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Entry tags: | complete, gabriel thorne, mairead, one-shot, private |
After Midnight (Part Two of Three)
Date: 14 August 2013
Time: 12.08 AM
Location: The Far Gates, Faerie / London, UK
Characters: Gabriel Thorne, Mairéad
Description: Mairéad and Gabriel venture into Faerie, and beyond. Part two of three.
Status: Private, complete (one-shot).
The first thing he became aware of was the warmth. Actually, calling it warmth was like calling a hurricane a mild breeze. This was sheer heat, searing, dry and unforgiving. He started sweating almost immediately, and gingerly opened his eyes.
They began hurting, and he closed them again.
Light reflected off everything, suffusing the world around him with an innate glow that burned into his retina. He opened his eyes again, gingerly, and had to close them after a few seconds.
"Take your time," Mairéad purred, and her voice seemed richer, fuller than it had done in the Burnt Wood. He chanced a look at her, and the wrinkles around her eyes were gone, her skin was radiant, and her eyes were bright, terrifying green. She was surrounded and filled with the power of this place, emanating from her in pulsing waves as she drank in the magic of Summer, and spun around with her arms outstretched. She caught him looking, and gave him a wolfish smile. Not for the first time, he wondered if he'd truly made the right choice, or if he was the cartoon mouse walking into the open mouth of the cat.
It took long minutes, but eventually, his eyes adjusted to the point where they weren't scorched by his surroundings. It didn't help with the heat, though, and he eyed a small brook to his left, which flowed with clear water. Mairéad followed his gaze.
"I wouldn't," she said, instead waving her hand and producing a skein of liquid from, it seemed, absolutely nowhere. "The best advice I can give is to stay away from anything but the Way."
He looked meaningfully at the water she offered, and back at her eyes, unwilling to accept it right off. She rolled hers, and sighed impatiently, even stamping her foot in a motion that was unsettlingly immature for a creature that had demonstrated such power and gravitas already. With an impatient glance, she held it out again, and he took it with a not-insignificant amount of hesitation, finally placing it to his mouth.
Once the first drops were in, he squeezed it, devouring the contents as if he'd been walking through the desert for 40 days without any water. It was gone in seconds, and he moved to hand it back, noticing at the last minute that the flask had disappeared.
"Come," she said, imperiously, and took his hand, dragging him with her as she stepped up the grassy bank from where they had crossed over into Summer, and onto the Way.
"You're taking the piss," Gabriel said in a flat tone, as he followed her onto the road, which was made entirely out of bricks. Yellow ones. "An actual yellow-brick road?" Mairéad didn't stop walking, and he started walking faster to keep pace, biting his tongue about being led around like a dog as they walked.
"Where do you think the story came from?" She said over her shoulder, as if it were one of the more asinine observations she'd heard in recent years. Gabriel, for his part, simply shrugged and walked along with her, taking in Faerie as they moved.
Calling it lush or verdant would be accurate, but also wholly wrong. Grass, bushes, and enormous trees lined the sides of the road, and the sound of birdsong rang through the entire area, but it was somehow off. Look a little closer, and you'd be able to pick out the brittle nature of the leaves, the bed of dead pine needles that coated the floor. The bushes bore shrivelled fruit, and the birdsong, far from being relaxing, was almost cacophonous if you tuned into it for too long. Gabriel was well aware of the nature of Summer from the Coven's research, in that they ostensibly represented life, but they had a darker side. This was life in its natural raw power, uncaring and unheeding, full of fire, heat, passion and fury. He could see it in Mairéad, feel it in the charged atmosphere around them. Small animals fought and scurried in the undergrowth, out of sight but definitely not out of mind, while the trunks of the trees, the more he observed them, began to look almost skeletal.
Summer and Winter, two extremes. One passion, the other order, the calm reflection of steady tempers and respect. But Winter, too, was uncaring in its worldview. It was manipulative and deadly when it wanted to be, fully cognizant of the big picture and utterly without remorse when it came to enforcing it. Titania may have resembled a fury from the stories of old, but Gabriel knew of Mab, the Winter Queen, too. She seemed just as terrifying, if not more.
He tried to push the thoughts from his mind, fully aware that even speaking the name of either Queen in his head was not necessarily the best idea that he'd ever had.
"Where are we going?" He said, by way of distraction, and Mairéad turned to look at him as they walked.
"The Far Gates," she said. "And from there, anywhere we want."
Gabriel didn't like the breathy excitement in her voice as she said that, alarm bells triggering in the back of his brain as they continued their progress. Fae, particularly Summer fae, had a reputation for unpredictability, and he wouldn't have put it past her to decide on a different course for their journey, carried away with the obvious vitality she felt here. Oh, sure, they'd get to London and back, but it might take them 50 years to do so.
"Remember our bargain," he said, his voice low. Her cat's eyes snapped to his, and she pouted.
"Fine," she said, huffing. "At least you're a touch smarter than the other witches I've come across in that city."
They didn't say much after that, walking for what felt like hours. Gabriel asked at one point how long it would take, and received a poisonous look in return, before the fae explained how time moved differently in Faerie than in the real world. By all accounts, they'd only been gone a few minutes, despite the length of time it had taken them here.
Another enquiry about placing them closer to the Far Gates received a cold silence, utterly at odds with the burning sun that was causing the witch so much discomfort. The thing with Summer, and probably Faerie as a whole, he observed, was that it was startlingly easy to lose your sanity if you thought too much about it. It was hard at first, but he reckoned that he came to that conclusion not long after he saw a herd of mushrooms stomping over the road, forcing them to stop while they passed, and engaging the giant caterpillar in conversation as they waited.
It was, officially, the weirdest place he'd ever been. And he'd been to Shoreditch on a Thursday night. On the plus side, there didn't seem to be too many beards around, and nobody wore tight jeans. The lack of gourmet coffee kiosks was a net benefit, too.
On the down side, there were giant fucking caterpillars that liked to wax lyrical on the political exigencies of Voltaire.
Faerie. Honestly.
Despite the intimidatingly hostile forest, though, the potential for the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man to come across them at the moment, titanic bugs, walking mushrooms and the heat, when they finally rounded a corner and exited the forest path, it was all worth it just to see what lay before him.
A great plain, miles in every direction, demarcated the edges of Summer and Winter respectively. In the vague distance, Gabriel could just about make out the glittering spires of Hibernis, and he shuddered to think how enormous they must have been up close, if they were this tall so far away. Even that wasn't the most impressive part of the panorama, though. On the plain, massive gates stood in the centre, arrange in a loose semicircle, around which a writhing mass of bodies gathered. The ones closest to Winter were a deep, midnight blue, shot through with amethyst and detailed with wrought silver so intricate and so beautiful that it made him choke up. Summer's were equally resplendent, carved from incredible tree trunks that arched and curved into each other. Gold inlay provided the decoration, while solid wooden doors, shot through with emerald ivy, opened and closed repeatedly. The most interesting portal was at the centre of the four gates, however.
It was solid black, so dark that it seemed to pervade the area around it. Massive, gigantic chains wrapped around it from head to foot, glittering with fire and ice as they interlinked and wove around one another. In the centre Gabriel could just make out a small keyhole, no bigger than a football. The arches were carved with runes, script and magical wards, ones of binding and sealing, ones of forbidding. The whole gate pulsed periodically, and occasionally, the doors shook ever-so-slightly, as if pressed from within.
If the terrifying image wasn't enough, the gate was surrounded on all sides by soldiers. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, gleaming in the half-light and bedecked in the liveries of both Courts, mixed units of fae that quite obviously were guarding the gate. Most faced towards it, poleaxes and spears readied, but a thin ring around the outside faced the multitude of humanoid and bestial fae milling around on the plains. Occasionally, one would venture too close and narrowly avoid the swipe of a sword or staff. Now and again, one wouldn't be quick enough. The message was clear enough: stay away.
"We're um, we're not going there, are we?" Gabriel asked, pointing at the gate.
"Nobody goes to the Obsidian Gate," Mairéad replied quietly, staring at the edifice.
"Why's that?" Gabriel asked, as they began to pick their way down from the elevated position towards the flat of the plain.
"Because... they don't," she snapped. "Stop asking questions and try not to break your neck."
"Right, but seriously," Gabriel replied, stepping around a large boulder. They were still around thirty feet from flat ground, and it did look treacherous. "What's behind it?"
Mairéad didn't answer for a few moments, and didn't seem to be struggling with the terrain anywhere near as much as he was, which struck him as dramatically, cosmically unfair. He took a moment to catch his breath, try to put his aching feet from the back of his mind, and regard himself. He looked like a mess, covered in dust, dirt, and sweat. At least the pounding sun had lessened here, with the temperature being neither hot nor cold. Just somewhere in between, like mid autumn.
"Outside," she finally said, apparently convinced that ignoring the question wasn't going to stop him in the slightest. "Others."
"Well, lah-dee-fucking-dah," Gabriel said in a raised voice, throwing his hands up in frustration. "Aren't we all lovely and cryptic. I'd call you Deep Throat, but given your gender that might have a few unfortunate connotations. Are you actually a woman, by the way? Only I'm never sure if fae actually have genders, or if it's all the glamours. Are you like a Barbie doll underneath that dress? Not that I'm asking to see or anything because, you know, happily married. Only a little scientific curiosity has been plaguing me for quite a few years, and it's not like I get the chance to ask an actual, real-life fae much-"
"Gabriel, please," she sighed, her voice plaintive. "Control yourself and for the love of the Glen, watch your tongue around my compatriots. Just be quiet."
Indeed, they were starting to near the edge of the crowd, now. Mairéad took his hand and gripped it tightly, possessively - in fact, that's exactly what it was. He was hers, according to the social mores of the fae. He felt their cat's-eye gazes slice over him until they noticed the bond, and then melt away just as quickly. She strode quickly, confidently towards the furthermost Summer gate, and he followed in her wake, trying not to make eye contact and look like he was too interested, but failing miserably.
Achingly beautiful men and women, subtly wrong in their appearances, tugged at his instincts and primal urges. One strode through the crowd, her breasts heavy and covered by foliage alone, looking for all the world like a real-life Eve. A man stopped to consult a travelling companion, the ripples of his abdominal muscles seeming as they were made from steel.
And even more, there were the creatures. Small motes of light buzzed around, and Gabriel realised that they were miniature fae, complete with wings. A creature that could only be described as a troll lumbered past them, while another with the legs of a horse, the body of a man and the head of a bull watched them pass impassively, his thick arms crossed over his chest.
Quite frankly, his brain was about to burst with the questions, but he thought it was commendable and entirely phenomenal that he hadn't said a word. Self preservation really was the strong insinct, it seemed. They joined the group awaiting passage and paused, which allowed the shooting pains from Gabriel's soles, ankles, knees and hips to come roaring back to life. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, willing them to calm down.
"Emissary, what a surprise," a voice came from in front of him, and he opened one eye with resignation. The fae was as extraordinarily beautiful as he'd come to expect, with long, brown hair tucked back into a neat ponytail. Cheekbones that could cut glass were framed by rich, fair skin pulled tight over them. His lips were blood red, and his eyes were wholly feline. His clothes, though, looked as if they belonged in the Elizabethan era. Knowing the fae, they were probably from then.
"My Lord Maoldomhnaich," Mairéad said, bowing her head. "A pleasure to see you."
"And you," the fae replied. "So far from home, too, and with a pet in tow, I see."
"An associate," she said. "What brings you to the Far Gates?"
"Business," he said abruptly, and Gabriel noted the cold, slightly standoffish approach that the fae man was taking to their conversation. If he'd had glasses, they would have been firmly perched on the end of his nose. "I should imagine that, given rumours about the parlous state of affairs in your Court, that this is a fleeting visit?"
Mairéad's cheeks flushed dangerously at the insult, which wasn't direct enough to take offence to (it wasn't, after all, an accusation that her Court was in a state, just that rumours said it was) but cut nonetheless.
"Oi, Macbeth," Gabriel said, motioning at the man's kilt and sporran. "If it's going to be or not to be, make up your fucking mind and stop pissing around with wordplay." For emphasis he rolled up his sleeves, and he heard Mairéad suck air in through her teeth. He ignored her.
"Hamlet," Maoldomhnaich said, after giving him the same kind of look that one usually reserved for an offending item on the bottom of a boot.
"You what?" Gabriel said, pausing for a moment.
"To be or not to be, it's from Hamlet, not Macbeth." Gabriel blinked.
"Right, but you knew what I meant, yeah?" He said in a flat voice, narrowing his eyes. "So how about we all pretend we haven't got English Lit degrees shoved up our arses for a moment?"
Mairéad's hand tightened like a vice around his arm. Her smile was thin, stretched and very forced.
"If you'll excuse us, my Lord, I have a mortal to punish and a destination to attend to," she said, motioning to where the Far Gate was opening again. The sidhe lord sniffed and turned away, which was apparently enough to excuse them. Mairéad dragged him towards the Way back to Earth.
"If you embarrass me, I'll skin you alive," she hissed, and Gabriel gulped. With little ceremony, she practically threw him through the portal, and followed after.