by Cory Huff
Another Thalamtuatha stepped out from behind a building as she passed it, speaking loudly, “Stop!”
Dubhaine smoothly flicked a dagger at him, and he flinched, just avoiding the throw. That gave her just enough time to sprint forward and kick the crossbow out of his hand. He cursed and tried to draw his saber. Dubhaine blocked his draw with her right hand and smashed him in the face with her left hand, and his head rocked back. She surprised him as she drew another dagger with her left hand and stabbed into his abdomen. He twisted and deflected with his left, reducing the stab to a scratch.
Her opponent was a full-blooded Tuatha. Despite him being male, he was thin and slight of frame. Dubhaine was half human. She held a sizable weight advantage. She head-butted the pale-skinned scout, surprising and stunning him as his nose broke. She brought up her right knee into his thigh, heavily bruising him. She was relentless as she stomped down on his instep. Overwhelmed by her vicious hand to hand blows, his guard was down, and Mindee stabbed him in the stomach, just below the rib, piercing his diaphragm. She pulled the dagger out as he froze in shock and pain, and stabbed him again and again. She stabbed him at least six times before he slumped to the ground, blood gushing in time with his rapid heartbeat.
One down, she thought, a lot more to go. She dragged the body down the alley he’d been hiding in and left him there. She shuddered to imagine what the dwarves would do with that body once they found it.
Barely breathing hard, Dubhaine began jogging. The church was probably the place to start. She realized she had little time. If Emperor Gabalifix’s army was here that had to mean he was close by and ready to attack. The descendants of the people she had known so many years ago, the very people she had guarded and protected for years, would be destroyed if the Emperor caught them unaware. They had hours, maybe a day if they needed time to prepare. She sped up.
Perhaps 30 minutes later, Dubhaine found herself slowing to a jog on the main thoroughfare. She paused before getting to the church grounds to catch her breath. She’d run down side streets to avoid attracting too much attention, but now she needed her wits and her breath.
Don’t do this.
It was Seinne. Her voice sounded sincere, but scared, to Dubhaine’s internal ear. Seinne was a teenager. She remembered things that Dubhaine didn’t want to remember. Dubhaine tried to mentally push Seinne back into the ether.
“I have to,” she said between taking great gulps of air.
Saving humans is not our fight.
“This is exactly our fight,” she whispered fiercely.
We will die.
Dubhaine could feel Seinne’s fear. It was a cold vise squeezing her stomach, making her even more nauseous than the Ogham already did. Her jaw ached and tingled. She bent over and put her hands on her knees.
“Stop it Seinne. If we don’t warn them, many people are going to die.”
What does it mean to die? That was new — Amberleigh’s high pitched voice, like a tiny child. Amberleigh had never spoken to Dubhaine before.
It means bad things. Seinne again, speaking directly to Amberleigh. What was happening? Why couldn’t she maintain control here? It means we go away forever and never come back.
Dubhaine looked at the Church of the Creator. Didn’t the church teach that there was a life after this one?
I don’t want to die. Amberleigh’s innocent child voice was heart-breaking.
Dubhaine shook her head. “Stop it, both of you. We’re not going to die.”
Did we almost die once? Amberleigh asked.
Yes we did, said Seinne.
Suddenly Dubhaine was on a soft fabric cushion, looking up. However, she wasn’t Dubhaine. She was Amberleigh. There was a man on top of her, doing things she didn’t understand and didn’t like. It hurt. The man promised it would be over soon.
Dubhaine shook her body, trying to shrug off the memory. She didn’t have time for this. “No! No! No!” She snarled.
The memory shifted, twisted and expanded. Caile was on the forest floor, on a bed of leaves. There were multiple men in black cloaks. They were punching and kicking her, forcing her to submit to them as they did…something to her. The pain was unbelievable and terrifying. Caile, a sensitive soul, an artist, fled and Seinne, ever the detached teenager fronted and experienced the beating. Her calm exterior popped immediately, and she fled. In her place came the inner warrior that had shown up when Caile had summoned a dark strength to make it through the Amhranaithe Sidhe training. That warrior was able to take the pain of combat, the pain of this beating, and put it into a bubble, setting it aside, so it didn’t stop her. She stopped struggling and took in what was happening to her.
The men in black cloaks stopped hitting her when she stopped struggling. One of them kicked her as the others were stepping back. She felt a rib come out of place. It hurt more than anything else that had happened, but she barely noticed it as the warrior self, Mindee, entered fully into control of her body.
Mindee watched them brand her. As an observer, she realized that the brand hurt more than the rib. The flesh on her upper thigh burned and she smelled cooked meat.
She noticed that she was screaming, begging them to stop.
“Hey, what’s wrong with her?”
One of the black-cloaked men was asking what was wrong, while they branded her?
Mindee felt around for a hidden dagger. She would stab one of these black-cloaked men.
Dubhaine suddenly knew that wasn’t right. Mindee had desperately wanted a weapon. She had been ready to kill all of them, but she’d been helpless. This wasn’t how the memory had happened.
Dubhaine, watching both her child self, Amberleigh, and her Mindee-self, looked out and saw flashes of humans on some street in Atania. Was this a memory too?
“Don’t get too close. She’s got a knife.”
“Maybe we should tackle her and stop her.”
“NO!” Dubhaine heard herself rage, at the same time Amberleigh began pushing the man away and Mindee grabbed one of the black-cloaked men as they let her up. Amberleigh had been unable to stop the man. Mindee had been unable to stop herself, so she snapped the man’s neck.
Dubhaine’s vision and sense of self and time snapped into place just as she nearly stabbed a man on the street. She had him by the shirt, and her dagger was just a hair’s breadth from his neck.
Her breath was still heaving. The man pulled away, shoving her in the process. She heard him say something about just trying to help. Dubhaine whirled around with her dagger in her hand, “Don’t touch me!”
Dubhaine was glad she hadn’t killed that man. Mindee quietly watched for new threats. Dubhaine was sure that if someone touched her, Mindee would end their life.
The crowd stepped back as Mindee/Dubhaine whirled around. She was wild-eyed, dripping in sweat and her breath was heaving. She looked on the verge of collapse.
A dark-skinned woman appeared, pushing through the crowd. She wore a white frock and a shaved, waxed head. She was perhaps in her thirties, fit and taught. “Let me through. Let me see what’s going on,” she said. The crowd quickly parted, recognizing her, and she stood in front of Dubhaine.
“Nobody is going to touch you. My name is Adare. I’m a priestess of the Church of the Creator. What is your name.” Adare stood with palms open, arms at her side as if to indicate she was non-threatening. Dubhaine recognized how she must appear to this priestess, dressed in threadbare brown clothing, covered in blood. Her head was shaved, with several days of stubble, and pointed ears. People were murmuring about it.
Dubhaine kept muttering, “Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.” As she said it, the energy seemed to drain from her. She slowly lowered her guard and sank to her knees. Her muttering dissolved into crying and sobs. After a minute of crying, Adare approached her. “I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to, but let me take you somewhere and get you cleaned up.”
Dubhaine nodded and stood. Adare reached out
a hand, and Dubhaine flinched away, growling. “I’m sorry, you said no touching,” responded Adare. She walked toward the church, gesturing for people to make way. They did, and Dubhaine followed.
“Is that an elf?” said someone in the crowd.
“Why are her ears pointed?” said someone else.
Mindee growled about the lost handkerchief she used to hide her ears. Dubhaine kept walking.
As Crom the minotaur shaman walked with the army of Emperor Gabalifix he reflected on the nature of what made this army so terrifying. From a small island nation across the Uisce Thir, the Sidhe name for the ocean, it was not an overly large army. The days of grand armies in the tens of thousands ended with the Hartland War. Cyric the Warlord’s genocidal war had wiped out most of the living beings who constituted those armies.
The legendary beings of myth and fairy tale had been reduced to memory by Cyric’s insane race war and the aftermath of the Gaeas. The Sliabh Sidhe, or the dwarven nation, was no more. He had heard Cichol, the Thalamtuatha, call the pathetic, twisted creatures they’d found the Truflaid Sidhe or garbage dwarves. He laughed a little at the name, but there was a note of sadness to it. The Tuatha were reduced to less than a tenth of their previous population. The Kjeldoran Tuatha had gone into deep hiding. Nobody had seen or heard from them since the end of the Hartland War, except for Celestina, who was now known as the infamous terrorist, the Sealgair.
The orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, gnolls, ogres, and ettins had retreated deep into the Dragonspine mountains.
Besides the dwarves, perhaps no race had been more devastated than the Minotaurs. The Uisce Thir had been shaken by a devastating earthquake unleashed by Cyric’s wild lashings with the Ogham. The legend was that he had pulled in enough power from the Ogham to awaken a dormant volcano and destroy the Kjeldoran elves. The earthquake he used to unlock the volcano had also awoken a volcano in Crom’s home, which in turn unleashed a massive tsunami which destroyed the entire city of his home island. Only a handful of families had survived the disaster. Those who had been at sea, including Gabalifix himself, had sailed home to find their homeland forever altered.
Gabalifix had vowed to rebuild their cities. However, the capital city had been covered in lava. Even after picking a new site for the capital, there were so many dead, so few able bodies, that Gabalifix had welcomed refugees from other places. Some of them had been hard-working people of the various races, kind-hearted beings that needed or wanted a place to start over.
However, others had been cunning usurpers who had wanted to take Uisce Thir as their own. Just 50 years after the end of the Hartland War, Gabalifix had found himself embroiled in a coup. He and his guards had put it down brutally, executing hundreds. Gabalifix himself put his two sons to death, who had joined with the traitors. Crom, who had grown up with Gabalifix, had watched something break inside Gabalifix that day.
To overcome the coup, Gabalifix had called upon help from the Sidhe Court and the Winter Queen herself. He had opened his realm to her influence to get it back.
So it was that Emperor Gabalifix, this mighty, long-lived monster out of humanity’s confusing maze legends, was here, doing the bidding of the most fearsome Archfey. He had once commanded thousands of ships against the navy of a great warlord, their empires clashing on the seas.
Now he was here, doing mop-up duty for a conflict that ended nearly 200 years ago. As far as Crom was concerned, humanity should have been put to the sword, and Atania razed to the ground immediately after Cyric fell.
But those interested in seeing humanity survive had extracted concessions from the Summer Queen and other members of the Sidhe Court. Those concessions had cost her crown, but her misguided fondness for humanity told her it was worth it.
Regardless, powerful beings to whom Gabalifix owed his crown commanded that instead of razing and salting this city, Gabalifix was to subjugate it and kill off any human that showed any mystical power, or any Sidhe or Tuatha creature that aids them.
The great emperor sucked his teeth as he walked through the middle of Hidden Atania. Crom knew him well and imagined how much he would have enjoyed being the one that set fire to the Engineering School, that place with the most ill-fitting of names. One did not engineer the Ogham in the same way a blacksmith forged a sword. But it could be taught. The Engineering School was where Cyric had trained his Chosen in how to manipulate the Ogham for war.
As Cichol said they would, the Truflaid Sidhe made themselves scarce as their host of nearly 300 passed through the ruins. While they might not be fearsome compared to what Gabalifix had before, they were more than enough for this pathetic rabble. He had seasoned warriors, massive ogres, and 300 Sidhe creatures with heavy grudges against the Duine - the Sidhe name for humans. He hoped they would put up a real fight, to give Gabalifix an excuse to let his army off their leash.
The emperor stopped for just a moment to look at the crumbling palace. That was a castle built for a great leader, and he knew that Gabalifix would be thinking about taking it for himself. Crom didn’t think it was a good idea. Darian had been a mighty warrior. He had also betrayed the Sidhe who gave him the power to create his kingdom. After a moment, they continued as Gabalifix led his small but mighty force East through Hidden Atania, nearly to the grounds of this Church of the Great Creator.
The dark-skinned priestess, Adare, is kind thought Dubhaine. She sat with Dubhaine while she bathed and cried. Adare gave her a towel, warm food, and made small talk, bringing her back to the world of the living, bit by bit.
“Can I ask where you are from?” asked the kind priestess.
Feeling like there was a thick fog inside her mind, she was slow to reply. Finally, she said, “Dubhaine. My name is Dubhaine. I am from the Hartland woods, originally.”
Adare nodded. “Have you been in Atania long?”
How to answer this? She nodded. “I have been here for years, hiding my true identity. My…” she contemplated how to say the Cumhnantach sent her without revealing her real purpose, “people…sent me to watch you. We wanted to see what you are like.”
She did not tell her that she had been among them for more than a hundred years, quietly murdering the humans who showed the ability to access the Ogham. She could tell Adare had many questions but was too kind to overwhelm her.
Other priests had come into the bathing room, and Adare had sent them packing with whispered words. She kept Dubhaine from becoming a spectacle. After her meal, Dubhaine said, “I would like to sleep.” Adare took her to a quiet room and asked one of the Knights to keep watch over her room.
She suddenly awoke, realizing that she had forgotten the reason she’d come in the first place. She opened the door to find an armored warrior standing guard at her door. “Adare. Now. I need to speak to her. Atania is in terrible danger.” The warrior looked at her, surprised, ogling her pointed ears. “Now! Go!” she shoved his shoulder.
She paced for the few minutes that it took them to retrieve the sister.
As soon as Adare walked in, Dubhaine lunged for her and grabbed her, “Atania is in mortal danger! There is an army on your shores right now. You have to mobilize your knights and warn the town. Gather as many people as possible here, within your walls, or hundreds will die.”
Adare blinked, taking in everything Dubhaine said and asked, “How do you know this?”
“Because last night I was on the shore and I saw them. Hundreds of soldiers in Emperor Gabalifix’s army. If you don’t act now, you’ll be too late. I’m sure they will march in the morning. I had to kill one of their sentries to get away and warn you.”
Adare blinked again, “Wait here.”
Long minutes passed until Sister Adare returned with a handsome, older soldier. “This is Lord Commander Garrick Cimarron.”
Dubhaine blurted out, “Did you raise the alarm?”
Lord Commander Garrick Cimarron stopped dead in his tracks and stared, for what Dubhaine imagined was the first time in his life, at the pointed ears of a Tuatha.
She stared back. He was strikingly handsome. After a moment she snapped, “Did you raise the alarm or not?”
Adare shook her head, “I want you to tell the Lord Commander what you told me.”
Dubhaine realized then that they had not raised the alarm, and her eyes narrowed in anger. “You’re wasting time! People are going to die! Lord Commander, my name is…” she paused for a second, “Dubhaine. My name is Dubhaine, and earlier today I watched an army embarking on the Southern Atanian shore, on the other side of the city. My best guess is that they mean to march on the city at first light.”
That got his attention. “How many?”
Dubhaine gave a precise count of how many soldiers there were. As she recounted the goblins, orcs, Tuatha, ogres, and minotaurs, Garrick’s eyes got wide. By reputation, Garrick was a good man, a strong leader, and he cared deeply about his men and their discipline. He had never actually seen a real battle. She paused after giving him the numbers and then asked, “Any questions?”
He held up a finger, then took a step outside. He gave the knight standing guard orders to summon someone named Strom, and the rest of his officers. The knight took off like a shot when Garrick sharply told him to run. He turned back, “I have questions. Starting with how do we fight ogres and minotaurs?”
Dubhaine, Adare, and Garrick waited while Strom and the other officers assembled in various states of dress. People were running in every direction, panicking. Word had got out that there was an army coming. The gates were closing, and people peppered the officers with questions as they assembled in Dubhaine’s room.
Garrick’s aide, Strom, had arrived in a disheveled uniform. Garrick frowned but didn’t say anything as Strom held the door for the officers as they walked past him. They all stopped at the door when they saw Commander Garrick talking to her. She smiled a little as she considered what it was like to see a Tuatha for the first time. Garrick noticed their arrival. He turned and spoke to them.