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Dust and rot choked the air, her lungs didn’t immediately remember how to work, and her head swam, she was drowning in thin air for a long moment before suddenly she snapped to clarity with a dull press of cold stone against flesh. Her flesh.

“Mn… G-Gram… Bart…?” She moaned groggily as she rolled over and promptly vomited what little was left of her lunch in a horrible, wrenching heave as her brain seemed to violently snap back to its senses, rattling around in her skull all the way to her guts. Wiping her mouth, she fell back, gathering her bearings… they’d been in the Temple, facing Mihai and his ugly little band of monsters and then… then she couldn’t remember. She remembered falling.

She retched again, her body shook and sweat poured down her face even as she felt as if she might freeze to death, but slowly she found her feet and her weapon, the stout little messer gleaming from a pile of rotted barrels. The stench was truly appalling.

Her eyes cast over the area, sidhe eyes brightening the gloom as she hefted her weapon, pulling her hood about her face tighter against the stink. She was alone.

Instincts immediately put her into the darkest shadows, taking a moment to tuck her blade between her body and the light, covering any gleam the steel might catch. Her ears open, she began to hear… sounds. The clatter of stones, the scratching of talons on stone. The familiar, ululating hoot slowly came off the walls and she froze.

A scent pushed past the heady aroma of rot. Vinegar and musk. Sour and visceral.

Ghuls.

Immediately her mood changed, her hackles rose and she clutched her blade closer, already moving. If they made a sound, that meant they’d found something. She’d already given up her position calling out the way she had. Lessons hard learned, under the dark stone of Fort Ivory.

She did not immediately pay mind to where she ran, her nose leading her towards what passed for fresh air, but the rank stench of ghul never seemed to lessen, it had sunk into the very pores of the earth here. Already she heard them behind her, the faintest noises, but she’d been given a rapid schooling in all things wicked in the months of siege. A favored tactic after the brutal reminder of the advantage the beasts enjoyed in the dark — live bait.

Her, in particular.

She was fleet of foot and sharp of senses, her sidhe eyes, ears, and nose put her on par with the blind horrors in the dark. She had an axe to grind with the beasties, and she’d ground it fine. A bit of spite, a lure in flesh and spilled blood, and she’d dragged whole warrens of the monsters hooting and snarling after her into well-laid traps of well-lit tunnels, blinding and searing the beasts with the light that cooked their pallid skin and fire that burned the rest. If they wanted a chase, she’d give them one.

Off she set, the strange environs beginning to resolve as she found the offal giving way to familiar cobbles, the strange, too-still sky awakening a sense of unreality. She’d been here before… she’d never left.

Lachheim. She was near the docks, in the warehouse district. The wan light and garbage giving way to strange, insect-like structures of mud. They covered whole buildings like a great midden of wasp nests piled high, obscuring the way forwards in many places. She ducked low, realizing where she had automatically gone, running on instinct.

The Counthouse, she was well on the secret, winding path to it. The opposite she’d lead Bart up seeming a lifetime ago. She drew into the dark, gathering herself.

“A sultry little thing aren’t you?” came a harsh, gravely voice.

From behind her.

“I always enjoyed a good chase,” It growled, and she felt the lips near her ear as it spoke. Suddenly the scent of sweat, steel and blood was overwhelming, the fetid odor of carnivorous breath. She instinctively ducked, and a singing blade cut the air where her head was but moments before, she pelted into the darkness with laughter echoing behind her — soon echoed anew by the ululating cries of ghuls.

The clash of talons on stone and the snap of eager jaws were all around her, fear filled her heart, but was rapidly drowned out by the burning hatred she had of these creatures, her blade flashed in the dark as the tunnels narrowed and her path became clear. A howl of agony answered a welter of brackish gore as she gutted one of the beasts in passing. The darkness around her alive suddenly with the beasts, having zeroed in on the speaker’s voice.

Parias. Hatred surged anew as she slashed and dipped through darting claws and snapping jaws with defiant cries, never halting her momentum as she made for her goal. She could escape through the Counthouse, at the very least she could fight on familiar ground.

She left a hole in their surging lines as she leapt clear like a gazelle, blood trailing her weapon’s wicked edge along with the flickering tails of her hood, kicking off a hamstrung ghul’s head and diving clear over another to land in a neat twist, kicking off the narrow walls to preserve her momentum, swinging and hurdling along handholds long-remembered and obstacles new and fresh alike. She was a marvel in motion, lit only by the flashes of light in between the bulbous growths and the gleaming green of her eyes as she danced with death in the dark.

Out she burst with a cry, leaping out into the square-edged clearing, a space between the stout, towering warehouses of the wharves, where the Counthouse squatted, ancient and forgotten. The whole area immediately felt… wrong. Dust and debris settled on everything. The walk had collapsed, and the stones were blanketed in offal and lichen. She’d expected devastation, ruin even… but she had been gone for but a few months, this was more like years.

“Oh I’ve waited to get a taste of you,” Parias’ voice came again from the darkness. Teeth gleamed in the blackness at the mouth of the tunnel she’d just left. Spinning on her heel, she brought her thick-spined messer to bear in a high guard. Gram’s lessons spurred her along. Parias’ face emerged from the shadows, the gaunt man’s wild eyes and angular features twisted in a mad, enthusiastic grin. His cruel, curved falchion — a grisly parody of her loverboy’s ever present saber — swung menacingly at the end of his arm as he walked forward, flanked at either side by ghuls like faithful, ravening hounds.

“I could smell you a mile off. Sweet and untried. Bet you’re tight as a nun.” He grinned with horrific, blood-stained teeth — all the more terrible in that they were all too human.

“Where’s Bart?” She growled, spitting the words at the man and he grinned at her coldly, walking forwards with his arms spread, blade held negligently in his fingers as the ghuls fanned out around him, hugging the edges of the room, cutting off avenues of escape.

“Dead. Quite badly too, didn’t even get to fight. Broke his neck in the fall.” Parias delivered with a mocking sort of sorrow, his lip curling as he said it. “Disappointed me, I thought to have more of a rival in him, but alas he can’t even fuck right, let alone die right.”

The brute’s eyes played down her frame as he circled idly, as if this were a casual conversation in the market, “Why would he bother with the White Slut when he had you.” He growled and ran his tongue over his bloodied teeth, a gesture mirrored by the stalking ghuls in horrid timing.

“Ye make a girl feel jus’ magical,” she hissed dryly, swallowing the spike of fear as she backed away towards the Counthouse, “Ye dinnae say nothin’ ‘bout Gram or the others.”

“The longshanks?” He inquired with a snort, “Eaten by ghuls, tore him apart limb from limb — the others much the same. You’re the last one,” he said, raising his bloodied blade at her chest with a salacious sneer, “By the sheer accident of being the least amount of trouble.”

“Yer a shoddy liar,” Lidia accused but in her heart she wasn’t entirely sure, he smirked at her with such casual contempt it was hard to call it a bluff, but her eyes flicked across the bloodied armor, beaten and battered — dented and warped by some great heat. She curled her lip back from her teeth.

“Ye said ye didn’t get much o’ a fight?” She asked and his smug smile widened before she jerked her chin at his armor, “Where’d ye get th’ dings then?”

The gaunt man’s face fell, and those dead eyes went flat as that of an animal.

“Mouthy bitch.”

“’Tis me mother’s charm.”

The sneer took on a ragged edge of hatred and he motioned the ghuls irritably to the attack, with hooting ululating vocalizations they leap, foaming and swarming at her, a yipping, hooting mass of violence seething forward.

This was Lidia’s nightmare, close quarters with nowhere to run or hide and dozens of these things. She allowed herself only a moment of brief panic before she threw herself backwards, pelting away from the chasing pack of monsters up the rotted steps of the Counthouse.

The first attacks were leaping, swiping things, the fastest of the pack trying to hamstring her and drag her down as the larger ones hung towards the edges, like the hammer hovering above an anvil. Lidia ducked and weaved, voiding the attacks with hops and long steps as she kept on the move. Kept them chasing her, she couldn’t let them surround her or they’d do everything Parias advertised, she’d seen it. A clack of snapping jaws sounded but spans from her ear as she clambered up around the edge of the Counthouse — it was as it had always been, a squat, ugly, square building of an older, utilitarian building style made of unadorned masonry perched on a raised, equally unadorned foundation, from back when Lachheim had been a collection of buildings and trade posts on the banks of the river. That high, raised foundation over the vaults made for just enough of a high ground that the average ghul had to jump to reach her, buying her more time as they funneled after her.

“Where are you running to?” Parias called, the cadaverous brute capering along with the crowd of creatures, always only a few steps behind her — always laughing. “Plan to sprout wings? Fly?” He jeered at her as she swung warding slices at the advancing monsters, noses and fingers sliced and sliced off as she clambered to higher and higher ground, ending up on the old slate roof of the Counthouse in two nimble bounds — laying open the belly of one advancing beast, and chopping the hand from another, sending it bouncing down the tiers of the squat little building. She had no idea where she was going — just away. Tears were streaming down her face as she ascended to the last tier of the building, staring out across the swarming mob of ghuls. Too many to fight.

Too many to survive.

She choked down a sob as she focused on the deranged laughter, on Parias through all of it, as the scrabbling claws appeared at all edges of the roof, she set her teeth in a savage snarl. This monster.

She dug down in her bag, out came one of the packed clay pots, just a bit larger than her fist. With a snarl she kicked a scrabbling ghul in the face, stabbing down at another before she caught it up by the fuse in her teeth, pulling a flint from her sash — her eyes never leaving Parias, the man even going as far as spreading his arms at her. Murder gleamed in her eyes as she clenched her teeth, her face suddenly lit by fire as the flint struck across the back of her sword. The fuse caught and with it, ignited a fresh scream in her belly.

Parias’ eyes went wide as she hurled herself from the edge at him, into the small throng of snarling bodies. The short fuse of the powder bomb trailing as she dashed it downwards beneath her into the frothing, blind mass of monsters. There was a beat and the howling turned to shrieks, the explosive detonating in a crack of fire and shattering bones, Parias whipped his hand over his eyes as gore and debris rained down on him, only to be met by the screaming for of the changing barreling out of the smoke at him. Their blades clashed, Lidia not bothering to even remotely try to meet him in a bind. Breaking away she harried him as she’d been taught, flashing at him from the sides aggressively, chopping and cutting at his hands and face as he stumbled and coughed in the plume of debris.

She threw herself at him, hacking and chopping with abandon, borderline mindless as the dread of it all sank in. She lashed out around her, lunging ghuls staggering out of the smoke to swipe at her, dealt with in brutal short slashes, or simply avoided in another step of the running battle, her lunges pressing at the heavily armored murderer again and again, never giving him room to rest.

“Spirited!” Parias snarled, gaining his stance and immediately rearranging her own footing by boxing her square in the breadbasket, the air leaving her lungs in a gasp as she fell back, a pouncing ghul cutting between them, snapping and slashing at her with its hooked claws, only to be silenced by her blade taking its throat in passing, the gurgling monster going down in front of its master in a flailing heap, Parias kicking the dying monster to the side without a hint of warmth.

“Go on, you can be rougher than that,” he said, spitting to the side before he lunged at her, along with another press of the surviving ghouls. She was flagging, all she wanted was to mark him well and proper before she died, goddamned monster deserved that much at least. The fusillade of claws and slashing blades were wearing down at her, and the fight shifted to her on the back-foot with a pained cry as he cut into her arm on a weak parry, pushing her back again.

“I’m so glad you have some fight left in you, I hope you struggle this hard on the ground,” he snarled and she gave a strangled scream as a ghul snapped out from the swirling dust and bit down heavily on her middle, shaking its head to gain purchase as her mail hauberk defeated its teeth — but not the pressure as it clamped down. She screamed in panic and fury, driving the crosspiece of her blade down into its face, smashing its teeth with a hammerblow of the pommel and getting flung to the floor in a rage, the monster clawing at its ruined face. Her blade skittered to one side and she rolled to her hands and knees with a cry.

A cry that became an explosive, strangled scream as she felt two spans of steel staple her down to the ruined turf.

“That’s it girl, nice and loud for me,” Parias’ voice cooed against her ear as she strained and struggled, the pain unimaginable, indescribable and yet… distant, like that was someone else’s guts nailed to the old rotting roots beneath her, she clenched her teeth around another wail as he dragged her head back by a fistful of her hair. He wasn’t allowed to touch her like that, only Gram was allowed to touch her like that. Outrage burned in her gut along with the pain of his wicked blade and she glared at him.

“Nobody is coming to save you, girl.” he snarled, surrounded by the monsters, rearing up around her. She remembered the fear, the hopelessness of that moment. Nobody had ever come to save her.

“LIDIA!”

A clarion sound. A voice rough and deep, with just a hint of the heartlands brogue on the vowels.

“BART!”

~ ~ ~

She came awake with a gasp, hand going to her belly in panic, curling reflexively into a ball with a moan — only to find her hands arrested, her cries soothed, she whimpered as the phantom agony of the blade was suddenly replaced by the soft warmth of a mouth. She had time to moan in a different capacity, curling around Gram and clinging tightly to him as he kissed up the ugly scar that ran from hip to navel where Parias had run her through. She uttered not a word but instead soft sounds of fear and need as Gram kissed every fingersbreadth of that scarred flesh, the memories slowly fading. Someone had come to save her. Bart had come, and he’d been a holy terror. Parias had been lying, and in the end she awoke to the world as she knew it.

She didn’t always wake up in time, Bart didn’t always save her. The nightmare didn’t leave without its pound of flesh.

Gram soothed her, as she often did him. Neither had escaped that dark place without their share of dark thoughts, his mouth kissed across her bare belly and his arms held her tight as she clung to him. How did the church soldiers do this without family, a lover to cry to? How were they expected to bear those horrors alone? She found herself calm and breathing clearly as her betrothed’s mouth made its way to hers, and she drank in that kiss like cool water. She’d had more and more dreams like that, dark ones, of places and times where she’d… hurt, for lack of a better term. Now on the morning of their departure, she lay there in the throes of the worst yet.

“Bad?” Gram asked her after a long moment, and she nodded with a swallow, letting him gather her to his chest again and she stayed there a moment longer. She wasn’t going to be alone this time, he would be there. He’d always been there since.

They dressed after a long while, and she once again found herself idly craving the pleasures of his flesh. She wanted to love him properly for how he cared for her, nothing seemed more natural right now than taking him to bed until they were both sated and safe… well, except for the promise that was the sole reason she hadn’t yet. Promises were such silly things, made out of nothing but words and entwined fingers and yet stronger than iron. Still… iron-bound or not, she desired to put her mouth somewhere far less acceptable than Gram’s lips, and she flushed with a unique desire at the fact she salivated a bit at the thought. Maybe the anticipation wasn’t so bad…

Dressed for adventure, she once again helped her beloved gird himself in steel. She’d done it plenty, but she’d had both Gram and the Lady Herself suggest ways to arm her betrothed for battle, it seemed the Lady took her role as wife very seriously, and she’d had quite a number of suggestions that Lidia had employed. The morning’s quiet was welcome as she casually combed his hair, perched high behind him on a stool to reach.

“Ye’ve gotten me too accustomed tae such things,” she lamented as she blatantly planted her nose in the nape of his neck, even the stink of his armor had a sort of attraction to her now, like the sharp smell of spirits or the bitter aroma of soap.

“What things are those?” He asked and she sighed happily.

“Men,” she said simply, leaning back and setting about braiding his hair for his coif, Gram smiled.

“On behalf of Men, I will say it was a duty well discharged.”

“An’ one well appreciated,” she said, leaning up on her tiptoes to let the edges of her fangs ghost across his ear, drawing a low, completely reflexive sound of delight from him, deep in his belly. She gathered his hair away from his neck and lowered her voice, and those sharp knife-like teeth to the lobe of that delicate appendage.

“I love your voice loverboy, I’m lookin’ forward tae hearin’ it nice an’ loud when my lips are nice an’ low…” she hissed, doing her very level best impression of the rolling lilt of smoldering hunger her mother gave the boys in their first meeting, her fingers sliding possessively through his hair into his scalp.

Gram made a sound she’d never heard from him before. A sound of need. A sound of submission.

She supposed that meant she’d done it right.

“I will consider that a due reward for heroism yet undone,” Gram answered breathlessly, and she smiled wide and sharp against the soft flesh of his throat.

“Dinnae indulge me too much, I’m startin’ tae see why me mother likes it…”

The flare of desire lingered in the moment, a welcome, heady balm against the still-gnawing fear of the dream. She pulled at his hair, exposed his throat to her… and he let her, laying aside his head in his armor, his gorget yet unfastened, gambeson unlaced. He exposed the beating pulse of his lifesblood to her willingly, eyes closed in delight… and she was not too ashamed to say that she reveled in that power. The shudder that ran through her was not at all unpleasant, nor the thrill that settled in her lower belly and loins as she opened her mouth a bit too wide for a kiss, a bit too wide for a playful nibble, and let her tongue run out across that delicate, beating vein, fangs glinting in the light. Gram did not draw away when their sharp tips met his flesh, her mouth closing on his most vulnerable point. Her hands gripped tighter in his hair, her body pressed closer, and there was a wringing desire to… mark him in some way, as she felt his heart pump and thrum under her laving tongue and teasing teeth. She shuddered and drew back, her lips leaving a wet outline upon his throat as she nuzzled her nose behind his ear.

“No wonder mum lost herself in such o’ thing…” she murmured, and he made a soft sound of pleasure as she went back to plaiting his hair, a flush visible on the soldier's cheeks. His breathy reply was a ragged, needy thing.

“Nor that so many men lost themselves in her…”

The silence after that was comfortably carnal, she doted on him in small ways as she secured his kit about him. Kisses on bare flesh, fingers lingering on hands and plates a bit longer than strictly necessary. In part she realized she was worrying, worrying that this would be the last time she touched him like this, her fingers traced the inlay of his armor and she gathered herself for the goodbyes in this last little island of intimacy. His hand caught hers, the steel of his gauntlets a cold counterpoint to her scarred flesh, she looked up to him and his eyes demanded hers.

“One last adventure, and I’m yours,” he said softly. Her heart fluttered as he knelt down before her in elegant poise, as any knight had before his lady, laying a hand upon his breast and offering the other to her.

“One last adventure, and then I will lay my heart in your hands as I have only the Lady and God.”

“Won’t be th’ last, Loverboy,” she purred, taking his hand and bringing it to the softness of her cheek, the freckles slashed by the ragged scar beneath her eyes as she leaned close, and sealed that promise with a kiss.

~ ~ ~

They met their small party of well-wishers at the north gate, the wood looming with a quiet sort of dread in the distance. The gathering was small, naught but Lucian, Abbot Giles and Lady Simone in attendance. It felt intimate, and appropriate.

“Straight on thereabouts two days on foot should see you to the edges. Can’t be more precise than that, the borders of the Black Forest are fickle and prone to moodiness, much like its owners,” the Abbot said, a steaming cup of coffee still sitting in his hands as he sipped. Goodman Durin had once again precognitively provided a small repast for the gathering of coffee and cakes to break their fast with, setup before they’d even gotten out of their rooms. God worked in mysterious ways, and so did Goodman Durin.

“I’d offer you a horse…” The Abbot hedged, and Gram turned his coiffed head thoughtfully at the comment.

“Yet you knew I would refuse one on such an occasion, prudent,” he remarked and the Abbot grinned.

“I wasn’t a military man, but I know the value of a horse, boyo.”

Lidia slid close to Lucian, bumping him with her hip, her pack already slung, the tall man looked a fright, bags under his eyes and his bright white mane an uncombed tangle pushed back from one side of his face.

“Ye look awful, Luc,” she said and he smiled at her through a faint grimace.

“I am yet to be abed, truth be told,” he admitted and shrugged his shoulders tiredly at her outraged expression, cutting off her tirade with one of his signature self-effacing smiles, “I had thought to arm you hand and foot with every possible advantage you could have over a fae, every bit and bauble of lore, Steel, Hawthorn, perhaps even some Absolute Iron to gird you against the dark with in place of my own blade,” and he sighed, his shoulders sinking as he smiled at her tiredly.

“It then crossed my mind, in the wholeness of her power that no bit of folklore remedy I could put in a bag would likely be of avail against so great a thing as She, and it was better that perhaps I simply am here to provide my Little Sister with a smile on her way out.”

“And it took him the entire night to realize it,” Simone added in an arch little tone, her face a rueful, motherly cast at the haggard knight-brother, who turned a wry look on her, “As I discovered when I looked in upon him first thing and found him in a nest of books, coffee cups, and burning pipe ashes.” Lidia’s eyes widened.

“Ye mean when Gram an’ I came by th’ study, ye’d been in there all night?”

Lucian winced, but nodded. Simone laughed softly.

“Let us leave it at the depth of my well-wishes for your journey, yes?” Lucian asked in a pained voice and Lidia nodded, shaking her head.

“Ye Churchfolk sure are built a certain sort o’ way.”

“Stubborn and forthright, that’s us to a man,” Giles added as he and Gram joined them, the latter’s armor and pack as well situated for a march, “The Lady likes us that way.”

“I know, she told me once,” Lidia remarked with a smile.

“You become accustomed to it, even grow to like it after a fashion,” Simone said, reaching up to cup her son’s face in her hands. “Come back, my son. I have been too long without your presence, I shan’t lose you twice.”

“I have much to return home for,” Gram answered, lowering his head for her to kiss his brow as Lidia joined him at his side, threading her fingers into the cavalier’s, “Too much to waste on lengthy goodbyes when the road ahead grows no shorter.”

“That’s my boy,” Simone said, stroking her thumb across his cheek with a fierce little grin. The others arranged around her.

“We’ll be waiting,” Giles said, his small frame a tower of strength as he raised his hands in the motions of the eye-and-horn. Lucian blew out a tired, rude noise.

“Waiting, not hardly. If I do not see you in a week, I will besiege the entire wood with the full might of the Radiant Order, Accords or no.” The usually gentle man said, and fire burned in those rosy-colored eyes. “The Lady Herself would not stop me.”

“Ye make a girl feel proper loved, Luc,” Lidia said as she threw her arms around his neck in a tight hug, getting one in return as Gram and he exchanged grips, “What kind o’ girl grows up without brawny sorts at th’ ready tae do violence fer her?”

“A civilized one,” Simone said dryly, and Giles laughed.

“Civilized and Soldier aren’t fit to be in the same sentence,” he said with warmth, tapping the side of his nose slyly; “The Lady leaves that to us soft-handed folk, but she likes her Soldiers a little wild-eyed and brutish, a touch feral.”

“It keeps us busy, all the scratching and gnawing of bones,” Gram agreed with equal dryness.

“We find time in between chasing squirrels and biting the tax collector to read scripture, for appearances’ sake.” Lucian confirmed, just as deadpan.

“C’mon then loverboy, time fer yer walk,” She jibed as she pulled Gram away from their waving friends.

“Woof.” He delivered with a completely straight face, taking his helmet under his arm and turning to raise his arm to the trio of faces in goodbye. Simone was tearful, the Abbot holding her hand in his as she watched them go, Lucian’s tired smile never fading as they went. A few curious brothers and sisters peeking out of windows and around corners as they began down the well-trod road north. A passing curiosity, leaving hand-in-hand.

~ ~ ~

Two days was about right. Hill and dale ruled the area above the ridge, and they marched as if expecting a fight. Lidia had never replaced her ruined, borrowed hauberk of mail from the Lachheim Campaign and wore naught but the simple travel clothes and hood she often had. Gram wore his armor, and they spend each day doffing and donning it as they slept and rose. She did not find the routine itself unpleasant, but the ever-present threat of one of Karnov’s men out looking for them put Gram and her mind more at ease with him wearing steel.

The nights under the stars were quiet save for the occasional tussle of blankets as nightmares took their increasing toll. She had not a fully restful night before they made the wood, finding herself wound around Gram in the throes of panic before being soothed back to sleep. Dreams of terror, of feral, mindless fear. Of being hunted. Chased. Eaten.

The woods loomed above them on the night of the second day, the tall, bare trunks and high canopy standing like a grand, impenetrable army. Ranks of wooden soldiers sentinel against intrusion. They set up camp a half-day’s walk from that border.

They had spoken little. It was not for discomfort but rather focus — Gram was on duty, his hawkish features sharp as the very messenger birds themselves as he kept his eyes on the horizon and ears on any errant sound. The Black Dog of Baudelaire Keep was a keen hound.

“You should rest early,” he said to her as they settled down into the hollow of a fallen tree, a fire already crackling to life as she sorted her way through their supplies. Cooking was a task she enjoyed, Naima had parsed many of their lessons in alchemy through food… and then she’d simply enjoyed being doted on in the kitchen by Bart’s delightful mother. A kettle of water found its way onto the fire, a satchet of Gram’s favorite tea following it to steep.

“Surprised ye risked th’ fire,” she said, dodging the question as she set about cooking up a little stew with trail rations and the little packet of spices she’d nicked politely from Goodman Durin’s larder. Gram raised an eyebrow.

“This close to the wood, I figure any of Karnov’s men that might be trailing us would have made their attempt before now. We seem to have made a clean escape. Is it the nightmares still?”

Lidia looked away, hugging herself a bit as the food simmered. “Aye, they’re worse.”

“Tell me about them.”

“I’d rather not, iffin’ ye please,”

Gram raised his eyebrow at that, and she shook her head, “It’s nae fer nothin’ Loverboy, I jus’… dinnae ‘ave anythin’ tae tell, just… raw, horrible feelin’.” she said, shuddering and growing pale. “Talkin’ jus’ makes it fresh again.”

He caught her hand, his fingers lacing with hers across the distance, she gave him a lopsided smile.

“Jus’ hold me when it ‘appens again, aye?”

He nodded. Her smile got a bit straighter.

“Do you think it is your mother’s doing?”

She took a breath… that was a fair question, she stirred the soup — a little soldier’s trail meal Bart taught her and gave it another pinch of salt before setting it off the fire to cool, pouring a cup of tea for Gram. He sat by alert, but turning to marvel at her hands busy across the many tasks, she smiled at him again. She’d be damned if he was the only man in their little coterie that didn’t get a home-cooked meal now and again.

“Aye… or at least, somthin’ o’ her world.”

“They have been getting worse as we got closer the wood, last night you were barely asleep moments before you were weeping in your slumber,” Gram observed, taking the teacup and tureen of soup from her, she shuddered as he blew the head of steam from the tin cup.

“Aye… aye they ‘ave. I ‘ad a few o’ ‘em nae an’ again but they made sense o’ sorts, but now its like somethin’ is… gnawin’ at me. Worryin’”

“I can tell,” Gram noted, his voice calm, “Your accent gets thicker when you’re stressed — or excited.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, but the levity was much welcomed as her mind played unwillingly over her last dream. A horrible phantasmagorical thing. Screaming, frenzied running. Pain. Teeth. Nothing but gnashing, biting teeth. She shivered anew. No sense in relating that wriggling madness to her Loverboy. Scooping up her meal, she walked the small pair of steps to him, and plopped herself in the crook of the fallen tree, pointedly occupying a full half of his lap. Giving him little, curt nod borne of pique she sighed and settled back, spooning more of her meal into her mouth. She didn’t taste much of it before raising her spoon pointedly at her lover.

“I dinnae want tae talk about it, and ye went an’ spooled all but th’ gory bits out o’ me, like a pryin’ pastor at prayer hour!” Her voice was dramatic and harsh, but she was smiling as she said it, he casually leaned down and kissed the top of her head.

“I love you too, Little Redcap,” he commented lightly, she narrowed her eyes at him, the smile was still there.

“Wonderful tea, by the way.” He added, she smirked.

“Yer welcome… an’ yeah, ‘tis right possible somethin’ is… out there, pullin’ and pokin’ at me, I dinnae think it’s Mum… she’s… well I hate tae say it, but she’s got style,” she explained and made a face.

“These dreams ain’t like mum, nae even the scary parts o’ her… more like,” she shuddered, eyes haunted as she turned her head to Gram.

“More like the Queen’s place, ‘afore Bart go ‘is protections up ‘round us.”

Gram closed his eyes, but she felt the subtle tremor of remembered fear course through him.

“I see what you mean, perhaps it is better to hope it is merely stress and the happenings of Sidhe magic than anything more… direct, then,” he admitted and she nodded with a shiver.

“Now ye know why I dinnae want tae share the particulars, loverboy.”

“I do indeed, Little Redcap. Bear it no mind.”

She took a deep breath, and they fell silent for a while yet, eating in relative comfort until her own tureen was empty. Sitting against him, she felt the full belly and warm food join forces with the fatigue of the fairly stiff march to drag her eyelids lower and lower.

“S’fine, Loverboy… iffin’ I’m bein’ honest, my real fear is…” She swallowed and reached a hand up, touching the amulet dangling across his gambeson.

“You think our connection is causing them.”

“Aye… what… what if I’m getting’ the thing in th’ egg’s dreams?” She said quietly, swallowing at the horror, “Wh-what if these are what it’s dreamin’, dyin’ in that egg…?”

His hands were firm as they sought her own out, lacing together to squeeze tightly.

“Do not even countenance the thought,” he said in a quiet voice, “I will not have you take the burden of Sidhe trickery upon your conscience any more than you already have.” She shook her head and bared her teeth in a wordless agony.

“I cannae do that, loverboy… there’s… there’s a baby in there, an’ all its ever known is pain jus’ so I can go play house like I’m a real girl,” she said bitterly, tossing her empty messkit to the side irritably, burrowing her face into his shoulder. He smelled like rust, iron, sweat, and rosewater. She always would remember that mix of odors, that scent that was specifically Gram.

“I cannae jus’… be callous tae th’ thing, born tae die. What a fookin’ thing that is.” She mused in a miserable voice, tracing her fingers over its mostly-blackened surface now, a familiar tremor come to her fingers as the being moved, ever so barely detectable beneath the rock-like shell.

“Nor would I love you so were you capable of such things,” Gram soothed her, stroking her hair and down her back, she sighed and felt her eyes growing heavy once more. She shifted her slight weight against him once more.

“I ne’er would ‘ave agreed tae it, ‘ad I known,” she said.

“I know,” Gram reassured her, “Baba Yaga did as well, which is why she entrapped you in such a bargain with clever words and obfuscation. She knew you would gnash your teeth at such a violation, she knew it would spur you to task.”

“Connivin’ bitch,” Lidia growled.

“Colorful,” Gram remarked and she made an indignant sound, but didn’t bother sitting back up as he stroked her hair.

“I jus’…” a yawn interrupted the words and suddenly she felt bone-crushing fatigue set in, Gram’s arm settled around her and its weight was a welcome presence, “I… jus’ wish I dinnae ‘ave tae put th’ price fer all me happiness… on others all th’ time…” she murmured, nuzzling into his chest, and laying her hand on the amulet. In a strange way, it felt like her child.

“I hope ye dinnae hate me…” She whispered to the amulet, her eyes fluttered closed as Gram’s soft reply was lost in the rustle of clothing and coiffed locks, falling heavy, head-first into desperately needed sleep.

Her eyes closed. Oblivion opened.

The bliss of sleep was restless, the unknowing of unconsciousness abbreviated by by the hackles on the back of her neck. Her eyes snapped back open.

Teeth. Snarling, gnashing teeth. All she could see was teeth and darkness. She could not scream. She could not move. She was not. The teeth ground out their hatred and hunger.

YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE.

The voice was not a voice. The sound of a thousand-thousand snapping fangs, clapping jaws and gnashing palates grinding together in a hissing, guttural mockery of the common tongue.

YOU ARE NOT WANTED HERE.

The chorus of canines snarled and snapped, the very air seeming to open to new maws, fresh jaws, a wealth of fangs of every shape and design. She felt hot, fetid breath on her skin, felt she was bare, nude before this tribunal of chattering hatred — yet her body seemed to have no form, her limbs no substance. She was adrift. Screaming in terror with no mouth nor voice.

From the darkness loomed a singular mouth, sensuous lips twitched and curled over a mouth full of knives and chisel-blades, anger barely contained as they seemed to lean forward in a rush, close to her ear, breath unnervingly sweet and close.

“Wake up.” It snarled in a low, dulcet tone. The demand echoed in the grinding, chattering din of fangs and fervor. Those lips peeled back in a sneer.

“Wake up. Leave this place, lest you are worried apart, rent asunder.”

ASUNDER.

The din peaked in gnashing ecstasy and she screamed again without sound or lips for it to pass. The mouth spread its lips in another cruel sneer. Teeth within teeth seemed to overlap as it spoke, beyond those fangs lurked further mouthparts, the rending mandibles of an insect chittering behind the gleaming plates of too-human teeth, behind the jagged angles of fangs again. Mouths within mouths. Teeth behind teeth. Biting, Gnashing. Forever.

“Of you an example will be made, wake up.”

The voice repeated the phrase, the jeering grind of dentin and bone echoed it in mind-shredding volume, she cried out with no voice to no ears capable of hearing. And before her the lips peeled back to gleaming, burning yellow eyes. Eyes like the searing core of a forge’s flame, the burning, mad yellow of the summer sun and arson’s embers. Slitted eyes.

Sidhe eyes.

“Wake up little sister. Wake up and die.”

Her eyes snapped open with a gasp, a new pair stared into her own in the same place. Familiar eyes. Green as emeralds and full of alien intensity. Slitted eyes. Sidhe eyes.

“Wake up, Mine Child. Wake up.” Her mother’s eyes.

“Mum… w-what was that?” She asked, and the sidhe woman tilted her head, face still so close as to drown out all other sight.

“What was what, Mine Child?” she asked, and Lidia found she had no words to describe… what she experienced, and leaned away, shaking her head.

The Queen of summer crouched over them both, her long, many-jointed legs splayed wide from the draping tails of her shadowy gown, the tails of which pooled into mere shadows cast themselves. She was perched like a strange mix of curious feline and hunting hawk, her head tilting slowly as she smiled again.

“Wake up, little birds. Your nest has fallen from its tree and you must fend for yourselves,” she tittered and leaned back, Gram stirred beneath her, coming awake with a start as he rubbed at his face, eyes wide… had he also had the dream? Lidia’s eyes were drawn to her mother’s sweeping gesture, and it was her turn to gasp.

Trees. Far as she could see. Endless haphazardly spaced trunks, tall beyond sight, vanishing into deep, dark mist that seemed to roil in from all directions. Instinctively she jerked her head back over her shoulders — the same awaited her. Miles of trunks and mist.

The Black Forest had taken them.

“Giles called the borders fickle, I will have to speak with him on that understatement.” Gram commented hollowly, looking up at Dame Morgana’s grinning visage as she folded her arms dramatically beneath her shadow-framed bust, one long, digitigrade leg perched on a nearby stone.

“What d’ye mean ‘fell from th’ tree’?” Lidia asked as she hauled herself to her feet, immediately setting about helping Gram into his harness. Morgan raised her eyebrows.

“Oh I am afraid you will have to make your own way to my Court,” she purred, walking a slow, swaying circle around the lovers as they dressed one another in steel and supplies, Gram abandoning all but his combat gear, Lidia hesitantly doing the same.

“Are you not to guide us?” The tall cavalier asked as he secured his helmet, The sidhe woman laughed softly.

“Oh no, Black Dog. Your betrothed may bear my name, but that provides upon her an onus more than it does a protection. She must be seen as able to stand on her own two feet with her own influence,” she explained, smiling at them both. It was sharp and brutal.

“What influence d’ye think I ‘ave all th’ way out here?” Lidia demanded as she adjusted her swordbelt, and quite plainly, the Queen of Summer flowed behind Gram, standing over him and framing his armored form with a flourish of hooked claws. He raised an eyebrow to that, Lidia threw her hands up in similar confusion.

“He is your betrothed, but also your champion. Your ‘love’ is power to us, Mine Child, and with it you carry a heavy influence in the affairs of curiously powerful men,” she purred, swirling around Gram, dragging a single, heavy talon in a slow circle along the etched surface of his breastplate — leaving a slow, sizzling line of smoke in her wake as the steel denied her Sidhe flesh.

“The Black Dog is a mighty being among mortals, a chosen of the Pale Lady even. A warrior, an heir apparent to a pair of dueling dynasties, a poet and lover most talented, a scion of hate and passion alike…” she swirled around him again, breathing deeply of Gram’s scent before sighing in clear, physical pleasure.

“Furthermore, he has a wonderful singing voice,” she added with a grin full of fangs, “In the eyes of mine Court, he is a daring acquisition, a powerful show of your influence.”

“He is also standing here, and well-armed,” Gram added coarsely, jerking his gauntlets on pointedly, eyes hard and serious behind his raised visor.

“There is also that,” Morgan agreed, folding her hands over her chest as she leaned unnaturally forwards, dipping down like a hunting heron towards the pair, “The Bane is anathema to this place, unwanted, disallowed — and yet you have brought it, and an able, even storied bearer of its edge to this place. That will turn away many a would-be opportunist or too-curious monsters.”

“I will kill any of them that lay hands on us.” Gram stated firmly.

“That will be their folly to suffer.” Morgan answered gamely.

“Yer jus’ gonna leave us tae wander? What happened tae all th’ bluster about time bein’ short?” Lidia asked, marching up to her mother. “Ye told me ye loved me, an’ now yer jus’ gonna turn me over tae yer beasties fer sport?”

“Mine Child,” she began, leaning in close to her, “It is out of love I do this, were I to walk you in under my guard in person, it would invite challenge. Many, if not all would deny you your birthright on fault of weakness. They would seek your blood and mine in restitution for that slight.”

“So what, we jus’ ‘ave tae kill a few an’ the rest will get the message?”

“That does tend to work, yes.”

Lidia blinked at that, and Morgan smiled at her patiently.

“Our ways are not your ways, but they must be for a time.” she stated simply, and stood, casting an arm almost casually, up from her gesture sprang a sudden, invisible gust of air, the mist and fog parted, as if a blade had sliced them on a razor’s edge, with a wave of her hand, the perfect column of mist formed and coalesced into two, perfect, glass-smooth walls of cloud and cottony vapor proceeding in a straight, unbroken line through the infinite, distant trunks. A passage forward. “My blood will offer you a degree of deference from those of low status in the Court, deal with them as you wish. Violence will not be frowned upon, those of strength should be prepared to defend themselves.”

She turned away, seeming to fade away far more… physically, than she did before. The very physical body of her Seeming evaporating, turning to dust, soil, and ash.

“I await you at court, I long to look upon you with mine own eyes.”

Those eyes smiled as she spread her arms, and quite plainly fell to nothing, her form collapsing into a mound of chalky, salt-like granules, before boiling away into the surrounding mist. Gone entirely. Her voice ghosted past them as the final grains dissolved to nothing.

“My blessing be upon you still, it will mark you as mine to those with eyes to see.”

“Great.” Lidia said to the silence that followed, running her fingers back through her hair in exasperation, spreading her arms and turning in a circle for a moment. Gram raised an eyebrow to her.

“I dinnae know what made me think one whit o’ this was gonna be jus’ walkin’ up an’ getting a wee little tiara at th’ end, but I was hopin’, ye know?” she whined, yes. Whined. This was whining, she was whining and it felt very well-earned for the moment.

“Keenly.” Gram answered, loosening his saber in its scabbard, pausing to look at it a moment, “It would probably be seen as poor form to carry it naked, wouldn’t it?” he asked. Lidia breathed out.

“Aye, probably. Ye know how the fae are,” Lidia said, echoing his motion with her own weapon and tightening her gloves and bracers with a little twist, meeting Gram’s eyes.

“Ye ready then, Loverboy?” she asked, and he clapped down his visor, snapping to attention with a clashing salute.

“Attaboy,” she said, linking arms with him and walking off down the proffered path, the camp and their packs abandoned. If things went well, they could be replaced… if not? Well. Little need for a bedroll dead.

The walk was silent. Eerily so, no game nor life seemed to stir in their passing. The trees beyond the misty walls of their path barely seemed real, let alone alive.

“I was not conscious for most of it, was the Sidhewood like this?” Gram asked, Lidia had busied herself taking stock.

“Aye, after a ways it all became… like what sommat who only knew stories o’ woods, would make woods be,” she said, squinting down at her satchel, she’d spent part of their downtime in the surprisingly well-stocked study, full of everything she needed to mix a variety of her alchemical recipes, namely: Bombs. She’d only had the materials on-hand for two, so two was all she had. She’d packed the powder tight in them though, with luck they’d have some extra oomph, the hulls of the bombs were already pig-iron, it’d be an ugly surprise for anything sidhe. Gram peered into her open bag.

“What is this?” he asked, plucking a small envelope out from between the two explosives. Lidia’s eyes widened and she gently — but firmly — took it back.

“I dinnae know how tae say its proper name, but Naima calls it ‘Godsfire’.” She said, holding the packet up to the wan, sourceless light that gave the entire place its eerie glow. Through the odd parchment, a coarse, brown powder was faintly visible.

“Is that why you were scraping all the rust off Goodman Durin’s tools that evening?” he asked, sniffing. “Smells of it.”

“Aye, th’ process is… somethin’ I dinnae fully understand the workins’ o’ — but a bit o’ rust, iron, an’ alum wit’ a few other standards o’ the craft, an’ ye get Godsfire.” She said, “Burns hot as th’ Lady’s Fury, saw Naima melt straight through a footman’s helmet wit’ just a thimbleful o’ this.”

“Fire, made from iron. Interesting.” Gram said, though he sniffed the air, “What is that smell? Is that naphtha?”

“O’ sorts,” she said, gently tucking the packet away. “Th’ wad is firepaper, it’s all soaked in a manner o’ nasty shite that burns hot and fast, same sort o’ stuff as th’ fuses on me bombs.” She explained, settling her hand back on her saber, “Ye fold up the packet right tight, then light one end, and the whole bit turns into liquid flame.” Her eyes glittered at the memory of the demonstration.

“Fiery hair, fiery personality, I suppose it is only appropriate that you have fiery talents,” Gram said and she grinned at him, a low flush on her face — once more welcoming his deadpan levity. She loved the sturdy, indomitable nature of his sort. Soldiers. She’d never liked them before… now she found she relied on them. Needed them.

“Aye, perfect tae melt a tall, steely soldier’s heart,” she said, and took his hand, she saw his eyes crinkle beneath his helmet in a smile. She smiled back.

The column of fog traversed what seemed like miles, maybe leagues. Time lost its meaning as the mist seemed to wax and wane, the fog becoming solid as a block of ice for times, filling in until they were in a cold, hazy corridor of perfectly square edges, proceeding to infinity. Other times it thinned until it was but gossamer, and the wood beyond was wildly different each time.

Deeper they went, and yet wilder it became. The bare trunks and eerie austerity of the outer boughs gave way to a dense, rocky, hard-packed forest floor and gnarled, impossible trees, growing thick as buildings or thin as wasted limbs, they continued to be unnaturally straight and bereft of branches — a forest of rocky, gnarled, leathery trunks surrounded by crags and coiling brush and an infinite sea of flowing fog.

The pair’s path drew them close alongside one of these seemingly bare trees, immense in stature they towered above all else, and around them were great, bare patches of packed clay and naked sod for spans and spans around each one. To the pair’s shock, at close quarters — the great, ashen trunk was seething with life. The bark was moist and springy, the canopy seemingly far above the ceiling of rolling fog for not a leaf nor sprig was seen, but as Lidia peered closer at a crevice in the great expanse of bark, suddenly, a pair of eyes blinked back at her. Then two.

Then twenty.

The changeling recoiled backwards several steps, Gram’s hand snapping to his saber as the multitude of tiny eyes replicated the eerie stare down the width and breadth of the surface, thousands of tiny eyes, all glowing with strange feral iridescence. The first pair of eyes blinked twice, and then out from the seemingly innocuous crevice of wood skittered… a tiny being.

She was small, perhaps the size of Lidia’s hand spread wide, with a body made all of sharp angles and points. Her tiny frame was an alien mixture of recognizably human features mixed with gleaming black chitin and segmented, waspish proportions. She had six limbs, her tiny torso flat and pale, leading up to her equally milk-white face — which was as pristine, perfect, and symmetrical as a porcelain doll with wide eyes, and a complete lack of eyebrows nor hair, in their place was a skullcap of hard carapace — and two, brightly-colored antennae that twitched to and fro. They were a delicate, sky blue. Her lithe little frame ended in a strangely insectile lower body, sprouting four sharp, chitinous legs and a long, undulating abdomen that gleamed with a glittering, translucent amber substance within — and a vicious, finger-long stinger exposed and glistening. Above her, similar shapes milled and gathered in the rent in the bark, out flitted winged forms, slightly broader, more square — clearly males, winged and curious, flitted out to peer down with those tiny, luminous eyes. The tiny creature seemed to smile at Lidia, and exposed a mouthful of tiny, gnashing mandibles behind those doll-like lips.

“What are they?” Gram asked, Lidia shrugging as she edged back a bit more. The little one at the front skittered closer to her with a tilt of her head, still silent it tilted its head at her. A series of small, almost musical clicks and trills came from its mouth as it extended a little hand.

“Oh I dinnae think so,” Lidia breathed and stepped back. The tiny fae hopped down and skittered forwards. Lidia held up her hands, “Nae, we ‘ave tae be goin’, no time tae dawdle but really, ‘Tis a lovely tree.” Lidia said, and the little chitinous creature skittered forward.

As did the rest of her swarm. Gram’s armor clanked subtly as his grip tightened on his saber.

“Oh shite.” Lidia whispered.

A legion of tiny eyes were fixated on them, errant clicks and trills sounding. Lidia looked back to Gram who shook his head. Those gazes weren’t friendly. The little white-faced fae out front chirped again.

“Look, ‘tis a fine tree, but iffin’ I delay then Dame Morgana will get right cross with me.”

The name hit the little swarm of shelled creatures like a bow wave, rippling back through their ranks with a sudden hush. The white-faced fae chirped with an inquisitive tilt to her head, Lidia didn’t understand her — not in words or language — but she got a sense of the question from the wide, gleaming eyes staring at them now with fear instead of nameless interest.

“She’s me mum, Ah’m a changeling, see?” She said, and leaned close to the little leader, brushing her bangs away from her own gleaming, slitted, sidhe eyes. Parting her lips to show off the jagged fangs. The little creature stood at attention at that, her little solid-colored eyes gleaming — this close she realized they were faceted like an insect’s — and she trilled and swept out a little bow, a gesture once again echoed back through the mass of chitinous little creatures.

“It seems Dame Morgana’s name indeed carried with it some weight, he said as he squinted through his visor, “I think… they’re offering you fealty.”

Lidia’s eyebrows shot up and she looked back, the little one up front had raised her hands up again, and fallen to an odd sort of kneeling posture on all four needle-like limbs, behind her the swarm had pulled back deeper into the bark, and oddly trying not to look at the little, left-behind creature, that looked up at her with wide, liquid eyes. That wasn’t loyalty in her gaze — she was terrified.

“… Nae, Nae I think its a lot worse than that.” Lidia responded with a sick feeling in her guts as she knelt down, “Listen, wee one I’m nae gonn-”

Her explanation was cut short by a loud, chattering, humming sound that for all the world sounded like a giant, creaking strip of leather, overstretched and snapping.

Down came a series of darting, angular forms. All colors and shades, vivid greens, vibrant yellows, vivacious blues, all fading to glossy black at the ends of their limbs. They were bipedal in a fashion as they alighted on the tree with shocking force, limbs digging into the bark for purchase.

There were a half dozen of them or so, tall beings, easily nine spans if they were a finger, and to a one made out of blades. Their bodies were waspish and severe — thin, almost tube-like midriffs connecting belled chests and flared, hard-shelled hips, all which carried that same mix of humanoid and chitinous features. Each had a pair of long, powerful legs that ended in grasshopper-like, saw-edged springy limbs, that themselves then ended in sharp, needle-like points in place of feet that made hideous clacking, crunching sounds as they dug into the bark and earth with perfect balance. Their arms were hollow through the forearms, and edged once more with those cricket-like serrations before long, slender fingers, all six digits in gleaming black carapace. Some of them had fluffy, bee-like ruffs, others strange fins and trailing antennae. They all wore visored helmets of some strange, silvery-black metal that covered their eyes, faces and everything down to the nose, leaving their mouths bare — mouths that were uncomfortably, distractedly lush, sumptuous and all-together human.

They were also on the hunt.

The little fae in the trees clattered and shrieked, running and swarming as the tall sidhe hunters snatched and dug at them — they had long, hooked poles and net-like sacks they used to grab and snatch at the little black forms, who fled and dug into the burrows away from them. Lidia reflexively grabbed up the little supplicating white-faced creature before her, which scurried up her arm and climbed fearfully into her hood — Lidia fought her revulsion at its tiny insect-like limbs as she and Gram retreated a few steps from the frenzy.

Lidia felt her gorge rise as one of the hunters snatched at one of the skittering fae — one of the females like the blue-antennaed one that was shaking in fear behind her ear. It screamed a tiny, trilling, tinny little scream and bit and chomped at his fingers — unable to pierce his shell as she looked up with a miniature face full of abject horror as the hunter’s too-plush lips parted in a snarling smile, and his jaw unfolded into a similar pair of greedy, gnashing mandibles behind too-human fangs. Before Lidia could act or anyone could really realize, the hunter snapped down on the little creature, who screamed horridly as it tore her amber-gleaming abdomen free and champed it down with a hellish crunching and snapping of carapace and flesh as the little fae flailed in horrible agony before being hideously put out of its misery as the hunter bit down and twisted her head off with his teeth, throwing the ruined body away in a soggy mess of blue gore.

Lidia turned and heaved up her guts in a sudden, shock-filled bout of nausea, Gram caught her arm, pulling her back further away as she staggered back up, wiping her mouth with murder in her eyes.

The tiny screams had gone quiet, the rest of the colony of wee creatures having fled deep into the inner recesses of the trees, the hunters working those hooked poles like levers, prying and pulling at the bark to get at the creatures within. Several had streaks of the amber fluid running from their mouths with streaks of blue gore, and they were all grinning, drunkenly, giddily… and then turned their attention upon the pair of mortals in their midst.

Everyone froze. The frenzy abated, it was only then they seemed to realize they had an audience.

“A pair of strays.”

“Wandered afar.”

“Dangerous to do that.”

“There’s monsters in the woods.”

“We should know. So should they.”

They swarmed around, their strange half-helmets were matched with glittering suits of plate and carapace that artfully hugged their bodies, blurring the line between armor and flesh, clothing and carapace. Ribbons, Stoles and scapula dangled and draped across them, and their strange, angular bodies moved with boneless fluidity — and Lidia realized that horrible leather-stretching sound was their limbs, so densely-packed with insectile sinew that they creaked and groaned in ready tension as they moved. They bared that strange mix of tooth-and-mandible behind their lips as they drew closer, eyes going to Gram’s armored form. Noses wrinkled, as if they could smell him.

“Anathema.”

“The Bane.”

“Bold.”

“Foolish.”

“Fatal.”

They hefted their hooked poles — closer view showed they had a grisly, curving blade along the inside edge, sharpened to such a fine hone that light seemed to pass through the barest edge, so thin as to be translucent. The five advanced on the pair with savage intent, the one she’d witnessed devouring the tiny fae in the lead — until one towards the back, one with a taller, more elaborate helmet and a modest pennant floating at the end of his polearm, raised a hand, lifting his nose, lips parting to even let a long, delicate tongue slip out a moment before he turned his face sharply.

“Hold brothers, that one has the scent of the Court upon her. I advise caution.” He said, and his voice had a different cant to it, an almost… familiar lilt, it ill-matched the alien tone of the others. There was a warmth to it. A valor. The amber-stained sidhe advanced on her past Gram as if he were a mere stone.

“A court plaything wandered afar? She even has taken one of our bounty, see!” the stained one jabbed a finger at the tiny fae cowering in her hood. Lidia bared her teeth like an animal, her lip curling in ribald disgust.

“Ye can jog right on with that shite, ye fookin’ creature.” Lidia hissed, and the thing only laughed and continued its clacking, creaking walk.

“Even the Court doxies cannot resist the fomori’s dew!” it sneered and reached its hand forward, as if to snatch this ‘fomori’ off Lidia’s shoulder, already baring its hideous mouthparts. Lidia’s hand flashed to her saber — but suddenly, there was a harsh whistling noise, and she blinked as a hot, wet spray splattered across her face. Recoiling she wiped at her face, hand coming away stained… blue?

The sidhe’s hand was quite plainly, gone. Sliced off at the wrist neatly, the wound sizzling and smoking. The creature didn’t seem to grasp it for a scant, fraction of a second before the pain hit it, the scream it let out was shrill and inhuman and it recoiled as its stump began to ooze more of the bilious blue ichor.

Gram flicked the gore from the edge of his blade, having drawn and cut in a single brutal motion, interposing himself between the sidhe hunters and Lidia as he did, his steely armor and gaze both set between the would-be attackers. He slowly drew his foot before him through the dirt, before setting his feet and raising his saber casually.

“The next one to cross this line loses a head.” He offered in a mild tone, “Consider carefully.”

The creatures formed a half circle around the pair, Gram holding his place, his visor down and his body so still he almost seemed a statue. The graceful monsters exchanged looks behind their helmets, each unique this close. One had a tall plume of bright purple, the other was topped by finned wings attached to the visor’s hinges. Their clothing similarly was wholly unique in every fold, stitch, and design. These hunters were proud things, their manner was sure and confident — and Gram’s example had rattled that. The gold-lipped one sneered and came to his feet with an angry whimper, the oozing stump of his hand had already stopped bleeding. He snatched up his hooked pole, the loss of his limb seeming more of a wound to his ego than body.

“Mangy cur, I will take great joy in reminding you your place!” The hunter hissed in that sibilant voice, taking a step forward but brought up suddenly short as Gram whipped his saber directly forward, the point stopping right at the tip of the advancing creature’s nose.

“I do not boast, creature. If you take a further step…” Gram pointedly looked down, he had perfectly arrested the hunter’s motion one step from the line, his eyes raised again behind his own visor, cold as ice. “… You will die.”

The wounded hunter seemed to actually consider that, looking to his brothers arrayed around the pair, his anxiety bleeding away as he did, grinning with amber-stained teeth, those mandibles visibly twitching between them.

“It forgets where it is.”

“It thinks highly of itself.”

“It has the bane.”

“Anathema.”

“It will need it.”

The one-handed hunter twisted, turning his gaze to his leader, the impressive figure was still apart from them, seemingly distracted as he observed the engagement — but his eyes were not upon Gram and his display, but the visor was firmly turned on Lidia. His sumptuous lips were turned down in a considering frown.

He nodded. The one-handed hunter cackled. Gram did not hesitate.

The lunge was almost imperceptible, Lidia blinked as the one-handed hunter choked up on the haft of its strange weapon with its one hand, and then it had leapt with authority towards Gram’s eyes, the weapon’s oddly-hooked tip trying to find its way around the cavalier’s neck.

Gram simply uncoiled, she’d often been on the receiving end of such a motion, but seeing it from this angle was somehow even quicker, he stepped offline, ducking the hooking thrust, and in the same motion rolled his entire torso into a brutal counter-cut that lashed up at the sidhe hunter’s belly, only voided by a hideously fluid tucking of its wasp-like middle back from the blade — wild eyed, the hunter seemed suddenly less sure of itself. The Black Dog however, had been roused.

Gram chased the hunter, the cuts came furious and whip-like, lashing at the lightly-armored target with fury and relish, blue blood spattered the floor as the overconfident sidhe was harried at a handful of places by Gram’s too-quick cuts and the sudden, ungainly disability of its missing hand. The disbelief was painted on its face as the hunter once again was simply bullied away by Gram’s ferocious aggression. The nine-span creature tried to regain the momentum, springing away on its sinewy legs with another harsh creak of alien limbs, dropping its grip on the strangely-curved polearm — snarling viscerally, with inhuman strength it began to swing it one-handed, whipping brutal, savage cuts and thrusts at Gram as it kept the distance, desperately harrying the cavalier from outside of the reach of his saber.

Gram however, was no novice to a spear.

Tucking his head he dodged and weaved the thrusts, and simply bulled through the cuts, hunching into the heaviest part of his plate, even the sidhe silver edge found no true purchase on the cold steel of his armor, clanging and skittering off, leaving ugly but harmless gouges in its finish as Gram simply advanced. Snarling in rage and frustration, the hunter lashed out with its legs as Gram ducked into the range of its assault once more, raising one so high as to point skyward before swinging it down like the arc of an axe, Gram narrowly rotating to the side to avoid the impaling impact. The creature levered itself onto the attacking leg, and spun its body like a child’s top, snapping its other, coiled limb at Gram with considerable momentum — but there was a canny gleam to the soldier’s eyes beneath his visor.

Gram did not duck, he blocked.

The kick slammed home — directly into Gram’s upraised arm and hunched shoulder, and the cold steel that encased it. Immediately, the sidhe flesh sizzled on contact with the iron alloy, the flesh boiling and blistering in ugly veins away from the iron’s kiss. The hunter howled at his own folly, jerking its leg back with a trail of sickly smoke before jerking its head back and forth to its brethren — whom much like Lidia, had simply stood fairly gob-smacked by the sudden explosion of violence.

“To me, my brothers!” it hissed, and the four still figures seemed to jolt into awareness, advancing on Gram at once.

Gram acknowledged this by punching the one-handed hunter directly in the mouth.

“You can credit that one to Ser Bart, terrible influence.” Gram snarled. The blow had been mighty, perhaps not as mighty as Ser Bart — but Gram was no wee lad, and that fist had landed backed by some fifteen stone of the man’s lean, powerful build, and all of that behind cold iron knuckles. The one-handed hunter reeled back. Teeth shattered, a mandible crunched under the blow, and all of Gram’s anger was felt in the follow-through of the swing, driving the alien hunter to one knee as his fae braincase rattled fore and aft inside of his skull.

The tiny fomori shrieked angrily from her spot on Lidia’s shoulder, getting her attention to a pair of leaping forms. Lidia was off like a shot, and the singing steel of her new saber caught the light as she threw herself into the fray. A pair of lunging slashes were spoiled as Lidia batted them aside in a quick pair of beats, immediately taking off into an aggressive rush of her own, eyes flashing with vindictive fury as she picked the one of the pair with the amber stains on his lips, same as the one-handed hunter. At her ear came tinny trills of righteous anger as the tiny pixie held onto her collar, cheering her on as she drove at the hunter hard at the middle, following Gram’s example and not giving him an inch in a furious drive. She differed from her hunting hound husband-to-be, he harried at limbs and vital veins like a war dog, but she — she was a predator, a wholly different kind of animal.

She struck for the heart.

Eyes, belly, hamstrings, and yes — the heart. She drove at the soft places on the body, the places you were taught to protect. Places she’d been taught to put a knife, then taught again was where you hurt monsters. Killed monsters.

She wanted to kill some monsters right now.

She whipped her blade in tight maneuvers aiming to gut the creature and minimize its polearm’s reach, keeping the tempo steady in her head. Just like pacing she realized. Counting out the tempo, counting out the steps as she clashed again with the fae hunter, the length of steel feeling like an extension of her arm. The change in hilt, the change in length, the change in attitude, and good old fashioned spite had coalesced in the heat of battle into something resembling a style.

The amber-lipped hunter grit its hideous mandibles as it jabbed at her with it’s polearm again, similarly to its brother it used its longer legs to try to out-distance the aggressive rush, finding its build seemingly purpose-made for the hunting of these little creatures fared poorly against someone so very used to being preyed upon the same way. It drove its spear-like hook down at her in repeated, brutal thrusts that she turned the edge of her saber against, pushing hard as she used both hands on the spine of the blade to drive and deflect the thrusts until she could push and shove against the shaft itself, driving the polearm aside and lunging towards his middle — that strange, wasp-like abdomen looked an awful lot like a pell post…

The trilling cry of the fomori once more alerted her to danger, and she swore and spun away from a lunging strike at her rear from the remaining hunter, bounding towards her with abandon and forming a line with his fellow, both jabbing in sequence with their oddly-hooked weapons. The bill-like blade on them was wickedly sharp, but she suddenly realized it made it rather poor for thrusting — taking the problems of her own saber’s sweeping shape and multiplying them, their thrusts were odd, levering motions, less driving at her with the point and trying to slice and pull at her limbs and body. She focused on parrying and evasion, her turn to dance away in a flurry of blows. She had naught but a moment to spare, but she spared it to cast a glimpse at Gram.

He was a blur of motion, the seasoned warrior squaring off against his own pair of hunters. His fight was going arguably better, driving at them recklessly — at least to her glance it seemed — but even in that fraction of a second she realized he was throwing his armored form at them as a deterrent, the sidhe shrinking back from The Bane and its poisonous touch. She spared another risky second to take stock of their opponents fellows –- a second she bought whipping a handful of earth into the face of one of the hunters and ducking away as he spluttered and swore.

The one-handed hunter was dragging himself upright still, in a daze — his face and leg both oddly melted, eroded by the touch of steel, as if the sheer touch of the metal was caustic, infectious. He seemed grievously wounded, but more angry than anything. Their leader remained standing, stock-still and straight as a marble column, his handsome face impassive. Watching. Waiting. Observing. She gave a yelp as the pair of hunters pressed her again, swinging opposite angles and forcing her to evade back again — away from Gram. She dug into her bag with her free hand, beating aside another hacking blow, stamping down on the weapon to pin it as she countered another swing from his partner with a heavy slap of her saber’s spine.

Out came the powder bomb, and she snarled an oath — no way she’d have time to strike a flint and steel. The hunter jerked back hard on his pinned weapon and Lidia danced back again, working in furious defense as she tried to find a way to get a spark, a flame, a hot piece of metal, anything!

The little fomori trilled up at her, peering at the open slat of her bag, holding onto the strap like a tiny deckhand on the rigging of a ship. Lidia’s eyes lit up as she danced back,

“Me tinderbox, can ye work it?” She asked, the little fairy’s multi-limbed body clinging to her clothing with sharp, prickling sensations. She dug through — the creature clearly understood her, not just in words, but concepts as well. Out it came with her tinderbox, pulling it open carefully it hissed back.

“Oh, shite,” Lidia hissed under her breath as the whole thing jounced and jostled around in her pouch, the firesteel and iron-hulled bombs loose and rolling beneath the little fae’s hands, anathema to her little fingers.

“Sorry!” She cried, swinging her blade in a tight moulinet, fending off two simultaneous strikes, and earning a painful slice on her arm for the effort, flinching away from the pain with a cry. Gram’s voice raised in a sound of protest.

The little faerie gritted her teeth, and dove her hands into the bag, darting in and out with little squeaks of pain until it came back with a trill of triumph as Lidia made space again — in its little hands it grasped the flint from her tinderbox, lips peeled back from her mandibles in a fierce little grin.

“That’s only half o’ it!” Lidia hissed, the two hunters regrouping, trying to flank her to either side. The little fomori girl gave a tinny little cry and swung the flint down with both hands — her oddly silvery stinger thrusting forward to meet it. With a tiny metallic ring, it struck the flint — and bright sparks flew from the impact. Lidia’s eyes widened.

“Do it!” She cried, holding up the bomb. The little fae ran down her arm like a shot, scampering up her bracer like a tiny acrobat before twisting her body with a tiny warrior’s cry and striking the flit against her stinger again.

Once. Twice. Three times and done. The fuse caught.

“Oh ye fookin’ earned this,” she snarled, dancing back from another pair of wheeling thrusts. The fomori skittered back to her shoulder, still grasping the flint as Lidia kept count in her head, the fuse burned — the hunters paused. That was their first mistake.

The second was curiosity.

Lidia threw the bomb with a twist, the spinning missile lobbing high and tight in a neat arc. The hunters followed its path to the spot between them, right where Lidia had guessed the fuse would catch… well, maybe a few feet lower.

The bomb ignited. Thunder boomed in the desolate fog, screams rose up from the hunters.

Lidia’s bombs were black powder yes, but she’d been taught to make them by Naima, who’d learned to make them to deal with Ghuls. Ghuls are tough creatures, tougher than anything natural ought to be, and they didn’t die from the blast or heat alone, they needed help.

That help was the handful of hard iron forge-scrap she’d packed in between the charge and the shell.

The two fairies writhed on the ground, screaming in horrible agony as the air-bursting grenade had showered them in a hail of cold iron shrapnel. Their tough hides and weird carapace had absorbed much of the blast, quite a bit like a ghul might — but the fragments of the hull and packed scrap had torn through them like a wheat thresher, each body was riddled with a dozen weeping blue wounds where the iron had embedded in them, smoke and pus bubbling up from the wounds as they bored deeper and deeper into their flesh purely on weight alone — eating, eating, eating.

It was poetic in a grim sort of way.

Lidia smoothed back her hair, spitting blood from a split lip to the side as she locked eyes with the watching leader’s visor, his impassive face no longer so — jaw agape in mute shock — indeed, so was the same of the others. Even Gram had taken a moment’s pause at the writhing horror, one of the wounded hunters rolling double and vomiting black bile before falling still and miserable almost as a hideous capstone to the entire affair, the fog and smoke of the explosion rolling aside her red-hooded form as she walked to stand shoulder to shoulder with her betrothed.

“Ye’ve gone an’ made me act like Mum, Dame Morgana is gonna fookin’ giggle her tits off hearin’ about this,” she snarled, squaring back up, blade at at the ready. The leader’s head jerked to that, hawklike and attentive.

“Even odds now,” Gram observed as he whipped his blade clear of a rivulet of blood. The tiny fomori trilled a tiny battle-cry, raising the flint in her talons. Gram inclined his head.

“I stand corrected, three to two.” He added, raising his blade menacingly.

The two hunters still-standing were festooned in cuts and abrasions, their own share of burns and welts from their brush with The Bane festering painfully, all black veins and oozing blisters. They exchanged looks with each other.

“We misjudged it.”

“It is formidable.”

The one-handed hunter screamed inarticulately in pure, elemental rage, hobbling on its damaged leg to point its good hand at them.

“Weaklings! Fearful weaklings! Fight or die, that is law!”

The two hunters exchanged looks again, before both curling their lips in a mandible-laden sneer, their visors locking onto the one-handed hunter.

“We followed your lead.”

“Your pace was faulty.”

The one-handed hunter’s teeth bared in outrage… and a look of sudden fear settled over it as the two hunters rounded on it with snarling teeth and eyeless, visored faces.

“I am second prime! You will kill them, they are but man-things!” He howled impotently, attention split between the haggard pair as they ignored Lidia and Gram, focused instead on their former leader, anger thick as fog in the air. Lidia swallowed as she noticed movement.

“Fight or die, that is law.” The sonorous baritone of the leader rang, his powerful, taloned fingers snapping down onto the wounded hunter’s neck, the sound of carapace cracking was loud in the ashen forest, and the one-handed hunter screamed anew. The leader’s impressive form had not just been for show, and with main force he lifted and cast the one-handed hunter to the ground… at Lidia and Gram’s feet.

“The offense most grave is theirs, seek their absolution or I will render judgment for your peers.”

The hunter looked up, panicked, his visor askew, revealing a face with two deep-set eyes, liquid black and staring, save for the slitted, feline tell of the sidhe in their inky depths. Lidia’s lip curled in an instinctual disdain, having seen this… creature for what it was in the first moments she’d laid eyes on it, she almost spit on it. Gram — forever more poised, simply turned his gaze away.

The little fomori however, did not seem as keen for mercy.

There was a tinny little scream, and the tiny, black-shelled fae hurled herself from Lidia’s shoulder, grabbing at the one-handed fae’s face. He gave a cry of alarm, but the little fomori wrenched his helmet off, those tiny claws and ends of her limbs sharp as steel, she gave a whistling little scream and grabbed him by the scalp, rearing that stinger back. The hunter bobbled at her form, but she was quick as a bowshot, and with a horrid popping sound — she drove that stinger directly into his skull, through carapace, bone and braincase alike. The yellow liquid in her abdomen slowly emptied out as the entire organ pulsed, pumping the faintly-glowing fluid into the writhing, screaming hunter’s skull.

The sidhe hunter’s face was agonized for a moment, but then its eyes rolled back, and its body seemed to go slack. His body sagged into a heap, his expression listless and distant. The little fae perched atop him, and met the leader’s gaze defiantly. He inclined his head once, and she threw up her tiny fists with another shrill whistling cry.

Eyes blinked open all over the tree. Out came the fomori, dozen, hundreds, they moved in neat, ordered columns rather than a mad scramble, like a living thing they moved as one, going to the fallen hunter and grasping onto him, their mandibles flared, and out came a strange, resin-like spittle that rapidly foamed and expanded, winding around him in a strange sort of cocoon. Soon the drug-addled, maimed hunter was swaddled head to foot in the bubbly silken wrap. The horde of tiny fae all formed into rigid, neat ranks again.

And then they hissed, as a single being.

The force descended upon the body like a hideous machine from some hellish workshop. Claws, limbs and mandibles flashing, they disassembled the hunter from the extremities out. Each… part of him, severed and neatly wrapped in the end of the silk and carried away. They worked at such blinding speed that he seemed to simply dissolve beneath their brutal, mechanical dissection. Lidia’s guts churned again, and she turned and retched up naught but bile and water, Gram covering her as the fomori finished with their grisly conquest.

It was over unnervingly fast, leaving naught in its wake but that same, solitary fomori with pale blue antennae… and an ugly smear of azure gore beneath her. Lidia was pale as the little thing trilled at her triumphantly, and clambered back up her leg and shoulder, her face lightly smeared with the same blue ichor. She gave Lidia a dutiful little chirp, the changeling shared an uneasy gaze with her betrothed through his helmet. There was a trod of feet, and both warriors snapped their blades to attention as the leader of the band held up his hand.

“Peace!” he hissed, his body straight and proud, “I heard the name of the Queen spoken by your lips with common familiarity — what does it mean to you, to be said as such?”

Lidia flicked her gaze to Gram, who shrugged almost imperceptibly in his armor, she did as well, slightly lowering her saber, “She’s me mother. I’m a changeling, an’ I’m goin’ tae meet mum at court.”

The leader took this in and thought on it a moment, before giving a nod.

“It is that time again then, it has been long. Before my time as Dewcatcher Captain,” he said and then seemingly made up his mind, he drew himself up sharply, snapping to respectful attention. “A scion of the Queen is a rare and storied thing, I was remiss in my duties. I will sq uare that debt by guiding you to court unmolested.”

The little fomori trilled spitefully at him, and he smiled at her.

“It is always duty, little one.”

Lidia’s eyes snapped open, “Wait o’ tick, ye can understand her?”

“I am sidhe.” The dewkeeper answered, as if it should be obvious.

“I guess I dinnae ‘ave to come up wit’ a nickname fer ye then, do I?” she asked, despite her… ferocious nature, she seemed to have something resembling the loyalty of the little fairy, the dewkeeper seemed truly, genuinely amused by her presence. He gestured at her as one would a dog he expected to perform a trick, and she chirped at him.

“Her name is Tirrah, how droll.”

Lidia met her gaze and she beamed at her from her perch, Lidia met Gram’s gaze again and then gave a lopsided smile.

“Tae hell wit’ it, nice tae meet ye, Tirrah. I’m Lidia, this is Gram.” She said, the still-visored cavalier eyeing up the Dewkeeper and his pair of haggared, and thouroughly cowed-looking pair of remaining hunters, but he spared her a nod.

“Introducing her vassals to it as well, perhaps she will start a new fashion.” The dewkeeper remarked, and his voice was genuinely amused and bore no malice, Lidia however found it oddly grating.

“What d’ye mean? She’s a person isn’t she?”

“She is fomori, you treat her as an equal. It is quaint.”

“An’ ye wouldn’t?” She challenged and he seemed delighted to respond.

“No Lady, I would not. It would have been boorish to spare her life after the agreement.”

“What agreement?” Lidia balked, the little fae was pale… paler than it had been before, at least, the little creature’s body language once more becoming timid as the dewkeeper captain turned back to her with an incredulous, but very gregarious smile.

“Why, the parlay you engaged in. I understand it now, she heard the Queen’s name — it has power.”

“What parlay?” Lidia asked, getting increasingly frustrated at the fae’s universal penchant for circular language, must be her father’s traits talking, “Get tae th’ point!”

“She gave herself to you as sacrifice.” The sidhe captain explained, turning to look at them squarely, “You spared them your matron’s wrath, and in exchange she gave you her life and dew to devour in their place.” He paused a bit and smiled anew, “It is quaint that you spared her.”

Lidia stared at him in horror.

Tirrah simply beamed. It was unnerving, smeared in fresh gore like that.

A rustle to their rear caught Lidia’s attention, bur Gram’s firm hand caught her shoulder, turning her pointedly away, getting her hackles up and a stern look at the still-visored cavalier. He shook his head, keeping his grip firm on her. The sound of the webbing came to her ears, and she swallowed. The other two sidhe, the ones caught in the grenade. Her stomach roiled despite being empty, and she leaned into Gram. War was one thing, killing with a blade, claw, or bomb she could understand, deal with.

It was the eating she couldn’t manage. Ever since the caves. Ever since Franc and the boys. Ever since the ghuls and Lachheim. She was disgusted. She was terrified. She was absolutely, positively terrified of being eaten alive.

Moreover, by something that would enjoy it.

She turned, to find the Dewkeeper studying Gram’s armor intently, the soldier tapped his saber against his tasset pointedly, getting the sidhe’s attention.

“The bars on your gorget,” he said, indicating the rank insignia, offset to his left, two golden bars representing his rank, “Capitán! We share a rank!” He trilled, beaming as he pronounced ‘Capitán’ the Mistport way, like Lidia had heard a thousand times from southern trade barges up on the wharfs. It got her attention on him over the horrors of the Black Forest’s unnatural ecosystem.

“I earned mine in service to God,” Gram offered somewhat icily, the Dewkeeper smiled broadly.

“I earned mine in service to My Lady and My Queen, both made greater by duty.”

Gram seemed to accept that in his silence, The Dewkeeper appeared content with that.

“C’mon then, Stretch,” Lidia barked to the waspish sidhe hunter and his two battered companions, “Ye said ye’d guide us, so get tae guidin’, nae nothin’ fine ‘nough tae be worth millin’ ‘bout here.” Tirrah chirped defiantely from her spot on Lidia’s shoulder, the little fae seeming to be quite taken with its new place of power over the hunters. Gram pointedly fished a handkerchief from his belt, handing it to the tiny pixie, who was still quite gory. Tirriah chirped and took the silken square, Gram raised his visor and made a vague motion around his mouth. She seemed to get it then, and wiped her face, and hands… and torso until she was a glossy, gleaming black shape again, holding the soiled handkerchief out to him.

“Keep it,” the cavalier murmured, raising a forestalling gauntlet with a faintly disgusted expression. Tirrah chirped, and began dutifully folding the square from her spot on Lidia’s shoulder. The changeling’s face through the entire affair was only a bit piqued. She gestured at the sidhe hunters with a sigh.

The Dewkeeper bowed graciously and gave a shrill whistle to its companions, who moved on ahead, one taking the dangling wicker cage full of still-terrified Fomori from him as they ranged ahead on long, loping strides. Lidia squinted at the cages, her gorge once again threatening to rise. Instead she turned to the handsome-faced sidhe as they proceeded to walk.

“What’s th’ point o’ that?” She asked tersely, jerking her chin at the cages held by his fellows. He tilted his head at her, and gave an amused little bob of his shoulders.

“If you are as you say, then in a way the Glimmering Wode is to be your territory, you should know it.”

“The Glimmering Wode…” Gram said, rolling the name around in his mouth, his face still impassive beneath his raised visor, he flicked his eyes to and fro to the trees — which did indeed, glimmer as they passed, glimmer with the shiny shells and staring eyes of a thousand-thousand Fomori within their bark. “You have a grim humor, Captain.” The Dewkeeper laughed knowingly, and Lidia raised an eyebrow in a baffled expression, Gram giving her a faint, almost utilitarian smile.

“It is an older word in the common tongue, it has a double meaning.” He said, his eyes flicking back to the Dewkeeper, “New growth — but also wild-eyed, furious madness.”

Lidia looked back at the trees and her gaze came to rest a moment on Tirrah, who had set about fashioning a small sling out of Gram’s gifted handkerchief to carry the piece of flint she had yet to return. Those multifaceted eyes turned up at the edges with a little smile that was just wide enough to show the frenzied mouthparts lurking behind it.

“It is an apt name.” The Dewkeeper agreed jovially.

“So what’s th’ point o’ murderin’ all the wee ones then?” Lidia asked, her mood standoffish at best. The Dewkeeper Captain seemed nonplussed, though he quirked his head at her in further curious amusement.

“You see it as murder? Curious, curious,” he said, tapping his chin thoughtfully before turning to address her directly — without missing a step. Walking backwards with a perfect, almost autonomous gait as he spread his arms conversationally, “The point is the Dew! The Amber Tincture, the Citrine Nectar, a dozen other names and titles, but it is all the same.”

Lidia shot a gaze at Tirrah, who’s translucent abdomen had begun to fill and blossom again with the same flaxen fluid as before, the little fae’s pale blue antennae drooping in a dour way as the Dewkeeper spoke, “What’s so special about this Dew? S’just poison, saw it meself on yer fellow back aways.”

“Ah! The sting of the Fomori is lethal bliss, yes. A drifting dream you never awake from, but its essence mixed with the spice of mortality and then consumed…” he shuddered in clear, visceral pleasure at the memory.

“So ‘tis a drug,” Lidia returned scornfully, disgust open on her face as the Dewkeeper Captain laughed again.

“Your mortal derision is refreshing, I forget how limited it is to be that way at times,” He said in a tone clearly meant to be reassuring, gregarious even, but he moved on regardless of the patronizing tone he unintentionally assumed, “But it is more than mere libation, the Dew mends flesh and bone, mind and spirit. It expands the mind and strengthens the body, and fills the blood with fire.”

“A powerful panacea then, why not merely ask the Fomori for it in trade?” Gram asked, his calculating mind already assessing the problems, looking for solutions. The Dewkeeper raised a long, taloned finger with a gallant grin.

“Therein lies the rub, Capitán! It is that kiss of mortality that imbues the Dew with its potency. The Fomori must be in the throes of battle or terror to release the humors that make it whole.” He explained in such casual candor that the two humans both visibly paled at the implication. “Not unlike salting the meat.”

Lidia didn’t want to think about it. The grisly display before was fresh in her mind regardless of her desires, burned in there with so many other grisly deaths. Part of her wanted to forget, part of her was glad she wouldn’t. These were her people… this is what it meant to be Sidhe.

She should not forget that.

They traveled in relative silence, not for lack of the Dewkeeper trying to strike up conversation with them as he lead them through the trackless fog, the trees seeming to simply go on forever in all directions, both beyond the impossible horizon and up into the infinite mist above them. She felt her ill mood threaten to merely worsen as they walked, and once again time and space simply refused to have meaning in this fell place. They could have covered miles or mere spans of distance and she could not tell, for the trees were numerous as they were practically identical, and it began to blend together.

She took it upon herself to watch the Dewkeeper. She had an itch every time he spoke, something prickled her senses. Something about him did not square with the rest, he stood apart from his fellows in more than just rank and grandeur… he moved differently to the rest of the sidhe hunters, more gaily, more joyously… as if his flesh were still in some way new. His gregarious words, the spring in his strange stilt-legged step, and even the turn of his lips as he ever-grinned at them… they all just rang oddly familiar.

“Hey, Stretch,” She called after a long while of silence, her hand had found Gram’s again, gauntlets and all as they walked a cautious distance behind their alien hosts, “Y’got a name tae match th’ rank?”

The Dewkeeper Captain’s face spread in a wide, genuinely attractive smile and he spun in place — not losing a single step in their marching pace — and swept a bow at her in the same motion.

“My Lady gifted me the name Dagonet when I entered her service, I am proud to carry it.”

That response only further sent Lidia’s eyebrows into her hairline, “She gave ye a name? Ye dinnae ‘ave one before?” she asked, her curiosity driving at her still. Something just didn’t quite sit. Dagonet smiled at her anew.

“My Lady made me greater than I was, it was only right she name me anew as well.” He stated with such a tone as to indicate it was glaringly obvious, down to the noncommittal shrug he added at the end. Lidia nodded and fell silent again, watching him warily all the same.

They began to climb, subtly at first, the ground starting to raise, curl, bend and then — reality just started to break down. The horizon curved to the naked eye — but the wrong way, swirling up and inwards, the ground seeming to rise to either side of them like an impossible valley — the miles of earth and trunks themselves rising up on either side like the inside of a great wheel. Trees suddenly crossed their sightlines above, hanging and jutting from the rapidly folding earth and stone. The sky funneled to a circle, trees began to coil as they passed, the grade intensifying to a near hike, before suddenly becoming bit by bit — stairs. Stairs of a flat, odd stone that had a peculiar give to it underfoot. The trees folded together now, pushing upwards and across in crisscrossing bands lining the now all-surrounding tunnel of earth and trunk they strode through — above them now, the sky an approaching layer of ethereal fog, the wan sourceless light making all seem flat and still as their ascent took a more worked appearance. The steps became ordered, patterned. A method emerged from the madness.

Gram’s hand had found hers sometime as the ascent had begun, but in the final twists it hand grown iron-tight — and she returned it, both her and her beloved wild-eyed at the phantasmagorical terrain.

“Where th’ Hell are ye takin’ us, Dagonet?” Lidia barked as they neared the wall of fog, his name used like the crack of a whip — a practice he seemed to cleave to well as his response was as always, gregarious and warm.

“To Brigadoon! If the Queen awaits you truly than there is no better way than the Amber Terraces, to be seen by all of Seelie worth being seen by, to bask in the swaying spans’ shadow and their many delights,” He paused in his recitation to take a dramatic breath, turning to her again with that eerie poise, seeming to have no issue moving both halves of his body independently of one another to an inhuman degree, so graceful as to be gruesome.

“Why… I cannot think of anyone of the Queen’s lineage who would pass up even a chance to glimpse of such.”

Lidia and Gram exchanged a look. The statement was loaded like a black powder bomb.

“I suppose he ne’er said it’d be safe, jus’ that he’d guide us,” She lamented quietly to Gram, Tirrah chittering nervously from her shoulder.

“He does leave us without much option, after that harrowing ascent I am not too proud to admit I don’t enjoy the idea of skulking through this place without direction.” The cavalier agreed, his weapon still naked in his hand, he gestured to their guide to carry on, Lidia giving his hand a barely-perceptible squeeze.

They pushed into the fog, it was cold and almost stifling, the vapor roiled invasively at the mouth and nose and proved an oddly discombobulating barrier to pass, requiring the little changeling take a deep breath and set herself into each step, keeping one foot firmly in front of the other. Through their still-joined fingers, armor notwithstanding, she felt Gram suffering much of the same tension. The cloying closeness of the cloud rapidly began to become suffocating, and right at the point that Lidia’s lungs felt they would burst for the thin wisps of breathable air they could find, she burst through in a sudden stumble as the stairs ended. Light momentarily blinded her, the cloud receded and balmy, pleasant air ran through her hair, stirring her hood and tousling her hair. She sneezing and rubbed her nose and eyes before opening them to look upon… impossibility.

The stairs emerged onto a great landing before a wide, open plaza. The strange, springy stone was nigh everything. All in an almost morbid bone-like texture and hue interspersed with shockingly dark black marble in sharp, unyielding hardness to the oddly flexible, almost organic stone. Behind them the fog extended outwards into a wide, lazy cloud.

Beyond, was the cosmos.

An infinite tapestry of sky fell above and below, skies terminating to stars in daylight hues and twilight colors mixing into an eternal, everlasting dusk. In that yawning, impossible cosmic void floated and swayed glittering monuments. Great, jagged outcrops of the hard, basalt-like black stone coasted like errant clouds through the great beyond, orbiting on some impossible trajectory. Between them stretched great, titanic spans of the strange, organic stone — rendered out into a series of spires and turrets, spires and towers to decorate the flying buttresses and sweeping braces of the great threads of stone edifice that linked each great, pyramidal block of primordial stone together. Span upon span, scale impossible to gauge, spires the size of all of Fort Ivory towering beyond. They wove between the floating monoliths of stone, crossing and interlinking in a mad, impossible tangle of architecture.

Like a glittering web, the stone retained its curious softness — and the impossible, massive spans swayed in the stirring eternal breeze — a slow and rhythmic cadence of motion that for all the world made the whole of the place seem to breathe.

Interspersed with it all, were great, towering branches. Blossoming petals spun on the breeze and pooled in every corner, and it took Lidia a moment to realize here were the greatest, furthest peaks of the Glimmering Wode’s seemingly endless trees. Up from the infinite void they stretched, defying all logic and attempt to render scale, winding and growing around — and in some cases into — the strange, undulating structures. The branches blossomed and stretched ever further, as if the very stars and alien planetoids that glimmered in the beyond were but drops of dew upon their distant leaves.

“Blood of God.”

Gram’s voice was humbled. It was appropriate.

“Welcome to Brigadoon,” Dagonet crowed, spreading his arms to the spectacle. “Welcome to the creche of dreams themselves, where reality is gossamer cloth at the tailor’s fingers!” His long-legged steps carried him out on the landing, twirling in place he spun like a dancer on one needle-like limb, sweeping his helmet from his head, arms outstretched in bliss.

Out of the helmet spun a thick, wealth of hair. It poured down his shoulders and chest like the mane of a lion, wild, voluminous and free. It was the color of fresh-poured coffee, of nutty wood… her eyes widened as he spun to face her anew, his sinuous, sidhe-given body for a moment… strangely human. His shoulders square, his chin out-thrust. His eyes were like the others, like hers now — slitted and bright, intense… like flints.

Chestnut. His hair was chestnut. Lidia’s hands came to her mouth.

“Oh my God,” she whispered as Dagonet’s eyes turned to her again, his bearing… damned if she wouldn’t call it valorous, helmet tucked beneath his arm, face beaming.

“Colin.”