Anyone else would've mistaken their chanting for the wind that night.

Victoria's heart burned as she sprinted through the forest. Bare footfalls thudded so hard on the dirt that her ankles felt close to giving out. She spun, eyes searching desperately for something remotely recognisable in the area apart from towering trees and this damned fog!

'Oh god- Oh God!' It was the first chance she had alone to recognise the sticky substance smeared on her body, dripping off her hands and filling her nose with a smothering metallic stench that made her gag. The mixture of disgust and closing dread rolled her stomach but she couldn't stay still. They were coming for her!

It echoed around in her skull, bouncing off her brain to the point where she clutched her head in pain.

'LEAVE ME ALONE!' She shrieked as her knees buckled.

What do you do when you feel your life boiling down to one moment? When your weak, desperate and not enough anymore, who do you look to? Family were too far away and to self-serving to care about spawn. Friends? Victoria's left her to save their own skins… or did she leave them? Details are such grey little things. Like worms.

A gentle hand brushed against her back as she cried. Victoria bucked wildly away with a demented screech, her limbs kicked and punched towards whoever had caught her. The mystery-person snatched her wrists and pinned her against the closest tree with ease, another hand pressing her mouth shut.

'Be still!'

A twig snapped behind the tree and they both froze in place. The thick fog around them parted in smoking swirls as they slipped through the terrain with liquid fluidity. These hooded figures glided through the forest in an almost unearthly manner, pacing in calm, methodical strides.

Victoria somehow heaved her gaze to the stranger. A woman, tall and slender with striking blonde hair and such piercing green eyes that she was glad that the woman was glaring at the hooded figures as slowly stalked past. If looks could kill took a whole new meaning.

A moment passed.

Then two.

Only when the chanting had dulled down into faint, indecipherable gibberish did the woman step back from smushing her body against the tree.

'Now I will take my hand off your mouth. You will remain silent. Understand?' She spoke softly, but with a faint accent that certainly wasn't American.

Victoria nodded.

The woman peeled back her hand, her tense expression eased when Victoria kept to her word and remained quiet. They took the time to regard each-other quickly. The woman wore a pristine white dress that seemed ripped out of a fantasy and in the right light her hair almost glistened with small jewels woven into it.

'Who are you?' She breathed, unable to maintain eye-contact with the stranger for long before checking over her shoulder for the hooded figures to re-appear like a horror film jump-scare.

'I'm here to help. You called for me Victoria.' She brushed a ratty piece of blood clotted hair out of Victoria's face and gently cupped her cheek.

She twitched away from the touch, but such an entrancing expression sucked her further into her sway. Fresh tears welled in her eyes. They streaked down her face in fat drops that cut through the caked grime. 'I wanted to explore my spiritual side not get hauled off by the cool-aid cult of witches banging on about freeing shit with virgin blood. Like, I'm not even a virgin!' Victoria babbled as they started to sneak back the way she came. 'Are you a spirit? They kept raving about spirits a-and cleansing the world!'

'I am The Guardian of Tir na Nog. Protector of the lonely and heartbroken. My name is Niamh, child.' She hushed sympathetically, 'I won't let them hurt you anymore.'

A hysterical scoff escaped, 'Fat lot of good you've been! Where were you when I was kidnapped? Where were you when- when…!'

'I've been trapped here for a long time. The fog was once a way to protect souls in Tir na Nog. Now, the gods use it as a cage.' Niamh stalked through the trees, only to duck back behind them at the slightest swirl of the fog. 'But you have the chance to make this right.'

'H-how?'

Suddenly, a bright flash of light struck between them, blasting the two away.

Victoria screeched, scrabbling in the dirt until she managed to climb to a stand. Everything swirled in a sickening motion, gravity spiralled and she felt herself staggering and hitting the ground once again. The hooded creature was all she could untangle from the dizzied visions and she choked on her thundering heart. 'NIAMH!'

Thunder echoed so powerful the ground itself quaked. Out of nothing the woman in white summoned a long sceptre of bleached wood, a strange circular piece of glass was fixed into the twined top. The glass changed colour as it swooped past the trees and Niamh slammed the staff into the ground. The world itself bent to her will as another roll of thunder forbade the hooded one's fates. The trees contorted, snapped and splintered as if it had bones to break. The twisting branches snagged the hooded ones around Niamh and Victoria, raising them into the air and curling into their bodies until it crushed them all in the canopy.

Niamh grinned. 'They will never touch us or this land again.'

'H-how?' Victoria propped herself up against the tree but flinched away in fear of being its next victim.

'All gods are given power through belief child. Yours allowed me to claim my sceptre and protect you.' She pointed to the mangled bodies. 'Now come. We escape this place. Where did you come from?'

Victoria looked around, taking a shuddered breath before nodding. She pointed to two trees that bowed and knitted together like folded gnarled hands. 'I went through those. It should lead to a tunnel that goes into the Sea caves. Those crones doused me in blood and some creepy glowing shit happened before I escaped. I don't know what will happen when we get there.'

Niamh just smiled, her hand gliding over the hilt of her sceptre. 'Don't dwell on such worry.'

For the first time in her ordeal Victoria felt… safe. No one could touch her with Niamh by her side. A small smile twitched her mouth. She beckoned and began to trace back her steps through the fog.

After a small amount of time they found the mouth of the tunnel, a yawning hole that inclined into the mountainside. Two pillars blocked the path with runes carved into the stone that radiated a dominating ancient magic. The pressure was enough to make both women rub their temples gently.

'Can your magic get through this?' Victoria swallowed nervously.

'No. This spell was cast by a god much stronger than I…' Niamh found it difficult to approach the pillars, pain evident in her expression. 'However, we can trick it. The living ones may pass back into your realm. We just need it to believe we are you.' Niamh glided back to Victoria, 'Let me have your body.'

'What?!' Victoria's eyes went wide.

'All you'll need to do is agree. I'll travel to the living world, dispose of the scum who did this to you and then come back to break down the barrier from the other side.'

Shaky strides had Victoria pacing away. Frustration built as she couldn't focus with that energy messing with her head. She cried out.

'Do you trust me?' Niamh's whispered words broke through the compressed fury that deafened her.

'Yes!'

'Then believe in me.' Niamh took Victoria's blood crusted hands and entwined them in her pale slender fingers.

Victoria looked up at the beauty in front of her. A vision who was willing to save someone as dirty and desperate as her. A small pang of adoration sparked in her chest and, somehow, Niamh responded, growing brighter like an angel.

'Say it.'

'I- I…'

Niamh smiled and let go of Victoria's hands, she held up the sceptre and through the glass, watched her with sharp scrutiny.

'I believe in you.'

By the time Victoria had the chance to look anywhere else the sceptre was taken away. In Niamh's place stood… Victoria. Deep brown curly hair replaced blonde, her dress changed into a business suit, the only thing that didn't change were her stunning eyes.

Slowly Niamh stepped back. Through the pillars with staff in hand. A spark of green momentarily froze her, but It didn't hurt any more as she passed through. She looked back at Victoria a triumphant grin on her face.

'You'll come back for me, right?'

Niamh responded nodding gently. 'There will be more Victoria… lost in the fog. Should you find them make sure they believe in me too. I'll be able to protect you better if more souls believed in me.'

'Yes.'

With that, Niamh disappeared into the tunnel.

In the silent fog, Victoria realised she couldn't feel the cold. The wind that rattled the trees didn't tousle her hair or brush her skin.

Numb. She was numb.

Slowly, through the licking fog she saw them, the wind had stopped yet the rustled noises churned into the heart stabbing chanting. The hooded creatures relentlessly closed in on her and all Victoria could do was turn to the gateway.

'Niamh!' She cried, checking over her shoulder as the horrors slithered closer. She pressed forward but the pillars blazed with furious green energy, throwing her back from the escape. 'NIAMH!'

The only thing she felt was fear.

…

Her wretched screams echoed through the tunnel, but Niamh had other priorities. She could smell the sea, hear the waves she ached to listen to again. The cold prickling against her skin made her heart rise with unadulterated joy and she laughed. Oh, how she laughed as she marched through the sea tunnel, her eyes casting on every witch that sat chanting for her return!

'Mistress. The world has changed since your last visit.' One of her followers shimmied forward on her knees in the wet sand.

'And how I despise it so.' Niamh sighed. 'But we have work to do I take it?'

'New creatures have surfaced. Mutants and other super powered beings. They- they aren't natural my lady. They poison the land.'

'And this is what you ask of me in repayment.'

The witches nodded.

'Very well. But Tir na Nog is fading. The gods are not as strong as they once were. I wish to restore it to the paradise it once was before the void swallows it.' Her eyes landed on the surf, the shallow waves that went back and forth in bubbling delight. She fought the melancholy that washed over her, only allowing steady steps as she made it to the mouth of the cave.

'You need more belief?'

'No,' she smiled softly. 'I need utter devotion.'