Secrets & Shadows

I grabbed my phone book and started checking for the number of the Gates Hotel. I was so tired I didn’t realize that I passed the page three times. I get really blind and clumsy when I’m dead tired.

“Still using a phone book, Frost?” Green jeered. “Bit archaic isn’t it?”

“With all due respect, detective. Fuck off,” I said. I also get really grumpy when I’m this tired.

“Well, excuse me,” Green muttered under his breath.

I looked up from the phone book at Green, “magic interferes too much with wireless technology thus making cell phones useless to magic users.”

Green attempted to add on to his remark. But, I interjected before he got a word out, “yes, even though I have a computer, it is hard wired to the internet. However, I’m not in a state of mind to have it be of much use. My magic might run a bit wild and destroy something as sensitive as that,” I explained. “Luckily there’s a low tech alternative.” Finally finding the number I needed I placed my finger on it and began to dial. “And landline phones are usually pretty reliable for some reason.”

The phone began to ring and I asked the front desk for Siren and Grunt’s room. After a moment longer Grunt answered.

“Hello?” He asked with uncertainty.

“Grunt, it’s Lance Frost. Did Siren make it back to the room alright?”

“Yeah, she just laid down in bed. She looked pretty exhausted. What did you do with her exactly?” Grunt’s concern for Siren was pretty evident.

“Take it easy, dude. All we did was just go out to drink at a friend’s bar. She just couldn’t hold all she was drinking. Also, did Eddy ever call the cops about Thorn?”

“You shouldn’t have let her drink, moron,” he said. I thought it was a bit uncalled for. “And no he didn’t call. We’re going to bed now. It’s late.” Grunt disconnected before I got the chance to say “bye.” I’m sure he was just cranky too. I placed the receiver down and rubbed my eyes.

“Hey, Detective?” I said.

“What’s up, magic man?”

“Did Eddy call you about another one of his band members missing? Her name is Wendy McGovern.”

Green thought for a moment. “Not that I can recall,” he said. “But, he may have left a message on my desk phone and I hadn’t gotten to it yet. I’ll check when I get back.”

“I hope he did. Kinda told him if he didn’t I’d turn him into a frog.”

“Can you really do that?” Green asked.

“No, but he doesn’t know that,” I said as we had a good laugh about that. I turned back to Green and let out a yawn. “Well, Detective, I feel it is time that I retire,” I said. I showed him out the door and advised that the potion will wear off in a few hours and hoped that he didn’t run into anything nightmarish. Green was a little putoff about that.

I turned back into my apartment and began to make for my bedroom and pass out with Puck but the phone rang. “Gods damn it all, who the hell is it at this hour? It’s nearly midnight!” I grunted to myself. I picked up the phone on the off chance that it might have been Siren calling back.

“Yeah?” I said disinterestedly.

“Good evening to you too, asshat,” a familiar stern, yet sultry, voice insulted.

“Oh, just you, Mara,” I said deadpan. “What’s up? I’m trying to head to bed. Leanan Sidhe was just here and she has been mentally exhausting.”

“Leanan Sidhe? Why was she there? All I said was to ask her about your situation,” she said.

“It’s a long story. But, the short version is she’s madly in love with me and-,” Mara cut me off.

“You’re not seriously courting her are you!?” I could almost hear the aneurysm Mara was about to have.

“Hell no, I’m trying to get out of a forced marriage. She’s kind of madly in love with me. But we can talk about that later, what did you need?” I digressed.

“It’s about that symbol you gave me. The one on that one lady’s arm,” she said piquing my interest.

“What have you got?” I asked.

“It’s a bit complicated to tell you over the phone. Come to my office tomorrow morning.”

“I can’t guarantee morning right now,” I said groggily. “I’ll get there when I get there.” It was the truth. I had no idea if I set my alarm or if I would even wake up to it. I was ready to sleep for a week.

Mara let out a disgusted grunt. “Fine. Just get here as early as you can tomorrow,” she said and hung up on me after that. I have always had that effect on her, annoyance and disgust.

I placed the receiver back in its place and walked over to my bed. Puck was already in his little bed on a shelf snoring away. ‘He snores loud for a little guy.’ I thought. I stripped down to my skivvies and actually crawled into bed for once with blankets over me. I was asleep before my head hit my pillow.

My dreams were not pleasant.

I remember seeing a large stone tower, something that would probably resemble a home of a damsel in distress from tales of knights in shining armor. It was on fire, a huge conflagration of flame and heat. The tower was beginning to succumb to the heat and fall apart brick by brick. I saw another person on the other side, the heat and light from the inferno was too intense for me to see clearly who it was. All began to fade into darkness as the tower collapsed under its own weight.

I woke up, not sure when exactly, just knew that it was light outside. I turned over to see someone under the blanket with me. My heart started to race. I was sure that who or whatever was in my bed would wake up just from the sound of my beating heart. I carefully pulled the covers back to see a familiar ocean of red hair and porcelain skin. The body turned to face me to reveal Leanan Sidhe sleeping soundly next to me.

I shouted and shot up in my bed waking up once more to see that I was, indeed, alone. It was still dark and I was dripping in cold sweat. Puck was still asleep on his shelf, his snore had turned to an exaggerated sound that reminded me of a sleeping character in Looney Toons. I laid back down, covered my head with my covers and shut my eyes. I felt wide awake unsure if I could go back to sleep. If I did get back to sleep, I couldn’t tell.

After a while, unsure of how long it may have been, I peeked out from my covers and saw it was daylight at last, and seemed like it had been for quite a while. I carefully got up from bed and inspected the room to make sure Puck was the only faery around. Did not need a repeat heart attack like last night’s dream. I looked out of my bedroom and reached out with any magical sense I could gather. Everything appeared to be normal. No one extra. I breathed a sigh of relief, worked my way to the kitchen and made a cup of coffee.

As the coffee finished Puck decided he was going to wake up. He lazily drifted over to the kitchen and I carefully fixed him a thimble full of black coffee.

“Mara called last night while you were asleep. Need to call her back,” I said sleepily.

“What did that beautiful, she-demon want?” Puck said grumbling while sipping his coffee.

“Hey, be nice! Sure she’s a she-demon but she’s helping us,” I said. “Anyway, she said she had some information about that mark on Siren’s arm.”

“She better not throw another knife at us or I’ll...I’ll-” Puck tried his best to puff out his chest acting tough.

“You’ll do what, exactly,” I said. “You’re a faery, Puck and she’s a vampire.” Puck looked a little dejected at that remark. “But you got some guts. I’ll give you that.” Puck cheered up and topped off his tough-guy pose with his arms akimbo and a tough look of confidence on his face.

We finished up our breakfast coffee, grabbed a snack, then walked through the streets and alleys to get back to my car. It was hard to start but it eventually roared to life once again and we headed out to Mara’s studio.

We walked up and let ourselves in. Mara’s secretary had tried to stop us.

“Don’t worry she’s expecting us. We know the way,” I said as I casually walked past her desk. She got up and tried to get my attention as she started to pick up the phone.

I could hear the secretary protest as we approached the hall, “Wait! What do you mean ‘us’ and ‘we’?” Sometimes I forget others can’t see Puck. We ignored her and walked right in through the double doors and ready to trek down the impossibly long hallway.

I ignored her and let the door close behind me. It apparently was a busy day at the studio. Some doors were closed with signs saying ‘Quiet. Active set’. Though by the sounds coming from the other side of the door, the first half of the sign seemed pretty ironic. Just like on the previous visit other doors were wide open with models doing all kinds of photo shoots. Some were fashion, boudoir, artistic and some straight up porn.

Puck was drooling at the vampires on the various sets as we walked down the hall. I kept walking ahead of him and stopping only to see that he was far behind me. I grabbed him by his dragonfly wings and held on as we got to the end of the hall and Mara’s office. “Ow ow ow!” Puck said. “Please let go, Sir! That hurts!” I let go of his wings.

“Then make sure you stay with me, Puck. These are vampires and even though you’re a little guy and a faery I’m sure they can think of a way to fuck you up,” Mara’s door opened, she must have heard us.

“It’s true, little Puck,” she said, leaning against the doorway, her arms crossed under her chest. “It’s a niche, special, market but we can figure out a way to use you and market some girl, or guy-on-faery scenes.” She winked at him. I’ve never seen Puck look both excited and terrified, hovering staring at Mara with his mouth agape. Whatever emotion, or combination thereof, it was that he felt it seem to shut him up pretty quick.

“Anyway, Mara, you said something last night about that symbol you were researching?” I asked. Mara guided us down another hallway towards an elevator. I put a couple fingers on Pucks back to help guide him along with us as he hovered. He was still in a daze, probably going over thoughts of what an incubus or succubus could do with or to him. I kinda shuttered imagining things that Puck might be thinking. His kind doesn’t really have sex like we do, but they can feel pleasure and procreate. I just never asked how that’s done, exactly, and didn’t really want to know.

“Yes I did, before you were so rude to me last night,” she said.

“Yeah, sorry about that. Was a really long day,” I said apologetically. “So what is it that you found out?” We had finally reached the elevator at the end of another hall. Mara reached out and hit the down arrow as she turned to talk to me while we waited for the elevator itself.

“I’ll show you momentarily. But I thought it was rather interesting,” she said. With that, the elevator dinged and the doors opened up. We went in and Mara opened a small door near the panel where you would select a floor. In it was a key pad on which she typed a code on then hit the emergency stop button. Immediately the doors closed and we began to rapidly descend. I couldn’t tell how many floors we passed, but I could tell we were pretty deep underground when the doors opened up. All we saw was a long concrete-walled corridor lit only by emergency lights which were set up where the walls met the ceiling about every fifty feet or so.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“About 1000 feet underground,” Mara said casually.

“Holy shit,” I said. “What’s so important you have to keep all the way down here? How are we all the way down here?”

“We’re not actually in Kaw City,” Mara said. “We more or less passed through a magical portal to an undisclosed holding facility for our Tribe.”

“Cacamas naofa tá sé fuar!” Puck said in his native Gaelic. He began to shiver and hug himself. Suddenly realizing the temperature myself, I started to shiver a little too. It was pretty cold in the basement. Mara didn’t seem to mind the freezing temperatures or care.

Puck tucked himself in my pocket and we continued on down the corridor. We turned a few corners, a left here, a right there and two more rights and a left, before we came to a large door with yet another keypad. Mara punched in another code and a large lock opened. We went inside and saw two caskets next to each other in a rather small room. They were large, pod-like and metal.

“Uh, what’s this exactly?” I asked.

“This is what I wanted to show you,” Mara said. She went over to one of the caskets and opened the seamless top. Inside was a rather old and withered man, who even in his state, looked rather dashing. He was dressed in very ostentatious white and gold robes with old withered hands resting on top. He had a full head of silver hair which was adorned with a golden circlet and had a large medallion around his neck that rested on his chest.

“This was one of our oldest elders,” she pointed out.

“You know he’s dead right?” I said candidly.

“Of course I know that, you moron!” Mara said scornfully. “I said he was one of our oldest elders, past tense. I didn’t say he was the oldest living elder.” She had me there.

Mara sighed, “Anyway, look at this medallion around his neck.” I got in closer and peered into the casket and fingered the medallion gently.

“It certainly looks close to what was on Siren’s arm,” I said. “How old is this, Mara?”

“About 500 years old,” she said. “These bodies are actually on loan from their respective mortuaries. They had become plagued with ghouls recently and the current elders wanted to make sure our most prominent figures were not in any danger of being harmed.”

“I see,” I said absently while still examining the pendant. It was very old and aged. It was octogonal and appeared to be made of a brass colored metal with a geometric pattern not dissimilar to Siren’s. “So what point were you trying to make here? Do you still think it’s a coincidence? Or that there might be a connection?”

“Most likely still a coincidence,” Mara said leaning against a nearby counter, crossing her arms under her chest again. “As I said before, it’s not the first time something like that has happened. But the similarities are quite shocking. I’m still in the process of doing some research. So, I’m not sure if these symbols will be relevant later or not but I thought you could at least see for yourself.”

“Well at least it’s something that I can potentially put on the back burner and work on later,” I said. “Do you mind if we get back to the office? I’m freezing my balls off down here.” I rubbed my arms trying to keep a little warm.

Mara chuckled, “Yeah, sure,” she said as she closed up the casket and we walked out locking the door behind us. After we got back into the elevator and got to the main floor Puck decided to come out of my pocket proclaiming, loudly and with some minor celebration, that he was once again warm. Once out we walked back to Mara’s office and sat down and attempted to discuss our findings and theories more.

“I wish we had more to go on than just possibilities and guesses,” I said sighing, throwing my head back as I sat in a rather comfortable office chair. “I’m not even sure if this Abyss Walker and that mark I showed you are even connected!”

“That’s what happens when you try to catch something from The Myst,” Mara said solemnly. “Things from there tend to drive people mad from all the wild goose chases they create. At least that’s what I assume you’re after anyway.” We sat in silence for a moment while Mara looked at me with interest and tilted her head.

“What are you looking at?” I asked. “Something in my teeth?”

“No,” she said. “I was just thinking of how stressed you must be with this type of work.”

“You have no idea. I wish I could just put it all down and relax,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve worked at something this hard since I was a kid.”

Mara sat and thought for a few minutes and picked up her desk phone. “Jessica, can you tell Farah to come to my office, please?”

“You probably need us to go then?” I started to get up and head towards the door.

“Not quite yet,” she said. Mara had a sly smile on her face. This couldn’t be good.

“Um, okay if you’re sure. I don’t want to get between you and an employee you just called in here.” I sat back down and made myself comfortable again.

“You’ll see in just a moment,” she said and placed her elbows on her desk and pointed her fingers together in a pyramid shape in front of her face. Nothing good ever came from the ‘finger pyramid of evil contemplation.’

A few minutes of long awkward silence passed and a knock came on the door. The door opened right away and a tall bikini clad woman came in. “You needed to see me, Ms. Grace?” A young voice asked.

“Yes I did,” Mara stood up from her desk. “Farah, this is Lance. He’s pretty stressed out from work and I was wondering if you think you could take him to one of your rooms and help him unwind a bit?” She gave a wink towards me. “Lance, this is Farah. She’s one of the models here.” I had a brief look of concern on my face. “Oh, I forgot to mention,” Mara came from behind her desk and whispered into my ear. “Don’t worry, she’s human.”

Farah stood just a hair taller than me, about five-eleven, had long, straight, jet black hair that brushed the small of her back. It was apparent by her youthful face that she couldn’t have been much older than eighteen. Her eyes were large and dark. Her skin was a smooth pale olive color indicative of her, assumed, middle eastern heritage. She had a body most women would kill for and a chest you’d only see in the lewdest of dime store magazines. The black micro bikini didn’t help leave much to the imagination.

I did my best in keeping my eyes on hers and not wandering to other places and did my best to keep the blood flowing to my brain.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Lance,” Farah said in a provocative voice with a vixenish smile.

I swallowed hard, “Y-yes you too,” I looked back at Mara. “Look, Mara I appreciate the gesture, really!” I turned back to Farah. “No offense, but I can’t afford to be distracted right now. But, perhaps a rain check?” The girl glanced over at Mara who gently nodded to the young girl. Farah smiled and gave a small excited bounce in place. ’Gods why did she have to bounce? And why did she have to smile like that?’ I thought to myself. The young girl left, returning to what she was doing previously. Mara said she was human, but she certainly had inhuman beauty about her.

“Wow, I wasn’t expecting that,” Mara said deadpan.

“Yeah, it’s just not my thing. Sleeping with random women I mean,” I said.

“Oh, well. I can’t be helped. I’ll let you know if I find anything else about that symbol. Or crack that archive problem.”

“Thanks. And we will see ourselves out,” I said as Mara sat back down and started working on her computer. As we walked back down the hall I caught activity in another room where the door was open. Apparently they forgot to close it since it looked like an active set. I peeked in a bit to see what was going on for the sake of morbid curiosity.

It was Farah. She had straddled a guy’s hips and was working him over pretty well. Or perhaps the other way round by the literal sounds of it. I shook my head and gathered my thoughts and left the building with what little blood was left for my brain to call dibs on.

“Sir?” Puck chimed in. “Why didn’t you go with that other human?”

I sighed, “Because, Puck. There are some things more important than sex with a bombshell of a porn star,” I struggled to say every word on the way to the car.

“Like what?” He asked.

I adjusted the tightness of my pants as I sat down in the car. “Not much, but the need of a very stiff drink and cold shower after all of that is one of them.”

“Humans are so weird,” Puck mused as I attempted to start the car. It struggled a few times but finally fired up. I pulled out of the parking lot and made my way back to Cassandra’s once again.

I pulled up to The Tavern and walked down the familiar staircase. Cassandra had greeted Puck and I as usual and we sat down. Drinks were already out on the bar for Puck and I by the time we sat down. The avian familiar, Nevermore, sat on the bartop near me eventually coming closer. He puffed out the feathers on his chest gesturing for me to pet him and I complied. Puck indulged in his special mead happily while I chugged my beer down and gave a rather large and loud belch.

“Yeah, that’s attractive,” Cassandra said. Nevermore followed suit and copied the noise exactly. Cassandra sighed.

“I think I’m going to need something stronger than beer today, Cassandra. A lot stronger,” I said, giving her back my empty bottle.

“Uh-oh. What happened?” She pulled out a shot glass and reached for the very top shelf behind her. She pulled down a bottle of twenty year old, single malt scotch and carefully poured the shot. I shot down the scotch all at once and grimaced.

“You know you’re supposed to sip scotch, right?” She said.

I ignored the comment, “I turned down sex with a porn star,” I managed to say through my throat burning from the expensive drink.

Cassandra stopped and contemplated that for a moment. “I’m sorry I had something ridiculous in my ear. Say that again. You did what?”

A minute thought crossed my mind that I thought it was cute that she used the same turn of phrase I did. But, I spelled out what I had said to her. “I. Declined. To fuck. A porn star,” I grabbed the bottle, poured and took another shot.

“Yep, I’m going to need one of those too,” Cassandra said, pouring herself a shot and throwing it back down her throat. “So tell me what happened.”

I told Cassandra everything that happened at Prana Studios up to that point. “Incidentally,” I added. “Would you happen to have any information on Prana vampire symbols or sigils?”

Cassandra thought for a moment. “I think I might have something in my room. Let me check,” Cassandra lived at her bar, which made her magical house arrest all the simpler for her Coven. Her apartment was located far in the back, past her office and kitchen, and was smaller than mine. Granted she didn’t really need a kitchen in her apartment since everything else was in the bar proper. All she needed was a bed, ritual space and shower really.

She came back a few minutes later with a very large and very old book. The red leather cover and binding by itself, though well cared for through the ages, showed its ancient age. She carefully opened it up on the bar and flipped through the thick handwritten pages to a place near the back, I assume some kind of index. She cross checked some print on the page and moved to near the middle of the book. She hummed thoughtfully and thumbed through the pages of the old tome. She ended up flipping back and forth between two pages becoming more frustrated with each turn.

“What the hell!?” She exclaimed.

“Something wrong, I take it?” I asked.

“Yeah, there is a page missing in my book!” She slammed the book shut with a resounding ‘thud’.

“Well it is old. Perhaps a previous owner removed it?” I suggested.

“Maybe,” she said. “Oh well, nothing I can do about it now. But no, unfortunately nothing related to what you need to know, Hon.” She grabbed the book and walked it back to her small apartment to put it back.

“On an unrelated matter,” I said after Cassandra had returned. “I have a second question.”

“Which is?”

“What do you do if a faery falls in love with you?” I asked.

Cassandra cocked her eyebrow. “What do you mean exactly? Do I need to hex a bitch?” She asked suspiciously.

I could feel my face and ears turn hot with embarrassment. “No, it’s nothing worth that. It was a long time ago. I wandered into Faewild when I was a dumb kid and I ended up having sex with the Leanan Sidhe in exchange for help in unlocking my muse and potential in my magic. She became totally enamored with me even now,” I confessed. “Currently, with the present situation I’m in, I had to get information so I went to Leanan Sidhe. And in order to get that information from her, she forced me into a position where she’s making me propose to her within the next day! Any idea what I can do or say to get out of this pickle?”

Cassandra thought for a moment again and threw back another shot of scotch. “Nope, you’re doomed,” she said. “You really screwed the pooch on this one.”

“Oh c’mon, Cassandra!” I pleaded. “You’ve got to have some ideas.”

“You could just not say ‘I do’,” she said. “I mean, it worked in ‘The Princess Bride’. ‘Didn’t say it, you didn’t do it’.”

“That’s actually a good idea. I wonder why I didn’t think of it before,” I said.

“Because you’re an idiot,” Cassandra said with all seriousness as she downed another shot.

“This is true,” I got up and called out to Puck. “Time to go buddy. We have work to do!” Puck finished his mead as well. I was filled with confidence now with some stress being taken off my shoulders between talking to a friend and alcohol. As I was about to turn to leave Cassandra grabbed my arm.

“Lance,” She said. “I know I already have your word, but I need to hear it. Please be safe. You’re getting mixed up in a lot of stuff and I’m worried.”

I looked into her bright green eyes and told her with all earnestness, “I’ll be safe. Don’t you worry.”

Cassandra gave me a rare smile. She hardly ever smiled any more. It was good to see the actual caring eyes of a friend. All it seemed she could make herself say was, “Thank you,” I smiled back, Puck perched himself on my shoulder and we walked out the door.

Puck and I got to the car and tried to start the car up, but it was cranking hard and the engine didn’t seem to want to turn over. “Oh c’mon! What’s wrong now?” My car might be old and mesh well with most magic users, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t come with your regular, mundane, run-of-the-mill car problems. It is over twenty years old after all. After a few minutes of trying to get it to start the engine finally turned over. “Much better!” I said. “Alright, Puck. Let’s get home to do some research,” I pulled out into the street only to notice a shadow in the rear view mirror.

“Hey, Puck?” I said.

“Aye, Sir?” Puck said. “What is it?”

“Look out the back window. Is that thing behind us what I think it is? In broad daylight?” There was no way, surely, that the very monster that nearly killed me yesterday was back and not even hiding itself from mundane humans. Puck glided over to the back window, pressed his face against it and peered out.

“Yup, sure is what you think it is, Sir!” He shouted back. “Wait, what did you think it was?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure that it is that thing that nearly killed me yesterday!” I said in astonishment. “That Abyss Walker!”

“Eep!” Puck squealed and hid away somewhere in the car. Meanwhile, I pulled out into traffic and tried to speed up Weaving and dodging other cars while mine had begun to stall here and there while attempting to flee was not the easiest thing to do. It was a wonder that I didn’t hit anyone or anything.

The large shadow, which seemed to be the form this Abyss Walker took, was gaining ground and my car was decelerating and surging while the transmission was slipping. The Abyss Walker looked a bit different as well from what I remember. It was large, and I mean gargantuan! It had developed a humanoid form that reminded me of the balrog from the ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies, minus wings. I couldn’t take my eyes off of this thing’s fiery eyes and mountainous form for longer than a few seconds.

We reached an intersection with relatively little traffic and I sped across it. Car horns honked around me as I cut off several more people while I attempted to drive. No one seemed to notice the giant shadow thing headed my way. It also didn’t seem to hurt anything or anyone while moving down the street and I couldn’t figure out why. I guess it was only after me. Makes sense since I was so different and it was probably able to track me after it was hit with my magic. I was going to have to try something stronger than just some electricity or a fireball this time, but I had to get away from the general public first. I pried my eyes away from my potential death as best I could and began looking around and paying attention to where I was exactly.

I had made it near the industrial district on the outskirts of town. There were several abandoned buildings and old construction sites that never got off the ground or even finished. This was usually due to no funding or some other reason. Luckily, there wasn’t anyone around that area and almost never was, save for a random junkie, transient or dealer.

I looked up ahead as the old construction sites came up fast and took a hard right to get to a side road as soon as I could. The car was still sputtering all the way trying not to die from all the incoming magic the Abyss Walker was giving off as well as my own. I had no idea if other cars were stalling out as well. I turned left again, got to a road that didn’t have traffic at last and began to move closer still to the towers of old scaffolding.

It was a stroke of luck and good timing; this Abyss Walker had hurled a huge fireball in my direction. How he conjured it, I have no idea. I narrowly missed it. It was about to hit the back end of my car when it sped up unexpectedly. I sped on and found a large abandoned lot with a lot of empty space. I parked and looked around to see where it was coming from.

The creature was gone.

I looked around and saw no sign of it. ‘Now where in the nine hells did this thing go? How could I just lose a thirty foot magical beast?’ I thought to myself. No sooner had I finished that thought, I heard a roar like a lion behind me. I got out and turned to face my opponent. It was just as it was in the mirror, only much much bigger in person. Giant, hulking, black as pitch and murderous intent in its eyes.

I held out my hands in a stopping gesture. “You shall not pass!” I shouted at the creature. I let out some magic to place a barrier some up fifty feet in front of me to try and halt it. It pushed right through the barrier like it didn’t exist. It broke with the sound of shattering glass. I figured it was worth a shot to try and stop this thing. The Abyss Walker continued to march on towards me, and my shaking knees, one large stomp at a time.

This time I decided I would try something a little different. The Abyss Walker didn’t seem to like the little magic cherry fireballs I was shooting at it last night, even if they didn’t seem to hurt it, but perhaps it didn’t like fire in general. I planted my feet a little more than shoulder width apart, spread my fingers and placed my thumbs tip-to-tip, with the other eight fingers pointed directly at the beast. I muttered only a single word of incantation pushing every bit of magic I could into my hands. “Burn,” The instant the word left my lips a fan of fire expelled itself from my fingertips like a huge flamethrower. The intense heat radiated everywhere and I could feel it blowing my hair. The fire met the Abyss Walker and it recoiled.

‘Did I actually hurt it?’ I thought triumphantly while the stream of fire continued from my hands.

The Abyss Walker moved forward through the fire, sluggishly, as if it was wading through chest deep water. I pushed more magic power into the ongoing surge of flame. Still it persisted and continued to move forward towards me. Though I could only see the Abyss Walker eyes, I saw them flicker with an expression of annoyance on its face. And boy was it most assuredly annoyed. I suddenly remembered that this monster was hurtling fireballs at me just a while ago. So no wonder fire didn’t work so well. It let out a roar and rushed at me and hit me backward with a swipe of, what I assume was, its arm.

I hit the ground hard several feet away. I struggled to catch my breath and it came for me again and hit me into the ground. Not like last time where it was just knocking me down. This was full on slamming me into the cold hard gravel. I could feel small rocks and dirt embed themselves into my face. On one hit I heard my nose crack and break. Cuts and bruises were forming with each subsequent hit into the ground.

I was finally able to get up, just for a second. I spat and painted the ground crimson with a splash. A combination of blood and dirt clouded my vision as I tried to raise my arm to point two fingers at the creature. My hair began to stand on end, and the sound of electricity arcing filled the air and unleashed a bolt of electricity directly between its eyes.

It let out a scream in pain and grabbed at its face and stumbled. At this point the thing was definitely hurt. But I, apparently, only made it mad. It began rushing towards me faster and angrier than before, like a bull. I began to charge up another bolt of lightning when a blast of pure blue arcane energy hit it square in the face from out of nowhere.

“Holy, Deus ex machina! What the hell?” I shouted.

There’s not many magic users or beings that are able to summon the purest forms of magic. Pure arcane magic was difficult not only to summon, but control. You have to open your whole self up to not only drawing in all the energies around you, but also to let it all out. If you didn’t know what you were doing, you could let in all of the magic around you, but if you couldn’t release it properly, you could very well cause yourself to explode in a very great display of fireworks.

An ethereal voice spoke up, “Get back thee demon or taste my power again three fold.” A being of blue light, similar to the arcane magic used, emerged from out of thin air and floated in front of the Abyss Walker’s face.

The Abyss Walker roared in defiance. It’s red eyes glowing with rage. It was like it was saying, “How dare you speak to me in such a way!”

“Very well, have it your way,” the being spoke again. It held up an arm and blasted it in the face again with a beam of energy. A bolt of the same pure arcane energy erupted from the blue figure, even bigger than the previous attack. The blast hit the Abyss Walker with such a force that it recoiled and cried out in pain. It let out a final surrendering shriek and glared at the being of light and faded away.

“Is it dead?” I asked the blue figure.

“No, not yet. But I did wound its body and its pride. It may be several days before it will have energy to do much of anything,” the figure said as it floated down to the ground.

“Who or what in the hells are you?” I asked.

The light began to fade from the being revealing a very pretty, naked woman; with pale skin, eyes like fire opals, and long flowing red hair. It was then my jaw fell open, I felt my stomach bottom out, my eyes widened with horror and the color went out of my face. In that order.

“Why Darling, whatever is wrong with you?” said the fae. “Don’t you recognize me?” She giggled. The fae that was trying to weasel her way back into my pants and get me to marry her had just used magic I had only read about. I had no idea she was this insanely powerful. I already had to watch my back with her, I didn’t think I had to worry about this.

“Leanan Sidhe!? What the hell are you doing here!? What the hell was that!?” I shouted. This could not be good if she just showed up again out of the blue.

What could she possibly want now?