A War Between Kin (Part 1)

[Igraine]

History wouldn’t remember who started the war. No one would remember who took the first blow one hundred years from now. What they would remember is that in the beginning there was a time of deep quiet, when no bird flew overhead and even the wind was quiet. Nothing made a sound beyond the breathing of the collected souls standing on the sand of Xexoria. It was a fitting place for battle because so many had died there, bleeding their life into the sand and feeding it with morbidity. For such an innocuous place, a small island surrounded by turbulent waters, the stories of death and dying were long and brutal.

There had been skirmishes between the factions of the Fae, but nothing like in recent months. The escalation of hostilities between the two sides spoke only of war. The human life that was lost, and would be lost, was inconsequential to the two sides – an unfortunate side effect on one side and a complete disregard for human life on the other.

Those humans that would survive the first battle would remark on the strangeness of the creatures gathered. Their kind hadn’t been seen by humans since before The End, well before in fact. It had been a few hundred years since anyone had direct contact with a Fae creature – one they could remember at least. The few creatures that spent time in the world were very adept at covering their tracks, and King Pendaran’s following rarely went out before nightfall. Those that did were the most dangerous because they had complete disregard for human life, typically the source of random killings and travelers never returning home.

One side glinted with a green armor, the other a darker more vicious looking cast, though neither side seemed to be completely armored. Not every creature needed armor, just as not every creature needed weapons. Those that were visible were typical in use though not in design.

One creature, tall and lithe like a forest elf, stepped forward from his pack with one hand on a sword at his hip and the other swinging freely at his side. He was dressed in full green metal armor and was one of the more impressive looking creatures on his side. His eyes, a dark shade of green like what you might find in the shadows of trees, were sharp and intelligent as he surveyed the scene before him. His eyes snapped back to the center of the Unseelie mass before him as someone else dislodged themselves to step forward to greet him. It was a woman that wore no armor and seemed unaware of the danger she could put herself in – except the General knew better, knew what King Pendaran was capable of harvesting and creating if he willed it. The more innocent a creature looked, especially a female, the easier it was for her to kill.

“What are you doing here, Harpy?” The General’s voice was calm, as if he were interrogating a trespasser.

“Harpy is the best you can come up with?” The woman laughed, showing her pearly white teeth as she lowered her hood back to reveal fiery red hair and almost transparent skin. Her eyes were an eerie shade of milky black, as if she had no soul and were already dead. The General doubted she had ever lived to have a soul at all. He didn’t move as she came closer despite feeling how unnatural she was.

“I asked you what you were doing here.” It wasn’t a question any longer, but a demand for an answer. The creature slowed to a stop about fifteen yards away. They could hear each other easily.

“I could ask you the same question. It looks as if Mab is mobilizing.” The woman made a show of gesturing with her hands first to one side and then the other, encompassing all of the army behind the General. The man snorted and laughed as he pointed with an armored hand toward the army behind her.

“It would seem Pendaran had similar goals. My Queen was only responding to the obvious threat. You are to leave this area at once. Return to whatever hole you crawled out of and disappear. This doesn’t have to turn into war. We can end it here.” The General gestured with his free hand to encompass them all.

“Oh, how touching, the General wants to put away the weapons and play at democracy!” The woman laughed, a screeching sort of thing that grated on the General’s nerves. He glared at her as she mocked him, trying to keep his calm intact though it was becoming very difficult. Just being near her made his skin crawl with disgust. This had to be one of Pendaran’s will-of-the-wisp creatures that were fabled to take the lives of anyone stupid enough to venture into a marshland.

“Leave now.” The General said, grinding the words out as if he were trying not to breathe.

“No.” The woman spoke, her black eyes searching the faces of the men and women behind him. Her wild hair was fluttering on some unfelt breeze as if she were party to more than one world, and the General couldn’t be certain that she wasn’t. With ringing anger he drew his sword and pointed it at her chest where her heart was just faintly visible beneath her almost translucent skin. The woman just watched him with her vacant eyes, almost begging him to start the war.

It wasn’t the General, though, that would take the first shot that day. It was an archer in the third row that released an arrow into the woman’s arm. He was the man with the courage to send the witch creature howling back to her ranks, screaming for blood and war. Those around him were shocked, and yet thankful for the retreat of the creature that had held them so captivated.

Those that would survive the war in Xexoria would remember the waifish woman with fiery hair and dead black eyes. A few would even comment that she haunted their dreams – and they would drown in the marshes in later months between battles and skirmishes, for no apparent reason at all.

In the span of a few heartbeats several thousand Fey, once brothers in a vicious cycle, clashed together in a roar of metal and screams. As the sun rose higher in the sky, the battle promised to be grueling and long.

[Paroxysm]

The whole of the Unseelie host, what passed for the Unseelie court’s military, had gathered in Xexoria, at their king’s command. There was no counting their number; there was little point in even entertaining the idea. They could be a hundred strong now, but when the battle started they could easily be a hundred thousand with but an incantation, a small uttering and an application of will. This would be one of those few wars where numbers were irrelevant, where both sides were, for all that it mattered, equal in strength, and where the day would be won by whomever had the determination to stand up when the shouts and screams ended.

King Madoc, or Pendaran, as he was better known, sat atop a gigantic warhorse, which he had set to pacing back and forth along the column that comprised the First Guard, elite soldiers of a variety of disciplines. The great equine let out an anxious snort that caused its breath to coalesce; Pendaran reassured it with a gesture.

Like his brother and sisters of the court, Pendaran wore armor of shimmering symbols and runes that quivered and slithered, and appeared to try and wiggle out of sight if stared at for any length of time. The air around him was a misty haze, a telling sign of the power radiating off of his body as he stored up energy to release against the opposing army. He would be the spear-head, the Warrior King, and he would inspire his people, who would fight all the harder knowing that their king, the creature they had put their faith in, was willing to risk it all alongside them. He always could play a crowd.

This was a two-fold plan, of course: Pendaran rarely did anything that could be taken at face value. While he was propping up Unseelie morale, he would also inspire fear in the enemy, and, more importantly, if Mab wished to kill him, it would have to be on the field of battle, amidst the strife and chaos of war, where she, too, may meet her end. There would be no catching him on his throne, or trying to turn some of his number against him by calling him a coward.

“They imprisoned us!” Pendaran’s shout was carried to all of his people at once. “Monsters and saidsts, they called us, and then they put us out of sight, like a secret they wished kept hidden! We were seen as the lesser beings! Ugly and inferior, and bloodthirsty! When I made well on my promise, what was their response? War! Mab rallied her forces,” Pendaran’s horse gave a violent, swift turn, and he pointed out, out towards the mobilized Seelie army, “and she brings them here, to our doorstep, and makes no attempt at diplomacy! She has not yet even spoken to me!”

Every horrible creature and every twisted, mangled throat in his army seemed to growl all at once. Ogres and trolls smashed their weapons onto the grounds, and the surrounding temperature plummeted twenty degrees as sidhe balled their fists and willed power into their bodies.

“Mab thinks to sweep our legs from under us, and she is scared, terrified of what will happen if she fails. She wants to bloody us and to bloody us good--and if she has her way, we’ll be back behind the veil before the month is up.”

More growls and more magic filled the air, and now other creatures, things that even Pendaran did not know the name of, were throwing in their voices, their opinions. Whispers and mutterings ran through the army like fire through a forest.

“If Mab gets war, I want blood!”

Pendaran’s eyes narrowed to pinpoints as he stared out toward the Seelie. The Will-o-Wisp was running mad for the Unseelie line. The call ran through the Unseelie forces, and the unstoppable machine known as war gave a terrible, haunting cry from thousands of throats made one and the war was on, and there was nothing any of them could do about it now.