, if I would speak such truth to her, why not you?” Gram stated plainly, and Mordred’s smile only deepened.

“Dutiful, a capable vassal, deadly in a fight. Would I be correct in believing that was the goal of this display, little sister?” He asked, cordial save for the twist of the knife on ‘little sister’, “He is both your cause and your leverage?

“He’s me loverboy, we’re betrothed. I ‘ave nothin’ I want more.”

“And he represents much of your strength here, I would say. A dangerous and capable warrior, and carrying The Bane as Men of Iron do.” He continued, steepling his strangely symmetrical fingers as he stared now at Gram. “Were his travails to cease, you would leave here, ne’er to return?”

“Ye can help?” Lidia asked suddenly, eyes wide with hope. Gram as well seemed curious, Mordred raised an eyebrow at that.

“I can, not as Mother would, but I have a solution to her machinations all the same.” He turned his gaze to Gram, eyes curious, “You will oppose me, no? If I stand before you as I do now, you will draw Anathema and bring it to bear on my flesh, will you not?”

“I will.” Gram said simply, nodding his head with a certain solemnity that added weight to the statement. Mordred mirrored it, pressing his lips to his joined fingertips.

“There is no swaying either of you then, you will see Mother, regardless of threat nor entreaty, unless I aid you in her stead?” He asked, voice measured and cautious. Lidia and Gram exchanged a long look, they felt the ice they walked on growing thinner by the minute.

“Aye, without Gram…” She met his gaze and he shook his head, she closed her eyes and took a breath, meeting Mordred’s gaze, “Aye, he’s th’ only reason I’m here. Ye fix him an’ we’ll turn ‘round straightway…” she gave another long pause, looking around at the environs and then meeting him dead on again. “Tae hell wit’ this place, nae see me again.”

“Perfect.”

Mordred’s arm shot out, faster than she could see, faster than she could react to. Gram let out a strangled cry as the sidhe lord seized him about the throat, effortlessly lifting him and his harness alike, the soldier’s legs kicking the air as the towering faerie stood to his full height, holding Gram at arm’s length with a cold, dispassionate stare.

“My deepest apologies, were fate kind — we may have been as brothers,” He whispered at that intimate distance as Gram choked and gasped, Lidia leapt to her feet, but was not fast enough as Mordred simply swung Gram out over the yawning chasm beyond.

Then simply cast him in.

“GRAM!”

Lidia’s scream replaced all other sound as Mordred turned away.

“A pitiable waste, but a necessary one.”

Lidia scrambled madly to the edge, clawing at the railing as Gram fell screaming, her eyes wide in terror that had no name, fear that had no words for it, only sensation and sound. She screamed and it had no form, only pain. Dagonet’s laughter drew her attention.

“A fine jest, surely he can fly, no?” The Dewkeeper said, Lidia’s expression turning absolutely outraged.

“NO!”

“Oh,” Dagonet said, turning to watch Gram’s shape rapidly shrink, Tirrah leapt to his shoulder, trilling and shrieking at him, and he turned his gaze back again. “_ Oh. ”_ Colin’s voice quavered. Tirrah trilled at him in a demanding tone, digging her hands into the ridges of his attire and he nodded suddenly, his face hardening with determination.

Then he followed Gram over the side.

Lidia screamed anew as Colin’s knife-like frame hurtled over the edge, Tirrah clinging fast to him as he leapt after the falling soldier, Lidia scrambled and even Mordred paused, turning to watch his companion’s seemingly suicidal leap.

“NO, NO, GRAM! TIRRAH! COLIN!” She screamed, almost mad with grief as she looked around for anything, a rope, one of those queer floating lifts, anything! She had nothing, and was left simply staring back down, watching the love of her life plummet to a mere dot and with him going their only ally in this den of horrors.

Colin seemed unafraid as he followed after, she gnashed her teeth, unable to tear her gaze from the falling forms of the man she loved and this strange sidhe hunter. Colin’s hand reached up, and with a deft motion, he ripped his sash-like top free of his torso, his inhuman anatomy gleaming in the eternal spring sunshine

And out from his back sprang great, glimmering wings.

Cases, not unlike a beetle, perched just below his shoulders, and from them unfurled four-propped wings, like a dragonfly. Down he dove, the new limbs whirring into a blur of motion, driving him suddenly forward with their thrust. The distance between the falling soldier narrowed, and Lidia’s voice caught in her throat, beating her fists on the railing unabashedly as she watched the pair of sidhe close the gap in the infinite void, Gram’s wide eyes looking up and catching sight. Colin extended a hand, and then snatched it back with a cry, his flesh burning as he grabbed hold of Gram’s armor — the Bane taking an eager bite from his would-be-rescuer.

Tirrah leapt to the task, her tinny scream of defiance audible even at the top where Lidia stood as she spat on her little six-fingered hands, covering them in webbing, before leaping onto the falling cavalier, sticking fast to his armor with her web-wrapped grip. She spat several more patches until she was standing firm, and rapidly spun a series of handholds onto the steely breastplate, Gram’s eyes wide as the little fae worked fast as lightening. Colin’s hands snapping down and grabbing the newly-spun silken cord and hauling, his wings beating against the increased weight as he grit his teeth and pulled.

The plummet slowed, the tumbling stabilized, and after a moment with a final scream of effort, Colin pulled them out of the dive, Tirrah’s web-spun handholds stuck fast to his fingers as he soared straight up, laughter most triumphant echoing through the void as the Dewkeeper and his charge rose on the eternal spring breeze. Lidia screamed in relief, sobbing into her hands as suddenly, a firm hand snatched a handful of her hair.

“A pity he did not die below,” Mordred’s voice hissed in her ear, “I had hoped to spare him your gruesome demise.”

A defiant roar was the answer he received, both Lidia and Mordred’s eyes snapping up to see Gram and Colin crest the edge of the platform, the armored cavalier’s eyes lit with fury and terror both as he hurled himself at the Sidhe Lord.

There was no nuance to the warrior’s rage, he pelted into Mordred like a catapult stone, hitting him just above the collarbone with both heels, hobnails leading. Gram was not a small man, and Mordred himself was towering, but the forces at play demanded their due, and down the pair went — smoke rising as the armored cavalier’s steel-clad body smashed into the sidhe lord.

Then came his fists.

Lidia was stunned, she’d never seen Gram angry, truly, genuinely angry. Only once before, in the yard with Karnov… but this?

This was barely human.

His fists smashed down on Mordred’s face, meaty crunching noises of flesh and bone without art or subtly — he simply hammered the seelie in blind fury, and to his credit, his steel-backed knuckles did a fair job, crushing the pretty sidhe man’s nose, cracking a tooth. Gram didn’t stop, and Lidia found herself unable to look away as he simply… beat him. Blue blood flew up from the assault, sizzling on the man’s armor before, with a snarl, the toothy cowl yawned again, snapping closed over Mordred’s face, and nearly taking off Gram’s arm with the clap of the large, far-too-human teeth.

The cavalier was not to be bested, and drove a new blow at that eyeless maw, striking it squarely and rebounding Mordred’s head back off the stones once more, the Sidhe Lord gave a hiss lacking anything resembling humanity and lashed out with one of his too long arms, backhanding the man across the middle with bone-crushing force, following after with a snarl as Gram bounced once and nimbly found his feet again, his breastplate showing fresh sizzles, and a dent. Unbothered and enraged, his saber lashed free of its scabbard and he lunged back, Mordred’s monstrous form snarling as he dipped forwards to meet it. Lidia scrambled to her feet, her own weapon rasping free of its scabbard as she rose to her feet, rushing headlong at her long-lost brother’s back, both she and Gram coiling for a mirrored thrust.

Then, Gram came up short.

A cry went out, and he jerked to a stop, his leg yanked out behind him, a sidhe from the crowd having lunged out and snared him, then another, and a third. All pulling, grasping, slowing him even as he hacked and kicked free of the grasping, limbs in but a moment.

It was enough.

Mordred crushed Gram with a driving blow of one of his powerful, alien legs — kicking the man hard back into the crowd and turning with aplomb and seizing Lidia by the face, twisting and throwing her bodily to the floor, her saber rattling as it skittered across the ground to land at Dagonet’s feet, Mordred stomping his three-toed, chitinous foot down on Lidia’s chest — pinning her and driving the wind from her lungs.

“You should have stayed away, little sister. Coming here was always your death.”

His voice came from the gullet of the faceless maw-helm, and he raised one of those odd, too-long arms. It was strangely flattened in its shape, a diamond-like cross-section, like a cricket’s leg… or a sword blade. The toothy inlay on it began to squirm. Lidia’s eyes widened as she realized it was in fact — no inlay, no engraving…

… as his arm simply, bisected down the middle, right at the split of those strangely-symmetrical hands, and opened elbow-to-wrist into a yawning, pincer-like maw full of chattering, vibrating, gnashing teeth. It clapped shut with the meaty sound of a predator’s jaws, once, twice again then flared back open, lined up hungrily with her throat. Panic surged through her, and she struggled against his weight, unable to even cry out, even draw breath as he leaned down and lined those horrific, fanged shears up with the base of her skull. She tried to scream but her breath came out hoarse, and the pincer-limb quivered with anticipation, actual drool running down the toothy, saw-like edges.

“Now little sister, you die.”

There was a sudden hush, and Lidia’s eyes went wide again. Mordred froze.

A pair of massive green eyes opened, just above his shoulder. Familiar eyes. Sidhe eyes.

“Go on, Mine Child. But be aware that I will be very cross afterwards.”

The eyes resolved in a slow melt into the familiar, cat-eyed stare of Dame Morgana, towering even above her son’s impressive frame in her seeming, filling the area behind him, bent low with motherly curiosity — and predatory intensity. Mordred’s helmet yawned again, peeling wetly back from his face once more, he sneered.

“You have been cross with me before, for this once, let it be for good reason.” He snarled in defiance, and her eyes widened, dilating to intense, fixated pools on her son as her smile broadened in concert, showing off those saw-edged teeth.

“_ Very cross.”_

Mordred, to his credit — stared her down. Lidia could not, Dame Morgana’s face tilted slowly and Lidia could not bear to look at her, the… there was no word for it, the pressure of her gaze suddenly drove her to close her eyes, to look away. To whimper, fearful, like cornered prey.

Mordred’s teeth set.

“You privilege this… this empty doll, over your firstborn? You deny me again, as you have for centuries, my purpose? You made me for a purpose you have no use for!” The first barb hurled and it came with a clatter of teeth all over his body.

Dame Morgana said nothing at first, she drew herself up, Lidia’s earlier reckoning had been incorrect as she stood head and shoulders still above her errant firstborn, and the light seemed to shrink away, the very radiance of the distant void cooled, the planetoids distant dimmed, and suddenly the only light available was that of her glowing, pitiless eyes. The heat leeched from the air, her breath fogged before her mouth. The air itself grew still. Thin.

I am Queen of Blood and Darkness, the chattering id that tasks you, the hungering cold between stars, the pulse of a panicked heart in the breast of fleeing prey, and you stand in mine demesne all, at my pleasure.

The words came from everywhere, the idea of language as it had been when Black Midnight had spoken to her mind before, but far, far more… vast. Lidia quailed in fear beneath that presence, the light gone from the realm, and somewhere she could hear that thundering, panicked heart.

With a wrenching horror, she realized it was her own.

Mordred trembled beneath that as well, and his burning gaze met hers accusingly, but also… adoringly, the light of her eyes casting a sickly pall over his face. Morgana’s face tilted subtly.

Your purpose is that, my pleasure. For all else you were made, of that there is primacy.

“Seelie withers, Mother.”

Let us make it whole.

With that, the pressure became as such that Lidia had to shut her eyes again, the darkness was no refuge and the terror she felt was a real, physical thing. This close, this… naked, to what her mother was, her heart raced, faster, faster. Until her chest hurt and her breath came short. Mordred’s teeth clenched and with a physical effort, he drew away from Lidia’s quaking frame, taking his foot from her chest, he turned to their mother in the infinite darkness that surrounded them.

He kneeled.

Morgana’s smile lit up her face. Literally.

Light, warmth, life rushed back to everything, Seelie returning to what it had been when they had arrived, banishing even Mordred’s influence, returning all to how it had been before his arrival save for a small area around the Lord of the Gnash himself. Morgana clapped her hands together with delight. All around them, the crowd had knelt as well, the Queen’s authority absolute.

“Splendid, mine vassals, bring them all, and witness the long-awaited renewal of Seelie!”

A roar rose from the crowd as Lidia rolled to her side, coughing and trembling — she found herself suddenly snatched up, the crowd hoisting her atop their manifold limbs, she shrieked and flailed, but found herself picked rapidly clean of knife, pouches and all of her tools. Soon she was simply being carried along between two burly Sidhe, dangling and struggling to no avail — when they brought Gram to the front. Her eyes went wide.

Split-Jaw had recovered, and had wrapped himself in heavy leather gloves and an apron to withstand the bite of Anathema. The cavalier dangled from his wrists, trussed up like a game hare — his armor dented in several new places, his visor forced open and his face bloody and bruised, his nose visibly broken and a dozen other wounds obvious beneath the plate. Lidia kicked and gave an outraged scream.

“Gram! LOVERBOY! Speak tae me!” She wailed, kicking her heels at her captors, trying to get to her beloved.

Gram stirred, groaning miserably but slowly coming around — they’d beaten him, badly. God’s Blood they must have swarmed over him like ants after Mordred cast him into the mob. Split-Jaw sneered at her from his battered and beaten face — he’d have scars from the Iron forever, and she took pleasure in that. Gram managed to open one eye, the other a mess, swollen shut with the rest of that same side of his face, ravaged with bruises. He met Lidia’s gaze, but seemed unable to do much more in his state.

Mordred remained silent, his face was impassive, but his eyes. He turned them on her and she felt the hatred in that gaze froth and foam up around her like floatsam on the riverbank back home — reeking and toxic. He meant to kill her still, that much was clear. She struggled against the two restraining sidhe, with the way things were going he might get his wish without doing anything at all.

They proceeded up behind Morgana’s long-legged, stately pace and a veritable festival began, music soared, laughter and cheers rang out, and the Amber Dew flowed again. Mordred kept pace with her bearers, Dagonet and Dearg appearing nearby as well, carrying her effects. Gram’s own swordbelt was missing, slung over Split-Jaw’s leather-protected shoulder. Both disarmed, she gritted her teeth and closed her eyes. She had to have faith.

“Please, God,” she whispered, “Please.”

The grand and final span lead them to the three-faced statue, and as they approached, Morgana turned and spread her arms dramatically, addressing the energetic crowd with zeal.

“All shall witness this renewal of oaths, and reunion of mother and child, a scion comes to us!”

Her smile was manic, her eyes practically crazed, and her seeming once more dissolved, turning to smoke and ash on the stirring breeze from fingers to toes, swirling up to dance and twist around the statuary, before fusing unto the central-most head of the imposing monument — and then, it began to stir. The stone flowed more like flesh than ever before and with a shuddering breath — it blinked and smiled, unfolding its hands in a too-fluid motion, it bared its breast to the crowd. She was Seelie, its very heart was where she sat.

Beyond was the path. An archway cut into her breast where her heart should be in disturbingly accurate anatomical detail, scalloped, skeletal halls leading deeper still to a place bathed in red, red, red. The Shrouded Throne, dense with the grisly velarium, awaited them.

Mordred marched forward, Split-Jaw and his cronies following close behind with their burdens, Lidia remained silent, watching, waiting. Praying. She could only hope in this that she could still wrest the bargain from her mother — but looking over at her betrothed, bloody, beaten and barely conscious, she felt despair creep in. Had she lead him to his death? A sob tightened her throat, but she swallowed it. Gram would die for her, and God’s Blood she’d do the same for him, she’d save him, and she wouldn’t do it by bawling.

They entered the throne-room proper, and all vestige of mundane architecture vanished. The impossible stone twisted and swirled in purely organic shapes here — faces and bodies seemed sculpted by natural growth out of it, forming a series of perfect sidhe visages following them through the passage, and out onto the wider walls. They stared down, extruded from the very structure to stare down in serene perfection on all who entered. The Heart of Seelie.

The red velarium swept down like great curtains from above, winding around the entire massive, bowl-shaped amphitheater from the top, which swirled upwards in a series of organic, undulating pillars that tangled together with the swaying fleshy tapestries. The walls were the same stark, white stone, but the floor was all the hard, impossible black stone. Every inch polished to such perfect smoothness that it was a ebon mirror, casting back a shadowy reflection back of the whole room, making it seem as if there was no floor nor ceiling, but merely an infinite tower spiraling to the cosmos forever.

Lidia was without words, she simply stared for a long, long while as they walked in. Seelie had been a nest of terrors, but also wonders. The velarium filtered the light here as it had elsewhere, and everything was cast in a soft red glow, shifting the tone of everything towards the crimson. It felt like being inside something, something living. Something ancient.

The center of the room is where it all coalesced, the velarium wound down, down, down from on high, where it threaded through lattices and braces all along the edges of the massive circular chamber, each twisting wind of the fleshy red fabric laid just so across the eyes of one of the staring, insectoid sidhe statuary growing from the walls. Blindfolded, unseeing. They chased downwards in an artful, careful spiral like the petals of a massive flower, or winding of an enormous loom, to wrap tautly around three separate spools of the thick, pulsing cloth. The Velarium filled the chamber, this was its source. Lidia… felt that, more than saw it despite it being so flagrantly obvious, she felt the life pouring off it. Warm like a mother’s womb.

The three spools stood upon three dais, and before them stood a lower yet still-raised platform, all carved of that impossible, glossy obsidian that reflected back that dark mirror of all around it — scattering the red light across them all. Atop its peak, stood a simple, shockingly basic throne. An essential ‘H’ of stone, curved at the middle with no back, seemingly grown out of the mirror-polished dais, and yet… felt older. As if the Throne itself, was the core of this place and all had grown from it. The Heart of Seelie. Lidia’s eyes snapped open as she Knew it then. It called to her, like to like, it was made to seat her, one of her blood.

The spools stirred. Each began to twist and turn, slowly unraveling themselves, pulling the massive length of the red cloth with it, there was a great rustling, creaking din of air and sound displaced as the massive tapestries of flesh and sinew drew across the walls all around them like curtains.

From the spools came three forms, the core of each winding as it came fully undone. Each was anchored to the walls still as they descended, two or more sinewy threads of the Velarium linking them back to the rest, the red light seeming to intensify around them.

First to catch her eye was to the far right spool, its contents boggling the mind as they for lack of a better term, walked down the dais. On their own. For all the world, it looked like a pair of legs of some great, impossible cervine being, walking fully autonomous, absent of a body. They were not unlike the strange legs Morgana had worn in her seeming, but grander, more detailed, more real. The seeming had been just that, a projection, an illusion. A sliver of the majesty of the true self. Three-toed feet walked down step by step, and then continued on, the legs seemingly made of a mixture of pallid flesh and hardy chitin, artfully forming patterns in between the two, massive digitigrade legs leading up to a shapely thigh and hips seemingly almost sculpted out of ivory rather than meat and bone. It was absent key features still. A cut-out where a mons would begin made of strangely scalloped chitin and doll-like flesh, doll-like was right — for it looked like it was the empty leg socket of a marionette, seeking the flexible torso to give it form and shape. From those shapely, alien thighs trailed two threads of the velarium like veils.

Gram made a soft sound of disbelief, Lidia chanced a look at him and saw him, his one good eye wide and staring at the unfolding impossibilities before them. She followed his gaze, the far left this time.

Moving in time, as if they were all the same creature, and yet even more impossibly was what resembled a torso, its entire rib cage flensed open, spine absent, but a powerful set of limbs moved and swayed, leading down to the framing outside of a whole, sumptuous torso. But the limbs themselves drew the eye and threatened the mind. There were four of them, one pair upper, one lower. The upper were powerful, six-taloned engines of slaughter, the sheer rending power of claw and sinew given beautiful, impossible form. Mordred’s hands were echoed there, absent the horrific toothy scissors, in their symmetry and dual thumbs — the central-most two digits of each limb overlong and stout, ending in cruel, meathook claws. The lower were feminine, shapely and stately, having but a single thumb and five other digits. Four banners of Velarium linked them to the upper spire as they walked, a strange vest-like assembly of empty flesh and bone, striding and swaying on thin air.

Lidia was let down as she stared, Gram was given no such courtesy. The little changeling fell to the floor and trembled, having to find her feet as the swarm of fae behind her spread out and filled the throne room, lining the back wall. Swiping her hair from her face, the red-headed woman found her feet…

… and found herself staring into the face of her mother.

The central spool had preceded all the others, but only by mad chance and the insane impossibility of the others did it not grab her attention first. All of the parts of the two previous that seemed missing were found here. An achingly beautiful face stared out, it’s entire features made out of a hundred, tiny, intersecting plates of leather-soft chitin. Her mother’s face, grander, more realized. She was crowned, and calling it anything less would be a drastic underselling, in a great halo of ebon horn — each grew from her brow and curled back in a smooth curve of scalloped horn to meet perfectly. A black halo of bone and horn, crowning her Queen of Blood and Darkness. The title made sense now as her glowing, intense green eyes stared back into her own, now unmistakable as anything but her own gaze staring back at her. Queen’s favor. She had been given her own eyes.

The rest was a sinuous torso of perfection rivaled only by its madness, a pair of sumptuous breasts swung bare and free, modesty an artifact of lesser beings. A third pair of arms came with it, seeming designed smaller and more dexterous, hands as the others were — six-fingered and poised just beneath her considering, too-wide mouth. They, much like the rest of her, were shot with lines and seams where the soft, silky plates welded together and formed intricate patterns of roundels and whorls across her body. Her belly was a chitinous, plated thing that defined a powerful, flat stomach with armored grace… and further down, she was similarly just as naked — wherein Lidia blushed and was forced to look away as she realized her mother had made her in her own image in many ways.

She found her footing as the three forms intersected, and the madness found its method. Legs, arms and inner torso fit together neatly, like a doll made of flesh and bone assembling itself out of component creatures. She fit into the hollow of the legs with a twist and sway, locking together and her naked vulva suddenly being covered as the velarium there wound and twisted, draping betwixt her thighs in a red, fleshy mockery of a scapular. Her torso welded to the killing claws and gestural arms, the hollow outline of her torso slotting into the lattice built for her raised, spike-laden spine, all finally ending as that very same spine locked into place — and grew. Expanding and filling out, it sprang out behind her in a great, segmented tail.

Her arms spread wide, there was a meaty series of pops and crunches as she stepped over her throne, the velarium flowed around her, pulled along its points attached at all three of her segments now, drawing that great tapestry of flesh and sinew along like veils as she sat upon her throne, her body shifting and crunching as it found its final fitment — and each of those whorls, indents and lines between segments lit with the same lambent energy that lit her eyes, threading her ashen, pallid body with an emerald radiance that pulsed in time with her heart… hearts. Three of them. Three beats, slightly out of sync. Each beat sent a pulse of that pallid green light rocketing back up the velarium, through the spiderweb of veins and fibers… and she understood, all at once.

She was Seelie. The Velarium, the strange stone, the very whole of it. It was all her. She felt familiar, because she felt again as if she stood in her mother’s womb.

In a terrible way, she did.

“Welcome, Mine Child. Welcome home.”

Lidia stood there, mute with shock. Awe. Horror. In absence of all of this she was still some twelve spans and then some tall, towering above her. Above everyone, the grandest, greatest thing in the room. All were once again knelt in reverence, one knee drawn, arms spread, head down. Lidia looked around, and did her best to mimic the posture, getting a titter of laughter from her mother.

“Mine Child I appreciate your fealty, but you are not here to bow. Not as they are.” She purred, sweeping her upper limbs at the assembled gallery, her smallest pair folding together over her breast. “You are a grander thing than they are, bringing with you bounty.”

“They’re… you. All o’ ‘em.” Lidia said after a moment, and her mother tilted her head in fascination. Lidia counted the three spools, the three directions her mother’s velarium wrappings came from. They aligned with the statues outside. The Monuments everywhere. Lidia’s mind raced as she Knew again, something of her mother’s blood simply understanding this place that made it. “Badab, Macha…” she pointed from her powerful, killing claws, to the almost distressingly sumptuous legs, and then back at her mother’s face, now with its eyebrow raised.

“… Morgana.”

“Very astute, your blood speaks to you, Mine Child.”

She gestured behind her, and Mordred drew in behind them, ushering Lidia closer to the throne with Gram’s more aware, but still-restrained body in tow. Split-Jaw clearly eager to be part of this impromptu honor-guard.

“I am all and they are I, doubtless you saw similar in that old crone’s nest in a fashion, we must dwell together and apart here upon our thrones.”

Lidia’s mind flashed back and she nodded, looking to Gram who also did, albeit weakly. “Aye, th’ Mother, Maiden an’ Crone, we could ne’er see their faces, ‘cept for Greatmother Winter.” She explained as she edged closer to her betrothed, Split-Jaw eyeing her. He knew she was plotting, and plotting she was.

“Nor would you lest you were there to see them specifically, but you were there for Baba Yaga, and Baba Yaga is all to whom you gave your gaze.” She spread her arms and stood, slowly descending the stairs in a sinuous display. “You are here for me Mine Child, so I am all that you see. Morgana, First Face of the Morrigan, Queen of Blood and Darkness.” She paused then and leaned down to tip her daughter’s face up to hers.

“… And I am glad you are here, Mine Child… my daughter.”

A hushed murmur went through the crowd at that, Lidia’s eyes grew wide as the overwhelming pressure of it all built to a single, yearning want to know. A single question.

“Why, mum?” She asked, her voice small. A child’s voice coming from a woman’s lips. “Gram’s near dead, we both near almost died a half dozen times ‘afore getting’ here. Why… nae just be here fer me, once?” Tears flowed as she said it, “Why did I need tae prove meself in some fookin’ game, ye love me, ye said so an’ ye cannae lie…”

“Oh… my dear,” she returned gently, the smallest of her hands reaching out to frame her face, sweeping her hood aside and smoothing her hair. “Never were you proving yourself to me, nor truly to the denizens of our realm… nay, the one for the proving dangles there.”

Lidia’s mother turned her gaze… to Gram. The cavalier’s beaten face was clueless, shaking his head before resuming his stoic mask. Lidia shook her head.

“I dinnae understand, mum.”

“Mine Child I wish you to stay with us, as part of the court — and to do that, you shall need a proper vassal, if you are to stand at my right hand.”

Mordred’s eyes flashed, and he bared his teeth, “That is _ my _ station.” He protested in a clipped tone. Morgana raised a hand to him, authority in the pose.

“And so it shall remain until she and her vassal are suitable, then I will set you to other tasks. You shall bear my will elsewhere.”

Mordred’s teeth audibly ground. All of them.

“That wasn’t the deal, mum.” Lidia said, stepping over towards Gram, Split-Jaw leaning away from her as she turned back to her mother, “Ye were supposed tae fix him, fix me. Let us ‘ave babies an’ live!”

“And so you shall — here at court, with the Black Dog as my Queensguard and Armsmaster, your bound Consort eternal!” She answered, as if it were simple, incontrovertible truth. The murmur went out again, Lidia looked around, shaking her head. This… wasn’t normal, something was wrong and everyone felt it. She took a step forward.

“Nae, nae that’s a shite deal an’ ye know it. I dinnae want tae be Princess o’ th’ fookin’ faires, I dinnae want tae be anyone, I wanna be Lidia Baudelaire, nae one single thing else.”

Morgana’s face froze. She slowly tilted her head, far, far further than any human should be able to. Leaning down slowly more and more until that too-wide mouth was far, far too close as she slowly, carefully asked: “Come again?”

“I won’t do it, mum. Nae chance in’ the darkest parts o’ th’ Queens realm,” Lidia’s eyes went deadly serious, her own chance to dilate with predatory intensity. “An’ believe me mum, I’ve seen ‘em, I escaped ‘em. Ye’d ‘ave tae kill me.”

“Do not deny me again child, you know the power of three.”

Lidia turned her chin up, but she caught Gram’s face out of the corner of her eye — beaten, bloody and barely awake, he had a burning gleam of approval in his eyes. She felt that spur her on. With him, or with the reaper. Nothing else.

“Three times an’ done, nae mother. Ye fix me, fix his soul an’ my hungers… or jus’ kill us both.” She sighed and looked back at Gram, a wistful smile spreading across her face. “Heaven’s due another angel anyways, I’ll jus’ ‘ave tae make do.”

The sound of knives grinding came as Morgana’s jaws clenched shut. Fury lit on her face and her whole body seemed to… contort.

The lights went out.

Then… she started screaming.

It was a horrid sound, a horrid, awful, agonized, angry wall of pain made into noise. It raked at the mind and rattled her teeth in her skull, ground her organs against her bones, shook the blood in her veins. She felt as if she were coming apart, it was three voices, off sync. Screaming. Forever.

No, no it wasn’t a scream. As she felt wetness run down her face, tasted blood. She remembered an old story. Of the Banshee.

She wasn’t screaming, she realized as she fell to her knees, her body going limp.

She was keening.

All around them, everyone was collapsing, falling in pain and shock. The darkness illuminated as each scream began anew sent a pulse of green from her racing hearts through the velarium, no other illumination pierced the gloom as she doubled over, screaming death out of her too-wide, distended jaws. The lore of the old stories was to hear the Banshee’s keen was to die, and she understood now as she struggled to make her scrambled brain fire the proper signals to her body, winnowed apart at the seams.

She wished she would die. That would be better than this.

Suddenly… it just, stopped. Echoes rang for what felt like a small eternity. Lidia gasped back to awareness, jerking upright, wiping the blood running from her nose and eyelids, coughing up more from… God, she didn’t want to think where. The lights returned, but it was… wrong, flickering, wavering. Fragmented.

Her mother wasn’t doing much better, turning a murderous gaze on her.

“It’s him , isn’t it.” She hissed in a dreadful monotone, her gaze wheeled onto Gram, already being gathered back up from the wailing doom and its fallout by ever-dutiful Split-Jaw, Lidia curled a lip in defiance.

“Ye knew it was! He’s the whole reason I came!”

“Giving him the highest honor of Seelie isn’t enough?”

“I want a human husband, mum! Human babies! Scads o’ ‘em!”

“Humans!” she snarled, rounding on her daughter, her head perfectly still — fixated on her as that massive body swung around, nearly feral in its motion. “You have spent too long with them, grown too close, too accustomed to their love. Perhaps I erred making you so palatable to them.”

“What are ye gonna do about it?!”

“Change it.”

Lidia’s eyes bulged as her mother reached for her with all six limbs, and grasped her. Not physically, her mother grasped something… inside of her. In her bones. Her blood. In the fibers of her being. The Seelie Queen’s fingers twisted. Lidia screamed.

The sound came before she could really parse the sensation, bones crackling. Joints rearranging. She fell to the ground, body convulsing as her mother just… altered her.

“I made you, Mine Child. Every drop of blood and scrap of bone. I can rearrange you the same way I would a set of decorative plates, let alone thrones, men, and dynasties!”

To call it pain wouldn’t be accurate, she was lost in a screaming wash of sensation as she tumbled into a phantasmagoria of alterations — a kaleidoscope of colors and textures rolling across her body as her mother just, rewrote her. She had five fingers, then six, then three, then she didn’t have hands at all, but jittering pincers, on it went. She fell over anew as her legs began to rapidly follow suit, her whole body simply morphing at her mother’s whim between thousands of arrangements — and in horrible understanding she felt them all.

“LIDIA!” Gram’s voice cut through the miasma of sensation, a beacon to latch onto as she turned her then six eyes to face her beloved. He was struggling in Split-Jaw’s grip, weakness abated somewhat by fury, but the hulking sidhe quieted him with a brief jab to his ribs with his heavily gloved hand, the cavalier gagging as the wind went out of him, armor or no.

“G-Gram… L-loverboy…” She wailed, clawing towards him on limbs that shifted wildly before she collapsed again, her mother towering over her with heavy, stomping footsteps.

“Life has been too easy for you, daughter. Mine eyes and teeth and pretty face did not avail you of anything but love, as I warned your father. They took in the ugly duckling, fangs and all.” She sneered, twisting her hands again. “Turning your back on your blood for brief, flickering candles that burn all too, too fast!”

“I cannae li-live like ye!” Lidia wailed, her body quaking as her mother twisted her many digits again, all six hands turning at different axis, and in rage the Seelie Queen forced her into another rapid, shifting torture session.

“THEN GIVE HIM BACK!”

Lidia screamed and kicked, flailing and trying to focus on anything. Gram’s hoarse voice raised again, flailing against Split-Jaw’s grip to no avail as Lidia curled into a ball, four limbs, then six, then none, her clothes were shredding or misshapen now, boots long fallen off, she clung tight to her hood and wailed.

“Mum… please, tae… tae much! ITS TAE MUCH!”

The dark faerie snarled and for a moment seemed set to twist the invisible threads even further, her face screwing up into a visage of feral horror. The light died again, all but the glow of her baleful green eyes once more.

She keened again. Lidia’s screams joined it once more. The room wailed along. The winnowing agony of unmaking had no words to describe it, no form to give the sensation of your body unraveling, your fiber and fitment of being shaking asunder. Mercifully, she drew in a deep breath, looming above Lidia with mad, agonized eyes, fingers still hooked into her being.

“Well then Mine Child, if you will only have the Hound as he is, then I will leave you the Hind.”

Her fingers twisted with purpose, and Lidia gasped as she fell over. Her pants shredded and she kicked hard as her legs lengthened, bones popped and cracked, toes fused. She gave a gasping, surprised cry and doubled over into a ball as new, focused sensation — agony and new, horrible over-stimulation, burst from the base of her spine. She choked in agony as her hips dislocated, shifted, and reset.

“He always did like the red deer…” Morgana mused in a mad little voice, and Lidia gagged and curled tightly, pain shot through her spine as a hundred new sensations ran through a limb she wasn’t meant to have, her eyes bulged and she heaved up a bit of empty bile from her strained stomach as her spine arbitrarily lengthened and burst from the base of her tailbone — appropriately, into a small, stubby deer tail. A subtle twist of her hands guiding it along, covering it in a shockingly stark red fluff and white down beneath.

“Yes, yes and that little goat we kept, where you learned to climb…”

Lidia’s legs crackled anew and she howled, her feet twisted, lengthened and fused all together into a pair of dainty, white hooves. Cloven at the tips with little dewclaws, just like a goat. Bare as the rest of her, no fur nor fluff added as her mother grinned wide and unhooked her talons from her essence, the little changeling jerking as she was left to recover… as much as one could from such an ordeal.

“Yes, yes, he’ll love that… now… give him back to me.” She chattered, looming over her daughter anew, leaning close as Lidia looked down with bulging eyes at her new limbs, and with horror she clambered to her feet, wearing naught but the shreds of her trousers… but with no difficulty.

“Wha… what did ye do tae me?!” She shrieked, she danced on her new hooves easily, darting away from her mother a bit, not even so much as tripping. Twenty-seven-odd summers of muscle memory rewritten in an instance. It was wrong. She had feet! Five toes, bare and a little small! She knew that, she remembered having them… but her body, her instincts… they remembered hooves. Traipsing roofs on two cloven claws. Skipping along on springy doe legs, but she knew what grass felt like beneath her toes. God’s Blood she remembered Bart chasing her with scrabbling hooves but she remembered her boots slipping on grain. It was wrong.

“I imparted a lesson, too long have you walked the easy path — now walk it unable to hide what you are behind a simple red hood.” The Queen snarled back, plucking at her hood, the only part of her clothing not in some way ravaged by the shifting agony she’d only even partially recovered from — she still was seeing actual spots.

“B… but… I… I was ‘sposed tae give Gram… Give him perfect little black-haired babies.” She looked down at herself, at her pale, ungulate legs and their ivory hooves. Down at the tail, shuddering at the still alien sensation, she gnashed her teeth, digging her fingers in her hair as the anguish washed over her.

“W-what iffin’ they look like me? Bad enough tae get the eyes, but… I… I cannae give him hooved monsters!” she clawed at her face and sank to her knees, hooves splayed, jaw clenched so tight her neck muscles bulged.

It was her turn to keen. It did not kill, it did not unmake nor unravel, it simply took from the one who spake it.

Morgana leaned in close, her lips spread in a cruel grin, and she listened to that grief until Lidia screamed herself hoarse, around her, the court had recovered from the last bout of true queenly force, and their gazes were haunted. There was no joy in them as before. This was not their Queen, not as they knew her. This was a dread thing. A broken thing.

“All can be made whole, simply give in. Be mine right hand, the Hound your consort, bear him all the children you can raise and then a hundred more.” She tipped her face up to her, smiling wider.

“Here, hooves, horns, who is to say? Here none will look upon you with fear or revulsion, no fear, nor pain, nor judgment. You can leave it all behind… just give him back.”

“Mum… I… I dinnae know wh-what ye mean…” She rasped, hoarse and miserable, she shook her head. “I… I cannae understand, it’s tae much….”

“Lachlan! His memories, his hands. I cannot remember his hands. I want to remember how he touched me, how he held you. I need it back. I need them all!” She gnashed her teeth at her, and Mordred stepped up, snarling again.

“Cease this madness mother, put them to the blade and have done with it.” He raised his hand again, the horrible shears snapping open, “I will do it myself if you cannot. Your insanity has half-killed the court!”

“No!” She snarled and drove a foot into his chest in a hideous mirror of how he has dispatched Gram in their previous duel, punting the Sidhe Lord back like a ballista shot where he bounced and skidded back out the hall that lead in.

“All of you, begone! Unfit, petulant children!” She drew herself up, and the lights dimmed again.

OUT!

A great, invisible force swept out as the lights came back up, sweeping them all, Gram, Split-Jaw, Dagonet and Dearg as well. All at the head of the sidhe mob swept and bowled by that bow wave of telekinetic energy, leaving Lidia alone with the raging monster who had given birth to her.

“If you cannot give him back, then I will take him from you!” She snarled, and the seams around her chest began to twist and distort. Her entire torso opened up like a massive, blind gut, her three hearts beating visibly within the sudden, gnashing orifice. Her tail lashed out, and caught Lidia by the ankle, jerking her legs out from under her — yanking her up into the air.

“No! NO!” Lidia shrieked, kicking, unable to even parse what was happening at this point. Gram’s screams from beyond came to her ears, he struggled against Split-Jaw, who stared with hatred at her that only barely just overrode the palpable sense of disgust and fear on his face. Her loverboy screamed and kicked, Split-Jaw slamming him into the ground grabbing his face with his hand, and forcing him to watch, arms wrenched back behind him.

“I WILL BE WHOLE AGAIN!”

Lidia shrieked as she was swung up, and like any morsel, stuffed into that gaping maw by the coiled end of the monstrous tail. She dug in her heels, kicked and fought.

“Nnn, N-no, Mum! Mum! Please!”

“NO MORE FRAGMENTS, NO MORE CRACKS, GIVE HIM BACK TO ME!”

Lidia screamed as she felt something pull her deeper, the three-pronged jaws of the bespoke maw clamped down on her and she gagged in pain, sinking deeper into the impossible gullet, space and distance making no sense here. Blind panic only adding to it. She scrambled and reached up, flailing for any kind of help.

Her hand was all that was left in the free air. There was a horrible, rending crunch.

It fell limp.

Nothing hurt at all anymore.