Slowly I felt the pressure against my body fade as Mab rose back to her feet, dissolving the throne behind her. The snow across the floor had risen to four inches in depth, sticking to the bottom of my feet and coating my fingers from where I rested uneasily. Most of it for a couple of feet around was coated red with my blood.
"Oberon is free within the Nevernever, Winter Knight. Find him. Seal him away again." She ordered with a forced calm to her voice that failed to reach her eyes. I wouldn't expect her of all people to start trembling, but a shiver slithered down her spine, and a sense of understanding seemed to speak to me from the same place as the raving fear - that such a being coming back into power again could bend the Queens to his will as easily as she had done to me.
That kind of force wasn't meant to walk in our world, not anymore. It was the reason the true heavy-hitters rarely strayed outside of their lairs in the Nevernever, relying instead upon weaker subjects and servants to do their bidding amongst the mortals, and on the very rare occasion when they did have to step in to do something personally, they didn't hang around very long even then.
They would break the world around them if they did.
I barely found my voice long enough to respond to what Mab had said. "Why am I the only one who can do this?"
That distant look came back into her eyes again as memories of the past played before them, and the temperature fell so far that the blood in my ears froze up. I heard her words as if through a murky sludge, the words blessedly faint. My frosted breaths came quickly enough to count as hyperventilation.
"Ferrovax would kill any of the Sidhe- for his own protection. His kind did not escape unscathed from Oberon's desires, and weakened though we Queens now are if the King should draw forth his reigns again.. 'than his Will be done,'" she quoted on a note that still managed to ring in my ears.
I swallowed dryly as my own fear clawed away at my chest and every sense I had finally started screaming to find the deepest hole I could and hide there until this was all over. I'll be honest and say that I indulged that thought and the imminent wisdom it contained for about a small eternity, and even as I did so, I also knew that I couldn't find a place deep enough where pushing my head under the sand and waiting for the terror to fade away might even be a possibility.
I mean, Hell's bells, I'm pretty damn strong for a wizard of the White Council, but this fight was so far above my power grade, it wasn't just a matter of not being in the same zip-code - we weren't even on the same freaking planet. And I was still trying to recuperate from the damage and expenditure of strength that the last battle days ago had taken out of my if I had a hundred more years of experience, equipment, and knowledge to work with, I knew in my heart that it still wouldn't have been enough preparation time.
I was also reasonably certain that, outside of my grandfather, almost no one else on the White Council that was stronger than I was would be able to make any kind of a difference, either. And we were currently out of defunct satellite stations to drop on Oberon's skull from high orbit.
Sometimes you just have to realize when your strength alone isn't enough. When you just can't dig any deeper and pull out something of a miracle in the eleventh hour. When the deck is so stacked against you, you may as well be blindfolded, deaf, and unable to use your hands.
Right then and there, I knew I couldn't do this.
Abruptly there was a loud knocking from outside, and Karrin's concerned voice echoed distantly down to my level, "Harry? Harry, what's going on in there?" Mab looked off toward the sound before striding toward the doorway again. She stopped just inside of it and told me one last thing before vanishing back into Arctis Tor.
"You have seventy-two hours before the King's strength revives to what it once was, my Knight. If that should happen... " without needing to finish her grim tidings she trailed off and faded from my sight about an instant before Karrin came stumbling down and into the room right where Mab had just been standing.
Her face fled from one emotion and wild thought to the next, settling upon imminently concerned as she glanced around at the conditions of the area and my own form covered in blood.
"My god, what happened in here?" she questioned in a tone of reprove and worry. She approached through the inches thick snow and crouched down to place a hand on either of my shoulders, lifting me upright and staring at my face. Karrin could see something of my state of mind reflected in my eyes, the way I was shuddering. What was coming affected me on an instinctual level as deeply as the instincts of the Winter Knight had driven me to lust for Mab, only now they compelled me to escape.
I wanted to cling to her, to hold her in that moment and never let go.
"Harry, what happened? What's wrong?" She asked me softly. I could barely make out her voice through the frozen blood in my ear-canals, but that gentle tone seemed to reach through the bundle of strangling terror and latch onto the real me underneath, shining a light through the overwhelming darkness. It wasn't long, lasting only a moment or two. Didn't have to be long, really. Staring up into her eyes, so full of concern and the need to protect me of all people, that I was reminded of the last time I had looked upon her with my Sight open.
And that one, crystal-clear image of an beautiful angel with eyes of azure flame dredged up with it dozens more. Not just of her, and not just in my Sight, but of the reasons why I was even resting on the Waterbeetle right then and there - it reminded me of all of the things I had done, both good and ill, of all of the times that I had fought through my terror and managed to at least limp through to confront the next instance of near-impossible odds, and then the one after that, in a line of hard-assed battles trailing all the way back to my very first real fight - against He Who Walks Behind.
And dammit if I'm not still alive and kicking.
I may not have always come through on my own merits, but I knew that the higher the odds were stacked against me, the harder I pushed to knock them back down to my level. This time I was just going to have to find a lever big enough to do that and then some.
And suddenly the fear of what was to come - it wasn't gone, but it was placated. Soothed. That cloying desperation was vanquished, however, and I knew that it wouldn't find a way to seep into my thoughts again unless I willingly let it. I had too much left in my life to give up, roll over, and let some monster creep out from under the bed to eat me as I slept. If I was going to die during this endeavor, it was going to be on my feet and screaming my denial straight into its face.
I leaned up and kissed Karrin. Her eyes widened, her lips were tense, and her hands gripped my shoulders just a little tighter at first. But she gradually relaxed into it after a handful of seconds, and I only broke it off when the need for air overcame the abrupt romanticism I felt in that moment. "Thank you," I whispered to her.
Karrin blinked and pulled back from me, her emotions suddenly influx. "You're going to leave again, aren't you," she stated quietly.
"I have to." I swallowed dryly. "This is worse than Chichén Itzá. I don't think I've ever faced anything this large before... and I can't bring you, or Thomas, and maybe not even my grandfather into this one, Murph."
I wearily pushed up to my feet and stumbled a couple of steps toward the bathroom to get cleaned up, glancing at Karrin's concerned visage as I swayed slightly on my feet and hesitated in mid-step. I managed to run some warm water and gingerly set about melting the blood in my ears until they were unclogged again.
Seventy-two hours. Hell's bells, but that's a short time frame.
She carefully walked up behind me and watched until I was done twenty minutes later. "This is it, isn't it?" She asked.
I only nodded my head. I knew I'd probably never get this shot again with Karrin. We had pushed too far, too hard, and gone through too much strife just to get this one night together. Backing out now would be breaking the camels back after everything else.
At least we had managed one kiss before the war was lost.
"Okay," she said, and then again louder as if trying to convince herself. "Okay. I'll... you know where to find me if you change your mind, Harry." She stared at me in the mirror and I met her gaze for a moment, and then in a swirl of bloodied, golden curls, Karrin Murphy walked up to the deck of the Waterbeetle and out of my love-life forever.
A short time later and my ears were dealt with, the bleeding contained, and I was standing inside Edinburgh. I had wasted roughly an hour of that precious countdown to doomsday healing up and preparing myself, taking measure of what I thought I was capable of and who I should go to with this.
As I had said earlier, it was improbable that anyone else on the White Council would be able to help me out with this. I don't know if even the Merlin would have the necessary oomph to contribute in a meaningful way, but if it was just a matter of swinging the bigger stick, than all of the Senior Council put together might not have been enough. Mab would have told me outright to seek them out if she wouldn't have simply made some kind of contact through her cats paws or messengers.
For whatever reason, she had sought me out specifically for this task. That meant it wasn't about who could hit the hardest- Oberon had essentially won that contest when he took on over a dozen capital-D Dragons in their prime turf and still shined their clocks quite nicely along the way.
So I had to find another way, a means more akin to what the Sidhe often relied upon- subtlety and entrapment. The only man I trusted on the Council enough for that was a man I had been at odds with from time to time, and the last time we had spoken he had forewarned me of the dangers of Demonreach.
I could have tried my grandfather, but frankly I had relied on him too often over the last few years, and Blackstaff or no, I didn't want to risk his life again after what we had barely survived at Chichén Itzá.
I knew the Gatekeeper had a different measure of power than the rest of us and that he was willing to at least consider helping out when it came to this kind of thing stirring up, as he had when the former Summer Lady, Aurora, had gone mad so many years ago. It was worth a trip to try and convince him to give me a hand again now.
After wandering through the halls and past the occasional young Warden in place I found Rashid's dwelling here and stepped through the open doorway, pausing just inside to knock with the end of my borrowed staff.
Silence followed.
I looked around uneasily as that silence stretched without interruption.
Warily I tapped my staff again before stepping deeper inside and calling out, "Rashid? Gatekeeper!" into the large room. The man himself stepped out of the shadows toward the back of the room at the second attempt and regarded me with an equally wary stance, gripping an ornate gray staff in hand.
"Doom follows you deeply, doesn't it Dresden?" He questioned slowly.
I frowned at the word play. "Care to explain that a little clearer?" I asked him in turn.
"Hrn." Without answering he gestured to either side of me and the doorway soared shut behind my back and locked into position with no more sound than a soft rush of wind.
I didn't get a sense from him that he was going to attack, but I had learned to have a back-up plan in place irregardless of what the situation looked like. I gripped my staff tighter and began focusing some will into it just in case.
Rashid simply shook his head and lowered his own staff before setting it aside and approaching one of the couches near the back wall.
"I suppose I should welcome you to my abode, Knight Dresden," he stated in a soft tone that nevertheless cleared the distance between us easily. Hearing him repeat my current title was more than a little unnerving, particularly in the inflection he applied to it. "So, welcome. If you'd care to release the Soulfire burning that staff and settle down we could begin discussing what brings you here." His tone didn't change in the slightest as he mentioned Soulfire, and while I wondered how he had known to recognize that power gathering, I also wondered why I had delved into that particular source.
I slowly let go of my gathering energy and will and looked around for somewhere else to sit other than beside him. He motioned toward another couch nearby and I took the seat a little rougher than needed, settling the staff across my lap in easy reach.
He looked at me a little closer before making another note of... curiosity, I suppose, and sighing. It stirred up a flicker of annoyance.
"You seem to attract more trouble than should be mortally possible, Dresden. All of the battles you have had to endure, the sacrifices made. And now this." He just stared at me until I cracked and glanced away first.
"How much do you know?" I asked evenly.
"What, your recent falling into Winter's Court? Or your succession from Hellfire? Perhaps you'd even care to know why Oberon has been freed after ten thousand years?" He questioned in turn. Warning bells began ringing in my head as he went from one point of contention within my life to the next, and he let out a low laugh at my bewildered expression. "I study more than just the Outer Gates, Dresden. I look in on the Nevernever in ways you can not yet realize. I saw your... acceptance ceremony with Mab, as I suspect most of Faerie did," he explained.
"Likewise, I have my own sources that I turn to and confide in, just as you have..." he paused once as though considering something different, then deciding against it, "yours. The nature of one fire to another is easily scented considering the scar it gave me," gesturing toward his face where I knew he was burned his answer only opened up a new area of consideration.
When did he encounter Hell or Soulfire? But Rashid pushed onward without giving me a chance to ask, and though it might have been interesting to have heard his backstory, I knew that it wasn't as important as what he might know about the imminent threat.
"The Sidhe King was secured within a hallowed and hollowed section at the depths of the Earth. This planet's core was the perfect prison for all of the swirling, pure metal at it's heart, but the space opened left it available to others who knew where the opening Way could be found. I can not yet fully answer who has unchained him from that place, but I may answer why more easily."
Rashid looked over his shoulder toward the shadows where he had seemingly emerged from earlier. I followed his gaze and saw a pale ring of gem ran the length of the wall in a vertical loop- it looked like a summoning circle, but I had never seen or heard of one being placed in such a position, let alone one of crystal.
A flicker of motion within drew my attention to a black-skinned creature scarred with green-highlights, yellow-eyes looking out from sunken depths. I felt an inexplicable draw, a sudden fiery rage to smote the figure before me as much as bow down and obey his orders. Almost against my will I stood up and approached with slow strides, until only a foot separated me from the seeming-reflection. I saw it resembled one of the usual Sidhe I had come to recognize, at least it had once upon a time, but age and damage had not been kind to the formerly pristine and gallant features, and the once-smooth skin was torn from the bone in many places. In others the skin was left charred and scarred from brutal flames, with the muscles underneath jutting against the flesh sharply and standing out in unimaginable ways.
"Be wary what you touch, Harry Dresden!" Rashid's voice cut through the conflicting desires of obedience and hatred that had settled into place the moment I took in the sight of the creature, and I realized with a start that my own scarred hand had risen toward the surface slowly. When the Gatekeeper spoke I had just-barely half-an-inch before contact would have been made with the image.
Rashid stood at my side without my notice until now, and looking down further I saw his hand was wrapped about my elbow tightly to keep me from reaching all the way forward. Looking back up, the yellow gaze of the creature seemed to glow brighter for a moment as if in frustration before I was pulled away and shoved into the couch facing away from it.
Rashid took my former seat and looked me over.
"That is their King in his current, newly freed form. No more a thing of beauty, forever marred by the Dragon's tongue and blade," he stated. "A mere reflection, a shadow I was able to capture before he was taken." Breathing a low sigh Rashid looked more closely at me before continuing. "I can see it in your eyes that you are aware, on some degree, why the Sidhe King walks the Nevernever again. He intends to smother the world and continue to claim new domains in his own name, and in so doing eradicate the Old Order that has endured throughout the millenniu in his wake. A war of untold scale, Dresden, that would ravage this Earth and all the realms still connected to it."
My head was beginning to swim with confusion from all of the information I had received, not only from Mab but now Rashid as well, to say nothing of the mental-whammy I had suffered with a glance. The scale just kept rising higher and higher. For a moment I considered what might very well become the final card to be played if everything else fell apart in the end - if I couldn't find a means of stopping him, if I couldn't outwit or overcome him, then it might very well come down violating perhaps the greatest Law of Magic available.
The Outsiders.
I shook my head. Inviting in something like that would mean the eradication of the world, the universe itself. They wouldn't target Oberon unless they had nothing better to do, choosing to wreak havoc and anarchy on a cosmic scale first.
A voice seemed to whisper in my mind, and if Oberon threatens to do the same?
I grimaced. I couldn't allow it to come to that.
A bitter sigh escaped before I could contain it and I looked back up at the Gatekeeper, a simple question needing to be asked.
"Why?" I questioned. "Who could benefit from this?" Rashid stared at me in silence for a few seconds, as if unsure I had really asked such a thing.
"When was the last time that you have slept proper, Dresden? I do not mean to insult you, but surely you are quicker to piece together these things on your own," he stated in a quiet tone.
A frustrated grunt was my immediate follow up. "Maybe you missed a few things back on Earth while watching the Nevernever?" I shot back with a return of that anger I had felt before.
A brief silence followed that as Rashid closed his visible eye and moments later I felt, rather than heard, the whisper of power flowing from his mouth as he spoke to someone else. Before a minute was gone his eye flickered back open and he gave me another considering once-over.
"Hrn. Perhaps you are right. It would seem you do have a valid reason for being so weary at this critical time," Rashid stated and stood up. "You do not yet realize what you have done in destroying the entire Red Court. It could be said that much the same will happen to the rest of the world and realms if the Sidhe King is not stopped, but that is for another time, I think."
Picking up his staff again, he began to pace away. "I can not offer you the exacting answers that you have sought by coming here, Harry Dresden," he added in that same quiet, neutral tone.
I pushed up to my own feet slowly and scowled at him, opening my mouth to speak when he brought up one finger in a silencing gesture.
"Do not presume that I can not give you aide in other manners, however, just as I have some small amount of knowledge. When you leave my rooms here you will find that this trip has not been for nothing."
Stepping out of a hole into the Nevernever is rarely pleasant. All too often it dumps you into something unnatural, likely into something dangerous to your health. Others it simply slings you into a living nightmare and lets you fend for your life. Rarely is it a relatively pleasant journey, more often disguising the unsavory aspects until they step out to play. The farther out you go from the realms easily accessed from the Earth, the less natural and more dicey they come.
So trespassing into a wholly-alien dimension, for example, one where the very air you breath, the sights you see, the entire plane about you makes it well known that you flatly do not belong within such a space is much the same- only a thousand times harsher on the psyche and soul in addition to the physical unease.
Rashid had helped me out as I had hoped for. He had gotten me the access route into here, within the Dragon's Domain, something I was beginning to realize had to have cost him a lot more than he had let on an hour earlier. If I could speak with Ferrovax or one of his kindred, it might be possible to find out how he had stopped Oberon the first time. Hell, he might have been actively interested in picking up the hunt himself and finishing the job this time around.
Even as I thought that, however, I felt an itch in the middle of my spine that just wouldn't go away. It seemed to crawl up along my neck and spread along my shoulders, and trail down to my hips and feet below. It was apparent that mortal man, be it wizard or otherwise, was not meant to stand here. We just weren't quite able to take wholly fit into the conditions of this dimension, as if everything was on an off-kilter alignment, and I could feel how unwelcome I truly was as a human here. It made me wonder if the true Outsiders felt the same way when they managed to trespass into this universe.
The Gatekeeper had handed me a vial before I passed through the first Way on the journey to this place, with a warning to drink it slowly before I came out on the final jump, and I had listened and done as told. Some of the fatigue from the battle days ago was gone now, and a little more clarity to my mind had gathered. Whatever that vial was, I suspected it was probably also the only thing keeping me from contorting to the rules of matter here and being shaped into a dodecahedron or something instead of retaining my natural shape.
I tried to ignore the burning sensation in my veins every time I took a breath of air. I could have been breathing plasma instead of oxygen for all I knew about this place, and that little vial was pulling triple-duty to process it well-enough.
"Okay, Harry, time to get a move on. This place is bad enough without just standing around looking like an appetizer to some wandering, hungry wyrm." I felt a smidgeon better snarking about the situation, and set off in what I was assuming to still be the westward direction and where the distorted, made-of-light-and-metal semi-solid trees were less densely crowded.
The black-blue sky overhead was illuminated with the hum of visible energy streaks in place of stars, flickering back and forth as if alive. They probably were, for all I knew.
Eventually the damp soil beneath my feet grew firmer and turned to solid copper, and the freakish trees conformed solely to various metals that stood stiffly and firmly in place. So far I hadn't picked up any other creatures around, and once the hum of energy faded with the ground and such I began to feel my unease rising to another level at the stillness and silence.
I had to call up a small flame for light after a few more minutes, and soon enough was rewarded for that with the sight of a pair of large iron doors set into the sky horizontally, ten feet off the ground and apparently connected to... well, nothing. Just floating, as if that was perfectly natural.
"Dammit, did you have to violate the laws of physics even further?" I muttered quietly, hesitantly stepping closer and pausing beneath them.
"But who decides what the Laws are if not for those who created them?" A throaty voice questioned from deeper ahead of me.
I gripped my staff tighter and pointed it off toward the mystery-speaker, smoke curling off it as tendrils of power slowly seeped inward from my instantly pulled together will. And with it came that rage I had contended with just hours ago, roaring into my veins, demanding that I struck now and smote the unseen creature with a vengeance that was almost primordial, truly ancient. I found myself drawing even more strength forward as the figure slithered out of the darkness into the faint light from the still flickering flame in my spare hand. I knew to dance back quickly to avoid its now-observable reach, still welling up the power but suddenly struggling not to reduce it to ashes.
You're here for a reason! Killing it might very well- it... it will serve the Godking, and raise his honor higher! My thoughts betrayed me again, and this time I could do nothing to stop them, only heatedly assess the monster I was about to burn down to cinders within a matter of seconds. The flame in my hand danced higher and burned hotter.
With the jutting, wedge-shaped head of a dragon, the angular and rough body of a snake, two leathery-wings jutting from the back, and as it grew closer still a barbed tail, the gray-bodied Wyvern tilted it's brown-eyed head to one side and sniffed at the air twice in quick succession.
I had seen illustrations at Edinburgh before, but the sheer size of the creature was more than mere drawings could convey. It might have been impressive in another time, under different circumstances, but none of that mattered in the moment. Once its lower body was coiled up under it like a snake studying its prey, it still towered over me by two feet easily, and just as wide across. The wings alone stretched six feet apiece individually and slowly wrapped around it's middle almost protectively, and I noted that while the front was rough-textured, the back reflected my light cleanly and almost seemed to be made of polished stone.
"You... you have his scent in your blood, and yet... His as well. Deeper than blood. Etched harsher into your body, or..." the Wyvern puzzled slowly, still in that same deep rumble. For some reason it seemed as if the energy I sought was slipping away from my grip the longer I tried to hold and gather it. Kill the forsaken beast and be done with it, my fury crowed righteously.
The Wyvern blinked once, scenting the air and the barely contained power I held, and the eyes suddenly transformed from their assessing state. The shifted into a vibrant red and glowed with malicious intent. Distantly I knew exactly what that meant, and I also knew I wasn't about to be filleted on the fangs starting to rise from it's maw, relinquishing my failing efforts to contain my power.
Thrusting the staff forward at the same time as it launched the upper body toward me, I cried out, "Pyrofuego!"
Chapter two concluded.