Chapter 12: Royal
The words split the air, each syllable resonating with hidden power, wrought with both ancient meaning and unheard concepts.
This was not a sentence a mortal mind could comprehend. It was not English or Spanish, or any other language that humans had ever spoken. It rolled in the air like a hurricane, splitting open rock and dust and revealing the glimmering crystal woven in and on the other side of reality.
It was un-speech. Incomprehensible. However, Alexandria understood it, a prisoner for a moment, within her own body. Watching the Leanansidhe's yellow eyes narrow, almost imperceptibly. It was alien, this presence in her mind. Childlike and eldritch. Ancient and inexperienced. An impossible dichotomy.
Perhaps it was the nature of this place, where legends and ancient fables walked free, which allowed Alexandria to grasp at the unknowable. Perhaps it was always within her reach and she had never reached for it.
The cycle. Scion and the counterpart, intertwined, feasting on every world, fighting to stave off the steadily encroaching nothingness. Entropy, the death of all things. It had failed.
In some manner, this brought Alexandria relief. At least Scion was doomed just as they were. A dying god on a dying world. The fractal monstrosity, her agent, slipped backward, just as easily as it grasped control of her body in the first place.
It was an alien sensation and wholly unpleasant to the very woman that had loathed the very idea of human masters. Part of this loathing was the knowledge that she was immune and being the one to liberate many poor souls, enthralled forever by her fellow parahumans.
She had been violated in a way that she had never actually felt before. Almost instinctively she crossed her arms over her chest, just a fleeting moment of insecurity in the maelstrom of snow and ice around her group.
Leanansidhe rested on her rump in the snow, wild green eyes leaking black and yellow. Alexandria stared down at her for a moment, the vision juxtaposed with vast crystalline tendrils stretching across the horizon. For a long moment all was still, and reality, such that it was bled back into being.
Alexandria cast one last gaze back at Leanansidhe and turned away. Pink tendrils shaped into half-shell orbs floated above each of the thralls and the Warden. Razor-sharp shards of ice and snow glanced off the barriers, carving gouges in stone and cliff-side lichen alike.
The Warden regarded her with an inscrutable gaze for a long moment, eyes flitting over her body, before he opened his mouth to speak, "You're injured?"
Alexandria glanced sharply at him, her suddenly focused gaze prompted him to speak up. He deftly gestured with his hand at his own side.
Alexandria mirrored his gesture, her fingers grazing along a line just under her breasts. She glanced down for a moment, noting the way it marked her flesh but had failed to leave anything but a seeming smudge.
Her fingers came away slick with what appeared to be viscous oil, quite like tar, or tree sap. She rubbed it between her fingers, it gradually flaked off and drifted into the roaring maelstrom blizzard.
The Warden's eyes flickered down and towards Leanansidhe and a strange knife lying untouched in the snow. Even the tempest around them seemed to shy away from covering it with frozen water, it lay undisturbed. A simple blade, with Celtic knots inlaid into the handle.
His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing as Leanansidhe made to stand, one still immaculate hand reaching for the knife.
She seemed to pause for a moment, as blue ice, so dark it almost seemed black seemed to engulf the knife in the span of a single heartbeat. There was the sound of a great glacier cracking, great monoliths of ice grinding upon each other.
Then there was another, standing as if she had always been there. A statue of perfect elegance, the eye of the storm, each meager snowflake drifting in just the right way to accentuate her otherworldly beauty.
Her hair was unbraided, but flowed in white spirals, disordered but still perfect seeming. Vivid piercing eyes stared out from an infinitely pale face, sparing a single glance for Leanansidhe before her eyes seemed to find Alexandria. For a long moment, it seemed like the new arrival was both looking at her and through her. Alexandria's next words died in her throat, as she fully took in the composure of the thing in front of her.
If it wasn't for her perfect bodily control Alexandria would've flinched at the wrath gathered in those eyes. Her lips, the color of frozen blueberries, was set in a grim frown, and fury was etched upon her immaculate brow.
"Handmaiden," the creature spoke. Her voice was painful to hear, out of tune with the world. A voice that spoke of impossible might and majesty, barely restrained by a veneer of civilization.
Alexandria mentally corrected herself, this wasn't just some creature. This must be the Queen Leanansidhe mentioned.
Leanansidhe opened her mouth to speak and the Queen's eyes flashed, fury plain to see, black ice flash froze in the blink of an eye upon Leanansidhe's body, pale pink wards flickered and broke, allowing the ice to swallow the sidhe whole.
"I shall not bandy words with you and yours, Deceiver." The Queen all but snarled, and the sound echoed far louder than it had any right. The very air seemed to shiver, and the Warden clutched at his ears, a silent hiss of pain. Alexandria noticed a trickle of blood fall from each of the still static thralls. Alexandria frowned. Her voice was like a razor in her eardrums, stabbing in a way that a mere voice should not be able too.
"The Queen of Winter." Alexandria risked speaking. While she had partially gathered that whatever this thing is was extremely dangerous, that didn't mean that she was afraid. Mightier than this thing had tried to kill her and failed. Even if this creature seemed to exude the same almost alien untouchability as the Simurgh or Leviathan.
The Queen turned her head towards Alexandria, breaking the eye contact she was maintaining with the new sculpture that had replaced the muse, Leanansidhe.
A dress of blue and green shimmered, as the Queen approached, little flecks of what looked like stars or snowflakes glimmered in its folds, which only served to greater accentuate the inhuman perfect figure of the monarch.
"Library of Alexandria." The Queen spoke and this time Alexandria felt it. Just as Leanansidhe invoked her name with power, so did this thing in front of her. It caused some part of her to resonate, almost enough to send her to her knees. It felt unfinished, like a note missing from a symphony. Alexandria shivered then but she did not kneel.
Mab's head tilted for a moment, the next words were no less terrible, "You lay dominion over a mantle that is ephemeral."
Alexandria did not respond, still unsettled by what seemed more like an accusation than an acknowledgment.
"You have done a great service, child," the Queen continued, her words like sharp razors. The ground, the mountain trembled. She could hear the Warden whimper next to her, and out of the corner of her eyes, even the thrall's faces were becoming filled with pain.
"Exposed the rot, in the heart of my demesne." The Queen continued," speak your boon and I will see it fulfilled in accord with my nature."
Alexandria paused, regarding the creature in front of her carefully, before nodding stiffly towards the restrained Sidhe, she spoke then, her voice sounded feeble to her own ears, "Your handmaiden, the Leanansidhe, promised us safe passage through Winter."
The Queen's eyes flashed, whether it was in anger or amusement, Alexandria could not tell. While she had spent every waking moment of her second life, as opposed to the third life this was, learning the faces of men, this thing was alien in front of her.
"The oaths of the subject pass thusly to the liege." The Queen spoke, with no less gravitas than before. The Warden beside Alexandria sunk to his knees, clutching at his ears, the Queen sent him a glance before nodding.
The air seemed to shiver, and the surroundings blended away, frost giving way to pale dead spring grass. Withered husks of terrestrial trees surrounded the whole group for a moment. Alexandria felt a sudden sense of vertigo, moving without actually moving and then found her feet, not upon snow but pavement.
A skyscraper stretched in front of her, then Alexandria did blink as her eyes caught upon the iconic symbol of Chicago's skyline, the Sears Tower.
Plap.
The Warden seemed to unclench his fists, letting out a stifled scream as something whacked his head, something small and green.
Alexandria ignored it for a moment, casting her gaze around for the Queen. Their surroundings, which looked like a small park, were empty, devoid of life. In a spiral around them the grass, which looked rotted, was sparkled with frost. A nearby bench tilted over, its support rusted away by presumably many long years.
Then Alexandria cast her attention to the thing squirming on the ground and then stretched heavenwards after a long moment.
It was raining frogs.