December 1069
My knowledge of the "modern" Ways consisted of what I'd read from the few of Rowena's texts that touched upon them, and my brief, panicked escape from Avalon about two years ago. What I'd determined was that, while there were still a great many Ways that went "open Way in England, move ten feet to the north-east, emerge in sub-Saharan Africa, trudge west for five minutes, open Way, follow an upwards flowing stream for a mile, emerge in China", the Ways in general were more compact. Interrelated.
I didn't really know why. The best explanation I could come up with was that the inherent difficulty and slowness of long distance travel, the reliance on firm trade routes, the quality of boats, the lack of hundreds of thousands airplanes ferrying millions of people around the world every day, all resulted in fewer connections being made, and the connections that did exist were closer together.
If it wasn't for that, I would have never braved the Ways. But since it was, well, I could take advantage of that.
The Way dumped us along the edge of a forest into half a foot of snow. The trees, though mostly barren, were starting to bloom with the tiniest sprigs of green. The winter solstice was the day before, when the balance of power began to shift from Winter to Summer. Maybe that helped.
A herd of enormous bull-sized deer started at our appearance, and started looking intently in our direction. I didn't like the way they looked at us, especially the stags, whose horns looked like they were as hard as steel. I quickly rushed out of the forest and away from the herd of deer, which went back to its business once we made some distance.
Past the forest was a disorganized mishmash jumble of human architecture. Dirt roads segued into Roman cobbles, forming a random web of stretches, twists, and turns that wound its way through wooden longhalls, dirt huts, Roman forts, post-Roman castles both ruined and whole, and stone buildings, all of various sizes, all coalescing into a bizarre collage of a city.
"Huh," I said, coming to a stop. "This is unexpected."
"What?" Lucille asked, her posture tense.
"The buildings," I said, gesturing with my staff. "It's like someone grabbed samples of every point in Britannia's history and jumbled them all together. It doesn't fit. Something like this doesn't just come about."
"Is that relevant to us right now?" she asked.
I shook my head. "I don't know, but you're right, we do have to get a move on. Where to?"
For the blind reader, if we orient so that we entered this jumbled city from the north, then Lucille pointed west-south-west at part of what I mentally labeled the outer edge of the city. I set off without another word, and a few seconds later Lucille caught up to me and then slowed down to keep pace.
As we ran I fumbled around with my collar, trying to grasp my pentacle amulet and turn it around so that my mother's ruby was pressing into my chest. It took a few tries, but eventually I managed it. Nothing came out.
The stone was, so far as I could determine, little more than a fancy recording device. My mother had dictated all of her routes and conclusions regarding the Ways to it, using it like a map and guide all in one. I'd been very hesitant to mess or fiddle with it, but after some very tentative experimentation I'd figured out the intuitive, surface level controls, how to make more detailed requests beyond "give me a route" or how to change "modes."
Sometimes, I turned it on just to listen to her voice.
Not now though. With how weird this place was, I figured it wasn't impossible my mother had come across it in the future, had some insight or explanation for it, advice for how to navigate it. No such luck.
I sent a mental impulse into the stone and shifted it from GPS mode to what was basically a theory and commentary mode, and a voice with no apparent source began to speak quietly.
"Genuine human architecture in the Nevernever is surprisingly rare. When it appears, it is usually the mark of a domain or the result of deliberate artifice, the product of a being with notable spiritual power, affinity for the region, and at least a somewhat human nature. Ghostly domains are the most common form of this, I've found."
I looked around the bizarre city, at the various and seemingly random levels of decay and vibrancy in the buildings. Some stone buildings that looked fairly modern were almost ruins, while dirt hovels that looked to have been in vogue before Christ were in perfect condition.
I didn't want to think about what kind of ghost or other being could've been powerful and connected enough to form a domain of England.
"Domains such as these are strongly reflective of their creator's memories and perceptions, and are often laid out in strange and irregular ways even by my standards. However, reflections of towns and cities are typically safe to travel through."
There was a brief pause, then, "Notation: It seems that areas and districts that reflect places that are colloquially known to be rundown and dangerous to the average person in the normal world are even more so in the Nevernever. Avoid slums and ganglands in the future, no matter how tempting a shortcut they present."
"Good to know," I muttered.
"Hmm?" Lucille hummed.
"Stop for a second," I called.
I slowed my pace over the course of a few seconds before coming to a stop, Lucille coming up beside me much more gracefully, and I took a moment to breathe and look around.
"Why are we stopping? Tired already?" she asked.
"No," I said. "We need to be smarter about this. The glove gives us a direction but not exactly the optimal path." I looked around, noting the web of streets and buildings, they way they blended and shifted between styles. "Okay. If you're an army on campaign, you're going to be following the roads, it's just more efficient. And if you can, you're going to want to follow the Roman roads. They endure, they're paved, faster, planned out." I shook my head. "As we've run, has the direction changed much?"
Lucille furrowed her brow for a few moments, then shook her head.
"We've taken a lot of turns," I said. "Which means we're still a good distance away, because if we were closer the angle would be varying as we moved. But so far we've been trying just the most direct routes, not the fastest."
"We haven't even gone a mile," she said.
"That's not the point. This place, whatever it is, is a nexus of civilization. It's cut out all the wilderness, all the plains, streams, groves, lakes, everything. It's just roads and places where people lived." I shook my head. "Physical distance is only half the equation here."
"Concepts," she said.
I nodded. "Concepts."
She looked like she was about to say something in response, then stopped. She furrowed her brow, narrowed her eyes, and cocked her head as if she were trying to place a sound.
"What do you hear?" I asked.
She shushed me, and a few seconds passed before she said, "It sounds like… music. But wrong."
"Like a dog is somehow howling a perfect tune?" I asked.
She nodded slowly, and I swore. Then I sighed. "Hellhounds."
"What?" Lucille asked, alarmed.
"Despite the name they don't actually have anything to do with hell or demons. I don't think they even breathe fire. They're just large fae hunting dogs."
"Then we run?" she asked.
"Oh yeah," I said, and took off down the nearest paved Roman road that led vaguely in our desired direction, Lucille falling in with me immediately.
"How dangerous are they?" Lucille asked.
"They're hunting dogs. Large mastiffs, the size of a pony," I said in between breaths. "They're just big and strong and fast dogs. If it was only a bunch of hellhounds we could deal with them."
"So why don't we fight?" she asked. Her tone made it sound more like a rhetorical prompt than an actual question.
"Because they're hunting dogs," I said. "Which implies a hunter. And I have a pretty good idea who's directing them. That's why we're running."
As we started moving along exclusively paved roads, the nature of the buildings around us shifted. Wood steadily gave way to stone, which gave way to concrete. They got bigger and more ornate, but were also riven with cracks and breaks. A few of the more wooden buildings sometimes spontaneously caught fire as we approached, timber quickly rotting and burning and dumping sparks on us. Walls and overhangs broke apart, scattering stones across the roads, and in one case sending a brick flying out in front of us. I didn't catch it in time but Lucille did, and she thrust out her left arm in a sharp motion that brought me to a halt and drove the air out of my chest.
"Ow," I complained. "Thank you."
"They're getting louder," Lucille noted as we took off again.
"I can hear that," I said, grunting. "Are we getting closer?"
"I think so, it's- this way," she said, suddenly turning and taking a right at the intersection. I swore under my breath and followed her. It was concerning; I was more than a foot taller than her and definitely more athletic and she was outrunning me. Her eyes, when I glimpsed them, were already a near solid gray, and seemed to be getting more silver every time I caught another glance. I wondered how much vampire fuel she was burning to keep up with me.
After another two minutes or so of running down wide and fairly straight roads, Lucille took a left turn and we ran almost smack dab into the gate of a Roman fort. It was closed.
"Through there?" I asked, taking steady, deep breaths.
"Yes," she said.
"Alright, let's try and force it open."
We lined ourselves up so we were facing only one side of the double-doored gate, then backed up and ran at it. I shifted so that I shoulder-checked the door with my left shoulder, while Lucille used her right. The gate shuttered, but barely budged.
"Again." Another slight budge. "Again." And another.
"Don't you have magic to force this open?" Lucille asked through gritted teeth.
"I use magic and the hellhounds will sense it, track us down faster," I said with a grunt. "Again."
We hammered it two more times and opened it enough to maybe stick Lucille's arm through before she snarled and backed up. When she looked at me, I saw that her eyes were split in half gray, half silver. "This isn't working." She cocked her head to the side. "And I can't hear them anymore."
"Shit," I cursed. "Alright, fine. Be ready for a fight the moment we get inside." I awkwardly grasped my staff in my right hand, and then thrust it at the door. "Forzare!"
My arm screamed in pain with the amount of power I threw out, but the gate door was blasted off its hinges and flew off down a street. I quickly switched my staff back to my left hand and dug my right into the pocket with my iron ball bearings, wincing at their added weight. Iron was one of those "extra real" materials that stressed and grew heavier in the Nevernever, and with my weakened grip I couldn't grab as many as I'd have liked. Five would have to do, and the baseball was right out.
Past the gate there was a somewhat wide and very straight road that seemed to run the length of the fort, all the way to the back wall. About sixty feet ahead of us the road stretched out into a plaza, surrounded by buildings that looked only slightly unkempt and dilapidated.
As we stepped through the hole I'd blown open, the damaged piece of gate ahead of us started quivering, and we both only had a brief warning to scatter before it came flying back the way it came, lodging itself back into position and sealing us inside.
"Are you sure this is the place?" I asked.
"Yes. We're close. I can feel it."
As she said that, a group of enormous mastiffs built from shadows and soot slunk in from the unseen sides of the plaza, taking positions along the road. Lucille responded to that by drawing her sword. I just swallowed.
As the hellhounds watched us with their flat, black eyes, the soft padding of bare feet against stone filled the air, impossibly loud given the distance between us and the hounds. A figure came out from around the corner, a very tall, slender, and inhumanly beautiful figure. She had red hair that curled down past her hips in a wild cascade, and her flawless skin, high cheekbones, lush blood red lips, and emerald green dress looked almost exactly as I remembered them. The only difference that gave me any semblance of hope was the complete lack of true recognition in her golden, catlike eyes.
"Is that the hunter?" Lucille asked in a low tone.
"Yes," I replied. "The Leanansidhe."
Though I said it in a bare whisper, she laughed in response, the sound of my voice somehow reaching her.
"I see you remember me," she purred. "How sweet."
Author's Note: To cut off this particular thread of wild speculation before it starts: she's referring to a meeting within the scope of the story, not any prior relationship.