Chapter 9 – Le Premier Printemps

"The First of Spring"

Nuada sat on the edge of a stone outcropping, overlooking the busy tumult of the Troll Market's central bazaar; an uproarious plaza filled with vendors, buyers, and performers which was most often referred to simply as the Hive. In the Hive, anything was possible and, if desired, almost anything was acquirable; from food, to jewels, to pets, to books and ritual implements. But Nuada had no interest in any of it, save the fact that he greatly enjoyed listening to the sounds of his people carrying on their lives and joys uninterrupted.

It was near midnight and the Hunt would call to him again soon, but for a few moments, in the wake of Ailith's Challenge, he had the time to meditate on all that had transpired in such a short amount of time. Absently, he rubbed his thumb and forefingers together, still looking passively out over the crowd. His hands were the last part of him that had regained sensation following his Awakening in the Golden Chamber and he now found the fleeting numbness to be a quaint addition to the new feelings and perceptions that had come with life returned.

Restoration. Or should he call it resurrection? How he had not even imagined that such a thing was still possible. Once Undone, there was no return and yet here they were. Breathing. Whole. Alive. And for him, something more. Nuada contemplated the new Name his sister had so recently bestowed upon him. Neachtain: The One Who is Washed Clean. The One Who is Made Pure. Tiarna an Dál nAraidi: Lord of the Lands of the North. He who is Maine Mórgor: One Who Undertakes Great Duty. He looked down at the Silver Lance, with its blade balanced gently in the crook of his arm. Airgeatlámh; The Silver Hand, that which had defined him and his foreordination for so very long. Was he truly prepared to set it aside?

Yes.

Though he understood why his sister and the other elven courtiers around him doubted it. His intent in all that had come before was not simply to rule in his father's stead; it had been to enact the righteous vengeance his people deserved. It had been to destroy everything in the wake of his own destruction so that mankind would be forced to pay the same price they had extracted from how own people. But now, rather than imminent apocalypse, he found his world to be on the threshold of an entirely different kind of radical transformation. Something had survived, dormant and forgotten, beneath the rot. Beneath the moldering leaf litter of urban decay and deforestation, roots had been spreading; sending green new shoots up out of the filth and into the light. And now, it was growing in earnest, beginning its reach for the sun. Spring had come at last.

But he was still himself though. His hatred for humanity ran deep and he knew that it was unlikely he would ever forgive mankind for the things they had done, for wallowing in greed and blind arrogance while cries for mercy echoed around them. In the end, he'd be lying not to admit to himself that he would take a fair amount of pleasure in enacting retribution for Man's encroachment into the Wild once he had the power to do so. But even so, he could no longer allow his anger and his despair to poison him. He also couldn't allow it to poison Ailith. His sister was right. His people did not want war. They wanted life. They needed hope, not animosity. They needed a chance at something better. Over the years, many of them had come to live within human families and communities. They had integrated into human life or, at the very least, carved out their own spaces in cities, towns, and country-sides. The last thing they would want would be further destruction. The last thing Ailith would allow would be annihilation.

He felt a small tap his elbow. Nuada turned slightly and looked down to see the tiny, two-headed, bogart who had now happily taken up the role of messenger within his household. Named Willowsprout and Lillytwill (though, to be honest, he had no idea which one was technically which), they were typically just called WillLily and they had served him faithfully since his arrival in the Americas. With their twig-like arms and comically expressive faces, the little fae was both well suited to delivering news and to remembering missives.

"Yes, my friend?" Nuada acknowledged them with a casual nod.

A short, clipped, litany of chirruping and chittering followed, aided by frantic gestures indicating everything from the rooms downstairs to the line of fae penitents begging alms in the courtyard below. Nuada nodded.

"Yes, I do believe my sister would quite appreciate that. She prefers apples to pears though, if there is a choice." He replied. "Thank you."

A second round of tittering came next, along with something very near to the bogart engaging in a game of charades. Nuada nodded again and offered his hand to WillLily in a manner of respect.

"Good to hear." He responded. "I will see to him now then."

Carefully, Nuada stood, sheathed his spear, and made his way from the overlook, through the front hall of his temporary quarters and down onto the main floor where two of his Corvid guards stood between the open doors and the din of the Troll Market just beyond. As he had been expecting, an Elven courtier, newly arrived from the Hearth of Bathmoora, stood at the threshold. Without hesitation, his Prince invited him in.

"I have brought what you requested, sire." The courtier in question was far more typical in appearance than the Prince he now served. With smooth white skin and pale eyes, he looked almost doll-like in the dim light of the hall but as with the vast majority of Elves, he did not share his sovereign's dark markings nor his bronze-tinted eyes. Dressed in the cream and crimson colors of the royal house, however, he was unmistakable as the Herald of Bathmoora, who had stood by the throne since the early days. Nuada knew his name as Nylian Elamoira, and he had always been loyal and faithful to the crown regardless of who wore it.

From the folds of his cloak, Nylian produced a lacquered box, inscribed with the royal seal, and gave it over to the Prince along with a key twisted together out of hawthorn sprigs. As Nuada set about to open the box, Nuala emerged from stairwells and approached the gathering. Having heard the commotion of the Herald's arrival, she now found the exchange taking place to be a curious one.

"What it is, brother?" She inquired.

The Prince and Herald turned and bowed politely to the Princess, who returned their gesture pleasantly.

"It is this." Nuada replied, extending the open box to his sister for her appraisal.

Nuala gasped. Nestled in a bed of moss and tiny white mossflowers was a ring of silver and platinum intertwined around a spectral lavender crystal suspended within a polished moonstone. The Princess looked immediately to her brother who carefully closed the lid of the box before locking it again with the hawthorn key.

"The Ring of Eluned!" She all but exclaimed. "How have you found it?"

"I always knew where it was." The Prince responded. "Our father presented it to our mother on the night they were betrothed as a heritage gift. When she was Undone, father had it buried beneath the hearth stone at the center of court, so that she would always, in a way, be present at his side. He told me of it many years ago and said that, when the time came for me to choose a queen, I should bequeath it to her in the same way. I promised to do so and now, I honor that promise."

Nuala gazed hard at Nuada, almost disbelieving the Prince she saw before her. She had always known him to be honorable, to be attendant to duty and obligation, but she had never really known him to be…. romantic. At least, not in any kind of overtly sentimental sort of way. But here he was, speaking fondly of their father and their family, sounding almost affectionate.

"Nuala." He implored her attention. "I want you to do something for me."

The Princess raised an eyebrow. "What is it?"

He held out the box. "Would you look after this until I return? I would entrust it to no other hands but yours."

Slowly, the Princess nodded, accepting the treasure and placing it discreetly into the length of cloth that formed the sleeves of her gown. "It will be here, brother. When you return. And if it does come to pass that you offer it to Ailith, I am certain she will find it to be an admirable gift."

Nuada bowed again. "Thank you. Sister. Which reminds me. When the Great Hunt is over, you should return to your beloved Abraham. I'm sure he's worried sick over you by now."

Just then, three Corvids burst through the door, one of them nearly knocking the Herald sideways. Cackles, cracks, and screeches spilled from their lead as he relayed something of great urgency that few, beyond members of the royal family, would have been able to decipher. Like a combination between birdsong and squirrel-speak, the Corvids recounted what they had seen.

'The trees were awake,' they said, 'the Path had been revealed!'

Another Corvid guard joined the excitement. 'Forces everywhere were gathering!' 'Great horns were sounding in the deep!'

The last Corvid jittered and quaked. 'The Hunt was upon them!'

With a nod and jubilant whistle, Nuada summoned the Hound from the rooms beyond. For its part, the great beast came bounding up with equal enthusiasm and barked an eager noise, pushing its massive, shaggy, head into the Prince's side as he drew the Silver Lance from his back.

"Retrieve the alicorn and prepare for the trial."

At that command, the six Corvids in attendance suddenly contorted and began to whither, their bodies breaking and drawing in upon themselves. As Nuala watched with a measure of astonishment, each member of the heavily-armored vanguard transmogrified before her eyes and metamorphosized into ravens twice the size of normal birds, but otherwise indistinguishable from them in appearance. As each then completed the shift into a fully avian form, they launched into the air with a flurry of feathers and loud caws, taking flight out through the door and into the grand spaces of the Troll Market; swooping and rolling about as the denizens below ducked in surprise and jumped out of the way.

Nuada offered one final nod to his sister and then to the Herald, who remained attendant upon the new Queen-Apparent to his family's ancestral throne. Without a word, he then took hold of a thick tuft of hair at the Hound's shoulder and swung himself up onto its back, sitting astride the width of its withers as one might an unusually large steed.

"Have faith in me, sister." He said, looking down at Nuala from above the Hound's anxious waggling and foot-tapping. "I will not fail you. I will not forsake our people. And I will not harm her."

With that the Hound moved forward, hunching into the threshold as it prepared to make a fantastic leap.

"Nuada!" She called after him. From the height of the Hound's back, he turned and regarded her. "I do wish you luck. Truly. Ailith will not make it easy for you."

He smiled then. Genuinely. "I certainly hope not."

Nicholas Cooper and Gabriel Aghasura were in a panic. Fifteen minutes ago, the both of them had arrived to find themselves thrown into a scene straight out of the worst renditions of the Brothers Grimm. And fifteen seconds ago, an oak tree had been attempting to eat them.

"I thought you said that the trees were talking!" The young vampire yelled up the pathway they were currently being chased along. "You didn't say anything about them EATING PEOPLE!"

"I seemed to have missed that part myself!" Nicholas huffed, still panting and cursing as he attempted to keep ahead of his partner (who, as it were, had no particular need to breathe while he was running but was not especially happy about the makeshift wooden stakes the trees were directing at him).

Cooper ducked an incoming branch before taking cover behind a large boulder near the children's playground, which had remained, remarkably, untouched in the chaos. A second later, Gabriel joined him, pressing his back to the rock while glancing behind to see if anything arboreal was still bearing down on them.

"I think they've broken off." He announced.

"I am presuming you mean the chase, and not the trees themselves." Cooper rejoined sarcastically, still desperately trying to catch his breath. Gabriel simply rolled his eyes in response just as a sprouted beechnut sapling, still partially encased in its thick nutshell, jaunted past them.

"How do we get out of here?" Gabriel glanced around, still unsure as to where the entrance of the park even was anymore. With the trees violently frolicking and reveling across every inch of ground, there was almost nothing left to mark their trail and all of the familiar structures were either missing or had been 'artfully' rearranged. The furthest merry-go-round, for example, had already disappeared from the sand basin it had originally been anchored to and was now only partially visible in the shallow end of the pond two-hundred feet away.

"I'm not sure." His companion answered. "But if we don't move soon, we'll be facing off with something I don't think either of us are prepared for."

Nicholas Cooper, while hardly practiced in the psychic arts, was not far off in his prediction. Moments later a massive tree-limb came crashing into the granite, showering the both of them with leaves and shards of bark. Gabriel moved first, yanking his partner out of the way of an incoming root just in time to prevent him from being hopelessly snared.

"Run!"

The both took off again, barely avoiding two more blows as an elm and a boxwood came up to join the fracas.

"Hey!" Nicholas called out, motioning wildly to their right. "I think there's something over there! Maybe it's a building!"

As the faster, and less physically exhausted of the two, Gabriel grabbed ahold of Nicholas and pulled him along and out of reach of the thrashing madness behind them. But to his surprise, as the two of them finally broke into open ground, they did not find a building at all. Rather, they suddenly found themselves in a quiet space of great standing stones, very much like those of Stonehenge but not specifically recognizable as such. Eight blue-slate monoliths formed an outer ring, with four long, flat, table stones arranged in the cardinal directions within them. Just beyond, black shale sarsens rose high into the night, some fifteen to twenty feet tall and arranged in a kind of semi-circle over the north-facing curve of the main circle. It was a jarringly strange place; eerily silent and utterly exposed to the bright glow of a low-hanging moon. It had also seemingly come out of nowhere and hadn't been visible from any pathway they had taken before. But what remained even stranger is that the trees did not attempt to enter the hilltop where they now stood surrounded, despite the fact that the both of them could be easily seen. Instead, they carried on in their rumpus all around them, swirling around the area in a colossal maelstrom of wildwood. Cooper quickly began to look about them and analyze their situation as best he could.

"This must be some kind of Hedge Circle." He surmised. "There are hundreds of them all over Great Britain. Early philosophers thought they were likely built by ancient Britons to protect sacred spaces from fae magic and by the looks of things, they were right. It seems to be working. Though, I don't recall there ever being one of these in Rock Creek Park."

"Well, it's a good thing that there is, I suppose. But while I am grateful for the time-out, we can't stay here forever, Nicholas. It's thankfully not immediately pressing, but it doesn't look like the forest is slowing down any and I have no wish to be caught out on an open hillside when dawn gets here. Where ever here is, now that I think about it."

The younger Hermetic nodded. "Of course, of course. We'll find something. I just need a moment to think."

Gabriel found the nearest table stone and sat down. "Thing is, I think the park is changing."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you said you didn't think there was a Stonehenge in Rock Creek Park and I'm pretty sure you're right. In fact, I'm not entirely convinced we're even still in Rock Creek Park, you know?"

"Is this your way of saying we're not in Kansas anymore?"

Gabriel chuffed lightly but smiled despite himself. Nicholas always had something of a dry sense of humor even under the worst circumstances. It was just how he coped. "Yeah, something like that."

"Alright," Cooper sighed. "Let's see if I can conjure us up a way out of here that doesn't involve running the gauntlet out there. Good thing I always carry chalk."

Summoning up all of his prior learning, the young mage then set about his task. As Gabriel observed, he began marking the stones with various symbols – some of which he had come to recognize, some of which he didn't – and inscribing the table rocks with geometric patterns; circles within circles, triangles transecting, and squares to delineate lines of runic text. As he became more and more enthralled, mumbling various warning to himself as he worked, Nicholas soon tuned out virtually everything but the occasional creak or groan of closely passing old growth.

Gabriel instinctively took watch, gazing out onto the pandemonium. Hoping that, for the time being, they were safe enough to divine a way back home. This was not how he was expecting this night to go. At all. But then, he took note of something rather unusual. From his position near the lee of the hill, he could see what appeared to be a thickening of the grass in a line that began far down in the murk of the woods, traversed up the hill where they now took refuge, through and around several of the larger standing stones, to end in the center as a distinctive ring of mushrooms. 'Mushrooms," he thought offhandedly. 'Shit! A fairy ring!'

But before the anxious vampire could speak up, he heard a more ominous sound crashing through the forest below them; trees parting and giving way to something moving impossibly fast through the thicket. He turned, sharpening his vision in the night (as was one of his species' more common capabilities) and scanning the tree line for the source of the noise. What he saw nearly struck him dumb.

"Nicholas!"

Cooper turned from his most recently completed alchemical sigil to attend to his partner, who was now slowly backing up towards him as something monstrous emerged out onto the grass. A chattering flock of ravens, however, were the first to arrive; loudly cawing and screeching as they found easy perches on the tallest stones. As they settled onto their favored spots, pecking and snapping at one another for the best views, they stared down at the two interlopers with beady, curious, eyes; hopping from stone to stone with seemingly malevolent intent. But their attention wasn't diverted long as the Hound emerged onto the hill, the great Cŵn Annwn, Harbinger of the Deep; stalking up along the verdant line to where they stood and, on its back, none other than the infamous, and imposing, Prince of Bathmoora.

"Mage!" He called out. "I think it best you not complete that incantation. You will only anger them further."

Nicholas was unsure at that moment whether he meant the trees or the ravens, but he was not inclined to find out.

"Stay where you are, Your Grace." Cooper answered firmly, but politely. "We are not undefended."

"I can see that." The Prince pulled the Hound up to a standstill just outside of the bluestone circle. "You traffic with a vampire and I am not one to underestimate the capabilities of the Dead."

Gabriel bristled slightly but did not respond. There were worse words he could have used.

"But I am afraid that you have found yourselves in a very disadvantageous situation." Nuada continued. "There is no way out of here but through them." He made a casual motion towards the forest.

"We have no quarrel with you." Gabriel took a step forward. "All of the greater magical communities are in turmoil right now and it would seem that the center of that turmoil is here. We had hoped to help."

"Which is why you are not already destroyed." The Prince responded, to their surprise. "In fact, your presence here is quite auspicious and I take it as a sign of our Advent."

"To what are you referring?" Nicholas interjected. "We know of the Name you seek. We know you come on the heels of Spring."

"Then you know what is about to transpire." The Prince concluded. "And in that, you have a choice."

"Which is?" Again, from the younger mage.

"Witness the Hunt, as those who have before you. But this means that you will have to stay here and fight. Few who have ever observed a Wild Hunt before have lived to tell the tale and, now, I am sure you can see why. It is your choice, if you think you can survive the night. Though, I doubt it. Or, you can join me."

"What?" Gabriel was now well and truly confused. This did not seem like the Elven Prince Nicholas had described to him at all. At least not in demeanor, even if by appearance he was spot on. "You would have us side **with** you?"

"Tonight, is not a night of vengeance." Nuada proclaimed. "Tonight, we begin a new age. An age of harmony, if not parity. The antithesis of the age that has come before us. Join me on the Hunt and help me set the counterweights in motion."

"Why would we do that?" Cooper placed a hand on Gabriel's shoulder, anchoring and steadying the both of them in the face of something neither of them could have anticipated.

Nuada smiled. "Is this not the manifestation of all you profess to believe, Hermetic?"

Cooper scowled. He was starting to get an inkling of what the Prince meant but he wasn't sure he liked it.

"Are we not the three sides of the Triangle, joined now at the sacred intersections of the Wild and the Mundane at this very moment? As the Mage and his Thaumaturgy stands with the Vampire and his Necromancy, so now do the Fae and our Glamoury come to treat with you at last? And do you know why that is?"

Cooper swallowed and took a deep breath. "And why is that?"

"Because you stand now within the Dreaming and the Dreaming speaks only in riddles and signs."

Nicholas and Gabriel exchanged a look. This is certainly not how either had imagined an encounter with Nuada would play out and there were far more questions at hand than either of them had answers for, but here they were; toe to toe with the Prince of Bathmoora astride a Hell Hound in the farthest reaches of a fable neither one of them remembered telling. But it would appear that this bit of fiction was going to do far more than give them nightmares. While the world had been sleeping, the birds had spirited away all the rest of reality and there was no way out but onward.

Cooper nodded to his partner and turned to face the Prince. "Very well. We will join you."

"We will?!" Gabriel hissed, his teeth clenched and fists nearly at the ready.

"We will." Nicholas whispered back. "Unless you have a better idea of how we're getting out of here you're not sharing."

"Oh, for the love of…"

Nuada offered a courtly bow, inclining his head slightly to indicate his acknowledgement. "Keep to the Trod then and do not stray from the sight of the Hound. We have a long and dangerous ordeal ahead."

Without warming or preamble, a shape dashed through the trees; something bright and shining moving on fleet and supple limbs between the spaces in the wild grove. It was white and swift, bounding across the distance in strides that would put the Hound to shame.

Catching sight of the movement, Nuada turned and watched his prey with narrowed eyes; something akin to growl beginning to rumble through his chest up to his throat. Where ever she went, brambles and undergrowth bloomed with joyous abandon; each of her footsteps marked with the sudden exuberance of life. The figure in the distance paused and turned. Gossamer and ethereal, he could hardly make out a discernable form, shimmering between girl and animal…but he could see her eyes. Tumultuous and defiant, they dared him to pursue.

"My friends!" He called out to the assembled Hunt. "The world is deeply sleeping. But now, she begins to wake. And so, she begins to dream. Let her awaken then on a new dawn, on this, the first Day of Spring."

There was a great cry throughout the city. The trees leapt and howled. The ravens flew madly cackling straight into the forest while the Hound bayed long and loudly into the night. The two companions readied themselves, unprepared but vowing to face it together. And Prince Nuada gave chase.