by Eric Asher
Most of the stands remained silent. And that surprised Nixie. She’d witnessed more than one duel in her time. They were usually rife with taunts and insults. She hoped their silence was a good sign, but she had no way of knowing. She wouldn’t know until the fight was over, if she was the one still standing.
The moment Nixie’s boot hit the stone surface of the arena, Deidra struck.
Nixie heard the shouts from the crowd then. She heard the gasp from Shamus and the curses from Pace. Deidra’s assault may have been unsportsmanlike, but Nixie had expected it. She parried the blow, smoothly drawing one of her daggers as the water witch sailed by, her sword arcing out to strike at Nixie.
The blade in Nixie’s hand tested Deirdre’s defenses. She poked and swept and lunged to bait the other water witch. Deidra was skilled, easily dodging the blows and scoring a hit against Nixie’s wrist. The metal guard sizzled, and Nixie had no doubt that the blades Deirdre wielded were stone swords.
“You want a world overrun by the Unseelie Fae,” Nixie said. “You’re a fool.”
“And so what if it is?” Deirdre snapped. “Better to serve a ruler who knows their place in the world than bow down to the commoners.”
The stands erupted in shouts.
Lewena never wanted that!
You’re wrong!
Any Unseelie is better than a traitor!
Nixie glanced at Pace and Shamus. A peaceful hideaway … she thought they had a great deal more work to do.
Deidra grew translucent, her motions harder to follow in the waters around them. But Nixie had been in enough battles to understand where to focus. An undine could elongate her limbs, change her form, but she could not change her weapons. The blade may move at a surprising angle, but it was always attached to the witch.
She saw the lunge, moved to the side, and slammed the hilt of her sword down onto Deidra’s hilt. The vibration caused Deidra to stumble and Nixie raised her left hand, summoning a pulse of water to push Deirdre’s form away. The whirlpool of force turned the water into a shimmering wavy chaos.
“Yield to me,” Nixie growled.
“You won’t leave here alive!” Deirdre snarled. “When I’m done with you, I’ll drown that prince of yours. Alexandra and Euphemia’s heads will hang from—”
Nixie cast her dagger up above Deidre’s head. The other water witch watched it as Nixie formed the whirlpool around the dagger, ready to launch it into her opponent. But even as Deidra ranted, Nixie slid the other dagger from her boot and hurled it with the force of a titan. Deidra’s breastplate crumpled, the blade cutting deep into her chest before erupting out her back. And there, in that place, the silence was deafening.
Deidra didn’t have time to scream. The stone daggers of the queen were far too powerful for that. Her body shifted from a semi-translucent state to a cold gray stone in seconds. The damaged breastplate had curled up inside the stone body, and it would be stuck like that until the end of time.
But that would be a waste of metal. Nixie held her hand out, let the waters spin around Deirdre’s frozen form before she said, “Mourn not the lost.” She snapped her fist closed and the force of the ocean shattered the undine’s form to dust.
Nixie turned slowly toward the spectators, leaning toward them. “Do not mistake my desire for peace as weakness. I have a long memory, and have done many things I would prefer to forget. But I also remember the wars, and how they are won. The world is changing around us. If we do not change with it, we will be lost to history, as much as the kings who came before.
“I’m taking the Eye, but there is something you all need to understand. The Eye is not the magic that sustains this place. That is the deep lines, the ley lines at the bottom of the ocean that feed magicks many of us have forgotten, that live inside each of us. Live here in safety, or join the battle against Nudd.” Her voice took on a steel edge. “But do not take up arms against my empire. Or you will fall.”
Nixie didn’t see who started the chant as she turned to leave. It was only one voice at first. “All hail Nixie!” But more voices joined, and while she was sure the fight with Deidra had left a bitter taste in some of their mouths, it was still good to know she had allies here.
Nixie glanced at Pace as she stepped back up onto the pulpit. “Stay with your people. Tell them what is happening on the surface. They need to know so they can make their own choices about what they want to do.”
Pace inclined his head. “Of course, my Queen.”
Nixie eyed Pace for a moment. The blue men had always been on the edge of the kingdom of Atlantis, never truly ruled by the queens of old, but never at war with them either. The meaning of those words didn’t escape Nixie.
She started back to the Temple of Poseidon, well aware of the presence at her side. He followed her in silence, past the smaller temples and dwellings, until they came once more to the Temple of Poseidon. This time, Nixie noticed where one of the stone offering baskets had been broken away. And she wondered if the basket she’d seen in the other circle of the ruins was the one that belonged to this temple.
Nixie let the thought linger and made her way back into the halls of the temple.
“Well done, my Queen,” Shamus said when they crossed the threshold. “I appreciate you not telling them about me. I want no part of that.”
“You’ll always have a part of that,” Nixie said, clasping his forearm. “Just try to keep them safe. If some of them want to join the battle against Nudd, you can send them back to Giant’s Causeway. I have witches there I trust.”
“And why is it you trust me?” Shamus asked.
Nixie offered him a small smile as they passed the statues and the golden chariot of Poseidon. “I see much of myself in you. It’s a thin line between fighting to change the way our people live, and running away to do the same. You’ve protected friends and family here, and I suspect you would have done much the same on the surface.”
“You can’t know that.”
“No one really knows …” Nixie trailed off as she opened the door to the inner sanctum. “No one really knows until they’re faced with the choice.”
Nixie remembered the shoe that bobbed and sank in the river. She remembered the cries of the boy. A child who would have drowned. Nixie remembered the claws cutting into her skin as that boy was caught between two forms. She remembered the tears on that wolf’s face. And Hugh’s tears of joy when she brought Haka back to him.
She could have let Haka die that day. Could have torn the breath from his lungs and folded him into the cold embrace of the deeps. But things changed. People changed. And she’d risk everything to show her people a better path.
Nixie held her hand above the table. The runes responded, and this time she didn’t pull away. The gauntlet met the table, and brilliant blue light lanced out, racing across the knots and whorls of the ancient ward. If she was right, she’d have the Eye of Atlantis in moments. If she was wrong … that would be a story for Shamus to tell the next fool.
“No one knows the incantation,” Shamus said. “What can you hope to …”
Nixie smiled and ran two fingers down the back of the gauntlet. A golden streak joined the rich blue light of the ward, and darkness took her.
CHAPTER TEN
Nixie’s heart hammered in her chest. She’d been confident, but confidence didn’t always mean survival. A pinprick of golden light grew on the horizon and something like relief washed over her.
She turned, and was met by the vision of a floating jewel, no larger than an eye. More light blossomed around her, and the blackness of the Abyss changed. It took on a deep red color that undulated and shifted against the golden motes.
“Get out!” a voice screamed, shattering the silence and echoing into eternity.
An eye opened beside her, blood red and shot through with darkness. Its twin joined it before she saw the horns below, the distended limbs and a mouth so full of fangs it was a wonder it could even close.
“Fuck!” Nixie shouted, snatc
hing the blue eye out from where it floated amid the wall of awakening fire demons. It was a cold thing that made the void of the Abyss feel warm. But even as the thought crashed through her mind, she realized the heat was coming from above. A torrent of flame, unleashed by the horned head of a titanic demon.
Her hair singed as she dragged two fingers down the back of the gauntlet. The flesh of her right arm blistered as she held it up to shield herself. There was no water here. No power for her to defend herself with. But nothing would stop her so long as she drew breath.
The gauntlet stuttered, and the world roared around her.
Darkness became light, and the waters boiled around her. Nixie’s own scream was deafening as sound returned. She clutched the scorched flesh of her right arm and collapsed onto the top of the round table.
* * *
“Don’t move,” a voice said.
Nixie bristled at the sound, and then winced as her muscles tightened. Was this it? Were they going to strike her down while she was weak?
“I know it may be a bit nasty, but I promise it can heal the worst burn from a fire demon.”
Nixie cracked an eye open and found Shamus standing over her, smearing some kind of hideous orange poultice on a kelp bandage before wrapping it around her hand.
“The Eye?” she asked, but her voice was cracked, dried out like a desert plain.
Shamus winced and picked up a foul-smelling jar floating beside him. “Must have inhaled a bit of that fire.” He frowned and studied her face. “Well, I have good news, and I have bad news.”
Nixie narrowed her eyes.
“Oh, it’s not that bad.” Shamus spooned a heaping dollop of orange gunk out of the jar in his hand. “Just swish it around a bit and swallow it.”
If he’d been trying to kill her, feeding her poison at this point probably wouldn’t have been the approach. She opened her mouth wider and almost cried as the flesh split at the corners of her lips. And Mike wondered why undines generally didn’t like fire demons.
“What is it the commoners say?” Shamus asked. “Here comes the aeroplane?”
Nixie couldn’t stop the pained laugh. Shamus gently scraped the spoon off on her teeth, careful not to touch her split skin. She chewed and swished the viscous stuff and her mouth felt better instantly, until her brain registered the taste.
“By the gods!” she muttered through a grimace. “It’s like a rotten lobster left out in the sun for a week.”
“Always thought it was more like two weeks,” Shamus said. “Don’t forget to swallow it. Take some water in, too. Let it fill your lungs.”
Nixie stopped swishing, closed her eyes against the horrifying lumpy texture, and swallowed. The torn flesh mended in her throat and lungs under the care of the wretched stuff, but she couldn’t stop gagging on the rotten fish taste.
Shamus applied another of the bandages on the side of Nixie’s face. “You know, my father always wanted me to be an alchemist. That was never my true calling. A healer, now that was something I could be proud of. My mother died in one of the old wars, but I always thought she would have been proud, too.”
“I never knew my parents,” Nixie said. Her voice was returning, but she still flinched at the awful taste.
“Never?” Shamus asked. “Well, that’s rather sad, I must say. But you still had a family, I assume?”
“Euphemia.” Nixie offered a weak smile. “She was all the sister I ever needed, and later we met Alexandra.”
Shamus nodded and peeled back some of the older bandages. “We all have family, whether we realize it or not. Those who would fight for us, and sometimes those who live for us.”
Nixie turned and looked at Shamus, studying the lines of the old undine’s face. “Who are you?”
“A humble healer. Now rest. You’ve had quite a rough day getting the Eye.”
Nixie’s heart pounded in her chest. “Where is it?”
“Right where you left it.” Shamus held up Nixie’s gauntlet and unfolded it. Nestled in the center was the brilliant blue orb of the Eye of Atlantis. “You know, you would not have survived the trial without your love for the necromancer.”
“What?” Nixie asked, furrowing her brow and wincing as she felt the skin split.
Shamus adjusted the bandage on her head. “Though I’m afraid you still hold a fair amount of hatred in your heart. Hence the burns.”
“What trial?”
“Well,” Shamus said, “perhaps you were luckier than I imagined. It is not unusual for the Fae to protect sacred artifacts with a trial to test the heart of the one who seeks it.”
“I’ve heard stories, but … I thought they were only stories.”
“Just as Atlantis is only a story to a great many who live upon this world. There is truth in most tales, my Queen. You need only seek it out. Now, the trials of the Fae were rather ingenious, I always thought. To retrieve the Eye of Atlantis, you must hold more love within your heart than hatred. But other trials would test your knowledge, bravery, or trust.”
“I know the stories. So no one Fae could wield too much power. A Fae filled with love may still hold fear, so he would never be able to suffer the trials of two.”
“Not just stories, though,” Shamus said. “It would do my Queen well to remember that.”
“It would have done your queen better to warn her,” Nixie muttered.
Shamus grinned and removed another bandage. He reached out and gently tilted her head from one side to the other. “Not much else I can do. Our regular healing incantations don’t work so well when the damage is caused by a fire demon. And just in case you get any ideas of asking someone to heal you right now, don’t.”
“I know,” Nixie said. “The flames of fire demons leave a mark for a time. If someone tried to heal me more than you already have, the spell would backfire and consume them instead.”
“Exactly,” Shamus said. “So don’t go asking for more help than you already have. You need to wait at least a few hours.”
A few hours didn’t seem so bad. But they had been in the middle of the battle, a wound like the one she had just suffered could’ve meant her end, or the end of a well-meaning healer. Fire demons and water witches were incompatible at the most basic levels of existence. Which made her friendship with Mike the demon all the more strange.
Nixie sat up and swung her legs over the edge of a spongy bed. It probably would have been simple to float, but she’d spent enough time on the surface that sometimes she felt better with stone beneath her boots.
She looked around the small gilded room and realized she was in one of the domiciles nestled inside the Temple of Poseidon. Where the main hall was coated in gold and precious metals, this room was simpler. A small bookcase sat in the corner along with a cage Nixie suspected held live snacks.
“Hungry?” Shamus asked as he followed her gaze.
“I can’t fully express to you how not hungry I am after eating that … paste.”
“Have you ever had fish paste? A strange concoction the commoners came up with. I’m rather fond of it myself.” Shamus gave her a broad smile before pulling the last of the bandages away from her face. He frowned and nodded. “Not too bad. Once a healer can get to you, I doubt you’ll have so much as a scar leftover. You did well, my Queen.”
Nixie ran a hand through her hair, wiping away the last of the salve before she picked up her crown and set it on her brow.
Shamus picked up the armor and greaves from the table beside the bookshelf. “Allow me.”
Nixie nodded and waited as Shamus strapped her armor gently onto her healing flesh. The cold metal felt good against the residual burn. He moved to her greaves, and as the last buckle fastened, the armor glowed as it covered the joints in magic.
Shamus took a knee, which made Nixie remarkably uncomfortable in the small room. “My Queen, should you have any need.” He held out a tiny disc. It was the smallest Wasser-Münzen she’d ever seen.
“And you. If I can come, I will. And I promis
e you I’ll return here one day. Even if it is only my armor, returned by the Morrigan.”
A sad smile crossed Shamus’s face. “I hope you can change the world, my Queen. We’ve been hiding and dying for far too long.”
And killing. Nixie thought the words, but she didn’t speak them aloud. “As the war rages above, do not be surprised if Nudd sends the eldritch things to attack Atlantis.”
“Do not be surprised if there, at the end of times, you find allies at your side you did not expect.”
Nixie studied the Eye of Atlantis on her palm before locking it away in a pouch at her side. Shamus held up her sword, which she took and sheathed at her waist.
With that, Nixie left the Temple of Poseidon, swimming once more through the crevasse and ruins, greeting a few curious faces as she left Atlantis behind.
* * *
The trench was dark once more as Nixie took to the sea and began her ascent. It didn’t quite feel real that she’d set foot in Atlantis. That undines were living there, deep beneath the sea. Memories of her time spent in Atlantis above the ocean warred with what she’d seen today.
She drifted silently, until she reached a depth where the anglerfish prowled once more, and the dim lights of their lures brightened like the stars of the Abyss. Their jagged teeth reminded her of the fire demon she’d seen. It was unlike any she’d encountered in their wars. The basic shape was somewhat reminiscent of Mike’s true face, but it was so different, so much … darker.
Nixie shivered as something brushed by her. Her armor brightened with a tiny effort of will, bringing to life a small light incantation to see where she was going. The wall of the trench surprised her with its proximity, but then it moved.
The massive form swiped its tail and bumped her again before she saw the eye.
“Guardian,” Nixie said with a small smile, reaching out to pat the enormous snout of the Mosasaurus.