AN: Look at me updating less than six months after the last update! I know, I know. I'm as shocked as you, believe me.
First and foremost, I need to thank spartanguard for being the world's most kick ass beta and friend. She deals with my constant whining as I slug through these updates with grace while also making sure I sound like I semi know what I'm doing, and is a constant source of support when I start to doubt myself. This story wouldn't be half of what it is without her. Seriously.
This chapter is where Shit Starts Happening, and I am beyond excited to finally get here and to take you on the rest of this journey with these characters.
As always, enjoy, and reviews keep the muse warm and energetic on those cold, self deprecating nights!
Chapter 8: An Unexpected Detour
"Will you let… go… of—Oh, for the love of Athena—me!"
Finally yanking himself free of the thorn filled bush that had snagged his cloak, Liam sighed in annoyance. "Whose brilliant idea was it again to take this insufferable route to the portal?"
Erin, who was sitting on a rock with Henry not far from where the horses were watering, snickered under her breath at her brother's antics as Henry tried—and failed—to hide his laughter while almost inhaling the piece of dried meat he'd been eating. They had stopped by the small brook almost an hour ago to give their horses, and themselves, a much-needed rest after traveling for most of the day. While Erin, Henry, and Eric stretched their legs, Liam had dismounted and promptly parked himself on the rock Erin currently occupied with a disgruntled eye on the forest around them. He'd initially refused to move until they were ready to continue but, after having drained his waterskin throughout the day, mother nature had finally called and with a defeated huff he'd wandered off to relieve himself.
He'd barely made it two steps back into the clearing when the bush had attached itself to the end of his cloak like a desperate lover.
"If memory serves, it was yours," she replied with a grin.
Liam's face contorted in regret. "Remind me never to have an opinion on how we reach a destination ever again."
"We asked you repeatedly if you were sure," Eric said from where he was refilling the waterskins with river water. "You said each and every time that you were."
"I only said that because going around this damnable area would have meant we didn't reach the portal for another two days."
Eric nodded, his face the perfect mask of seriousness. "I'm sure Arthur will give you a knighthood for willingly enduring your most hated nemesis to ensure the safety of his kingdom. What do you think, Henry? Slayer of the Foliage a good title to suggest?"
Liam glared at the young captain while Erin and Henry held on to each other to keep from falling off the rock with laughter.
"I hate you all," he muttered, a few curses in Elvish following as he made his way towards the horses.
It had been the surprise of the century when he made the suggestion that morning. After all, they'd taken the road that ran directly from Misthaven to Camelot for the last three days at his insistence. The well-worn and wide path offered them not only accessibility to a number of small towns and their semi-comfortable inns, but also ensured Liam didn't have to traverse through the miles and miles of woodlands that lay between the two kingdoms for any length of time.
Upon reaching Camelot's border, however, Liam had noted—with the help of his super power—that the most direct path to the portal from where they were was to go through the Broceliande. Stretching nearly the entire length of the kingdom and at least forty miles wide, the Broceliande was a vast forest that created a natural divide between Camelot's urban areas and its more rural countryside to the south. To say Erin had been gobsmacked when her brother, a man who detested forests of any kind, suggested they take that route would have been an understatement.
"Here you go, Jones."
Pulled from her thoughts, Erin looked up to see Eric standing in front of her with a freshly filled waterskin. She accepted it with a grateful smile.
"Thanks."
"No problem," he replied, offering her a slightly strained smile in return before turning and walking to where Liam and the horses stood. She didn't miss the look Henry gave her at the interaction, but she resolutely ignored her brother and took a hefty swig of the cool water.
Things between her and Eric had been cordial over the course of the trip. They had to be, really. It was easy to avoid someone when you were in a hundred-room castle compared to when you were only a few feet away from them on horseback. The first day after they had set off from Misthaven had been tense, both of them participating in the larger group conversation but not acknowledging each other in any way. That hadn't happened until they'd been leaving their rented rooms on the second morning. She'd nearly tumbled down a staircase due to its severe incline and an ill-timed misstep in her haste to get back on the road, and Eric had caught her. His quick reflexes ensured he had a hold of her arm before her brain had time to register that she was falling, and the thank you she'd breathed back to him had been the first direct thing she'd said to him in six days. His response had been a small yet genuine smile, and the fact that she had felt his hand hovering near her to ensure she didn't repeat the incident again as they continued down didn't go unnoticed by her.
After that they had stopped ignoring each other's presence. They still weren't striking up mundane conversations with each other, but they weren't pretending to ignore the other's contribution when the group was talking about something any longer. If anything needed to be handed to him she didn't try to find a way to get one of her brothers to do it, and if Eric needed to relay something to her—as he had done with the waterskin—he did so without the detached tone he'd used in her presence before the trip.
It still wasn't perfect, however.
They were being cordial to one another but there was still an undeniable awkwardness to their interactions. Smiles were strained, acknowledgements short and to the point, and physical touch was only done when completely necessary. There was no ribbing of each other when they did something stupid or playful banter to pass the endless miles. He hadn't even accused her of cheating the previous night when the four of them played cards at an inn that sat just across the Camelot border. It was a world away from how they normally were with each other in this type of setting, and it unnerved her.
You've got no one to blame but yourself for that, she thought with a bitter swallow.
She was, after all, the one who created this awkward mess. Erin desperately wanted to fix it, and not because she had made promises to her parents. She wanted them to hold a genuine conversation and laugh together, or be able to move the hair that was constantly falling across his forehead out of the way because she missed doing those things with him. All she had to do was pull him to the side and open herself up, bare every unsaid fear and lower years of built-up walls to explain why she had done what she did, yet she couldn't. The fear of what would happen after she did paralyzed Erin to her core every time she thought she'd finally worked up the courage to speak with him.
"You have to let go of that fear and talk to him about what happened because if you don't, how the two of you have been interacting during this trip will become your new dynamic. And I don't think that's something you can accept."
Henry's words from the previous night filled her mind, and Erin sighed internally. Aside from their blatant meddling that had brought Eric on the trip, her brothers hadn't said anything to her about the cordial yet strained interactions between her and Eric. Not that they had to. She had seen the looks they gave her—some covertly, others not—and she knew them well enough to know what those looks meant. Still, she hadn't been the least bit surprised when they'd decided to corner her in her room the previous night to talk and, with a few libations in her system, she'd finally opened up to them about what had happened. Neither had looked surprised that she'd pulled away after the cloister moment—particularly Liam—and while they understood why she had, her brothers had also made it very clear that at this point, after everything she'd been through with Eric, she had been wrong to do it. It was an assessment she agreed with, and the last few days had definitely shown her she couldn't accept this as her and Eric's new normal.
She just needed a little more time.
Looking skyward, she grunted in annoyance at the towering trees that blocked the position of the sun. "Liam, how much further do we have to go?" she asked while corking the waterskin. There wasn't an immediate answer but Erin knew from the tilt of his head that her brother wasn't ignoring her.
"Three hours to clear the Broceliande, another two after that to reach the portal," came his eventual reply.
"With where the sun was when we entered, I'd say we have no more than two hours of daylight left," Henry added as he closed their provision satchel and slid off the rock.
"At most," Eric agreed. "So we should probably head out sooner rather than later."
With nods all around, Erin moved to join the others but froze with one foot on the ground when the unmistakable sound of a female voice came from behind her.
"You shouldn't be here, Twice-Blessed Child."
An involuntary chill went down her spine at the menacing and hostile tone. With her heart pounding rapidly against her chest as her fight or flight response kicked in, Erin unsheathed the hidden dagger from her boot and turned in one fluid motion—nearly two decades of self defense lessons and natural instincts guiding her movements. Every muscle in her body tensed for what was to come, but instead of warding off an attack she found herself blinking in confusion.
There was no one there.
What the—
Adrenaline continued to course through her veins as she took in the motionless forest around her with a critical eye. There was nowhere within a ten foot radius of her position for someone to have sought cover after speaking to her, but what was more disconcerting was the fact that there were no signs of anyone even having been behind her. The forest debris all around the rock was undisturbed save for the areas she, Henry, and Liam and tracked through, and there wasn't the faintest hint of a foot or boot mark anywhere in the soil.
That can't be right, she thought, eyes still roaming about the forest as her mind tried to comprehend the undeniable evidence in front of her. I heard someone. They were there, as clear as the day was long...
"Erin?"
Turning, she saw her brothers and Eric were already on their horses and staring at her with a mixture of concern and bewilderment.
"What in the seven hells are you doing?" Liam asked, the reins for his horse in one hand and the reins for hers in the other.
"I heard something."
"Like an animal?"
She quickly shook her head at Eric's question. "No, human."
Henry chuckled. "Well, we were talking while mounting—"
"It wasn't you." Ignoring the way his eyebrows jumped nearly to his hairline at her brisk tone, Erin wet her lips and forced herself to take a deep, calming breath before continuing. "It—It wasn't any of you. Whoever it was, they were female."
Liam tried, and failed, to hide the amusement from his voice. "Are you saying you heard the Witch of the Broceliande?"
She gave her brother a hard and withering look at that question. The Witch of the Brocelidane was an infamous story associated with the otherwise mundane forest, a tale that had been told around campfires and in the dark corners of taverns for so long that their father could remember it already being a legend when he was a boy. A witch who derived her power from the ocean had been cursed by Posideon himself to wander the vast forest for all eternity, forever unable to see, hear, or touch the very thing her magic depended on. Why she was punished varied based on who told the story. Some believed it was because she had scorned the God of the Sea, others said she used the ocean to kill an innocent soul—an act that Posideon couldn't condone. Landlocked and with no hope of breaking her curse, the witch had gone mad and began preying upon those who entered the Broceliande. It was said that she snatched those who wandered too far from the pathway, appearing before a traveler could even blink and with fingers caked in dried blood, her frenzied eyes the last thing a person saw before she ate them.
If one was to believe a fairytale, of course.
"Don't be a git," Erin muttered while putting her dagger back into her boot.
Liam shrugged. "You were the one who said you heard a female voice."
"Because I did, but it wasn't some made up figure from a cautionary tale to keep children from wandering the woods and adults entertained as they drink."
"Sure sounds like that's what you're saying you heard," Liam said, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.
Erin opened her mouth to lodge a retort back at her brother, but before she could utter one word Henry held up his hand.
"Alright, alright. I think we can all agree that you didn't hear a malevolent witch who doesn't exist."
"But she clearly heard something," Eric pointed out as he rested his right forearm on the horn of his horse's saddle. "Have you ever known your sister to pull her dagger out when it wasn't necessary?"
"Of course not, but this forest can easily play tricks on the mind, especially when you've grown up hearing the story. It's happened to me on more than one occasion when I had to come through here for court business." Giving her a placating look, Henry added, "I'm not saying you didn't hear something, just that… it was probably nothing more than the wind coupled with how mentally drained you are from our traveling."
Erin huffed in a mixture of resignation and agitation. On the one hand, she could understand what her brother was saying. The forest, with its towering trees and lack of adequate light drenching everything in hues of gray, was the perfect setting for one's imagination to run wild. Hera knew she'd seen the very same thing happen to seasoned sailors while going through a thick fog in the middle of the night countless times before. On the other hand, however, she knew what she'd heard, and her gut instinct was screaming at her that it wasn't due to their travel schedule or the wind.
As if on cue, a strong gust of wind blew through the trees, whipping the dead leaves left behind on the forest floor into a frenzy and making the ends of her hair flutter. There was a slight chill to it, the kind of nip that only existed when summer finally gave way to autumn, but that wasn't what made Erin visibly shiver.
Magic. It permeated the air, a palpable and sinister presence that was heavy with the weight of its age. A metallic taste filled her mouth as the unmistakable smell of salt water curled around her, invading her senses and stealing her breath, and she could feel her own magic humming beneath her skin in response to it.
Whoever, or whatever was out there, was powerful.
Before she could say anything the wind died just as suddenly as it had started, but as the last leaves settled back to the ground she heard it. Laughter—dark, menacing, and distinctly feminine—sounded all around Erin, echoing off the trees until it faded away and settled into her bones with a heavy forbidding.
She didn't have to ask if her brothers and Eric had heard it. She knew they had by the fear etched on their faces and the way they looked around, all three of them gripping the reins of their suddenly restless horses until their knuckles turned white.
"Believe me now?" she breathed in the suddenly too quiet forest.
All three quickly nodded their heads, and Erin sprinted the ten feet between them to reach her horse. She had no sooner settled into the saddle and taken the reins from Liam when the laughter echoed around them again, this time undeniably closer.
"Something is definitely out there," Eric whispered, voicing the obvious fact that none of them could deny now as they turned their horses.
Erin nodded, the metallic taste returning to her mouth even stronger. "It has magic too—old magic—and I'm not waiting around to find out what it is."
With swift kicks to their horse's sides, the steeds lurched forward and fell into an easy canter as they cleared the small distance back to the well worn path that ran through the Broceliande. If any of them had looked backwards, they would have seen a flash of auburn locks move amongst the trees where they had been seconds ago, and a pair of emerald eyes alight with fury staring back at them.
Having finished tying the laces of his pants, Killian looked across the length of his cabin to the bed he'd just slipped from and where his wife remained fast asleep.
Emma was facing the wall that the small bed butted up against, a dark red sheet pooled at her waist and hair a tangled waterfall of blonde and gray locks on the matching pillowcase. Night had descended a few hours ago, and the light from the lone lantern that was lit on his desk danced across her exposed back—seemingly caressing her curves and illuminating the stark contrast of her ivory skin against the ruby colored sheets. It was a scene that, under normal circumstances, would have had him crawling back beneath the sheets and gently coaxing her awake for another round of vigorous love making.
But things hadn't been normal between them for some time, had it?
Killian's jaw clenched at the thought, and what small bit of relief he'd felt while climbing out of bed to the sound of her light snoring evaporated almost instantly. Not even bothering to don a shirt or boots, he carefully made his way to the cabin's large bay window and quietly popped open one of the window panes, mindful with each step of the planks that creaked and might wake his sleeping wife. He let the fresh air cool his overheated skin for a long moment before reaching into the hidden compartment beneath the windowsill and retrieving a bottle of his finest rum. The cork—which hadn't been removed since he purchased the rum almost 300 years ago in Agrabah—made the faintest popping sound as he pulled it from the neck of the bottle with the aid of his left elbow, causing Killian to still until another of Emma's snores filled the cabin. Confident that the sound hadn't woken her, he deposited the piece of buoyant wood atop his desk and took a long pull from the dark blue bottle while settling into his chair.
As the amber liquid began to warm his stomach, Killian rolled his shoulders in an attempt to loosen the tension that had settled there over the last few days. It was futile, of course. The tightness that pulled at his neck and knotted between his shoulder blades like a tangled piece of rope wasn't from any physical strain. It was caused by an emotional one, and no amount of stretching or massaging was going to ease it because his wife had lied to him.
Emma had sought him out on the Jolly Roger five days ago to tell him about the talk she'd had with Erin. While Killian had been thrilled that she was able to—in some small way, at least—get through the emotional barricade their daughter refused to lower, he'd also been curious as to when that conversation had taken place. The last time he'd seen Erin the previous night she had still seemed withdrawn, and he had known for a fact that her and Emma's paths hadn't crossed after that because his wife had been in her study until nearly midnight. So, he'd asked, and Emma told him, without hesitation or breaking eye contact, that she'd crossed paths with Erin while on her way to a wedding meeting earlier that morning.
At the time he had no reason not to believe that scenario, yet now he knew it wasn't true.
His wife and daughter had run into each other unexpectedly and had a long overdue chat, but it wasn't in the sun filled halls of the castle. No, it had been during the witching hour, when Killian knew Emma was up wandering the castle instead of sleeping because of the nightmare that had startled her awake a few hours after she finally came to bed.
She'd lied to him.
Taking another gulp of rum, he tried to focus on the way the liquid burned as it easily slid down his throat instead of the maelstrom of emotions coursing through him.
They'd lied throughout their marriage when it came to surprising each other with gifts—white lies that were more misdirection than deception like he had done the night of Liam and Elizabeth's engagement ball—or keeping a harmless secret one of their children had. To his knowledge, Emma still didn't know about the time he'd caught a sixteen-year-old Liam and Katheryn's daughter aboard his ship in the middle of the night, or when Erin, at eight, had gotten into Regina's potions and turned her hair blue. Neither incident had required her to become involved in the punishment and talk that followed, and he would bet every dubloon he owned that there were things she knew their children had done that he didn't.
But that wasn't what had happened this time. Emma had outright fabricated a story about how she'd had the conversation with Erin because she didn't want to explain why she'd been awake to have it. Killian wasn't a naive man. He knew that, technically, every time he asked her if she was okay over the last six months that she was lying to him. It had become the unspoken thing in their marriage, after all. He secretly knew about the nightmares, and she knew he was aware of something going on with her, but this felt vastly different to him.
He knew she was lying when she said everything was okay. He never would have known the truth behind her conversation with Erin if their daughter hadn't mentioned it.
More rum disappeared from the bottle, and Killian took a ragged breath once he'd swallowed the amber liquid.
He'd tried not to focus on the fact that his wife of nearly thirty years had attempted to keep something from him while they embarked on their trip. As he had promised his father-in-law, he'd whisked Emma away shortly after seeing the kids off to Camelot with the hope that, by getting her away from the constant string of wedding planning and strategy meetings concerning Maleficent, it would give her the space to catch up on some much needed rest. And it seemed to be working. She hadn't had one nightmare over the last three nights, and for the first time in months, the dark circles under her eyes seemed to be receding.
It was a small victory in a long battle that Killian couldn't fully celebrate, however. Not with the knowledge of her lie resting on his shoulders.
The first day of travel had been easy. His mind had been preoccupied with navigating them to a place that was so far from home there was nothing to see but miles upon miles of ocean. The endless horizon had always had a healing quality for him during troubling times, and he'd hoped it would have the same effect on Emma. Making love intermittently throughout that day and losing himself in her had also helped to distract him. The second day was harder, what with them having anchored in place and Killian not needing to focus on sailing the Jolly Roger. In the moments they weren't holding a mundane conversation or making love his mind wandered back to the lie, rolling it over and over again until it had begun to fester in his gut by dusk of the third day.
Part of what bothered him—aside from the lie itself—was that there was no immediate way to resolve it. To do so, he'd have to tell Emma that he knew about her nightmares, and despite the resentment that was beginning to build over the entire situation, Killian still believed that was the worst action he could take. She was clearly not ready to talk to him about them yet, and having him point out the lie—let alone the nightmares existence—could cause her to withdraw even more than she already was. No, as much as it hurt him that she'd lied, he wasn't going to confront her with it until she'd finally mastered the nightmares, and he still believed that wouldn't happen without Erin's help. He hadn't discussed that with his daughter when he revealed Emma was having trouble sleeping because of the pressing need to get her and her brothers on the road to investigate the portal as soon as possible. There was time, he told himself, to talk with her and set up a strategy to finally break the hold the nightmares had on his wife.
He just had to keep swallowing the resentment until Erin returned from Camelot….
"Killian?"
Startling like a virgin in a brothel—and nearly knocking half a bottle of 300 year old rum onto his navigational charts—Killian turned his head to find Emma sitting up in their bed, her eyes heavy with drowsiness and the sheet pulled up to cover her breasts.
"Aye, love?"
"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice slightly hoarse from snoring.
"I couldn't sleep so I decided to partake in a nap cap." It was a lie, of course, but what was one more after all the other ones they'd told each other recently? Tapping his wedding ring against the glass bottle, he added, "Care to join me?"
She didn't answer him right away, her gaze clearly trying to contemplate him and the situation through the sleep that still clung to her mind. He almost wished she'd push the issue, question him on why he was drinking his best rum—alone—at nearly midnight, but that would lead to answers he couldn't give her. At least not yet.
In the end, whether because she was still half asleep or she realized what was really going on, she shook her head.
"No, I'm okay. Will you come back to bed soon? It's cold without you."
Despite the emotional turmoil raging through him that even rum couldn't dull, Killian's heart warmed at the simple and oh-so-familiar statement, and he found himself nodding without thought.
"Aye. Let me close the window and I'll be there, love."
Emma's own answering nod was slightly sluggish with the pull of sleep beginning to win out, and he wasn't surprised to hear snores coming from the bed mere seconds after her head landed back on a pillow. At least she's getting rest, he thought while corking the bottle before standing and moving to the window. They were lying to each other more and more, yes, but he had to remind himself it wasn't from a place of malice or due to a breakdown in their marriage. He'd fought to overcome the same thing Emma was now dealing with, and he knew all too well how alienating it could be. They'd beat this like they did everything—her with her fiery spirit and him unquestionably supporting her—and in the aftermath they could fix whatever frayed ends the nightmares and lies had started to create.
He had to believe that.
As he reached for the window latch, a stiff breeze blew in off the ocean and ruffled his hair, bringing with it the promise of a storm brewing somewhere out in the darkness.
2,004 steps.
2,003 steps.
2,002 steps.
2,001 steps.
Two miles.
"We're getting close," Liam announced, breaking the comfortable silence that had fallen amongst the four of them over the last hour.
Eric grunted in approval. "Thank the Gods. I don't know how much longer I can take being in this saddle."
Erin, who was riding to the left of the pirate captain and in front of Liam, made a sound of agreement. "How much further?"
"Two miles. We should be able to catch a glimpse of it when we reach the top of that hill in the distance."
Groaning as he tried to shift in his saddle, Eric said, "I don't know about you guys, but I plan on skipping our usual nightcap, plopping my arse in a feathered bed, and refusing to move until the morning after we investigate this portal."
To Liam's right, Henry chuckled. "Coming by a feather bed out here is going to be hard, D'Harper. The nearest town that would have one is nearly twenty miles East of here."
He grimaced at what that meant as Eric made a strangled noise in the back of his throat.
"Please tell me you're joking."
"Sadly, no," Henry replied. "There is a village a few miles away, but there's no inn there. Just cottages and farmland."
"Sorry, Liam. Looks like we'll be camping after we deal with this portal."
Liam rolled his eyes at his sister's statement, and he knew without even having to see her face that she was smirking.
"You're hilarious, Em."
"Of course I am."
Chuckling at the all too familiar banter, Liam surveyed their surroundings as his superpower continued to update him on the distance between their current position and where the portal lay. The fertile grasslands of Camelot's southern region stretched around them for miles, a vast landscape that was unmarked by the kingdom's inhabitants. Some areas do not need to be touched by Man's hand with roads and settlements. It was a statement Arthur had once said to him when he was a child in the aftermath of reclaiming Camelot from Morgana, and Liam understood why the king felt that way about this place. Even shrouded in the darkness of night, it was breathtaking. The ankle-high grass was vibrant beneath the low light of the moon as it entered its last night before beginning a new phase, and the entire landscape gave off a sense of timelessness and other worldliness that he had only ever felt while out on the ocean.
It was far more of an inviting area than the Broceliande had turned out to be.
An involuntary shiver ran through Liam at that memory. He'd encountered a number of frightening things in his short life—Jabberwockys, dragons, krakens, his grandmother's wrath—but nothing had caused cold dread to settle into his blood quite like that laugh had. It had been filled with darkness and malevolence, a threat of violence and the promise of untold tortures in its every note as it echoed around them. It, or more accurately she, had not liked them being there.
He might have entered the Broceliande a non-believer in the stories about the witch, but he had most certainly left it with a different mindset.
They'd ridden their horses at an almost gallop for as long as they dared to after leaving the stream, the very real threat of over exhausting the animals and causing them harm the only reason they had slowed to a walk. Coming to a full halt to give their horses a proper rest had briefly been discussed, but the previous incident had spooked all of them enough for there to be a unanimous agreement to keep riding the remainder of the way through the forest. Their resolve to do so had only deepened the longer they'd traveled. While they hadn't heard anything outside the normal sounds found within a forest, flashes of a figure moving among the trees had teased them the rest of their time in the Broceliande. They were mostly fleeting glimpses—the remains of faded and torn tulle quickly disappearing behind a tree, the flash of auburn locks—each one caught in their peripheral and gone by the time they turned their heads towards it.
It had been unnerving as the very air around them filled with a thick and never-ending dread, prompting each of them to keep one hand on their weapons at all times. The witch had kept her distance, however, never more than a wisp of an image that seemed to want to get closer yet couldn't for some reason.
Not that any of them had questioned that.
After three hours of tense and on-edge traveling, they'd finally cleared the Broceliande, and the sense of dread that had hung over them melted away the moment they stepped onto the wide open grasslands on the other side of the forest. They had still put a good mile or two between them and the forest before stopping to rest their horses, and while sitting on their cloaks in a circle and devouring a late dinner of cheese and meat, they'd talked in hushed tones about what had happened.
"It was definitely the witch."
Erin quirked an eyebrow at him. "I like how you're ready to make that call after hearing something, but when it was only me who heard something, I got teased."
Swallowing the piece of dried meat he'd all but shoved into his mouth after his declaration, Liam replied, "In my defense, we hadn't encountered anything up to the point. Finding you randomly staring at the forest with a dagger in your hand was… odd."
His sister huffed in annoyance but otherwise remained silent.
"Are you saying it wasn't the witch?" Henry asked while accepting a block of cheese from Eric and breaking off his own portion.
Liam watched as his sister mulled over their brother's question, her right index finger absentmindedly tapping against her knee. "I'm not sure," she said at length. "There was something in those woods, that we can all agree on, but I'm still hesitant to say it was the witch."
He gave her an incredulous look. "You're joking, right?"
"No, I'm not."
"Em, you said you felt magic."
"I did, but that doesn't mean it was the Witch of the Broceliande's magic."
Liam gesticulated wildly with his hands despite holding food in each one. "Who bloody else could it have been?!"
"Another traveler? Someone with evil intent who just happen to stumble upon us?"
Eric made a sound of disagreement. "That seems like a stretch considering what we experienced."
"More so than us encountering a fairytale? We just happen to hear and catch glimpses of the witch, a being that no one else has seen and lived to tell the tale? That's either the mother of all coincidences or we're the most lucky gits to have ever walked the Broceliande."
Erin had remained steadfast in her view point throughout the rest of their dinner, a fact that Liam still had trouble wrapping his mind around. He was willing to concede that perhaps it was some entity other than the famed witch, but considering they had never heard of anyone other than the witch being associated with the forest, the likelihood of that was very slim. Erin had also divulged what she'd initially heard, which had left them more confused than ever. None of them had ever heard the term 'Twice-Blessed Child' in their lives, and no one could begin to speculate why someone would call Erin that.
After eating and letting their horses rest for another thirty minutes, they'd remounted and continued on with the remaining two-hour trek to the portal blessedly incident-free.
1,235 steps.
1,234 steps.
1, 23—
Liam swore loudly and vividly as Erin brought her horse to an abrupt stop at the top of the small hill they had been climbing, forcing him to quickly maneuver his own to the side to keep the two animals from colliding.
"Bloody hell, Erin. What are y—"
The question died in a shocked intake of breath as he came to a stop alongside his sister. There, a little over a mile away and at the apex of the flattest area, sat a ring of oak trees. Each one was massive—their branches towering high into the darkened sky and extending nearly as wide to either side of their trunks—and even with spring having arrived less than a week ago they were already covered in green leaves. They were perfectly spaced apart so that the tips of one trees' branches barely grazed another's, the uniformity and neatness of their placement an obvious sign that someone other than Mother Nature had placed them there.
Subtlety had never been one of Merlin's strong suits.
"Please tell me that isn't where the portal is."
Liam didn't have to use his superpower to accurately answer his sister. "Unfortunately it is."
Erin threw her head back and groaned towards the night sky as Eric's brows furrowed in confusion.
"Is that a bad thing?"
"Immensely."
"Why?"
"Because that, D'Harper, is where a fairly significant event in Camelot's history took place," Henry replied as he pulled his horse to a stop on the young pirate's right side. "Ever heard of the Battle of Camlann?"
Eric searched his mind for the term for a long moment before slowly nodding. "It's where Uther the First, Arthur's ancestor, defeated his half-brother Mordred and reclaimed the throne."
"Precisely. The war that was waged on this land was brutal even by our standards today, and thousands upon thousands died on both sides before Uther the First pulled Excalibur from its stone and ended the war."
"I still don't understand why it's bad that the portal is there," Eric said with a shake of his head.
"Because of the power that comes from bloodshed." Lowering her face from the sky, Erin continued, "All magic is fueled by emotion, as you know. If you aren't connected to an emotion—no matter what it is—you can't even do the simplest thing. What most people don't know is that if an emotion is strong enough, or if there is a large enough amount of it concentrated to one area, it imprints itself on the area and that can be used to strengthen magic. It's what Merlin did when he created the ring of oak trees as a memorial to those who had lost their life in the quest to see Uther the First back on the throne."
She didn't say it, but Liam knew from the brief flash across his sister's face that she was also thinking of when Maleficent had taken Eric to the courtyard where Matthew died during the battle six months ago. The Dark Fairy had mostly done it because of the emotional anguish it would cause Erin, but there was no denying she had also chosen the spot imprinted with heartache to strengthen her protective shield.
"So the blood that was spilled here thousands of years ago is what is keeping the portal open?"
"No amount of lingering emotion in a place should be able to keep a portal open for this long as portals have their own governing rules, but that's a theory to think about moving forward," Erin replied. "The reason it's bad that the portal is there is because it means whoever did open it clearly did so with evil intentions. You don't introduce magic as strong as a portal to an area this drenched in bloodshed unless you're up to something nefarious."
"I feel like I need to make a quip about Merlin being shady and not being here with this going down on Uncle Will's behalf right now," Liam said with a heavy sigh.
Henry chuckled. "Well, at least we got the intentions behind it answered sooner rather than later. Now let's go see who is responsible for this mess."
They continued on down the small hill and towards the ring of oak trees, hands consciously gripping the pommels of their swords as their eyes scanned the surrounding countryside. There was no sign of life for as far as any of them could see, though that fact didn't loosen their grip on their weapons in the slightest. Forty feet from the trees, Liam caught the first sight of light beyond the man-made barrier. It was faint, nothing more than a constant flicker, but its distinctive blue hue clearly marked it as an unnatural light source. Another thirty feet and they could not only see the portal swirling but hear it; the familiar whooshing sound that all portals seemed to make loud in the otherwise silent night.
As they passed between two of the giant oak trees—their trunks so far apart the four of them could ride through side by side with twenty feet to spare on either end—a knot began to form in the pit of Liam's stomach. Not that there was a reason for it to. As far as he could tell, there was no sign of anyone in or having been in the clearing for some time. Ages, really. Yet the knot persisted, churning and tightening until it had morphed into a sense of dread that covered him like a wet blanket.
Bringing their horses to a stop twenty feet from the portal's outer reaches, Liam tried—and failed—to visibly shake off his unease.
"Anything, Em?"
Erin shook her head, her loose hair swaying with the movement. "I'm not sensing any specific magic, which you would expect to find if a bean had been used, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. If it was opened by any other means the person could have easily cloaked their magical fingerprint."
"How do you find out if they did?" Eric asked as he patted the neck of his horse. None of their horses seemed to like the swirling mass, each one whining and pawing softly at the grass with their hooves.
"By getting closer." Dismounting, Erin handed the reins of her agitated horse to Liam. "The three of you stay here and watch my back."
Before he could open his mouth to argue—just because they couldn't see anyone in the clearing didn't mean they weren't there, not to mention all the inherent dangers that came with getting too close to any portal—Eric was tossing his reins to Henry and swinging himself down from his own horse in the same motion. A grunt left the young pirate captain as his feet hit the ground, and even above the noise of the portal Liam could hear more than a few of his joints pop with the movement.
"Hold on, I'm coming with you."
Turning from where she had been heading towards the portal, Erin raised a disbelieving eyebrow.
"I am more than capable of finding a magical fingerprint without an escort."
"That may be, but I'm still going."
The finality in Eric's voice made Liam's eyes widen comically. He wasn't sure if his friend had completely lost his mind or had nerves of steel in directing that tone towards Erin on this particular subject. Probably a bit of both, he mused while watching Erin's jaw clench.
"So you're going to come with me and leave Liam and Henry a man down when it comes to our outer defenses because..."
"Because you're trying to walk into a potentially dangerous situation alone." Erin's eyebrow ticked even closer to her hairline, and Eric simply shrugged in response. "It's not up for negotiation, Jones. You go, I go. Simple as that."
There was a brief flash of relief across his sister's face at that, but it was gone as quickly as it had come, and she huffed in what Liam could clearly hear was feigned annoyance.
"Fine."
Liam shared a knowing look with Henry as Eric followed their sister on slightly stiff legs. He might still be hurt by her actions after that night in the cloister, but there was no way Eric D'Harper was letting Erin possibly walk into a dangerous situation without backup being within arm's reach. It was a fact both brothers were appreciative of, particularly Liam as that feeling of dread continued to gnaw at him.
Needing to move—both to stretch his aching legs and keep his apprehension at bay—he quickly tied the reins of Erin's horse around the horn of his saddle and dismounted, his eyes scanning the area before his feet had even touched the ground. The clearing the trees surrounded was no more than half a mile wide and as flat as the ocean, giving them an unobstructed 360 degree view of its entirety. It held the same ankle-high grass that covered the rest of the grasslands they had just spent two hours traveling across, and other than the portal that sat at its center, the only other item inside the boundary of trees was a lone boulder off to the northwest.
Liam had always wondered if the legends about it were true. It was said that it was the very rock Uther the First had pulled Excalibur from, cementing himself as the rightful King of Camelot in a blinding flash of light and forging a pathway that had led to Arthur sitting on the throne. Not that he had time to ponder that particular myth, he thought as his gaze swung away from the famed rock and towards the portal. If he hadn't had known that it had been active for almost a week, he would have sworn someone had thrown a bean or waved a wand to open it mere minutes ago. It was a swirling mass of light and clouds that reminded him of a whirlpool, and it looked very much like every other portal he'd seen throughout his lifetime. It's electric blue color was bright but not blinding—an almost calming color—and it shaded Erin and Eric in various hues of blue.
His sister and friend were almost five feet away from the portal now. Erin stood with her right hand held out towards the swirling mass, the white color of her magic gently illuminating her palm as she tried to ascertain if there was a hidden fingerprint in its creation. Eric was no more than a half a foot behind her, one hand on his sword and eyes constantly moving between their surroundings and her. Clearly having not found anything in that spot, Erin moved further down and one step closer to the portal with Eric instantly following her.
Unease bloomed anew in his chest as he watched them, and he subconsciously twisted the ruby ring on his right hand with his thumb. There was something about this place that didn't sit well with him, and it both annoyed and worried him that he couldn't put his finger on why. It would have been easy to chalk it up to what had occurred here thousands of years ago. You didn't have to be a magical person to be in tune with the energy left behind by that kind of incident, but Liam had been a sailor long enough—and been raised by one—to know the difference between a feeling that something was wrong, and when something was actually wrong.
"Liam?"
Pulled from his thoughts, he turned his head to find Henry next to him. At some point his brother had dismounted as well and hammered a stake into the ground, tying off his and Eric's restless horses before coming over to him.
"Hm?"
"I've been calling your name for a solid minute," his older brother stated, a worried crease forming in his brow. "You okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. I just… something doesn't feel right."
Henry snorted. "Nothing about this entire situation feels right."
"No, it's not the por—"
Liam's breath hitched as that feeling of dread intensified tenfold without warning. It nearly choked him with its intensity, burning through him with a hardened surety and igniting every sixth sense he held like a thousand suns. He couldn't figure out what had caused it at first, his eyes scanning the clearing for a sign of something that would have triggered that type of response, and then like a well timed punch to the face he realized what it was: the wind. It was faint, no more than a breeze that didn't even have the strength to move the clearing's grass, but it was an unnatural wind not produced by Mother Nature.
He didn't know how he knew that, but he did, and alarm bells sounded in his mind even as an icy sense of foreboding filled his veins.
"Something's wrong," Liam muttered, dropping his horse's reins without preamble and moving towards where Erin and Eric stood.
He'd only taken a few steps, however, when the portal pulsated like a beating heart, sending a magical shockwave across the clearing. It hit him with the same force as a full sized gale on the open sea and threw him backwards, the strength of his impact with the ground causing air to momentarily leave his lungs. Before he could catch his breath—or even think about doing so—a white hot pain erupted from his stomach. It was excruciating, like an iron poker had been heated and jabbed straight into his belly button, and Liam tried to scream with what little air was still left in his lungs. He attempted to curl inward on instinct to lessen the pain but it didn't work. It only intensified, becoming hotter—stronger—and bile rose sharp and fast into his throat at the sensation.
Then it was gone, a dull ache replacing the searing pain, and he was moving. No, not moving, his mind supplied to him frantically. He was being pulled, yanked even, at an alarming speed in the direction of the portal by something. He scrambled for purchase, fingers desperately grasping at blades of grass and clawing into the very soil to try to slow his descent towards the blue mass, but none of it was working.
He stopped moving as quickly as he had started, the abruptness of it so jarring that it rattled his teeth and disoriented him further. Something had latched onto his arm, that he could feel, but it took him a long second after he looked back towards where he had come from to realize what it was. Henry. His brother was on one knee, both hands grabbing Liam's right forearm and the reins of Liam's horse looped around his upper torso. Using the weight of both his and Erin's horses as an anchoring point, Henry began to pull Liam towards him. The invisible force was still trying to drag him to the portal, however, and his brother had to use every ounce of strength he had gained through years of service to the Roundtable to counteract it. With his teeth clenching and muscles in his neck straining, Henry finally managed to maneuver Liam up, pressing his younger brother's back against his chest and wrapping an arm securely around him.
"I've got you!" Henry shouted into his ear, and for the first time since he'd been knocked down Liam realized the world around him was deafening.
The wind howled and raged, a monstrous presence that reverberated through his ears and caused his hair to whip painfully against his face. It was the kind of wind that took your breath away with its strength and left you gasping for air despite the sheer amount of it that was striking you. The pulling sensation continued, the jerks almost painful as they tried to dislodge him from Henry's secure hold, and Liam cried out with the surety that he would be ripped in two by it at any moment.
"Henry! Liam!"
Liam's eyes snapped towards his sister's voice despite the pain that was threatening to send him into unconsciousness. Erin was sprawled on her stomach, one hand gripping a dagger that had been buried to its hilt in the ground while the other just barely managed to keep a hold of Eric's right forearm. They were dangerously close to the portal—Eric's legs from the knees up were already hovering over its opening—and even with the distance between them, Liam could see the same pain that was coursing through him etched onto his sister's features.
"Erin!"
"Hold on!"
No sooner had Henry and Liam spoken than the dagger Erin was holding onto ripped from the earth, sending both her and Eric hurling into the depths of the swirling portal.
The Mother Fairy's heart beat frantically against her chest as she broke the surface of her lake with a startled gasp.
Something was wrong.
She couldn't pinpoint exactly what had awoken her from her dreamless rest, but she knew that something sinister had occurred. It permeated the very air around her, seeping into her bones and leaving behind an after taste of wrongness that caused her immortal soul to tremble with fear. There had been an irrevocable shift somewhere within the universe. Something—or someone—had caused destiny to suddenly be thrown off its intended course without warning. It was a sensation that the Mother Fairy had felt only once before in eons of existence, and her stomach turned at the memory of that fateful night when everything had changed.
The unclasping of a lock… betrayal… unapologetic laughter… tears of guilt… an anguished cry as a light was forever snuffed out…
As her ability to breathe properly became constricted by an overwhelming sense of dread filling her lungs, the Mother Fairy began to move. The elegant and ethereal way she normally carried herself gave way to clumsiness with her desperation to reach the shoreline. More than once she lost her footing on the slick soil beneath her feet and found herself tumbling forward into the very water she was trying to get out of, causing her to resemble a fawn learning how to take its first steps rather than the ancient and powerful being that she was.
She had barely reached dry land when three familiar black robed figures appeared in front of her.
"What happened?" she demanded, all propriety forgotten as the fear that had gripped her soul intensified at the sight of them.
The Moirai did not make social calls. They were eternal beings, permanent fixtures in the cosmos that predated even her. Known more commonly as The Fates, they were responsible for every mortal's thread of life. Clotho spun each thread at the time of a person's conception from her spindle, the white fiber intricately woven into a pattern unique to the person whose lifeline it represented. As she did so Lachesis, the appointer of the three Fates, meticulously measured the line with her staff to denote a mortal's lifespan. Atropos' had the grimmest duty of them all—ending a life by cutting the white fiber with her unbreakable sheers.
There had always been a reason behind the handful of visits they had made to Avalon over the last four thousand years, and in all that time the Mother Fairy could only recall one unscheduled visit. If they were here without warning then whatever had happened was as monumental as the shift itself.
Atropos, who stood to the far left, stepped forward. "Princess Erin and Captain D'Harper have fallen from the Upper World."
All the color drained from her face. "Fallen?" she whispered in horror. "What do you mean they've fallen? Are they—have they died?"
"They are still very much alive, M'Lady," Clotho, the robed figure to the right of the trio, quickly interjected. "But they no longer breathe the air of the living."
Only eons of having dealt with the Moirai and knowing of their tendency to speak in ambiguous phrasing kept her temper in check. No wonder mortals became frustrated when omniscient beings speak to them cryptically in times of danger.
"How is that even possible?"
Despite the hoods that shielded their faces, the barely perceptible way that Lachesis and Atropos glanced at one another didn't go unnoticed by her, nor did she miss Clotho wringing her aged and nearly skeletal hands togethers. It was an uncharacteristic move for the Weaver—an almost mortal emotion of unease behind the act—and dread settled anew in the pit of her stomach.
"Because they've entered the Underworld while alive," Lachesis intoned solemnly from her eternal position between her sisters.
The entirety of Avalon shifted beneath her feet, and with a gasped, "No!" the Mother Fairy crumbled to the ground.
"M'lady!"
Tears of anguish blurred her vision as she fought to catch her breath between stilted sobs, heedless of the cold and wet dirt seeping into her dress or the sympathetic arm that Clotho placed around her shoulders.
It all made sense now.
The feeling that something was wrong, a shift within the universe, destiny being rerouted—all of it was happening because a Twice-Blessed Child was in the land of the dead. Without both of the Twice-Blessed Children present in the ultimate moment, the prophecy she had set forth thousands of years ago couldn't come to pass, and the world as they knew it would change forever. Maleficent would, without question, herald in an age of darkness and death that Mankind couldn't even begin to comprehend.
There was only one silver lining to the problem now facing them, and it caused more sobs to wrack her body. The intricate happenings of Hades' realm were known only to him and his wife, but even as an outsider, the Mother Fairy was aware of the law that Hades had placed upon his domain centuries before. In an effort to halt people from entering and trying to steal their loved one's soul, he had used his divine power to decree that only half of the number of living mortals who entered the Underworld could return back to the Upper World.
Only one of them would be able to leave the Underworld.
"Perhaps you could beseech Hades to—"
"He can't break or bend that rule under any circumstance, and we all know why," she said brokenly, interrupting Lachesis' attempt at softening the news.
Hades had made that law with a vow on the Styx—the same way she had given her word to right Maleficent's wrong at any cost—and an oath upon the river Styx was as unbreakable as a promise given directly by a god.
"I'm not so sure Hades would even if he could."
There was something in Atropos' tone that broke through the devastation filling her heart, and with a quiet sniffle she looked up to the Fate.
"What do you mean?"
The oldest of the Moirai turned to Lachesis. "Show her."
For the briefest of seconds Lachesis seemed to contemplate the wiseness behind her sister's suggestion, but in the blink of an eye the white orb that sat atop her staff began to glow brightly. When the light vanished she saw a clearing ringed with oak trees, the image before her cloaked with a darkness that only came from night. A figure stood within its midst, and despite the fact that it had been four thousand years since she laid eyes on him, the Mother Fairy instantly recognized Hades. He seemed to be contemplating something in his hand with a resigned expression upon his divine face, and as he angled the object her breath caught in her throat at the familiar heraldry engraved on the pommel of the dagger. Asteria. Before she could contemplate how he had come in possession of it, or why there was blood upon its blade, Hades stretched his free hand towards the empty clearing.
The electric blue color of his divine power seemed to bubble up from the very earth, swirling and increasing in size until it had taken the unmistakable shape of a portal. Lowering his hand, he held the dagger upside down over it and, with horror and realization seeping into her very bones, she watched as the blade portion disintegrated into a pile of silver dust that landed in Hades' palm. He instantly began speaking one of the oldest and most powerful tethering spells—a magic so ancient that only she and the Gods remembered it—and once it was completed the dust, along with the portal before him, glowed a brilliant gold before returning to their previous colors.
White hot rage burned through her as Lachesis' orb returned to its normal color, and each of the Moirai took a step backwards when Avalon began to tremble beneath their very feet.
"Hades... what have you done?!"
Secluded within the southern section of oak trees that ringed the small clearing, Persephone sighed in resignation as Princess Erin and Captain D'Harper disappeared into the portal.
She absolutely loathed this. She understood why it was happening, but that didn't mean the Goddess of Spring and Queen of the Underworld had to like it. Forcing a soul to enter any realm that had a strict entry law like the Underwood did without them knowing about it was the height of cruelty, and went against every principle she held as a benevolent goddess. It was a fate worse than death and no one—save perhaps the Dark Fairy—deserved to have that happen to them. It had to be done, however. Hades was as bound to the ancient tenant of their divinity as the sun was to rise in the east every morning.
There was at least a ray of hope in an otherwise despairing situation, she thought as the portal dissipated in a sudden and blinding flash of light.
Maleficent, in all her scheming and ruthlessness to undermine a prophecy she barely understood, hadn't known about The Gauntlet. Not that she could have. Only those who lived within the boundaries of the Underworld knew of its existence. It was the one loop hole to Hades' law, a product born because of a tenant far greater than even that of a divine promise, and as long as the Twice Blessed Child and her Companion completed The Gauntlet, the universe would shift back into balance.
She knew Hades had his doubts over whether it could be done, and she didn't blame him for having them. After all, no one had ever been able to complete it. Hundreds had tried and every one of them failed. There had been only once, in the untold centuries since The Gauntlet's creation, that a pairing of souls had almost finished it. In the end, however, the faith needed to pass had given way to doubt and led to yet another failure. It was why Hades hadn't even thought to use The Gauntlet when he'd first realized that the Dark Fairy had given him the means to circumvent her request while still upholding his promise. Why should he believe that this time would be any different than the others?
But Persephone knew it would be. Unlike her husband, she'd witnessed the connection between Princess Erin and Captain D'harper first hand. There wasn't a divine law forbidding the gods from mingling amongst mortals—half of Zeus' children wouldn't exist if he'd put one in place—although discretion was required after the incident with Ares and a war celebration a few eons before. Because of that, Mortals never knew the person walking beside them at any given moment was divinity. Persephone, like many other gods of the pantheon, had been using that to her advantage for centuries whenever in the Upper World, and she'd seen the princess and young pirate interact on a number of occasions. Sacrifice, honesty, trust, belief, loyalty—those were the things The Gauntlet tested, and the bond between Princess Erin and Captain D'Harper held them all.
If there was ever anyone who could complete the unpassable test, it was them.
Even if there was tension between them currently so thick you could cut it with a flaming sword. She didn't know what had created it, or when things had changed since the last time she saw them a year ago, but it was there now and undeniable to hide.
Persephone had picked up on it from the moment she started following the foursome undertake their journey to Camelot. She hadn't needed to be their silent watcher—getting away from her mother to do so hadn't been the easiest thing—but she'd felt like she owed it to them to at least make the trip safe for them. It was the least she could do, after all, considering their world would soon be upended because of a promise her husband had made. In the end it had been a good thing that she did. None of them could have known that the presence of the Twice-Blessed Children within the boundary of the Broceliande would attract her attention. She'd gotten fairly close to the group at one point when Persephone had been called back to her mother's side unexpectedly, but the Goddess of Spring had managed to return in time to halt a bloody confrontation.
The last thing they needed was for the Twice-Blessed Children to lose their lives before completing the prophecy.
The frantic shouts of Prince Liam and Sir Henry suddenly filled the otherwise silent clearing, and Persephone watched as they ran to where the portal had been only seconds before in a vain attempt at trying to see their sister and friend.
This would not be an easy journey for any of the heroes moving forward, particularly the one Princess Erin and Captain D'Harper were now on, but she had faith that Maleficent's attempt to foil the prophecy would fail and all would be righted with the world. Quietly whispering a prayer of strength for the things that were to come for them, Persephone dissolved into hundreds of flower petals.