October 1070

"Wizard, welcome," the Leanansidhe purred. "You put on an amusing show out there, marred as it was by your use of the Bane."

I took a deep breath and looked the Leanansidhe right above the eyes. "Leanansidhe. Were you a party to the attack?"

The Leanansidhe's full, red lips curled into a smirk. "And what if I was?"

I tightened my grip on my staff in response.

Gusts of arctic wind blew out from the rift, quickly dissolving into shimmers of ectoplasm. The sky on the other side was dark, dimly lit by distant stars. From my position I could see a sea of flowers stretching in all directions, flowers with bloodred stems and corpse-pale petals covering the ground like a layer of fresh, bloody snow. There were footsteps and drag marks leading away from the rift, trampling the floors and leaving a trail of bright red liquid.

The silence stretched out in time with the Leanansidhe's smirk before she finally sighed dramatically. "No, I had no part in it, though I was aware of the vampire's impending attempt at revenge. 'Twas why I observed the two of you with such giddy anticipation. And what an opportunity you have provided me, truly."

I frowned and narrowed my eyes. "What opportunity?"

"The Ways are barred to you wizard until such time as my Queen deems otherwise, wizard. All the Ways." She smirked again. "And all their myriad uses."

I stared at her in confusion for a bit before my eyes widened in baffled realization. "The cats?!" I asked. "Really? That's... that's..." Exactly how a faerie would interpret it.

I sighed. "So you decided to take Elfleda instead?"

"Part of me expected more from the sorceress and her servants, I admit," she said. "To drive you into this realm, enough so that I was momentarily left at a loss when you banished those poor matagots. But you did trespass, if only indirectly, so upon consideration I thought it best to follow your example."

"Let her go," I said.

"I think not," she replied. "I did say this was an opportunity, did I not?"

"I don't especially care."

"Perhaps not," the Leanansidhe allowed, tightening her grip on Elfleda's throat. "But I think you'll listen all the same."

I glared at her and said nothing, casting my eyes across the surroundings on the other side. I didn't see any hellhounds, but that didn't mean there weren't any, hiding just out of sight, waiting to ambush me if I crossed over. And I didn't know what the deal with those flowers was, if they produced some kind of harmful gas that was dissolving into ectoplasm as it hit the mortal world.

The Leanansidhe took my silence as agreement and loosened her grip. "You see, my Queen is rather inexperienced in the way of the heart, whereas I..." She smiled. "'Tis in my name. She may believe that a distant ideal of beauty and grace and power is enough on its own, but I know better. When one seeks to capture a man's heart, one must first find the path to it. And then, once the right incentive is at hand, you must properly motivate him."

"Considering everyone you've ever supposedly loved has died as a result, I'm not sure you're qualified to give relationship advice," I said.

"Ah, but they experienced such joy before the end, each and every one of them," she said.

"Yeah, sure. See, this is what I'm talking about. You think that just because you threaten her, that will make me want to go to Mab?"

"Won't it?" the Leanansidhe asked with a smile, tracing a finger across Elfleda's jaw. "You know you are not my equal in power, wizard. And using the Bane here would be most unwise. You wouldn't enjoy waking the marrowblooms."

"And why's that?" I asked.

"Why, they'd eat you, of course," she replied.

"Of course," I muttered.

"Running will not avail you, wizard. There are no tricks left to you. Simply a choice: what do you value more? Your obstinacy, or her life?"

I worked my jaw and considered her words. Then I took a deep breath and planted my staff in the ground. "You're right. The odds are against me, and I guess you've set up a nice little arena for yourself. But you're missing three things."

The Leanansidhe cocked her head. "Oh?"

I put away my blasting rod. "First, this kind of setup isn't new to me. Second, I have a pretty good equalizer." I drew Amoracchius with my right hand, and curled my left hand around the base of the hilt. It didn't burst into light, and its humming was muted, but the cold air blowing out of the rift split apart before the sword, rushing off to either side to dissolve. "And third, aegis!"

Yeah. Of course I included another way to activate the necklace.

A silver bubble burst out of the sapphire around Elfleda's neck, quickly growing to encompass her and throwing the Leanansidhe back. As an added bonus, I'd recently added a fire component that reacted on physical contact, just for that extra bit of discouragement. So when the Leanansidhe went flying, she did so while on fire.

I charged inside and yelled "Ventas reductas giostrus!", mixing a few spells together to pull in air from the mortal world and make it start circling around me in case the atmosphere wasn't as hospitable. I pivoted the moment I stepped inside, my boots crunching against the flowers as if they were made of bone, and found that the Leanansidhe's entire pack of hellhounds was arranged behind the rift, as I expected. There were also about thirty or forty of them, which was more than I expected.

I cut down the one immediately to the left as I entered, the iron cleaving through a hound's skull and setting it aflame. I had to pull my blow halfway to make sure I didn't hit the ground or one of the marrowblooms, since I didn't want to test the Leanansidhe's warning about them.

Still, one down, thirty something to go.

A chorus of angry bays split the air as the hellhounds reacted to my assault, and I had to quickly throw up my physical shield to prevent them from overwhelming me. I took up Amoracchius in my left hand for a moment, considered my options for dealing with the pack, and decided that for once, I would try and minimize collateral damage.

So I used lightning. "Fulminos!" I cried.

Blue-white lightning shot out from my hand like I was Emperor Palpatine, going right through my physical shield without impediment and striking the front few hellhounds. They whimpered in pain as the lightning grounded itself through their bodies, cooking flesh and fur. God, this day sucked; I typically hated killing anything that resembled an animal, especially something that looked like a cat or dog. And that wasn't about to end.

I backed up until I hit the barrier surrounding Elfleda, the wards being designed to ignore me and her when it came to their "burn on contact" behavior, angled my shield to my right, and slashed Amoracchius out at knee height, switching hands at the end of the swing. That took down another two hellhounds that had gotten close, but now they were between me and the rift. Not that it particularly mattered; as long as the Leanansidhe was able to intervene, it didn't matter how far the rift was or how many hellhounds there were, as I'd never be able to get Elfleda out.

Speaking of the Leanansidhe, she screamed in indignation from behind me, and on instinct I snapped my left hand up and called up my comprehensive shield. Right on time too, because she'd dropped a hail of fist-sized chunks of ice down on my head. I shimmied my way around the outside of my barrier and loosened my grip on the sword, enough to free a few fingers that I used to point at the ground. I then took a moment to grasp what little bits of heat there were in this region of Faerie, and then pulled them straight up with a shout of, "Glacivallare!"

A wall of ice about nine feet high, most of a foot thick, and twelve feet long appeared to my left, one side pressed up against the barrier, the other stretching out through the sea of flowers. With my flank briefly secured, I turned around and ran for the Leanansidhe and found that her hands were ablaze with a mix of violet and emerald fire that she immediately launched at me. I swung Amoracchius around wildly, interposing it between me and the fire, which did a decent job of turning what would have been a lethal amount of third-degree burns into a still painful, but less serious mix of second- and first-degree burns.

I spent half a second blocking out what pain I could manage and kept advancing on the Leanansidhe, who snarled and backpedaled out of the reach of the sword. I heard the sound of bone crunching behind me and half-turned on instinct, right hand coming up to form a shield and reconsidering at the last moment.

"Tornarius!" I thundered right before the hellhound could bite me. Caught in midleap and with my hand above its head, my reflection of its momentum sent it flying into two more right behind it, turning all three hellhounds into a battered pile of limbs.

By this point, I was starting to breathe hard; between my exertions with opening and closing the multiple Ways, holding off the cats, and all the evocation and shielding right then, I was starting to approach my limits. I still had some gas left in the tank, and I hadn't even touched soulfire yet, but I wanted to keep that trick up my sleeve if at all possible.

Which was looking less and less likely by the second. It wasn't ideal, and it would make Mab more interested in me, but I'd just have to live with that.

I took a deep breath, prepared myself, and unleashed my will with a scream of, "Laqueus!"

A cord of pure force leapt out from around me at the Leanansidhe. She swiped her hand and tried to tear the spell apart, but I was ready for that, had been expecting it. I grit my teeth as her magic clashed against mine and forced a mass of soulfire into the spell, the cord suddenly flashing and glittering until it seemed to be made of solid moonlight. The Leanansidhe's eyes widened as the cord resisted her attempt to deflect it and whipped thrice around her throat, tightening savagely. Her eyes bulged as I pulled it tight and her feet dug into the ground, resisting my efforts. I raised Amoracchius and prepared to hold it to her throat when she thrust her hands forward, desperately and crudely manifesting a cataclysmic amount of fire in her hands. I grunted and pulled Amoracchius back to block even as half the power dissipated before it could even be put to use, but she didn't attack me. Instead, the fire leapt like a serpent, arcing over and behind me - towards the barrier around Elfleda. Enough fire to burn down an entire city block battered against the barrier and stopped right as it was about to crack, though a fraction remained swirling above.

I swallowed a yell and turned back to face the Leanansidhe, one hand still held behind me maintaining a shield. The Leanansidhe's catlike eyes bore into mine, and strands of fire flowed through her hands towards the serpents. With a sigh, I loosened the cord slightly, enough for her to talk.

The Leanansidhe released a strangled sigh of relief, then began hoarsely chuckling. When she spoke, it was in a reedy whisper. "Impressive, wizard. Truly. But not enough. Pull me closer, take another step forward, pierce my heart with that blade, and I assure you that with my dying breath, I will shatter that barrier and everything inside it. Then my hounds and the marrowblooms will tear you apart, and you will have won nothing."

I ran my tongue along the inside of my teeth, considering. The Leanansidhe was a practitioner, if an unconventional one, and if even a walking corpse like Mavra could pull off a kind of death curse, then I was willing to bet that the Leanansidhe could too, even if it may not have been strictly conventional. And the kind of death curse she could unleash, the amount of power behind it, I had no real recourse against.

"Then I guess we're in a standoff," I said quietly.

The Leanansidhe chuckled again. "No, we are not. Impressive as this was, nothing has really changed. You cannot threaten me without also threatening that which you cherish. I told you, you know you are not my equal. And for all the power the Sword of Love possesses, it was still not enough, and is no more useful to you now than a common butcher's knife." She shook her head. "You could never have overcome me, Harry."

I took a deep breath and wracked my brain, looking for a way out of this. The Leanansidhe was betting hard on me not having a way around her death curse, which was admittedly a bet with good odds. If I could somehow get Amoracchius in the way I could maybe block it, but she knew that as well; her final attack, if it came, would come from too many angles to cut it off completely. And Elfleda would die.

I needed to change the stakes somehow. I thought over how I'd beaten my Lea in my past, the tricks I'd used. Running was overdone and not useful in this situation, and iron wasn't a real option in this scenario even if I could hit her with it and not set off her death curse. There was only one option left, one way in which I'd beaten her in the past, and which might work again now. A rather fitting option.

The most fitting option, really.

"You're right," I said. "Amoracchius is about as useful as a butcher's knife right now. But, it also doesn't need to be anything more than that."

I pulled the sword back - and set it right against my neck.

Author's Note: Always found it a bit interesting how Lea throws around fire as her go-to attack. I mean yes, faerie fire, I know, but still.