Disclaimer: I don't own the house that is Charmed, just squatting for a little while
AN: There is some gore in this chapter, just fair warning, nothing terribly graphic but still. Hopefully all the exposition in this chapter doesn't bore everyone to tears, tried to keep it interesting, but there is a lot here, please bear with me! We're getting closer to the timeline merge and then its crazy action... and a few sub plots too. Happy reading!
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The dark haired demon rubbed a towel through his wet hair before wrapping it round himself and walking out to his penthouse balcony overlooking Central Park. Gods, he loved New York. The energy in the city was absolutely delicious and such an unending source of entertainment. It continually fascinated him how humans could get so wrapped up in such inconsequential nonsense and produce waves of anxiety over absolutely nothing. It was too bad really, one would think with such a short life span, not to mention such fragile bodies, they would be more appreciative of things. He had to admit however, for such shortsighted, self-important little pests, they could create exquisite works of beauty. He supposed that is what really preserved their species for all these millennia- their infinite inventiveness. And perhaps their stubbornness. They had such a will to survive, despite their frequent attempts to destroy each other. He laughed, sometimes he wondered why demons even bothered to intervene at all in human affairs. Even without demonic influence wars come and go, humans destroy and rebuild, endure suffering themselves and cause the suffering of others. He could after all, like so many before him just choose to sit back and enjoy the show, but no, no he had bigger plans. With that thought Nomed took in a deep breath of the tainted city air and turned back into his apartment. He had an appointment to keep and it would not do to keep Trina waiting for long.
He shimmered into a dank alleyway and spotted Trina immediately, her frosty hair and pale skin were hard to miss; the Seer always looked as if she had just walked out of a commercial freezer Nomed thought to himself, shivering and involuntarily pulling his sport jacket more tightly around himself. He called to her, catching her icy stare.
"I was wondering if you would bother to show up," she said in her clipped, crisp accent. She was old despite her youthful appearance, much older than Nomed and had walked many Otherworlds. Her voice carried a sense of her long life and vast experience, if you listened closely enough you could hear the dawn of a thousand winters in each syllable she uttered.
Nomed smiled, a smile he knew would warm her icy heart. "Tut-tut Trina, you know I'm not late," he looked around the alley as he spoke, "Now then, shouldn't we move on to business?"
Trina eyed him suspiciously, she always did have a soft spot for the handsome, young, ambitious ones, but surviving as many betrayals as she had through her long life had taught her caution. Yes, there was a time, long ago… she snapped back to the present. "Yes, I need to do some collecting first," she said as she purposefully walked over to a figure sleeping beneath a nearby pile of cardboard. She studied the dirty, drunken man for a moment, then, moving faster than a typical human could even detect, she slit the man's throat collecting the blood in a shining goblet. "Come," she said to Nomed.
The demon obediently followed her through the back door of the closest building, up two flights of stairs and into an abandoned restroom that smelled strongly of rats. Trina walked over to the discolored mirror and began using the blood from the goblet to trace out peculiar runes on the reflective surface. She murmured words from a long-forgotten tongue and Nomed watched as images began to form in the mirror. Some he could make out, even recognize, but most seemed indecipherable, random images flashing around, disjointed, out of context tidbits of information. He shifted his gaze to Trina and watched as she studied the barrage of images. She was focused and alert, obviously she could decipher the steady onslaught of visual information. Finally the images began to slow and Trina smeared the runes across the face of the mirror, leaving bold streaks of blood.
"Well?" Nomed impatiently began. "Did you see them? Am I getting closer?"
Trina clicked her tongue at him, annoyed at his brash impatience. She eyed him warily, "Clean the mirror."
Trying not to let his annoyance show Nomed did as she commanded. He could feel her watching him, her ancient eyes penetrating deep into him.
"The blade you failed to recover," she finally began, "is in fact Tyrfing." Nomed tried to speak but she ignored him, cutting him off. "It is the key to the lock and betrayal follows it, as you know. You already have recovered Lia Fáil and the Coire Ansic of The Dagda, yet while you believe the treasure you have once belonged to Lugh, it did not. And still, Claíomh Solais eludes you though it should be within your reach. Once the treasures are recovered there will still be the daunting tasks of opening that which was banished. No moment in the history of this world will be more opportune than the one on the horizon. The boundaries between this world and all the others will be weak and unprotected as time heals itself. Yet your own time grows short as the horizon is approaching."
Nomed waited to ensure she was done speaking, barely concealing his rage. He was tired of these endless riddles. He hated Seers and their maddening ways.
"And this is all I am to expect from you today?" He finally questioned. "I might wonder at so little an effort to actually give real information. You know I didn't start on this mad quest all on my own Trina, you helped push me down this road and now you don't help me to get to the end of it! Damn you!" He could see that Trina was done, he would get nothing else from her today. He glared at her one last time, eyes flashing, then turned and stormed out of the abandoned building.
Trina watched him leave and sighed. She still had much work to do, and the centuries were starting to wear on her. She was tired, she felt stretched and thin like a veil draped over the corpse of a young bride. The Seer turned and reached for the goblet still filled with fresh blood. She stirred the blood with her finger while chanting something oddly melodic under her breath then went to the mirror again. This time she only used a few well-placed strokes, then focusing her intent, she placed her hand on the mirror before passing right through the reflective glass and landing on a Shadow Path. It was time, she had to find him, speak to him and the Shadow Paths were the only way to reach him anymore. She looked around the infinitely gray world: walks and stairways, roads and trails forking and snaking around each other. The paths were everywhere, they extended out in every direction even above and below, but she knew her path well and with one more heavy sigh she took a begrudging step.
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Leo nearly dropped the stack of books he was carrying as his oldest son appeared suddenly, materializing through a swirl of tinkling blue lights. Last year Chris had devised a system of using mortals as a grounding energy source to digitize magical texts and so Leo and his nephew had been spending much of their free time working in The Magic School library to create a searchable index of the magical tomes housed in the vast collection. Since Bianca's arrival however, their focus had shifted and the family were taking turns researching the collection, trying to discern what objects Nomed was after.
"Oi, sorry Dad," Wyatt apologized, realizing he nearly orbed in right on top of his father. "Deuce! Go long!" He added, tossing a bag of chips and soda bottle to his cousin who was slouched over a laptop. The young man diverted his attention just in time to catch the flying snacks, knocking over a stack of books in the process.
Leo looked sharply at his grown son, raising his eyebrows and shaking his head. Wyatt did at least have the decency to look sheepishly back at his father and shrug his shoulders before going to help his cousin restack the books that had fallen. As Wyatt helped clean up the mess, Chris walked into the library, accompanied by Bianca, each with a fresh coffee, the sudden disarray barely registering as they headed for the large map of the Underworld they were working on.
Chris and Bianca had spent weeks laying out the map, arguing over some of the specifics and doing surreptitious reconnaissance to fill in their gaps in knowledge. Piper wasn't too keen on Chris and Bianca's numerous trips to the Underworld, but even she had to admit the mapping exercise was coming along nicely and could prove to be immensely beneficial.
"Ok," Bianca started, looking down at the colored tokens littering the map, "so obviously those Grimlocks were working with Zohar's team." She moved a green token over to another area of the map.
"We don't actually know that," Chris argued.
"No, of course we don't because someone got trigger happy and vanquished them before I could get them talk," Bianca quipped.
"Bullshit," Chris retorted, "I was saving your ass, woman. Or did you forget that part where you stopped breathing?"
"I had it under control, Halliwell," Bianca said, gritting her teeth. "What part of Phoenix do you not understand?"
Leo had heard some version of this argument at least twenty times over the last few weeks, and was headed in their direction when he heard a loud gasp from the other side of the room.
"Holy shi—uh, guys?" Henry Jr. started. "I think I found something." Deuce, as his older cousins affectionately dubbed him, was picking up one of the fallen books, studying the spread it had fallen open to. As he lifted it to the high study table, the others in the room crowed around to get a look.
There were labeled illustrations of a large rectangular stone with intricate carvings, an immense cauldron filled to abundance, a spear with a tip of fire and a sword that gleamed like the midday sun. Alongside these illustrations were depictions of what appeared to be great battles between tall, shining figures and grotesque monsters.
"It is unknown," Deuce began reading aloud, "if the myths regarding the Tuatha Dé Danann (circa 4000 BCE) have any validity in the ongoing battle against the Chaos. As it is widely agreed by magical scholarship, the Elders seized power during the great battle of the Titans circa 2500 BCE. Many of the traditional stories from people groups around the globe date back thousands of years prior, some documented as early as 8000 BCE. While some believe the Elders do have accurate records of the time of Chaos in our world, they have never sought to share such records, if indeed they do exist. However, it should be noted, the great wizard Elgad (footnote 27a) warned extensively of the continued threat of the Chaos and taught his apprentices the ancient mythological stories of the defeat of the Chaos. Elgad was silenced in 350 AD and his apprentices scattered." Deuce turned the page, looking for more information, "That's it. That's all it says."
"What about the footnote reference to Elgad?" Leo asked.
Deuce squinted at the cramped text along the bottom of the page, "Uh, not in English, I can't read it."
"The drawings have captions though," Wyatt leaned over his cousin's shoulder. "Stone of Destiny, Cauldron of The Dagda, Spear of Lugh, Sword of Light…"
"That's the stone," Bianca interrupted, "it looked just like that."
Leo looked at her, thinking. "You said you recovered it from Ireland?" He asked. Bianca nodded and he continued, "The Tuatha Dé Danann is an old Irish myth…" Leo paused, thinking again then looked worriedly at Wyatt. "The man, the man you met in Africa… how did you describe him?"
"Uh, spidery?" Wyatt responded, confused.
Leo jerked around, rushing to a shelf opposite the table they had gathered at, frantically searching for a book and mumbling to himself. As he ran his fingers over the spines he called out, "Boys, call Brody and get your mother."
It took a few minutes for Leo to find the book he was searching for, and when he did Brody and Piper were already there, everyone anxiously waiting to see what dots Leo had connected. He opened up the volume, bringing it to the table and flipping through the pages until he found the one he was looking for. It was mostly covered in text with a small, black ink illustration of several iterations of a man and a spider.
"Anansi," Leo said, pointing to the page. "He's an African god, originating from the Ghana traditions I believe," he finished, as if that explained everything and was surprised when he looked up and met a crowd of confused expressions.
"Wait," Piper laughed, "like Anansi the spider? From the children's stories? You're getting worked up over a bedtime story?"
"No, Piper," Leo began earnestly, "Anansi isn't just a bedtime story. Don't you see? Wyatt encountering an ancient god, Nomed searching for ancient relics of the gods… its too great a coincidence."
"But… gods?" She questioned, trying not to glance at Chris. Her last experience with gods was not pleasant, and involved her son from the future convincing Leo to turn her and her sisters into said gods.
Leo understood her unspoken reference. "Not like that, no. The Greek gods were humans endowed with the powers of the gods. The gods themselves… they left our world so long ago, and the Elders spent centuries closing up any remaining portals. There are a few who remained here, or who have been able to concentrate their essence into humans for short periods of time," Leo smiled at Piper, remembering their time channeling two of the great Hindu deities.
"But what is Nomed doing messing with gods?" Bianca asked.
Chris looked again at the images of the relics, "Dad, you said they left our world? What do you mean?"
"Just that, they left. At least that's my assumption, even as an Elder I never knew how much of the ancient lore was true. It wouldn't be a huge leap, knowing the amount of effort that went into sealing off our world from other planes of existence, to assume they moved on to other dimensions." Leo answered.
"Other dimensions…" Chris trailed off, thinking. "It's a portal. He's making a portal. Or opening the portals, I don't know."
Piper looked alarmed, "How do you figure, Chris?"
Chris pointed to the relics, "Earth, Water, Fire, Air. He'll need a key too… Metal. If these are relics of the gods then I'm sure they pack a pretty hefty magical punch." Chris looked at his father, "But if the Elders did seal off our world, then even with the relics and the key it would take some serious fire power to rip through barriers between worlds… unless… unless he knew of a weak point."
Leo looked meaningfully at Piper. They both realized the hidden importance of what Chris had just said. There was a weak point, an alternate timeline in another reality that was about to catch up to their own, and they had no idea what would happen when time caught up to itself. They both looked at Chris, if this was true, there were only a few weeks before the barriers between the two realities would start to thin out so that time could heal the rift the Original Chris had created.