Disclaimer: Still don't own Carmilla (the series), or any recognizable characters.

Author's Note: So, after careful deliberation - or coin flipping, one of the two - I've decided to tackle the prequel to Summer Storm next. Not sure how long of a story this will be - since it IS a prequel, you already know how it ends. I guess we'll just have to see if I get inspired as I write. (It happened with Let's Pretend, so it might well happen here, too, for all I know.) Aside from maybe one or two characters, I'm going to have to invent pretty much everyone, and I have no events from the show to revise to fit the story, both of which will be a new thing for me, in terms of Carmilla stories.

Here goes...

Aberaeron,Ceredigion, West Wales, U.K.

September 19th, 1892

The mighty warrior stalked through the darkened forest in search of her prey.

She had to be careful, she knew. The creature she was hunting was no mindless beast, but a cunning and ruthless Unseelie predator. She'd never encountered a Winter fae before, but she'd heard enough to know they were all exceedingly dangerous - a description that was more than accurate when it came to a redcap. This one had been terrorizing the nearby village, murdering travelers and dying its hat with its victims' blood. Supposedly, redcaps needed to kill regularly, for if the blood staining their hats dried out, they would die. She didn't know if she believed that, since the fae seemed to pretty much live forever unless they were killed, and no fae she knew - all of whom were incapable of speaking any words that were untrue - had ever said such a thing to her. Ultimately, though, it didn't matter. This redcap showed no signs of stopping his killing spree, so she was just going to have to make him stop.

She stepped carefully over an exposed root, moving as quickly but stealthily as she could so that her armor would make as little noise as possible. She'd debated simply walking along the road into town, as that was where all the murders that they knew of had taken place, but had decided that would leave her too exposed. There were, after all, those who thought her current quest was too dangerous, and would have sought to stop her. It would also have made it easy for the redcap to ambush her. This way, at least, she would have cover to duck behind, should she need it. And who knew? Maybe she would be able to sneak up on the redcap. That would be appropriately ironic, she felt.

She couldn't count on that, though.

The sky was clear, moonlight illuminating the forest almost as brightly as daylight, to her. She gripped her sword nervously, though she worked to keep her anxiety off of her face. Fear was a weakness that she couldn't afford when dealing with the Unseelie, she knew. If she was afraid of them - if she let them know that she was afraid of them - she'd be giving them an advantage. She had to be strong. There were too many people counting on her to fail.

A twig snapped behind her.

She immediately whirled around, bringing up her sword without thinking to deflect the blade swinging at her head. Redcaps, she knew, tended to carry pikestaffs, weapons with wooden shafts and metallic heads. (Not iron, despite what some humans thought. No being of Faerie would - or even could - wield iron, nor wear iron shoes. Wolfram - or tungsten, as it was officially called - was a more accurate mortal equivalent of the Faerie-derived metal that most redcaps favored, from what she'd been told.) "There you are. I was wondering where you were hiding from me."

The redcap smiled mockingly at her. "And here you are," he replied, not seeming to notice as a drip of blood slid down from his cap onto his face. "How kind of you to present yourself. I'll be sure to thank your Queen for her offering."

She tensed her arms, then shoved the pikestaff up and away, making the redcap step back a couple of paces. "You're not going to be killing anyone else."

His smile widened. "No? And how do you believe you're going to stop me, little girl?"

In response, she simply brandished her sword. He chuckled, expression one of mocking contempt, and saluted her with his pikestaff. Then he attacked, making it clear that his first strike had been little more than a casual swipe.

She probably should have brought a shield, she decided as she ducked under one swing, deflected another, then hastily caught a third with her sword's guard. The redcap already had the advantage in terms of height, weight, reach, physical strength... She should have considered that his weapon being so long would give him one more advantage, especially if he kept his distance. Well, she thought, nothing to be done about it now. All she could do was get in close, then try and slip past his guard.

He laughed at her efforts, easily melting away from her attempted counterstrikes. "Now, really. If the Summer Queen actually wanted to stop me, she wouldn't have sent one lone, untrained changeling, would she?"

Not wanting to admit no one had actually sent her anywhere, she didn't reply - and truthfully, she didn't have the breath to spare for it, anyway. It was probably sheer luck that she hadn't taken any blows, but that same luck wasn't extending to letting her land any of her own.

Judging by his malicious expression, though, she probably didn't need to say anything; he'd figured it out.

It didn't matter, she decided. Yes, she was outclassed. Yes, she was untrained. Yes, she was a changeling. She wasn't just a changeling, though: she was the Summer Queen's daughter. As such, unlike other scions of fae-human unions, her magic was already developing, and being out in nature was the easiest place for her to make use of it.

When the first vines began wrapping around his ankle, he tugged it free with little trouble... but he was distracted enough for her to land her first hit. It was little more than a scratch, but she'd drawn first blood, and they both knew it. That angered him enough that the next vines went unnoticed until they'd solidly wrapped around both ankles. He knocked her away with a powerful strike with his pikestaff, which he then smoothly swung down to slash at the vines. She rolled to her knees, got one leg underneath herself, and lunged forward before he could free himself, her blade sinking into his chest just under his ribs, angled upward. He dropped his staff in shock, the gurgling sound that he-

"Josephine Yates!"

She started in surprise, falling over from her lunging position, the impact knocking the wooden sword from her grip. It took her a few seconds to reorient herself, the moonlit blood-soaked forest in her imagination being replaced by a mid-day, peaceful one.

Mostly peaceful, anyway. The birds nearby had been as startled by her father's unexpected presence as she had. "Papa?"

"What are you doing out here, Josephine?" He didn't sound angry - he never sounded angry, having far too kind a temperament - but he clearly wasn't happy that he'd had to come looking for her. He was still wearing his work clothes, indicating he'd come straight from the shipbuilding yard, and she felt a surge of guilt that she was cutting into his lunch break.

She'd inherited her red hair and light blue eyes from her father (though the curls in her hair hadn't come from either of her parents), though he was far more physically impressive. All her life, he'd been a sturdy, comforting presence, his work in ship construction contributing to his solid nature.

Her mother... was not around nearly as often.

"I was just playing," she said defensively, though she wasted no time in collecting her 'sword' and climbing to her feet. "My homework's already finished." Going to a human school was... interesting, though she always needed to be careful not to let anything Faerie-related slip. Magic lessons, when they happened, were so much easier.

She had, at least, had the foresight to wear a dark brown dress that wouldn't show any dirt - she didn't want to think about what a white dress would have looked like by then - so no one would immediately know what she'd been up to unless they got a close look at her, and since she was only in the woods behind their house, she was certain she could clean up and change before that happened.

Her father must have agreed, as that didn't even seem to register to him as a concern. "You know you shouldn't be out here by yourself," he said instead as he began leading her back toward their house. "It isn't safe."

"I'm sure the Queen has people watching me at all times," she replied. Any guards that might be there were very good at hiding, so to an eight-year-old, their presence wasn't all that intrusive. (Supposedly, by the time she was in her teens, that would change, and she'd value her privacy far more highly. She wasn't sure what difference a few more years would make, herself.)

"Whether she does or not isn't not the issue, young lady," her father told her as sternly as he could... which wasn't very. (Admittedly, that was in comparison to the few times her mother had used such a tone around her. She was pretty sure nobody could out-stern a Faerie Queen.) "You're not allowed to use your magic out where someone might see you, and you know it."

"I'm sorry..." She honestly hadn't meant to, but when she'd been snapped out of her fantasy, she'd seen that she'd been actually spawning vines to clutch at an imaginary opponent. Fortunately, they'd only moved where she directed them to, and even that had stopped, so anyone who came across them now - assuming they didn't get eaten by a forest animal or simply die - wouldn't think anything of them.

"I know you are, Josephine," he said, stopping and crouching down to give her a hug. "You just need to be more careful in the future. If you do something that draws too much of the wrong kind of attention to yourself, or end up getting hurt because of one of your games, your mother will take you away to Faerie to raise you herself. As much as I know you want to meet your sister, I'd miss you terribly if that happened."

"I will be, I promise!" she said, hugging him back as tightly as she could manage. She did want to meet her sister - she'd heard about Hazel, but the duties of the Summer Princess (to say nothing of not wanting to attract attention to her little sister and place her at risk) had thusfar kept her from visiting - and having her mother around more often would be nice, but giving up her father would be far too high a price to pay. As long as she behaved herself...

What was the worst that could happen?

"You're certain your source is trustworthy?" a sibilant voice asked. It seemed to have no discernible source, but only because the communications portal it was coming from was hidden behind a veil. It was masculine, though any human who'd seen the creature producing it would have been too horrified to give much thought as to the gender of the speaker.

They'd also die too quickly to figure it out, even if they did manage to try.

"Entirely." This speaker was a woman, her voice honey-smooth and dripping with seduction. "She always is."

"If anyone would be capable of getting past whatever defenses the Summer Queen has set up and killing her daughter, it would be a daeva."

"And what is to stop the Queen herself from intervening?" a new voice asked. The speaker, a small creature, twisted and gnarled, was the only one of them actually present on Earth, hidden along with the portal under the veil. It was there as a scout, and would be acting as an observer, reporting on the outcome of the upcoming events. "As this involves her daughter, it will count as a matter of the Summer Court. She will be under no restrictions as to what she can or cannot do."

The woman laughed. Had any humans been present, they would have been utterly intoxicated by the sound, regardless of gender or preference. "Don't worry about that. The Archdemon plans to seal off that entire area once the daeva arrives. She won't be able to tell what happened."

The first speaker didn't seem to share her confidence. "If she does find out, the best we could hope for would be to live just long enough to regret it."

"You'll see..."

Gates began opening all over the ground surrounding the property where the youngest princess of Summer was residing. (Why she was there, living amongst the human cattle, none on the demon plane could understand. Given that it meant they had a clear shot at eliminating her, though, they were not about to complain.) Demonic entities of all shapes and sizes began emerging, heading for the house. In the air, almost two kilometers above and nearly a kilometer away, space itself seemed to warp and twist, then another portal formed.

This one was different than the others, though. Those had been stable doorways between worlds, crimson in color, and had been closed well after the being or beings using it had stepped through. This was a series of flashes of blue-white light, then a hole was punched in reality and a form zoomed through, the portal closing immediately. A moment later, another portal briefly formed, a blindingly luminous something erupting from within it. The second arrival instantly flew after the first.

Down on the ground, the peaceful night had devolved into chaos. The hidden fae guards that Josephine had correctly guessed were present promptly engaged the demonic attackers. That they were outnumbered significantly seemed to make no difference to them... and it quickly became apparent why. Silvery blades flashed, precise and intense magical fire burned clear through flesh and bone with little to no difficulty, and bursts of electricity paralyzed those who were too fast to be caught by other attacks.

None of the invading demons even cleared the property line.

This wasn't the first such 'unofficial' assault of this type that they had repelled. There were a number of powers in the supernatural world that had some problem or other with Summer in general, of their Queen in particular, and any time they learned of one of her children living in the mortal world, that child became an instant target. Growing up amongst humans gave them invaluable insight when it came to mortal affairs that impinged upon fae concerns, though, so the Queen persisted in allowing it. (She did, of course, visit as often as she could manage.) The princess's guards had gotten to be very good at their job, and thusfar had even kept young Josephine or her father from knowing about any of the attacks. From all appearances, this was going to be just another quiet night, from their perspective.

The first hint that things might not go quite so smoothly this time was when the sylphs reported they were under attack.

In and of itself, that wasn't completely unusual. It wouldn't be the first time an enemy had tried an assault from the sky. That was why there were sylphs up there to begin with, after all. They'd always been able to handle any airborne attackers with ease, though.

This time, however, the ground forces began losing contact with them. Communications spells bound the defenders together, but something was disrupting them to the point where no one on the ground could make out anything the sylphs might have been trying to say. Even then, they'd still been able to sense them... until one mental signature simply vanished. Then another. And another. Something up there was tearing through them, and worse, it wasn't even slowing down. The sylphs were evidently in pursuit, but it seemed to be ignoring them unless they were physically in its way. That kind of confidence was a bad sign - all the more so that it seemed to be warranted.

They would have been more worried, had they known what was transpiring up in the clouds.

Sylphs were air elementals. When it came to aerial combat, mostly invisible beings that pretty much were the air were difficult opponents to beat, particularly when they could use the combat arena against you (tornadoes and creating vacuums to remove any air to breathe were popular tactics) and had poisonous bites. From the moment they'd been assigned to watch over the young princess from above, they'd maintained air supremacy.

Until now. Unlike those on the ground, they were able to sense the intruder... and it was unlike anything they'd ever encountered. They were bound by their Queen to stop anyone attempting to harm her daughter or perish in the attempt, so that was exactly what they did.

It simply went through the first sylph without even stopping. The being, they saw, looked almost human. It was female, covered in scaled armor of such a dark green shade it looked almost black, had reptilian eyes, and sharp metallic silvery 'feathers' in place of its hair. Sprouting from its back were the large black bat wings that held it aloft. In each hand it held a jagged black sword, sharp enough to cut the very air.

Literally, in the sylphs' case.

It was not as powerful as the Queen, but it could easily be mistaken for a lesser god, and it was clear that none of them stood a chance of stopping it. Nevertheless, they'd been given a command by the Queen. Even if they'd wanted to, they were physically incapable of disobeying.

Head-on attacks, strikes from above, from below, from behind... Nothing worked. Any of them that got close enough while attacking were slashed apart, or dispersed with some kind of violet energy beam.

That was when the second intruder made itself known, smashing into the first from below and knocking it away from the sylphs.

This one looked like a shooting star. There might have been a person inside the ball of fire, but it was far too bright for even the sylphs to look at. They didn't have to look at it to sense that it was of Summer, and whoever or whatever it was, it was clearly much better equipped to fight the winged woman.

It - she - must have realized that, because, despite the hateful look she cast at it, she immediately continued on her course, trying to outrun the Summer guards. When the new arrival pursued it, drawing far enough ahead of the sylphs that their senses were no longer being overwhelmed by the combined auras of the two, it became obvious who it must have been; all the more so when she ordered them to pull back and let her handle it... and they had to obey.

Only the Princess could modify the Queen's orders in such a situation (usually, even she couldn't do that, but the mortal world was the Princesses' realm of responsibility, and the Queens gave them certain latitude), and this was only to prevent her subjects from throwing their lives away for nothing.

As the Princess chased the unidentified intruder toward the ground, an insanely powerful burst of hellfire erupted from seemingly nowhere on the surface, shooting forward from a location in the woods toward the town in a beam big and thick enough to be seen from over a kilometer in the air. (This also made the sylphs realize just how far down they'd been chasing the intruder before being ordered to pull back.) Before it reached town, though, there was a muted flash, and it abruptly began bouncing off of something, heading off in another direction. When it reached a point roughly equal in distance, it was reflected off of something else. Again and again, until a massive five-pointed star. A pentagram, large enough to be seen from the air... and that completely cut Josephine and her father off from the rest of the world, to say nothing of their defenders.

And the intruder had gotten inside before it had enclosed the house within the pentagram in the middle.

The sylphs could only hope she hadn't been the only one to get through.

The house shook.

Josephine wasn't a really heavy sleeper, even after as active a day as she'd had. She'd taken care of her chores - she wasn't entirely certain that sort of thing was appropriate for a princess, but she had no real idea what was, and didn't overly trouble herself with it - and gotten to bed on time, falling asleep even as her father was tucking her in.

The house shook again, and something glass fell down and shattered in another room.

It wasn't a big house - two bedrooms, one lavatory, a kitchen (though she was pretty sure some brownies her mother had assigned to the house took care of a lot of the cooking, as well as most of the cleaning), a dining room, a sitting room (where the fireplace that she sometimes - under careful supervision - practiced her fire magic was located), her father's workshop, and an attic - but for just the two of them, it didn't need to be. Most of the furniture was carved from mahogany or walnut, any metal used something her mother had provided that was disguised as iron or steel, to prevent any suspicion. It was comfortable, it was home, and it had never, even been shaken like that.

Now that she was fully awake, she could tell it was the ground itself shaking when it happened again... and then there was suddenly hellish red light streaming in through the closed curtains on her window. Even as young as she was, she could tell something was horribly wrong. She scrambled out of bed, calling, "Papa!"

"Josephine! Stay in your room!" he yelled back, the alarm in his voice making her ignore his order.

She'd never heard her father sound scared, before.

There was a thunderous sound from the front of the house, a titanic impact combined with splintering wood. She yanked her bedroom door open, not even caring that she was only wearing a white nightgown, and hurried out into the hall. She reached the entryway to the sitting room and stopped dead in her tracks, unable to understand what she was seeing.

Her father was sprawled on the floor, the occasional movement reassuring her that he was still alive, while two alien forms battled within her house. The fiery one was too painfully bright to look closely at either one, though she was able to catch a quick glance at the winged one when it was knocked across the room to slam into the far wall. It wasted no time in climbing to its - her? - feet... and saw Josephine.

It reacted instantly, launching itself at her, arms crossed, clearly intending to use both of its horrible-looking swords to take her head off.

She froze. She should have been reacting, she knew that - running, trying to defend herself with her magic, something - but she couldn't move. Couldn't think. All she could see was the horrible creature bearing down on her.

Right up until the other form smashed into it, redirecting them both into and then through the outside wall.

It took Josephine a long moment to shake off her fear even just enough to run to her father's side. "Papa?" she whispered, not wanting to catch that horrid thing's attention again. She knelt down next to him, shaking him. "Papa, are you alright?"

There was a long moment of silence, and her heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest. She could hear the fight still going on outside - it sounded even more violent, as if her rescuer wasn't holding back now that they weren't in the line of fire - and if she looked out through the hole they'd made, she could see what looked like a wall of fire. Even from inside, she could smell it, a rotting eggs stench that even she knew could only mean one thing: hellfire.

Before the implications of that could terrify her too deeply, she was distracted by her father deliberately taking a deep breath, then saying, "...I told you to stay in your room."

"I don't think that would have helped," she defended. Before she could say anything else, there was a horrible screeching from outside, and she could feel something die, something that should have been able to live forever.

Silence reigned for almost an entire minute... then a woman she didn't recognize appeared in the improvised doorway.

She wasn't the creature, Josephine knew that. On some instinctive level, she'd known which of them had died. This woman seemed to be in her late teens or early twenties, but Josephine had been raised with Faerie in her life, and knew better than to assume that. Something about her felt the same as the Queen, but... less, somehow.

Summer, Josephine realized a few seconds later. The young woman - clad in armor that looked like it had been made from dragon scales, visible now that she wasn't engulfed in her fiery battle aura - was from Summer. Was Summer, in a way. So there was only one person she could be. "H-Hazel?" Josephine asked, stunned. Too much had happened in too short a time for her to be able to process it all. She was having trouble even taking in new details.

The woman - Hazel - was at her side in a flash, the subtle magical touch she used to check on her condition reminding Josephine so much of her (their) mother that she nearly started crying. "Are you okay, Josie?"

"W-wha...?"

Her sister apparently took that as a 'yes', sighing in relief and giving her a quick hug. She was shorter than the Queen (which, admittedly, wasn't terribly difficult; Josephine had never met another woman as tall as Queen Titania), with light brown hair that was tied back, and brown eyes. Vertically slitted eyes. Like hers might one day be, if she chose her fae heritage over her human side.

Josephine hugged her back, shaking so badly she might have fallen down had the Princess not been supporting her. It went on for a while - she couldn't have kept track of time right then if her life depended on it - before her sister let go, pulling back. "The barrier will be down shortly. I need to go check and make sure whoever enlisted the daeva's help has cleared out. Don't worry," she added before Josephine could protest. "Your other guards will be along shortly, and after something like this, Mom will be coming here as soon as she can." She rested a hand on Josephine's father's back, healing energy spreading out from the contact. "Your father will be fine," she promised. She stood up, glancing at the wall of fire outside. As she'd predicted, it was already fluctuating and stuttering, its collapse imminent. "I'll see you around, Josie," she said, ruffling her sister's hair affectionately, then she was gone.

"Wow," Josephine said softly. Her sister was amazing. She'd heard stories, yes, but they fell far short of the reality of the Summer Princess. That, she decided. That was the kind of hero she wanted to be, one day. She wasn't sure about the Princess part, but everything else...?

Absolutely.

There was one other thing she was sure of. "Josie...?" she echoed slowly, tasting it as she watched her father haul himself up off the floor. Josie.

She liked the sound of it.