Liminal space. Sirius didn't know why the phrase popped into his head while he followed the Witch Queen into her citadel. Yet the two little words that Remus had given a tired lecture on, after an especially brutal full moon, could not be shaken from his thoughts.
"They're empty, abandoned places. Schools at night or during summer hols, empty train stations, empty streets. Usually they are places that people should be in, but are not. It causes cognitive dissonance making a usually normal or mundane space eerie", Sirius could practically hear his friends raw throat as Remus wheezed his delirious musings.
"And what does that have to do with anything dear Moony?", James asked, splayed out on the crimson common room couch, feet kicked up on the armrest like the lackadaisical nevau riche pureblood his mother always decried the Potters to be.
"The shack. It's liminal space. On the edge of such a safe magical neighborhood like Hogsmead. A family should be living there. A happy husband and wife, with children running and laughing about the garden. Instead it's empty. So lonely.", Remus left the statement hanging in the air. His friend was right.
There was a wrongness to spaces created for people but found themselves without the thing that they were created for, Sirius found himself now in such a mad world.
The whole of the Shadowlands seem to be trapped in that terrifying state of incompleteness. No sun to feed the dark plant growths and shadowed forests. No animals to eat the plants and hunt beneath their shade. The citadel Dun Scáith, so empty of purpose and empty of people. Only a single Queen sitting atop her throne. A Queen of quiet nothing ruling over a house of the hollow.
This place was stuck in the wrongness of being between states. Not empty, as the Queen could not leave her domain. Not full, Dun Scaíth designed for thousands to live within its expansive halls. Rooms for guests and servants, kitchens ready to feed the masses, libraries ready to pass on their knowledge, battlements ready to defend against siegesâ
Akin to Purgatory, to the Christians, the fields of Asphodel to the Greeks, the shadowlands were so unnervingly empty. Creepy as fuck and definitely somewhere Sirius needed to leave as soon as possible. But despite its terrible emptiness the empty castle sang a welcoming song to his weary soul.
So very different to the joyful song of Hogwarts, or the somber protectiveness of Castle Black, Dun Scáith sang him a song of sorrowful hope. Mirrored by its master just a few paces ahead.
As Sirius listened to his ancestor babble about all the hard work she had put into the stonework of this particular pathway, or the pruning she had done of the garden through the window, the renovations made to the castle after watching the outside world change and evolve, he could not hate this place completely. This sad and empty liminal space, that for the first time in centuries, had a visitor.
Sirius gulped as he looked down a particularly wide doorway leading deeper into the citadel. The massive vaulted ceilings composed of reflective obsidian stone would make the ballroom the perfect space to host grand parties. Faerie lights would bounce about the crystal chandeliers, the Smokey finish of the polished stone reflecting the colors of any dancer's attire, it would make quite a sight. A moving tapestry of light, yet...
Sirius shuddered. The deep shadows of the room seemed to almost wave at him to come into the hall. There was no life in this place. Movement yes, but no life. Just shadows with minds of their ownâ
Curse Remus and his fancy words.
Eventually the Queen led him to a great throne room at the peak of her seat of power. Massive windows of pure crystal wreathed in platinum detailing. The intricate spellwork required for such a magnificent work of art would cost an immeasurable amount of gold. Sirius would wager that even the King of Goblins himself would have a difficult time producing such a sum.
Seems of silver wove through black marble walls and pillars glowing with magic, lighting the space with a dim weir light. Supported above by the impressive architecture was an immaculate jewel encrusted fresco of stars of the Milky Way. Sirius recognized the constellations blinking above. Lines of magic connecting jeweled stars for brief moments before shattering and falling, like softly glowing snowflakes, until they touched the ground. The magical light fading from existence like sparks from a dying fire.
Sirius thought his family got their expensive taste, opulence, and grandstanding from the Romans. Yet he could see the proud arrogance of his uncle at one of his political parties, in the small smile the Queen wore as he took in her home.
"Like what you see?", the Fae Queen asked as she sat atop her throne, a full glass of some blood red spirit summoned from the shadows around her seat of power. The throne itself seemed to be composed of some kind of crystalline void. A tesseract of ever shifting shadows both violently churning and completely still at the same time. An impossible feat of magic binding the immaterial into form.
Leaning against her throne was a strange red spear. Long as the goddess was tall, wreathed in bloody thorns, and crowned with a singularity. A blade so black and sharp, that the light around it seemed to be pulled in by the weight of its existence alone.
Sirius licked his suddenly dry lips. Being the scion of the house of Black made most attempts at boasting shows of wealth and power fall flat. Yet even one such as he was not immune to the splendor of Dun Scáith's halls. Let alone his mind numbingly powerful bombshell of a host showing an arguably improper amount of cleavage as she languidly drank from her glass taking in his reactions to her home.
"You're, I mean-I-It! It's beautiful!", Sirius managed to choke out. Damn. He could feel the blood rushing to his face. Fucking Padfoot. His inward berating of himself was soon interrupted. The Queen's quiet chuckle put him more at ease.
"I've spent many lifetimes enchanting these halls to my whims. Very much inspired by the material plane as humans created through the ages", she said. Her smile turned a bit sad as she gazed out upon her domain seemingly lost in thought.
As Sirius tried to come up with something, anything to break the silence, the Queen's eyes flicked back to him standing below her throne and she spoke once again.
"Sirius Orion Black, heir to the house of Black, Blood of my Blood, Son of conquerors and traitors alike, I, Queen of Shadows, welcome you to my halls. My hearth to warm you, my table to share with you, my words to counsel you, my blade to protect you within my domain", the words seemed to reverberate throughout the entire room shaking the very foundations of the castle as the Queen invoked the ancient rites of hospitality.
Remembering his lessons Sirius replied, the magic of the rite steadying his voice even through his immense surprise at the words contents, "I, Sirius Orion Black, heir to the House of Black, Blood of your Blood, accept your offered shelter. I bring no ill will into your halls. May magic smite me if this oath proves false".
Sirius could feel magic itself press down upon him in that moment, his slight variation to the oath taking effect. Usually the burden of the oath laid mostly on his shoulders as the visitor. Yet when he spoke, Sirius had left no room for falsehood claiming he held no ill will towards the goddess.
Magic was judging his intentions, weighing his heart, if he hid nefarious motives magic would punish him accordingly. Eventually the pressure lifted and the Queen gifted him a small smile.
"Welcome home Sirius", she said softly. The words made his heart clench, and Sirius could have sworn he saw tears in her eyes.
He stood there awkwardly as she stared down at him lovingly, seemingly lost in fond memories of brighter days. The shades of the past seemed to weigh quite heavily on the Fae. Honestly it was making him quite uncomfortable. He was emotionally drained and too tired to fully grasp the swirling emotions in his own chest let alone deal with the mercurial Queen of Shadows.
"Now an rionnag bheag, my little star, though I pulled you into my domain for less than...", her eyes glowed with that manic anger for a moment before softening once again, "kind reasons, I've taken a liking to you, grandson. So I won't kill you". The Queen finished the statement with a proud nod, looking quite like a child who had come to make some great decision. Sirius merely blinked in response. Fucking crazy bint.
Said crazy bint stood and walked down her throne, size changing to that of a small girl. Doll like, her porcelain features and red eyes became cute rather than sultry with the childish guise. Her dress of shadows morphing into a dress similar to what his cousins wore when they were young and playing about in the Black gardens.
"You are welcome to all in my domain, though I'd suggest you stay on the isle. You're not quite ready to tangle with the beasties in the dark", the childish goddess patted his arm a solemn frown on her cherubic face. She grabbed his hand and began pulling him out of the throne room, "It's time for bed, you've had a long day. The guest wing is this way, I'll show you!".
The goddess babbled once again, as they walked through the citadel of the Shadowlands. The Arcmage, excited to finally have someone to talk to after her many years of solitude, gabbled about her home, "the library has many tomes both ancient and more modern! I've just stumbled across a quite good series myself, Tolkien paints such a wonderful world and tells quite an inspiring story. The lady Eowyn is a girl after my own heart!".
Sirius listened and tried to nod at the appropriate moments. The world as he had known it, utterly shattered, annihilated, eviscerated. He knew it was bad when he started listing synonyms in his head like Remus would.
Eventually Sirius' reeling mind had settled into the absurd new world he found himself in. The words he had spoken under the hospitality rite caught up with his body being dragged along by the mite sorceress.
"Bloody hell!", Sirius froze as he came to a realization only for his arm to nearly be pulled out of its socket by the overexcited Fae still gushing and skipping along with her companion.
"Oi! Hold up!", Sirius yelped in both pain and epiphany. The Queen halted and raised an imperious brow in question, eyes glowing with a slight bit of anger at the interruption of her monologue. Terrifying on her adult form, but the look was adorable on her small frame.
"I'm still the heir of Black?", Sirius questioned incredulously.
She nodded once, her flat stare as if he she thought him a lack-wit.
"But I was disowned!", some of Sirius' own temper flaring at his recent banishment. The wounds on his breast flaring with phantom pain. The Fae rolled her eyes and turned down a new wing of the castle, still dragging the confused Black behind her.
Her voice took on a teaching tone as the shadows from the dark spaces of the halls stretched downward and floated in a globe before them. "Your mother banished you from her family, yes", said the Queen as if explaining something to a very small child. Her child-like voice really irked Sirius at the moment. "Yet she has no power over the heir of a clan". Sirius quirked his head, not really understanding her statement.
Her dainty hand pointed to the shadows and shapes began to form as actors ready to tell a story. "The house system used on the material plane today, has its roots in ancient tribal magics".
Fifty figures formed in the black sphere floating ahead of them, each glowing in a rainbow of color. These figures of light began throwing bits of light from their bodies casting what seemed to be spells; some growing trees, some conjuring fire from their hands, some singing stone into elegant shapes.
"Wielders of the arcane are mighty, but they stand little chance against the dangers of the world", a dragon swooped into the shadowy play, breathing fire and incinerating eight of the spectral bodies. A writhing mass of tentacles dragged off another twelve. A giant smote the wrought stone and crushed five more.
"Banding together early mages could fight back against the mighty beasts of the world, where they couldn't alone. The weak would flock to the protection of the powerful and aid their fight against the wrath of the elder races", five figures brightened as they fought against the beasts that had slain so many of them. Their magic, brighter than the others, threw massive fire balls or great storms. The light of their great spells seemingly coloring their inner light in turn away from their original multicolor hues. Five figures glowed a bright blue, green, red, gold, and white. Groups of the surviving wizards formed, supporting their brightly shining champions and protecting each other where they could not survive alone.
"Bonds of life and death form in battle, an rionnag bheag. Love, life and living are all that magic needs to grow and change. Stories. Magic loves them. Is empowered by them. The story of a group coming together into a greater whole, well, Magic rewarded those first mages", A piece of each magician's light gathered above each group and merged into a brighter light. The pieces from the brightest mages turning those group lights to their colors.
"The first clan magics, shared spells and teachings that became more powerful and refined with practice. Each accomplishment, shared practice, each defeat, all weaving a tapestry, becoming something more", Sirius watched enthralled as the lights above each group sent a band of light to each spectral mage tying them all together and strengthening even the weakest of them. The color of the figures now bore a hue of the group's magic. Five of red, six of gold, seven of green, and three of white.
"The powerful, having given the most magic in each tribe, gained control over the collective mass. The weak obey, else they lose that which made them stronger", the brightest of the red mages made the other reds kneel in submission. The dullest red refused to kneel, the tether of light that brightened his core breaking, as his figure returned to his previous multicolored dull hue.
"Your mother does not control your house's magic. She does not hold the authority to cast you out", one of the lesser blue figures tried to break the chain of its brethren, but no matter what was done, the tether was unscathed. The shadows faded with a flick of the Fae's wrist.
"Now house magic is different from its ancient beginnings. Magic has responded to the actions of each generation, history now influences the collective magic of your house. It's power has grown over time as each generation adds to the collective, the Magic influencing and being influenced by each and every one born into the house of Black. Laws, writings, agreements between clans, national identity, all of it has slowly coalesced into modern magical communities", with but a flick of the wrist, the images faded back to shadow.
"You may scoff at what you call, 'pure-blood bull shite' but it holds a grain of truth Sirius. Magic is will, the soul, memory, all imposing itself on the universe", the witch Queen said solemnly, looking up into her descendant's eyes.
Sirius nodded unsurely. The Fae patted his cheek and began pushing him into the nearest doorway, which swung open as they approached.
A large bed sat in the center of a stately room. It was adorned with gossamer sheets that seemed to shimmer in the wyr light cast by the red starlight coming in from the large window. A desk, small bookshelf, and what looked like a weapons rack took up one of the stone walls.
To the right, out of the window, Sirius could see what looked to be a black ocean crashing upon the cliffs Dun Scáith was built upon. The dark woods descended into mists to the left.
"Now you're very tired so you should sleep. The days ahead will be long, but I have a feeling I will enjoy them. The training will be very fun!", the Queen gabbled as she threw Sirius into the bed. The teen landed on his face, arse in the air, with an indignant squawk.
"Training?", Sirius asked as he rolled onto his back looking at the Fae who now stared out into the night sky out of his window. Damn this bed was the most comfortable thing he's ever laid on, hands down. Hogwarts had nothing on this heavenly masterpiece of a mattress.
"Yes. I will need your help, grandson... I have been trapped here for many ages. I brought you through the gate of the Skye, and you may leave Dun Scaíth freely. But I cannot leave with the shackles that bind me here", the Arch Fae said morosely.
"I see darkness coming to the isles. Something slithering in the deeps. I am the Warrior Queen, Sirius, my court must be put to order before all descends into the dark", Sirius swallowed. That didn't sound ominous at all. The little girl spun towards him with a manic smile.
"The world is changing, monsters sleeping are waking, chains are breaking, the world turns, cities will burn, the gods return!", the Queen danced a merry jig and did cartwheels as she seemed to chant prophetically. The words thrumming with magic and meaning. The Fae was off in her own world. It would be cute, if Sirius didn't know she was millennia old and speaking of the end of the world.
"Sleep tight!", and with that very unsettling display, the Witch Queen skipped out of the room, slamming the door as she left.
Apologies for the long wait. The muse has not been singing. Hope you enjoy.