Darkest Night

Opening a [Portal: Talahm], I completed the trip between worlds in a matter of seconds. Passage through the portal was a two-step process and required passage through the Summerlands. Usually, [Portal] allowed the Sidhe to ignore the idiosyncrasies involved in traversing that realm. The vagaries of time anchored in the present, somehow, when using System spells.

But not always. The only sure way to travel and make sure you exited in the present was to use linked [Portal]'s that forced the Summerlands to balance the time between your opening [Portal] starting point and where the second opened [Portal] exited. It was during this transition point, that step between while a Sidhe existed in the Summerlands that the Laws of Time were broken, and the future, past, and present could all coalesce at one point in space.

This trip was as uneventful as ever. I did take the time to save a [Portal: Rome] as a permanent portal location before leaving the planet. System only allowed two of these locations to be saved and I would probably delete it in the future. But for now, I wanted a way back to the planet, a way that could not be traced by the bureaucratic middlemen, Caesar's troops, or Olympus Gods.

I could feel the difference immediately once I transitioned from the Summerlands to Talahm. It has an energy and vitality to it that can be found nowhere else, at least for the Sidhe. The ebb and flow of magic, the planetary energy harmonized together, the music of Fairy a symphonic cadence that resonated with the soul of Sidhe. King Teigh was certain this same harmonic frequency would exist if and when we claimed Ijal, I wasn't sure.

And I wasn't sure if I should hope he was correct or not. There was a unique and invigorating quality to Talahm that I wanted to maintain. This was our first world, the place where the Tuatha de Danaan had walked among us so long ago. And I wanted to preserve those historical wonders that made it special.

I liked the unique quality of our homeworld. A world touched by the Tuatha de Danaan. The accumulation of their divinity permeating every rock and plant, even after the millions of years they have been in Sleep.

As I spent a few moments taking deep breaths, simply enjoying the moment, muscles that had been long clenched eased. The tension and pain from my recent battle finally fading as I allowed myself to relax for the first time since Caesar had summoned Tisiphone.

I had been able to hide my wounds during that battle, those that I hadn't been able to heal instantly. I was nothing if not resilient, all Sidhe had an innate healing factor that made it almost impossible to kill us. It was what gave us our Immortality.

Tisiphone had done more damage than I'd like to admit. There were moments during our game of cat and mouse, I'd had to exert every bit of intellect and power I possessed to escape the unsheathed claws of the goddess of Vengeance, and buttress my natural healing ability with spells, long ignored and neglected.

My body's ability to heal was impressive, but even as quickly as I could regenerate, even replace entire body parts, the process took a toll. I had spent days constantly running, fighting, and healing, and my magical stores were almost exhausted. It had been a long time since I'd felt this tired and weak. But the restorative energies of Talahm served as a respite as soon as I'd crossed through the [Portal].

"Duchess Wynne?" A voice in the dark called.

I had returned to the planet during the darkest part of the night, with no moons to eliminate the surroundings. Which made no sense. I had returned during the height of summer, a time when the moons never set. It was only during Samhain, as the seasons changed from harvest to winter, that the moons failed their eternal vigilance.

For that two weeks of the year, the week before and after harvest's end, the moon failed to rise. It is during this time that the Goddess Arianrhod, Lady of the Moon, is forced by her Uncle Math fab Mathonwy to spend two weeks as his servant. He had been cursed, and to avert that curse he was required to rest his feet in the lap of a Virgin unless he was at war.

The curse required him to wade through the blood and vitriol of those he slew in blood, and only the purity and chastity that could be found in those virgins could he avert that curse and keep from dying. That duty was shared among a bevy of Goddesses that were protected by that purity, and even in sleep, the Moon adhered to Cosmological structures that had been created when she sat in her castle at Caer Sidi.

"I was Duchess Wynne, twenty years ago," I answered that voice in the dark.

"Now? I am Princess Ailis Wynne, the head of House Wynne. Who is speaking?" I demanded.

"I bring a message, Your Highness," the voice rejoined, ignoring my question. "Tybalt, King of Cats, ruler of the Cait Sith, would have you join him in consul. There are strange portents, signs that our Oracle has seen, that relate to you.

"Paradox exists and must be answered."

His words gave me pause. Tybalt was a force of nature on par with Gwyn ap Nudd. The King of Cats was not an empty title, he and his people were gifted with immortality the same as any other Sidhe, but where we embraced the wheel of reincarnation if we were killed, the Cait Sith was given another chance. Nine lives, nine times to return from true death, nine times before they were constrained to risk the wheel of reincarnation. This ability was the envy of all Sidhe.

But more importantly, during Samhain, the Cait Sith held sway over the recently dead. They could restore one of the nine lives they had lost by stealing the unprotected souls of those that had yet to pass over. They could be bribed to ignore the recently departed with saucers of milk, but they could not be restrained.

That Tybalt held court in lands that could only be accessed by the Cait Sith gave him and his people an additional layer of protection that made his power impossible to ignore. It was only by chains crafted by Goibniu, God of Smiths, chains that were permeated with enchantments for hospitality that kept Tybalt's kingdom limited to Cait Sith.

I had never met the Cait Sith King. Tybalt was as fickle as any cat. Willing to sit and be petted by any man or woman that took his fancy, and unable to be found unless he willed it. I could refuse his invitation. But the messenger had invoked an Oracle, and it might spell more than my own doom to ignore that person.

Every Pantheon had men and women that could foresee the past and future. For the Tuatha de Danaan, they rarely got involved in events that touched upon the mortal world. Unlike the Greek Fates that were capricious and obsessed with controlling the tapestry of life, the Oracles of the Tuatha de Danaan seldom intervened.

That Tybalt wished to speak with me, was interesting. That the Oracle was involved was a portent I could not and would not ignore.

It was only after I tried to activate my M-AI to inform King Teigh about these events, that I realized just how strange this night would become. There was no connection to Teigh, no Tuatha de Danaan frequency that my M-AI resonated and connected with. The magical network that allowed our faction to stay connected was offline.

And it was offline for a very good reason.

The Summerlands had opened the [Portal] that I had cast to a time before the Tuatha de Danaan faction existed. I had stepped back in time, and a quick check with the person who had greeted my arrival let me know I had returned to Talahm the day before my people were attacked, my daughter went missing, and I was cast into the CERN dungeon.

The Summerlands had decided to send me back in time to where it all started, and I believed. I hoped. I had faith in Fairy that this was not a mistake, that I would find out what happened to my daughter twenty years ago, and that I had been returned to this point in time and place for the express purpose of saving my daughter's life.