A "Gargoyles" fanfic by Rydia Erdrick Landale (aka Captain Chaotica!!)
Rating: G. Spoilers for up through "The Gathering"
Chapter Five: Besieged
A female voice. "What is it? What's going on?"
"The Vikings are attacking, your Highness! During daylight!" A male voice, unknown.
The same voice again, now recognisable as Princess Katherine. "What? Sound the alarms! Lower the portcullises! Hurry!"
Sweet Apollo on a flaming chariot--why did Xanatos have to pick TODAY of all days in 994 AD to drop by for tea and biscuits?! "We'd better get out of here," he said, taking hold of the boy's arm and starting to steer him down the corridor. "Now."
"But--but your friend--"
Puck shook his head. "If I know David Xanatos, he always has at least three or four alternate plans in his mind at all times. He'll be fine. Come on."
"I..." And suddenly, to Puck's amazement, Avery tore himself away from the fay's grip and careened madly up the stairs to the tower library. "I'll only be a minute!" a sing-song voice came wafting down the stairwell.
"WHAT the--?! What are you doing? This castle is under attack by the Vikings; the whole place will be on fire in a few moments! Get BACK here!"
A few moments later, the boy reappeared, his arms full of books--books of magic. Puck noted with relief that the most powerful of all, the Grimorum Arcanorum, was not among them, but still raised an eyebrow at the boy.
"I'm not changing history," said Avery defensively. "They were going to be burned by the invaders. One way or the other they'll be gone from this castle forever, so does it matter how they go?" Then he looked down, sadly, and said, in a much softer tone, "Besides...my father would have wanted me to have them..."
Puck gave the boy a frank, appraising look. "You are catching on to this time-travel business a little too quickly for my liking, kid. But--"
He heard the voices again, coming closer this time. He couldn't tell if it was friend or foe and at this point, he didn't have much time left to find out. And speaking of time, he also didn't have enough energy left to do another major time-and-space travel spell at the moment, either. He briefly considered floating out one of the windows, but that would make them a lovely target for any archers the Vikings might have among them--and a magic shield that made arrows just bounce right off would garner them a good sight more attention than he wanted. And to float them both, be shielded, and invisible would, again, take more energy than he currently had. So it looked like they'd have to get out the old-fashioned way--down the stairs.
"Come on! This way!" He pulled off his cloak, made it into a satchel around the books with a gesture, grabbed hold of the boy's hand in one of his own and the satchel in the other, and rushed off down the corridor. The voices were coming nearer and he could almost swear he smelled smoke...
Xanatos looked up, startled, as he thought he heard something. Isolated as he was up in this very high room, the sounds of battle were distant as of yet, but...
Just to be certain, he sped up the process looking for the spell he wanted. It would by necessity be a very powerful one, only available to the most highly-trained of wizards. That let out most of the minor books of spells on the shelves, and of course he could eliminate the simple herb-lore and potion-mastery tomes. Which left only...
His eyes strayed to a large, heavy, ancient leather-bound book sitting upon an ornately carved wooden pedestal. Of course. It HAD to be that one, all along. Was there ever any doubt? Smiling slightly, Xanatos walked over to the Grimorum Arcanorum and started to skim quickly through the pages. I'm lucky this thing doesn't have any of those spells of warding on it to prevent non-wizards from reading it...like, spells that make you go blind, or mad, or zap you with lightning if you try to open it, or...hey, wait, why doesn't it have anything like that, anyway? Oh, well. I'm not about to complain... He went on, faster now, knowing that he only had one chance to find what he wanted. If he tried it again, certain people would be on to him ahead of time and he would never get away with this.
"Oooohhh...." There was a miserable groan from somewhere behind one of the bookshelves, and the Magus staggered dizzily to his feet. "How did I get on the floor?" He looked around, muzzy. "I was studying from the Grimorum, and...." An awful thought occurred to him. "The Grimorum! If the Vikings take over the castle, it will be burned along with everything else they deem worthless! Where is it? I've got to take it with me!"
Hearing the voice wend its way through the shelves, Xanatos quickened his search even more. "Aha! This is it!" he muttered to himself. Or at least, it sure looked like "it". No time to test it now--he ripped the page out of the book, turned a few pages over to hide the ripped one, and whispered the incantation for the Phoenix Gate...just before the Magus rounded the tall bookshelf he was behind.
"What? What was that strange flash of green light...?" wondered the young wizard to himself, looking about in confusion. The voices were getting closer, however, so he pushed such trival concerns aside--as well as some vague memory about a tall man in badly-fitting clothes--clutched the book to his chest, and started running down the stairs as fast as he could.
There was a very good reason why the Grimorum didn't have any spells of warding about itself, and the Magus knew what it was, as did every wizard who had ever been allowed to study from its pages. The wizards who compiled it--long, long ago...had simply never assumed that anybody not ready for this book WOULD mess with it. They just assumed that rumours and superstition would be enough to keep those without the gift away. They knew a lot about magic, those wizards. A whole lot.
It's a pity they didn't know more about human nature.
"Come on! Everybody out! We are invaded!" yelled Princess Katherine, herding people past her with frantic gestures. She saw it as her duty to make sure her people were safe. "Let's go! Everybody ou--" She broke off abruptly as a small figure careened straight into her, coming down the stairs that led to one of the towers. They both went sprawling.
"I'm sorry, your highness!" gasped the boy. He was dressed as a page-boy, but she knew all the castle's pages and his face was not among them...yet he still seemed familiar, somehow. Behind him stood a small man with long, golden hair and green robes--obviously a wizard but even more obviously not her Magus. "I got lost! I didn't mean to bump into you!"
"That's all right, child," said Katherine, bending over to help the boy to his feet. She tried to speak in as soothing a tone as possible, while also looking back and forth over each shoulder for any sign of marauding barbarian hordes. Then she stood up and looked the strange wizard in the eye, speaking in a much more businesslike tone. "Who are you?"
"My name is...Robin, Robin Goodfellow," said the man, who had not expected to have to introduce himself during this brief sojourn and therefore had not bothered to think of a good pseudonym. "I'm the Royal Magus of a kingdom far away. The boy is my nephew. I was visiting here to exchange knowledge with your court wizard, when--"
He never mentioned any of this to ME, thought Katherine, who knew how passionate the Magus was about his craft and how much the idea of being able to talk to a colleague from foreign lands would delight him, but she pushed the two strangers towards the back door anyway. "Never mind any of that now, we have to get out! The castle is under siege! Go!"
Gratefully accepting her directions, the two ran for the exit.
Katherine then bounded up the stairs to one of the towers, to see if anybody else was still in the castle. To her surprise, the Captain of the Guard leaned out of one of the side corridors. Why is he still here? He should be out leading our troops! "Captain!" she called out. "The Vikings! We are attacked!"
The Captain grasped hold of her wrist and leaned forward into her face, a most unpleasant expression stealing across his own rough-hewn features. "I'm afraid it is far worse than that, your highness..."
The immediate outside of the castle was bedlam--the frightened castle-folk trying to get away, the Viking soldiers snapping them up, siege engines, fires, chunks of fallen battlements, people running, screaming, accidentally striking their own comrades in the confusion, and smoke, smoke everywhere. The smoke from the numerous fires the Vikings had set almost turned the day black as night, and Puck was uncomfortably reminded of the way he last left Avalon--in the present day.
Nobody made it out of the castle without being grabbed--except a certain wizard from out of town who knew how to alter the possibility of people seeing him and his companion, and who stayed in the shadows of overhanging balconies and the thickest patches of smoke whenever possible. Coughing and sputtering, the two managed to make it to a reasonably safe distance beyond the castle walls, and climbed a tree to get out of the way. Wish I had thought to cast an air-filter spell ahead of time... thought Puck ruefully, as he choked right along with the human boy.
"I remember this," said the boy in a melancholy tone, after a few moments of relative silence between the two as they attempted to get their breath back. "That is, I remember my parents telling me about it. My...real parents..."
At this point, they ARE still your real parents, thought Puck. They don't become the other ones until that accident on Avalon...doesn't happen. Instead of pointing that out, however, he decided that now was the time to bring up a subject he'd been wondering about ever since he met the kid. "About your parents...um...I assume your father taught you how to use magic?"
"Of course," said Avery, looking sideways at Puck as if he thought the fay had suddenly lost his wits. "Who else?"
"The reason I ask is...the way you cast spells is not normal, for humans," Puck went on. "Human spells use Latin words, spellbooks, staves, jewelry...something to use as a conduit...you don't just concentrate and have it happen! And you certainly don't say it in rhymes, in the vernacular. You're pure human, or as close to it as makes no odds--how did you DO that?"
"Well..." The boy swung his skinny legs absentmindedly as they sat on the tree branch, far above the chaos and, for the moment, safe--"My father had this theory that the magic of Avalon itself could be harnessed directly--it would be a great strain, but if done carefully and only in small amounts at at time, it could be safe. The rhymes...I guess he just figured that would work better since it's the kind of magic that Avalon is used to, right? So, he trained me to use my magic that way."
"His own son?!" said Puck, startled, although he supposed he shouldn't be startled at ANYthing mortals did anymore, by now. "At such a young age? But humans aren't meant to channel magic directly through their bodies--you might hurt yourself!"
Avery shook his head. "It's not like that. My father really does--did love me, it's just that it was so important to him to pass his knowledge of magic on to someone else, that's all. He trained me in tiny little steps, very small spells to begin with, only one or two a day...and then, over time, I guess...I got used to it. I was able to do more and more without wearing out."
"Got used to it" to the point where, if he kept up with his studies, he might be at the power level of a child Fay by the time he reached adulthood! thought Puck, rather stunned. Well, not like Oberon as a child--like one of the weaker members of our race. Still, this is NOT something the Sisters would be happy to hear about. Thankfully, it'll only work for him while he's on Avalon...
He was about to say something out loud to break the uncomfortable silence, when suddenly the child gasped in horror and clutched Puck's arm--so hard the fay could feel the small nails digging through the thick green cotton of the sleeve. "Ohh..!" cried the boy, his voice an anguished whisper.
Far away, but still visible, at the top of the battlements...the sihouette of a Viking raised his mace to one of the stone Gargoyles. The mace came down...
"NOOO!" The boy buried his face in Puck's robe, sobbing. "How can they do that? How can ANYbody do that? They can't! They just CAN'T! It's too..." He broke down crying, his words lost in sobs. At a loss for what to do and and frankly feeling rather sickened himself, Puck awkwardly stroked the boy's long hair, trying to emulate what he'd seen human parents do with their children at times like this. He never thought he'd find himself taking care of a mortal child, especially a strange one with magic powers... "I know," he whispered, softly. "I know. It's horrible. But it has to be this way."
"WHY?!" The boy looked up, eyes red from crying but fierce, almost frightening, with hatred and anger. "WHY does it have to happen? Some of the Gargoyles are still whole and you have all these great magical powers...USE them! DO something!"
Puck was tempted, had been tempted long before. He had been tempted when he saw these events--the first time, so to speak--from far away, in Raven's reflecting pond in Canada. But he knew he couldn't--he mustn't. Not only was history immutable, but he KNEW what would eventually become of this, he had been a large part of the future that came from these events, and he knew that to try to solve this problem, here and now, would cause quite a few others later on.
But it was tempting. So very, very tempting. A few words, a small flick of his wrist, and the entire Viking army would go up in flames. Flames, like the ones licking around the castle, like the ones burning up the poor unfortunate servants stuck down in the basement who would be missed in the chaos and not taken prisoner like the other Scotsmen, like the ones...emanating from his hands. Puck snapped back to reality and, his eyes changing from glowing green back to their usual dark colour, forced the power back under control. Not now. Now was not the time.
Unfortunately.
Seeing that the fay wasn't about to leap into action, Avery decided to take matters into his own hands. "If YOU won't save the remaining Gargoyles," he yelled, standing up on the branch, although a bit unsteadily, "Then I will!" He snatched the "magical" staff Puck had been using as a prop and leaned on it, making a dramatic gesture with his left hand. "Flames of red, both far and near--burn down the Vikings, make them disappear!"
A miniature fireball shot from his palm, drifted about five feet towards the castle walls, then fell to the ground and set a small patch of grass ablaze. Nobody noticed. The boy turned grey, his knees buckled, and Puck barely caught him before he slumped out of the tree.
"Whoah, boy, what do you think you're doing? You can't do magic like that except on Avalon! Human magic works differently--it takes little bits of energy from everything in nature around the spellcaster and channels it into the spell! You can't take pure magic directly out of the ground on Earth--there's not enough of it!"
Avery blinked, conscious enough to hear what Puck was saying but, for a moment, too weak to answer. "But...you can do it..."
"My power comes from Avalon, not Earth", said Puck, leaping down from the tree-branch with the boy in his arms (floating the satchel with the books behind them) and falling softly to the ground in slow-motion. Now was the time to leave, he felt. The fires were getting uncomfortably close to the tree they had been sitting in, and besides, he just didn't want to be around this site of death and sadness any longer. At least, not until a thousand years later, when it will be an overgrown ruin and I will be the ever-efficient businessman, Owen Burnett. Ah, Owen. I miss him, in his way. Feels like a long time since I last saw him. "I am connected to Avalon, being a Child of Oberon, just as you are connected to Earth, since you're human. But no time for that now--we've got to get out of here!"
A moment later, a little patch of emptiness that people just didn't feel like looking at...somehow seemed even emptier.
The once pristine-white snowdrifts were now a trampled, wasted plain, as the fight against the unrelenting Frost Giants wore on. Broken weapons of all sizes littered the ground, trees had been knocked over or crushed, and blood of both red and green had been shed during the conflict. High overhead, an eagle wheeled, screeching as if it were somehow mocking the efforts of the tiny dots below. But the most terrifying thing of all was the...hole. A rip in reality glowed ominously above the blackened sky of Avalon, looking as if some impossibly strong giant had pulled the air apart with its bare hands, the ragged edges pulsating with a dull, evil green light. Nothing more came from it, though--the Frost Giants had all come out the second it had opened.
It still made one feel uneasy to look at, however, because of its very...wrongness, so Elisa Maza made herself stop looking at it, and concentrated on the task at hand. She brushed the back of her fur-robed forearm across her forehead, breathing heavilly...strange as it seemed, even in this cold of a climate, she had worked up a sweat fighting these Frost Giants. Then again, that wasn't hard to believe when one considered how much effort it took to harm something of their size. A human-sized person had to run (or glide) all over the place in order to do enough damage so that the giant would even notice it; whereas the giants had to do only one heavy blow of their weapons, and if you were in the wrong place, you were out of luck. The giants were slow, but that was about the only disadvantage they had that Elisa could see. If they didn't find some way to stop them soon...
There came a cry from above and to her left, and Angela was knocked out of the air by a glancing blow from one of the giant's hands. Nobody else was near close enough, so Elisa rushed over as quickly as she could, cursing the way the snow slowed down movement every step of the way. She managed to catch the falling Gargoyle girl--barely. The two of them went down in an undignified heap in the snowdrits.
"Thank you," said Angela, sincerely, looking closely for the first time at this strange human from far away. "You saved my life. From what Katherine, Tom, and the Magus tell me...people of the outside world usually don't have much use for us Gargoyles."
"Yeah, well, you could say..." here Elisa's eyes drifted over to Goliath, and she hid a little smile, "...I've got a different perspective."
A huge wooden club loomed over them. Angela grabbed the human's arm and pulled her out of the way just in time. Elisa sat up, again, shaking her head dizzily. "Man, we have GOT to find a better way to fight these guys, soon..."
Something caught her eye--twisted, thorny black shapes against the white snow, in the background. Wait, I think I have an idea...well, the beginnings of one anyway. "FOLLOW ME!" Elisa yelled, hoping her voice would be heard by the others. "Head for those trees over there! We'll have them at a disadvantage in more closed quarters!" I hope... She didn't want to kill the giants, if necessary. As a cop, her job sometimes included recapturing escaped criminals...not executing them. Sure, they had been judged "criminals" in a case centuries before she was even born, but it still seemed like a dispute of justice to her, and that, she was used to. When in doubt, go with what you know.
The others acted as if they heard her, except for a couple of the Gargoyle hatchlings, but Gabriel veered over in their direction and said something to them that was lost in the howling wind and intermittent thunder. Gradually, the whole group began to head for the trees, and the giants followed.
"Elisa!" called Goliath, as he glided over the human woman's head. "What exactly are you planning? They can just step on the trees; the forest won't hold them for long!"
"I know!" she yelled, "but I was thinking maybe we could entangle their feet and make them fall, or something!"
"Let us take care of that, human!" sneered Demona, coming up to glide alongside Goliath for a moment. "We can get there faster."
If Demona was hoping for an outraged reaction to her derogatory use of the word "human", she didn't get it. Elisa merely shrugged and turned to the Magus, Katherine, and Tom, who were struggling along through the snowdrifts behind her, fighting the whole way. "That sound okay to you?"
"Anythin' ye think will help, m'lady!" called back Tom. The other two just nodded their agreement. The Magus, especially, looked rather out of breath--it was obvious that using his magic so much was taking a lot out of him, even if the environment was currently "supercharged".
The Gargoyles, led by Goliath and Demona, sped on to the forest, the strong--if erratic--wind currents taking them there much more swiftly, since they didn't have to worry about slogging through the thick snow on the ground. Elisa could vaguely see them weaving branches together or something, if she shielded her eyes against the constant biting, blinding wind, and she almost started to dare to hope. It might work, she told herself, looking over her shoulder for giants every few steps. There's a chance... She had almost reached the relative safety of the trees when--
"What is THAT?!" came a horrified cry from the Princess, and Elisa turned around to see what she was talking about. Something else had come through the...rip...two somethings. One was a wolf, fur as white as the snow they were struggling through, but its body the size of a moderate skyscraper!--and the other was a snake, also white, so long she couldn't even see where it ended.
Elisa gulped, as she realised there was no way their small band, even armed with iron weapons, could possibly fight monsters of this size. Sure, there was all that stuff about how the pure of heart could always win against any odds if they tried their best, but who was she kidding? Certainly not herself. She was a cop--a New York cop at that; she didn't have much time for fairy-tales. Even when they're real, she thought dryly, as she watched Fenrir and Jormungand rush forward, slavering and drooling. Who am I kidding; we're not only outnumbered, we're also tired by now and the Magus is about to collapse. The traps the Gargoyles are making in the forest won't trap these guys, they're too big! If we had more people or more power or if we didn't have this snow slowing us down, then maybe, but as it is...
Elisa was so fascinated--in a car-wreck kind of way--by the scene behind her, she neglected to look closely enough at the path ahead and plunged straight through a thin crust of snow, landing in a deep pit. Desperately, she tried to climb out, but it was no use--the snow was too powdery, came apart under her hands. It offered no handholds. She could get out if she really worked at it but that would take time, and the lead giant's huge feet looked way too close... "HELP!"
The other humans rushed forward to help her, and Goliath looked up his work in the forest, torn between finishing the traps and going to her rescue. Of course, he soon stood up and went charging through the trees after her. "ELISA!!" Demona just rolled her eyes and went on making her trap.
"WE'RE COMING!" yelled Katherine, but she and the others were still too far away. Elisa redoubled her efforts to get out of the hole--and fell in even further, the snow caving in from the sides. She was blind, exhausted, the snow covered face...she started to black out. Not NOW, she thought, struggling to stay awake, bare fingers clawing away at the snow without any direction. Please, not now...
"Are you all right, my lovely little Valkyrie?" called a voice, muffled, from above the snow, and before Elisa could stop to wonder who would be calling her such a thing, a hand reached in to pull her out. Gratefully (but still somewhat suspicious) she took the hand and was soon back on her feet, on relatively solid ground. When she could see again, she noticed that it was quiet...strangely quiet. The reason soon presented itself--the giants and the monsters had all stopped and were just standing where they were, looking about with somewhat confused expressions--well, the giants had confused expressions. It was hard to tell on the wolf and the snake.
"I am so sorry about that, we certainly didn't mean to harm anybody," said the person who had pulled her out. Her rescuer was a tall, slender man with sharp features, high cheekbones and a thick, wild shock of flaming red hair with streaks of orange and yellow in it. He wore a red velvet tunic with elaborate gold edgings and might have passed for a human with somewhat odd fashion sense--if not for the eerily blank silver-blue eyes and the pointed ears.
Elisa wondered briefly where he had come from--she hadn't seen any normal-sized people among the giants, but the man went on. "It's just that we were so eager to escape, you see. We've been cooped up in there for so long. Empty pocket dimensions can get so very dull, you know. Of course, that's the idea, prison wouldn't be much of a punishment if it were enjoyable, would it?" He smiled...such a reasonable, charming smile that Elisa found herself instinctively fighting to keep from smiling back, without quite knowing why. "Oh, but where are my manners?" He bowed graciously. "Please, allow me to introduce myself..."
Xanatos reappeared on the shores of Avalon, although not the Avalon he had just left--it would never do to attempt such a complex spell in the twisted, warped-magic conditions that prevailed on the island as it was in the present time. But if this works, I'm sure I can do something about that, he thought confidently. No, this was earlier--still night but the sky was starting to lighten in the east, hinting that the sun would be rising soon. And yes, there was still a sun at this point. He could tell, even without being sensitive to the magic of the island--the air just felt clearer, the atmosphere more calm, the colours were normal...this was Avalon as it should be. Avalon, the source of the magic of an entire race, the most powerful place in the world, whose children were immortal.
And soon, if all went the way he wanted, Xanatos would have some of that power for himself.
Standing up straight and facing out into the sea, the tall businessman pulled the page he had taken from the Grimorum out of his pocket, carefully smoothed it, and ran his eyes over the spell one more time. Finally, he would have his dream. If this works... he thought nervously, but banished the thought. David Xanatos was never nervous. About anything. He had confidence in himself and went full-speed ahead at all times, no matter what--that was how he had become so successful. Clearing his throat, he began to speak the incantation.
"Maga insula, tam candida magnificaque,
Da mihi tui adiuvantem manum,
Exple me cum immortale flamma,
Et coagmenta nos, unum idemque!"
At first he felt nothing, and thought the wizard who wrote down that spell must not have known what he was talking about. After all, the notes on the page said that this was only a theoretical spell, it had never been used because it was deemed too dangerous. Supposedly--so the legend went--if the island found the person lacking, the "immortal flame" would destroy them, burn them up from the inside, rather than giving them the powers of an immortal. One way or another, David would know whether the spell worked or not...quite soon. And quite definitely.
But nothing seemed to be happening.
He considered saying the spell again, thinking that perhaps he had mispronounced a word or two, when suddenly he felt a strange tingling--almost as if he were underwater, and delicate tendrils from some exotic sea creature were reaching forward, curiously, tenatively, to brush against him, see what he was, then pulling back, while other tendrils brushed him from another side. The air seemed thickened somehow, as if time itself were slowed down, adding to the impression of being underwater. Avalon is seeing what it thinks of me, he thought, trying his best not to show any sign of fear. I sure hope I pass the test...
Then time and the air snapped back to normal and the "tendrils" went away...to be replaced by an overwhelming sensation. Heat, such powerful heat, it felt as if he was burning up inside. Xanatos would have screamed if he could remember how, but the flames were blurring his mind, making it hard to think. They surged through him, the pain excruciating. He felt as if he were being torn into tiny pieces...
A few moments later, Puck and Avery teleported in to see nothing but an empty beach, the water lapping at the two indentations in the sand where a pair of designer leather dress shoes had once stood.
"He's already gone." murmured the fay, looking at the thickening mists. "We're too late..."