7
:: May 1st, 1981 ::
:: Lough Leane, County Kerry, Ireland ::
The tiny group hiked quietly over one of the numerous low hills that surrounded Lough Leane, the faint bluish-gray traces of dawn starting to dance across the dew-soaked emerald knolls. Their worn boots or mud-stained sneakers squelched as they cautiously made their way down towards the black placid lake blanketed by a ghostly fog, the tallest of the group making even more careful steps due to the person he cradled in his arms - a girl, barely four, her eyes closed and completely unaware of her surroundings. They skirted across the wet obsidian rocks covered in thick white-splattered moss before coming to the very edge of the lake itself. The woman in their midst, her hair nearly as fiery as the sun’s rays, knelt by the water, reaching out and touching its cool surface very gently, tiny ripples disturbing the glass-flat surface - how she kept her balance with the large broadsword strapped her to back was impressive.
“Yes, this will be fine,” she confirmed in a heavy Irish brogue, standing up and rubbing her arms against the early morning chill. She turned to her other companion, a pale and impossibly beautiful man with green eyes. “You say the grave sites are here?”
The taller man’s jaw clenched in a repressed curse as he set the girl down on the plush moss and the pale man only shook his head. “No, they are not buried here. Some of their names are far too close to mortal sentimentality for them to rest here.” He walked further north along the slippery stones until he reached a flat platform of stone that jutted a few feet further out onto the lake itself. A dozen and a half pebbles, all polished to a gleaming white and moist with the morning dew, lay embedded into the speckled stone, in no particular pattern or order.
The woman followed him over as the girl began to stir, but the muscular man quickly quieted her down with a spoken spell and the little girl drifted back into a dreamless slumber. The red-haired woman knelt by the smooth stones, brushing her hand across one of the markers. The pale man, tall and dressed in the same shades of green that surrounded them in the Irish mountains, had a carefully neutral expression when the woman touched one of the stones, but the other man caught the way his fist clenched - it must have been the stone that belonged to Anastasia.
“How much longer do we have?” the woman asked, the wonder vanishing from her face as she rose to her feet.
The pale man grimaced. “Not long, I’m afraid. The Outsiders will have traced our path through Summer and alerted Nicodemus and his fellows. This place is protected by wards, but even it shall not last long if we continue to linger.”
The woman nodded, casting a concerned look at the muscular man and the girl. She seemed to be quickly thinking of a route of escape for them all, but failing. Creased worry lines appeared at the edges of her eyes and mouth, making her look far older than her thirty-some years. Even the cool and fresh descent of morning surrounding them did not ease the burden that seemed to suddenly weigh her down. How many years had it been now since she had been a part of this? She had not come willingly at first, even when the sword had first been pressed into her hand while she was still barely a schoolgirl in Cork, the words of her strongly religious mother still indelibly etched into her mind. If only the woman had known back then of the holy crusades her daughter would have been venturing off on...if only she knew what mortal danger all the worlds were in...
You must always believe in your faith, Kathleen, she remembered the voice from her youth saying as her mother calmly plaited her hair for church. You must sat your prayers to the angels...
“...and God will give you strength,” she said calmly and resolutely as she unfastened the clasps that held the mighty sword to her back. Knowing that the touch of iron would be harmful to the pale man, she instead handed it towards the other man. He looked at her, puzzled. She only smiled gently. “My journey ends here. You must give this sword back to my comrade.”
The tall man looked stricken by her request, knowing fully what she was asking of him. “Katie...”
“Shiro’ll understand,” she continued, looking down with fondness at Amoracchius, the familiarity of the sturdy hilt that she had gripped so often in the name of the Lord for over ten years. She knew what this sword truly was, knew how important it was to both of her missions. She turned to look up at the man, saw the indecision in his eyes. She reached up, resting a hand on his unshaven cheek. “You have been so helpful to all of us. Please understand I do this so that our mission can continue.”
“You don’t have to sacrifice yourself,” came the harsh reply, spat out from the shock. “There is still time.” Kathleen shook her head.
“I’ll not risk it. You must protect this child and you must get back to David and Shiro at all costs.” She turned to the pale man. “Lysander, you’ll do this for me, eh? Nicodemus’ll not rest 'til he sees me dead - Amoracchius musn’t fall into his hands. There’ve been...so many setbacks...” They were surrounded by the white stones of those setbacks - friends whose lives had been lost over the century as they struggled against everything to make sure that humanity and existence stood a chance against the oncoming war. Her heart went out to the one who still led them all - his ability to escape and vanish from the most horrendous of circumstances was testimony to his intent to see this to the bitter end. He had once told her that it was his duty to make sure none of his comrades had died in vain. But she knew him better than that. Once they had joined this fight, they had ceased being simply comrades.
They had become his family - they had all become family, bond by blood split and secrets shared.
Lysander, still as youthful-looking as he had been the night he had first met Anastasia seventy sixty years prior, nodded at Kathleen’s words, scooping the child from the other man’s arms. “It has been a privilege to fight alongside of you, Kathleen.”
She laughed, a low and husky sound. “Lysander, we’ve known each other for years and yet even now you refuse to call me Katie.” There was sadness in her voice as she quietly stroked the girl’s pale hair. After a few moments, she looked back up at him. “You stubborn bastard. I don’t know how Anastasia had ever put up with you.”
Lysander neither smiled at the comment about his former lover nor completely shut off whatever emotions the Grand Duchess always managed to stir up in the fae’s heart. Instead, he only nodded his head in acknowledgment before turning to navigate away from the granite-and-moss platform, the child still sleeping soundly in his arms. It was always that way with him, and she was no longer surprised by his aloofness - no, it had always balanced her fiery Irish tendencies perfectly with the other man right in the middle.
She turned to him now. “You must go now.”
His dark eyes glinted and she could feel the darkness that sometimes crept into his heart brush against his mind. “Come with us, Katie.”
She reached up now, cupping his face in her hands and offering him a brilliant smile. “I’ve known forever which path me heart will take. I would not change this for anything. Tell David and Shiro that I’ve done my best for them always - if this is what must be done to make sure every world has a fighting chance, I’ll take it even without a death curse like you.” Her face hardened then as she stepped out of his path and pushed him towards Lysander who was waiting further uphill for the wizard. “Now go!”
He was almost to Lysander when he felt something evil and powerful and ancient crawl along his spine, robbing him briefly of his breath. He spun around to see a man calmly walking along the black rocks towards the weaponless Kathleen. By then, a breeze had picked up off the lake, clearing away the fog and chasing it towards a gray sky - the sunlight had only been able to reach their area for a few moments before the wispy clouds of a spring storm smothered it. The breeze gently played in Kathleen’s overabundance of red-gold curls, the same hair that had always made her look so much younger than her true age. Even now, she looked so small as the man approached her, a thick oily shadow trailing after him despite the lack of intense light anywhere.
Despite his distance, he could hear the man chuckle. “Kathleen Tierney. It has been awhile, hasn’t it?”
“Shite, are you really going to talk me to death, Nicodemus?”
“You’ve been a worthy opponent - nearly as worthy as Shiro.”
Kathleen only crossed her arms, and he wasn’t sure why he couldn’t move but he was frozen to his spot, ignoring that fact that he was right out in the open and that Lysander was undoubtedly glaring at his back, urging him to come along. He knew that the other Denarians would be closing in on this place - Deidre and Tessa and Tarsiel and Belias - but staring at Kathleen, strong and heartbreakingly defiant even though she knew Nicodemus wouldn’t make her death easy. He turned completely and, completely out of instinct, took a step back down towards her, his thoughts screaming at him not to leave her there.
Kathleen must have sensed him - she whipped her head around, curls flying, her mouth opened to shout a warning of retreat...
Nicodemus acted the moment she broke away, the large shadow shooting forward and enveloping her so quickly, he barely had time to react, reaching only for the hilt of the sword that she had given him, needing to act, needing to stop him...
“My god, my go-!”
She was screaming now and he turned towards Nicodemus, already beginning to move, fury enveloping him as he heard others begin their approach, the twisted and sickening fallen angels that had been moved into place by the Outsiders led by the one they had to stop. He felt the grip of the hilt in his hand and he prepared to draw it, to cut Nicodemus down where he stood - meeting the eldest of the Denarian’s eyes for a moment too long...
...too long...
“No!”
The world spun crazily and he was sure he felt someone tugging him backwards, screams of fury and pain around him, the smell of fresh blood (his? Katie’s?) mixing with the scent of rain and moss and the ever-present odor of the lake. Everything was black and green and red - there was so much red - and then there was the fleeting feeling of weightlessness and this time a different smell permeated his senses - sweeter and warmer and far too seductive for any mortal. The powerful arms that had pulled him away from the chaos that had erupted - what had happened? - let go, and he heard voices then in the warm green darkness, different from the cool Irish dawn. His head spun and screamed with a pain of two thousand years of anguish and hatred, glimpsed in only a second - not even time for a full soulgaze - but knowing it had touched some dark part of his soul, twisting and poisoning and ruining it all...
Oh god, Katie...
The voices were clearer now, but he couldn’t open his eyes, floating in the midst between a weary sleep and panicked alertness. It was magic, he knew - who had put him, a Warden, under this spell? Impossible - he needed to be there, to rip apart that fallen angel...he could still hear her screaming...
“The girl?”
“Safe for now. Lysander, what happened?” Copperfield. Even in the sluggish dream-state he was in, he recognized that excitable voice.
“He tried to save her.”
Another voice, unfamiliar, accented. “Fools. Both of them...”
“He’s injured.” Dull, throbbing pain at his side.
“He tried to fight Nicodemus using Amoracchius...she stopped him before she...”
Silence.
“I will take the sword to Shiro. The Council...they should not know of this yet.”
“What about him?”
More silence.
“I will watch him until he wakes up.”
“Thank you, Lysander.” Quieter now. “The Outsiders...they sent the Denarians to them. They knew that the Archive’s daughter was with us...”
“Damn it, how did they pull off another gambit?”
“David...” A weary sigh. “I will find a way to rectify this but right now, we must return the Archive’s daughter to her.” There was an audible grumble and then footsteps as the young man moved away from wherever they were. “Lysander, please tell me - did Kathleen...?”
“The Gyges ring was on her person when she died. We will have to find another item for the map.”
More silence and then came a single name, barely-restrained grief behind it, “...my god, Katie...what have you done?”
He stopped listening then, falling deeper and deeper into the darkness. He did not want to think about their loss, yet another one in so few months. He wanted them to succeed but even as they moved closer and closer to this battle, he was beginning to doubt. Doubt could fester - he was a Warden, he had seen what could be done by doubt. Perhaps they were playing things too safely, too cautiously - if they attacked with same powers that their enemies had...
Katie, her red hair now stained with blood...
Darkness crept into his thoughts and, in the middle of Summer’s heart, Justin DuMorne fell into a restless slumber.
:: Lough Leane, County Kerry, Ireland ::
The tiny group hiked quietly over one of the numerous low hills that surrounded Lough Leane, the faint bluish-gray traces of dawn starting to dance across the dew-soaked emerald knolls. Their worn boots or mud-stained sneakers squelched as they cautiously made their way down towards the black placid lake blanketed by a ghostly fog, the tallest of the group making even more careful steps due to the person he cradled in his arms - a girl, barely four, her eyes closed and completely unaware of her surroundings. They skirted across the wet obsidian rocks covered in thick white-splattered moss before coming to the very edge of the lake itself. The woman in their midst, her hair nearly as fiery as the sun’s rays, knelt by the water, reaching out and touching its cool surface very gently, tiny ripples disturbing the glass-flat surface - how she kept her balance with the large broadsword strapped her to back was impressive.
“Yes, this will be fine,” she confirmed in a heavy Irish brogue, standing up and rubbing her arms against the early morning chill. She turned to her other companion, a pale and impossibly beautiful man with green eyes. “You say the grave sites are here?”
The taller man’s jaw clenched in a repressed curse as he set the girl down on the plush moss and the pale man only shook his head. “No, they are not buried here. Some of their names are far too close to mortal sentimentality for them to rest here.” He walked further north along the slippery stones until he reached a flat platform of stone that jutted a few feet further out onto the lake itself. A dozen and a half pebbles, all polished to a gleaming white and moist with the morning dew, lay embedded into the speckled stone, in no particular pattern or order.
The woman followed him over as the girl began to stir, but the muscular man quickly quieted her down with a spoken spell and the little girl drifted back into a dreamless slumber. The red-haired woman knelt by the smooth stones, brushing her hand across one of the markers. The pale man, tall and dressed in the same shades of green that surrounded them in the Irish mountains, had a carefully neutral expression when the woman touched one of the stones, but the other man caught the way his fist clenched - it must have been the stone that belonged to Anastasia.
“How much longer do we have?” the woman asked, the wonder vanishing from her face as she rose to her feet.
The pale man grimaced. “Not long, I’m afraid. The Outsiders will have traced our path through Summer and alerted Nicodemus and his fellows. This place is protected by wards, but even it shall not last long if we continue to linger.”
The woman nodded, casting a concerned look at the muscular man and the girl. She seemed to be quickly thinking of a route of escape for them all, but failing. Creased worry lines appeared at the edges of her eyes and mouth, making her look far older than her thirty-some years. Even the cool and fresh descent of morning surrounding them did not ease the burden that seemed to suddenly weigh her down. How many years had it been now since she had been a part of this? She had not come willingly at first, even when the sword had first been pressed into her hand while she was still barely a schoolgirl in Cork, the words of her strongly religious mother still indelibly etched into her mind. If only the woman had known back then of the holy crusades her daughter would have been venturing off on...if only she knew what mortal danger all the worlds were in...
You must always believe in your faith, Kathleen, she remembered the voice from her youth saying as her mother calmly plaited her hair for church. You must sat your prayers to the angels...
“...and God will give you strength,” she said calmly and resolutely as she unfastened the clasps that held the mighty sword to her back. Knowing that the touch of iron would be harmful to the pale man, she instead handed it towards the other man. He looked at her, puzzled. She only smiled gently. “My journey ends here. You must give this sword back to my comrade.”
The tall man looked stricken by her request, knowing fully what she was asking of him. “Katie...”
“Shiro’ll understand,” she continued, looking down with fondness at Amoracchius, the familiarity of the sturdy hilt that she had gripped so often in the name of the Lord for over ten years. She knew what this sword truly was, knew how important it was to both of her missions. She turned to look up at the man, saw the indecision in his eyes. She reached up, resting a hand on his unshaven cheek. “You have been so helpful to all of us. Please understand I do this so that our mission can continue.”
“You don’t have to sacrifice yourself,” came the harsh reply, spat out from the shock. “There is still time.” Kathleen shook her head.
“I’ll not risk it. You must protect this child and you must get back to David and Shiro at all costs.” She turned to the pale man. “Lysander, you’ll do this for me, eh? Nicodemus’ll not rest 'til he sees me dead - Amoracchius musn’t fall into his hands. There’ve been...so many setbacks...” They were surrounded by the white stones of those setbacks - friends whose lives had been lost over the century as they struggled against everything to make sure that humanity and existence stood a chance against the oncoming war. Her heart went out to the one who still led them all - his ability to escape and vanish from the most horrendous of circumstances was testimony to his intent to see this to the bitter end. He had once told her that it was his duty to make sure none of his comrades had died in vain. But she knew him better than that. Once they had joined this fight, they had ceased being simply comrades.
They had become his family - they had all become family, bond by blood split and secrets shared.
Lysander, still as youthful-looking as he had been the night he had first met Anastasia seventy sixty years prior, nodded at Kathleen’s words, scooping the child from the other man’s arms. “It has been a privilege to fight alongside of you, Kathleen.”
She laughed, a low and husky sound. “Lysander, we’ve known each other for years and yet even now you refuse to call me Katie.” There was sadness in her voice as she quietly stroked the girl’s pale hair. After a few moments, she looked back up at him. “You stubborn bastard. I don’t know how Anastasia had ever put up with you.”
Lysander neither smiled at the comment about his former lover nor completely shut off whatever emotions the Grand Duchess always managed to stir up in the fae’s heart. Instead, he only nodded his head in acknowledgment before turning to navigate away from the granite-and-moss platform, the child still sleeping soundly in his arms. It was always that way with him, and she was no longer surprised by his aloofness - no, it had always balanced her fiery Irish tendencies perfectly with the other man right in the middle.
She turned to him now. “You must go now.”
His dark eyes glinted and she could feel the darkness that sometimes crept into his heart brush against his mind. “Come with us, Katie.”
She reached up now, cupping his face in her hands and offering him a brilliant smile. “I’ve known forever which path me heart will take. I would not change this for anything. Tell David and Shiro that I’ve done my best for them always - if this is what must be done to make sure every world has a fighting chance, I’ll take it even without a death curse like you.” Her face hardened then as she stepped out of his path and pushed him towards Lysander who was waiting further uphill for the wizard. “Now go!”
He was almost to Lysander when he felt something evil and powerful and ancient crawl along his spine, robbing him briefly of his breath. He spun around to see a man calmly walking along the black rocks towards the weaponless Kathleen. By then, a breeze had picked up off the lake, clearing away the fog and chasing it towards a gray sky - the sunlight had only been able to reach their area for a few moments before the wispy clouds of a spring storm smothered it. The breeze gently played in Kathleen’s overabundance of red-gold curls, the same hair that had always made her look so much younger than her true age. Even now, she looked so small as the man approached her, a thick oily shadow trailing after him despite the lack of intense light anywhere.
Despite his distance, he could hear the man chuckle. “Kathleen Tierney. It has been awhile, hasn’t it?”
“Shite, are you really going to talk me to death, Nicodemus?”
“You’ve been a worthy opponent - nearly as worthy as Shiro.”
Kathleen only crossed her arms, and he wasn’t sure why he couldn’t move but he was frozen to his spot, ignoring that fact that he was right out in the open and that Lysander was undoubtedly glaring at his back, urging him to come along. He knew that the other Denarians would be closing in on this place - Deidre and Tessa and Tarsiel and Belias - but staring at Kathleen, strong and heartbreakingly defiant even though she knew Nicodemus wouldn’t make her death easy. He turned completely and, completely out of instinct, took a step back down towards her, his thoughts screaming at him not to leave her there.
Kathleen must have sensed him - she whipped her head around, curls flying, her mouth opened to shout a warning of retreat...
Nicodemus acted the moment she broke away, the large shadow shooting forward and enveloping her so quickly, he barely had time to react, reaching only for the hilt of the sword that she had given him, needing to act, needing to stop him...
“My god, my go-!”
She was screaming now and he turned towards Nicodemus, already beginning to move, fury enveloping him as he heard others begin their approach, the twisted and sickening fallen angels that had been moved into place by the Outsiders led by the one they had to stop. He felt the grip of the hilt in his hand and he prepared to draw it, to cut Nicodemus down where he stood - meeting the eldest of the Denarian’s eyes for a moment too long...
...too long...
“No!”
The world spun crazily and he was sure he felt someone tugging him backwards, screams of fury and pain around him, the smell of fresh blood (his? Katie’s?) mixing with the scent of rain and moss and the ever-present odor of the lake. Everything was black and green and red - there was so much red - and then there was the fleeting feeling of weightlessness and this time a different smell permeated his senses - sweeter and warmer and far too seductive for any mortal. The powerful arms that had pulled him away from the chaos that had erupted - what had happened? - let go, and he heard voices then in the warm green darkness, different from the cool Irish dawn. His head spun and screamed with a pain of two thousand years of anguish and hatred, glimpsed in only a second - not even time for a full soulgaze - but knowing it had touched some dark part of his soul, twisting and poisoning and ruining it all...
Oh god, Katie...
The voices were clearer now, but he couldn’t open his eyes, floating in the midst between a weary sleep and panicked alertness. It was magic, he knew - who had put him, a Warden, under this spell? Impossible - he needed to be there, to rip apart that fallen angel...he could still hear her screaming...
“The girl?”
“Safe for now. Lysander, what happened?” Copperfield. Even in the sluggish dream-state he was in, he recognized that excitable voice.
“He tried to save her.”
Another voice, unfamiliar, accented. “Fools. Both of them...”
“He’s injured.” Dull, throbbing pain at his side.
“He tried to fight Nicodemus using Amoracchius...she stopped him before she...”
Silence.
“I will take the sword to Shiro. The Council...they should not know of this yet.”
“What about him?”
More silence.
“I will watch him until he wakes up.”
“Thank you, Lysander.” Quieter now. “The Outsiders...they sent the Denarians to them. They knew that the Archive’s daughter was with us...”
“Damn it, how did they pull off another gambit?”
“David...” A weary sigh. “I will find a way to rectify this but right now, we must return the Archive’s daughter to her.” There was an audible grumble and then footsteps as the young man moved away from wherever they were. “Lysander, please tell me - did Kathleen...?”
“The Gyges ring was on her person when she died. We will have to find another item for the map.”
More silence and then came a single name, barely-restrained grief behind it, “...my god, Katie...what have you done?”
He stopped listening then, falling deeper and deeper into the darkness. He did not want to think about their loss, yet another one in so few months. He wanted them to succeed but even as they moved closer and closer to this battle, he was beginning to doubt. Doubt could fester - he was a Warden, he had seen what could be done by doubt. Perhaps they were playing things too safely, too cautiously - if they attacked with same powers that their enemies had...
Katie, her red hair now stained with blood...
Darkness crept into his thoughts and, in the middle of Summer’s heart, Justin DuMorne fell into a restless slumber.