The Red Witch and the Nightmare Queen

by Catasterism

The Cabal decried Pyrrha's course as doomed, so she went on alone. Upon an unnatural isle she found the haunting witch she sought to end, let free the unraveling bonds, and lost control. Escape was hardly the word for what followed when so little remained.

19. Chapter 19

Cradled in a black void, Pyrrha thought she must at long last be dead.

But with time trickled in the sensations that led her consciousness crawling back to the fore. Music soft and serene swelled and ebbed over crunching grit, scraping rock, crushed beneath rushed and uneven steps. Pyrrha's hand twitched. It was firmly clasped in warmth, a lone coal against the chill that seemed to seal her limbs and arrest her breath.

"Pyrrha, oh, thank God," Daisy said, translating her relief into a brief squeeze. "Please talk to me, please tell me you're fine—don't you dare pass out again!"

"Or what?" Pyrrha found herself muttering, still not entirely lucid. She was uncertain whether or not her eyes were open, and confusion had begun to crumble into concern. "Where are we?"

"Good, yes, thank you," Daisy said breathlessly. "I would've loved to stop and tend to you properly, but the bloody harp seems perfectly happy to leave us behind in this—I dunno, this miasma? Right, well, we're in the heart of Dagda's territory," she went on, words nearly running together, "it's been, what, near on an hour since you, erm, got here. We've been going downslope for most of it—I think we're heading into some sort of canyon, but I'm only guessing, of course—the echoes—can't see a damned thing in—"

"Miasma?" Pyrrha tried to push herself upright, but her stump met empty air and she slumped back with a bolt of pain up her spine.

"Careful! Stay still, I've got you by Locomotor." Daisy pulled Pyrrha's arm in closer to rest against her chest. "Sorry if my grip is sweaty, but I'm not letting go until we're well clear of it. Whatever it is, it eats anything that gets lost inside . . ." Her voice trailed faintly off.

"How—?" Pyrrha felt fire billow up in her chest when she marked the song shepherding them. "The harp . . . she retrieved it. And you—you made it to—?" She forced her eyelids wide and looked everywhere, met with the same endless nothing all around. No golden light pierced the vaccuum.

"Into Dagda's lands, that's right," Daisy said softly. "I made it, barely . . . Wasila didn't."

The complete course of events rammed its way through Pyrrha's head then—the struggle at Caerialto, the fall, Hati and the vision she stole—and she grasped in full that she'd been struck blind. The thought writhed and fought, and she struggled with its cold clammy tendrils snaking down her limbs, coiling round her chest. It gripped her and forced her to settle beneath it. Her breathing came rough.

She made herself speak, that her mind might follow her tongue away from distress. Only when she voiced the news did it land. "Wasila is dead?"

Weeping harpstrings and tumbling scree were all that disturbed the quiet for a time. Daisy took in a shaky breath. "I don't know. She fell into the fog, and I haven't seen a sign of her since. I called out . . . no answer, of course . . . I can't lift the fog—can't move it at all. And those shapes, there, see? A little ways off, but they never get any further from us, like they're following, waiting. What are they? Could they—could they have . . . ?"

"Hmm." The idea of Wasila's death left Pyrrha with a strange conflation of regret and relief, not having learned in three years all that much of her nature, her drive, at once the most private and profusively spoken member of their Cabal. The feeling soon passed; ultimately Wasila's demise was a favorable outcome, a wild card played for its worth and discarded.

Once again Pyrrha's blindness absorbed her, and she took a long breath. "I need you to describe it for me, Daisy. I can't see."

"Oh! You've lost your new glasses. Tell me how, and I'll spell you a new pair."

"I'll not have need of any. My sight has gone entirely."

"Wh—gone?" Daisy's voice cracked; she clutched tighter. "What d'you mean gone? You're not blind?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Right, okay—I mean, obviously not okay in the slightest—you were really banged up, whatever went on at Caerialto, and I did the best I could to patch you up while we went, but like I said, the damned thing won't—"

"Breathe," Pyrrha said, squeezing back.

"Yeah." Daisy took a few gasps of air and settled into more stable rhythm. "Don't worry. The moment we stop, I'll mend your eyes. I expect the blow to your head disrupted a few neural pathways. It's a simple enough problem to correct with a few elixirs, a few spells. Just one spell, actually, the Corpus Corrigantur. I have everything I need. You'll be better in a wink, don't worry."

"I'm not worried." With her best friend's voice the initial instinct toward despair had abated, and Pyrrha tried to live by the notion that worry for circumstances she could not influence was a poisonous waste. "Whatever form Morrigan's demise takes, I doubt it will entail another prolonged confrontation. I'll manage this final step without sight. I have no choice."

"Don't talk like that!"

"It's the price extracted by blood sorcery," Pyrrha said quietly, running her thumb along Daisy's knuckles. "There can be no cheat, no compromise. My eyes were already damaged; this is simply the final toll."

"God," Daisy said, breathing shaken by tears. "God help us. If it were me, I think I'd be screaming my head off. I don't understand—how can you just accept this?"

"How can I not? There's no time to fall apart now. Please," Pyrrha said over Daisy's hyperventilating, "listen to me. We're together and we're safe. This is all but over."

"Y-yeah?"

"Yes. Because of you, because you brought the harp here, we're soon to learn how to end this nightmare. We're soon to wake. You'll be in time to make the first day of term . . . Did you draw up lesson plans?"

"Did I?" Daisy let out a watery chuckle. "All sorts, and after all that preparation I'll still have to panic, trying to pick the best between them. But really, I'll be resigning, of course," she said, wistful but resolved. "Your sight is my job now. And I'll warn you right off; if we overdo it with the reading, I may have to shut my eyes and start making stuff up."

Like a dull knife in the gut the knowledge punched through; books and writings, lifelong companions which asked nothing but Pyrrha's time and attention in exchange for escape, for empowerment; these portals had slammed shut before her. Despite ways and means to read without sight, the easy link between ink and comprehension could never be emulated. Always would it leave her with the sense that subtle details were lost in conveyance.

"Ah," Pyrrha said, chest tight. "We'll debate that later. Begin with our surroundings."

While gliding headlong down the craggy descent Pyrrha let Daisy's words paint a picture against her black canvas. Mist white as snow and nearly as cold, it seemed a near solid wall between them and the world outside, without even a stray breeze stirring in its depths. Instead the fog flowed with a nebulous uniformity throughout, waving and furling. The harp parted it like a paring knife to leave them tucked inside a small suffocating pocket.

"And there are those figures, maybe a couple hundred feet away? Dozens, in every direction," Daisy said, voice a tremulous whisper, "even where I'm sure there must be solid rock, canyon walls, right? It's like they're here but . . . not."

"Their appearance?" Pyrrha said, more curious than alert. "How do they move?"

Daisy's tone steadied out at Pyrrha's lack of concern. She stumbled and cursed, then said, "Er, well, it's hard to judge in the fog. Let's see . . . so, they're pointy, but with rounded edges, I guess. Grey. Sort of wibbly."

"Wibbly?" Pyrrha said neutrally.

"That's right," Daisy said, heating a little. "Wibbly. They move like pictures developed in expired agents, a lot of stuttering. And they don't seem to adhere to any shape for longer than a few seconds."

"Ah. Remarkable. Yes, I remember," Pyrrha said, the close canyon walls carrying her voice upward and away. "Father's notes cited scattered mentions of Dagda's impulse membrane; I never considered he could accomplish quite such a scale. We're an hour inside, you said?"

"Thereabouts," Daisy said, fingers fidgeting with Pyrrha's. "What's an impulse membrane?"

"A term coined by Bartrand Litchfield. It describes the charm enshrouding these lands," Pyrrha said, turning her head about the nothingness smothering her. Her chest ached with the need to tear the veil away, but she could only blink and stare into it. "According to his findings, Dagda nestled his domain inside a sort of projection of the subconscious; a permeable barrier beyond which lurks the lingering impulses that haunt the minds of men and women. Intrusive thoughts repelled, only to return, time and again, even stronger." She extended her riven arm toward the dense cold, and Daisy hauled her back. Pyrrha tisked and said, "I'm no child to be steered away from sharp edges. Contact is essential to understanding the limits of a charm."

"You best understand my limits, before my hand contacts your head! I draw the line at sticking your limbs into the endless mad man-eating fog, and is that at all unreasonable? Guess what? No, no it's not." Daisy skidded down a steep patch, panting, guiding Pyrrha by the hand above spurs of stone. "I'm sorry, Pyrrha, but think; you're wounded, vulnerable. Perfect time to reevaluate what constitutes a threat to you. I sure as hell couldn't fish you out if something happened. This is an awful, terrible time to take risks."

Pyrrha hummed, inhaled sharp cool air against a faint simmer of regret. "You're . . . entirely right. I apologize."

An anxious breath blew warmth across Pyrrha's hand, then came the press of soft lips, swiftly withdrawn. "Er—that—um, sorry. I mean, that's alright, it's—we're fine," Daisy said, speaking faster every word. "So, impulses? The things out there? What—what exactly does that mean?"

For a moment Pyrrha waited out an odd sensation nipping at her stomach, then said levelly, "Well, I think you've just provided a fine example. An impulse, an intrusive thought that slipped your filters. Hardly any out there will be so benign; there are, after all, far fewer reasons to repress our kinder impulses."

They scaled the shallow slopes in silence for a minute, Daisy's huffs of effort resounding strangely off the mists and the rock faces beyond. The harp's ghostly melodies had faded into the background.

"Bad impulses," Daisy said quietly. "Like lying?"

"Lying," Pyrrha said with a nod. "Like setting fire to a library. Upending a brew three months in the making. Cutting down laggards obstructing the way. Smothering a noisy infant." At Daisy's quiet gasp she added, "These are passing thoughts every person must dismiss, even you. They may be so thoroughly unthinkable that you don't give them the smallest consideration, and so fail to notice them at all, but they live in you all the same. It's these impulses which Litchfield purports to be turned against us within the membrane, awaiting their chance to overtake."

Their joined hands shook with Daisy's shudder. "What happens then? If they manage to . . . overtake?"

Pyrrha cast a thoughtful look into the emptiness above. "You become something else."

In the wake of her theory a weighty silence fell, punctuated by dislodged rocks and shoes skidding down dirt. Though Pyrrha trailed along at a considerable decline, the charm bearing her was expertly cast, and compensated to make her feel perfectly level. She itched to rise and take up her wand, to probe the charm, or even simply to move under her own power, but an aura of pain still radiated from the place her spine had snapped. Nausea bubbled in her core.

More and more the song issuing from the harp resembled a lullaby, gentle and repetitious. Pyrrha realized her eyelids had been resting open when they began to flutter shut, heavy with exhaustion; she bit her lip. The blood that trickled in her mouth was foul, spoiled. She coughed until her eyes watered.

"Still with me?" At Pyrrha's hummed affirmation Daisy said, "I think we've hit bottom, finally. We must be very close. We're looking for a cave, right? Of course we are," she said lowly before any answer, "obvious enough . . . men and their bloody caves . . ."

A short laugh escaped Pyrrha, and incurred a jolt of pain. To forestall more concerned questions Pyrrha said, "Tell me about the harp."

"Oh, well, it's gorgeous, apart from the terribly ugly bit at the top. The neck? The neck. That part's all black and withered, like the wood was burned, rotten and petrified all at once. The rest of it is a lovely light wood, with the scorched ivy patterns all over, just like Furnival said. It's got this dim silvery glow . . . I think it's coming off the strings. The strings are twined veela hair, I'm dead certain."

"Really?" Pyrrha craned her neck toward where she thought the harp must be drifting ahead of her. Not a hint of light. "He used veela to amplify the emotional effects of his charmwork. Interesting. I wonder how he acquired enough hair to string the harp."

"I doubt we'd like the answer."

Into pensive silence they lapsed. The harp's refrain nestled around them into one gentle pattern played beginning to end and over again while they went, as if at last settling on a favored song. With the tune came a vague sense of shelter and warmth that was crushed by the cold heft of the mists hemming them within.

Sailing through space black as pitch, Pyrrha wrestled with the old anxiety of suspension high up from unyielding ground, though she knew it slid beneath her a bare few feet from her back. But she didn't know, couldn't know. She was blind. Irreversibly cursed by her own magic. Anything could happen around her, happen to her. No longer would she ever be ready and able to face all that came.

Pyrrha nearly matched Daisy's drawn efforts for breath. Hot static traveled her chest, and sweat welled up to whet its edges against the biting air that sliced along her skin. With her riven arm she swiped her brow and then pressed the stump against her ribs, willing her body to settle. Every thread of her robes felt stiff and crusted with blood.

"It's okay." Daisy's voice broke softly into Pyrrha's spiral. She held on with steadfast pressure. "I'm right here. I'm here with you, and we've won. We're going to set things right."

"Are we?" Pyrrha brushed her arm against the lives splattered and spilled onto her body, heard the scratch and crumble of dry blood flaking away. The stench of it pawed at her senses. "Daisy . . . Caerialto is rubble. Leitrim is ash." The burn pulsed against her skull, a pain driven deep and repeated in tandem with the tremble in her empty breast. "Nothing I do could ever balance that. I tried to save them, but only condemned even more . . . I . . ."

"You're one woman," Daisy said, "standing between a relentless horror and so many innocents. You're not all-powerful, not infallible; that doesn't mean you've done no good. God," she said, "imagine you let Morrigan alone, and she broke out later—on her own or not—unchecked, unknowable. There'd be no end to the devastation without you."

All Pyrrha could envision was the fire she'd unleashed upon her home, the bodies she'd created and waded through on this path to the end. A flash of Ashlin's terrified blue eyes. Never had she ached for the safety of Daisy's loving gaze so much as she did now that she would never meet it again. The dark veil smothered her, wouldn't stir. Ceaseless and still.

"Without us." Pyrrha's voice barely came out; if not for Daisy she wouldn't have made it. Her weakness further stoked the loathing that coated her stomach and closed her throat.

Drifting down the narrow belly of the canyon, Pyrrha clutched Daisy's hand and floundered beneath streams of soft-spoken reassurance. Each scrape and crack of stone underfoot sent echoes scuttling up the walls like fingers clawing for leverage that wasn't there. The air remained frigid, thick and muted, as if the whole chasm were buried in snow, and them with it.

The harp performed its cyclic song with a somber sense of ceremony, sweet strokes of the strings flittering past the high notes to linger on the lows. Over and over, the melody trickled out in one precise cadence, like a record on repeat; it evoked in Pyrrha a far gone childish comfort of the ever-familiar, the favored books and songs that had settled themselves into her formative routines.

After a time the design of it came to Pyrrha. The harp's purpose had always been to lead Dagda's daughter to reconciliation, back to roost at her roots. It sang her lullaby.

Another knot tied itself into the tangle in Pyrrha's gut. Though only a notion she was sure of herself, and the thought of such manipulation laid into the magics of a father's gift gave new context to the family tale. The issuing sense of comfort receded as if sucked away into the surrounding mists, leaving the tune torpid and soulless.

Then it stopped. A strained parting chord reverberated through cavernous space that hadn't been there before, swallowed inward and down.

"Oh my . . ." Daisy's hand twitched away toward her other, but she didn't let go, squeezing instead. "We're here."

A surge of strength set fire to Pyrrha's heart and sent prickles of energy through her limbs. The end of the nightmare was at last in reach, if not in sight. She struggled and said, "Help me up."

"Oi—careful, now!" Daisy guided Pyrrha to her feet as if righting a priceless vase. Their shuffling pattered against distant cavern walls. "It'd be a shame if Morrigan won after everything because you conked your head on a rock."

"That's why I have you."

On her feet, Pyrrha felt the aftermath of Caerialto rush to the fore: head beating like a drum, lungs screamed sore, spine radiating pain down through her legs such that she felt like she had sunk into a thermal pool. She fought to keep her breathing even and steadied herself on Daisy's shoulder, whose hands fluttered around her.

The cavern spun slow underfoot. There was nothing by which to orient on her own, no anchor, no reference for balance. She couldn't see her own hand inches away. Pyrrha had become one with a flat black mass that would permit her no distance, no space to breathe. Eyes closed, eyes open—neither made the slightest difference.

"C'mon. Let's catch our breath for a minute; I'll finish patching you up, have a look at your eyes." Daisy steered Pyrrha with the care of a mother minding her child's first steps, one hand in hers, the other on her hip. "Here," she said, and they sank onto a low smooth shelf of stone. "That's it."

Resting against the damp and craggy cavern wall Pyrrha felt her lesser pains evaporate one by one. Silent but for the swish of her robes, Daisy set upon Pyrrha with wand movements that ghosted over the skin mellow as a moth courting flame, soft murmurs left lost in the close space between them. A warm hand slipped around to support her neck.

"Drink," Daisy said. "Try not to let it hit your tongue. The taste is awful."

Pyrrha tilted her head back and let Daisy pour; something like burning mold invaded her thoat. She coughed feeble and dry. "Oh."

"Bit of payback," Daisy said with a playful nudge. "That was your blood I drank, wasn't it? How about a little warning?"

"My blood, yes. The base of the potion . . . perfectly safe." Every part of Pyrrha seemed to have taken on weight, even her tongue. "Recall that you were the instigator . . . the re'em blood, inside Furnival's manor."

"Oh. True enough." Daisy gave a subdued laugh, then Pyrrha felt her lean back. "Open your eyes," she said, voice falling somber, "and stare straight ahead. Blink once when I squeeze your hand."

While she complied Pyrrha tried not to think how she only saw nothing, all nothing, and she couldn't look away. The unmarked dark was like death; a place apart, without bounds by which to cross and escape, or even to understand. Her withered heart began to limp faster, skipping, stumbling over itself.

Another squeeze of her clammy hand. Pyrrha fought the urge to squirm and instead focused on the smooth callus along Daisy's thumb, the wire-thin scars raised across slender knuckles. Each cut and burn marked a memory, a life feverishly fought for in the St. Mungo's urgent triage; the cauldron her battleground; the enemy, time. Daisy left them to heal as they would, indelible signatures that, while faded from the skin of her fingers, lingered ever legible.

With one more whispered spell, and a patient wait, Daisy heaved a distressed breath and brushed sweaty strands of hair from Pyrrha's forehead. "I don't see anything wrong."

Pyrrha hummed. "Nor do I."

"Not at all funny," Daisy murmured, giving a light reproachful bump on the head. Her elbow brushed Pyrrha's when she turned and put her back to the wall alongside. "How did this happen?"

"I've overtaxed my body," Pyrrha said. "Become too reliant on blood sorcery, particularly in the last few days. This degree of damage I considered to be a more distant concern, something avoidable, were I to find answers in time to set my studies aside for good."

"But . . . ?"

A current of unease traveled Pyrrha. She wrapped her arms around herself, robes sodden with blood and sweat and cavern damp. "Do you remember the compendium in my quarters?"

"Hard to forget seeing a book bound in human skin," Daisy said, shifting about. "Tried my best, though. Please tell me you didn't make that revolting thing."

"Not the binding, no. But I have added to the writings," Pyrrha said, "as the latest in a line of practitioners tracing back to the Dark Ages. I could live ten lives and never absorb all the knowledge inside; every time I open it, new excerpts reveal themselves. Familiar pages hide away." The cave magnified her low whisper, carrying off into chasmal depths. "Of course, all that knowledge came at a cost . . . suffering. Human sacrifice. Countless cut down as cattle, by creatures like the Blood Countess of Čachtice. One of several obsessed with extending her lifespan."

Quietly, Daisy said, "But you'd never sink to that."

"I saw no need to expend anyone but myself. And so I have, and for it I'll be by far the shortest-lived of the tome's contributors." Pyrrha rubbed hard at her eyes, tried to see stars. Absolute nothing.

Daisy locked her wrist in a vise grip when she lowered her arm, and said unsteadily, "We . . . we never discussed exactly how much time . . ."

"I don't know." Pyrrha didn't flinch away. "Less than we'd like, if I'm to proceed without either hand." The grasp loosened a fraction at Daisy's choked laugh, lips ghosting over knuckles again, and Pyrrha added, "At a guess, six years, as my condition stands. Likely half that by the time my work is concluded."

"Why—ah . . ." Daisy paused to rally herself against a sob fighting to escape, all breaths drawn deep and shaky. "Why doesn't it upset you?"

"Mmm . . . Since age ten I've pondered the same," Pyrrha said. Between the delirium of injury and blood loss, and the surreal fact of their impending triumph over the Nightmare Queen, she felt, resting there with the last person who cared for her, who had faced death and worse at her shoulder, less inhibited than she ought. "Why don't I feel what I'm supposed to—why does life glide past me as it thrives inside everyone else? . . . Where did my missing pieces fall?" With a sigh Pyrrha reclined as she was able, the stone cool against her neck. "Do you recall when our friendship began?"

"'Course," Daisy said with a wet sniffle. "Beginning of third year, breakfast in the Great Hall. I saw you looking all grumpy at Ashlin's birth pictures . . ."

"You laughed and asked me why I wasn't overjoyed."

Daisy giggled breathily, still holding fast to Pyrrha's hand. "And you said her first act as your sister was to send a featherbrained owl to ruin your porridge."

"Yes," Pyrrha said, "I was bothered by the owl—and further still by the absence of anything else someone like Daisy Pitcher would feel at the birth of a sister. Watching you admire her, I thought perhaps, given time and investment, I could learn how . . ." She reined in her tongue and shook her head. Any end to that thought would be too pathetic to voice.

For a period Daisy was quiet. All the while Pyrrha's heart thudded a reproachful pulse to her muddled head, stomach prickling, a pain and anxiety entirely, frighteningly new.

"You picked me to learn from?" Daisy said, words thick enough they sounded near stuck in her throat. "I had no idea . . . that's . . . incredibly sweet. But you did love her, though, you know that? You do." She let their hands slip apart when Pyrrha struggled upright. "All you've done for her, you couldn't call it anything else. Even if you still think you don't feel it, don't believe it—believe me. You love, so much." A swish of robes as Daisy rose too. "Whoever said love came the same way to everyone?"

Something meant to work itself free from Pyrrha's body, pry her apart from inside and fly; she never realized she'd waited and wanted for ages to hear such a thought, brought forth as the most self-evident truth to ever elude her. Pyrrha yearned to accept it. She wouldn't. Couldn't yet let herself release the tension ever coiled in her chest, the pain that bound her together, lashed her to her purpose still unfulfilled. She kneaded at the ache, straining to work her lungs free to breathe. Then she lifted her hand to swipe from her face a drip of dew fallen from the cavern.

A soft intake of breath in the dark; Daisy had drawn into arm's reach. She ran a thumb along the same cheek, and said with wonder, "You're crying."

Pyrrha hurt, from her chest and then from everywhere, as if sealed valves had ground agape and flooded her with it. A desperate thought took hold and told her that if she could name it, explain it, she may tame the emotions hewing her open. But she couldn't speak.

With arms encircling her waist, their beating hearts meeting, Daisy spoke for her with a simple purity. "You love me."

Down into boundless black Pyrrha stared exactly where she knew Daisy's eyes tried to shine up at her. Her numb hand brushed hair back and found Daisy's nape, blood crusted nails scraping goosebumps, thumb against the thumping pulse. Too fragile, too precious to be safe in her grasp.

"I can't . . ."

Daisy's warm breath crept up against Pyrrha's neck. "Try?" she whispered, an entreaty so soft and sweet that the waiting answer flickered out.

The smallest bit forward Pyrrha tilted, and then Daisy claimed her lips before any proper thought could take hold.

Heat. Against her mouth, about her tongue, within her lungs and burning out to every nerveless extremity. Needles tracked up her spine where Daisy's nails dragged gentle trails, one hand settling at the small of her back, the other sliding up to bury slender fingers in her hair, as precariously bound as Pyrrha felt herself. She stayed still as if petrified.

Their taste was of blood and bile. Daisy didn't seem to notice; she caressed and pressed in, then finally broke away and gasped against Pyrrha's cheek, slid her mouth to the jaw, the neck, a wet course crossing the burn to nibble at the ear. She spoke high and faint, like her fluttering heart obstructed her breath: "I—I want to love you . . . I want to love you for as long as I can. Please," she breathed, "please . . . don't say it's too dangerous, I'm here, I'm already here . . . always be here . . ."

Limbs numb and tense, tingling hot, Pyrrha found she'd wound her arms around Daisy in turn, so tightly as if to press her whole into Pyrrha's hollow shell and preserve her there. A tarnished shelter for what was precious. But Daisy would stay safer from far apart; why, then, why didn't Pyrrha shrink back, split away . . . "Why?" she said, with one word asking a thousand questions.

"Why?" Daisy huffed a laugh into Pyrrha's shoulder, then gently bit down, released as quickly when Pyrrha twitched. "The witch could wipe out all civilization outside of this cave by the time I'm through answering that. It's all the ways you are," she said into Pyrrha's ear, fingers exploring unmapped places that sent little sparks across the skin. "The ways you make me feel: safe, understood, wanted . . . loved. For all I am. You always saw me for what was past the surface—one of the few who ever decided to look that far. You never treated me like an inanimate prize to be coveted and won . . . nor made me feel foolish for my faith in God, or in people, even though you share neither. When we're together, I . . . I feel like I can accomplish anything, withstand anything, because when I need you I know you'll be there for me . . . every time. And I want to be all of that for you, too."

"You have been. You are," Pyrrha said. "But the price for this—" she briefly tightened the embrace "—is too high. Look at what I've dragged you through. That's why I . . ."

"Why you've tried to keep your distance." Daisy went on, serene, as if reading out what was written plainly on her soul. "Anyone who loves you would rather share your pain than be cut out of your life entirely—that hurts us both far worse. And you know it," she said, "because I'm here now. I wanted to be here and you respected that. Only I can decide what you're worth to me, what consequences I can bear." Daisy nuzzled into Pyrrha's collarbone, whisper tickling over her throat. "This is worth anything. I think . . . I hope you feel the same."

All Pyrrha could do was breathe, each lungful dearly won from the suffocating dusk clotting her eyes like blots of ink. Any answer would visit more misery on Daisy, now or later; hate flayed at the scar across her head in rebuke for her selfish choice. Daisy, calm and cradling her in an accursed cave, should be giving herself to Hogwarts instead, safe and content and left only with distant recollections of a redheaded schoolmate. But it was too late; to force her back down that path now would deal her a lifelong heartache Pyrrha could not erase, all the more painful for its opaque origin.

The woman left behind would no longer be Daisy at all. Only a false, broken doll, dragged along a road she'd never set foot on, nor even turned to face. Discarded and lost.

Instead Pyrrha determined to bring Daisy as much light as she could with the all the time she could wrest from fate.

Pyrrha relinquished her grip on stunted emotions, let them stumble blindly as did she. What she thought was love felt like a new-formed diamond inside her, dense and defined and searing with heat, a multitude of planes imperfect and pure.

"I feel it." Pyrrha's voice issued free of her uncertainties; they no longer chained her. Against the curse reaming holes in her head as censure, she pressed her lips onto Daisy's head and said into her hair, "To the end of my limits and further, until there's nothing left of me, I'll love you. I promise."

A sound halfway between a laugh and a sob escaped Daisy, and she flung her arms round Pyrrha's neck and dragged her into another blistering kiss. It struck sudden as snake venom, a warm, sick intoxication thickening Pyrrha's blood, heartbeat hurried and heavy, anxieties hurtling through her head faster than she could acknowledge them. The instinct to flinch away was almost strong enough.

No one had ever crossed Pyrrha's boundaries; she didn't know where to position her arms, what to attempt with her tongue. She kept still. Daisy hummed into her mouth and withdrew, a parting slow and tender, rough breaths bringing heat across her cheek again.

"I'm sorry," Daisy said, a dazed whisper. She nearly hung from Pyrrha's shoulders, nails digging in. "I've had so much more time to be ready for this, I—I shouldn't've—"

"We can . . . we'll explore this later." Pyrrha extricated herself with all the grace she could manage, though still slid her hand into Daisy's. A long minute passed while she gathered herself for the task ahead; Daisy kneaded her hand. "Our business now must be with Dagda's cauldron, swift as can be, before Morrigan visits herself upon a new target. You'll guide us ahead," Pyrrha said. "I have my doubts we'll encounter resistance within, but we cannot assume. I've shown you what to look for in places unfamiliar, how to draw out what's hidden. Do you remember?"

"Er, yeah?" Daisy fidgeted with Pyrrha's fingers, gentle twists of affection and stress. "Mostly. I may need a little refresher. First goes the Inquisitor's Incanticle, right? And then if . . ."

As they paced through dimensionless dark side by side Daisy rattled off precautionary measures with only a few small corrections required. She put them into practice admirably, probing and brushing along the throat of the sloping tunnel with a prehistorian's care, all while steering Pyrrha by the hand down steps irregular in width, precarious in shape. The stairs dropped so steep as to make each step a distressing plunge that seized at her lungs, squeezed and released her like a bellows. Sweat soon saturated her limbs anew.

By their echoes Pyrrha knew that the tunnel was voluminous, more of a grand antechamber than the narrow channels that would stem from a canyon floor's natural cave system. Their halting footfalls, hushed voices, carried on for dozens of feet at all sides, a divide that might stretch larger every step, every breathtaking downward lunge. Her legs burned with effort.

Scant strength flagging, Pyrrha came down too fast and gasped when her ankle gave way; she pitched forward and Daisy caught her around the waist, hauled them solidly back until they sat hard upon the previous step. From the perch her feet could barely rest flat.

"Bloody hell—who thought these stairs were a sound idea?" Daisy ran a hand along Pyrrha's jaw, swiped sweat from her forehead. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," Pyrrha said, glaring down at all the deep nothing yawning below, an open gullet with an endless gulp. Her heart pulsed in time with the scar. "Being endowed with a measure of giants' blood surely goes some way to making this passage more practical."

"Oh! Of course. But . . . wow, hang on." Sounds of shuffling issued where Daisy turned to climb a step, searching hands sliding over stone. "Yeah, look at—er, I mean—sorry—um, this here?" Daisy planted Pyrrha's hand on the step, stone worn smooth and irregular. "The way they're all warped, in a kind of pattern, right, one side after the other. I think they're footprints."

Pyrrha traced the diameter of the depression for six of her handspans. More than a measure of giants' blood. "Yes. Good observation. And with imprints this defined . . ." She felt further along, then pulled herself up to Daisy's step and inspected it as well, another solitary print on the opposite side to the next. "Obviously he made regular use of his cauldron. What's most noteworthy here is the reason the trail is this clear; an absence of returning tracks." Pyrrha rubbed at her smarting ankle, turned her head back where she guessed the passage descended. "Dagda had another way out. Best be alert for it."

"Right . . ." A soft swish of skin betrayed Daisy wringing her hands. "I do wish you could help me search somehow . . . I'd feel terrible if I missed something important down here, or even—oh!" She slapped her palms to her legs. "How stupid! There's something you need to try, Pyrrha, can't believe I didn't—I've worked with all sorts of sight afflictions at St. Mungo's, right? There's a charm they taught me, most patients found it really helpful, but . . ." She trailed off, enthusiasm deflating a little. "Well, it takes a lot of time and familiarity for your brain to efficiently translate the effect, as I understand it. Still . . ."

Pyrrha nodded, privately pessimistic. Still she said, "Teach me."

It was the work of a few minutes for Daisy to relay the precise wand movement: "—up and out, sort of. Imagine you're flipping an omelet. Yeah. Then straight back down, like you're braining someone with the pan." In the end Pyrrha sought permission to feel out the motion in Daisy's mind, and it came to her easily.

A wave and a thought; Pyrrha kept her eyes wide and strained to see as she cast, but nothing stirred in her dusk. Instead an unpleasant sensation rolled off of her as if her flesh had crumbled into grains of sand and been blasted away everywhere. It was a sensation akin to the blood charm that saw her dissipate, a diffuse arrangement of faint feelers, but magnitudes more quick and coarse. The spell left her with a rough impression of Daisy's outline leaning close, the stairs jutting out from above and below. A nebulous sense for clusters of broad shapes hanging overhead.

"What are those?" Pyrrha nodded at the ceiling.

"Stalactites!" Daisy clapped her hands together. "Brilliant, you did it, first try! How'd it feel?"

"Vague and uncomfortable."

"You'll get the hang of it," Daisy said. "The charm's purpose is terribly complicated, mapping your surroundings directly to your mind's spatial awareness. Not nearly all patients could ever manage even something fuzzy. For the rest, it took years of practice."

"I don't have years to spare," Pyrrha said. "But I don't need practice. The problem is here, I suspect." She twitched the wand resting in her fingers. "At the castle, it failed me. I'd thought we were compatible—it's of the same make as my first."

"Then why'd it backfire?"

Pyrrha shrugged. "I suppose I'll have to devote time to subjugating it. I'm uncertain. Wandlore is as fickle and imprecise as divination." She stood and pocketed the wand, stuck her hand out to the side; Daisy met her immediately, soft and warm. "I'd rather rely on you. Let's be onward."

One great step at a time they descended, clinging together for balance, and for the newfound flames kindled inside them that flared at their touch. Daisy anchored herself to Pyrrha as if they were truly adrift on a black sea, themselves the only two people left to be. The comfort of her made Pyrrha's heart swell such that each beat came with a jolt of exquisite agony.

While Daisy whispered in her ear of the near future, tone sensuous and tender with promise, Pyrrha plumbed the past for all the reasons she'd maintained her distance and found them brittle, broken upon the sensation sweeping her away. Theirs was a vow without cost, without toil and sacrifice, that Pyrrha felt she could keep with no trace of heartache or regret. Purpose without pain.

"You could've had this ages ago," Ashlin said.

The air started to thicken and heat with each step down, a mineral stench growing stronger until it singed their nostrils and brought tears to their eyes. What Pyrrha had taken for blood roaring in her head resolved into the distinct rush and gurgle of a body of water boiling from the molten veins that flowed deep beneath the earth. The bubbling echoed off the bounds of the cavern and overlapped into an endless pounding beat.

Underfoot the steps leveled into a broad causeway that bridged haphazardly forward; Daisy steered Pyrrha around treacherous stretches of stone. Over cracks and crevices they crept, around boulders and spiring stalagmites—Daisy's grip crushed tight and she gasped, the lungful of dense fumes driving her to a fit of coughs.

Pyrrha took her wand and cleared the atmosphere around them. A drift of air ghosted by. "What do you see?"

"It's—bloody hell, I can't believe . . ." Daisy's hand shook, and she squeezed against the tremors. "It's the cauldron! Dagda's cauldron—a massive, boiling lake! Look, look in my head, you have to see!"

A spell saw Pyrrha's mind slip into Daisy's and meet with the sight she offered. Dagda's cauldron, a colossal sunken pit carved out of the earth, seethed a frothy white spittle over its lips; it spilled down into channels of magma that coursed through charred bedrock. Bursts of hissing grey steam billowed from the drips and became pale vapors that rose high and wound thick about the distant stalactites like cotton caught in a comb.

The cragged footbridge joining the cauldron's edge to the cavern sloped precariously down, pitted and fractured by age, warped by heat and fallen stone. Below either side of the bridge glittered the pointed edges of glossy black rock formations, lava flows seeping between them in the manner of blood through a beast's teeth.

Wonder fought elation for space inside Pyrrha's body, such that she felt she might float beyond the bridge entirely. Roiling before her was the legacy of Dagda, the might of Ireland's reclusive druid, a masterpiece of magic the workings of which she could spend decades deciphering. Pyrrha could hardly breathe.

It was never to be. The thought struck her in the gut. There could be no return journey for supplicants of the cauldron; Pyrrha would never set foot in Dagda's domain again. Her scar seethed.

"Oh!" Daisy plucked at Pyrrha's sleeve. "It's gone bright blue. Really bright. I don't think I've ever seen a brew take that color. Is the cauldron reacting to us, d'you think, or do its properties change on its own—fluctuations in humidity and temperature, maybe, or . . . ?"

Whether due to stifling hot air or the culmination of Pyrrha's efforts striking home, she still struggled for breath. The cauldron was here. The weapon that would strike down Morrigan. Avenge Ashlin. Secure a future for her family, that she may wrest them from the possessive arms of death without threat to their second chance.

"To the edge," Pyrrha said, voice fluttery, uneven. She didn't trust herself to string more than a few words then. "Come."

The crossing was a protracted horror, a trek over broken steps and crumbling slopes, loose rock scattering at their feet and clattering over edges to drop into the infernal rivers beneath. All that existed in Pyrrha's dark world was an oppressive heat bearing in as if she were smashed between two flatirons. At all sides spat the sharp sizzle and scorch of magma burbling over bedrock, the dull crack of rock splitting in the swelter. The heavy smell of molten metal seemed to sit in her lungs and solidify.

With Daisy's hand finding her shoulder in warning, Pyrrha paused and felt a wide set of ascending steps present themselves at her spell. Broad stalagmites flanked the flight, adorned with odd strung-together shapes that rattled and clacked with the rumble of the cavern; Daisy whispered about yellowed bones tied up and ornamented with feathers, moss and woad.

Pyrrha surmounted the stairs and stopped at the cusp of a tumultuous basin emitting waves of near solid heat. The thunderous boil of Dagda's cauldron drowned out all sound. It throbbed and shuddered at her feet, a mass of wild magic threatening to corrode the stone below and plunge the cavern into the planet's core. In moments her legs were numb and unsteady with strain; she let herself fold and sank to her knees. Daisy knelt beside her.

Dagda's cauldron was close enough to reach out and immerse herself, burn herself as a living crucible to distill from the druid's wisdom the knowledge she needed. Pyrrha's eyes, thrown wide in vain desire, felt as if they were melting into her skull; she shut them and bowed her head against her heart pounding up her throat.

Fingers jittering, Pyrrha cast about with her arm along the jagged rim of the cauldron; Daisy's tender touch alit on her shoulder. Pyrrha turned and said breathlessly, "Is there a vessel?"

The cavern quaked as if all life on the surface had stomped their feet at once; Daisy pulled Pyrrha back from the boiling lake and into a frantic embrace.

"Don't fall, don't fall!" she cried. "Hell! The concoction's changing again, it's gone all foggy. Damn this mist—again—can't bloody see, one second—" Daisy struck out with a decisive movement, and the atmosphere thinned "—there. Right, so now it's changed from blue to a sort of silver, er, silvery white, and—and there are shapes in there, below the surface! Shadows . . . are those people?" Daisy yelped, the sound chilling Pyrrha's blood. "M-Morrigan! I saw her eyes!" She pressed tight to Pyrrha's side, shivering. "Is she about to break through? How—?"

"They're memories." The realization passed Pyrrha's lips before it had settled in; she took an exultant breath and said again, "They're memories of Morrigan. This is it, Daisy, isn't it? This is the answer we need. Look—look again. Tell me what you see."

"Oh my God . . . Oh my God, you're right," Daisy said. "It's like the cauldron turned into some kind of enormous pensieve—and she's everywhere, with those horrible yellow eyes. I'm sorry," she said, massaging Pyrrha's hand. "I thought she'd found us again, like with Furnival's mosaic, and—"

Pyrrha cut her off with a kiss on the bridge of her nose, rather than the cheek she'd aimed for; Daisy startled and made a delighted sound.

"I'll be back soon."

"Oh! But—!"

Dagda's brew lapped at Pyrrha's outstretched hand and drew her headlong into ancient recollection.

---

Color slashed at the black and spilled free like fatal wounds. The shock of it shot pain through Pyrrha's head and gave her heart a start, to perceive anything at all, let alone the vibrant tones she'd thought forever confined to her mind's eye. Craning a hungry gaze all around, she hardly noticed her lack of footing until she found it, landing light upon lush grass.

The manifold streaks of murk lurching down like painstaking drips of paint sharpened into the towering trunks and bristling needles of evergreen trees. Their scent brought a bracing taste to the crisp air of early spring, while below the boughs the smells of rich soil and wildflowers lingered low, inviting, such that no stretch of ground could be found less than a fine place to lay down and rest.

Pyrrha was sorely tempted. The fervor burning like coals in her chest spurred her on; Morrigan's secrets were hers. The nightmare was over. She had but to take the final steps.

She turned on her heel and peered around through the trees, spaced more intimately than typical; there was hardly more than a dozen feet to any line of sight before being broken by flora or hillock. A purposeful work of magic to frustrate attempts at breaching the heart of the forest, perhaps. Navigating the charmed wilderness without magic would prove nigh impossible.

Though it pained her to return so swiftly to the dark Pyrrha closed her eyes and strained to hear all that the memory offered, beyond the sussuration of the winds and the diffuse cries of wildlife. She waited. There came no snap of a twig or bark of a raised voice; instead the hoot of a nearby owl caught her attention. Incessant and identical in its short intervals. Pyrrha strode for a lance of sunlight that pierced the canopy and peered up at the chink of sky peeking through.

Midday. A certainty settled in her that the owl was an intentional dissonance. A signal. Pyrrha heeded it with a haste her true body could no longer tolerate, reveling in the freedom to navigate space without deliberating on the safe placement of every step. A twist of distress wrung away any cheer; if reprieve from a scant few hours spent blind brought such relief, how much lower would she sink? How long could she stay stable, so soundly shut inside her own sick head?

An insane, childish desire to stop short and plant herself where she stood passed over her; what if she refused to go on? Claimed herself a placeless place, where she was separate and safe from spreading her ruin? A ghost in a memory. Something untethered in her chest at the idea, a warmth like a salve, and somehow she felt certain that the cauldron would accommodate her.

Pyrrha sliced inside the length of her sundered forearm with a sharp wand gesture, blood spurting out, potent pain bringing a shock of clarity to her brain. The scar sent hot tremors down the base of her skull with the weight it impressed. Her breathing shook, but she traversed the forest with redoubled purpose, and when next she looked, the wound had gone. She thought of Ashlin and Daisy and opened herself once more.

Shivering with agony and disgust, Pyrrha nearly missed the flicker of red hair that slid between the undergrowth ahead, intent on the same course toward the sound of the owl. She wove around the trees, heart hammering its anticipation, impatience itching in her fingers to turn her wand on the forest and force it out of her way. Reduced to running instead, Pyrrha felt no protest, no exertion, and in a minute fell into step with Fionn McCoul.

More than six feet of intricate layered robes hemmed with thin golden embroidery, Fionn carried himself as a lord who'd seen fit to bestow his presence upon the forest. Not a hair in his dark mane had fallen out of place. His heavy lidded eyes darted around the high boughs as he tracked the owl's cries, a sturdy rod held low at his side, thumb tracing over winding patterns etched into the metal.

Pyrrha shadowed him a while and then stopped before he did, having spotted the deception; with his eyes focused high Fionn failed to notice the wolf burst from the brush until it had leapt; it locked its fangs around the rod and yanked viciously. His footing unmoved, Fionn flicked his arm as if shooing the beast away, and it shot back in a grey blur that punched a hole in the pine branches and disappeared, too far or too harmed for any whine of pain to be heard.

"Miserable churl!" The words hissed as if from the rasping needles of the trees. "Must it ever be the drive of desirous swine, to march toward what they cannot possess with weapons drawn?"

"Macha," Fionn said after a moment of contemplation. He gazed around as if made from animate stone, never landing upon an origin. "You're mistaken to think any part of this primitive subsistence appeals to me."

Another disembodied voice, a tranquil wind through thin grasses. "She speaks of our sister, of course. She Who Shirked the Stars' Design. Queen of Nightmares, Earth-Whisperer, Devourer of Men." Badb—Pyrrha presumed—drew a long, bored sigh. "Be you another so consumed?"

A numb exhilaration had near overtaken Pyrrha, to witness such history firsthand, to feel the speech of lost legends within her own ears. Their words came strange and coarse, but Dagda's cauldron seemed to have imparted to her a mastery of the language. She paced around the towering trees in search of gleaming yellow eyes.

"Atimes I am consumed by impatience," Fionn said, low voice seeming to stiffen the limbs of the thicket, "and I favor not the man I become—or rather, I favor him overmuch. Did you agree to this meeting merely to hurl insults?"

"Naught was agreed!" Macha spat.

Badb's hum evoked imagery of a cruel smile. "Morrigan's pacts are not ours, Shepherd."

"Shepherd?" Fionn said. Macha cackled, her wild laugh echoed a thousand times in an upsurge of animal chatter. "Because the people who look to me for protection are cattle."

"'Tis apt enough." Pyrrha's blood curdled; Morrigan spoke from the trees and the earth in a timbre that haunted her thoughts, as if it could take hold of her mind like wet clay and reshape her any way it wanted. "Is that not the role you are here to fulfill?"

"Are you afraid to find out?"

"I am mother to fear."

"Children do not always obey," Fionn said. He stalked slow about the pines, no longer seeking, only maintaining a bearing that expressed he belonged wherever he stood. "Were she among the living, Nemain could tell you that."

Shrieks and snarls, howls and caws resounded from the forest, unbridled rage staining the environs with lengthening shadows and looming evergreens. A gust of wind whipped Fionn's robes about and set foliage flailing. The forest floor trembled with Morrigan's next words.

"State your purpose and leave! At once, or be crushed into sustenance for our soil!"

"A threat as empty as your . . . humble existence." Fionn stopped in the shade of a swaying pine atop a hillock, and glared at the wild landscape. "Were I not to return, the full might of all the petty kings and lords of Éire would fall upon this place as a scythe fells grain . . . they are wont to do so regardless." He looked up sharply at the birds roosting overhead, a tiny glint of gold behind each of their beady black eyes. "Even the sisters three cannot sing to so many at once."

"Then it seems we have naught to lose by making broth of your bones," Macha said.

Badb made a revolted sound. "Naught but our bile."

"His blood is poison," Morrigan said. After Fionn's proclamation she sounded almost resigned. Tired. "No use shall be made of him dead . . . Come you here only to spill your poison, Shepherd?"

Fionn shook his head and sat primly upon a fallen tree, rod performing absent twirls in his fingers. "As I say, the lords of the realm are poised for the conquest of your wilds—"

"Bah! Have they not claimed enough from us?" Macha's fury matched the ominous groans of the trees. "In drought we sent rain, in famine we uplifted their fields—!"

"Herbal magics against disease and infirmity," Badb added, "though they still seem to drop as mayflies."

"We cannot spare humanity its every tribulation," Morrigan said, "nor have we the desire. Yet it seems if we are regarded not the solution, then the cause we must be."

"The village of Redgate lies in smouldering ruins, its inhabitants fodder for crows."

"They saw fit to plunder our home," Morrigan said, voice seething from each blade of grass. "We brought them prosperity. We warned them away. It was not enough. Humans are not content to thrive as they are; always will they seek greater gain, until to take from their neighbors is the next natural step. Thus, we shall brook the encroaching settlements no more. So march your mephitic militias. We will feed our woodlands to hellfire before those cattle can claim a single copse."

"That is what it will come to," Fionn said, "if you do not accept my amnesty."

After a brief pause, Macha snickered, and Morrigan said, "On behalf of the lords of the realm, I venture."

Fionn nodded at the sky. "Of course. Upon my word, I bring terms to which the powers that be have already agreed." He sat forward and aimed a tense stare into the soil while he waited, and after only an anticipatory silence, he went on, "In exchange for absolution of your every crime, you will join with the forces under my command in retaking the northern holdings from the giant Bennadon and his ravening horde."

"To elude the consequences of risking ourselves to serve the realm . . . we are to serve yet again?" Badb sounded almost impressed. "I bid you go plough your hidden acre."

Birds twittered and cawed along with Macha's harsh laughter. Fionn stood and dusted off his robes, then turned toward the way he'd come, brushing by undergrowth, unbothered by the riot of noise that slowly died out.

"Leave them to slaughter till the last!" Macha said. "Never after may these lands carry man's voice."

"You cannot expect our trust," Morrigan said quietly, a murmur in the wind. "Even were your masters true to their word, it changes nothing. Neither side will abandon what is home, and so the cycle shall repeat. The offer is insufficient."

"Burn now or burn later," Fionn said without breaking stride. "Our message is delivered. I shall await a crow with your answer."

". . . I would not think to leave you in suspense."

The frigid rage in Morrigan's tone was all the warning Fionn had before a storm of crows descended upon him and plucked at his hair, tore his robes—he shouted oaths and repelled them with thunderous sweeps of his scepter. The crows harried him away with beak and claw and buffeting wing until a strange blur blotted out the scene, and Pyrrha found herself drifting in dark again.

---

The next memory birthed in a flash of lightning, a crash of thunder, splintering brilliance arcing under far-flung thunderheads to pierce the mottled mountain range slouched on the horizon. For hundreds of miles in every direction the landscape lay open and undular, processions of rolling hills segmented here and there by glassy rivers like silk ribbons cinched tight. Cast in stormy dusk, the grasslands rippled green and grey in the gusting wind.

Pyrrha stood upon the crown of the highest hill, surrounded by tremendous standing stones carved with symbols that were distantly familiar. Some were daubed in woad or goat's blood—the beast hung dead from one pillar—while others overshadowed bonfires piled at their base, burning herbs turning colors that curled up into strange patterns and faded away. The wind crooned along striations gouged into the stones, across chimes of bone and metal festooned between their crests.

At the epicenter of the formation loomed the dim silhouette of a man stood higher than the tallest obelisk, even hunched as he was, shrewd eyes glinting down like dagger tips over a stone altar. His unkempt grey beard bristled down to his feet as a filthy apron over scraps of cloth worn like an afterthought. Hands large enough to encircle Pyrrha's body pinched an array of metal tines between the fingers with surgical delicacy, the tips of each flickering with multicolored light.

The cloaked figure lashed to the altar twitched at each quick prod to the exposed pale flesh of their arms. Sparks and flashes threw motes of light across Dagda's rapt expression like embers from a forge, each puncture producing odd pulses of sound that were more felt than heard. He paused and peered closely at the figure's face, leaning over the wooden stake driven through their mouth. The reprieve saw no reaction but the faintest moan.

With a savage rumble from his chest Dagda ripped the stake free. As if he'd unstoppered an ancient drain, the figure gurgled, sucked at the air in one limitless inhale, hooded head greedily craning. Dagda forced a fistful of plants into its gaping mouth and held the creature down. He fished a glittering white gem out of the tangles in his beard, crushed it in his teeth, and spat the grit in with the herbal compound. At a noise like rotten fruit dropped from a height the stake plunged back into place.

Overhead the skies groaned one long and meandering lament. Dagda straightened, bald head shining in sparse firelight, and turned to drive a hateful glare at one of the standing stones. Charged moments passed, Dagda's eyes flicking from the skies to the stone and back while the clouds grumbled. He roared a wordless burst of heavenward rage that made Pyrrha jerk back as if she'd been smacked.

A solitary stroke of lightning blasted the pillar and bathed the hilltop in burning white; when it fled Fionn stood at the pillar's base as if he'd only stepped out from behind. The men met eyes and waited for the strike's deafening echoes to sink away and fade across the countryside.

"I see you've not lost your fascination for the Soul-Sippers." Fionn clasped his hands inside his sleeves; Pyrrha was positive his implement rested in easy reach. Nocuous black eyes like punctures in the gloom belied his air of courtesy. "Think you still they have aught to offer? Their nature contends the contrary."

"A lesson 'neath every leaf."

Dagda's thick speech dragged with a deliberate weight, like a tool hefted with grim purpose. Tines cast aside clinked upon the slab. The druid leaned on a staff borne from nowhere, little more than a stripped tree trunk that matched his tremendous height. At its crown, wiry roots twined about a boulder, shapeless surface splotched with murky stains. One burst of motion was all it would take to make Fionn die, add his dye to the mire of histories dried across the stone's surface.

Similar thoughts seemed to cross Dagda's mind by the creases deepened around his eyes. "Take the wraith's place on my table and serve as example . . . we will learn the truth of the soul of Fionn McCoul." The trunk in his grip let a slow creak when he wrung it. "Will the creature come away ailing . . ." he said, "or will it come away hungry?"

"Oh, Great Groundbreaker," Fionn said with a chiding smile, "is that any way to behave toward a family friend?"

Dagda balked at the precise intonation of those last few words. He said, speech landing like hammer blows, "I have . . . no . . . family."

"Of course not." Fionn's smile stretched, a festering wound. "Though such is through no choice of yours. Young womenfolk," he said, casting a rueful look at the clouds. "Too accustomed to living headstrong to take heed of the contents inside."

A breeze blew a spectral tune through the stone pillars of the hilltop and tousled the grass. The dementor's tattered black trappings, loosely wrapped, did not stir an inch in the winds whipping at it. Its mottled grey hands strained at its bonds, clawlike fingers splayed wide with the same heedless greed as its gaping mouth.

Eyeing the creature with an unreadable expression, Fionn went on at Dagda's perilous silence. "Word of an itinerant songstress has circulated among the courts of the realm . . . a maiden of towering beauty, toting a most extraordinary harp." He squinted at the dementor, which had begun to emit red smoke around the stake down its throat. "Extraordinary," he said again quietly. "Enchanting, even. Indeed, her performances are not long to amass a great following, wherever she goes."

Dagda's whisper was like shifting earth, his massive hands tense and white. "I care nothing for the affairs of men."

"Mm." Fionn nodded slowly. "Then it is of no consequence if I strip the girl of her power," he said, manner more frigid with every word, "apprehend her and sell her for a prize concubine to some feral Icelandic jarl. Or perhaps I shall denounce her as a renegade witch, and permit all the ensorcelled their own justice before she is burned at the—"

Fionn's body rippled around Dagda's club as if he were made of water; the pillar behind cracked and trembled at the impact. The giant's free hand shot out and snatched, then recoiled, skin of the palm charred dark red.

Fionn had barely moved. "You are not made for direct contests of magic. Don't try."

A chilling snarl; Dagda pivoted and swung a titanic overhead blow down upon the altar. The boulder head struck with a deafening blast of stone on stone. On and on the sound pounded past all natural limits, compounded strike by devastating strike, bouncing off the standing stones in a sickening sequence that weakened near where Fionn knelt clutching his head. His body began to shudder in time with the beats.

He lashed out blindly backward; the fractured pillar burst into fragments with a fleeting screech like each piece keening in pain. The unrelenting reverb rushed for the breach and torrented out into the air over the hills in a drawn out low howl, leaving an uncanny silence in its aftermath.

Sparks arced high when Fionn knocked aside a swing of the club with his metal rod; with a following flick he sent the embers into Dagda's eyes. The druid roared and reeled away, club sweeping wide arcs that billowed Fionn's robes as he stepped back. In several long strides he scaled the side of a standing stone and stood waiting at the top for Dagda to gather himself.

Red-eyed and heaving with rage, Dagda whipped the boulder head in tight circles with what had been the staff, enlongated and slackened into something like a massive flail. He lunged forward and collapsed to one knee, the strike flinging wide into empty air to pound the earth with a bone-shaking impact. He trembled, fingers crushing the implement tight; an oily darkness crept down from a black stain on the boulder head, along the trunk, and into the skin of Dagda's hand and up the arm. The curse flickered and surged beneath the flesh like rising fire.

Taking huge breaths like stressed bellows Dagda said, murderous glare aimed up, "I have availed you of all that is in my power—I cannot abate my brethren's thirst for war, nor can I stand against them! My vows were sealed under the moon's open stare—I will align with neither—" he bellowed in pain and clutched at the inky curse burrowing up his shoulder—"What more?" he roared. "What more?"

A billowing silhouette against the grey sky, Fionn's face was shrouded in shadow. His voice cut through the wind.

"Morrigan." Fionn said the name as if it conveyed a taste he hated and craved. "Her dominion over mortal hearts is the cornerstone of the victory which our seers have foretold. Without her strength, all that is certain is a sustained campaign of blood and suffering . . . but she would sooner die than align with me—with us." He stepped forward off the pillar and sank to the grass light as dandelion fluff, standing eye to eye with Dagda. "The two of you have nurtured a kinship, if I am not mistaken."

With a whoomp the staff fell to the grass, Dagda's arm limp and quivering with the curse. He clutched his chest with the other hand where the corruption swept curious strokes. Blinking away sweat, he said hoarsely, "No man's counsel will sway the Nightmare Queen . . . not even mine."

"Counsel," Fionn said, "is not what you were born for. Your blood is savagery and benightedness, but your soul aspires to define and defy nature's truths—how could it not? A giant enlightened by magic is an existence forever at war with itself. You are a shaper, a force for most fundamental change." The gale buffeting the hilltop surged against them and blew out a bonfire, its dying embers cast up before being smothered in the dusk. "That is what I expect you to do. What must be done. Change her will," he said. "Reshape her taste for warfare."

". . . I—"

Writhing darkness permeated Dagda's body; he shuddered and gasped, eyes rolling up, clouding over white, and his chest heaved and strained but worked no further breath. Fionn watched him grasp feebly at his heart, his throat tensed into straining cords, shivers besetting his limbs where the spell trickled in to fill him like foul fumes through glass tubing. Then at a wave of the metal rod the curse ebbed out of Dagda's flesh to curl upward and die before it could reach the sky.

"You will change her. Betray her. Because it will end the war before the toll outstrips the souls of our people," Fionn said. "And because it will ensure your dear daughter shall never need fear for her life in Éire."

Underfoot the earth shook as Dagda lumbered to his feet. Eyes clear and strained with untold pains, he trained his gaze on Fionn's impassive expression and exuded palpable desperate rage in the set of his shoulders, the tension of his arms. A huge coil waiting for weight to abate that he could spring forth. But Fionn's attention never relented. Dagda slumped and turned away, reached out with one huge arm into the dark shrouding his hilltop.

"Very well . . . this much I can do." Something pale and thin floated out of the murk into Dagda's waiting hand. He faced Fionn again and said, "I will conceive a gift of my . . . influence. Morrigan will thirst for suffering. Sate herself with war."

By Dagda's lingering baleful look, Pyrrha knew they had made the same assessment; the carnage would not cease with Bennadon and his uprising. Whether the thought concerned Fionn or not, or if it registered at all, was impossible to discern. The gift had him riveted.

Black eyes glinting in low firelight, Fionn gave one soft laugh. "Ah . . . Perhaps as clever a path forward as I could have asked for."

Pyrrha crept closer, peered through the descending night, and felt her heart still. Resting in Dagda's upturned palm was the sundered arm of the dementor. It still reached out with long, gnarled fingers.

---

As if from one bleary blink to the next the world blurred away and resurged into an endless glimmer of shimmering iron mail under an unforgiving sun. Alongside a vast winding river marched an army of thousands, tramping through the low hills and shallow pools that comprised the surrounding wetlands. The river snaked ahead through hill and dale to disappear into a distant forest.

Soldiers slick with muck trudged in ranks across swathes of transfigured ground left in the wake of the wizards at the vanguard, their implements swaying perpetually as they progressed. Trailing the procession, another collection of spellcasters toted a few dozen floating catapults along with carts full of stained black barrels, sloshing casks, and sacks packed with rations. The army's path left behind a broad, ugly rut of mud cutting through the marshes.

Perhaps a mile ahead of the mass Pyrrha found herself beside Fionn again. Two men flanked him; a soldier who stared out as if the world had long since lost its color, and a wizard that cast a bored eye up between scant white clouds. The wizard spoke first, smoothing out a fine robe made modest beside Fionn's gold embroidery.

"Your liege is aware that spontaneous fire sits well within our purview?" He glanced aside at the soldier. "'Tis a skill one develops concurrent with walking."

"Aye." The soldier kept his dreary eyes trained on the way ahead, over puddles and ponds and humps of sodden grass toward a bend in the river. The forest bristled on the horizon. "Are you aware that your lot's acts of 'skill' tend to end in their spontaneous death?"

The wizard gave a snort of outrage. "You cannot conflate our brotherhood with any branch-swinging charlatan infesting your backwater—!"

"Be silent, Pádraic." Fionn lowered his gaze from the army to a scroll unfurled in the air before him, translucent in the sunlight. "This battle will be like nothing you might have seen in the giants' war; 'twill be fought on two equally dangerous fronts. We are manned and provisioned for both."

The wizard could contain himself for but another minute. "Are they not our allies?"

"They are not." Fionn ground the words out as if he longed to punctuate each with a blow.

"Visiting terrors upon our bordering settlements isn't enough anymore," the commander said quietly. "They disrupt trade routes, rout our militias before they can mobilize to aid their neighbors, curse the fields with foul weather. And each passing day, the trees draw closer to casting their shade where we lay our heads. They aim to conquer."

Pádraic shifted uneasily, then shook his head. "The war was lost without them. If they want these godforsaken holdings in return for peace," he said, flapping a hand toward the heart of the marshes, "then I say they should be welcome to it."

"It is fortunate, then, that you command nothing more than one small contingent." Fionn stowed his scroll and sent the wizard an icy stare. "Those who know little should say even less. I shall not repeat myself a third time."

"Lord." The commander's blade rasped from its scabbard. "Look there, three handspans off the southern river bank; a beast approaches from the forest." After a tense pause he said, "A wolf, lord, with something wound around its neck."

The wizard squinted beneath a hand blocking the sun. "A collar?"

"A serpent." Fionn drew his metal rod and held it steadily at his side. "We are to receive a message, I think. Do not strike first."

In a streak of grey the wolf flew across the marshes uncannily adroit, as if the swaying alders, the treacherous muck, the still ponds mirroring the white sky, were as familiar as the tufts of its own fur. When it drew near enough to betray soft light in its eyes the men tensed further but still made no move. With barely a whisper of motion over the grass the beast surmounted their hill and padded a wide circle around them, the serpent hissing from its nape.

An odd fog obscured the animals and resolved into a pair of pale witches clad in nothing but layered strips of plant matter—braided fern fronds, twined moss, vibrant flower petals caught in their night-black hair. One sister had adorned herself with an artful splay of black feathers, the other with intricate strings of seashells and river stones small and smooth as fingernails. The long strung shells clicking in the wind did little to conceal the warped, scorched joint that had once been the witch's knee; her arms wrapped about her sister's shoulders for support.

Despite how vulnerable the sisters presented themselves, it was they who stared with an air of predators weighing the counsel of their instincts. Their eyes didn't shine with sickening light; the sight instead struck a stark beauty akin to the amber of a cold sunrise.

The one in feathers broke the silence, and Pyrrha knew her tranquil voice to be Badb's. "Shepherd . . ." Her mouth upturned in a mirthless smile. "You appear to have mustered your flock on the wrong side of the Nore."

"Appearances deceive," Fionn said. Though he did not betray it, Pyrrha could sense his astonishment. "And yours, here, is like to be no different. I cannot conceive of another reason you should so brazenly quit your demesne."

Macha hissed, the sound short and sharp as a stab from a needle, and Fionn's company winced. "Everything your filthy stares can touch is our demesne! Even them." She cast her luminous eyes out over the encroaching army, then settled back on the men. "Even you."

"For us to assay a deception," Badb added, "would foremost require your thoughts to be of any import."

"Then come you here to surrender?" Fionn's attention trailed pointedly down to Macha's withered leg. "Perhaps to beg asylum? It can be arranged, in return for—"

Wild, dangerous laughter from Macha stirred nearby roosting birds, chirps answering in an urgent melody. Badb's hand on her sternum seemed to restrain as much as support. "Allow that tongue to wag too freely and I may grant it the escape it struggles for! Ah, but who can blame it, stuck in such a disgusting encasement?"

"We are here," Badb said with a quelling sidelong glance, tone projecting temperance, "to extend you an offer which will put a tidy end to this impending conflict, and avert the dreadful fate toward which you herd your people."

"Do not dare to feign care for any lives but your own." Fionn ran his thumb along the striations crossing his rod, posture rigid with ire. "As I see you do not come bearing Morrigan's head on a spike, I will entertain no compromise short of your surrender. For your crimes, these wilds shall burn."

"All blame lies with Dagda," Macha spat. "His foul creation whispers evils in her ear . . . of late, she hears naught else."

"We have made every effort to part her from it." Badb's gleaming eyes shifted to alight briefly on Macha's knee. "But the bond runs deep. It feeds on the strife sown by her cruel deeds, an accursed parasite . . . more and more Morrigan resembles the mother she freed us from on the eve of our true beginnings."

The pair clung together a touch more closely and shared a look that came near to despondent. Matching stares then met Fionn's impassive gaze. Pallid sun rays bathed the wetlands in a warmth that sapped spirit and color, bleeding ghostly white into the green of the grasslands and the grey sea of gleaming iron mail. The army had advanced near enough they could hear each staggered march stomped into the marsh, each harsh bark of orders echoing over the low hills.

"Our offer is as follows: we will lend our strength to your battle," Badb said, voice quiet and clear, "in return for our sister's life. We shall together divest her of Dagda's influence—when Morrigan is returned to us whole, there ends any need for bloodshed. The peace that was promised will be."

A pensive silence followed, shortly broken by the hollow-eyed commander's scoff. He still gripped his shortsword, low at his side, stance wide and ready.

"Children of the Devil," he said, voice rough with repressed fury. "See how their eyes glow with the embers of Hell itself? See how they come to us in the serpent's guise? Cloaked in an illusion of beauty? Trust not a word of it, my Lord," he said. "We should cut them down where they stand!"

Shells and stones clicking, Macha leaned forward, hanging off her sister, and cackled at the soldier. Her yellow eyes lanced into his, and her voice rasped as if from all the leaves and blades of grass.

"'Tis your fault."

The air grew heavy with the weight in the words. Stiff and sallow, the soldier blinked, then seemed to process a barrage of bleak thoughts brought up from where they were buried. Distress tautened his jaw.

When the confliction faded from his face, he methodically moved aside the skirt of his mail and unbuckled a clasp at the inside of his armored thigh, then ran his sword across the artery. He watched his blood spurt and pour until he collapsed. The wound wept and fed the pool.

Neither Fionn nor Pádraic moved, the latter frozen in open-mouthed shock. Fionn regarded his former commander with an unreadable look, then turned his attention back to the sisters, a contemplative tilt to his head.

"Do you accept?" Macha said with a beaming smile, tone honeyed as if offering hospitality. "Or shall the spawn of Nemain raise Hell together?"

A moment went with no words, Fionn's eyes flicking down to the commander's body and back. His face remained masklike, but Pyrrha marked the way the muscles around his eyes moved and knew he felt some triumph; he felt he could play the sisters against each other and so see them all dead. Another long minute spent pretending at deliberation and he answered.

"I accept." His voice was frigid. "Should you live up to your end, Morrigan will survive. What news bring you of her preparations, her prowess?"

"Her magics are far beyond your understanding." Macha snickered when she ran an appraising eye down the distant army ranks. "Far beyond . . . or you would not have brought her so much fodder."

"We march without mounts or beasts of burden."

Macha gave another hysteric laugh, and Pádraic twitched.

"She speaks of your infantry," Badb said. She waved a hand languidly out, as if casting the distant figures into the wind like dust. "Indeed, they will prove no more effective than would toddling babes. Those without magic have no hope of resisting her. Naught but kindling for her infernal madness."

"Your counsel to me," Fionn said slowly, "is to send my armies away? Confront the witch with scarce more than the two of you at my side?" He tilted his head back, eyes narrow. "Be this some uncommon idiocy, or naked treachery? Do not answer. I will guard the minds of my soldiers. For the sake of your sister, I hope you have more to offer; if our assault unfolds poorly, her death may prove unavoidable."

Badb maintained a thoughtful stare, then gave a slight shrug from her unburdened shoulder; Macha exhibited a dark excitement where she clung. Badb inclined her head to indicate the sprawling wetlands. "The battle ground is ill-chosen. If you will not turn them away, you must order your soldiers to ford the river and draw up on the plains beyond. The marsh serves her purposes better than yours."

"Is that so?" Fionn snapped. "Morrigan's beasts will have free reign of the plains. The wetlands, however, will hamper their advance, while my spellcasters transfigure defensive positions for the pikemen and archers."

Macha shrieked a laugh. "Her darling crows care not for the terrain!"

"And the marsh harbors a plethora of creatures which may escape your notice," Badb said, "until the battle is joined and they rise up to answer her call. By then 'twill be too late to salvage any positional advantage. Ford the Nore," she repeated before Fionn could speak. She turned and pointed downriver. "There, at the bend. We shall await you on the other side."

In a burst of black feathers the sisters shot into the sky as crows and soared out over the wetlands, hoarse cries carried away on the wind. Large swathes of the army fell out of step when they passed over, stumbling and pointing, craning their heads with hands on their weapons as if there were any hope of landing a blow. A smattering of stray arrows fell far short.

"Can we trust them?" Pádraic tore his eyes from the sky, drawn magnetically back to the commander's body. Their faces made the same shade of pale.

"But of course." Fionn stormed down from the crown of their hill, forcing the wizard to jog after him. His voice carried acerbic sarcasm. "Are they not our allies?"

With his low voice magically amplified Fionn redirected the army toward the Nore's most narrow span. During the near interminable marching, halting, repositioning, the world sped onward in a haze of motion until the soldiers in their iron mail slithered on as scales in a great turning serpent. The memory gathered itself back as the fording began, ranks two dozen wide tramping over conjured wooden footbridges the length of ten fallen trees.

The river Nore roared beneath them, the bend surging down over shelves of stone protruding out of the foamy falls. Pyrrha stood beside Fionn and mirrored his gaze, sweeping from the vanguard nearing the midway point of the river to the barren plains beyond, and further on, the thorny sea of shadow on the horizon where Morrigan waited. Even at its zenith the sickly sun failed to shed its light inside the distant forest.

Something small and sleek shot out of the water, drawing scattered cries; the shape blurred in the air and unfurled black wings. Burning golden eyes streaked over the footbridges and beamed down upon the vanguard. An otherworldly wail gouged at the air when the crow's wicked beak cracked open, echoed a thousand times by the men enthralled below.

Fionn launched forward and met with a dark tide that swam with despairing eyeless faces, his shouts resounding as he rallied his spellcasters to defend the panicking throngs that fled the cursed river bank. Blade and bow struck indiscriminate with bloody fervor. Vibrant red stained the river.

When Fionn focused high and set to breaking Morrigan's curse, her sisters unfurled from empty space and set upon him with nightmarish light spreading from their fingertips, a vicious curve to their lips. Their ferocity forced him further and further from the mad hammering heart of the battle.

"Traitors!" Fionn's rage could have split stone.

Lightheaded at what unfolded around her, Pyrrha followed the sisters' pursuit, averting her eyes from the worst of their foul curses. The army left behind devoured itself with a thousand sounds of screeching metal, splitting flesh, screams over screams of unmatched horror. Morrigan winged away from the massacre and took shape before Fionn.

Intertwined vines and roots and budding flower shoots wound around her pale body, and bound tight between were torn bolts of cloth wrought with different dyes and crests, designs blotched over red, all definition long since sapped by time under the sun. Banners, tabards, trophies bespoke of the dead. Morrigan's eyes shone sharp light. She spread her arms. The staff in her grip seemed to reach out and beckon, clawed fingers curled in.

I FEEL YOUR HEART, THAT CRIPPLED HEAP, HOW IT PARTS THEIR CRIES AS A CAIRN SHEDS RAIN

The world wailed in her voice. Morrigan flourished her staff; limp mangled bodies dangled near at her call, a grisly rank of blank-faced men dividing the field between them like strung up puppets across a stage. Pyrrha peered close when their shapes wavered and saw other faces layered beneath as faint mirages. A woman and children with blood red hair. The witch had spelled Fionn's head with the likeness of loved ones pressed upon the dead.

BEHOLD THAT YOU WERE HUMAN, BUT NO MORE, FOR I HAVE TAKEN THAT AWAY

Grief and rage twisted Fionn's face, and they joined battle in a hurricane of light and sound. Pyrrha retreated to high ground. Space bent and warped between them, curses burned the field and coughed smoke into the air, where crows cawed and swirled and flashed down golden eyes. Clouds rolled inward from the edges of the blinding sky.

A pair of shadows circled the contest and struck out at both sides when the time was opportune, flashes and bursts of wild magic disturbing the brutal dance with quick deflections, brief distractions. Badb and Macha were guiding the fight toward one desired outcome. So consumed were the combatants that the two sisters set about their scheme completely overlooked.

Ribbons of white light streaked from Morrigan's staff and obliterated the dark designs winding up from the soil in some defensive spell, shrill crackles following a spray of grey sparks. The slithering lights struck Fionn down and bound him to the earth. Scorched grass smothered his screams.

Morrigan set upon her fallen prey without pause, hatred beaming from her brilliant gaze, mouth parted wide for her eternal cursed cry. She leveled her staff, the foul instrument extended like a grasping arm, gathering light in its fingers, and shadows struck from both sides; shrieks and bursts of light pierced the air, a tangle of lashing curses and flashing golden eyes. Dirt tossed up in a violent twister and cast a haze over the struggle.

With a visceral ripping sound the field rippled such that Pyrrha reeled back and blinked, waited for her mind to recover, heart matching her urgent breaths. Three cursed cries pried at her eardrums and forced lies inside, driving in a shock of pain like ice cold knives. Her vision snapped back in time to see the twister of light and earth and blood burst into a staggering shockwave that sent two witches sprawling across the field.

Heaving, seething with emotion, Morrigan swiped blood out of her golden eyes with one trembling hand, the other clutching the staff against her body as if it were her organs spilling out.

"Betrayal," she croaked, looking up at the heavens drawing closed behind a cover of clouds. "That mine own sisters would attempt to . . ."

Her eyes fell and landed on the staff, wide and rapt, as if listening, reading lips or expressions ever so closely. Then she blinked and wrenched her gaze away, finding the inert forms of her sisters instead.

For a moment Morrigan only stared, bright eyes flicking there and back, as if what they conveyed to her could not possibly make sense. A whimper unraveled into a heartbreaking sob, a tearful scream. She stormed forward as a stroke of black smoke across the air and skimmed the earth. When she found form a blink later, she had gathered Macha and Badb in her arms and knelt in the dirt. The staff lay forgotten in the long grass.

With a strange ache quaking her heart Pyrrha watched from afar as Morrigan wept. The witch cradled her sisters' lolling heads close and whispered, voice desperate and raw.

"Sisters . . . sisters mine, rise . . . rise, I beg you, I . . . I didn't . . ."

Their eyes were clear and still as amber. Morrigan shuddered, drew them into a shaking embrace, murmured into their hair and kissed them, coaxing, sweet. Then she let another long sobbing scream from her chest, and begged them not to leave her alone.

Pyrrha couldn't breathe. She turned away. The pain was too much to bear as a witness, too near to the memory of Ashlin's final moments. Instead she focused on Fionn, agonizing sorrow suppressed beneath a pure, focused fury.

Clouds had eclipsed the bone-white sky entirely. Fionn crossed the field at a determined limp, wind tossing about and staggering him; he planted Dagda's staff for balance at every other step.

Impotent despair caught in Pyrrha's chest and pulled taut the tendons in her limbs, to watch as Fionn stole the sisters from Morrigan's arms and set them ablaze.

The witch's shriek became that of a pouncing wildcat, blurred body broadening midair into a bear; Fionn batted her aside and sent a curse with a following stab. Bestial cries carved at the air while Morrigan spasmed, form flowing freely, horse and crow and wolf and otter writhing, whining, crying echoed by all the distant wildlife.

Fionn lifted the staff and the curse, then performed a tight whirl. Macha and Badb, flesh melting and black, set upon Morrigan and held her upright between them with grips incinerating against their sister's skin. Their skulls were turned toward her, all blackened flesh and bone and empty dripping sockets.

Beneath Morrigan's choked moan, Fionn said, "Death is a mercy. Tell me—" he raised his vile voice to match her keening "—do you deserve mercy? Do you deserve my mercy, Morrigan?"

Like a drowsy blink, darkness closed in on the memory, the last image that of Fionn's black eyes glimmering down with exultant hatred upon Morrigan's struggling body.

---

The churn and crash of the sea drowned the cave in slow echoes. It lapped inside, ice cold water and foam tiding in and out around cruel stone spires and swirling pools. Ashen morning light glimmered in shards off the sharp facets of the cavern walls. Beyond the yawning mouth, beyond the heaving grey sea, a sweep of green and gold painted the horizon.

Morrigan curled against a hollow at the back of the cavern. Wounds new and old festered all over her emaciated form, slashes and burns seeping fluids down bruised skin and ragged garments. Wet golden eyes gleamed with stolen sunlight—until Fionn stepped aside to obstruct her window to the world and cast her in shadow.

"No matter how long, how ardently you look, the lands outside this cave are to you as distant as a dream." Fionn waved a hand aside; Morrigan recoiled. "Instead you will reside here in a nightmare all your own. A fitting end, I think."

Huddled in darkness, Morrigan's outline spasmed with each cough that tore out. When the fit subsided she said faintly, "I can but hope this prattle won't play a part in my ordeal much longer . . ." Her rich laugh became a hacking cough. She spat black blood. "Such hatred . . . hatred all your own. How frightful . . . how beauteous. For whom do you bear it, Shepherd? Do you know?"

"That is no mystery. You have ravaged countless lives."

"Then you must loathe yourself most of all." Bone cracked when Fionn slammed Morrigan against stone with a flick. She laughed in gasps. "No. No, not those faceless, nameless deaths. To feel weak . . . helpless to control your own desires. Powerless to control me, even now . . . that is what ever consumes you."

Fionn swung his arm to hurl Morrigan into the wall again, bone and tendon rebounding with a foul crunch. Her cry rang out then settled into a breathless cackle.

Stiff with fury, Fionn gave a sharp exhale. "It seems that nothing may break your spirit . . . but I am a patient man. We shall have ample time to stress that theory . . ." He paced forward and knelt, placed himself inches away from Morrigan. "Perhaps you still believe you can escape your fate." His voice was quiet, quivering with venom. "Perhaps you thought I'd find my satisfaction and abandon you here to end your own life, and so rejoin your kin."

Morrigan didn't move.

"Wrong."

Shrieks shook the cave when Morrigan's body scraped over stone at the direction of Fionn's rod, smearing flesh and blood up the scabrous curve of the wall. Halfway up her momentum halted, Fionn's arm aiming steady, pinning her aloft like a pagan sacrifice. She struggled and sobbed.

Blood dripped from the tip of Fionn's metal rod, trickled through the air and streamed into Morrigan's open wounds, her open mouth. She gurgled and screamed, thrashed harder. Her golden eyes shined with revolted terror.

What words came next passed Pyrrha by as meaningless murmurs. Her pulse pounded without rhythm in her head. All she could process was the sight of Morrigan writhing in the air, the wisps of blood from Fionn's rod that still furled around her. The curse.

". . . While my bloodline endures, so too shall you . . ."

Fionn let fall his arm. Morrigan dropped to the ground, howling her despair and rage into the void that closed around the memory.