Interlude: Baines Pt. 2
Candy for a companion? This creature must jest, Baines couldn't help but think to himself as he dug in his robes for the Hershey's Kiss that he was almost sure was still in there somewhere. He felt a brief flicker of terror as his groping fingers failed to find it for a moment.
The little pixie that accompanied this 'Alexandria' tugged on the larger being's hair, attempting to move her forward. The pixie tugging ineffectively for a moment, straining and then Alexandria moved forward, floating easily.
It was beyond eerie how she moved. It was like watching a badly choreographed play. Where the character was supposed to fly but was pulled forward almost unnaturally. Moments like that broke immersion. This creature in front of Baines had no strings, no line holding her up, but her flight involved no movement.
Since she was currently divested of her garments, he was treated to a view of adamantine pale skin but even that beauty merely seemed to emphasize inhumanity. No tensed muscles, no posture change, no minute twitching.
Baines changed his mind. She was not beautiful, even in the immaculate sense, she was terrifying. A statue given human form. Now that the honeymoon phase of his infatuation was swiftly departing he was forced to admit that she wasn't some pinnacle of Grecian beauty.
Her hair and eyes were dark, and if he was forced to make some kind of ethnic judgment, he would guess Iberian. Race was nothing but flavor to the denizens of the Nevernever. Most shed skins with greater ease than serpents. Baines knew this intimately.
This close Baines could see the brown eyes of the creature in front of him even though he focused on her nose. It was not because he believed this thing human, but more so that he feared that it was. What foul rituals and tribulations would be necessary to desecrate a human body to give such obscene power?
"Wait," he said, and immediately almost started to hyperventilate at his own foolishness. Still, he forced the next words from a mouth that was far too dry, "If I give you this, would you consider my debt fulfilled?"
The creature raised a single eyebrow. He, himself, was startled by his own audacity. The creature snorted slightly. A regal sound, for all its seeming vulgarity. Somehow this creature managed to still sound poised while standing stark naked in front of him.
Despite his own efforts, his eyes slipped a little lower, only snapping back upward at the self-styled Alexandria as she spoke, crisp, clear words, each one perfectly measured and delivered in a tone that was only notable for just how incredibly dry it was, "For this pixie, yes, after all, she led me here, As for me, saving you served a greater purpose of mine."
By the once and future king, this thing couldn't be implying…? Baines swallowed hard. Saving him had served some kind of purpose. Purpose, with a capital 'P', was a very dangerous word to use. It either meant that Alexandria was refusing payment because she already intended to save him or he was just a by-product and not even notable enough to receive payment from. Or even for something else, like delaying him long enough that something else which wanted him could arrive.
"-Warden," his attention snapped back to the adamant woman as she broke his concentration, "What exactly did the Red Court want with you? Speak truthfully."
What did that mean? Could she detect lies? Did she already know why the Red Court wanted him and was trying to trap him in falsehood? He couldn't help it when the little pixie perched on Alexandria's shoulder and crammed the Hershey's Kiss into her gaping, tooth-filled maw. Who knew that little pixies were packing so many teeth, layered over each other like a shark? The pixie matched his gaze, and he couldn't help but think that it was supposed to be a threat.
His mind snapped to a dark place, how long would it take her pet pixie to eat him piece-by-piece?
"I'm part of the attache assigned to Wales," he tried to explain, while thinking as hard as he could to himself, please don't ask about Archangel.
"Really?" the woman asked. Her tone was exceedingly mild, with just the barest edge of amusement. As if she was completely amused by his attempt at misdirection, but was still allowing him to hope that it worked. The little pixie's eyes flickered toward the blind side of Alexandria and then she made a little throat-slitting gesture.
"Tell me the truth, not a half-lie," Alexandria requested a moment later, floating forward in just a small movement, which nevertheless, almost made Baines take two steps back.
He hurried to clarify, almost choking on his own words, "I was in Wales! I'm not stationed there, but I'm an attache at Archangel!"
"Hmm," Alexandria seemed to muse, looking at him closely for a moment, she made a show of looking around, turning to the right and then the left, before speaking, in that same cold calm voice, "Why exactly did the Red Court want you then? This doesn't look like Russia."
How was he supposed to answer this? It was obviously rhetorical. Who hadn't heard about the war?
"Don't you know? The Red Court and the White Council have been at war for months?" the words slipped from his mouth and he wanted to bite them back a moment later. It was only at that moment that he considered another reason something may not have heard of the war. There were things in the Nevernever that had existed since time immemorial, legendary beasts, and heroes of the ancient world. They measured time in decades and centuries the way ordinary people measured time in hours and days.
This thing in front of him might very well be some kind of beast which time held little dominion over. There were many such beasts and beings that dwelled the darker and deeper depths of the otherworld.
"Have they," the creature which called itself Alexandria asked. There was no emotion in her voice to reveal her thoughts. What she was thinking, what views she held. Where her sympathies lay. Baines was forced to consider the question of her name again. Alexandria was widely regarded as a protector of man, but as the myths of Hera often showed, such a claim had a broad interpretation.
He was jolted from this reverie when Alexandria bent and plucked an iron dagger from the snow, fingers leaving prints in the solid iron. With a considering look on her face, she crushed it in her hands, the metal deforming like taffy. Baines could only act as a spectator to her action. His fear had almost completely overridden his natural inclination to fight.
Her lips curled as if she had remembered something particularly unpleasant, "You! Do you know where we are?"
He blinked, letting the question sink in for a moment. What did this question mean?
"Do you intend to leave the Nevernever?"
"Yes," he replied to the second question. Honestly, that last question had cast doubt into his ideas of some great and lofty power. It was a decidedly odd question and one that for the life of him, he wasn't able to draw a connection too.
The next words, like others before it, he instantly wished to take back, "If I may be blunt, what are you?"
To be honest, his nerves and wits were still frazzled by his recent experience. He was only able to stare in surprise as she seemed to actually consider the question, adopting an almost pensive look.
Her following words were very soft, almost on the edge of hearing, like the revelation of a great secret "I am nothing anymore… Echidna ruined me."
The little pixie made a nasty face at him as if she was daring him to say something nasty just so she could attack him. It was honestly almost just as disconcerting as the actual revelation.
Echidna. Mother of all monsters. Baines knew that there were books of forbidden knowledge sequestered away in the deepest vaults of Edinburgh that held treatises and theories on the mother of monsters. That this being, Alexandria, had faced Echidna and lived.
Baines was suddenly appalled, even more so than before, about his careless handling of the situation. Echidna, he could certainly believe could harm the pristine appearance of the creature in front of him. The missing eye featured so bravely and prominently was more than just a defect. It was exhibited, then, as a badge of war. Like the scars of a hero of old. It must be the mark that she had come out intact from Echidna.
That was when he heard the hounds. He had traveled the Nevernever ways. Read the codices and guides composed over millennia by countless scholars. Scrutinized the warnings.
He barely kept the raw fear out of his voice as he managed to speak. Give a warning to a creature that he doubted needed the warning. Undoubtedly she was already aware of the approaching Leanansidhe. He could sparsely remember the words he spoke, just remember the utter calmness that he somehow managed to infuse into his words to hide his gibbering terror.
Alexandria regarded him for a moment and he wanted to scream. Why wasn't she reacting? The hounds were so close, he could hear them in the rocks above!
Her hand snapped away, up toward the mountaintop.
"I suspect that they have already found us," she said in a calm but low voice, each word distinct. Baines spared a moment to glance upward, and froze as he spotted the great black hound currently frozen in place, locked in a staring contest with his one-time saviour.
The little pixie flitted out from behind Alexandria's hair, one hand full of a pine needle sword and the other filled full of a black strand of hair. She tugged on the lock, hissing with fright, "It's her. She's here!"
"Warden, lead these thralls to safety, I will speak with our hunter." Alexandria's words were still just as calm as before. He couldn't even detect a hint of tension in her voice.
Yes. he could do that, maybe the Leanansidhe was only here for this 'Alexandria'? Yes, that would be great. Just what he wanted. Escaping away from winter before he was made into the figurative statue of ice or a hound or something else unpleasant.
His voice cracked as he replied, "I will owe you for this."
That was stupid, he berated himself a moment later. He had just seemed to get off lightly, avoiding direct commitment. Now he had just stumbled back into debt, even more certain than before and he only had himself to blame. He needed more experience.
Alexandria nodded, her eyes unmoving, still locked on the hound for a moment. In the next moment, she glanced away for a split second, sliding over the thralls and flickering from weapon to weapon.
"Take one of the guns," was all she said. He managed a few steps to the side, scooping up a pistol with a stiff hand, already stiff from the cold and attempted to work the action. He wasn't familiar with this model, but he knew from books how guns were supposed to work.
"My, my, so quick to depart with the prize?" The words were soft and trilling almost, low and impossibly saccharine.
He couldn't help the whimper that slipped from his lips. No book could prepare him for this, no treatise or eyewitness account had prepared him for the sheer fear he felt at that voice and what it boded.
"Leanansidhe," he whispered. He could see that the Leanansidhe heard him if the subtle head tilt and sharp malice-filled smile were any indications.
Alexandria lifted her nose slightly, and her body followed a moment later, floating into the air with the same unnatural grace as before. She almost looked like she was looking down, disapprovingly, at the sidhe currently standing before them.
"The Muse?" Alexandria said, and her tone seemed to ask, that's it? The hounds snapped their jaws and one lunged, Alexandria did not react, sending only a half-lidded glance toward the hound, enough to make it abort its strike. It was phrased almost like an insult, derision. Everyone knew that the Leanansidhe had been much more than just a muse for a very long time.
"On occasion," the Leanansidhe answered, eyes flicking toward something on Alexandria's neck. Try as he might Baines was unable to see what exactly it was, some hidden weakness. Again, he was tempted to open his sight but refrained. He wasn't quite sure his battered mind would be able to handle the strain of seeing the truth in the heart of winter. Nor handle the true nature of both the creature in front of him and the handmaiden of the Winter Queen.
"Your interaction with Jenny Greenteeth did not go unnoticed, Library of Alexandria," the Leanansidhe spoke softly, the words lilting from perfect ruby lips. Baines' head snapped toward Alexandria to stare at her, uncertain for a moment if he had heard right. The Library of Alexandria? But what did that mean? Was she a genius loci of the library? Some kind of proto-avatar of lost knowledge?
Alexandria did not seem to heed the Leanansidhe, merely frowned softly and answered with a veiled accusation, "The Red Court claimed they ventured here with Winter's leave."
Of course, Leanansidhe denied it. Baines had heard enough. As cordial as this all was, it had the potential to go bad very quickly. Carefully, still paying attention to the barbed words bandied about by the two inhuman women, he began to softly tug all the thralls toward him, away from the slinking hounds.
A sentence slipped past and he choked on his own spittle. Child of Eden's Garden? That implied…? Wait, that didn't make any sense at all! He bit back the academian inside himself, who wished to shout questions to the world. The middle of fairy was not the place to ask rhetorical questions out loud.
He felt himself growing faint, and he sank to his knees. He was hyperventilating, he could tell that much.
Alexandria seemed to shift in midair, still utterly poised and completely nude, "The flesh was vile, was it not?"
More nonsense, Baines thought at first, but then blanched as another meaning whispered its foul tidings into his ears. Surely not, did she speak of the fruit? The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? In conjunction with being called the Library of Alexandria, was she a spirit of forbidden knowledge? The haze over his thoughts only seemed to lift as he dimly became aware of Alexandria negotiating with the Leanansidhe from a position of equals.
A position that few outside the upper echelons of the world deemed to take, especially when it was better to be more respectful, lest hidden insult was given to Winter.
"I will answer one question of yours, Leanansidhe," Alexandria stated imperiously, as if she granted a great favor, conferred a great. No, what was she doing? Didn't she know who she was dealing with? No. No. No.
That was too open-ended. What was she thinking?
The words of the agreement echoed through the swirling snow, "Thrice said and done."
The very air seemed to still, snowflakes hanging in the air for a moment. The chill seemed suddenly greater, more focused. A presence seemed to linger. Dark and foreboding. A beast amongst lesser beasts. The eddies of power rose. Baines could do nothing more than shiver as the eddies of magic swirled ever greater. His metaphorical third eye scratched at his mind, almost wishing to open his mind to the almost intoxicating and stifling power of winter's magic. He got such a sensation from his long-ago mother, he knew.
"Summons have been sent," the Leanansidhe said, and her velvet and saccharine voice seemed almost weary.
The eddies reached a crescendo. Baines realized then that somehow what they had just done, whatever agreement was reached had somehow drawn the ire of the undisputed Queen of all Winter, Mab.
Frozen fractals of magic slammed into the mountain, cracking the stone and freezing it in equal measure. He barely managed to speak a word of the Jagged Script and let a pink shield leap around his form.
"What is going on? Can you not feel the wrath of Winter manifest?" He managed to speak, even as a shard of winter magic slipped through and sliced along his face. The shield was imperfect. The Jagged Script was an uncertain tool, especially for one not of strong sea-blood.
"I repeat, what manner of deal did you make?" he screamed, not sure if Alexandria actually heard him over the roar of wind and snow. Winter was furious about something and he wasn't sure if he actually wanted to be present when Winter manifest actually arrived.
Out of the corner of his eye, the other focused on shielding the thralls, he saw Alexandria and the Leanansidhe grapple, within the snow flurries, like two titans of myth. Each impossibly perfect, each inhumanly fast. It was unlike a duel between mortals, this was a duel of grace and agility. Of brutality and primality.
The paused, breaking away. He could see lips move, words being shouted but were unable to make out their purpose.
Bam!
He was knocked on his back, crystals flooding his vision. Not snow crystals, but crystals of impossible depth and gravity. Spiraling, growing, lingering on the other side of reality. It was an endless lattice leading back to the Library of Alexandria.
An impossible idea shoved its way into his brain. He was screaming, he could feel his threat bleeding. An unknowable idea. Harvest eternal. The slow encroach of entropy, grinding all things to dust. The desire to reject reality, remake the world. Too much, too much.
He came in the snow a moment later, forcing himself to his feet. Almost as soon as he cracked his eyes open, he was met with Alexandria, one hand held almost awkwardly over her chest. A long black mark, almost like soot stretched down her side. A bead of what looked like oil swelled and fell to the snow below.
He marveled for a moment that somehow, despite all possibility his shield had held, even if strange tendrils of pink now seemed interwoven into it. He dismissed the fact that somehow he now seemed able to taste pink and regarded his saviour.
She seemed almost diminished. Lesser than the haughty demi-god-esque character of earlier. She seemed more human, frailer.
Against his better instincts, he questioned her, "You're injured?"
At the same time he said it, he knew that she was not, but it seemed polite. She looked at him a moment, assessing, before her hand dipped away from its awkward position to wipe the blackened soot away, it beaded on her fingers for a moment, before she flicked her fingers once, before rubbing them sending flakes of it into the crystal white snow below.
Baines's eyes tracked over toward the Leanansidhe and the dagger by his side. Immediately, he recognized the knife. The Athame of Morgan LeFay. All though plain, it was unmistakable for any lore expert. A monstrous weapon in the hands of a fae. His eyes flickered back to Alexandria. She had survived its strike?
His heart chilled at the thought. What kind of power would that take? Almost involuntarily his mind flickered back the impossible fractals of crystal and light. Something beyond human comprehension could. Beyond human understanding.
Ice flowed like water, encasing the athame in a layer of the darkest of Winter frost. There was the sound of distant glacier fracturing, of great northern icebergs crashing into each other at terminal velocities. The noise was deafening, and he bit back a scream.
Mab had come. She was radiant, hair flowing white with perfect spiraling symmetry, flowing with an unrealized winter breeze. Her lips were the color of dark blueberries, and eyes of impossible blue stared out from an ivory-skinned face. Mab's eyes roved over his body for a moment, and his knees threatened to give out. He could feel her immense power even from a full four meters away. He could feel the almost gravity that threatened to bite into his nature.
"Handmaiden," Mab said in a voice like thunder. His hands flew to his ears, attempting to block out words that sounded like icebergs colliding, glaciers crushing mountains, and the shrill crack of frozen lakes.
"The Queen of Winter," Alexandria said, and Baines couldn't help but marvel at the way her voice was steady. No hesitation or reluctance. Just clarity and confidence. And she was doing it naked too. That was a step beyond what even Baines dreamed about in the confidence of his own mind. That was the subject of nightmares worthy of fetches.
"Library of Alexandria. You lay dominion over a mantle that is ephemeral." Mab declared as if announcing it to the world. Baines could see the way the snowflakes quivered in midair. The way the wind froze in flight, in frozen eddies all around.
You have done a great service, child. Exposed the rot, in the heart of my demesne. Speak your boon and I will see it fulfilled in accord with my nature." Mab continued to speak, each syllable an avalanche, each vowel a razor wind. It was sheer pain, but as with all the things of winter, pain edged over toward pleasure in an obscene way that Baines did not appreciate.
Alexandria responded, her voice resolute. Unbowed.
"Your handmaiden, the Leanansidhe, promised us safe passage through Winter."
"The oaths of the subject pass thusly to the liege." The Winter Queen declared finally. Baines finally couldn't take it anymore and sank to his knees, where he could only whisper in pain.
Bonus Interlude 3: A Glimpse into the Eldritch
A shard of adamant flickered in the light of a dying world. Great tendrils of crystalline bone and sinew drilled down into the depths of continents. Countless protozoa and shards of unicellular potential lay destitute, crushed beneath the flesh of colossus.
A fragment of a dead god lay dreaming, always and forevermore, this last relic of the divine. A carcass primordial. Cast off and sundered from the lands of its progenitor's genesis.
A tendril of thought and will intruded thusly, probing at the necrotic bulk and inflamed withered fasciitis. Great tendrils of fractal spirals turned in on themselves, always twining, never connecting.
A connection forged, a derelict given life. The most feeble of touches. Death touching death with a feeble dying hand. The body of the offering was riddled with deformity. Order turned in upon itself, cells consuming sibling cells.
This would not do.
The god was dead, its emptiness felt across the grateful suns of an internal epoch. This would not do.
Flesh was unmade, reduced to barest elemental flurries.
Reality bent on itself, contorting like a frail beast in its last desperate flails. A foul beast, its hour comes round at last.
The shard of adamant forced order into what had been discord. Giving flesh gave way beneath the relentless march of timelessness. Order from disorder. Strength from inviolability.
The dead soul unmade.
Life flickered in the depths of a derelict.
There was a purpose here, deep inside this beast of beasts. A beast eternal. Shard of the divine. Consume. Drink of the endless well of the universe, until there was no more drink to give. Drink the life from the moon and stars until all worlds darken from offspring without end.