by A. Omukai
Mushrooms grew in small forests, or groups, or whatever it could be called. Not a single animal, as far as she could see. To the right, endless plains. To the left, the ravine. If not for her map, she would have asked herself multiple times if they had even made any progress.
The landscape just didn’t change significantly. Eventually they reached Corporal Hill’s final waypoint. She reached out with her magical senses, feeling around for Cailean, who was already running off into the distance, to the east. Deirdre took over manual control, turned the vehicle, and followed the Cu Sidhe.
“How long do you think it will take you to find those places of power? Can you… sense something, or how does that work?”
Deirdre looked up in surprise. Of course, Adams had been one of the people on the bridge at the time Brilann had told her about her mission and totally surprised even the captain with his words. That was one of those moments that were hard to forget, she supposed.
“To be honest, I have no idea how to answer that question. I don’t know what we are looking for, what it feels like, what it looks like, I don’t even know what the heck, places of power are.”
“And how are you searching for them?”
Deirdre thought for a moment. How much could she tell the xenobiologist? He was no druid, he had no magical talents, and if she remembered correctly, there were certain clauses in the contract between humans and the two courts that regulated the flow of information about the Otherworld.
How much a druid could tell someone who had no relationship to the Otherworld was regulated somewhere, and those rules were set in stone. This had been one topic that hadn’t interested Deirdre during her time as an apprentice of the circle. She had paid little attention. Now she wished she had. It would have come handy. Then again, she didn’t really sweat it. He was his partner down here, so he had to have some background knowledge.
“It is not me who’s looking for those places of power, it is my Cu Sidhe.”
Adams raised his eyebrows, stared at her, as if he wanted her to continue. Should she?
“You might think Cu Sidhe only exist in fairytales, but that’s not correct. Actually, most fairytales have a true core.”
Adams still didn’t say a word. The muscles in his face worked, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Well, she could imagine, to some extent. Adams was a scientist, and listening to tales of magic must have been difficult for him. While he might have been able to accept the existence of magical powers, he might not have agreed with their existence, as stupid as that might sound. Having to do something he couldn’t explain must have been annoying. She felt for him, even though she didn’t share his frustration. Their worlds were quite different.
A disapproving glance from Corporal Hill made her sit up and take notice, before he could hide it behind his facade of indifference. She wouldn’t let him know she had caught sight of his reaction.
“Where is your Cu Sidhe, anyway?” Adam asked.
“He is running ahead. You couldn’t see him anyway, unless he wants you to see him, or unless you have the gift. Fae animals are invisible to you. And if he wants you to, he will be the last thing you see in your life. That’s where those stories come from, of Cu Sidhe as heralds of death.”
He didn’t answer.
A notification sound distracted her, and she was grateful for the interruption. She opened the home screen of her system, activated the notification, and read the message.
“Temporal anomaly ahead. Potential danger.”
12
Chaos
Deirdre closed the message and wiped away her AI’s screen. She looked at Adams; he looked back at her. They had obviously gotten the same message at the same time.
“What’s going on?” She asked and commanded the Wisp to stop.
Corporal Hill stood up, walked over to the console, activated it and typed frantically on a virtual keyboard. The display lighted up, but she couldn’t read the contents on the screen, the data scrolled by too quickly for her. She remembered for only a moment the face of Fionnlagh, scrolling like crazy through ungodly amounts of data, that time on the bridge, only recently. That had been even faster than this, by an order of magnitude. Faeries had their own personal time. Everything had been alright back then.
The tech mumbled something under his breath, but she couldn’t understand his words. What he was saying probably wasn’t meant for her anyway, or he’d not have kept his voice low. She leaned back on the bench. She would wait until he told her what he thought was going on. While doing that, she reached out to Cailean, who was now standing still, not far away from them. Just up the slope, a few hundred metres from here.
Finally, the corporal turned around to her and spoke.
“The Wisp’s scanners have detected an area in which the natural parameters of the Einstein universe are completely chaotic and unpredictable. Reading that data didn’t tell me a lot though.”
“What does that mean?” Deirdre asked.
Adams shrugged.
“I don’t know. I’m no physicist. This could mean many things and I wouldn’t know, all I get from this is, the place over there might not be safe for us to go. It’s certainly different from a normal environment. Maybe this is what you’re looking for, a place of power,” he said.
Yes, maybe it was a place of power. She wouldn’t know, at least not until she went there in person, and looked.
“Wanna come with me? I’ll see what’s going on myself.”
Adams didn’t seem happy, but he nodded.
“Yes, I will go with you.”
“Let me come with you,” the Ghillie Dhu said. “I’ll look after you.”
“I’ll come with you,” the corporal hurried to say, as if the thought of being alone with the doctor scared him.
It probably did. The man either had some serious xenophobia problems, or an unstable personality. Deirdre shrugged. She didn’t want to waste brain power on that now; she had more important things to do. Had Cailean indeed found a place?
They left the car and wandered up the slope, slowly, with gravity pulling them down. Deirdre strode out confidently. If she could finish her mission right here, they’d be able to go back to the Tuatha De Danann as soon as the transporter came back. Her heartbeat sped up.
Only a few more metres, she thought. The Cu Sidhe stood there, waiting for them. Like a statue. From here, Deirdre couldn’t see anything yet. She had to get closer. Corporal Hill suddenly stopped. His face looked pale, his eyes were opened wide.
Slightly annoyed that she still couldn’t see, Deirdre sped up her step and marched on until she stood next to Cailean.
The scenery in front of her eyes took her breath away.
The three humans stood at the edge of a valley, almost shoulder on shoulder. The corporal pulled out a scanner and operated the controls with flying fingers, while the xenobiologist to her right frowned.
“What’s going on over there?”
“I don’t know, this is… not what I expected.”
Deirdre looked down on Cailean. The Cu Sidhe shook his fur like a wet dog. He sniffed, as if there was a scent in the air. And maybe there was.
“Unbelievable,” murmured the corporal, slowly walking closer, without looking where he went. He stared at the display of his scanner and shook his head, then typed again.
Deirdre turned her attention back at the valley in front of her. The landscape wasn’t so different from everywhere else. Before her eyes was a large valley, with many of the typical features of this planet. Rolling hills, gentle slopes, small brooks, with two big streams running around it and forming a natural frame. The difference didn’t lay in the features themselves, but in the details about them.
The brooks were dried little river beds without a drop of water, unlike those streams, with which some of them were directly connected. The water just refused to flow into them, and into the valley, for no discernible reason.
The blackened landscape showed not a single mushroom, and the moss
, or whatever the stuff was that grew everywhere, had not populated the ground here.
In fact, she not only didn’t feel any life, as in the absence of life force. What lay ahead was a life force deficit.
When the corporal set foot on the blackened ground, the complete zone awoke to life, or maybe to its opposite. A humming sound lay in the air now, deep like the engine of a large vehicle.
To her right, Adams collapsed. The xenobiologist dropped like a rock and fell hard, but it didn’t look like he had hit his head. He hadn’t even uttered so much as a moan, which made it even weirder to watch. With two quick steps, the marine was next to him. She felt for his pulse, looked at Deirdre and nodded.
Something was welling up from the ground, defying gravity slowly rising into the air. She couldn’t tell what it was, but it looked like parts of the ground, soil and small pebbles, slowly floating upwards, disappearing far above them in the distance.
She felt the valley, or something in it, tucking at something inside her. Not her magical energies though, it was after a different pool. The energetic vacuum inside the valley was greedily trying to suck raw life force from her. Shocked, she shut down her senses. Cailean howled, staring at her, then flickering, similar to how the wall hiding the alcove inside the Wisp had. She stumbled backwards a few steps until Ailbhe grabbed her by the arm. The marine looked her straight in the face.
“Hey! What’s up? Are you okay?”
Deirdre moved her lips, but no voice came out.
“Away.”
Adams frowned, shaking her gently.
“What did you say?”
Deirdre tried again. She closed her eyes. Her throat felt dry, swallowing without saliva hurt.
“Away.”
She breathed in, held the air inside her lungs for a second, then opened her mouth again.
“Away, we have to get away, now!”
The Ghillie Dhu reacted immediately. She pulled Deirdre back, then grabbed Adams’ jacket.
“Corporal, back off!”
The command came too late. Hill was already tumbling like a drunk and barely still on his feet. Ailbhe jumped up and stormed to the edge of the valley.
“No!” He screamed, as he was aware of the Aes Sidhe closing in on him. “I won’t let a filthy shrub touch me! Stay away from me, bitch!”
His eyes were open wide and his face pale white. Sweat rolled down his face, and he shivered violently, but he had never stopped walking deeper into the valley.
“Get your act together!” The marine seemed unable to enter the black zone. She regarded the corporal, then Deirdre and Adams with a look, then doubled her efforts and dragged them both down the path they had climbed earlier.
Deirdre’s knees weakened, but she could keep walking, if only barely.
A moan in her speakers, then the muffled sound of a body hitting the ground. The corporal had lost his balance and fallen. He was lying over ten metres past the black zone’s border, where he had assumed a fetal position. These ten metres, it might as well have been ten light-years. No way anyone could get to him now.
“What’s going on over there?”
The voice from inside her helmet belonged to the doctor.
“Stay where you are. You can’t do anything here,” the marine replied in a calm voice. Her facial expression never changed. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking behind that unmoving face.
Ailbhe didn’t waste a second. Her grip on Deirdre’s arm tightened, as she dragged both humans after her. Down the slope, double time.
The Wisp, only a few hundred metres away, move towards them.
Cailean was nowhere to be seen.
***
Deirdre opened her eyes and found herself inside the Wisp. No idea what had happened, but there was a subtle fear sitting in the back of head. As if something bad had happened, or would happen, or both.
She moaned, tried to orient herself, but she was still too confused and slipped back into unconsciousness.
She woke up again. Her sense of time was completely busted. This was the Wisp, on planet Gliese 667 Cc, alright, but how much time had passed this time?
Also, something was missing, but what?
She tried to sit up once more, and this time, a huge hand supported her back and she managed to slowly get into an upright position. Doctor Moan looked at her with a worried expression, then nodded and turned around to the xenobiologist.
Adams lay on the other bench, a pillow below his neck, legs stretched out and fast asleep.
She looked around. The marine had somehow transported her back inside the car where she had just slept for — she’d have to check the clock to tell.
“You are lucky you’re still alive,” the doctor said.
“What happened…” Her memory returned while she was speaking. Blackness, decay, a maelstrom threatening to grab her. Adams collapsing right next to her. Cailean’s howling voice and the corporal’s screams.
“Oh, shit.”
The Fir Bolg snorted. “Indeed. We lost a team member, and both of you were in extreme danger. When you reached the Wisp, your vitals were in overdrive. Just a minute longer, and you’d have died to either a stroke or a cardiac infarction.”
Deirdre pointed at Adams. “Is he…?”
“He’s stable, no worries. You were closer to the danger zone, but you’re tougher than you look.”
“And the corporal, what happened to him?”
“Impossible to say. His suit is still functional and sending status reports. The man’s vitals are gone completely. The suit can’t even measure brain waves anymore, and we can’t get close enough to salvage his body and do an autopsy.”
“Then he is…?”
The Fir Bolg nodded and turned back to his medical equipment. “I already sent a message back to the Tuatha De Danann, even though they can’t help us now.”
Deirdre shook her head. What a waste of life. There had not only been no reason to die, his death could have been avoided. What had actually gotten him in the end was his own stupidity, and she hadn’t been able to do anything about it.
She looked at the Ghillie Dhu. “You saved our lives out there. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. Just doing my job.”
“Don’t feel bad about the corporal. You couldn’t do anything to help him.”
No answer from the marine, whose silhouette had already blended in with her surroundings again.
The sensation returned: Something was missing.
She turned her attention to the steering wheel and the console. The lights were off and the car was stopped. She stifled a yawn, sat up properly and tried to get it together.
What was it?
She stood up, wandered over to the console, activated it and opened the vehicle’s map of the region. The area was dominated by the ravine they had passed on their way to…
Now she remembered what it was she was missing
Where was Cailean? She could usually sense his presence as long as he was in this world. Even when he was too far away to make out in which direction he was, she could feel him being around.
The Cu Sidhe wasn’t exactly missing, but she had seen him flicker in and out of existence, his appearance turning transparent. It might have been her own reaction to whatever had been going on in that valley, a sign of exhaustion, or nervousness. Her nerves might have played tricks with her. But if she remembered correctly, her team members had not flickered like this. It had really only been Cailean, and that drain on her life force seemed to not have hit him either.
Deirdre concentrated and reached out for the Cu Sidhe with her magical senses, and she felt him scouting the area outside the car. Immense relief washed over her. Thank god.
The rustling of cloth came from behind him. Adams had woken up.
“Good morning. How are you today?”
A moan answered her. “What exactly happened? And how long was I gone?”
Adams adjusted his position on the bench and looked at her, then his eyes
took on a distanced expression for a moment, as he checked his system.
“Two hours!” He cursed.
She stood up and walked over to him.
“Sergeant Ailbhe got us out of there. It was too late for the corporal though.”
The xenobiologist groaned.
Thinking back, she couldn’t remember her walking back to the Wisp. The last memory she had was that of the Cu Sidhe, howling and flickering.
Deirdre was still tired but it was a deeper kind of fatigue. She felt exhausted.
She looked up, and his eyes were wide as he stared at her. Or rather, as he stared at something about her.
She didn’t know what he was looking at, but it kind of pissed her off. She frowned. He noticed her glance and smiled.
“Sorry, Deirdre, but…”
“What?” This had come out angrier than she had intended.
“Did you have some white hair before?”
“I have what?”
“See for yourself.”
He switched the front display’s camera from outside to a view of the inside of the vehicle.
Deirdre stared at the picture of the room, the benches, the table, the xenobiologist’s equipment, the tall scientist himself, and finally her own reflection.
She was sitting behind the steering wheel, a small figure, slender and tired. Her skin was pale, the rings under her eyes dark, and now she saw it, too. A pure white strand in her flaming red hair.