AN: sorry for format error, dont know what happened with that!
Interlude: White Council Warden
In his youth, Ēadmund Alfred Baines wanted to be a cartographer. Where other children would marvel over the works of Tolkien, immersed in the story, or indulging their mind with fantastical daydreams, he pored over atlases.
He traced the lines and marveled at the way the earth shaped the world. Magic and mystery were far from his mind. Of his mother and father, neither were wizards, even if according to ancient family language, an ancestor had crawled from the sea.
He'd seen the old book, tattered with age and written in an unreadable dialect, hidden away in his father's study behind a glass case. Its pages were always wet, but the pictures were vivid. Maps of places the world had never seen, seashores and inlets. The urge to explore fairly burned within him.
This urge to explore, to map, to record led to many family trips. His childhood peers pleaded with their parents to attend amusement parks, theaters, and zoos. In contrast, he desired places of great and heady importance. Buckingham palace, even though the place made him shiver, was a real treat. The experience was tainted by the confiscation of his map, drawn on a spare napkin.
He first learned of the masquerade one haunting October day, so long ago, when much by chance he stood along the side of the River Strid. Many people have attempted to swim in that water, all or most that tried would secretly desire death. There he was, a youth of eleven, along the bank, fingers stained from smudged lines. He scribbled as he walked, marking in meters his stride.
Then he slipped, his feet catching on a root perhaps, in his dreams and nightmares it was a grasping hand. He tumbled into the cold river water, and slipped beneath the surface. The deaths had tainted this place, and the proximity to the solstice meant that other things, more foul, has slipped across into the waking world.
A man with a staff of white oak, bald and gaunt pulled him free of clutching claws on the other side. It was fortune he thought for many years. Why else would Aleron LaFortier, one of the Senior Members of the White Council be in exactly the right place at the right time to save him?
He had apprenticed under the Frenchman, despite his rude and biting words, and eventually fulfilled his dream. The NeverNever was a world that he had never dreamed of, a world where he could form new maps, of lands never before recorded. Later on, bitterness crept into his work, unlike the maps of the world, which changed only over long eons, the maps of the ways were outdated within days, weeks and years. Only the strongest routes, which these days formed through consistent thoughts and emotions which were unfeasible to shape, endured past decades and centuries.
Even the ways between Rome and Constantinople once thought utterly secure had withered and decayed, until enough travelers lost their path that new routes had to be found. One of these new nexus points was the Hidden Halls, which relied on both the strength of myth and wards placed down by the original Merlin to maintain its place in both worlds.
It was this knowledge of the ways, and whims of both Winter and Summer helped secure him a Wardenship over a full half of Wales, from Radonshire to Anglesey. It was also this knowledge that was the reason why his silver sword seemed too far away, his sight swaying as the Red Court ambushed him in his own tower.
"This him?" He heard one of the vampires hiss. If only he had fled to the Hidden Halls at once when he heard Archangel had fallen. However, he needed to secure the ways. Archangel had been a nexus all to itself, offering free routes into Africa and much of Asia. Some of these routes had powerful guardians which he needed to bargain with to close the ways.
"Yes, Warden Baines, Ways Keeper," He heard the hissed reply, the vampire noble he had torched with his pink ward. It was a defense he had developed with La Fortier for use against the Jade Court but it did well enough against the Red Court when they weren't expecting it. Darkness clutched at him, he fought to refocus his thoughts, but the thorn manacles cut deep into his skin.
"Grab the woman and the child, we may need them to ensure compliance," the Spanish lilt to the words was unfamiliar but it sounded like somebody he knew…
Cold. Biting cold. Seeping into his bones and grey cloak. His ears were already tinted blue, or at least he suspected so, he had come back to awareness suddenly, a curse at his lips, but the manacles stifled it before it could even be given form.
His captor sniffed, amused, sharing a joke in broken Mayan with another Vampire, this one in green and black Colombian Army fatigues. Once, the Red Court had been barely a blip in the World's eye, even if they had subsumed an entire pantheon. Hernan Cortez had broken their power clean open, and for a long time they had merely scrambled to keep some semblance of empire together.
Now, Mayan was a language that the White Council encouraged its Wardens to learn, much as the Jade Court forced them to learn obscure dialects of Chinese.
The slap of flesh, another vampire, the noble and a red Court clad in serpent garb argued, fragments of half-translated Spanish making its way to his groggy mind, "Traes hierro aquí, al corazón del peligro?"
Something about iron, maybe? He shook his head suddenly, clarity returning suddenly as he remembered his niece and her son. His eyes darted left and right, gaze drifting over the faces of glazed over thralls, drool and spittle leaking from their faces, which shivered into adoration whenever one of their captors shared a touch, to keep them moving.
Baines shivered, not daring to speak. His hands were warm under the grey cloak of his office, the Red Court must need him alive for something, else they would have stripped him and perhaps broken his mind. The question was why they would dare to travel with him alive? Tendrils of ice and vines clutched at an unfortunate vampire, pulling him from the path with a scream. The vampires ignored their fellow's shrieks and screams as in some dark hole it was consumed by the vines, just the very least of the denizens of Winter. With no small amount of horror, Baines recalled the earlier argument, which had died away with the recent death. Who were these fools that dared to carry iron into the midst of Winter? Either they were desperate or something more was going on here.
Then the vampires paused as one. A garbled shout, half-broken by the wind, emanating from the back of the group. Baines tried to twist and look, but one of the vampire's thralls, one half-addicted to the narcotic saliva but still functioning grabbed his shoulder. He hissed in pain as the wound under his cloak smarted, whatever the vampire noble had, some kind of pain magic, packed a mean punch.
Entropy and pain, it fed in a self-fulfilling loop. Very easy to break concentration if you caught someone unawares, as he had been. Why had he put down his sword? He knew he wasn't safe, and he knew that he was a target? He knew the ways too well and had been seen by the negotiation tables too often in recent years. Plus, he was young, did not have the weight and mystical power of someone like Liberty or the Blackstaff. Not that any Warden has the sheer presence and foreboding malaise that the Blackstaff evoked in his enemies.
He stumbled along, half cognizant with pain, attempting to channel a spell again and again, even though he knew it was doomed to failure. Why were these even working, his mind wailed, thorn manacles were only supposed to work outside of the NeverNever? He focused his will again, stumbling into the suddenly stopped vampire in front of him. In fact, he noticed with bleary eyes, they were all stopped.
"Your friend was most impolite, I'm sure that you'll be more receptive," a cold disdainful voice broke clean through the swirling wind. Baines's eyes snapped to the front, leaning to the side to see around the vampire in front of him.
A woman stood atop the snow, a little blue pixie playing with her blowing black locks. Her cheekbones were sharp and her face was perfect, except for an ugly and deep scar over her eye, which stood empty. She was clad in what would've been a nearly picture-perfect example of a woman's business suit if it wasn't for the almost starburst shaped hole currently shredded into it. The skin under was completely unmarked and her complexion, what he could see was perfect.
His mind leaped to fae first, noting the way her feet rested atop the snow without sinking.
The lead Red Court snarled, a deep animalistic sound and spit out badly accented English, "What do you want spirit? We have leave to travel through these lands."
"You are the Red Court, yes?" The woman asked, not even a single part of her body moving. It was unnatural in the way that only a stalking panther could be. A great predator poised, frozen for a moment as the prey shifted uneasily. The still silence, that so often heralded a blur of death, especially here in the ever-present danger of the NeverNever.
Baines did not quite hear the lead Jaguar Warrior's sudden reply, no doubt it was subtly biting and differential to what must be some kind of fae or NeverNever Winter monster.
"That man, and those women" Baines started, eyes darting over and narrowing. He almost tried to speak, stopped only by the rancid gag in his mouth, "What are you doing with them?"
The creature pointed subtly with a single outstretched finger, in an almost negligent wave. Every motion screamed power, barely constrained. Her brown eye, sought to meet his but his long training made him slip his gaze downwards, away from the almost alien gaze.
"The prisoners?" A vampire warbled, the sound not unlike a man, suddenly confused by a change in conversation. They were probably expecting demands for a deal, an offer of safe passage, perhaps a threat. The vampire shot a look back, aborted partway and continued, rather feebly, "They're prisoners?"
"The question I believe I asked, is what are you doing with them?" The creature replied, a single immaculate brow raised. The little pixie still played with a strand of hair by her ear. It looked vaguely unsettled, even from this distance.
"They are our prisoners, we do not answer to allies of the White Council!" The Jaguar Warrior responded, irate. A faint flicker of hope clutched at Baines heart. Was this woman, this creature with the White Council. Had they heard about his capture and made a deal with something to save or retrieve him? A moment later he dismissed this errant thought, they probably didn't even know he hadn't been able to fulfill his duties yet, closing the few ways that could be closed, unless more time had passed than he had thought.
Baines blinked, partially shaking his head ruefully, it wasn't a very good thing, at all, when creatures took an interest in you, especially inhumanly beautiful beings from the depths of Winter Unseelie territory.
One moment the jaguar Warrior stood in front of the woman the nest the Jaguar Warrior screamed, clutching at its arm. Fragments of bone, wood and obsidian flying from its club. The woman had moved so quickly that he hadn't even seen the strike.
The woman cocked her head, a flicker of all-too-human amusement lingering for a moment on her features and then, she the Jaguar Warrior slammed into the ground, the woman moved several steps forward between his blinks. Pistol and submachine gun fire pierced the air, small fragments of metal impacting the woman's body and falling to the ground in a facsimile of a scene from Superman.
Of course, as he expected of a denizen of the NeverNever, this creature did not sit idle but slipped forward, leaving the snow unmarked behind her, and in the next moment, Baines realized that more than half of the vampires hands and trigger fingers clutched at guns that were not there or broken and torn fingers. One vampire continued to pull the trigger of a nonexistent gun aiming it at the women. Another tried to strike with its talons, undeterred by her speed.
With barely a backward glance, the creature backhanded the lunging vampire, its skull shattered inwards with a sickening crack, it stumbled to the side, a rasp of agony coming from a broken mouth before it slipped over the side, tumbling to its death, partway down even its addled brain realized what was happening and it managed a mangled shriek.
"Iron. How…quaint," The creature informed them almost in the same tone one would usually use to carry out a conversation. Baines had missed what just happened but now the creature clutched a grey knife, familiar to anyone that traveled the unclaimed ways of the NeverNever. An iron dagger, as close to pure iron as you could get and not be brittle enough to shatter with a simple strike.
The vampires backed away in a completely believable response. Baines could only gibber in horror within his own mind. Red Court or Fae? A Fae so powerful that she could ignore iron as if she was a dragon faced with a knight in plate armor with a mundane steel sword.
"The prisoners are yours," the Jaguar Warrior croaked, shooting angry eyes back towards him. He could see how the vampire's eyes flashed to the mangled gun in the snow and how it must dearly wish it could deny him to the Fae. Honestly, he may have preferred that fate.
He attempted to say something along the lines of, "You big coward…"
Some other words would have followed but all was muffled by his gag, he felt it as the chains clutched by his captors loosened, the crunch of snow sounded as the vampires backed away carefully.
"Your thralls remain," the still Fae commanded, her voice brokering no argument. Again, she stood perfectly still, almost statue-like. Not even her eye moved. Only her hair twisted and twirled, caught by the growing wind.
For a moment, there was nothing but silence, and Warden Baines was able to listen to the relaxing sounds of the NeverNever. The distant trees groaned. The wind howled like it would greatly prefer to kill you itself. The ice shifted and cracked up the mountain. The hounds bayed in the distance… wait…
Baines could feel a cold sweat on his back and he was momentarily unsure whether it was because of the distant sound of the hunting hounds. He had spent enough time in the NeverNever to know what usually followed them, so to fear them would be natural. No, this was a fear of the unknown, of this thing in front of him, which oozed serenity and malice. The ease with which it broke the vampires and the nonchalance was frightening in a way that Warden Cartographer Baines had never experienced before.
Now, he had heard of the experiences of other Wardens with beasts most foul, fair fairy fiends with more power than the ordinary wizard had in their pinky toe. Those were just stories, sure he cataloged the ways, but he had actually been lucky his whole life, even after the dip into the River Strid so long ago. He had avoided making deals or encountering such dreadful creatures and he would have really appreciated if it had stayed that way.
"I am Alexandria," The creature said, and his mind whirled. What? Did it give its name, just like that? Alexandria? He struggled to place meaning to the title. Was this just a name it had adopted? Alexandria meant 'protector of men' and was another name for Hera. Was this Hera? He was doomed, wasn't he?
Alexandria stepped forward, feet not even touching the ground and for a moment he was reminded of Yudhishtra from Hindu text who was said to be so pure that he floated above the ground. Of course, that comparison and link was beyond silly, for one thing, Yudhishtra was male not this immaculate female with only a single blemish upon her face.
To be continued in Baines Interlude 2, coming soon.